by Rachel Hanna
“I’d be glad to be your friend, Ronni.”
“You would?”
“Yes, but can you stop making it so dang hard all the time? Take off the coat of armor and trust me?”
“You caused me to fall out of a tree,” she said giggling.
“And you sanded my crotch, so we’re even.”
“Jeez, the mental images you can conjure up…”
“Thinking of my crotch again, are you?”
She smiled slyly, all the while loading her hand up with sand again. When she pushed it down the back of his shirt and bolted toward the car, he knew he had to have this woman. Forever.
Chapter 6
Addison could barely keep her eyes open as she leaned back in the rocking chair, Anna Grace resting peacefully on her chest. She really needed to review the week’s financial report on her iPad, but her baby girl had kept her up most of the night with an earache and she just couldn’t focus.
Clay had tried to help, but sometimes a baby girl needs her mommy. Or maybe it was the other way around. Sometimes the mommy needs to be in charge, and that was Addison’s problem most of the time. She wasn’t willing to give up control to anyone, including Clay.
Which had led to an argument.
Clay felt like she didn’t think of him as Anna Grace’s “real” father, and that wasn’t it at all. But Addison had been tired at the time, and her mouth had gotten the best of her… again.
“Knock knock…” she heard Jackson whisper as he walked into the nursery.
“Oh, hey, Jack…” she whispered back as she slowly stood up and placed the baby in her crib. Addison turned on the baby monitor, a high-tech thing with TV screens, and motioned for Jackson to follow her downstairs to the kitchen.
She walked straight to the coffee pot and poured a large cup. “Coffee?” she asked him. He nodded, and she poured another large cup for her brother.
“Long night?” he asked with a smile.
“That doesn’t even begin to describe it,” she said, sliding down onto the barstool and relishing in the first sip of coffee. Her hair was a mess, her bathrobe wrinkled and her general appearance disheveled. “I didn’t know babies had lungs on them like that. She literally cried for almost three hours straight.”
“Gettin’ old, Addy. I stayed up til three in the morning working, and look at me.” He stretched his hands across his puffed up chest and then flexed his muscles.
“Oh, you just wait, Jackson Parker,” she seethed with a grin. “When Rebecca has a baby…”
“Whoa… Don’t get too far ahead of yourself, sis. We’re not even married, or engaged for that matter.”
“Yeah, what’s up with that anyway?” she asked as she topped her coffee off yet again.
“Um, that wasn’t the reason for my visit today.”
“No? Then why are you here?” she asked, a little more pointedly than she meant to.
“I saw Clay this morning at the dock. He looked upset.”
“Did he tell you to come talk to me?” she asked, her eyebrows knitted together.
“No. He isn’t that way. You know that, Addy. He’s a proud man, and not one to share private stuff. But he’s like an extra brother to me, and I hope things are okay with you guys.”
“They’ll be okay. We just had a little tiff last night. I’m sure we’ll get over it soon enough,” she said as she stared out at the garden behind the B&B.
“You’re a terrible liar.”
“I’m not lying, Jackson. We’ll be fine. He just needs to be more understanding…”
“Of?”
“Fine. I’ll tell you. Anna Grace has been sick with an ear infection. He wanted to care for her while I slept last night, but I wouldn’t let him. He got all offended, thinking I don’t believe he’s capable or her real father. Ridiculous.”
“I agree. You are being ridiculous.”
“Me?” she snipped. “He’s the one…”
“Addy, come on now. This man adores you and has for most of your life. And he loves that baby like she’s his own. He needs to feel needed. He needs that bonding time with her as much as you do. And he’s more capable than most men I know.”
She sat there staring at her brother for a minute, unsure of what to say because she knew he was right. That didn’t make it any easier.
He scooted closer and put his hand on her knee. “Listen, sis, I’ll tell you a little secret about us men. We all grew up watching superheroes, and we longed to be them. To leap tall buildings and fly over the highest mountains all while slaying dragons. And then women entered the picture. We wanted to impress them, slay every dragon that comes into their path. Clay wants to be your hero, and you’re depriving him of that feeling. He wants to watch you sleep peacefully while he takes care of you and Anna Grace.”
Her eyes welled up with tears. “Oh God, Jackson. I really screwed up. I wasn’t thinking… I’m just so tired…”
“Clay will forgive you, Addy. Just tell him you understand. I think you spent so long on your own, even when you were married, that you haven’t quite grasped that you don’t have to do everything alone anymore.”
She smiled. “Dang it.”
“What?”
“You’re right. And I hate when you’re right.”
Ronni walked around the edge of the conference table and leaned over Brad’s head, her chiseled arm sliding across the paperwork in front of them both.
“See? That estimate is inflated. I think we can get that down by at least another fifteen percent. Don’t you?” she asked. He froze in place. God. She. Smelled. Good. Like puppies and rainbows and chocolate… and all the other good things in life rolled into one. He’d been awake the last two nights thinking about her, and the sleep deprivation was getting to him. “Brad?”
“Oh, yeah, totally.”
“Totally?” she said, as she stood upright and crossed her arms. “What is this? Nineteen eighty-five?”
“Sorry. I was… distracted.”
“By?”
Frustrated and severely lacking sleep, he stood up and crossed his own arms, his eyes squinting at her. “Fine! I’ll tell you. You’re stunningly beautiful and smell like a dream, and it’s extremely distracting to want to pin your co-worker against the wall and kiss her until her lips can’t take another second.”
Crap. Had he just said that out loud? He could only hope it was a wonderfully vivid hallucination.
“Brad…” she started.
“No, don’t say another word. I don’t want to hear one of your lengthy lectures about how I can’t think with the head on my shoulders. Trust me, this pains me as much as it pains you, but you asked and I told you.”
“Brad…”
“Stop. Seriously,” he said, holding up his hand. “Let’s just get back to work. And being ‘friends’,” he said, using air quotes like a teenage girl.
“I’m trying to…”
“I mean, come on, how much can a guy take?” he said, now pacing around the room, running his fingers through his hair like all of the Parker men did when they were stressed. Usually by a woman. “You waltz into January Cove, all gorgeous and smart, and I haven’t dated anyone in a while… I mean, it’s normal, right?”
“Can I just…”
“And then there’s your neck. It’s like a swan. How could any man not want to kiss a neck like that? Of course, I could just go to the pond and look for a swan, but something tells me that wouldn’t be the same at all…” Now he was sounding like a lunatic.
“Brad… Just listen to me…”
“And then I find out that some stupid guy named Evan actually had you ready to walk down the aisle and bailed on you? I hate all guys named Evan now, so thanks for ruining that name for me…”
Before he could say another word, she walked up and slapped him across one cheek. Shocked - and a little turned on if he was honest - he stopped talking and rubbed his cheek.
“Why’d you do that?”
“Because you wouldn’t shut the hell up.
Jeez. Can you take a breath now?”
“As long as I don’t move my cheek, I guess,” he said as he stretched his mouth from side to side to try and take out the sting.
“Good. Now, first of all, thanks for all of the compliments. A girl likes to hear those things. And secondly, maybe if you’d stop pacing like a caged lion and actually ask me out on a date, I might say yes.”
Brad was sure that she’d affected his brain’s abilities to process information correctly. Did she say she’d go on a date with him?
“Excuse me, what?” he asked, turning his ear toward her.
“I said I might want to go out on a date with you. If you want to, that is.”
He walked toward her slowly. “Um, I think that’s pretty obvious…”
For the first time, she seemed timid and almost shy as she looked down at the floor instead of him. So he knelt and took both of her hands in his. Ronni’s eyes were bugging out of her head.
“What’re you doing?”
“My dear Ronni, would you go on a date with me?” he asked in his best Rhett Butler accent.
“Well, I do declare, Brad Parker, I would be honored,” she said, in the worst Scarlett O’Hara accent he’d ever heard. But he’d listen to it all day long if he could.
Brad stood back up and continued holding her hands. “I thought you’d say no.”
“You did? Why?”
“Because we work together… and you don’t like me very much.”
“Well, we won’t work together forever… and I like you more than you think.” She winked at him and then walked out of the room, knowing full well he was watching every inch of her as she did.
“Wow, you look beautiful!” Addison said as Ronni stood in the kitchen of the B&B. “My brother’s tongue is going to be hanging out. Watch your shoes for drool,” she giggled as she wiped the counter with a wet cloth to clean up behind a new guest who’d come to stay that day.
The B&B was growing, and some days Addy was finding it hard to get everything done. Taking care of Anna Grace, spending time with Clay, sleeping, taking care of guests. It was a lot more than she’d expected in the beginning, but she was enjoying her life, as busy at it was these days.
“Thanks. I’m a little nervous, to tell you the truth,” Ronni admitted. She was wearing a simple blue sundress and silver strappy sandals with low heels. Her long blond hair was cascading over her tanned shoulders, and she added a touch of lip gloss to her full lips just to add a fuller effect.
Truth was that she was pretty excited about her date, and that would’ve never seemed possible a couple of weeks ago. When she’d first met Brad, he wasn’t her type at all. Southern, down to Earth, loud. She thought of herself as more reserved, a little uptight even. At least that was what she’d been told her whole life.
“Ronni’s too serious.”
“Ronni never has any fun.”
But what was she supposed to be like when she’d been raised by what seemed to be a pack of wolves?
Her mother had had the best of intentions, she supposed. She was young herself when she had Ronni. At only seventeen years old, her mother was just a kid and didn’t really know how to be a mother.
When her family pressured her to marry the father of her baby, Ronni’s mother had given in and married him. But he was a bad man and very abusive to both her mother and her. Finally, when she was six years old, she and her mother escaped and went to live in a shelter for battered women and children.
It was a memory Ronni never wanted to think about. She could still see that place in her mind and smell the cigarette smoke and orange scented cleaning solution they used on the floors. It was an odd mixture of smells, and it always made her stomach churn.
When they finally got on their feet, they moved to a small apartment just outside of Baltimore. Ronni thought her mother would get it together and make better choices, but instead she had a string of men - each worse than the one before - in the apartment at all hours or the day and night.
At around thirteen years old, Ronni realized how her mother made money. She sold her body to these men with Ronni right there in the apartment. So Ronni ran away at fourteen and went to live with a distant cousin who was eighteen and trying to be an actress in Hollywood.
Turned out to be the best choice she ever made. She found people who cared about her in California. First was a woman she worked with at a local diner. Her name was Hilda Ayers, and she was in her sixties when Ronni was fifteen. But she took her in and cared for her like a mother, getting her back in school.
Ronni worked hard to keep up her grades, and eventually got into college on a full scholarship. Being serious had gotten her far in her career, but not so much in her social life. In fact, it often sucked the fun right out of her life. But she didn’t know any other way.
“Nervous?” Addy asked, breaking Ronni right out of her walk down memory lane.
“Yeah. I haven’t gone on a first date in a while.”
“Oh, well, Brad’s harmless enough,” Addy said with a laugh. “I hope I’m not prying, Ronni, but I take you as someone who’s been hurt before. Am I right?”
“Haven’t we all?” Ronni asked as she sat on the barstool.
“Probably. I just wanted you to know that you can trust Brad. He’s a good guy, even if he is my brother.”
“I know. I can tell he’s got a good heart.”
“Just know that I don’t want anyone breaking his heart again,” Addy said, trying her best to sound nice but getting her point across nonetheless.
“Again?”
“Hasn’t he told you?”
“Told me what?”
“Oh. Maybe I shouldn’t…”
“Please, tell me. I won’t say a word.”
Addison sighed and walked around the counter. “Brad was engaged once. She left him at the altar. It was to be a small beach wedding about six years ago. He was young, she was an idiot. He showed up, she didn’t. It was awful. He was so embarrassed. I think it’s why he makes so many jokes now. For a long time, he had this ‘get them before they get me’ kind of dating mentality. It’s good to see him trusting a woman again and putting himself out there.”
Ronni’s stomach knotted up. Before she could respond, Brad came walking through the front door carrying a bouquet of red and pink roses and wearing an off-white linen shirt and navy blue shorts. He looked so handsome that Ronni’s hands started shaking, so she put them behind her back as she stood up.
“Wow, you look stunning,” he said softly as he walked over and handed her the roses. Addison suddenly felt like a third wheel, so she quickly rubbed her brother’s arm as she passed by and went upstairs to check on Anna Grace.
“Thank you. These are lovely.”
“I think Addy keeps vases in the cabinet over there,” Brad said pointing to a small freestanding cabinet at the corner of the breakfast area. Ronni found one and filled it with water before placing the flowers on the table for everyone to enjoy.
“So, where are we going?” she asked, smiling shyly.
“Lots of surprises in store for you tonight, Miss Blair,” he said as he jutted out his arm for her to take. “Shall we?”
“We shall,” she said in her silly Southern voice again before they walked outside into the sunshine.
Chapter 7
The first place they went was to Breakers for dinner, which gave them lots of time to chat about life. Ronni told Brad more of her checkered past than she’d anticipated, but it felt good to finally be honest with someone about everything that had happened all those years ago. And he didn’t seem to judge her for it at all.
He listened, he asked questions (because he's Brad, of course, and Brad asks questions) but there was no judgment on his face. Instead, there was genuine concern and understanding.
As someone who'd lost his own father at a young age, he at least understood those feelings of absence that not having a father brought. But more than that, he seemed to accept her right where she was, faults and all.
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And it terrified her.
Did she really want to go down this road again? The whole falling in love and then disappointing another person thing? The one other time she'd opened her heart to someone - Evan - it had ended in disaster. One person left holding the bag of a two-year relationship. Feelings felt, hearts torn open, future plans dashed. The whole love thing sucked, and she'd vowed never to do it again.
Nope, she'd work until she died, own cats and learn to knit.
And then Brad appeared, like a khaki beach mirage, and now everything was spiraling out of her control again.
Jeez, it was their first date. Maybe she was overreacting. Maybe it wouldn't work out, and she wouldn't have feelings for him. Problem was, she already did.
And if it was possible, they felt stronger. They felt more uncontrollable. And she was all about control.
Dang it.
They walked toward the car after their dinner, and she was feeling something unfamiliar in her gut. Then she realized what it was. Peace.
Brad was just this easygoing soul who wanted nothing from her except her company. He wanted to know more about her and what made her tick, but he didn't want to change it. He didn't want to change her. That was something she hadn't experienced before in her life.
"So, where are we going now?" she asked, fully aware that he had to have other plans since it was barely getting dark.
"Oh, I have my plans. Just try to relax, Ronni. Let someone else have control for a bit, okay?" he said. Any other time, she would've fired back, but the way he said it wasn't condescending or accusatory. It was reassuring. It was like someone saying "It's okay. I've got this. Don't worry because I'm taking care of you right now." And she liked it.
They climbed into his truck and he started driving toward the pier. Moments later, they were in the parking lot, but she knew the ferry wasn't running that late. Resisting the urge to ask questions, she sat quietly enjoying letting Brad be in control for a few minutes.
