Brambleberry House

by RaeAnne Thayne

  His heart was a little harder to steal than that. Sometimes he wondered if he had one. And if he did, he wasn’t sure a little girl would be the one to steal it.

  He’d never had much to do with kids. He couldn’t say he disliked them, they just always seemed like they inhabited this baffling alien world he knew little about.

  “How old are the twins?” he asked.

  “They turned eight a month ago. And Sage’s stepdaughter, Chloe, is nine. When the three of them are together, there’s never a dull moment. It’s so wonderful.”

  She loved children, he realized. Before he’d gotten to know her a little these last few days, that probably would have surprised him. At first glance, she had seemed brusque and cool, not at all the sort to be patient with endless questions or sticky fingers.

  But then, Anna Galvez was proving to be full of contradictions.

  Just now, for instance, the crisp, buttoned-down businesswoman he had taken her for that first night looked earthy and sexy, her cheeks flushed by the cold and the exertion and her hair blown into tangles by the wind.

  He wasn’t interested, he reminded himself. Hadn’t he spent all day reminding himself why kissing her had been a huge mistake he couldn’t afford to repeat?

  “There. That should do it,” she said a moment later.

  “Good. Now come down. That wind has picked up again.”

  “Gladly,” she answered.

  He held the ladder steady while she descended.

  “Thank you,” she said, her voice a little shaky until her feet were on solid ground again. “I’ll admit, it helped to know you were down there giving me stability.”

  “No problem,” he answered.

  She smiled at him, her features bright and lovely and he suddenly could think of nothing but the softness of her mouth beneath his and of her seductive heat surrounding him.

  They stood only a few feet apart and even though the wind lashed wildly around them and the first few drops of rain began to sting his skin, Max couldn’t seem to move. He saw awareness leap into the depths of her eyes and knew instinctively she was remembering their kiss as well.

  He could kiss her again. Just lean forward a little and all that heat and softness would be in his arms again...

  She was the first one to break the spell between them. She drew in a deep breath and gripped the ladder and started to lower it from the porch roof while he stood gazing at her like an idiot.

  “Thanks again for your help,” she said, and he wondered if he imagined the tiniest hint of a quaver in her voice. “I should have done this last week. I knew a storm was on the way but I’m afraid the time slipped away from me. With an old place like Brambleberry House, there are a hundred must-do items for every one I check off.”

  She was talking much more than she usually did and seemed determined to avoid his gaze. She obviously didn’t want a repeat of their kiss any more than he did.

  Or at least any more than he should.

  “Where does the ladder go?”

  “In the garage. But I can return it.”

  He ignored her, just hefted it with his good arm and carried it around the house to the detached garage where Abigail had always parked her big old Oldsmobile. Conan and Anna both followed behind him.

  Walking inside was like entering a time capsule of his aunt’s life. It looked the same as he remembered from four years ago, with all the things Abigail had loved. Her potting table and tools, an open box of unpainted china doll faces, the tandem bicycle she had purchased several years ago.

  He paused for a moment, looking around the cluttered garage and he was vaguely aware of Conan coming to stand beside him and nudging his head under Max’s hand.

  “It’s a mess, I know. I need to clean this out as soon as I find the time. It’s on my to-do list, I swear.”

  He said nothing, just fought down the renewed sense of loss.

  “Listen,” she said after a moment, “I was planning to make some pasta for dinner. I always make way too much and then feel like I have to eat it all week long, even after I’m completely sick of it. Would you like some?”

  He was being sucked into Anna’s life, inexorably drawn into her web. Seeing Abigail’s things here only reminded him of his mission here and how he wasn’t any closer to the truth than he’d been when he arrived.

  “No,” he said. “I’d better not.”

  His words sounded harsh and abrupt hanging out there alone but he didn’t know how else to answer.

  Her warm smile slipped away. “Another time, then.”

  They headed out of the garage and he was aware of Conan glaring at him.

  The sky had darkened just in the few moments they had been inside the garage and it now hung heavy and gray. The scattered drops had become a light drizzle and he could see distant lightning out over the ocean.

  “I should warn you we sometimes lose power in the middle of a big storm. You can find emergency candles and matches in the top drawer in the kitchen to the left of the oven.”

  “Thanks.” They walked together up the front steps and he held the door for her to walk into the entryway.

  He headed up the stairs, trying not to favor his stiff ankle, but his efforts were in vain.

  “Your ankle! I completely forgot about it! I’m an idiot to make you stand out there for hours just to hold my ladder. I’m so sorry!”

  “It wasn’t hours and you’re not an idiot. I’m fine. The ankle doesn’t even hurt anymore.”

  It wasn’t quite the truth but he wasn’t about to tell her that.

  He didn’t want her sympathy.

  He wanted something else entirely from Anna Galvez, something he damn well knew he had no business craving.

  * * *

  UPSTAIRS IN HIS apartment, Max started a fire in the grate while his TV dinner heated up in the microwave.

  The wind rattled the windowpanes and sent the branches of the oak tree scraping against the glass and he tried to ignore the delicious scents wafting up from downstairs.

  He could have used Conan’s company. After spending the entire day with the dog, he felt oddly bereft without him.

  But he supposed right now Conan was nestled on his rug in Anna’s warm kitchen, having scraps of pasta and maybe a little of that yeasty bread he could smell baking.

  When the microwave dinged to signal his own paltry dinner was ready, he grabbed a beer and settled into the easy chair in the living room with the remote and his dinner.

  Outside, lightning flashed across the darkening sky and he told himself he should feel warm and cozy in here. But the apartment seemed silent, empty.

  Just as he was about to turn on the evening news, the rocking guitar riff of “Barracuda” suddenly echoed through his apartment.

  Not tonight, Mom, he thought, reaching for his cell phone and turning it off. He wasn’t at all in the mood to listen to her vitriol. She would probably call all night but that didn’t mean he had to listen.

  Instead, he turned on the TV and divided his attention between the March Madness basketball games and the rising storm outside, doing his best to shake thoughts of the woman downstairs from his head.

  He dozed off sometime in the fourth quarter of what had become a blowout.

  He dreamed of dark hair and tawny skin, of deep brown eyes and a soft, delicious mouth. Of a woman in a stern blue business suit unbuttoning her jacket with agonizing slowness to reveal lush, voluptuous curves...

  Max woke up with a crick in his neck to find the fire had guttered down to only a few glowing red embers. Just as she predicted, the storm must have knocked out power. The television screen was dark and the light he’d left on in the kitchen was out.

  He hurried to the window and saw darkness up and down the coast. The outage was widespread, then.

&nbs
p; From his vantage point, he suddenly saw a flashlight beam cutting across the yard below.

  His instincts hummed and he peered through the sleeting rain and the wildly thrashing tree limbs to see two shapes—one human, one canine—heading across the lawn from the house to the detached garage.

  What the hell was she doing out there? She’d be lucky if a tree limb didn’t blow over on her.

  He peered through the darkness and in her flashlight beam he saw the garage door flapping in the wind. They must not have latched it quite properly when they had returned the ladder to the garage.

  Lightning lit up the yard again and he watched her wrestle the door closed then head for the house again.

  He made his way carefully to his door and opened it, waiting to make sure she returned inside safely. Only silence met him from downstairs and he frowned.

  What was taking her so long to come back inside?

  After another moment or two, he sighed. Like it or not, he was going to have to find out.

  CHAPTER NINE

  SHE LOVED THESE wild coastal storms.

  Anna scrambled madly back for the shelter of the porch, laughing with delight as the rain stung her cheeks and the churning wind tossed her hair around.

  She wanted to lift her hands high into the air and spin around wildly in a circle in some primitive pagan dance.

  She supposed most people would find that an odd reaction in a woman as careful and restrained as she tried to be in most other areas of her life. But something about the passion and intensity of a good storm sent the blood surging through her veins, made her hum with energy and excitement.

  Abigail had been the same way, she remembered. Her friend used to love to sit out on the wraparound porch facing the sea, a blanket wrapped around her as she watched the storm ride across the Pacific.

  Since moving to Brambleberry House nearly a year ago, Anna tried to follow the tradition as often as she could. Sort of her own way of paying tribute to Abigail and the contributions she had made to the world.

  Conan shook the rain from his coat after their little foray to the garage and she laughed, grateful she hadn’t removed her Gore-Tex parka yet. “Cut it out,” she exclaimed. “You can do that on that side of the porch.”

  The dog made that snickering sound of his, then settled into the driest corner of the deep porch, closest to the house where the rain couldn’t reach him.

  Conan was used to these storm vigils. She would have thought the lightning and thunder would bother him but he seemed to relish them as much as she did.

  Her heart still pumped from the wild run to the garage as she grabbed one of the extra blankets she had brought outside and used a corner of it to dry her face and hair from the rain.

  Lightning flashed outside their protected haven and she shivered a little as she grabbed another quilt and wrapped it around her shoulders, then headed for the porch swing that had been purposely angled into a corner to shelter its occupants as much as possible from the elements.

  She had barely settled in with a sigh and rattle of the swing’s chains when thunder rumbled through the night.

  Before it had finished, Conan was on his feet, barking with excitement.

  “Settle down, bud. It’s only the storm,” she assured him.

  “And me.”

  She gasped at the male voice cutting through the night and quickly aimed her flashlight in the direction of it. The long roll of thunder must have muffled Max’s approach. He stood several feet away, looking darkly handsome in the distant flashes of lightning.

  Her heart, already racing, began to pump even faster. This had nothing to do with the storm and everything to do with Lieutenant Maxwell.

  “Is everything okay out here?” he asked, coming closer. “I saw from my window when you went out to the garage to close the door. When I didn’t hear you come back inside, I was worried you might have fallen out here or something.”

  He was worried about her? A tiny little bubble of warmth formed in her chest but she fought down the reaction. He didn’t mean anything by it. It was just simple concern of one person to another. He would have been just as conscientious if Conan had been out here in the storm.

  More so, maybe. He loved her dog, while she was just the annoying landlady who wouldn’t leave him alone, always inviting him to dinner and making him help her nail down loose shingles.

  “I’m fine,” she finally answered, unable to keep the lingering coolness from her voice after his abrupt refusal to share pasta with her earlier. “Sorry I worried you. I was just settling in to watch the storm. It’s kind of a Brambleberry House tradition.”

  “I remember,” he answered.

  She gave him a quizzical look, wondering what he meant by that, though of course he couldn’t see her expression in the dark.

  “You remember what?” she asked.

  An odd silence met her question, then he spoke quickly. “I meant, I remember doing the same thing when I visited the coast several years ago. A coastal storm is a compelling thing, isn’t it?”

  He felt the same tug and pull with the elements as she did? She wouldn’t have expected it from the distant, contained soldier.

  “It is. You’re welcome to join us.”

  In a quick flash of lightning, she saw hesitation flicker over those lean features—the same hesitation she had seen earlier when he had refused her invitation to dinner.

  Never mind, she almost said, feeling stupid and presumptuous for even thinking he might want to sit out on a cold porch swing in the middle of a rainstorm.

  But after a moment, he nodded. “Thanks. I was watching the storm from upstairs but it’s not quite the same as being out here in the thick of things, is it?”

  “I imagine that’s a good metaphor for the life of an army helicopter pilot.”

  “It could very well be.”

  “There’s room here on the swing. Or you could bring one of the rockers over from the other side of the porch, but I’m afraid they’re a little damp. This is the safest corner if you want to stay out of the rain.”

  “Says the voice of experience, obviously.”

  After another odd, tense little moment of hesitation, he sat down on the swing, which swayed slightly with his weight.

  The air temperature instantly increased a dozen degrees and she could smell him, spicy and male.

  Lightning ripped through the night again and her blood seemed to sing with it—or maybe it was the intimacy of sitting out here with Max, broken only by the two of them wrapped in a warm cocoon of darkness while the storm raged around them.

  They settled into a not uncomfortable silence, just the rain and the thunder and the occasional creak and rattle of the swing’s chains.

  “Are you warm enough?” she asked. “I only brought two blankets out and one is wet but I’ve got plenty more inside.”

  “I should be okay.”

  “Here. This one should be big enough for both of us.” She pulled the blanket from around her shoulders and with a flick of her wrists, sent it billowing over both of them.

  Stupid move, she realized instantly. Stupid and naive. It was one thing to sit out here with him, enjoying the storm. It was something else indeed to share a blanket while they did it. Though they weren’t even touching underneath it except the occasional brush of their shoulders as they moved, it all still seemed far too intimate.

  He made no move to push the blanket off, though, and she couldn’t think of a way to yank it away without looking even more foolish than she already must.

  “I imagine you’ve seen some crazy weather from the front seat of a helicopter,” she said in an effort to wrench her mind from that blasted kiss the day before.

  “A bit,” he answered. “Sandstorms in the gulf can come up out of nowhere and you have to either play it
through or set down in the middle of zero visibility.”

  “Scary.”

  “It can be. But nothing gets your heart thumping more than trying to extract a wounded soldier in poor weather conditions in the midst of possible enemy machine-gun fire.”

  “You love it, don’t you?”

  He shifted on the swing, accompanied by the rattle of creaky chains. “What?”

  “Flying. What you do.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. Your voice just sounds...different when you talk about it. More alive.”

  “I do love it.” He paused for a long moment as the storm howled around them. “I did, anyway.”

  “What do you mean?”

  This time, he paused so long she wasn’t sure he would answer her. She had a feeling he wouldn’t have if not for this illusive sense of intimacy between them, together in the darkness.

  When he spoke, his voice was taut, as hard as Haystack Rock. “The damage to my shoulder is...extensive. Between the burns and the broken bones, I’ve lost about seventy percent range of motion and doctors can’t tell me whether I’ll ever get it back. Worse than that, the infection damaged some of the nerves leading to my hand. At this point, I don’t have the fine or gross motor control I need to pass the fitness test to remain a helicopter pilot in the army.”

  “I’m so sorry.” The words sounded ridiculously lame and she wished for some other way she could comfort him.

  “I’m damn lucky. I know that.”

  He spoke quietly, so softly she almost didn’t hear him over the next rumble of thunder. “The flight medic and my copilot didn’t walk away from the crash.”

  “Oh, Max,” she murmured.

  He drew in a ragged breath and then another and she couldn’t help it. She reached a hand out and squeezed his fingers. He didn’t seem in a hurry to release her hand and they sat together in the darkness, their fingers linked.

  “What were their names?” she asked, somehow sensing the words were trapped inside him and only needed the right prompting to break free.