by Jen Gilroy
“You’ll do what’s best for the girls.” Jay narrowed in on her weak spot like a heat-seeking missile. “Once she calms down, Naomi won’t miss an opportunity to live on the West Coast. As for Emma, she’s excited already. I can commute to the city and get a place in the country to keep that pony she wants.”
Mia swallowed the angry retort she could have made. Emma wasn’t old enough to understand what moving to California meant. Or what having a pony meant she’d give up.
“You can’t drop this on me. The girls have been through a lot and—”
“Think it over.” His voice became soft and cajoling. “Like I said, you can teach in California if you want, but what about the girls? In San Francisco they’ll have access to good schools and lots of cultural experiences. Naomi will apply to colleges soon. Apart from granola-crunching, tree-hugging hippies, who lives in Vermont unless they have to? The Northeast Kingdom is great for a vacation, but you have to be realistic. A choice between a cosmopolitan city and a little backwoods town is no choice at all.”
Except, maybe it was the most important choice of all because it was her choice and her life. As for the girls, she wanted what was best for them. Security, family, and an independent mother they could be proud of.
“I live in Vermont because I want to, and I can’t make any other decisions yet.” She picked a hangnail on her thumb.
“Okay, I hear you. Maybe I got ahead of myself, but this is such a good opportunity. It’s the big time.” His laugh was intimate. “I know what I want and I go for it. You think about it, babe, and we’ll talk when I bring the girls back.”
Mia winced at the meaningless endearment. She’d always gone along with what Jay wanted because he and the girls were her family. But because of that, she’d lost sight of what she wanted. She mumbled a good-bye and disconnected then grabbed a corner of the building until the brick cut into her palm.
“He won’t get away with it, Pixie. He won’t, I tell you.”
Pixie barked once and cocked an ear.
“Listen to me. I talk to you like you understand.” Mia texted Naomi, then forced herself to put one foot ahead of the other to go back the way she’d come.
Back to Harbor House, where Gabrielle needed her and her work made a real difference in her friend’s life.
Back past her little house, where she was happier than in any of the big houses she’d lived in with Jay.
As she passed Daily Bread the door swung open, and the scent of cinnamon and coffee wafted out to the street. Her stomach rumbled and she paused, drawn by the row of cinnamon buns displayed on a shelf in the bakery window.
“There’s nothing in there for you, Pixie.” She’d done it again, talked to a dog. It was all Jay’s fault. He’d stirred her up.
“Mia?” The bakery door swung open again, and Nick came out. He had an insulated Boston Bruins mug in one hand and a paper bag in the other. “You’re out early. Did Pixie pester you for a walk?”
Mia opened her mouth but the words wouldn’t come. Instead, she shook her head.
Nick’s white shirt was open at the neck, and he didn’t have a jacket above his navy pinstripe suit pants. He came closer, and his eyes changed from clear blue to stormy gray. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” She jerked her chin like a puppet on a string.
Pixie strained against the leash to climb Nick’s legs, and Mia fixed her gaze on the cinnamon buns.
“Come on.” Nick took her arm and awareness shot along her nerve ends. “I know when something’s wrong. Remember?”
She remembered all right. Remembered what she’d trained herself for years to forget.
Chapter Four
Mia’s lips were tinged with blue, and she fiddled with her phone before she slid it into the pocket of her black athletic pants. “Nothing’s wrong.” She wound Pixie’s leash tighter around her fingers.
“If you say so.” Nick dug in the bakery bag and handed her a cinnamon bun. “Eat. It’ll boost your blood sugar.”
“You’re Dr. McGuire?” She licked her lips, and his heartbeat sped up. “You save lives as well as estates?”
“I wish, princess.” He gave her a teasing grin. “Cat’s the only doctor in the family, and she’s an historian, remember?”
The ravaged look on Mia’s face made him think about taking her in his arms right in the middle of Main Street and promising her he’d protect her and fix whatever was wrong. Apart from his mom and sisters, though, he was done protecting women and fixing their problems.
“Princess?” She gave him what he guessed was meant to be a smile, but it didn’t reach her eyes. Then she bit into the sweet pastry, chewed, and swallowed.
“It’s what the guys around here used to call you. I thought you knew.” He fell into step beside her and Pixie.
She shook her head. “No.” A bit of icing clung to one corner of her mouth and shone against her still-pale lips.
Nick focused on the basket of flowers suspended from one of the Victorian-style lampposts along Main Street. It was a look the summer tourists loved because it mirrored the nineteenth-century buildings and the time when one of his mom’s ancestors, a mill owner from Boston, had built the big house on the hill. If he focused on that long-ago ancestor with his mutton-chop whiskers, captured in a stern portrait in the dining room at Harbor House, he wouldn’t reach out to run his fingers along Mia’s jaw to her mouth and brush the icing away.
“Is princess what you called me?”
He shrugged and sipped coffee. “If the name fits.” Back then, she’d been as beautiful as the princesses in the bedtime stories his younger sisters had demanded he read to them when his mom had to work late. And, because of that beauty, she’d been as unobtainable.
“I’m not a princess.” She ate more of the cinnamon bun, and the expression in her eyes was bleak.
No, but a part of him would always think of her that way. “I get things aren’t great for you but—”
“I’m fine.” Her tone was as regal as the princess she claimed not to be, and a hint of red colored her cheeks. “Naomi and Emma love these cinnamon buns. Once a month, they’re our Saturday morning treat.”
He flinched at the change of subject with its reminder of who she was now. A single mom who struggled to make ends meet. “Mom says you’re making great progress on her house.” At the law office, he found his keys, unlocked the door, and punched in the code for the security alarm.
“We sure are and…Pixie, no, you can’t, oh…” Mia let out a breathy whoosh and lurched forward as Pixie wiggled out of her collar and scampered into the office. “Come back here. How did you do that? You mustn’t…Nick, you have to do something.”
“Mom didn’t tell you her sweet little Pixie is an escape artist?” Nick shut the door behind them and tried not to laugh.
“No, she didn’t.” Mia twirled Pixie’s pink leash, and the dog’s collar and tags rattled. “I’m not a dog person. Pixie knows it, the little monkey.” She took off the baseball cap and her hair slipped free of its ponytail. “Come back here, you…”
“You have to show Pixie who’s in charge.” Nick followed Mia into the office and set his coffee and the bakery bag on the reception desk under a picture of his great-grandfather, one of the founders of McGuire and Pelletier.
“Pixie?” Mia put her fingers in her mouth and let out a whistle. “Nick, you gave that animal to Gabrielle. You have to fix this.”
“Way to go, princess,” he murmured.
“What?” She turned to face him, stuck her fingers back in her mouth, and whistled again, louder this time.
“Where did you learn that?” A whistle so unexpected and hot he wondered what other surprises were hidden beneath her cool, elegant exterior.
“Charlie’s my little sister.” Her eyes narrowed and amusement mixed with frustration glimmered in their chocolate depths. “As a toddler, she was the original escape artist.”
He grinned. “Not something Sean ever mentioned.” He put a finger t
o his lips. “Follow me,” he whispered.
“What?” Mia asked in her normal voice. “Pixie’s got to be in here somewhere. All we have to do is capture her and then I can leave.”
Nick shook his head. “It’s part of the game.”
Mia’s expression said he was deranged. “She’s a dog.”
“Come on, play along.” He moved into the short hallway. “Not in here.” He poked his head into the first half-open office door, still empty because, like all the other staff, his cousin, the other partner in the firm, didn’t start until nine.
“She’s not in here, either.” Mia ducked into the smaller office that belonged to their part-time paralegal and ducked out again. “What?”
“Nothing.” Nick dragged his gaze away from her sexy butt outlined in the stretchy pants. She should wear pants more often. But he liked her in dresses and skirts, too. In fact, he liked her in pretty much anything. And he bet he’d like her even more in nothing.
“Nick?” Mia popped out from the cubicle occupied by the summer student who helped with office work. “Pixie’s not here either, and I have to get back to Harbor House. I’m planning to start on your mom’s bedroom closets today, and they’re a big job.”
His laughter died. Although Mia hadn’t said so, it was a dumb game. The kind he’d have played when he was thirteen to spend more time with a pretty girl. “Pixie’s in my office. I keep dog cookies in my desk drawer.”
“Dog cookies?” Mia raised a groomed eyebrow.
“Mom brings Pixie along when she comes here because everyone loves that little dog. It makes Mom happy. When she was so sick, Pixie was the only one who could make her laugh, and I came up with this game to help Mom, okay?” His throat got tight, and he made fists with his hands.
“More than okay.” Mia’s eyes softened. “It’s sweet.”
Nick suppressed a groan. Sweet was right up there with nice. The kind of word no man wanted to hear from a woman, especially a woman like Mia. A gorgeous, sophisticated woman who could pick and choose men like chocolates in a box and discard the ones she didn’t want. Like his ex-wife had done.
“Pixie’s in here.” He pushed his office door all the way open.
There was the big mahogany desk with the black swivel chair behind it, his suit jacket draped across the back. Glass-fronted bookcases that had been part of McGuire and Pelletier since his great-grandfather’s day. A round table with four chairs and filing cabinets topped with pictures of Rotary club dinners and the annual Firefly Lake Fishing Derby. Modern computer equipment and a cactus the firm’s receptionist kept alive. A typical small-town attorney’s office, but, except for the jacket, nothing to mark it as his.
“Pixie, I know you’re in here.” Mia strode by him, and a light floral scent lingered in her wake. She headed behind Nick’s desk and pulled out the chair. “Here you are.” She scooped up the dog and slid the collar over her head then snapped the leash back into place. “Don’t think you’ll get a treat out of this trick, either.”
Pixie barked and licked Mia’s face.
Nick leaned against the door frame. “She likes you. She wouldn’t kiss you if she didn’t.”
Mia frowned and avoided Pixie’s pink tongue. “Neither you nor Pixie will turn me into a dog person. I took her for a walk because if I hadn’t, she’d have barked the house down and disturbed your mom.”
He crossed the office and kept the desk between them. The floral scent was stronger here—freesias maybe? His ex-wife had favored spicy fragrances with incense and amber that were mysterious, exotic, and sensual. Isobel had been mysterious, all right, and he’d been the sucker who’d fallen for it.
“Pixie will miss you when you go back to your house.” This closeness between him and Mia was temporary, but he’d miss her too, more than he wanted to admit. In only a few days, he’d gotten used to her being at his mom’s place when he dropped by, and he looked forward to chatting with her.
“About my house.” She fingered the thin gold chain around her neck. “I might have to sell it.”
“You only bought it a few months ago. Sean’s doing all that work on it.” Nick didn’t rush to fill the silence.
Her chin jerked. “Jay…he’s got a new job in San Francisco. He’s moving and he wants the girls nearby. So he wants me to get a place there, too.”
“Do you want that?” Nick shifted from one foot to the other.
Mia’s head shook like it was disconnected from the rest of her body. “Of course not.”
Pixie nuzzled Mia’s throat, and something broke inside Nick. Something frozen for a long time came free in a sudden rush of emotion.
“I’m scared if I don’t move, though, he’ll take the girls from me.” Mia’s shoulders heaved as she buried her face in the dog’s silky fur.
“You have a custody agreement.” Nick moved around the desk toward her. A friend would comfort her without a second thought, and he was her friend.
“Naomi called me this morning. Then Jay got on the phone and…” Mia’s voice faltered and broke.
“Hey.” Nick slid his hands around her shoulders to pull her close. The floral scent was mixed with cinnamon, sunshine, and something honest and real. The scent of the woman she was. Sweet, sexy, and vulnerable. “What did Jay say?” Warm and soft in his arms, Mia’s curves fit against him like the other half of a whole.
“He said I was putting the girls at risk. If I wanted to teach, I could do it in California.” She stiffened. “I won’t let him do this. If I have to take him to court and sell the house to raise enough money to pay the legal fees, I will.”
“Don’t even think about selling your house.” Nick tried to ignore the need that slammed through him, half frustrated and half relieved Pixie formed a barrier between them to keep Mia’s breasts from pressing into his chest. “That house is security for your future.”
“My girls are more important than any house.” She eyed him over Pixie’s head, her expression stern. “For almost seventeen years, I did what Jay wanted. I moved from city to city each time he was promoted or headhunted. I made a home for my family, but I never put down roots, not real ones anyway, because as soon as I did, he changed jobs and we were uprooted all over again.”
“That’s the past.” Nick trailed a hand across her back to relax the tension in her tight muscles. Which did nothing to relax him and the pressure behind the zip of his pants.
“It is.” A half smile played around her mouth. “For the first time in my life, I’m standing up for myself. I choose what’s right for me and the girls.” Her smile broadened. “It feels good.”
Nick tried to smile back. After Isobel, he’d told himself he didn’t need a woman in his life. At least not a permanent one. He’d filled his days and weeks with work, but maybe he’d made a mistake. Maybe the gaping hole in his heart wasn’t about Isobel any longer.
“You know something else?”
Nick shook his head.
“I’d never thought about Firefly Lake or Vermont as home. Not until Jay went on about how I could pack up and leave. But I’ve got family here, the girls love it, and you and your mom are my friends. Even though I never expected it to be, this is my home. I’ve got roots here, my roots.” She leaned forward and gave him a quick hug. “Thank you.”
“For what?” Awareness churned through Nick of what he’d missed and how he’d fooled himself.
“For being a good listener and not judging me. I should have left Jay long ago. I should never have married him in the first place. It’s as if my life stopped the day we got engaged, but you’ve never made me feel stupid for any of the choices I made.” She lowered Pixie to the floor and looped the dog’s leash around one wrist. “Thank you for being my friend and, like today, comforting me even when I didn’t think I needed it.”
Except friendship and comfort hadn’t been at the top of Nick’s mind. He’d wanted to take her here in his office, on the desk or the table. Or pull her onto his lap in his desk chair and wrap those endless legs of h
ers around his waist. He bit back a groan as he pictured her head thrown back as he ran his hands through her cloud of dark hair. Her eyes and hands on him, too.
“It’s not a big deal. What else are friends for? You should talk to Allison.”
“Allison?” Her expression was puzzled.
“Allison Pelletier. My law partner and cousin on mom’s side of the family. If Jay’s up to anything, you need a good attorney.” It wasn’t like he could help her. It would be a conflict of interest, and he always kept his private and professional lives separate. At least he did when he’d had a private life. “When it comes to family law and wronged women, Allison’s a pit bull in stilettos with the soul of a pussycat.”
“A pussycat, huh?” Laughter lurked in the depths of Mia’s eyes and warmed him. It also made him want her so much he ached.
“Absolutely.” He fixed his face into an expression he hoped was friendly and reassuring. “At McGuire and Pelletier, we give a discount to family and friends.” They didn’t, but he’d talk to Allison and pay the difference.
“Really?”
“All part of small-town service.” He picked up Allison’s business card from the holder on his desk. “Jay’s probably bluffing, but if it turns out he’s not, Allison’s your woman.”
“Thank you.” This time Mia didn’t hug him, didn’t even let her fingers brush his when she took the card. “I’m going out to Camp Rainbow later. One of the counselors called and asked if I could help Kylie with swimming, one-on-one. Charlie told them I taught swimming at a summer camp when I was in college. Do you want to join us?”
Nick’s tongue got stuck to the roof of his mouth. He didn’t swim. Not anymore. His vision blurred as memories pressed in on him. Back when he was seventeen and pissed off at the world. He and two of his buddies, drunk on a cocktail of Jack Daniel’s and beer. Suspended for endless seconds in midair as the truck hurtled off the cliff on the highway outside town. Then the dark water as it pulled him toward the lake bed and he’d fought for breath.
“Earth to Nick? Swimming with Kylie and me?”
