“Why?”
“She listens to you. She trusts you. You’ve been able to reach her in ways no one else has since the accident.”
She shook her head. “I haven’t been the one to reach her, Brodie. I don’t know why you refuse to listen to me about this. Charlie is the one who helped her turn the corner.”
“Maybe he’s helped, but you have a bond with her. I know how hard you’ve worked to help her. She won’t listen to me but maybe she’ll pay attention if you tell her what a mistake it would be for her to appear at the hearing.”
“What’s so very terrible about it?”
He stood up restlessly and paced to the window, where he leaned against the sill. “She’s come a long way, no doubt. Compared to where she was when she first came home from the hospital, she’s like a different girl. But this. Standing in front of the whole damn town and trying to communicate her thoughts inside the pressure cooker of a crowded courtroom. She’s not ready for that. It’s too much, too soon.”
She understood his position. He was concerned for his child and wanted to protect her as much as he could. He didn’t want her to be hurt, which was perfectly understandable. Yet how could she make him understand that Taryn ought to be the judge of her own capabilities? His daughter was more than competent enough to make this decision. If she thought she could handle the stress of trying to speak in a courtroom, Brodie needed to give her the chance.
“I’m going to say something here. I don’t want you to take it the wrong way.”
He laughed roughly. “When somebody prefaces a sentence like that, it’s usually very tough to take it any other way.”
“I know you have Taryn’s best interests at heart. She knows that, too. You’re a good father and you want to protect your daughter from ridicule and embarrassment. That’s admirable, Brodie.”
“But?”
Lightning flashed behind him and the low rumble of thunder that followed left her in an odd, restless mood. She didn’t want to get into this with him right now, when she was tired and feeling so strange and out of sorts—but if he was leaving town, she wouldn’t have another chance to argue on Taryn’s behalf.
She drew in a breath and stood as well, joining him at the window where the cooling breeze helped settle her a little. “You need to have a little more faith in Taryn. You’re not doing her any favors by protecting her and wanting to keep her tucked away safe at home. She’s got to rejoin the world sooner or later. I think you need to let her go back to school like she wants. And I think you should let her speak at this sentencing hearing, if that’s her wish. She’s tougher than you think.”
He leaned against the window and closed his eyes. “Every father would like to believe he’s raised his daughter to be tough and resilient. But not every father has lived through what I have these last four months. Not every father has had to hold his daughter in his arms, knowing she’s a dozen machines away from dying. Not every father has had to sit by his child’s bedside day after gut-wrenching day, praying she was still somewhere trapped inside this twisted, damaged, unresponsive body. While she was in a coma, I prepared myself that we were going to lose her. For nearly two freaking months, I had to brace myself whenever I walked into that damn hospital, wondering if this would be the day.”
Lightning flashed behind him again and tears scorched her throat at the raw pain in his eyes. He was not a man who shared his emotions easily and she was extraordinarily touched that he would choose to do so with her.
“Yeah, I might be too overprotective. Maybe I need to let go a little. But I can’t seem to help wanting to shield her from any more pain after everything she’s been through. Don’t you think I’ve earned that?”
“Yes,” she murmured, helpless against the urge to comfort him, to ease a little of that pain in the only way she could. Though her brain warned her this was foolhardy in the extreme, the emotion of the moment demanded she do something.
She wrapped her arms around his waist and offered the only comfort she could. He didn’t move for a long second and then he wrapped his arms tightly around her and held on as if she were the only thing between him and a raging ocean.
They stood together for a long time in her stuffy apartment while the thunder rumbled outside and the rain clicked against the window. A soft peace seemed to eddy around them like the breeze, quiet and sweet.
She was falling in love with him. The truth poured over her like that breeze and the urge to weep again burned behind her eyelids.
She pushed it away for now, quite certain she would have plenty of time to fret about that stunning truth later, after he left. For now, she needed to focus on the reason he had come to her.
“I understand you want to protect your daughter, Brodie. You absolutely have earned that right. You’ve done everything you can to give her the life she had before.” She paused, choosing her words carefully. “But don’t you think that after everything she’s been through, Taryn has also earned the right to have a hand on the rudder of her destiny?”
He stared at her and then closed his eyes, pulling her closer. She wanted to run from these feelings inside her, from this soft and subtle binding of their hearts.
“Damn it. Why do you have to be so smart about everything?”
Oh, if he only knew. She had been so very, very foolish about so many things. She should have said no that very first night he had come to her here to ask for her help with Taryn. She had known somehow that if she agreed, everything would change. All her careful barriers would tumble down and she would become vulnerable once more to pain and heartbreak and life.
The world she had created here in Hope’s Crossing—safe and serene, comfortable—would drift away now like fall-turned leaves caught in the current.
She was falling in love with Brodie Thorne and she knew it would not end well for her.
Despite that knowledge singing through her mind, when he lowered his head to kiss her she didn’t have the requisite strength to step away. All she could do was lean into him and savor the sense of rightness that defied all sense.
The kiss began as merely a soft brush of his mouth against hers, easy and slow, like a quiet rain just before dawn. The sheer sweetness destroyed the last of her defenses and she was helpless to pull away when he leaned his hips against the edge of the deep windowsill, his long legs stretched out on either side of her, and pulled her closer so her mouth was perfectly on level with his.
Lightning flashed behind him. Would she ever view a Hope’s Crossing thunderstorm in exactly the same way, or would that burst of atmospheric energy forever remind her of this moment, in her apartment with Brodie’s arms around her and his mouth teasing and tasting each inch of hers until her thoughts were tangled and her knees were weak?
They kissed there for a long time while the wet breeze drifted in and the rain pattered down outside the window and the lightning slowed to only occasional flares.
Some annoying little part of her mind cautioned her they needed to stop before things went too far but as the kiss deepened and Brodie’s mouth licked and teased hers, the rest of her decided to ignore the warning for now.
She didn’t protest when he tugged her to the sofa and pulled her down beside him, his body male and solid and wonderful next to hers. She was too busy relishing the solid strength of him, the delicious heat.
Nor did she think to object when his mouth trailed delectable kisses across the curve of her cheekbone and down the length of her neck, his breath warm and erotic against her skin.
By the time his fingers began to play at the buttons of her shirt, that voice of warning had quieted to barely discernable whimpers. This was Brodie. She was falling in love with him and being here with him while the rain whispered against the window seemed exactly right.
CHAPTER TWELVE
SO MUCH FOR HIS GOOD intentions.
Brodie had assured himself in those few moments he was waiting for her outside in that little garden that he had come only to seek Evie’s help. He truste
d her—sometimes he was astonished at how much.
His grand plan had been only to ask her to help him convince Taryn of the foolishness of her wish to testify.
However, when she had stepped forward and wrapped her arms around him, offering that generous comfort he was beginning to depend on, he had been unable to resist her. What man could? Evie Blanchard was soft and beautiful and giving.
He wanted her so fiercely he couldn’t think around it. He had never known this kind of hunger, to want everything from a woman. Always before, he would try to maintain some sort of control over himself but this reckless abandon with Evie was completely unexpected.
He wanted everything. To taste and touch and explore every part of her until he learned just what brought her the most pleasure…
Her skin was warm and tasted like wildflowers as he trailed his mouth from her lips to her cheek, then down the long, silky column of her throat. She wore a pale green shirt that made her exotically tilted eyes look vibrant and mysterious. She closed them halfway as he brushed his mouth at that sexy little spot where neck met shoulder, then moved his lips to her shoulder, all while his fingers were busy working the top button of her shirt.
Even though he was more aroused than he’d ever been in his life, he wanted to spend all night exploring these secret little places, like here, the hollow just above her collarbone.
He pressed his mouth there…then froze when she suddenly hissed in a breath and tried to move her shoulder away.
He frowned, easing up on his elbow. “Did I hurt you?”
Her eyes were huge, dazed. “Sorry?”
“You caught your breath there with a sort of whimper. And it wasn’t a do-that-again sort of whimper.”
“Sorry.” She cleared the huskiness out of her voice. “I, uh, didn’t even realize I had.”
Did she have any idea how powerfully arousing he found it that she hadn’t been aware of her own subconscious reaction?
“I hurt you.” He drew back farther and pushed the collar of her shirt aside so he could see in the low light from the bead-covered lamp beside the sofa. He frowned at the apple-size, vivid black-and-purple bruise on her shoulder.
“What did you do?” he exclaimed. As soon as the words were out, he remembered that scene with Taryn the week before, that horrible moment when his daughter had lashed out in anger and frustration, throwing the free weight at Evie. It had struck her cheek, he remembered, then landed on her shoulder before falling to the ground.
“Taryn did that to you, didn’t she?”
Evie stared at him, her eyes still aroused and unfocused. She shifted her gaze to her shoulder and then back to him. “Yes. It looks worse than it feels.”
“Liar.” He had seen the way she winced when he kissed her there. She was hurt because of his daughter, and here he was pawing her like a horny teenager.
He sat up. “I completely forgot about what happened in therapy Thursday. I’m sorry, Evie. I guess Charlie’s hearing thrust it completely from my mind.”
With each passing second, she seemed to be gathering her composure around her until she gave a heavy sigh and eased away from him. He could do nothing but watch as she rose from the sofa and moved to the easy chair adjacent to the couch, where she perched on the edge of the cushion, her fingers intertwined as if in prayer. He could almost see each of her defenses snap back into place.
Right now, with his body still throbbing and his nerves still humming, he sincerely wished he were the sort of guy who could have ignored that wince of pain and taken what they both wanted.
“Don’t worry about it,” she murmured. “It’s no big deal.”
He wanted to grab her to go back to the wild heat between them but she was too much in control now. The moment was gone. Damn it.
“Evie,” he began, not sure what he wanted to say to her, but she shook her head.
“Don’t. We’ve got to stop doing this, Brodie.”
“Why? We’re both adults. Neither of us is involved with someone else right now. We’ve got this heat that seems to spontaneously combust whenever we’re together. We can’t just ignore it.”
“You might not be able to but I can.”
He frowned. “Why do we have to?”
Jacques padded over to her—apparently done giving them the privacy Brodie was suddenly grateful for—and Evie dug her hands in the dog’s short, wiry fur for a moment before she spoke. “You probably can’t understand this because you have lived here all your life,” she went on, without waiting for an answer, “but…I need Hope’s Crossing. I can’t explain it very well, but this has become my home. I’ve found peace here. I have friends here and a life I love. But what happens if we give in to that heat and what we both want and make love?”
“I don’t know, other than I have no doubt it would be incredible.”
She closed her eyes briefly. When she opened them, they were distant. “I know it would be. But it wouldn’t last, Brodie. How could it? We’re far too different. This heat is not enough. When things between us ended, as I have no doubt they would, where would I be? I wouldn’t be able to stay here in this place I love. I would have to leave Hope’s Crossing and I would hate that.”
“You’re really choosing a town over what we could have?”
She shook her head. “That’s a little too simplistic, don’t you think? I’m choosing to protect myself.”
How could he argue with that? She was right. They were very different people. What had he once thought about her? Color and chaos, passion and heat. He already had a brain full of chaos and had struggled like hell as an adult to contain it. As drawn as he was to her, as much as his body ached for her, Evie could threaten everything he had worked so hard to overcome. Was he willing to pay the cost?
“So that’s it,” he said.
“I’m sorry.”
“So am I,” he said roughly.
“I’ll still try to talk to Taryn for you in the morning,” she said.
He was so messed up, it took him a minute to register what she meant and then he remembered. Right. That was the whole reason he had come here, to convince her to help him talk Taryn out of speaking at Charlie Beaumont’s sentencing hearing.
“Don’t,” he said. “If she wants to speak, I won’t stop her. Like you said, she’s earned it.”
Her lovely features softened and she opened her mouth to speak but he couldn’t stay here any longer, not with this ache of hunger in his gut.
“Sorry I bothered you about Taryn and…everything else.”
“Brodie…”
He decided it would be wiser not to look at her right now or he would waver. “And thank you for your hard work with Taryn. You’ve done far more than I asked. I’ll have my assistant send a check tomorrow to the Layla Parker fund, doubling the amount we talked about.”
“You don’t have to do that,” she murmured.
“But I’m going to anyway,” he answered. “Good night, Evie.”
He headed for the door, but not before he heard her whispered goodbye behind him.
* * *
A SLEEPLESS NIGHT following a long, arduous weekend, following an even longer week did not make a good combination.
Evie was gritty-eyed and exhausted the next morning when she arrived at the house for her last day with Taryn. She half feared she would see Brodie and wondered what she would possibly say after last night, but only Taryn’s new therapist was in evidence.
Stephanie Kramer was young and clever and bubbled with energy. Already, she and Taryn seemed to have a rapport. A recent graduate from P.T. school, Stephanie had just finished her internship. Though she was taking a position at a clinic in Denver, they didn’t need her until after Christmas, which made her perfect for the job of Taryn’s full-time P.T. aide.
Everything would work out great, Evie knew, and Taryn could continue on her road to recovery.
One part of her was deeply relieved to turn over the responsibility to someone competent who would provide exactly what Taryn nee
ded. At the same time, Evie was more than a little disconcerted by how sorry she was to put this time behind her.
She would miss Taryn. The lump that had been hovering in her throat all morning swelled a little bigger. Oh, this was exactly what she’d been afraid of when Brodie had dragged her into this. Deep in her heart, she had known she would struggle to walk away after all their hard work, to turn over both the responsibility and the satisfaction of the girl’s progress to someone else.
She couldn’t alter course now. For heaven’s sake, her replacement had already been hired. She couldn’t just suddenly announce, Oh, excuse me, I’ve changed my mind. Go on about your business now.
Anyway, she wouldn’t do that even if she could, especially after last night with Brodie. She needed to make a clean break before it became not simply difficult but utterly impossible to walk away.
“I guess that’s everything. We’ve been through it all several times. I showed you the pool exercises, what we’ve been doing in here on the equipment and the schedule of other therapists who come in and out. Do you have any more questions?”
Stephanie shook her dark ponytail. “I don’t think so. Your notes are amazingly clear. If I do have questions, I can always call you, right?”
“Yes. Of course. My cell number is right at the top of the notes and if you can’t reach me there, you can always find me at the bead store in town.”
“Great. I’m superexcited about this. We’re going to have so much fun.”
She would do a wonderful job, Evie told herself. “Make sure you bring Taryn into the store often so we can bead.”
“I’d like to make something for…Hannah.” Taryn spoke from the mat, where she was brushing a delighted Jacques and working her arm and shoulder muscles in the process.
“That is an excellent idea. Hannah will love it.”
“Can…Jacques still come to visit me?” she asked.
“I’m sure we can work something out.” Evie couldn’t ignore the yearning in Taryn’s eyes as she gazed at the dog. “Maybe your grandmother could bring him out to spend an afternoon with you. And of course you can always visit him at the store whenever you come in.”
Woodrose Mountain Page 23
