by Tami Hoag
“Good morning.”
Bronwynn looked away, fighting to keep from giggling like a teenager. She was enormously pleased by his kiss, but she tried to tell herself it was because Wade was in a good mood, that he was relaxed more relaxed than she’d ever seen him.
“Hi,” she said, staring at the toe of her battered sneaker. “How are you feeling today?”
“Great.” He discounted the slight gnawing in his stomach as being routine.
Over her rare burst of shyness, Bronwynn noted the healthy color in his cheeks. “Glad to hear it. Do you mind if we have breakfast before we start? I’m famished.”
“From what I’ve seen, that’s a perpetual state,” Wade said dryly. He checked his watch, an action that did not go unnoticed. He had hoped they could get the lawn taken care of right away. The report on the defense budget would arrive soon, and he needed to dig into it. “I’m afraid I don’t have much in the line of breakfast ingredients on hand.”
“Don’t worry. I did some shopping this morning. It’ll be my treat,” Bronwynn said, going back to her truck to get her grocery bags.
“Oh goody,” Wade said, teasing her as he tried to peek into the sacks. “What do we get, cookies or chocolate cupcakes?”
“If you’re going to get snippy, I’ll eat both omelettes myself,” she warned him in a prim tone, her freckled nose in the air as she marched to the house.
“Snippy?” he asked, out of habit reaching for the cigarettes in his shirt pocket, realizing there was no pocket on the shirt she’d given him.
“I happen to make an outstanding omelette.” It was the only thing she knew how to make, but she wasn’t going to spread that bit of news around. Part of her plan to help Wade included seeing to it that he ate properly. An herb and cheese omelette would have to do for starters, but she’d picked up a cookbook at the dime store in Shirley and fully intended to learn to cook a wide range of dishes.
Wade took a seat at the breakfast bar and watched as she stored her groceries away in his refrigerator. She had no intention of taking them home with her. She’d chosen fresh fruits and vegetables, lean meat, milk, all with Wade and his tender tummy in mind. She tried to look as proficient as possible as she brewed a pot of herbal tea.
“Do you know how to make a decent pot of coffee?” he asked, picking up half an English muffin she’d set in front of him.
“Nope,” Bronwynn lied blithely. She poured two cups of tea and set one in front of Wade. “I prefer tea. Give it a try.”
He made a face as he contemplated the tea, but he took a sip and decided it beat the heck out of the battery acid he brewed every morning. It actually had a pleasant, soothing quality to it. He was equally surprised by the quality of the omelette. It was light and tasty. He tried to remember the last time he’d had a decent breakfast but couldn’t. It had no doubt been at a meeting, and he would have wolfed it down without tasting a bite. It was nice to sit and chat with Bronwynn and linger over the meal.
“Delicious,” he said with a twinkle in his amber-flecked eyes. “Do you do windows?”
Bronwynn grinned. “As a matter of fact, I do, but you’ll have to take a number and wait. I have thirty or forty to do at Foxfire this week.”
“Why don’t you hire someone to do them?” he asked, reaching for the cigarettes he thought he’d left on the counter. They were gone.
“Why should I?” She refilled their teacups. “I’ve got nothing but time on my hands. Besides, I’m looking forward to it.”
“To washing windows?”
“And scrubbing floors and knocking down cobwebs. My first big project is going to be the kitchen.” Her face was glowing with excitement.
“Figures,” Wade mumbled, fighting a grin as she bounced a green grape off his head.
“I’m going to tear out the countertop and lay ceramic tile myself.”
Wade shook his head in wonder. She was something. He didn’t know many people—male or female—who would have been willing to tackle that monstrosity of a house alone. Bronwynn seemed determined to. He thought of the sketches he’d had done of the ski lodge he wanted to build and felt a pang of regret. “You really are going to tear into the old house and set it to rights, aren’t you?”
“I am.” She watched him carefully for signs of skepticism. None came. “Oh, Wade, you should have seen it when it was in its glory. It was so beautiful, elegant, but it was also warm and charming. It was a real home. I want it to be one again.”
The way she was looking at him, he would have promised her anything. She was full of wishing and hoping, like a little girl at Christmas. He felt his ski lodge slip a little further away from reality. “You love the old place, don’t you?”
She thought of Uncle Duncan and her family and all the wonderful memories Foxfire had given her. “As much as a person can love a place.”
They worked on the lawn the rest of the morning, repairing the damage their pets had done, while the perpetrators sprawled in the shade, watching. The sun climbed, but the breeze continued, keeping them from sweltering. Even so, Wade peeled off his shirt and tossed it on a lawn chair.
Bronwynn suddenly felt in dire need of a cold shower. She’d seen her share of male chests and Wade’s was no disappointment. He wasn’t heavily muscled, but he was in surprisingly good shape. She guessed it was simply his natural build, because she doubted he took the time to work out. Lean and lanky, there wasn’t a spare ounce on him. A mat of curls a shade darker than the hair on his head carpeted his chest and trailed down his flat belly. Bronwynn found the color contrast with his tawny blond hair incredibly sexy.
To distract herself, she asked, “How’s your stomach doing?” It certainly looks okay.
“Not too bad. Thanks to the breakfast and the soup last night, no doubt. Thank you.”
She shrugged, looking down as she shoveled dirt around the base of a juniper shrub. “What are neighbors for?”
He was hoping this neighbor was going to do more than see to the needs of his troublesome stomach. Dawn had found him out on the patio, stretched out on a lounge chair, contemplating his growing attraction to Bronwynn Pierson. He had come to the conclusion that he liked her as a person in spite of her eccentricities. She made him crazy with all her quirks, but she was never dull. In fact, she was one of the most genuine people he’d ever met; nothing about Bronwynn was an act. And she was one sexy lady, he thought, eyeing her pretty little backside as she bent to roll up her pant legs.
In his typically logical, analytical way, Wade had decided there was no reason he and Bronwynn shouldn’t explore the mutual desire he’d tasted in their kisses. There was no reason except that she recently had had her heart broken.
It seemed like much more than just a matter of days since he’d held her in his arms and comforted her while she cried over her fiancé’s betrayal. She had been an emotional wreck. Was she still feeling the hurt? Did she still harbor any love for the man who had deceived her?
She seemed to have gotten herself back on track. She seemed to have put the disaster behind her. Diving into work at Foxfire seemed like a positive sign to Wade. He had to think she’d been telling the truth to herself and to him when she’d said she hadn’t truly loved Ross Hilliard. But was she ready to try another relationship?
Wade had decided he wanted Bronwynn in his life—and in his bed—but he wouldn’t take advantage of a vulnerable woman.
They sat down on the shaded patio to rest when the last of the shrubs was in place. Wade pulled his shirt back on. Bronwynn served milk and deli sandwiches she’d picked up in Shirley. Tucker sat at their feet pleading for a handout with his big brown eyes while Muffin stood under the maple tree staring at them, bleating her heart out.
“Poor Muffin,” Bronwynn said sadly.
“Poor Muffin,” Wade repeated. “Mutton stew on the hoof.”
“Wade!” she wailed, tossing a potato chip at him. He laughed and tweaked her nose. “You’re a horrible tease.”
“Poor Bronwynn,” he s
aid, chuckling. He leaned back in his chair and lit a cigarette, one of the last in a pack he could have sworn had been nearly full. Exhaling a stream of smoke, he studied Bronwynn through narrowed eyes.
She glanced around her nervously. “What?”
“How are you?” he asked, suddenly very serious.
There was no need for him to expand on the question, Bronwynn knew exactly what he meant. The odd thing was she didn’t wonder how it was they were so in tune. It felt natural. She took a deep breath, carefully considering her answer instead of tossing off the usual “I’m fine.” Finally she met his gaze and said, “I’m good. I don’t have all the answers yet, but I don’t have any regrets. I did the right thing.”
“What are the questions you don’t have the answers to?”
She made a frustrated face, propped her elbow on the glass-topped table, and leaned her chin on her hand. It never occurred to her not to be totally open with Wade. “I don’t understand how I could have become engaged to Ross. I knew it wasn’t the real thing. In my heart I knew. You’d understand if you’d ever met my parents. They had such a wonderful love. They really cared for each other as human beings. They were friends, but they had an incredible passion for each other too.”
“It must have hurt a lot to lose them.”
Tears sprang to her eyes. She didn’t try to hide them. “I know I couldn’t live through anything worse. We knew Mama was going. About the time the doctors had given her only a couple of months, Daddy was killed in a car accident. So sudden, so—” She paused and bit her lip. She still felt cheated when she thought about it. There had been no time for good-byes. “Mama died two days later. When we told her about Daddy she just let go.”
Wade reached across the table and slipped his hand over hers, giving her contact, support, sympathy, all without ever thinking about it. That it was needed and appreciated didn’t have to be said out loud.
“How does Ross fit in?”
“I’d known Ross casually for years. Our families were friends. After it all happened, he was there for me. Familiar, dependable—or so I thought. I went to work raising funds for the Cancer Society, and Ross was always around. He was . . .” The adjective eluded her as it had every time she’d tried to sort through her feelings.
“Safe.” Wade supplied the word, easily seeing what Bronwynn had turned around and around and was trying to come up with in frustrated confusion.
She went completely still as the word sank in. It was the missing piece to a puzzle. She didn’t understand it, but she knew she had the key. Wade had given it to her.
The colors of her eyes were startlingly clear as she settled her intense gaze on him and said, “Safe. What a terribly interesting word.”
“It’s only natural to want to hang on to something familiar and unthreatening when it seems as if the world’s being torn apart around you.”
Bronwynn knew there was much more to it than that, but it certainly was a start. “Yes,” she said. “I suppose it is.”
Their conversation was interrupted by the arrival of the express delivery truck. Duty bound, Murphy had shipped the thick packet of reports Wade had requested, but true to his own conscience, he had included a note telling his boss and friend to take it easy. His suggestion that Wade read while stretched out in a hammock with a tall, cool drink at his elbow brought a smile to Wade’s lips.
Bronwynn, on the other hand, was frowning. The sheaf of papers Wade held looked like the unabridged manuscript of War and Peace. She didn’t think much of the invisible Murphy, who had sent his vacationing boss a mountain of work.
“I’ll get to this later,” Wade said, tossing the report on a lawn chair. “We should finish up the yard, I’m sure you’ve got other work to do today.”
“Work, work, work,” Bronwynn said, only half-teasing, hands on her hips. “That’s all you ever think about, Wade. You’re such a stuffed shirt.”
He looked astounded by her evaluation. “I am not a stuffed shirt!”
“Ha! You’ve been on vacation for days and you only just managed to stop wearing a necktie! If your shirt gets stuffed any fuller, they’ll hear the seams splitting in Cleveland.” Her gaze scanned the lawn for some way to prove her point and distract him from the report he’d temporarily set aside. “When was the last time you climbed a tree?”
“What?” By the look he gave her she might have asked him when was the last time he’d grown a second head.
“When was the last time you climbed a tree?” She repeated the question the same way she would for a half-wit.
Wade shrugged and scowled in irritation. “I don’t know. I’m a responsible man with a very important job. I don’t have time to run around climbing trees.”
Bronwynn cupped a hand to her ear. “Is that a seam I hear giving way or is it stuffing rustling?”
Wade’s expression suggested it was feathers ruffling—his. Of course he didn’t go around climbing trees. What sane person did? Even as he thought about how ridiculous it was, he set off across the lawn behind Bronwynn.
Her purposeful stride took her around the back of the house to what she instantly recognized as a perfect tree for climbing. It had been years since she’d made use of one, but she wasn’t about to tell Wade. She grabbed hold of a low limb and swung herself up. Some skills, such as bike riding and tree climbing, never were forgotten, Bronwynn thought. As a child she had alternated regularly between being all sugar and spice and the tomboy terror of the neighborhood. The old skills came back to her with a pleasant rush of nostalgia as she scrambled into the higher branches of the tree.
Wade stared up at her with mingled disbelief, admiration, and exasperation. She had settled herself on a limb and looked down at him through the canopy of leaves, a smudge of dirt and a look of satisfaction on her face. Figuring his pride was on the line if nothing else, Wade got a firm grasp on the same low branch she’d used and hauled himself into the tree, breathing in the rich green scent and remembering long, carefree summers in Indiana.
How long had it been since he’d felt carefree? he wondered. It was in another lifetime it seemed. How long had it been since he’d indulged a boyish sense of adventure and done something that was productive only in bringing a sheen of sweat to his skin and a sense of exhilaration to his soul? Since he’d become a man, too long ago. Bronwynn had teased him into it, and he was grateful to her.
“Stuffed shirt?” he questioned, standing on a branch a few feet below her perch. They were nose to nose as he planted a steadying hand on either side of her bottom.
Bronwynn laughed, delighted. “Maybe there’s hope for you after all, Grayson.”
He leaned toward her, his gaze narrowing, focusing on her wide, soft mouth. The air around them began to heat. “Is there a kiss for me too? I think I deserve a reward for risking life and limb.”
He didn’t give her time to answer. It would have been a waste of time anyway, Bronwynn thought to herself as Wade’s lips gently captured hers. Anticipation had been simmering inside her ever since the quick kiss he’d surprised her with earlier that morning. It had never stopped simmering since the first kiss they’d shared, the kiss that had stripped pretenses and exposed needs and desires.
She dropped one hand from the limb she was holding, sliding her fingers through Wade’s hair to cup the back of his head and draw him closer. She deepened the kiss, her tongue meeting his eagerly. They tasted and tempted, and just when she was on the verge of vertigo, Wade altered the rules, upped the ante.
His mouth trailed heat down her slender throat, over the worn, faded fabric of her purple T-shirt to the hard peak of her breast. Bronwynn grasped the limb above her head, arching toward Wade as she gasped for air. He drew her nipple into his mouth, sucking at her through the cotton, his tongue teasing the hard bud. A soft moan floated up out of her from the warm, tight ache swirling deep in her belly. Her eyes drifted shut as the mists of passion blurred her vision.
Wade wanted all of her. Now. A sudden, overpowering hunger for Br
onwynn hit him broadside and knocked his capacity for logical thinking out of commission. Completely forgetting where they were, he tried to take a half step closer to her. The only toehold his sneaker found was air. In the automatic attempt to catch himself, his other foot slipped on the rough bark, and he half-fell, half-sat down on the branch. A soft red haze filled his head as his breath left him on a painful “ooof.” The old tree groaned a protest, but the thick branch held.
“Wade? Are you all right?” Bronwynn held on to the tree trunk and leaned down, trying to get a closer look at his face. His eyes were squeezed shut and he was baring his teeth.
“Aarrgh . . .” He let his head fall sideways against the tree. “I may never play the whoopy cushion again.”
“I can’t imagine you ever played it before.”
“Well, now I may never get the chance.”
Bronwynn heaved an impatient sigh. “In other words, all you got is a pain in your posterior.”
“And I thought that was your job,” Wade said dryly.
“Don’t take it out on me. You brought this on yourself. You’re the one who had to go and get smoochy in a tree.”
“Smoochy?” He arched a brow at her. “And who led the way up this tree? Never mind. You’ll find a way to make that my fault too.”
“It was,” she said as she watched him descend. His hand slipped on the next to the last branch, and, with a strangled cry, he dropped to the ground, landing on his feet, but instantly keeling over with a dramatic groan.
Bronwynn scrambled down after him, her heart in her throat. He looked hurt this time. Actually, he looked dead. Never taking her eyes off him, she missed getting her hand on the last branch and dropped out of the tree, landing on Wade.
“Oooofff!”
“Oh, Wade, thank God you’re not dead!”
“I’ll thank God when you get your elbow out of my solar plexus,” he said, his voice a gravelly growl. This wasn’t quite what he’d had in mind when he’d staged his dramatic dismount from the tree.
Bronwynn rearranged herself on top of him, brushing his hair out of his eyes. “You scared me.”
