“I know she’s a grown up.” Big Will’s husky voice growled out. “What’s that got to do with anything?”
Rebecca bit back frustration and found her voice. “Hey, y’all. Dinner’s on.”
The men swung their heads in her direction. Big Will’s hair stood on end from when he scratched his head and this, combined with his widened eyes, gave him the look of a surprised rooster. Rebecca eyed him with little charity before meeting Caleb’s gaze. In his eyes, she saw regret, and it took effort to force a smile. But this was not the time or the place to hash through this, so she said, “Hope you guys are hungry because there’s enough food for a small nation.”
Big Will’s expression settled into one of relief and he offered what Rebecca recognized as a genuine smile. “You know me, little britches. Big man, big appetite.” He clapped his hand on Caleb’s back. “C’mon. Let’s eat!”
Rebecca moved back to allow the men through the doorway. Her father made a beeline for the dining room, but Caleb stood with Rebecca while she closed the door.
“How much of that did you hear?”
“Enough to know he’s not coming around. You can’t change his mind, but I appreciate you trying. Let’s forget about it for now, okay? Time to enjoy our Thanksgiving feast.” She tucked her hand into the crook of Caleb’s arm, squeezed, and smiled. “You’re the best big brother ever.”
“You make it easy.”
Rebecca grinned. “You never said that when we were kids.”
“It would’ve been a lie when we were kids,” Caleb said with a laugh as he escorted her to dinner.
***
Sean had no complaint with the seating arrangement, which placed him across from Rebecca. He watched her with casual interest over the rim of his wineglass. Something had changed since their playtime with TJ and he wanted to know what. She smiled and laughed, answered questions asked of her and conversed with others, but her behavior held an underlying current he couldn’t identify. She set down her fork and lifted her wineglass but never took a sip of the fine Riesling. She was…preoccupied. That was the word.
Her superficial and breezy participation contrasted with her customary full-throttle engagement. Something had tamped down her usual spark, and he itched to know what it was.
Rebecca must have felt his gaze because she set the wineglass down and cut her eyes to him with swift awareness. Sean held her momentary stare and smiled when the color rose to her cheeks. Her skin, a sensitive canvas, prevented her from hiding her emotions well, and he suspected it annoyed her to be ever at the mercy of her fair complexion.
Cheeks flushing, she looked away and set her attention on Brenna, and there it stayed until she had the opportunity to joke with Grandpa Boone and Papa Ron. When the table talk turned to details of Caleb and Maddie’s upcoming June wedding, Rebecca’s interest focused and she appeared to be caught up in genuine excitement for the happy couple, and when TJ slid from his own seat to climb onto her lap, she welcomed the sleepy-eyed boy with warm affection. He snuggled against her and soon fell into the sort of deep sleep common to the very young and the very old.
When the time came to clear the table, Sean offered to carry TJ upstairs to one of the bedrooms so the little boy could enjoy his nap.
“Lay him in my room,” Brenna said. “He doesn’t need to wake up in yours and see all those posters of half-naked women.”
“Whatever.” Sean rolled his eyes. “He probably wouldn’t even notice. There are Star Wars posters up there, too. At his age, he’d pass up Kim Basinger for Darth Vader without blinking an eye.”
“My room, Sean,” Brenna said and walked off toward the kitchen with the platter of turkey leftovers.
“Has she always been so bossy?” Dante asked, balancing two armfuls of empty dinner plates.
“Always.” Sean lifted TJ with care. “She’s a fucking pain in the—”
“Sean Patrick Kinkaid, you watch that potty mouth of yours.” Edie wagged her French-tipped finger at him then pointed to TJ. “We have little ears here today.”
Sean shifted TJ in his arms. Asleep, the kid equaled dead weight. His head slumped over Sean’s shoulder and his legs dangled like a disengaged puppet. The little boy twitched and emitted a healthy snore. Sean grinned. Cute kid.
“Follow me up and help me get him situated, okay?” Sean said to Rebecca.
She nodded and followed him upstairs and down the hall to Brenna’s room.
Sean waited with TJ in his arms while Rebecca pushed decorative pillows and stuffed animals out of the way. Once laid down, TJ curled up like a popcorn shrimp and snuggled into the softness of the down comforter. Rebecca untied his sneakers and eased them off his feet, then covered him up with a plush throw the color of raspberries.
While Rebecca fussed over TJ, Sean stood in front of the dresser poking at Brenna’s girly stuff. He noted a plastic box full of bows and clips and elastic ponytail thingamabobbers, an unzipped purse-looking thing that held a bunch of makeup, and five different bottles of perfume. He picked one up to sniff it and buried a sneeze when the too-sweet scent invaded his nose. Rebecca met his gaze in the mirror, her expression amused.
Sean made a face and set the bottle down. He spied something else and picked it up, turned and leaned against the edge of the dresser while he toyed with it, his thumb rubbing over its surface.
“What’s that?” Rebecca asked, stepping toward him.
Sean held up a smooth stone the size of a walnut. He held it out and she took it, turning it over in her hands.
“It’s a worry stone. You’re supposed to keep it in your pocket and play with it to keep your hands busy when you’re nervous or upset. Jack went on some trip when he was a kid and came home with one of those for all three of us.”
Rebecca rubbed the stone with her finger. “The word ‘dream’ is etched into it.”
“They all said something different. I used to carry mine all the time. Not sure where it is now.”
Rebecca looked up from the pale blue stone, smooth as beach glass. Sean held her gaze for a moment, the familiar heat between them springing to life. Uncomfortable with the ease with which she drew him in, he straightened. Her nearness shot heat straight to his groin, and an unexpected rush of…something…into his chest. Discomfited, he shoved his hands into his pockets and stepped back. The moment ebbed, and he sought to find their usual solid ground.
“Hey, you want to help me with something?” he asked with a grin.
Rebecca set the stone on the dresser and shrugged. “We ought to go downstairs and help with dishes.”
“Forget the dishes. This is more important.” Sean took her hand and pulled her from the room, leading her across the hall toward his bedroom. “I need you to help me cross something off my bucket list.”
Rebecca narrowed her eyes. “What kind of something?”
Sean opened the door to his childhood room, flipped the light switch on, and tugged her in. “Having girls in here was forbidden, and it was always one of my goals to—”
Rebecca gasped and a laugh bubbled from her lips. “Are you out of your mind? No!”
Sean gave her a solid yank. She stumbled forward and he captured her in his arms, laughing. “Give me a little credit, will you? I don’t want to get you naked—well, okay, technically that’s a big fat lie. What I mean is I wouldn’t go that far.” He nuzzled the junction of her throat and shoulder so that the stubble on his jaw sent goose bumps rippling across her skin. “I only need to get to second base and I can cross it off my list.”
“No.” She laughed and tried to push him away. “You’re incorrigible.”
“Aw, c’mon. It’s only second base.” He held her tighter and performed a fair impression of a horny teenager. “You know you want to.”
Rebecca laughed in spite of her effort to keep quiet. “You’re ridiculous. And I don’t believe for a second you never had a girl up here.”
“Only once. Swear to god. Marybeth Sanantonio. My parents were supposed to be out till
midnight, but they came home early. I made Marybeth go out the window and down the trellis.”
“Oh, my god. You did not.”
He couldn’t help but laugh. “I really did. She fell off about two-thirds down and sprained her ankle. She didn’t talk to me for the rest of the school year.”
Rebecca bit her lip but the laughter wouldn’t be stilled. Sean laughed with her and caught her off guard, pulling her against him and falling back on the bed. He released her the second they toppled, and she flopped beside him so they lay crosswise, still chuckling and staring up at the ceiling.
“Poor Marybeth. You must have been the worst date ever. How old were you?’
“Well, let’s see. That was sophomore year so, fifteen or sixteen I guess. Not very smooth.”
“You’re still not very smooth.” Rebecca elbowed his ribs. “You dragged me in here like a bag of Santa’s toys and you’ve been accosting me ever since.”
“Yeah,” he said, without an ounce of shame, and made her laugh again.
“Your ceiling is blue,” she said after a moment of silence. “I’ve never seen a blue ceiling before.”
“Jack’s is blue, too. Brenna’s is some gross shade of pink. We were supposed to have clouds painted up there, but by the time my mother convinced my dad to do it, Jack and I decided it was uncool.”
“Idiot boys. Clouds would’ve been way cool.”
“Yeah, they would’ve been.” Sean let the silence take over for a few moments before he looked at her. “You weren’t yourself at dinner. Want to talk about it?”
“You know the saying, eavesdroppers never hear well of themselves? Cal and Dad were on the porch when I went to call them for dinner. I overheard part of their conversation.” She folded her hands over her stomach and stared at the ceiling. “My dad is never going to accept me in the role I’m currently in. He just isn’t. It doesn’t matter how well I run the business, it doesn’t matter that the numbers are up and the employees and clients are happy. All that matters to Big Will is that I’m a woman instead of a man.”
“That’s shortsighted of him, and surprising, considering he’s so successful a businessman.”
“I got upset at first. Angry and frustrated more than hurt, you know? But there’s something I’ve been thinking about for a couple of years. I wasn’t ready to do it before, but I am now. So…” She crossed her arms over her chest.
“So, what?”
“Nothing I want to talk about. I need to think it through, and when I’m ready, I’ll tell Cal.” She turned her head, and Sean did the same so they could look at each other. “I’m not going to ask you to keep secrets. That isn’t fair.”
“Do you have a dollar?”
“Do I—I guess. In my purse.”
“On you?”
Rebecca’s brows met in a quizzical vee. “No. I think I have a couple of quarters in my pocket. You have a vending machine in here or something?”
“Hand them over,” he said. “Don’t give me that look. Just give me your quarters.”
“If you think I’m going to pay you to kiss me—”
Sean grinned. “I would never be so bold. Trust me.”
Rebecca stood and dug into the front pocket of her jeans. “I lied. I only have one quarter.” She handed it to Sean and flopped back onto the mattress, reclaiming her prior position.
Sean tucked the coin into his pants pocket. “Okay, now you officially have me on retainer. Anything you tell me is protected under attorney/client privilege.”
Rebecca smiled. “Clever move, Counselor. Okay, here it is. Don’t laugh. I’m going to start my own consulting business,” she blurted, and her cheeks flooded red. Her eyes, the color of moss—or emeralds, or maybe clover, he couldn’t tell, and why the hell was he thinking something so stupid anyway?—had widened and regarded him now with serious expectation.
“What kind of consultant?”
“I’d be the liaison between the client and the construction company. Say you decide you want to build an office park, but you’re a lawyer, right? So you don’t know anything about construction. You get quotes and do your due diligence and you pick a contractor, but you’re still at his mercy because you don’t understand the business. So you hire me to make sure he stays on task, meets deadlines, orders the right materials at the best price. In the capacity of project manager, I’m helpful to your contractor, too, because assuming he’s honest, there are still going to be glitches on the job, but now he doesn’t have to explain them to you. He can explain them to me, and it’s my job to help him smooth it out, my job to make sure you understand what’s really going on. It’s a win-win.
“And, also, I’m a CPA, so I understand the accounting end of things. You won’t have to worry about misappropriated funds or errors on your tax returns. And when I say I know my way around honest deductions, you can take it to the bank.”
Sean stared at the ceiling and considered her plan, turned it over in his mind, and saw the benefits. He played through a number of scenarios, looking for drawbacks and found none besides the obvious ones that every small business faced.
“Pretty damned brilliant.” He turned his head to face her again. “You can’t lose. Even during times when the construction business is slow, you’ll still have clients who need a CPA to do their accounting. It’s like you have this cool consulting niche that feeds your love of building, and the accounting side to run parallel. Have you thought about how you’ll market your services? Do you belong to any community groups, like the Chamber of Commerce or the Rotary Club? You’ll need a website, too. And you might even consider offering a newsletter. That will—”
“Whoa, slow down.” Rebecca’s eyes crinkled with her smile. “I appreciate your enthusiasm, but I haven’t done any serious planning yet. I only just decided to do it today.”
“What’s your first step?”
“Dad will have to hire an office manager and someone to take over operations out in the field. When I’ve collected résumés, I’ll go over them with Cal, and he and I can narrow them down to a handful for Dad to interview. He can hire a little miss to run the office and fetch his coffee, and a man to do the site work. That should make him happy.”
“The second he realizes he’s paying for two instead of one he’ll be begging you to come back.”
“Big Will never begs. Big Will sucks it up and moves on. If he ever realizes he was wrong, I’ll never hear about it. Not from him anyway.”
“Does that bother you?”
“Not really.” She sat up and shrugged. “He is who he is.”
“That’s very grown up of you.”
She grinned. “I didn’t say I don’t dream of coshing him upside the head when he spouts his chauvinistic crap. You know, it’s funny, because he doesn’t act that way with my mother. He thinks she walks on water.”
“That’s probably why they’ve been married so long.”
“Maybe.”
“Hey, can I kiss you and go to second base now?”
“You may kiss me.” Rebecca leaned down and rubbed her lips against Sean’s. “You may not go to second base.”
“You sure about that?” He touched his thumb to the soft cleft in her chin while the fingers on his other hand danced along her spine.
“Do you really want to test me?”
In one quick motion, Sean reversed their positions. With his lips playing above hers he said with a slow smile, “Oh, Xena. You know how I love a challenge.”
Chapter 6
Chili bubbled in the crockpot. Rebecca set the microwave timer to go off in an hour to remind her to turn the setting from high to low, then she took the brownies from the oven and set them on a rack to cool. In the bedroom, her cell phone rang, and she dashed down the hall to grab it before the call went to voice mail, jumping over Mr. Peabody, who lay in the middle of her bedroom floor warming himself in a sunbeam streaming through the window.
“You sound out of breath. Did I catch you in the middle of a work out?”
Rebecca’s anticipation came to life at the sound of Sean’s voice. She reminded herself to breathe. “My phone is in the bedroom and I was in the kitchen. What’s up?”
“What time are Brenna and Maddie supposed to be over?”
“One.”
“It’s eleven-thirty now. I can be there in ten, if you’re free.”
Rebecca swallowed hard and read between the lines. Her skin tingled and her toes curled into the carpet. “You have to be gone before they get here. I don’t want to have to explain anything.”
“See you in a few.”
Rebecca clicked off the call and scrambled to brush her teeth and apply a little mascara. Although she and Sean had talked about getting together before her crime show marathon with her BFFs, the morning had grown late and Rebecca assumed he couldn’t make it.
She should have known better. When had a man, in the whole history of the universe, ever passed up a sure opportunity to get lucky?
On her way to the closet, she yanked off her ratty sweats and dropped them in the hamper, favoring instead worn blue jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt of forest green. She made the bed, knew it to be a waste of time under the circumstances, and settled on the living room sofa to wait for the knock at the door. She rested her head on the couch cushion, her feet on the coffee table, and thought back to Thanksgiving Day. Sean had indeed gotten to second base, but not without a great deal of muffled laughter and final acquiescence on her part when she made him promise to make no effort to steal third.
“Second base only, and I mean it, mister,” she had said, to which Sean had replied, “Scout’s honor,” and then kissed and caressed the resolve right out of her bones. But he was as good as his word, and they returned downstairs and parted ways, he to the kitchen to help with what remained of the dishes, she to the man cave to watch movies with the ladies. Rebecca wondered what Big Will thought about the Kinkaid tradition of the women not participating in cleanup since they had prepared the meal. She grinned at the thought of her chauvinistic father up to his elbows in dirty dishwater.
After the men and women joined company, Rebecca and Sean stole glances when they thought no one was paying attention, but otherwise ignored one another. Best not to raise questions neither of them wanted to answer.
Love to Believe: Fireflies ~ Book 2 Page 10
