The blonde’s eyes lit up. “Right now, sugar, I would kill for some coffee.” She threw off her jacket, dropping it and the helmet onto the nearest chair. She seemed far more at home here than Fiona was.
“Help yourself.” Fiona gestured toward the percolator with as much dignity as she could muster. “I have to be going.” She hurried from the room.
“Hey, don’t run off on my account,” the woman called after her.
“I’m not,” Fiona answered, not sure if the woman heard her. It didn’t matter.
She wasn’t leaving on the other woman’s account, she was leaving on her own account, Fiona thought, hurrying into her clothes. She kept one eye on the door, praying Hank wouldn’t come out until she was finished and gone.
What an idiot she’d been, thinking that she could make this work. The woman in the kitchen was the sort of woman who belonged with Hank, not her. A beautiful woman who was comfortable with herself, comfortable in any environment she found herself in.
Not like her, Fiona thought ruefully. She pushed her hands through her shirt, a shirt that was missing a button because Hank had been so eager to touch her.
Her heart tightened in her chest.
All she wanted to do was get back to where she belonged. In her kitchen, creating dishes to make people happy. Not deluding herself that she could accomplish the same thing without a stove.
Made it, she thought, grabbing her shoes and her purse. Hank was still in the shower.
“Great coffee,” the blonde told her, catching a glimpse of Fiona as she quickly made her way to the front door. “Want me to say anything to Hank for you?”
Fiona paused only for a moment. “Just tell him…tell him now that the main event is here, the warm-up act went home.”
The woman frowned as the front door closed. Strange little thing, she mused. For a minute there, she had thought that Hank’s taste had definitely improved, but maybe that wasn’t the case.
Finishing her coffee, she debated taking another cup, then decided against it. She rinsed out her cup and placed it on the side of the sink.
A movement behind her caught her attention. When she turned to see Hank walking into the kitchen, wearing nothing but a towel precariously knotted at his waist, Morgan Cutler smiled broadly.
“Is this what the well-dressed hunk is wearing these days in California? Don’t make any sudden moves, brother dear, or I’ll get to see just how much you’ve filled out since we all went skinny-dipping at the creek when we were kids.”
Hank stopped dead. His hand immediately went to the knot to make certain it was secure. “What are you doing here?”
“Admiring the view,” Morgan answered tonguein-cheek. “Really, Hank, is that any way to greet your baby sister? And after I rode all the way down here to see you, too.” Crossing to him, Morgan brushed his cheek with her lips.
“You know I’m glad to see you.” He looked around. He could smell the coffee, but there wasn’t any sign of the woman who had prepared it. Where the hell had she gotten to? “Have you seen Fiona?”
“Fiona,” Morgan repeated. She liked the way the name wrapped around her tongue. It sounded a lot more melodic to her than her own did, although she’d always felt Morgan suited her just fine. “That would be the cute little thing wearing one of your old T-shirts?”
“Yes,” he answered impatiently. “Where is she?”
Morgan made herself comfortable at the counter, deciding that yes, she would have another cup of coffee. Something told her she might need it. She took it black, like the ace of spades. “She left.”
“Left?” he echoed. Hank strode back to her. “What did you say to her?”
“Nothing.”
She batted her eyes at him, the soul of innocence. He didn’t usually mind Morgan’s teasing, but he wasn’t in the mood for it right now. There was no reason for Fiona to have left without a word. Everything had been perfect last night.
“But she said something to me,” Morgan volunteered.
“What?”
He bit off the word. Morgan had a feeling it was going to be her head next The display of edginess was very unusual in her brother. Morgan began to study him a tad closer.
“She told me to tell you that the warm-up act was leaving now that the main event was here.”
Warm-up act? What the hell was that supposed to mean? Had Fiona somehow gotten the crazy notion that Morgan was an old girlfriend?
The very thought chilled him. Hank grabbed Morgan’s shoulder and turned her around to face him. “Did you tell her you were my sister?”
“Careful, another sudden move like that and you might catch cold where you can’t afford to.” She lifted her chin playfully, indicating that her eyes were riveted to his face. “I didn’t have time to tell her anything. She was out of here before I fully realized that she was your latest conquest.” Morgan smiled, her blue eyes crinkling. “I must say, you’ve finally hooked yourself up to someone who doesn’t look like an airhead.”
Annoyed, Hank poured himself a cup of coffee, laced it with milk and downed it quickly. He frowned. The cup rattled as he put it down on the counter. “The problem is, she doesn’t seem to want to stay hooked.”
Morgan stared at him, trying to see if he was serious. “To you? Hank, sugar, you’re too young to have lost your touch.”
He blew out a breath. Damn it, what did he have to do to convince Fiona that he was serious? That he wanted to build something between them? “I don’t give a damn about my ‘touch,’ I just don’t want to lose Fiona.”
The playfulness left Morgan’s eyes. Hank was the last of her brothers she’d have thought would be hit by Cupid. “This sounds serious.”
He paused before going back to his room to put on some clothes. “Yeah, it is.”
Admitting it out loud gelled it for him. And told him what he had to do next.
10
When he left the house, Hank fully expected to overtake Fiona walking toward the main drag outside the development.
But she was nowhere to be seen.
Just his luck, she’d probably managed to find a cab letting someone off in the development, he thought angrily. Taking a shortcut, he arrived at her block in time to see a blue and white car with a lit Taxi sign atop its roof turning away.
“Damn it, woman, why can’t you stay put?” Hank muttered to himself.
He pulled up sharply in her driveway, narrowly avoiding her van. Hank was at the front door in five strides, punching his forefinger at her doorbell.
There was no answer.
“Fiona, open the door. I know you’re in there.” When she didn’t comply immediately, he began knocking. Knocking quickly escalated into banging as his fist made contact with the wood.
Fiona jerked open the door. The expression on his face startled her, but she was good at holding her own in the face of anger. It was the dream of tenderness that made her fall apart.
She scowled at Hank. “You’ll wake up the whole neighborhood.”
He strode in, slamming the door behind him. It pained him to see her jump like that, but the pain in his gut was even worse.
“Right now, I don’t much care if the whole damn neighborhood loses its beauty sleep or not.” He was struggling to hold on to his temper. There was no reason for her to do this. He’d thought they’d gotten beyond this point. “Why the hell did you just run off like that?”
Fiona shrugged, looking away. “I figured you wanted to be alone.”
She wasn’t making any sense. “Alone?”
Did she have to spell it out for him? “With that gorgeous woman who showed up.”
Hank realized he’d been right, she had run off because she thought Morgan was an old girlfriend. Even if Morgan had been an old girlfriend, that was no reason for Fiona to just take off like that.
“I’m sure Morgan would love the compliment, but why would I want to be alone with my sister?”
Fiona realized her mistake as soon as she heard the name. “Your sister?”<
br />
When the hell was she going to trust him? “My sister.” Because he wanted to shake her, he shoved his hands into his pockets. “And if you hadn’t run off like some scared jackrabbit with a coyote on her tail, you would have found that out.”
Fiona took offense at the image, even though she knew she deserved it. Maybe she’d acted rashly, but mistaking Morgan for an old girlfriend only showed her how really foolish she’d been, hanging on to her dreams. Someday, maybe soon, an old girlfriend would show up. Or worse yet, a brand-new one. A man like Hank would never be hers.
Fiona drew herself up. “Maybe this is for the best.”
His eyebrows furrowed until they formed a single, wavy light-brown line above his nose. Now what was she going on about? Hank wondered. He swore women should come with instruction manuals. But even if they did, with his luck, the manuals would probably be written in a foreign language.
“What ‘best’? What ‘this’? Fiona, what are you talking about?”
She was drawing on all the inner strength she had to say this without breaking down. “Look, we’ve had a wonderful time together—”
“Had?”
There was a dangerous note in his voice she’d never heard before.
Fiona pressed on. If she didn’t get this out now, she never would. “Yes, had.”
She wanted to pace, to twist her hands together, to somehow find a way to manage this horrible, unsettled feeling that was consuming her. But that would only make her seem like some nervous little twit and she didn’t want his last memory of her to be that.
“I couldn’t expect it to go on much longer, not in a place where every fifth woman that you trip over is some drop-dead gorgeous creature who wants to become a movie star.”
His eyes were flinty, as if he didn’t understand what she was saying. “I hadn’t noticed that I’ve been tripping over women.”
Frustrated, she threw her hands up. Didn’t he know how hard this was for her? Didn’t he appreciate the fact that she was giving him a graceful way out? “You know what I mean.”
“No, I don’t I don’t know what you mean at all.” He crossed his arms before him, his eyes never leaving her face. “Explain it to me.”
Somehow, she managed to steel herself off. She said it as simply as possible. “You’re a very handsome man. You belong with a gorgeous woman.”
It went over like a lead balloon. She didn’t expect to see the anger that entered his eyes. “Is this some sort of convoluted reverse prejudice?” he demanded heatedly. “I’m good-looking, therefore I don’t have brains?”
He was twisting things. She’d never meant to insult him. “No—”
He cut her off, too angry to listen.
“That’s what it sounds like to me.” Hank couldn’t remember feeling this angry, except maybe when his grandfather had died. He hadn’t been able to do anything about it then, either. “You’re treating me as if all there is to me is vanity, as if I belong on top of one of your wedding cakes, next to an equally fake figure of a woman.”
Fiona placed her hand on his arm, trying to make him understand that what she was doing was for both their own good. She couldn’t bear him looking at her someday and saying it was over, that he’d found someone he really cared about.
“No, that’s not what I’m saying.”
But whether she realized it or not, that was exactly what she was saying, Hank thought. He shrugged her off. “Do you think I’m stupid, Fiona? That all I want is someone who looks gorgeous on my arm?”
Fiona squared her shoulders. She was being adult about this and he was yelling at her as if she were a child. Yelling at her just the way her father had. “No, I don’t think you’re stupid, but why shouldn’t you want someone who’s gorgeous?”
He turned the tables on her. “Is that what you want? Is that why you’re with me?” he demanded. When she took a step back, he matched it until he had her up against a wall, both figuratively and literally. “From everything you’ve said, you seem to think I belong in that category—good-looking, the kind of man who makes women’s heads turn. Am I just a hood ornament for you?”
She stared at him, wide-eyed. How could he possibly think that she felt that way about him? “No, it’s not like that.”
He glared at her. Where there was smoke, there was fire. “You wouldn’t be saying it if it wasn’t on your mind.”
Anger, hot and defensive, kicked in. “Don’t you raise your voice at me.”
Hank wanted to do more than raise it, he wanted to shout in her face until somehow she came to her senses. But her hotly voiced protest made him realize that neither one of them was willing to give an inch.
He blew out a breath, taking stock of himself. “Sorry. Maybe we both need a little time off here.” He backed away from her, surprised how far his anger would have taken him if he’d let it. “Maybe things have been going too fast for both of us.” They had been for him, he realized. He’d been thinking things about her that he’d never even considered before.
He was at the door before she could say anything.
“Sorry I disturbed your neighborhood.” The door slammed, a final coda to the scene that had just taken place.
Fiona stood, staring at the closed door, feeling as if everything inside her was shattering. In the course of a few short minutes she’d somehow managed to bring about everything she’d hoped could be held off for just a little while longer.
She stood stock-still for a very long time before she began to cry.
“So call him,” Bridgette urged, frustration mounting in her voice. Fiona seemed to be getting worse with each day that passed. It was like watching a flower die without being able to do anything about it. Except that this time, she was related to the flower. “Fiona, for heaven’s sake, if you love him, call him.”
There was no “if” about it, Fiona silently conceded.
She’d thought of calling him. A hundred times she’d thought of it. Once or twice she’d even dialed all the numbers before putting the receiver down again.
“And do what? Grovel?” Fiona cried. She caught herself. Bridgette only meant well. She shouldn’t be taking out her feelings on her. “Plead that he stay for just a little while longer?” she asked more evenly. “Then I’d have to go through this again when he decides that he’s tired of me.”
Bridgette had forced Fiona to go over the whole scene for her, bit by bit. She’d gleaned things that seemed to have escaped her usually more savvy sister.
“He didn’t sound as if he were tired of you, just your damn insecurity.” She took hold of Fiona’s shoulders. “Fiona, get this through your head. You’re not an ugly duckling, you never were.”
Fiona shrugged Bridgette off. Helpful or not, lies had no place here. “Did you have the same childhood I did?”
Bridgette put her own interpretation on the question. She’d always been the favored one and she knew it. “No, but I was there. Yes, I was prettier than you, the classic kind of pretty that Dad, in his warped sense of priorities, expected.”
They both knew what their father had been like, what had made him tick. He was a first-rate real estate agent, a salesman down to the very bottom of his shoes. He was into appearances and gingerbread trimmings. They both knew that was why he had married their mother in the first place. Because she was the kind of woman he wanted on his arm: beautiful.
Bridgette had loved her father, but that did not change what he was. “He was a shallow, shallow man who was just into surface things and he never looked beyond that.”
A bitter smile twisted Fiona’s lips. “Beyond that,” she repeated. “Right, that would be inner beauty.”
Bridgette took offense of her own. It hadn’t been all roses and lollipops on her end of it, either. “Hey, don’t knock it. I was considered empty-headed. You were the smart one.”
That hadn’t counted for very much and they both knew it. “So if someone wanted their algebra homework done, they came to me. If they wanted to see a movie, or go to a party,
or have a great time, they came to you.” Bridgette had been the one with more dates than days of the week. Fiona had been the one who had sat home. And had her father rub her nose in it.
Bridgette lost her temper. “Stop it, Fiona. Take a good look at yourself. A real good look.” She forcibly turned Fiona toward the hall mirror and made her look into it. “You were never anything but what you made yourself. Did you ever try to work with your looks? I was there with a slew of makeup—you wouldn’t even put on lipstick,” Bridgette reminded her angrily. She gestured at herself, at her face. “What I’ve got is fifty percent illusion. You’re genuine.” Why couldn’t Fiona see that? Her voice softened. “And, with a little work, you would be so stunning, I would probably hate you.”
A smile began to form, a genuine one. Fiona could never stay mad at Bridgette, even when they were younger. Bridgette had never flaunted her looks, or her boyfriends. It was just the way things were.
“You’re just saying that.”
Bridgette’s expression matched hers. “About hating you, yeah. But the rest of it’s true.” Their eyes met in the mirror. “Just let me get my hands on your face for a little while and I’ll show you just how gorgeous you could be.”
Fiona had never cared for the idea of layers of makeup on her face. “No, I—”
Bridgette arched an eyebrow. “Chicken?” Not waiting for an answer, she began making clucking noises.
“Of course not.”
Hands tucked under her armpits, Bridgette added a visual dimension as she continued clucking.
Fiona held up her hands, surrendering. “All right, Fairy Godmother, wave your wand. Let me see what you can do.”
Bridgette was already reaching for her purse. “I left my wand in my other outfit, but I just so happen to have my makeup bag with me.” She pushed Fiona down onto a chair and dropped her bag on the kitchen counter. “Sit and be amazed.”
It didn’t take long.
Finished, Bridgette stepped back to admire her handiwork. Rather than say anything, she gestured Fiona toward the mirror in the hall.
Fiona was almost afraid to look. Afraid that, after all of Bridgette’s efforts, she wouldn’t see a difference. But there was. A distinct yet subtle difference. She was, in Bridgette’s words, amazed.
Fiona And The Sexy Stranger Page 13
