Too soon Charlene’s coffee cup was empty and her plate, as well. There was just something about Chastity’s kitchen, she thought. It was so comfortable and it always smelled so good….
Chastity offered more coffee and a second slice.
But Charlene was already on her feet and pushing in her chair. “It was wonderful, thanks. But Mia and I should get home.”
So Brand’s mother ducked into her bedroom and returned with the baby, who blinked owlishly in the kitchen light, yawned and sighed—and went right back to sleep. Chastity carefully handed her over. Charlene settled the warm bundle on her shoulder and reached for the diaper bag, which Brand grabbed first.
“I’ll carry this for you.”
Charlene probably should have argued that she could handle the bag herself, no problem. But why make a big deal out of such a small thing?
She thanked Chastity.
“Anytime. I mean that.” Chastity nodded at Brand. “You’ll see her out?”
“Be happy to.”
Out on the porch in the cool spring darkness, Charlene extended her hand. “I can take that now.”
His white teeth flashed as he stepped out of reach. “No way. I give you this bag, it’s good night, Brand.”
She rubbed Mia’s back. “Well, it is good night.”
He dangled the bag by a finger—just far enough away that she’d miss if she grabbed for it. “No way. I have to hear all about how it went with Tanner.”
“There’s nothing to tell.”
He pretended to look pitiful. “Charlene. Come on….”
She didn’t buy his act for a second. But then there was that other problem she had….
The one that involved her silly heart, which was beating too fast with excitement. With something that could only be called anticipation.
She was so losing all perspective here.
Her sister was missing, could be in just about any awful trouble imaginable. Any day now, her wicked Aunt Irma might find out about Mia and sic CPS on her.
And then there was the still-unresolved paternity question—and no, Charlene didn’t believe it was Brand.
But still. It somehow seemed all wrong to get breathlessly excited over the guy her sister had accused of being the father of her baby.
And what about the original problem. The one of ten years ago. To learn to forgive was one thing.
To want to try again…
Uh-uh. Bad, bad idea. The pinnacle, the absolute summit of dumb.
And she didn’t. Oh, no. She sincerely did not want to try again with this man.
And yet somehow, all her silly heart cared about right then was that he was there, on Chastity’s porch, in the dark, beside her, grinning and dangling the diaper bag a few feet away.
All her heart wanted was to stay there—or anywhere, as long as Brand was there with her.
Dumb.
Oh, yeah.
Dumb-de-dumb-dumb.
She needed to just say no.
But what she said was, “All right. My house. But only for a few minutes.”
His grin widened as he swung the diaper bag back over his shoulder. “Let’s go.”
Chapter Eight
A kiss, Brand was thinking.
A man needed goals, and he had one for the evening: a kiss from Charlene.
Yeah, it had only been two nights ago that she agreed to let him help her, to try and learn to forgive him. Maybe, to some, two nights might seem as if he was rushing things a little.
Brand knew better. Two nights wasn’t rushing. Two nights was too long. It was an eternity.
Especially considering all the lonely years of denial that had gone before. A decade of telling himself he’d done the right thing by walking away from her.
A decade of pretending he was happy without her, a decade of reminding himself how it didn’t matter that she hated him or that she snubbed him every chance she got.
Ten endless years of going out with…strangers.
There was no other word for them, for the women he’d dated after he broke it off with Charlene. They were nice, most of those women. Smart. Fun. And easy on the eyes.
But they weren’t Charlene.
And so, to him, they’d always been strangers.
The good news, was all that was over now. He wasn’t thinking marriage or anything. He wasn’t going that far. He still didn’t see himself as the marrying kind.
But he did want to be with her. A lot. He was more than ready to start making up for lost time.
And she was warming back up to him pretty fast, too—though you could bet she’d deny it in a heartbeat if he asked her outright. But Brand was an attorney, after all. And there’s one thing all lawyers learn early: never ask a question unless you’re sure of the answer.
Brand didn’t intend to ask. He intended to act. And to do so the moment she gave him the slightest opening.
He realized it wouldn’t be easy, getting a kiss out of Charlene. But hey. He’d known the goal would be a challenge when he set it.
“I’ll just put Mia down,” she said when she let him into her house.
He followed her to the tiny bedroom off the kitchen, dropping the diaper bag on a kitchen chair as he went by. She put the baby in the crib without turning on the lamp. Brand stood in the doorway and watched her, admiring the curve of her cheek and the sheen to her wavy blond hair when she bent over the crib and into the wedge of light spilling in from the kitchen behind him.
She put the baby down and covered her with a baby-size quilt decorated with yellow stars, stars he couldn’t see all that well in the dim light.
But he knew they were there, crooked little stars sewn on by nine-year-old hands.
The quilt had been Sissy’s once. Charlene had told him so years ago, when they were kids and so much in love. Way back when she used to tell him everything.
All her secrets.
All the little things that mattered to her, the details of her life. Like how her mom had made a baby quilt before Sissy was born and Charlene had been allowed to sew yellow stars on it.
Charlene had looked at him with stars in her eyes back then. He was her world then, he was everything to her.
Until he turned his back on her. Until he threw it all away.
She straightened from the crib, that blue gaze meeting his—and then skittering nervously away. The baby monitor waited on the bureau. She switched it on. He moved aside, stepping back into the kitchen, as she approached the doorway.
“A beer?” she asked. “More coffee?”
“Naw. But, thanks.” He moved the diaper bag to the floor and sat at the table. She sat, too—but left an empty chair between them.
Kissing her wasn’t going to be any walk in the park, with her over there. And him over here.
He’d need to get closer.
Somehow.
She folded her slim hands on the tabletop. He calculated distances. It seemed a long way to reach, to put his hand on hers. Unless she reached out and met him halfway—which at that point, judging by the set to her jaw and the don’t-you-even-try-it look in her eyes, wasn’t real likely.
He remembered why he was here—other than the kiss, which he’d be getting to. Later. “So what happened with Tanner?”
“Just what you said would happen. He asked a lot of questions. I answered as best I could. He took one of the two pictures I have of Sissy from last year.”
“He’ll give it back.”
“Yeah. That’s what he told me—and he asked me if I was sure Mia was Sissy’s.”
That one kind of shocked him. “Well. Remember. He hasn’t met Mia—or Sissy. He doesn’t know how much Mia looks like her mother.”
“Oh, God,” Charlene said, and put her hand over her mouth. Above that hand, her eyes filled with tears.
What the…? He jumped to his feet and went to her. “Charlene. I’m sorry, I…What’d I say?”
She shook her head. A single sob escaped her.
“Hey. Come on….” He caught her hand and p
ulled her up. Amazingly, she didn’t resist. She rose and she curled into him, burying her head against his shoulder. He stroked her silky hair, breathed in the sweet scent of her, as she muttered against his shirt, “It’s only…you know it, too.” She looked up then, damp eyes gleaming, a smile trembling on her soft mouth. “You know it. You just said so. You know she’s Sissy’s.”
“Mia?” He gathered her closer. Damn. She felt so good. “Oh, hell, yes.”
“Oh, Brand. I…I’m sure of it, too. But it’s good, you know, that someone else agrees with me. There’s so much I don’t know, about my sister. There’s too much I don’t know. But it never crossed my mind until Tanner mentioned it, that Mia might not even be hers….” She had her face buried in his shoulder again.
He tipped her chin up with a finger so she would look at him. “Listen. Think. Even aside from the fact that Mia looks like Sissy, there’s just no sense behind your sister leaving someone else’s baby on your couch.”
She sniffed. “But there’s no sense to most of what Sissy does and—”
“Yeah.” He put his thumb against her wonderful mouth to silence her. “There is sense to the rest of it. A twisted, sad kind of sense, but sense, nonetheless. Your sister’s hardly a careful kind of person. So she slips up and gets pregnant. She decides to keep the baby—which really doesn’t surprise me, somehow—and soon learns that taking care of a baby is way more than she’s up for. But as luck would have it, she knows someone she can count on, someone who’ll be sure to take real good care of the kid. You. But Sissy’s got…issues with you, issues she’s not up for facing any more than she’s up for the responsibility of raising a baby. So she drops Mia off—and disappears.”
“Leaving a note that says you’re the father.”
He touched her cheek. Because he couldn’t help himself. Warm and smooth and soft. Just like he remembered it. “Your sister’s got issues with me, too.”
Blue eyes narrowed. “What issues?”
“You are such a suspicious woman.” He stared down at that beautiful, wide mouth and wanted to take it.
But they were talking issues here. Never wise to kiss a woman when there were issues under discussion.
She asked again, “What issues?”
And he told her, since he could see she wouldn’t leave him alone until she had it out of him. “Your sister resents me. She blames me, just like you do, sees me as part of the reason she ended up with mean old Aunt Irma at the tender age of nine.”
“She told you that?”
He nodded. “The day I hired her. She came strutting into my office wearing a skirt the size of a postage stamp, those safety pins sticking out all over her face, waving the Help Wanted ad I’d put in the Sierra Times, announcing she needed a job and I’d better give her one, that I owed her a job, that if it wasn’t for me turning my back on you, she’d have grown up in town and ended up happy and well adjusted with a high school diploma and scholarship offers from all the best colleges.”
“She had a job last year,” Charlene grumbled. “At the diner.”
“Yeah. But she didn’t want a job at the diner.”
Charlene sighed. “So you’re saying she still resents you for what happened when she was nine….”
There was more, but it would only hurt her to hear it. What he’d already told her was enough. “Imagine that,” he teased. “Someone carrying a grudge for all that time.”
“Oh, stop it.” She shoved at his chest—but gently. “I really am working on that.”
“I know. And I’m glad. Real glad…” He waited, holding his breath.
And it happened. She did it. She tipped that sweet face closer to his of her own accord. “Oh, Brand. Just look at me.”
He smiled down at her. “I am. And it’s a pleasure.”
Her mouth quivered at the corners as she tried not to smile back at him. “You know what I mean. Standing here with your arms around me. Liking it with your arms around me….”
“It’s good that you like it. I like it, too.”
“But I honestly wasn’t going to do this.”
“Do what?” As if he didn’t already know.
“You know. Get…involved with you again. Rekindle the, er, flame….”
“So?”
“So. Look at us. This feels very…flamelike.”
“Charlene.”
“Humph.”
“We all have a right to change our minds now and then.” He ran his hand slowly down the slim curve of her back. She felt just right in his arms. She always had. Nice to know that some good things didn’t change.
“I don’t think so,” she said without much conviction, her soft lips still tipped up, as if waiting for his kiss.
“I do.”
“I don’t….” But her actions gave the lie to her words. She tipped her mouth up higher still.
And he needed no more encouragement than that. He lowered his mouth until it touched hers.
Barely. Just…there.
Brushing.
Waiting.
Because he wasn’t going to push her—at least, no more than he already had. He wanted her to be willing, wanted that more than anything.
More even than he wanted the kiss itself.
And then she sighed. And she slid her arms up to link around his neck. “Oh, Brand,” she whispered, and rose up on tiptoe to seal the kiss tight.
Amazing.
Perfect.
Charlene’s kiss. With a tiny, surrendering moan, she opened to him.
He gathered her tighter against him, groaning low in his throat as her soft breasts pressed his chest, slipping his tongue beyond her parted lips.
Tasting her, finding her as he remembered her in his secret dreams.
As he remembered—and more.
Oh, yeah. There was nothing—no one—like Charlene.
The taste of Charlene. So sweet. So good. So exactly right for him…
He was tempted.
More than tempted.
To carry it farther, to sweep her up into his arms and take her to bed. To start making up for all the lost years, right now, tonight.
But even he had to admit that might be rushing it. Reluctantly he lifted his head. After a moment she opened her eyes. Blue as the Sierra sky in summer, those eyes of hers.
He wanted to look in them forever.
She said, “I can’t believe I did that.”
And before he could formulate a suitable comeback, the doorbell rang.
“Oh, God,” she said.
He pulled her closer, pressed his lips to her sweet-smelling hair. “Don’t, all right?”
She tipped her head back, met his eyes. “Don’t…?”
“Don’t be afraid. Of what anyone’s going to say. So what if they talk? They always will and there’s no way to stop them.”
“You’re right,” she said.
He stared at her. “Say that again.”
“You’re right. They’ll be talkin’ anyway, no matter what we do.”
“That’s the spirit.”
“If we want to be…friends, well, that’s our business, isn’t it?”
He had a lot more than friendship in mind—and the kiss they’d just shared should have told her that. But, hey. If she wanted to call it friendship for now, fine with him. He’d met his goal for the evening.
Someday very soon he’d show her—in detail—why they were a hell of a lot more than just friends.
The doorbell rang again.
“Well,” she said. “Guess I better get that.”
Reluctant to let her go, but pleased with the progress he was making, he dropped his hands from around her waist and stepped out of the way. “Go for it.”
She turned for the door.
From where he stood, he could watch her through the arch as she crossed the living room. He could even see into her small foyer area. He grinned to himself as she smoothed her skirt and then ran a hand down her hair, making sure everything was in order before she dealt with whoever h
ad come knocking at eight-thirty at night.
She opened the door.
And she gasped. He heard the sound all the way from the kitchen.
“Aunt Irma,” she cried. “What are you doing here?”
Chapter Nine
Anyone, Charlene was thinking as she gaped at her father’s sister. Anyone but Aunt Irma.
And she had suitcases. Two of them. Big ones. They sat on the porch, one on either side of her.
“Surprise,” Irma said grimly. Her slender face looked tired, and there were lines bracketing her mouth and raying out from her brown eyes. “I’ve come…for a visit.”
Charlene said the first word that came to mind. The only word, actually. “No.”
Irma blinked. “Excuse me?” She said it with surprising hesitancy. And she also appeared to be shaking. Was that possible? The uptight, always right Aunt Irma…trembling?
Charlene cleared her throat. “Is Larry with you?” Uncle Larry was a first-class jerk. He’d made a lot of money in real estate and he thought he knew everything. The man was so overbearing, he made Irma seem timid in comparison.
Irma blinked and smoothed her hair. “No, he’s not. He…couldn’t make it this time.”
Well, that was something. Only one of them to get rid of. “Really, Aunt Irma. I had no idea you were coming. And besides, you and I are hardly speaking. A visit right now is just—” She cast about for words that would be tactful and final at once. None came to her. She finished weakly “—impossible.”
By then Brand, who should have had sense enough to wait in the kitchen where Charlene had left him, was striding across the living room. She sent him a warning look, but that didn’t stop him.
Irma put her hand to her chest. “Please. If I might just…come in. If I might just have a word or two.” She blinked again as Brand filled the doorway. “Oh. Hello.”
“Brand. Brand Bravo.” He stuck out a hand.
Irma took it automatically and gave it a weak shake. “Brand?” She’d heard the name, of course. She glanced disbelievingly at Charlene.
Charlene groaned. “Yes. My high school sweetheart. Brand. We’re…friends again. What of it?”
“Oh. Well. I meant no offense. Truly…” Irma tried to pull free of Brand’s grip.
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