Читать книгу He's the One: Winning a Groom in 10 Dates / Molly Cooper's Dream Date / Mr Right There All Along - Jackie Braun - Страница 13

SOPHIE could not resist going to the window and watching Brand get on an old bicycle and peddle away. It was a woman’s bike, and ancient. Probably it had belonged to his mother.

And yet, the way he rode it, he could have been a knight and the bike a war horse. With his colossal confidence he could probably stride down Main Street in a pair of canvas pirate’s pants, and nothing else without flinching.

Not that she wanted to be thinking about him like that! Why would he flinch? She had seen his considerable assets, seen him without his shirt, the perfection of skin stretched taut over hard muscle marred only by recent thorn scratches. He knew what he had, the devil, and probably knew exactly the effect it had on women!

The man was maddening! He’d tempted her to kiss him! He had made her feel driven to show him that just because she was a small-town girl, naive and heartbroken, his big strong self was not going to march into her world and take control of everything!

Ha! She was going to show him. That kiss had just been a start!

Though when she thought of that it occurred to her she wasn’t quite ready to mess with a force that had the potential for so much power.

Even thinking about that, her hand moved to her lips, to the puffiness where his lips had touched her lips—collided really—and she felt a shiver, of longing, of awareness, of aliveness.

No, she had better stick to surprising him with small things.

“Vanilla ice cream, indeed. Tiger passion fruit,” she told herself. “Or banana fudge chunk.”

That’s it, girl, she added silently, live dan-gerously.

But she already knew that once you had played with the danger of lips like his, the chances of erasing the thrill of that memory were probably slight to nil.

Sophie willed herself to be only annoyed with Brand for messing with her plans, for tilting her tidy world so off-kilter, for making her want so badly to be seen in ways she had never been seen before.

And probably never will be, she thought with a resigned sigh.

He was a force to be reckoned with, fast and furious, like a hurricane sweeping through. Only a fool thought they could play with a hurricane, or tame it or force it onto a path other than the one it had chosen.

But the scent of the sweet peas filled her office, a poignancy in the fragrance that made it hard to be annoyed, and harder still to build her defenses against his particular kind of storm. It reminded her everything was more complicated than that.

He wasn’t just a hurricane.

Sometimes, like when he’d leaned across that counter this morning and played with her fingertips, he was so much what she had remembered him being a devil-may-care boy, full of himself and mischief, his charm abundant, his confidence reckless.

But when she had walked into that conference room and he had looked up at her, and refused to go for the lunch he’d invited her on, it had not been that boy.

Or a hurricane, either.

It had not even been the man she had stolen a daring kiss from.

That new veil had been down in Brand’s eyes, something remote and untouchable, the fierce discipline of a warrior surrounding him like impenetrable armor.

That had never been in him before. Something hard and cold, a formidable mountain that defied being climbed. It was something lonelier than the wind howling down an empty mountain valley on a stormy winter day.

She shivered thinking about it, and thinking about the kind of bravery it would take to tackle what she had seen in his eyes, to ignore the No Trespassing signs, to try and rescue him from a place he had been and could not leave.

Sophie, she scoffed at herself, you don’t know that.

But the problem was that she did. And now that she knew it, how could she walk away and leave him there?

Even if that’s what he thought he wanted?

The next evening Sophie dressed carefully for their outing to the ice-cream parlor. Her war with herself was evident in her choices: her shorts rolled a touch higher up her thigh than they would normally have been, the V in her newly purchased halter top a touch lower.

Just in case that kiss had not done the trick, she was not going to be dismissed as the little sweet geek from next door! She wanted the days of Brand Sheridan feeling like her brotherly protector to be over!

And at the same time, she didn’t want him to get the idea she was trying to be sexy for him, because she thought probably every girl in the world had tried way too hard around him for way too long.

So she wore no makeup and pulled her hair back into a no-nonsense ponytail.

Her grandmother approved of the outfit, but not ice cream or bike-riding as romantic choices.

“He loves ice cream, Grandma, he always has.”

“Ach. Do you have to ride your bike to get it? You’ll be all sweaty. And your hair!” She was still squawking away in German when she went to answer the door.

In German: “The hair! It makes you look like a woman I used to buy fish from.” In English, “Hello, Brand,” in German, “She died lonely.”

“It could have been the fish smell,” Sophie said, in English, because it was too complicated to figure out how to say it in German. Did her hair look that bad? Not just the careless do of a woman confident in herself?

Brand stepped in, and Sophie was anxious about who had come: the carefree boy from next door, or the new Brand, the weary warrior.

It was the warrior, something in him untouchable. The smile that graced his lips did not even begin to reach his eyes.

Just like that, it wasn’t about her. It was not, she thought, pulling the band from her hair, a good thing to die lonely.

“Everything okay?” she asked him quietly, as she gathered her bag and slipped out the door he held open for her. She glanced at his face.

He looked startled, as if he had expected the smile to fool her. “Yeah, fine.”

She looked at him, again, longer. It wasn’t. So, she would work from the present, backwards until she found out what had put that look on his face.

And then what? she asked herself, and when no answer came she hoped she would just know when the time came.

“How are things with your dad?” she asked, casually, as they went down the steps. She thought something had happened in the conference room, but the rejection of his father couldn’t be helping.

“Why don’t you tell me? How are things with my dad? Is he okay in that house by himself?”

She was aware he was trying to divert her, as if he had sensed she was going to try and go places angels feared to tread.

“Your dad is one of the most capable men I know.”

“That answers your question then, doesn’t it? Things with my dad are fine.”

He got astride the old girl’s bike, waited for her…she didn’t miss the fact that he looked long and hard at her legs and then took a deep breath and looked away.

“Except for the little matter of him catching his house on fire,” he muttered, as they began to pedal down the quiet street, side by side. “Why don’t you tell me what you know about that?”

Somehow he had turned it around! He was being the inquisitor. And she’d bet he was darn good at it, too, when he put that cold, hard cop look on his face.

“I’m not spying on your dad for you!”

“You know what happened,” he said, watching her face way too closely.

Well, yes, she did. But Dr. Sheridan had specifically asked her not to tell Brand that he and her grandmother had been caught in a fairly compromising position as the house burned around them. He had also asked her, last night, just before he had taken Hilde for dinner, not to mention that he and her grandmother were having a real romance.

“But don’t you think he’ll notice?” Sophie had asked, uncomfortable to be put in yet another position of deception.

“I’m counting on you to be a distraction,” the doctor had said pleasantly.

“But why don’t you just tell him?”

“He’ll see it as a betrayal of his mother. Brand is a man who likes being lonely.”

Now, looking at the coolly removed expression on Brand’s face, Sophie could see there was some truth in the doctor’s assessment of his son. Brand had developed a gift for distance.

Who was this man? Once he would have tried to argue it out of her, tease it out of her, coax it out of her.

Now he just cast her a look that was coolly assessing, said nothing more about the fire and quickened his pace so that his bike shot ahead of hers.

And, as aggravating as she had found his appearance in her office yesterday, as much as she had felt vulnerable to him, Sophie decided to try another tack to coax that chilly look off his face and bring the boy she had always known back to the surface.

Sophie put on a bit of steam herself, pulled out beside him and then passed him. She took the lead, then turned around, placed her thumb on her nose and waggled her fingers at him.

“Ha, ha,” she said, “you have a girl’s bike!”

So much for the new Sophie, all slick sophistication and suave polish.

Brand had always been competitive, and he read it as the challenge she had intended. Just as she had known, he could not resist. She could hear the whir of his bike spokes, the rubber tires hissing on the pavement. She pedaled harder. She was on an eighteen-speed, he on a three. He was going to have to work very hard to keep up with her.

Apparently he was up to the task. When she heard him coming up on her right-hand side, she swerved in front of him, heard his yelp of surprise as she cut him off and kept the lead.

“Hey,” he called, “you’re playing dirty!”

Her laugh of fiendish enjoyment was entirely genuine. She rose off the seat, leaned forward, stood up on those pedals and went hard.

Mr. Machalay crept out on the road in front of her, one arm full of groceries, the other clamped down on the leash of his ancient dog, Max. She rang her bell frantically and swerved around them. She glanced over her shoulder. Brand swerved the other way around Mr. Machalay and Max, both of whom now stood frozen to the spot. Mr. Machalay dropped the leash and waved his fist at them.

“Sorry,” she called. Still, she was pleased with her lead. It didn’t last long.

“You’re going to cause an accident,” he panted, way too close to her ear.

“Oh, well,” she called back, breathless. “Better than dying of boredom.”

“I thought I told you that wasn’t a bad thing!”

“Coming from the great adventurer, Brand Sheridan, I found that a little hard to buy.”

“Watch your tone,” he instructed her, exasperated. “You’re supposed to adore me!”

She laughed recklessly.

“You needn’t make that sound as if it’s impossible,” he called, and then he pulled his bike up right beside her.

Sophie thought she’d been pedaling with everything she had, but a sudden whoosh of adrenaline filled her and she dug deep and found something extra.

They were racing full-out, and she loved the breathless feeling, loved the wind in her hair, her heart pumping, her muscles straining. She loved knowing he was beside her. She felt as if she had been asleep and suddenly she was gloriously, wonderfully alive.

He reached out over the tiny distance between them, and touched her, a gentle slap on her shoulder, as if they were playing tag, and then he surged ahead, effortlessly, as if he had only been playing with her all along.

Though his bike was older and less sound, his legs were longer and stronger. But it was his heart, the fierce, competitive heart of a warrior, that made this race impossible for her to win.

She cast him a look as he shot by and smiled to herself. She might not win this race, but she had won in another way.

It was there. A light shone in his face, laughter sparked in his eyes, the line of his mouth, though determined, had softened with fun. It took her back over the years and made her think maybe she did not have to go as far as she thought to find him where he was lost.

Now he was way out in front, weaving fearlessly in and out of the growing traffic as they got closer to Main Street and downtown.

He turned, put his thumb to his nose, waggled his fingers at her as she had done to him. “I might have a girl’s bike, but I’m no girl!”

“Don’t say that as if there’s something wrong with being a girl!”

And then they were both laughing, and he deliberately slowed up and let her catch him.

“Nothing at all wrong with being a girl,” he told her, sweetly, solemnly.

By the time they arrived at Maynard’s they were together, the couple that they hoped to convince everyone they were.

He threw down his bike, and lay on the grassy boulevard, taking deep breaths, looking up through the canopy of leaves to the sky.

She threw down her own bike, and saw he was choking on laughter. It was a good sight and a good sound. She had broken down the barrier around him, and she was satisfied with that.

She lay down on the grass beside him. Who cared who saw them? Wasn’t that the point? Thanks to Grandma she kept her arms glued to her sides in case she was sweaty.

“You nearly killed me,” he accused her.

“That would be a cruel irony, wouldn’t it? With all the things you’ve seen and done, to die racing your bicycle down the Main Street of Sugar Maple Grove?”

The laughter was gone.

“Yeah,” he said, “that would be a cruel irony.”

“What have you seen and done?” she whispered, seeing his defenses down, moving in. Tell me.

But he got up and held out his hand to her, pulled her to her feet. She hoped any sweat had dried, but if there was any, he didn’t notice or didn’t care.

He stood staring at her for a long time, debating something.

She held her breath, knowing somehow he needed this.

And yet not at all surprised when he was able to deny his own need.

Instead, he kidded, “What have I seen and done? Ice-cream flavors you wouldn’t believe.”

“Such as?”

“On the tame side, Philippine mango. On the wild side, ox tongue in Japan.”

“Ox-tongue ice cream?” she said skeptically.

“Or oyster, garlic, or whale. Seriously.”

“Did you try those?”

“Of course. Who could resist trying them?”

At the risk of confirming she was boring, she stated, “Me!”

“You only live once. Rose petal is a favorite in the Middle East. You might like that.”

“You’ve eaten rose-petal ice cream?”

“Yeah.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

And the moment when he had almost told her something, revealed a hidden part of himself was gone, but this was something, too, to have him relaxed at her side, remembering exotic flavors of ice cream, and unless she was mistaken, enjoying this little slice of small-town life.

“Surprise me,” he told her. “Order something other than vanilla.”

And then Sophie was duty-bound to order vanilla, since he had suggested something else!

“Not unless they have rose petal,” she decided. “Or if they have ox tongue I might try that.”

And he laughed, because they both knew she never would, not even if she was starving to death and ox-tongue ice cream was the only food left on the face of the earth.

After they had gotten their ice cream in chocolate-dipped waffle cones, they left their bikes lying on the grassy boulevard, unlocked, and strolled down Main Street. The evening was not cooling, and even as light leached from the sky it was so hot that the ice cream was melting faster than they could eat it.

There was something about this experience: walking down Main Street with him, licking ice cream while the sun went down on a day that had been scorching hot, that was both simple and profound. She didn’t know what it said about her life that this felt like one of the best moments ever.

And it didn’t hurt that other women were looking at her with unabashed envy, either! Or that he seemed oblivious to the fuss he caused, to the sidelong looks, to the inviting smiles, as if being with her was all that mattered.

Was he really that good an actor? No, he’d always had that gift. No matter who he had been with, it had always felt as if, when he focused on her, she was all that mattered to him.

He stopped in front of an art gallery, closed for the day.

“Like any of them?” he asked her of the paintings in the window. He crunched down the last of his cone, and licked some stray ice cream off the inside of his wrist.

It was so sexy she nearly fainted.

She studied the paintings with more intensity. “I like that one,” she decided, finally. It was safe to glance at him. No more ice-cream licking. “The one with the old red boat tied at the end of the dock.”

“What do you like about it?”

It took my mind off what you could do with that tongue if you set your mind to it. And she bet he had set his mind to it. Lots.

“The promise,” she stammered. “Long summer days that just unfold without a plan.”

Moments caught in time, she thought, moments like this one that somehow became profound without even trying.

“Somehow I have trouble imaging you without a plan,” he said.

“I’m not uptight!” Though a woman whose mind went in twisted directions over a lick of ice cream was probably, at the very least, repressed.

“Of course you aren’t,” he said soothingly, smiling at her in an annoying way, as if he was going to pat her on the head. Then he studied the painting.

“It’s been a long time since I spent a day like that,” he said, and something slipped by his guard. Wistfulness?

“You were never the type of guy who did things like that,” she reminded him. “A day fishing? Too quiet for you.”

“I know, I was the guy roaring down Main Street on my secondhand motorcycle with no muffler. Leaping from the cliff above Blue Rock, that outcrop that we called the Widow Maker. Jumping my bicycle over dirt-pile ramps at high speeds.”

“Which you have just proven you still are!”

He smiled, but the wistfulness was there. “After I wrecked my third bicycle my dad wouldn’t buy me another one. Everything seemed simple back then,” he said. With a certain longing?

Could she help him back to that? And also prove she could be spontaneous, not uptight? A girl who could surrender her plan?

“Want to try it?” she asked. “I could find a boat. Your dad has fishing rods. We could dig some worms.”

The new Sophie was appalled, of course, and her grandmother would be, too. What kind of romance plan was that? Digging worms? But the truth was she was suddenly way more anxious to see him enjoy himself, truly and deeply, than she was to manipulate his impressions of her.

Except for the impression that she had to have a plan.

“It’s not on the courtship list,” he teased her.

“I can adjust the list.”

He shrugged, amused. “You can?” he asked, with faked incredulousness. “It’s your courtship, Sophie. If you want to dig worms and go fishing, I’ll go along.”

Good. He’d be so much more amenable if he thought this was about her and not him.

“We can go tomorrow after work,” she decided. “I’ll track down a boat. Can you look after the worms?”

“Sorry, I’m not depriving you of the pure romance of digging worms with me.”

And then he was laughing at the look on her face, and that laughter was worth any price. Even digging worms!

Sophie was less certain when she stood beside him the next evening in his mother’s rose garden.

“This looks good,” she said of the rose garden, amazed at how the weed-choked beds and overgrown roses were beginning to look as good as they once had. “You’ve done a lot in a little amount of time.”

He handed her a jar with some dirt in it. “Enough small talk. Dig. Worms. Big ones. Wriggly ones. Juicy ones. Ones just like this!”

He dangled a worm in front of her face.

She screamed, and he chuckled. “Come on, Sweet Pea, you were never the kind of girl who was scared of creepy-crawly things.”

“I was. I just pretended not to be.”

“Really? Why?” He took the jar from her, dropped the worm into it without making her touch it.

“If I had let those boys know I had a weak spot, Brand, I would have been finding worms in my lunchbox, worms in my books and worms in my mittens.”

“There was a certain group of boys who picked on you,” he recalled affectionately. “Especially after ‘What Makes a Small Town Tick.’”

“I think they might have made my life unbearable except for the fact they knew my big, tough next-door neighbor had my back. Brand Sheridan. My hero.” She slid him a little look. He was on his hands and knees filling the worm jar, not even asking her to help.

“Actually, I think they probably liked you. You know, guys at a certain age give the girl they like a frog, so she won’t know, and so they can hear her scream. I probably prevented you from having a boyfriend for a lot of years when you could have. Or should have.”

“I felt like you had my back then,” she said, her voice soft with memory, “and here we are, eight years later. And you still have my back.”

He glanced up at her, smiled, looked back and snagged a wriggler from the freshly turned black soil and put it in his jar. “I’ll always have your back, Sophie.”

He said that so casually, but even the casualness of the statement resonated deeply with her, and made her heart stand still. The way he said it, it was as if caring about her was part of who he was, came as naturally to him as breathing.

Just as she was relaxing, he turned and tossed a worm at her and then laughed when she shrieked. A good reminder that for all his sterling qualities, Brand Sheridan was no saint!

“Are you trying to tell me you like me?” she demanded.

“Sure. That, and I wanted to hear you scream. Did those boys stop bugging you by high school, Sweet Pea?”

“By then they ignored me completely,” she admitted. “I was the invisible girl.”

And somehow, even though this fishing trip was supposed to be all about him, it was so easy to tell him about her. To talk about the lonely little geek she had once been, not with regret, but with affection.

And it became so easy to show him the life he had said such a firm “no” to eight years ago.

They went fishing at Glover’s Pond, but before they got there they had to go through the ritual of him chasing her around the garden with his jar of worms. And then they had to go to Bitsy’s house and load her long-dead husband’s old wooden rowboat onto the roof of Brand’s car—a sporty little number which was not made to carry old wooden rowboats.

After much cursing and sweating and laughing and yelling of orders, they finally made it out of Bitsy’s driveway.

And when they got to the pond they had to reverse getting that contraption on the roof, to get it back off.

“Get out of the way,” Brand panted at her, trying single-handedly to wrestle the rowboat off the roof of his car. “I don’t want you squished by a damn boat.”

“Shut up. You’re such a chauvinist.”

“Get out of the way!”

“Okay. Okay.”

“Was that sound my paint job getting scratched?” His voice from underneath the rowboat was muffled.

“You wanted to do it by yourself, Mr. Macho! Now you have a scratch. Live with it.”

“Mr. Macho. Are you kidding me? Who says things like that?” he muttered, wobbling his way down to the water with the rowboat on top of him. “How bad’s the scratch?”

“Small. About the same size as the worm you threw at me. Maybe worms make good Bondo. Have you ever thought of that?”

“Actually, no, I never have. Imagine that.”

He flipped the boat off, kicked off his shoes and hauled it into the water without rolling up his pants. The boat didn’t start to float until he was in nearly to his thighs.

“That painting, Sweet Pea? A big, fat lie! Don’t get wet, for God’s sake. One of us getting wet is enough.”

He shoved the boat around, waded back in, guiding it with a rope attached to the pointed bow. Then he stooped, moved his shoulder into her stomach, wrapped his arms around her knees and lifted. She found herself being carried like a sack of potatoes out to the boat. He lowered her in.

When the excitement of being manhandled by him, and having an intimate encounter with his shoulder subsided, she couldn’t help but notice her feet were getting wet. Already.

“Brand?”

“What?”

“The boat appears to be leaking.”

He peered in over the side. “It’s not like a leak. It’s a dribble. That’s what the coffee can is for.”

And then he nearly dumped the boat trying to scramble over the side to get in. Finally in and settled, he attached the oars while she bailed water from around their ankles. No matter how fast she bailed, the water level stayed about the same.

“Are you sure its just a dribble?”

“Hey, I’m a marine. If the boat goes down, I’ll save you.”

If that was anything like being manhandled by him, she’d better bail harder.

After a while, he set the fishing lines and handed her a pole, while he bailed and rowed. And swatted bugs.

“I’ve got a nibble,” she cried, rising unsteadily to her feet.

“No, you don’t. Sweet Pea. Sit down. You can’t stand up in boats. Sit down!”

He was quite masterful when he used that tone of voice. She sat down.

“I lost the fish,” she told him.

“I’m beginning to think fishing is overrated, anyway.” He rowed them in a big circle around the pond.

It was a ridiculous way to conduct a courtship, Sophie thought. No flowers, no wine, no fancy dinner, no dancing until dawn. But she was the one who never seemed to get anything right.

But if that was true, why did this feel so right? Probably because watching him pit his strength against a water-filled boat that was growing more uncooperative by the second was just about as sexy as watching him lick ice cream off his wrist.

“You know that painting?” he asked her.

“Uh-huh.”

“There’s a reason no one’s in the damn boat.”

And then they were laughing, and the sun was going down, and the water sloshing around her ankles felt wonderful, though not as wonderful as watching him pit his pure strength against the oars until it was so dark they could hardly see each other anymore.

As they exited the boat and wrestled it back up the slippery bank toward his vehicle, the evening seemed to be ringed with magic, suffused with a golden light.

“I’m picking the next date,” he told her, swatting at a mosquito. “If this was your idea of romantic, you are in big trouble.”

“It may not have been romantic,” she said, “but it was fun, and Brand, given a choice, I think I’d choose fun.”

He rolled his eyes. “Fun over romance. Good grief, girl, what kind of a dork were you engaged to, anyway?”

“Don’t even pretend you know what a dork is,” she teased him.

“But I do, Sweet Pea. Because you taught me.”

“So, what is your idea of a romantic date?” she asked him.

“Given the limited choices of the town, its probably still the movies on Friday night.”

“This week’s feature is Terror in the Tunnel. Even you can’t make that romantic.”

“That just goes to show what you know. It’s not about the movie. Besides, if we’re trying to be highly visible, I don’t think Glover’s Pond quite does it.”

Sophie decided that Brand Sheridan was both the easiest man she had ever spent time with and the hardest. It was so easy to talk to him, to be with him, to laugh with him, and so hard when she remembered the truth: this was all a charade.

As she was getting ready to go to the movie, it felt real. The hammering of her heart, the tingling anticipation she felt waiting for the doorbell to ring, the way her heart swooped when she saw him in the door watching her come toward him. It felt all too real.

Especially the palpable electrical tension between them.

“Showtime,” he said, parking as close to the theater as he could and holding open her door for her. “Pretend you love me, Sweet Pea.”

He paid for the show, Sophie slipped out her wallet to pay for the popcorn.

He gave her a look. “Not even in a pretend world would I ever let that happen,” he growled in her ear.

The theater was packed. Before the movie started, everyone was sending surprised looks their way. Several people were nudged by others, turned in their seats and craned their necks to look at Sophie and her new beau.

“You were right about this date,” she whispered to him, “highly visible.”

The lights went down. The movie started. With a bang. A terrible explosion filled the screen.

Sophie gasped. She hated this kind of movie.

And then his hand found hers in the darkness.

“I’m okay,” she whispered. “It just startled me.” When he didn’t let go of her hand, she leaned closer to him, “You don’t have to do that. No one can see us.”

“When we walk out of here, it will be written all over you that we did this.”

“It won’t!”

“If it’s done right, it will.”

“You are just a little too sure of yourself, mister,” she hissed.

“I know,” he growled in her ear, “but my supreme confidence in myself is not unfounded.”

And then he did that thing with his fingertips on her knuckles, even though that was not in the rules, even though no one could possibly see them. Just when she thought maybe, maybe, she could get accustomed to the pure masculine possessiveness of his touch without her heart doing double-time, he moved his hand up to her wrist and traced slow, sensuous circles around the delicacy of her bones.

Who knew wrists could be such zones of sensation?

When he had thoroughly debilitated her with the wrist thing, he turned her hand over, and his fingers did the same sensuous exploration on the palm of her hand.

Throughout the movie he toyed with her fingers. He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it, he treated her wrist and her palm as if they were parts of the female body that were worshipped in one of those exotic places he had been.

When the final credits rolled, she didn’t know what the movie had been about and she could barely get out of her seat. She stumbled so badly in the aisle that he wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her in close to him.