Читать книгу He's the One - Jackie Braun - Страница 11

“I THINK I’ll call the police,” his father said, eyeing him from the bedroom door. “Break and enter is still against the law.”

Brand turned over, winced at the light pouring into the room, eyed his father and then the clock. From his sister’s reports he had expected his father to look older, frazzled, his white hair sticking up à la Albert Einstein.

Dr. Sheridan, in fact, had already combed his rather luxurious steel-gray hair, and looked quite dapper in dark pants, a crisp white shirt, a suit vest that matched the pants.

“It’s not break and enter if you have a key,” Brand said mildly. “Hi, Dad.” It was nearly noon. Brand had slept for close to twelve hours.

“Humph. I guess you’re the expert on all things criminal. If I called the cops, you’d probably flash your badge at them, wouldn’t you? You’d probably have me arrested. Shipped off to an old folks’ home. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”

Whoo boy. Everything was going to be a fight—if he let it. Brand wasn’t going to let it. There was absolutely no point telling his father he wasn’t a cop, and he didn’t have a badge. He was an operative. But he wasn’t a doctor, and that’s all his father really cared about.

“How are you, Dad?”

“That fire could have happened to anyone,” his father said, defensively. “Your sister sent you here, didn’t she?”

Brand felt relieved that his dad was obviously mentally agile enough to figure that out.

“Any chance of getting a cup of coffee?”

“Get your own damn coffee,” his father snorted, “I’m having coffee next door.”

“At Sophie’s?” Brand asked, intrigued.

But his father didn’t answer, gave him a dark look that let him know he was not included in coffee plans, and slammed the bedroom door.

That went well, Brand thought. On the bright side, Dr. Sheridan hadn’t ordered Brand to get out of his house and never come back. Maybe there was something here they could salvage.

Unless his sister was right. If his dad was losing it, not capable of living on his own anymore, and if Brand was the one who had gathered the evidence, there would be nothing left to salvage.

“How did I get myself into this?”

He’d known he’d have to come home sooner or later, and, as it happened, he needed a place to be safe. God, if Sugar Maple Grove didn’t qualify in spades. As if to confirm that, a church bell pealed in the distance.

Brand got up, stretched mightily, aware of how deeply rested he felt.

In four years deep undercover, assuming an identity, moving in a glitzy world of wealth and crime, a man lost something of himself. And he never quite slept. One eye open, part of him ever alert, part of him hating the life he lived, making people he would betray like him and trust him.

Well, not him. The role he played—Brian Lancaster—though who he was and who he pretended to be had begun to fuse together in ways he had not expected.

Now, having slept well, Brand felt more himself than he had felt for a long time. Or was it because he had seen the reflection of himself as he used to be, in Sophie’s huge hazel eyes?

A funny irony that the place he couldn’t wait to get away from might have something to give him back now, all these years later.

“Who could have predicted I would become a man who would treasure a good night’s sleep more than most men would treasure gold?” he muttered ruefully to himself.

Brand showered and dressed, then moved downstairs, guiltily aware he was looking for evidence his father might be slipping.

Everything seemed to be in need of repairs, but Dr. Sheridan had never been gifted at things like that, faintly flabbergasted when Brand had shown an early knack with something so primitive as a hammer.

Brand’s sister, Marcie, had said, vaguely: if there’s something wrong, you’ll know. Mittens in the fridge, that kind of thing.

“No mittens in the fridge,” Brand said, opening the fridge door and peering inside. “No food, either.” Did he report that to Marcie?

He went out the front door to his car—a little sports number he’d purchased before his Brian Lancaster assignment. Now, it seemed too much like a car Lancaster would have chosen, and he was aware of wanting to get rid of it.

Brand needed coffee. Did everyone still go for coffee at Maynard’s, morning coffee house, afternoon soda fountain and evening ice-cream parlor?

Brand was aware of a reluctance to see everyone, the chasms that separated his life from the life in this small town probably too deep to cross.

He never made it to the car.

“Young man. You! Come!”

An old woman, dapper in a red hat, was waving at him from Sophie’s porch. He saw his dad and Sophie out there, too, and remembered Sunday brunch on the porch was always something of a pre-church tradition in Sugar Maple Grove.

He could smell the coffee from here and it smelled rich and good and added to that sense of coming home to small-town America.

He hesitated only for a moment, was drawn by curiosity to see Sophie in the light of day, and went through the gap in the hedge that separated the front lawns. The path between the houses was worn.

He registered, peripherally, a man trained to notice everything, that there was a lot of going back and forth between these two houses.

When his dad wasn’t around, he would have to thank Sophie for looking in on him.

Sophie’s porch was out of the American dream: deep shadows, dark wicker furniture with bright-yellow striped cushions, a gray painted wood floor, purple-and-white petunias spilling color and scent out of window boxes.

And she was part of the same dream. Despite the fact his father and the old woman were there, Brand could see only Sophie. Somehow, in the years between them, she had gone from being a delightful little nerd to the all-American girl.

“Good morning, Sweet Pea,” he said, taking the empty seat beside her.

“Don’t call me that.” Then, with ill grace, remembering her manners, “Brandon, this is my grandmother, Hilde Holtzheim.”

“The pleasure is mine, but my granddaughter, she is not a sweet pee in the morning,” the old woman said in heavily accented English, “More like a sour poop.”

He could tell from the accent that Sophie’s grandmother was German, and he almost greeted her in that language, one of three he spoke fluently thanks to countless hours in language school getting ready for overseas undercover assignments.

But before he could speak, Sophie did.

“Grandma! He doesn’t mean that kind of pee! He’s talking about a flower.” Sophie was blushing. Brand could already feel that heavy place in him lightening.

“Oh.” Sophie’s grandmother’s eyes widened. “He compares you with flowers?” she asked in German. “That’s romantic!”

Maybe, he decided, it would be way more fun not to let on he spoke German. His father, colossally indifferent to any career choice outside of medicine, did not know his only son spoke any language other than English.

His decision paid off immediately when Hilde turned to Sophie and said in rapid German, “Ach. Gorgeous. You and him. Beautiful babies.”

Sophie shot him a glance, and Brand kept his expression carefully bland, congratulated himself because it was obviously going to be so entertaining not to let on he spoke German.

“What did she say?” he asked Sophie innocently.

Today, Sophie wore a white T-shirt and shorts. Her hair, that amazing shade of mink browns and coppers mixed, was thick and sleep-rumpled. It was half caught up, half falling out of a rubber band. She didn’t have a lick of makeup on.

She looked all of sixteen, but he knew she hadn’t looked like this at sixteen because he had been the recipient of a picture taken at her sixteenth birthday party and she’d still been awkward then, duckling, pre-swan.

Now, it occurred to Brand that Sophie was going to be one of those women who came more and more into herself as she got older, but who would somehow look young and fresh when she was fifty.

“She said you don’t look like the kind of man who would be interested in flowers.” She shot Hilde a warning look.

“What kind of man do I look like?” he asked Hilde.

He was aware of liking sitting beside Sophie. She smelled of soap, nothing else, and he was surprised by how much he had missed something as simple and as real as a girl sitting on her front porch with no makeup and no perfume and her hair not styled.

She tried to hide her naked legs under the tablecloth, but before they disappeared, he noticed her toenails were painted candy-floss pink.

And he was struck again with a sense of having missed such innocence. In the world of Brian Lancaster, there had been no modesty. The types of women who were attracted to the wealth and power of the types of men he had been dedicated to putting in jail all aspired to be swimsuit models or actresses.

They were tanned, fit, artificially enhanced and wore lots of makeup and very little clothing. He did not think he had seen a natural hair color in four years. They had also been slickly superficial, materialistic and manipulative. For four years he had been surrounded by the new and international version of the old-fashioned mafia moll. His colleagues envied him the lifestyle he pretended at, but he had felt something souring in his own soul.

Brand had not even allowed himself to think of this world back here, of women who didn’t care about flashy rings, designer clothes, parties, lifestyles so decadent it would have put the Romans to shame.

It occurred to him that he might have died of loneliness if he had allowed his thoughts to drift to someone like Sophie as he immersed himself deeper and deeper into a superficial world where people were willing to do anything—absolutely anything—to insure their place in it.

“You look like a man,” Hilde said, starting in English and switching to German, “who would have a kiss that could change lead into gold.”

“She says you look like a man with a good appetite,” Sophie said, without missing a beat. “She wants you to eat something.”

The table was loaded with croissants and muffins and homemade jams, fresh fruit, frosty glasses of juice—the simple meal seemed so good and so real after the world he had come from.

His stomach rumbled as the old lady in the red hat glared at her granddaughter, smiled approvingly at him, poured him a juice and then coffee.

“Eat,” she insisted, and then in German, “A man like you needs his strength.”

Sophie’s German was halting. “Stop,” she warned her grandmother, “be good.”

“I’m supposed to be the old lady, not you,” Hilde muttered, unrepentant. In German. “Look at his lips.”

He was aware that Sophie looked, then looked away.

“Enough to make any woman,” Hilde searched for the word in German, blurted out in English, “swine.”

“Swoon,” Sophie corrected her automatically, and then turned beet-red. “She says to tell you the raspberry jam is to swoon for. She means to die for.”

The old woman was staring at his lips. “Yes, to die for.”

He laughed. “That’s mighty good jam.”

Brand was aware his father had his arms folded stubbornly over his chest, not finding the hilarity all that hilarious. Brand dutifully looked at his father for any signs of malnourishment, given the condition of his fridge, but the elder Sheridan actually looked fleshier than Brand could ever remember in the past.

He turned his attention back to Sophie, who was still blushing. In the light of day, he was aware again how pretty she had become in a wholesome way, and how watching a girl like her blush was an underrated pleasure.

After the life he had lived undercover—in-filtrating a gang of exceedingly wealthy and sophisticated weapons smugglers and currency counterfeiters—there was something about her wholesomeness—her ability to blush—that appealed to him, shocked him by making him yearn for a road not taken.

It occurred to him that maybe people should listen to the adage “you can’t go home again” and not even try.

Because he could never be this innocent again. But maybe he could just enjoy this moment for what it was: simple, enjoyable, companionable.

He was aware, again, that that was the first time in years he had felt relaxed in a social situation.

Safe, he thought in a way only someone who lived with constant danger could appreciate. Once, he had hated how this place never changed.

Now, he thought, maybe a month here wouldn’t be so bad after all.

He could see Hilde eyeing him with unremitting interest, despite Sophie elbowing her in the ribs and warning her in soft German to quit staring.

“Your father tells me you’re a secret agent,” Hilde said, pushing Sophie’s elbow away.

“No,” he said firmly, though it surprised him his father had said anything about him, since he was persona non grata. “I belong to a military branch that was developed as an antiterrorism squad. I’m just a soldier.”

“Very exciting,” Hilde declared.

“Not really. Ninety-nine percent pure tedium, one percent all hell breaking loose.”

“But you were under the covers?”

He saw Sophie, who was just beginning to recover from her last blush, turning a lovely shade of pink all over again beside him. In the world he had just come from, women didn’t blush. And they said things a whole lot more suggestive than you were under the covers. Sophie’s blush was so refreshing.

“I was. It’s not as exciting as it sounds, believe me.” The grandmother didn’t look like she believed him, so he headed her off at the pass. “Sophie, I didn’t have a chance to catch up with you last night. It’s been what? Eight years? What do you do now?”

“Last night?” his father sputtered.

Brand could tell by Sophie’s sudden slathering of marmalade on a croissant that what she had been doing last night was private to her. That instinct to protect her rose to the surface instantly.

“We ran into each other briefly when I arrived.” He watched her out of the corner of his eye, saw her catch a breath of relief that the details of her secret ceremony by the fire were safe with him.

Still, if he remembered correctly, Sophie didn’t even like marmalade.

“Oh,” his father said, his tone crotchety.

Her grandmother looked disappointed, Sophie looked relieved. She took a bite of her croissant, and her eyes nearly crossed. She glared at the marmalade.

“I’ll take that one,” he said smoothly and passed her his own croissant and the jar of raspberry jam. “As I recall, your grandmother says this is the one to swine for.”

He smiled at her to let her know he’d noticed she was rattled. And he raised an eyebrow evilly that asked if it was him that was rattling her.

But when she took a little nibble of the new croissant, ignoring the jam, and a crumb stuck at the corner of her mouth, he wondered just who was rattling whom.

“I work for the Historical Society,” Sophie said, but reluctantly. “I’m sure you would find what I do exceedingly boring.”

“It’s not,” his father rushed to her defense. “Sophie is our only paid employee at the Society. She’s a whiz at organization. A whiz! She’s going to write a book.”

“Well, not exactly,” she said swiftly, blushing sweetly again. “I’m going to gather material for a book. A collection of remembrances of Sugar Maple Grove during the Second World War. I won’t really be writing it so much as selecting and editing.”

It occurred to Brand that once upon a time he would have found Sophie’s choice of work exceedingly boring. But having just spent four years around women who were ditzy, who thought it was cute to be dumb, he found himself intrigued by Sophie’s career choice.

His father began to talk about the book with great relish—and considerable savvy.

Brand allowed himself to hope his sister was wrong, and to sink deeper into the feeling of being somewhere good. And decent.

Then the mood suddenly changed. A bright-red sports car was slowing in front of the house, then, apparently having spotted the people on the porch, it pulled in.

Sophie had been starting to relax as Dr. Sheridan had waxed lyrical about Sugar Maple Grove’s contribution to the war.

Now Brand was aware of her freezing, like a deer caught in headlights. Unless he was mistaken, she was getting ready to bolt.

“The nerve,” her grandmother said, and then in German, “I’d like to cover him in honey and stake him out over an ant hill. Naked.”

Brand, practiced at deception, never let on with so much as a flicker of a smile that he understood her perfectly. He watched, as did they all, as the man got out of his car.

If there was one thing Brand had gotten very good at spotting—and not being the least impressed by—it was wealth and all its trappings, the car, the designer sweater, the knife-pressed pants, the flash of a solid-gold pinkie ring.

“Mama’s boy,” his father hissed with disdain, and then shot Brand a look and muttered sulkily, “not that that’s always such a bad thing.”

But as he was reading the shift of mood at the table, it was Sophie that Brand was most aware of.

She had gone white as a sheet, and he could see tension in the curve of her neck, in the sudden locking of her fingers. She had hunched over as if she was trying to make herself smaller.

He had a memory from a long time ago. He and some friends shooting baskets at the riverside park where Main Street ended. Sophie had been walking home from school. She’d been thirteen, it had been after her speech in that national competition.

“Hey, metal mouth,” some Main Street big shot had yelled at her. “What makes a small-town hick? You!”

Brand’s eyes had flown to Sophie. He had seen her hunch over those books, trying hard to make herself invisible.

Brand had come out of that group shooting baskets and been across the street in a breath. He’d picked up that loser by his T-shirt collar, shoved him against the wall and held him there.

“Don’t you ever pick on that girl again,” he’d said, his quietness not beginning to hide his rage. “Or I’ll make you into a small-town brick, pound you down to dust, make you into a little square and stick you on this wall forever. Comprende?”

Even then he’d had a certain warped gift for tackling things in a way that had made him a prime find, first for the United States Marine Corps and then for the unit he now served.

Through those organizations, Brand had become much more disciplined in his use of force, at channeling righteous fury to better purpose, at choosing when aggression was the appropriate response.

A frightened nod, and Brand had let the creep go, caught up to Sophie and slipped the books away from her.

“Put your head up,” he’d told her. “Don’t you ever let a dork like that control you, Sweet Pea.”

No gratitude, of course.

She’d given him her snotty look, and said, “Brand Sheridan, don’t even pretend you know what a dork is.”

“It’s a guy like that.”

“It’s a whale penis,” she told him. And then she blushed as if she had said or done something really bad, and surprisingly, he had blushed, too.

Now, sitting here beside her, he tried to think if he had blushed like that since then. Or at all. He doubted it.

But she still blushed.

Suddenly, Brand was aware she had flexed the muscles in her legs, just enough to push back slightly from the table, and he just knew she was going to bolt.

And that for some reason he couldn’t let her. It was a variation of holding her head up high. He laid a hand on her arm, not holding her down, just resting his fingers lightly on her skin, his own hand completely still, willing his own stillness into her.

He felt her eyes on his face, but he didn’t look at her, didn’t take his eyes off the man who had made her shrink as if she was still the town brainiac carrying her books down Main Street, a target for every smart aleck with an opinion.

Brand was aware, even as he made himself go still, even as he let her see and feel only his stillness, that something in him coiled, ready, ready to protect her with his life if need be.

He didn’t know exactly what was going on. But Brand knew whatever it was she couldn’t run from this. Whoever Slick was coming up her front walk, Sophie shouldn’t let him know he had that much power over her.

Why did he?

Slick came up the steps, sockless in designer sandals, and flashed them a smile made astoundingly white by perfect porcelain veneers.

“Dr. Sheridan. The misses Holtzheim.”

He seemed unaware that no one looked happy to see him, that he would have to search long and hard to find a more unwelcoming group in Sugar Maple Grove.

He raised spa-shaped eyebrows at Brand, and put out his hand.

Brand half rose, took it, felt the softness, and squeezed just a little harder than might be considered strictly polite.

He did not return the smile, intensely aware of how stiff Sophie had become, her face rigid with pride, even as her hands gripped the tablecloth just out of view, white-knuckled.

“Brand Sheridan,” he introduced himself.

“Oh, our war vet! What an honor, the hero returning to Sugar Maple Grove.” His tone was aw, shucks, but Brand did not miss something faintly condescending in it. “I’m Gregg Hamilton.”

Ah, the Hamiltons. Strictly white-collar. Old money. That explained the underlying disdain for the public servant.

“I think you might have gone to school with my brother, Clarence.”

I think I might have taken a round out of him behind the school for having exactly the same snotty look on his face that you do.

Somewhere along the line the military had managed to channel all that aggression he’d visited on others. His father might not be willing to admit what a good thing that was, but Brand knew he was a better man for it.

Brand shrugged, letting nothing of his own growing disdain show in his face. This was what he was good at, after all, never letting on what he was really feeling.

“Sophie, Mama told me she dropped by yesterday. I just wanted to echo her invitation to come to Toni’s and my engagement party. It would be so good if you came. I think you’ll adore Antoinette. I’m hoping you’ll be friends.”

Hilde Holtzheim muttered something in German that was the equivalent of go screw yourself, worm face.

Suddenly Brand put together Sophie sitting in front of that fire last night in her wedding dress, burning all manner of wedding paraphernalia with her tension at the unexpected arrival of Slick Hamilton.

Surely, Sophie hadn’t been going to marry this guy? Worm face?

But a quick glance at Sophie, trying so hard to retain her pride, a plastic smile glued across her face, confirmed it.

Not only had she been going to, it looked like she regretted the fact she wasn’t! The little ceremony he’d interrupted at the fire pit last night was all beginning to make an ugly kind of sense now.

Well, that’s what happened when you left a lovely hometown girl, innocent to the ways of the world, to her own devices for too many years. She had all kinds of room to screw up.

“Um,” Sophie stalled, “I haven’t checked the calendar yet. What day was it?”

Brand hated seeing her squirm, and he hated it that she was so transparent. The little worm could see just how badly he’d managed to hurt her—which was exactly the kind of thing that made little worms like him feel gleeful with power.

Gregg actually looked as if he was enjoying himself enough to pull up a chair and have a croissant with them!

Brand slid Sophie a look. Slick Hamilton wasn’t the kind of threat you had to keep a hand free to get at your hidden holster for.

The look on her face reminded him of another time when he’d found her on this porch, alone, on the swing over there, listening to music drifting up from the high school. It had probably been sometime in that year before he left.

He’d been rushing somewhere, though it was funny how that somewhere had seemed so important at the time, but he couldn’t remember it now.

But he could remember the look on her face as clearly as if it had happened yesterday.

“What’s up?” he’d asked her.

“Nothing.”

“Come on. You can’t lie to me, Sweet Pea. How come you aren’t at the school dance?”

“It’s the Sweetheart Prom,” she said and then her face had crumpled even as her chin had tilted proudly. “Nobody asked me to go.”

At nineteen what did a guy know about tears except that he didn’t want to be anywhere around them? A better person than nineteen-year-old him had been might have dropped his other plans, changed clothes, taken her to the prom.

But he hadn’t. He had chucked her on the chin, told her proms rated pretty high on the stupid scale and gotten on with his own life.

Brand thought suddenly of all those cute letters she had sent him when he’d joined up, when he’d been posted overseas. His one-gal fan club. The envelopes always decorated with stickers and different colored inks, the contents unintentionally hilarious enough that he had read every word.

Never answered any, though. Not even once.

Had her younger self waited by the mailbox, hoping?

So, maybe it was because he regretted doing the right thing by her only when it was convenient for him back then that he made a decision now. He owed her something. A smidgen of decency, compassion in a hard world.

Being undercover had taught him to read situations, and this one was obviously going as badly for her as it was going well for Gregg.

It felt like the most natural thing in the world to rescue Sophie.

“I think Sophie’s going to have to say no,” Brand said smoothly. “I’m only here for a little while. We don’t want to waste any of our time together, do we, honey?”

He turned to look at her. She was no actress. If Slick Hamilton saw her mouth hanging open in shock, he’d know the truth.

And Brand didn’t want him to know the truth. That she still loved Gregg Slick Hamilton. Or thought she did.

There was one way they both could find out.

He caught her cute little puffy bottom lip with his. Touched it, ran his tongue along it, made her world only about him.

It was probably a sin how much he liked it, but Brand was pretty sure his place was reserved in hell, anyway.

And the kiss accomplished exactly what he wanted.

Sophie was staring at him with wide-eyed awareness as if Gregg had vaporized into a speck in front of them. She licked her lip and her eyes had gone all smoky with longing.

Nope.

No matter what she might have convinced herself, she didn’t love Gregg Hamilton and never had.

Not that Brand considered himself any kind of an expert on love.

Lips, though, that was quite another thing.

And he liked hers. A whole lot more than he’d expected to. His sense of having sinned deeply grew more acute.

“Well, Sophie,” the swagger was completely gone out of Gregg’s voice, “You know you’re welcome to come. Bring your new friend with you.”

The invitation was issued now with the patent insincerity of a man who saw something he’d been using to puff himself up disappearing before his eyes.

“We might just do that,” Brand said easily.

Gregg got in his car and roared away, spitting stones as if they proved his testosterone levels were substantially higher than those of the next guy.

Brand committed to getting rid of his own sports car sooner rather than later.

“Were they to swine for?” Hilde demanded, mixing German and English.

“What?” Sophie asked, dazed.

“His lips!”

“No. Yes.” She closed her eyes, gathered herself and then looked sternly at her grandmother. “Stop.”

And then she turned to Brand. The dazed expression was completely gone from her face.

“What did you do that for?” she demanded.

He tried not to smile. The girl was transparent! It was written all over her that she was torn between yes and no, stop and go, hitting him or thanking him.

And it was written all over her that that kiss had rocked her tidy world in a way she would never want him to know. But then again, he didn’t really want her to suspect it had rocked his, too.

“Your ex was just gloating over your discomfort at his arrival a little too much,” he said quietly. “It bugged me.”

“How did you know he was my ex?” she asked, aghast.

“I’m good at reading people,” he said. He didn’t add that it was a survival mechanism, that over the past few years his life had depended on that skill. “I’m glad about the ex part, Sophie. I didn’t care for him much.”

Her grandmother snickered with approval and Sophie shot her a quelling look.

“You only saw him for thirty seconds!”

“Like I said,” he lifted a shoulder elaborately, “I have a gift for reading people.”

“He looked like a good kisser,” her grandmother insisted in German.

“Stop it!” Sophie said in English.

“Stop what?” Brand asked innocently.

She looked him straight in the face. “Stop rescuing me, Brand. I’m not fifteen anymore. I don’t need your help with my personal affairs.”

She blushed when she said affairs in just about the way she had when she’d said dork all those years ago, as if she was fifteen and had just used a risqué word. It was very sweet. She was very sweet. The kind of girl he knew nothing about.

She was right. He needed to stop rescuing her.

“It was just an impulse,” he said. “It won’t happen again.”

She struggled to look composed. Instead she looked crushed.

“Unless you want it to,” he couldn’t resist tossing out silkily.

“I want it to,” Hilde said, all in English. She reached across the table, touched Brand’s hand. The mischief was gone from her eyes. “The whole town is whispering about my Sophie and him. I’d much rather they whispered about my Sophie and you.”