The scent alone was decadent, particularly on an empty stomach. Gideon nibbled, then took the whole brownie into his mouth. Soft, warm, sweet, rich heaven greeted his palate.
“Good,” he managed. “Very good. You’re not to give the recipe to anybody but me.”
Sadie stood before him, petite and considering, and his words took on a significance he hadn’t intended—consciously.
She stepped back and resumed tossing the salad. “So the Knightley brothers are your B team?”
“My C team. When I struck out with Dunstan, I asked my partner, Finn, but he’s hot on a case that involves weekend work. I was at the law library, on the phone to a moving company, when MacKenzie overheard me. The Knightleys offered.”
“That surprised you,” Sadie said, helping herself to a whole black olive from the salad. “Would you have helped them?”
“I have. We work together a fair amount, professionally, but I’ve also done the occasional weekend project with each of them. For all he impersonates a tramp, James knows everything about renovating old houses, and his brothers are handy too.”
A tea towel bearing a damp, wrinkled list of Scottish dialect terms was draped over Sadie’s left shoulder. She looked good in Gideon’s little kitchen—comfortable, competent, and at home.
“One of your parents drank?” she asked.
The sense of her question took a moment to sink in. “I beg your pardon?”
“You’re not at ease with garden-variety friendship. You’re self-sufficient to a fault, and yet everybody likes you. You have excellent people-radar but are at sea in relationships. You’re observant, even hypervigilant, and yet your own emotional landscape is terra incognito to you. Adult Child of an Alcoholic, or ACOA.”
Gideon had wanted to like Sadie Delacourt, which realization came as something of a surprise. Yes, he also wanted to shag her, in a stray dog, passing sense—his sex life drifted in a permanent state of benign neglect—but mostly, he’d wanted to like her.
He did not like being reduced to an acronym and a Google search.
“Sorry,” she said, tossing the salad as if it had committed a mortal sin. “Didn’t mean to armchair-analyze a near stranger. I do best if I stick with my games and graphics. I’ll write down the brownie recipe before I leave, and Merle can keep the sketch pad. I don’t get out much—though my sister can tolerate my company—and this whole small town, bucolic…I guess I’m more tired than I knew.”
The part of Gideon that could skip trace a deadbeat dad through thin air, locate missing heirs two continents away, and catch straying spouses with their pants literally around their ankles tried to keep him pinned to the doorjamb.
The part of him that was homesick for his half-destroyed farmhouse, that had adopted a too-big stray dog, and had been surprised to have help moving, crossed the kitchen and snagged a bite of radicchio.
Sadie had given up flailing at the salad, and yet she stood before the salad bowl, head down, staring a hole in a bunch of leafy greens. Gideon studied her earrings, swirly blue-green malachite and gold dangles. Pretty and doubtless one of kind.
She arranged the salad tongs against the side of the wooden bowl, a laying down of culinary arms. This close, Gideon could catch some summery, flowery scent from her and feel how small she was—also how badly she wanted to pack up and leave, possibly never to return.
All that mortification over a question that had been awkward, but courageous rather than rude.
“Was it your mum or your dad who drank?” Gideon had kept his voice down—the Brothers Knightley were all loose on the premises somewhere, to say nothing of Merle.
Even Sadie’s earrings were still.
“Both.”
That single word, coupled with the way she braced herself against the counter, suggested anger, consternation, and possibly even relief to have shared this miserable, defining bit of truth.
Gideon slid an arm across Sadie’s shoulders, lest she resume mauling the lettuce.
“No alcoholics in my family,” he said. “My dad had cancer. Took him seven years, two remissions, and a whole lot of experimental trials to die. I was six when he was diagnosed.”
A breath went out of her. She sagged against him, as if she’d dodged a bullet. Maybe Gideon had surprised her.
He’d certainly surprised himself.
The brownies were arranged in a tower of decadent pleasure on a red serving dish. Gideon found a small one and offered it to his neighbor. Sadie bit off half; he took the remainder, and for the space of a single bite of chocolate, they stayed like that, not quite embracing, but closer than either had planned on being.
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About the Author
New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Grace Burrowes hit the bestseller lists with her debut, The Heir, followed by The Soldier, Lady Maggie’s Secret Scandal, Lady Eve’s Indiscretion, The Captive, and The Traitor. All of her Regency and Victorian romances have received extensive praise, including several starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and Booklist. The Heir was a Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2010, The Soldier was a Publishers Weekly Best Spring Romance of 2011, and Lady Sophie’s Christmas Wish won Best Historical Romance of the Year in 2011 from RT Reviewers’ Choice Award
s. Lady Louisa’s Christmas Knight was a Library Journal Best Book of 2012, and The Bridegroom Wore Plaid, the first in her trilogy of Scotland-set Victorian romances, was a Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2012. Darius, the first in her groundbreaking Regency series The Lonely Lords, was named one of iBooks Store’s Best Romances of 2013.
Grace is a practicing family law attorney and lives in rural Maryland. She loves to hear from her readers and can be reached through her website at graceburrowes.com.
Kiss Me Hello (Sweetest Kisses) Page 35
