Her Best Friend's Brother

by Kay Stockham

  Alex had pulled a compact from her purse and quickly repaired her lipstick. “I suppose we need to get in there before Mom sends out a search party. The band’s started. Let’s go dance.”

  The plastic bottle popped in his hand. “You want to dance with me? Should I be flattered?”

  She lifted a shoulder in a shrug. “Not particularly. It’s either you or cousin Richard.”

  Staring at her and knowing there was a punch line coming, Luke was reminded of why little sisters were often a pain in the ass. “And?”

  “He’s been taking dance lessons. I picked you because you dance worse than I do.”

  Thinking of the many dance clubs his last girlfriend had dragged him to during the six months they’d dated, Luke stifled a laugh. His little sister was about to learn how much things change.

  SHELBY SPRAWLED sideways across her bed, her damp hair hanging over the edge. She rolled onto her back and stared up at the ceiling.

  Nothing. Not even a trace of the lingering nausea she’d had ten minutes ago when she’d dragged herself out of the shower, yanked on clothes and flopped onto her stomach like a dying fish.

  Just relax. If you do, the stupid hives will go away and so will the upset stomach.

  A bug really was making the rounds at work so it could be that, but she knew her sickness and the hives decorating her skin were more likely due to Luke’s return. So maybe she’d had her bout of nervous Nellies over facing Luke and it was over?

  That had to be it. It couldn’t be anything else.

  Sure about that?

  Her heart stopped, then began pounding a fast, frantic rhythm, and a muscle spasm made her eyelid twitch. She lay frozen, her body tensed until she remembered her doctor’s words. No, it wasn’t anything else. Good grief, it couldn’t be. The physician had said it would be next to impossible for her to ever have children.

  Next to impossible doesn’t mean impossible.

  Shelby shot up, muddling her way through her spinning senses as she frantically tried to count back the days. Everything scrambled together and she shook her head, desperate to remember last month without having to dig out the journal her gyno insisted she keep. It didn’t work. She scrambled for the journal on her bedside table, noticing for the first time that the book was red. How appropriate.

  She flipped through the pages until she found the entry. Last month she’d had a light period, spotting really, and cramps. Pain, fatigue and achiness. Not unusual with her diagnosis of ovarian cysts, endometriosis and fibroid tumors. Some months were light, others extremely heavy. Basically it boiled down to pain, always pain.

  Her monthlies were never the same. Sort of like a walking flu combined with the period from hell that made her feel like she’d been hit by a truck. Stitches in her side. Sharp, stabbing jabs that came out of the blue and took her breath, stopping her in her tracks because it hurt to take a step. The result of one of the many cysts on her ovaries bursting.

  The cysts. That’s it! After the cysts burst, she sometimes felt sick. Once she’d even passed out.

  Shelby inhaled and breathed a gusty sigh of relief. Oh, thank goodness. Of course that was it. Fingering the thick sheets of paper, she gave herself time to recoup by scanning the entries.

  Three months ago she’d had a heavy period that had left her in bed the entire weekend. It was so bad that she’d called and made an appointment with her gynecologist, but the quickest they could get her in was two weeks later, the day of Garrett and Darcy’s rehearsal dinner.

  The same day you slept with Luke.

  Her heart went turbo again because her mind flashed back to that night.

  “Oh, my—” She clamped a hand over her mouth and raced for the bathroom, dry heaving into the toilet. Staring into the depths, she moaned because—

  The timing was right.

  CHAPTER THREE

  SHELBY LEANED against the bathtub and gaped at the journal she’d hauled into the bathroom with her. It couldn’t be. She knew better. Next to impossible meant extremely unlikely to happen. As in it couldn’t happen, wouldn’t happen. It was a cyst.

  She’d gone to her gyno before reporting to work, and in a somber meeting in his office the man had explained her situation and how her condition was progressing. Like she couldn’t tell by the pain and symptoms? But she was only twenty-eight, and to have a doctor say a total hysterectomy was the next step—What do you say to that? She’d reeled from the news, growing angrier and more upset as the day wore on.

  But how could she go from being a twenty-eight-year-old in need of surgery because her reproductive organs looked like a battle-scarred war zone to—to possibly being pregnant?

  “You can’t,” she whispered, the sound echoing off the tile floor. “Get real, Shel. It’s a cyst. You’ve got enough things to worry about without adding hysteria into the mix.”

  She was a worrier. Always had been. But her capacity for worrying was already overextended with her job, her plans for the beautiful building in need of backbreaking work before it could reach its potential and the never-ending drama of her parents. Now Luke and this?

  A painfully high-pitched laugh escaped her chest. “You’re not pregnant, because you can’t get pregnant. Why are you doing this to yourself?”

  Why, indeed. But what if it wasn’t a cyst or the flu? Her inner worrywart reared its ugly head and Shelby knew she wouldn’t get an ounce of rest until she had a definitive answer.

  She used the tub as leverage to pull herself up and hurried to the kitchen to grab her purse. Quite a change from when she’d dragged herself into the house. She’d go to the pharmacy and—

  Have everyone in town talking about you?

  Oh, crap. She paused on the threshold of the door. No way could she purchase a pregnancy test in Beauty. It would take an hour, tops, for word to spread all over town.

  Shelby chewed her lower lip and decided her best option was to drive to the next town over. Maybe even the one on the other side of that. It was the only way of keeping the news she’d had sex and there was a possibility, slim though it was, that she might be pregnant quiet.

  And if she got sick along the way?

  More doubts flooded her brain, and she could feel the tension growing inside her, the exasperating itch of the hives that appeared whenever she stressed. What on earth would she do if she was pregnant?

  You should’ve thought of that before you took the chance.

  Shelby grumbled to herself as she locked up. “You’re not pregnant. You’re not pregnant. One night with Luke couldn’t possibly—” She lifted her hand and covered her gaping mouth.

  Bad enough that she’d slept with him, but if she was pregnant with his baby? Oh, what had she done?

  She’d have to tell Luke. His family. Alex. And after working so hard to avoid Luke and not saying a word to Alex about that night, how could she suddenly appear with news like this?

  For the second time that day Shelby collapsed into her car, the gentle thud of her head on the leather seat packing the force of a two-ton wrecking ball.

  She wasn’t pregnant, never would be, never could be. “You’re getting nowhere, Shel. Save the drama for your mama and go get a test.”

  Then you can forget you ever slept with Luke and ruined everything.

  LUKE PARKED the rental car behind Shelby’s bright red BMW, amazed she still drove the sweet sixteen present from her parents. The car had been secondhand when she’d gotten it, but she’d obviously taken good care of it. Not surprising with her perfectionist nature. She and Ethan had that in common. Both were neat freaks.

  A dog barked in the field to Luke’s left and disappeared into the trees. He followed the dog’s progress, then his gaze shifted to the huge stone building Shelby had inherited. He whistled softly, impressed that Shelby had been able to land such a prime piece of real estate.

  The mill house remained from the first logging/lumber business in the state, built by an Englishman who’d come to America in search of adventure. Using stone fro
m the creek bed flowing down the mountain, the man had built the sawmill and powered it by the same water source, then cured and housed the wood inside the warehouse-size structure.

  After being handed down for generations to the firstborn son, the last heir—a local banker—had no children to inherit the legacy. Apparently, the man had fallen ill six or seven years ago and liquidated much of his wealth, surprising everyone in town by giving this property to his longtime bank manager, Shelby’s grandfather.

  Shelby’s grandfather suffered a massive heart attack soon after taking possession, so the land passed to Shelby. In the meantime, the banker continued to battle his illness alone.

  Luke made his way around to the other side of his rental, noting the similarities between the mountain valley and Mystic Magi. He’d present his brainchild to Sony in a matter of weeks, but until this moment he hadn’t realized how much his work resembled his Tennessee hometown.

  Two walkways led to Shelby’s house. A low, stacked-stone wall welcomed visitors and indicated the way to the front entrance, flanked by sunflowers of varying shades and sizes. Several birdhouses and hummingbird feeders were quite popular with their visitors, and a dog dish and water bowl were under the carport off the shed in back. Luke chose the second path, captivated by the colorful palette surrounding Shelby’s house. He would have guessed her to have had a black thumb like Alex.

  Along the way Luke noted arched windows and leaded-glass double doors had been added to the mill house to fully enclose it. Was Shelby converting it to a home? Made sense. The foreman’s cottage, where she lived, was pretty small.

  Distracted by the beautiful building taking shape nearby, Luke stepped onto Shelby’s narrow porch and paused. Beyond the plain, glass-paned door, she paced back and forth, her hands twisted together at her waist. One glance at her expression revealed her agitation and—something else.

  Shelby wasn’t sick now. Which meant what? The thought of seeing him had made her sick?

  Luke ground his teeth, his hand fisting around the sack he carried. He didn’t bother knocking and his anger ratchetted higher when the door automatically opened beneath his fingers. What woman didn’t lock her house?

  Shelby whirled in a rapid about-face, her hand flying to her chest. “Luke?”

  He entered her kitchen and shut the door behind him. “You should lock your door.”

  “I usually do but I just—What are you doing here?”

  “I came to check on you. You seem to have made a remarkable recovery.”

  She looked away, swallowing. “I—I am feeling better. I’m sorry about today—your shoes. I’ll pay to have them cleaned.”

  “Don’t worry about it.” He watched her closely, trying to figure out her mood. “You look flushed. Are you sure nothing is wrong?”

  “It’s the heat.”

  Every muscle in his body tightened a little more.

  Silence filled the house and Shelby gave him a weak, nervous smile.

  “Shelby, what’s going on?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  Her teeth sank into her lower lip, drawing his attention there. Memories of that night swept over him and he stifled a groan. Despite his irritation with her, he remembered exactly how her mouth felt, tasted. The way her pale skin gleamed in the light and the husky way she’d breathed his name when she’d sunk on top of him.

  Shelby lifted a hand and tucked her hair behind her ear, her gaze not quite steady on his but she sure tried hard for it to be.

  “Luke, I owe you an apology. I’ve handled what happened very poorly. I should’ve woken you, said something or left a note. But I had to get to work and—well, I’m sure you’ve realized by now that night was a huge mistake and never should’ve happened?”

  He moved closer, drawn even though he knew he’d be better off to keep his distance. “It didn’t feel like a mistake.”

  “But it was. I know you’re probably angry, and you have every right to be. I should have—”

  “Returned my calls?”

  “Not slept with you,” she countered, her tone soft but firm. “I’m sorry.”

  “Tell me why you think it shouldn’t have happened.” He could think of several reasons if he tried, but that was beside the point.

  “Because I don’t—” she closed her eyes briefly “—do that sort of thing.”

  Thank God. He’d hate it if that was her MO.

  “Especially not with guys like you.”

  Guys like him? Damn. In a heartbeat he was transported back to his supergeek days in high school. He massaged the back of his neck and processed that. Knowing what she meant was one thing, but hearing it? “But you did do it. More than once.” Petty, sure, but he liked being able to remind her of that.

  Shelby held up her hand, regret pinching her features. “That came out wrong. I meant I shouldn’t have slept with you because you’re Alex’s brother and it’s made things…awkward. And it was wrong. I shouldn’t have led you on that way.”

  “We had a great night together.” The pulse at her throat beat visibly and he noted it picked up speed as he moved closer, near enough that he smelled the coconut scent of her hair. “Are you denying that?”

  “I’m trying to apologize. That’s all. Once I realized how stupid it was to endanger our friendship and what was at stake, I felt awful. I shouldn’t have behaved that way and I’m sorry I did.”

  Sorry…or scared that she’d lowered her defenses with him and let go? Luke stared into her summer-green eyes and tried to muster some of his twin’s aloofness and cool attitude. Nick had a knack for getting to the bottom of things, an amazing feat considering his brother wasn’t all that talkative. “I can think of a lot of things that night was, but a mistake isn’t one of them.”

  Shelby shook her head, golden strands in her brown hair glittering beneath the old-fashioned lights of the kitchen. “We’re practically strangers.”

  “We’ve known each other since we were children, Shelby. That hardly rates us as strangers.”

  Her chin lifted and she hugged her arms around her waist, closing herself off. “That makes it worse. We hadn’t seen each other in years. I’d had a bad day and you…I turned to you for comfort, but it doesn’t change the fact that I shouldn’t have used you that way.”

  He set the bag of food on the closest countertop and leaned against the cabinet. “What we did was mutual. I didn’t mind.”

  “Luke. Stop saying stuff like that. It shouldn’t have happened.”

  “We’ll have to agree to disagree there.” He paused, studying her. “Unless there’s something you’re not saying? Something else you’re upset about?”

  Shelby blinked, swallowed. In less than a second the color drained from her face, but just as quickly it rushed back into her cheeks and scorched them with rosy intensity, highlighting the red blotches on her neck and what he could see of her upper chest. Her hives. Yeah, they were more than strangers. How else could he recognize her stress reactions? Know what they were? But was her upset about more than having to face him?

  In a heartbeat he was reminded of the other reason he’d come to see Shelby. His sister-in-law Darcy’s whispered comment to a newly expectant cousin at the wedding reception had cut him off at the knees. “That’s how I knew I was pregnant. One minute I was fine and the next I was sick. And my chest! Oh, my goodness, I jumped two bra sizes almost immediately.”

  Shelby lifted a trembling hand to her temple and rubbed. “Luke, I don’t mean to be rude, but I have a lot of stuff to do and I’m still not feeling well and—”

  “Did anything else happen that night?” His gaze dropped to Shelby’s chest and shot back to her face in surprise. It’s all in the details. “Shelby…are you pregnant?”

  SHELBY FOUGHT the sensation of the walls closing in on her. Seconds passed that seemed like hours. The question left her literally shaking in her shoes. She didn’t know. Not for sure, because she was too afraid to take the stupid test. So how could he know?

&nb
sp; It’s a guy thing. You didn’t use protection, remember?

  Stupid, stupid, stupid mistake. But there wasn’t supposed to have been a need for it!

  Luke’s tall frame took up too much of her small kitchen, his brooding demeanor not at all his typical, easygoing self. His gaze was direct, never wavering from hers, and for a guy who’d blushed every time he looked at her as a teenager, the change to quiet, confident male was disconcerting.

  “Shelby?”

  Denial was instant. She automatically shook her head, her attention fastening on the navy, black and silver swirling pattern printed on Luke’s medium blue T-shirt. He’d looked wonderful in his tuxedo but this casual, tanned and muscular version of Luke was infinitely more appealing. He was Clark Kent but sexier.

  The silver in the shirt’s design gleamed at her, making her remember the silver-gilded mirror beside the hotel-room door and the way she’d watched their image in it. Heat flooded her insides and she looked down only to find herself fascinated by the shredded holes in the legs of his loose-fitting jeans. He had bony knees, strong thighs. And a taut butt that looked great in wash-worn denim.

  Luke wasn’t nearly as developed as his weight-lifting twin, but his upper arms bulged when he moved, and his chest and abs beneath the shirt were well defined. And he’d had no problem with her weight that night when things had gotten…strenuous.

  “Are you sure?”

  She swallowed back a moan of unease when a knot formed in her belly. “I’m not pregnant.”

  It was true. It had to be true. Being pregnant would mess up everything, just like her impending surgery would. Time, money. She had plans that would be totally screwed up if—

  “Have you taken a test?”

  Her focus automatically shifted to the logoed brown sack on the table. Before she could even think of taking the few steps to reach it—hide it—Luke had the pharmacy bag in his hand. He watched her closely as he reached inside.

  “Luke, it’s not what you’re thinking. It’s just—”

  “Just what?” His jaw locked tight when he pulled the box free and saw what it was. His dark blue gaze hardened. “I take it this means no?”