The silence made her jittery again. During their early-morning encounters, the silences had been comfortable. But now that she was looking at him, seeing him as a thirtyish single guy—didn’t he have to be single? She hadn’t seen a sign of wife or kids—it made her awkwardly aware of herself.
As if reading her mind, he said. “You are blonde. Brown-eyed.”
Her skin heated, remembering when she’d described herself for him. Teasing him then had seemed funny at the time. Easy.
But now, with his gaze sliding down her body to her legs—in cut-off denim, but a length modest enough for a school picnic—she felt it like the stroke of a man’s hand.
And a man hadn’t touched her except in anger for a very, very long time.
She had to fight to hide her sudden shudder.
“Got the gams you mentioned too,” he said casually, then lifted his glass and closed one eye to examine its icy contents. “However, you inflated the top half a tad.”
Cleo choked back a laugh, even as she fought not to cross her arms over her respectable but scant C-cups. But maybe she should, she thought, going hot all over again. Because she could feel the distinct prick of her hardening nipples against the fabric of her bra.
Clearing her throat, she threw one forearm across her chest, like she always gripped her opposite shoulder during casual conversation. It was time to change the line of this one. “You haven’t been in your office lately.” Did that sound accusing…or worse, like she missed him? “I mean, um, not that I noticed.”
“Working some different hours,” he said. “Should we get back to where we can see your boys?”
“Sure, yes.” She hoped she wasn’t blushing again, though she felt foolish for not being the one to mention that first. As she followed him back outside, again she was struck by the emptiness of the house. “What is it you do?” she asked, addressing his back.
Since he faced away, she could barely hear his mutter. It sounded like “I make stuff up,” which she took to mean he made stuff. But what kind of stuff, she wondered. Birdfeeders? Computer processors? Mail bombs?
At the chilling thought, she hurried past him to stop at the base of the tree where she could address her sons. “Obie, Eli, we’ve gotta go, guys.” She knew better than anyone that monsters could lurk beneath the most harmless-looking masks. Even the one who was supposed to love you the most, care for you the best, could change and become a threat.
As the boys climbed down, she turned toward their host. “Harmless-looking” was nowhere near a close description of this man. He was gorgeous, with that tough body and arresting face. But Cleo Anderson shouldn’t be noticing things like that. She was a twenty-eight-year-old single mother.
Men, even merely appreciating one this good-looking, had no place on her agenda filled with homework, bathing times, and building a new life for herself.
“Well,” she said, pasting on a polite smile.
“Well,” he countered, with no smile at all.
Cleo wiped her right palm on her shorts then held out her hand. “It was nice meeting you.”
“Likewise,” Reed said, then his palm touched hers.
It was the Fourth of July. Midnight on New Year’s. The lightning strike she’d once witnessed crack a massive tree in two.
Rockets, shell bursts, a whiplash of power and heat.
They stared at each other, and she supposed he was having as difficult time as she was coming to grips with this…this thing flaring between them.
If she was honest, she’d admit it had been there when their gazes had first met and when his glance flowed over her skin in his kitchen. It had sparkled in the air between their bodies out in his front yard. Even, maybe, during the conversations in the darkness that they’d shared.
Chemistry. Attraction. A potent force beyond one’s control.
Cleo yanked her hand away, panic clawing at her throat. “Let’s go, boys,” she said, backing away from the man.
“Mommy?” Obie, sensitive and sympathetic Obie, detected the note of alarm in her voice. His fingers curled around the hem of her shirt.
“It’s okay, baby,” she murmured, turning to hustle him and his brother through the gate. “Nothing to worry about.”
Except she was. Worrying. And worse, afraid.
Because her intense reaction to the man’s touch gave her the unsettling feeling that her life was about to change.
Again.
A couple of days later, Cleo was removing the mail from the box situated at the mouth of the driveway while Eli and Obi raced their bikes up and down its smooth surface, zooming from the sidewalk all the way to their little guest house at the back of the property. The usual circulars were jammed in with the bills and letters and she was sorting through the mass when movement in the peripheral of her vision caused her to look up.
Two young women were approaching on the wide sidewalk.
As this neighborhood teemed with fitness aficionados and people with dogs big and small, walkers were a common sight. But these two didn’t hold leashes or pump small hand weights. Instead, each of them carried a short stack of aluminum foil baking pans.
Cleo thought she knew where they’d come from.
Which made her study the newcomers with interest. Both appeared petite from her height of five feet, eight inches. One was a honey blonde with bright blue eyes. The other was an olive-skinned brunette. They both wore pastel-colored yoga gear and friendly smiles.
Not unexpectedly, they stopped as they reached her.
Cleo glanced at her sons, reassuring herself they were fine, something she realized she did in moments of uncertainty. If the boys were well and safe, then nothing else could truly spell trouble.
Surely these two beautiful visitors weren’t portents of danger.
“Hi,” the blonde woman said. “I’m Priscilla—Cilla—Maddox. This is Alexa Alessio.” She nodded to her companion, who sketched a wave.
“Hi,” Cleo said, aware their gazes were assessing as hers had been. She tightened her hold on the mail so she wouldn’t fidget with her clothes—a simple pair of jeans, a gauzy white shirt with crocheted short sleeves, a pair of rubber flip flops that had, inexplicably, a bite taken out of the sole. She glanced down at them now, asking herself why she hadn’t thrown the cheap sandals out and when had one of the boys tried to make a meal out of them?
“We’re here to return your pans,” Alexa said. Her hair was long and wavy and Cleo not only admired it but felt envious for the free time it likely took to tame such a mass. Her own locks were near-platinum, but while she had some length on top, they were cut short at the back and sides so she could get out of the shower, rub some gel on her palms, then run her hands through her hair for a thirty-second style.
“Reed sent us,” Cilla added.
That nugget wasn’t a surprise. But hearing his name said aloud jerked Cleo’s attention from her self-consciousness and returned it to the man who she’d been trying to forget since that afternoon at his house. The man who had the elegant bone structure, the boxer’s body, the absolute, near-violent effect on her hormones.
Even now, just thinking about it, made heat crawl up her neck. She swallowed. “Well.” Tucking the mail, both junk and not, under one arm, she reached for the pans. “There was really no need to give them back. They’re disposable.”
“That’s what we told him,” Cilla said, and a new smile lighting her face seemed to rival the sunshine. “But he thought you might want them returned.”
“Or maybe he wants you to fill them up again.” The brunette helped her balance the mail on top of the pans.
“Oh. Hmm.” Imagining her face might be bright red, Cleo fumbled for some response. She still continued soothing her insomnia through early-a.m. baking, but after meeting him she’d resisted any more deliveries to his mailbox. Since he’d gone absent from his office during those morning hours, she’d figured he was no longer interested in anything she had to share—whether it be casual conversation or shortbread cookies.
“I don’t know about that.”
Alexa’s gaze was now trained over Cleo’s shoulder. She glanced back. Yes, the boys were still playing bike NASCAR. She’d drawn a “track” for them with sidewalk chalk.
“Cute little guys,” the other woman said. “Yours?”
“My sons, Eli and Obie.”
“You don’t look old enough to have kids who can walk, let alone ride bikes.”
Anxious to fill her lonely heart after her parents’ accidental deaths, she’d married and become a mother of two by twenty-one. She shrugged.
“Your husband?” Cilla asked.
The third degree, over some baked goods! But Cleo didn’t even blink. “We’re divorced.”
“And this big house—”
Alexa interrupted by putting her hand on her friend’s arm. “I’m sorry. Cilla’s very nosy.”
“Hey!” the blonde protested, without heat.
“And I’m Italian,” Alexa said, grinning. “We love to talk. So before we grill you any more, we should give up a little about ourselves.”
“I don’t know why. Reed and I… Reed and I…” Cleo stopped, helpless. “There’s no Reed and I.”
Alexa acted as if she hadn’t said a thing. “It’s kind of complicated, though. Do you know the band, the Velvet Lemons?”
“Of course.” Like she knew the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Eagles, and a handful of other classic rock bands. The Lemons were notorious in the L.A. area for their raucous, wild lifestyle. If she remembered correctly, they were currently on tour in Europe—something she’d gleaned from the city paper which had an extensive section on entertainment news, this being the hotbed of TV, movies, and music production.
“Reed’s one of the sons of the band’s drummer, Hop Hopkins.” Alexa wiggled her thumb in Cilla’s direction. “She’s Mad Dog Maddox’s daughter. I’m engaged to her brother, Bing.”
“Let me explain,” Cilla said, taking up the conversational thread. “There’s nine of us…each of the band members has three kids and we were raised in Laurel Canyon, in a big compound with three separate houses.”
Laurel Canyon. It held mythic undertones, even for Cleo who was new to Los Angeles. Though it wasn’t far from the citified Sunset and Hollywood Boulevards, the canyon was known for its rural atmosphere and for the counterculture types who had settled there in the 1960s. All sorts of celebrities continued to claim it as home, if the Maps to the Stars hawked on every corner in Hollywood could be believed.
Cleo wasn’t sure what this had to do with her, except to underscore how the man on the other side of the fence was an enigma to her.
“So Mad Dog, my father, had my twin brothers Bing and Brody and me. Hop’s children—now grown men, of course—are Beck, Walsh, and Reed. The third member of the band is String Bean Colson and he fathered Payne, Cami, and my fiancé—” here her smile went wide again, “—Ren.”
“There’s lots of get-togethers now,” Alexa said.
“With all of them?” Cleo asked.
“All but Beck,” Cilla said, frowning a little. “He’s a journalist on assignment and has been out of touch. But the rest gather now.”
Alexa nodded. “It’s a tribe.”
“And I like to think I’m in charge of all of them,” Cilla added.
Her friend rolled her eyes. “Obviously. She’s the youngest but also the mother hen.”
The meaning of the visit was now completely clear. The mother hen suspected there was something more than casual kindness to her delivering baked goods to the man said mother hen considered a brother of sorts. The women were here to give Cleo a once-over.
“Look,” she said. “I hope you don’t have the wrong idea…”
“Isn’t he breathtaking?” Alexa asked. “Reed, I mean. He’s got that whole broody, moody vibe going on.”
Cilla stared. “Hello? You’re in love with my brother!”
“It doesn’t mean I don’t have eyes in my head. And didn’t you once try to fix me up with Reed?”
“That was only to tweak Bing. And it worked, didn’t it?” Cilla asked, sounding smug.
Alexa’s expression looked just as self-satisfied. “Boy-howdy, yes it did.”
Cleo swallowed her sigh, feeling envious all over again for their obvious comradery. She missed that kind of woman-to-woman friendship. When she’d moved here a few months ago, she’d been forced to leave her small circle behind.
Cilla looked back at Cleo. “Not that I want you to think I’m visiting with any matchmaking in mind.”
“Okay.” That was good. So why was she here?
“It’s just that Reed asked us over to help him furnish his house.”
“It’s pretty empty,” Cleo said.
“I know. He gets too lost in his head to notice much of anything most of the time.”
Cleo thought of his serious gaze on her, as if he was cataloging every feature, absorbing every atom that differentiated them. Got the gams you mentioned too. However, you inflated the top half a tad. Even now, his dry tone made her smile.
“And then when he mentioned he had a baking friend…well, we were curious.”
“He called me a friend?” Cleo couldn’t buy that.
The two women exchanged glances. “What did he say?” Alexa asked Cilla.
She waved a hand, dismissing the question. “Anyhow…” She lifted her gaze to study the Spanish-styled house a lush expanse of lawn away and that was surrounded by Queen palms, Sago palms, and Bird of Paradise plants. “You live here?”
“Way out of my league,” Cleo said. “The owners are in Europe while some extensive reno is being done inside and to the pool. I’m living in the guest house and watching out for the place while they’re gone.”
“How long will you be in the neighborhood?”
Alexa rolled her eyes again. “Geez, Cilla. Interrogate much? I thought we agreed to be subtle.”
Cleo might have taken offense at the continued questioning, but now she was enjoying the by-play between the two friends.
“I’ve lost my subtle,” Cilla defended herself, “while trying to keep tabs on our tribe. The majority of them are male, and the male animal needs an elephant gun to get the point, not a subtle little wasp sting.”
Laughing, Cleo found herself agreeing. “I have two boys. They might not yet be grown, but already I can tell they operate on a very literal level.”
“At least we should give Cleo the opportunity to query in return,” Alexa said. “Go ahead, ask us anything you want to know about Reed.”
“I…” She felt her face going red again. How embarrassing. Of course she should say she wasn’t the least bit interested in the man, because she wasn’t! But there was that swarm of heat and sparks that had been ignited by a single touch.
Glancing back at her boys, who now had abandoned their bikes to inspect something interesting, probably a bug or a lizard, she reminded herself she was a single mom, with no room in her life for the persistent daydreams she’d been having about blue eyes, sexy hair, the flex of a man’s muscled forearm as he’d poured a glass of tea.
The way his gaze had felt as it roamed her skin. Hot. Appreciative.
Maybe these two women would tell her something that would banish him from her thoughts. From her dreams.
She licked her lips. “He’s probably involved with someone.”
“Would we be here if that was so?” Cilla scoffed. “I can’t claim to know everything about his love life—he’s possibly the most close-mouthed of our clan—but I’m certain he’s currently not sharing his nights with someone.”
Only me, Cleo thought. At least, up until a few days ago. She missed those moments of connection, sometimes the only adult conversation she would have in a day. It had been fun…and curiously intimate…to talk to him in the darkness, without knowing what he looked like. She’d babbled about her baking and about her TV shows…and never about her children.
Perhaps because she’d wanted to keep them private—or perhaps because, just
for a few moments each night, she’d enjoyed being nothing more than a person. A woman.
“What is it that he does?” When the two women glanced at each other again, Cleo tried clarifying. “You know, for a job?”
When they were silent, a nervous laugh escaped her mouth. “I, uh, was imagining he constructed mail bombs or something. Crazy, huh?”
“Crazy,” Alexa agreed firmly, then caught Cilla’s eye and held it. “It’s nothing dangerous.”
“Only, um, maybe…offbeat.” The blonde smiled again. “He’s actually a writer.”
A writer? That wasn’t so strange. “Oh, well—”
“Of horror novels,” Alexa slipped in, then took a breath. “For children.”
Chapter Three
Some people went for a walk on the beach to clear their heads or calm their minds. Other people went hiking in the mountains to find their mental oasis. Still others took to the city streets for a punishing run.
Reed had been known to do all of the above on occasion, but his go-to place for a brain break was the public library—which was where he went this afternoon.
There was an excellent one in his neighborhood, two stories with lots of natural light and comfortable seating. A whole section was devoted to computers available for public use. He avoided that area—keyboards were not his friend at the moment—and instead wandered the stacks of both fiction and non-fiction.
Invariably, interesting volumes caught his eye. Today, he read the opening pages of a spy novel set at the beginning of the Cold War. A few aisles away, he perused a how-to book on masonry. As always, he immersed immediately into the world of words, taken away by the descriptions of a damp and dark London and by the intricacies of a herring-bone walkway design.
It was at Oceanview Army-Navy that he’d found the quiet library and the escape it provided from cadet life. There, he could forget for short periods at a time the pervading sense of oppression the school fostered. It had been a terrible adjustment for a kid raised in the free-wheeling, anything-goes atmosphere of the Laurel Canyon compound. He’d been unhappy as hell, but at least he’d been big enough and mean enough not to suffer as some others had.
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