The subfloor creaked, drawing his gaze to the open French door. Kelsey and Gracie stood just inside, the woman’s hands on the girl’s shoulders, both in their sundresses, both with their unruly brown hair, creating too pretty a picture. Why did she try to hide behind ugly clothes and do up those great curls in a matronly bun? Why go out of her way to be plain when she was so lovely? Was she afraid of drawing a man’s attention? Too late, because she sure had his, at least until he slowly, deliberately, and just a little reluctantly turned it back to the cabinet he was manhandling into the dining room.
“Can we take a look around?” Kelsey asked.
“Be my guest.”
They wandered off, talking about the rooms and their functions, picking out their favorite features. It’d been a long time since he’d heard the distant softness of a woman’s voice in his house. Then he’d taken it for granted—the sound of Carol Ann on the phone, visiting with friends or chatting with the housekeeper. It had been comforting background noise, reminding him that he wasn’t alone, that she was there, taking care of everything, waiting patiently for her share of his time. He hadn’t given her enough of it, of course. He’d been too busy becoming respected, renowned, the authority in his field. He’d paid for his neglect. She had paid for his ambition.
Footsteps clumped up the stairs then down the hall and around each room. There were three bedrooms up there, two too many for a man who lived alone. But maybe someday he would have company. His father would visit, if he ever got the place finished, and maybe—
Swallowing hard, he cut the thought off right there. There were limits to how much of the past he could endure in one evening, and with Kelsey’s question about marriage, he’d already surpassed them. Better to think about something else, anything else.
He leveled the cabinet, tossed a handful of screws inside, then reached for the drill where he’d left it on the ladder paint tray. He’d misjudged the distance, though, and could barely brush the cord with his fingertips.
“Looks like you could use a little help.” Kelsey laid the drill in his palm, then came closer. “Need an extra hand?”
“No, thanks.” But it was a lie. He needed a couple extra hands, just not hers.
“I wasn’t planning to offer my own. I was going to walk to the door and call Caleb.”
“I can manage. Where’s Gracie?”
“Lounging in the bathtub upstairs. It’s a great bathtub.”
It was, he acknowledged as he drilled the first screw into the stud. Oversized, marble, set in a corner, and looking out on the best view on the place. Any lounging he did would likely be on the deck, but he’d included the tub on the off chance that someday …
What? He’d get married again? Maybe, but he wasn’t at the point yet where he could imagine it. Married or not, he wouldn’t be celibate. Maybe he would get involved with some woman who would appreciate the luxury. Someone who would look incredibly enticing wet and naked. Someone with long hair and longer legs and a wicked smile. Someone—ah, hell, why ignore the obvious? Someone like Kelsey.
And if she was lounging in his bathtub, he thought with a wry smile, it was a sure bet he wouldn’t be on the deck out back. At the very least he’d be in the room, watching her. At the very most he’d join her and—
Taking a deep breath, he put the brakes on that line of thought.
“It’s a great house,” she remarked, standing close enough that he could see the floral print of her dress from the corner of his eye, could smell the faint fragrance of her perfume. “How long have you been working on it?”
“I bought the property in March of last year. It’s been slow going.” But therapeutic. Chopping down trees, digging out stumps, and hauling rock had saved his life. It had kept him too busy to think, had left him too tired to dream. By the time the actual construction had begun, he’d been in better shape both physically and mentally than he’d been in years.
He’d been able to cope. And though that didn’t sound like much, he knew from experience that it was the most precious gift in the world.
After checking the level of the cabinet one last time, he began searching for the next one. It was a double unit and heavy enough to make his muscles strain until Kelsey gave it a boost.
“Are you going to stain or paint?” she asked, bracing it while he dug more screws out of the box.
“Paint. White.”
“What about the walls?”
“Dark green. White and green tile floor, serpentine marble countertops, white tile backsplash with an ivy pattern.”
“Sounds lovely. Who made all those choices for you?”
“You don’t think I could come up with a plan like that myself?” He grinned. “You’re right. I would’ve given all the trim a light oak stain and painted all the walls white. Holly’s in charge of decorating.”
“Who is Holly?”
“McBride. She owns the inn in town.” It was the most basic answer to her question, but Holly was so much more. He’d met her at a party given by the Winchesters right after he moved to town. They’d spent that night together, and a fair number of others. Before long he’d become convinced that he’d found something extraordinary, and as it turned out, he had, but not what he’d thought. She couldn’t be what he needed—namely, Carol Ann—and the best sex in the world couldn’t give her what she wanted, and so they’d become friends. She was the best friend he’d ever had.
“Is she … special?” Kelsey’s cheeks when he glanced at her were tinged pink, as if she’d asked a most intimate question. Exactly how intimate did she mean to get? Did she want to know if he’d dated Holly? Had sex with her? Intended to share this house with her?
“I like to think that all of us are special in one way or another.” He watched her nose wrinkle in scorn at his pat answer, and chuckled. Then his humor fled. “You know, Ms. Malone, I’m never quite sure when we’re having a conversation and when you’re conducting an interview.”
“Funny. I don’t always know whether I’m talking to a client or a psychiatrist.”
“Or an interesting man. You forgot that one.”
“Or a smug, arrogant—”
He interrupted her with a tsk-ing sound. “Don’t forget. There are children around.”
“Speaking of children …” Releasing the cabinet, she went into the front hallway. “Gracie?”
There was a moment of silence, then a soft “What?”
“What are you doing?”
Another silence, another faint answer. “Nothin’.”
J.D. went to join Kelsey in the hall. “Come on down, Gracie,” he called.
After a moment, dispirited footsteps came from the direction of the guest rooms, and a moment later a bedraggled Gracie, on the verge of tears, appeared at the top of the stairs. Her clothes were wet, her hair stuck to her face, and her words were barely audible. “It wasn’t my fault.”
She looked so pitiful that J.D. choked back a laugh, earning himself a glare from Kelsey. “What happened?” she asked calmly, motioning for the child to come down the stairs.
“I went to see if the other room had a great big tub too, but it don’t, but it’s big enough for me, and so I climbed in. I was just playing. I didn’t mean to turn the knob, but my foot slipped and water came out and got my new dress all wet, and when I tried to jump up and get away, it got my new shoes wet too, and now it’s all ruined.”
Kelsey looked to him for an answer. He rose to her unspoken challenge. “Nothing’s ruined, Gracie. You just got your bath a little earlier than you expected. Why don’t you hang your dress over the railing out back to dry?”
Gracie looked horrified. “And be naked? No way!”
J.D. ran his fingers through his hair. He didn’t keep extra clothes in his truck, and if Kelsey had an extra shirt in her car, she wasn’t offering. There was the quilt on the deck, but it was much too warm to wrap up in. Short of giving her his own shirt—
Abruptly, he strode down the hall to his office, where he’d been cau
lking the woodwork the previous weekend. The best thing for wiping away excess caulk, according to his experts, was a damp piece of old, soft T-shirt. He’d cleaned out his closet when he’d started the job, and a few shirts, fortunately, were still in one piece. He shook one out, sending enough dust into the air to make him sneeze, then delivered it to Gracie in the hall.
“That’s a lot of modesty for someone who lets one brother give her a bath every night while she shares the tub with another,” he murmured as she raced through the house to the deck.
Kelsey gave him a sidelong look. “But her brothers are family. You’re not.”
It was a simple observation, one he might have made himself if someone else had said the same thing, and it was true. So why did it sting just a little?
Nah, he’d merely imagined it. The truth couldn’t hurt unless he seriously wanted a different truth, and in this case he didn’t. He wanted to help the kids, would especially like to help them settle into a permanent home, but he absolutely did not want that home to be with him. He didn’t want to be any more to them than he was just then—someone temporarily in their lives who, he hoped, did them some good, whom they would forget soon after he was gone.
Returning to the kitchen, he positioned the next cabinet, then began securing it. “You know, I’m not getting much accomplished here tonight.”
“Don’t blame me. I’m not distracting you.”
Wasn’t she? She’d asked him the marriage question and made him think about Carol Ann. She’d made him notice how pretty she was by doing nothing more than walking into the room, and she’d put in his head the image—the very erotic image—of her, him, and that bathtub upstairs. For a man who hadn’t been in a relationship for a very long time, he’d say that was pretty damn distracting.
“Why don’t you put Caleb to work?”
“I don’t need his help.”
“Actually, I wasn’t thinking about what you need.”
He glanced at her and saw that she was looking outside. Gracie was sitting on a bench, her knees drawn to her chest, her entire body except her head enveloped in his shirt, and giggling at the conversation between Jacob and Noah. Caleb stood a few yards away, staring into the woods. His rounded shoulders made him look vulnerable, while the set of his jaw gave him an angry air.
“He doesn’t want to work with me.”
“Or maybe you don’t want to work with him.”
Maybe. He made the admission silently, because it shamed him. Truth was, he didn’t particularly like Caleb. He felt sorry for him. He was angry for him. He wanted to help him, needed to help him. But he didn’t like him. Caleb was too difficult, too wounded, too powerful a reminder of the damage adults could do the children who depended on them.
He was too powerful a reminder of the damage J.D. had done Trey, and somewhere deep inside J.D. found it possible to hold that against him.
What incredibly mature reasoning for an adult and a psychiatrist.
He glared at Kelsey on his way to the door. It was a few degrees cooler outside, the air about a hundred times sweeter. “Caleb.” Even from across the deck he saw the kid stiffen. “Do you mind helping me in here?”
Moment stretched into moment, and Caleb didn’t move. Neither did the other kids. Just when J.D. was ready to give up and throw Kelsey an I-told-you-so smirk, Caleb slowly turned. “With what?”
“Hanging cabinets.”
His usual scowl intensified. “I don’t know how.”
“I didn’t either until someone showed me.”
He wanted to refuse, J.D. could see that. Instead, he left the railing and, with halting steps, approached the door. When he was ten feet away, J.D. went back inside to locate the next cabinet unit and considered the boy’s agreement. Why hadn’t he said no? It wasn’t likely he was looking to get on J.D.’s good side. Was he just so accustomed to doing what adults told him? So responsible it didn’t occur to him to turn down a request?
Or was he tiring of his own anger and hostility? Did he, somewhere deep inside, want more peace, more emotional comfort, in his life?
Whatever the explanation, J.D. wasn’t going to worry over it. He was simply going to take advantage of it.
There was nothing wrong with changing her route.
Kelsey repeated the words in her head, keeping silent rhythm with the sound of her shoes on the pavement. She was living in a new town, and what better way to familiarize herself with it than on foot? That was all she was doing. Honest.
But she was already familiar with this block of Sixth Street, the devil in her pointed out unnecessarily. The fact that she’d missed catching even a glimpse of J.D. in her first four and a half miles couldn’t possibly have influenced her decision, could it? She couldn’t possibly be so …
Normal? Typical? Female? Simple fact—it wasn’t unusual for a woman to go a little out of her way to see an attractive man. Besides, she needed to burn off the calories from the two giant-size cookies she’d scarfed down last night with Gracie and the boys. A few extra miles were called for. And if they happened to take her past that attractive man’s house …
There was a car pulled to the curb at the end of his driveway, a flashy, expensive sports car that apparently belonged to the woman beside it. Standing next to her, wearing his running clothes but looking as if he’d just rolled out of bed, was J.D.
Kelsey felt like a teenager seeing the boy she had a crush on making eyes at the head cheerleader whose favorite pastime was making Kelsey miserable. A flush swept through her, and her stomach did a flip or two. She wished she could make a U-turn in the middle of the street and head back the way she’d come, but they’d already spotted her. If she avoided them now, they would wonder why, and J.D., damn his smug arrogance, would probably figure it out.
He pushed away from the car as she drew nearer and stepped into her path. “Are you following me? And don’t tell me this is your regular route or you didn’t want the sun in your eyes.”
She eased to a stop, bent forward in a stretch, then straightened. “Nope. And I’m not being neighborly either.”
Up close, the woman reminded her even more of a cheerleader. She was gorgeous. Her outfit was of better quality than Kelsey could dream of affording, her short, sassy hairstyle couldn’t have suited her better, and her colors were perfect—from the auburn hair to the peaches-and-cream complexion to the rich salmon of her clothes.
And here Kelsey was in a sports bra, an old tank top, faded shorts, and shoes that were due for replacement, dripping sweat from head to toe, with her plain brown uncontrollable hair even more out of control than usual.
“Kelsey Malone, meet Holly McBride,” J.D. said with a grin. “Kelsey’s our new social worker. Holly provides warm beds and good food to strangers in town.”
Holly rolled her eyes at him. “You’re so amusing, J.D. Kelsey, I own the inn in town.”
Damn, even her voice was perfect—husky, low-pitched. Kelsey was breathing too hard to even make hers work right.
Holly looked her up and down, then asked in a puzzled tone, “You do this every day? On purpose?”
“I like running.” Kelsey gulped a deep breath, then pulled the bottom of her shirt up high enough to wipe her face. “I’ve got to do something to stay in shape.”
The smile that crossed the other woman’s face was, of course, flawless. “Oh, honey, there are better ways to do that. Trust me.” She placed her hand on J.D.’s arm—long nails, neatly manicured, polished. Kelsey wanted to hide her short, uneven, unpainted nails behind her back. “J.D., thanks for your time. I appreciate it. Kelsey, nice meeting you.”
When Holly drove off, she gave them a smile and a wave. Kelsey felt the most incredible urge to screw up her face and stick out her tongue. Luckily, she stifled it, because when she looked away from the car, J.D. was watching her.
“So that’s Holly. You can add one more to your list of people you’ve met.”
“Huh. Well, see you.” She started jogging, but he accompanied her.
“What’d she have, some kind of fashion emergency? Broken nail trauma? Shortage-of-admirers distress?” A quick glance showed that he was looking at her—worse, that he was grinning.
“That’s pretty snide coming from an advance-degreed, state-licensed, certified do-gooder,” he teased. “Holly’s vain, I admit—so does she—but she’s not shallow.” He turned serious. “She’s going through some tough times. She has a few unresolved issues with her dying mother, her husband’s having an affair, and their oldest daughter wants various, rather delicate portions of her anatomy pierced to match her boyfriend, Slash.”
For an instant an awful remorse swept over Kelsey. She never said nasty things about people she didn’t know, and the one time she’d given in to the temptation, the poor woman was going through enough traumas for—
Then she caught the twitch of the grin J.D. was trying to suppress and realized she’d been had. “You … you!” She gave a shriek of pure frustration. “There’s no boyfriend named Slash, is there? And no daughter, no husband, and probably no mother, because women like that aren’t born. They’re created by fashion designers and hair colorists and plastic surgeons. You are twisted, Dr. Grayson.”
“Oh, but you make it so much fun.”
She scowled at him, then picked up her speed until she was running flat out. He easily caught up with her and stayed by her side as she covered the last two blocks to the town square in record time. There she collapsed on the first bench she saw, bending over so her head was between her knees, dragging deep, sweet breaths of air into her bursting lungs.
He paced back and forth, then finally stopped directly in front of her. “Is that the best you can do? That’s not even a fast jog.” She looked up at him, sucked in desperately needed air, and he pushed her head back down. “Breathe.”
Father to Be Page 12
