by Leanne Banks
“Uh-huh,” Senada said, her voice dripping disbelief. “You agreed, and all the while your little heart was going pitter-patter because you still—”
“I do not,” Lisa interrupted, desperate not to hear the rest of that statement spoken aloud. “And my heart is supposed to be beating all the time. I’d be dead if it didn’t.”
Senada sighed. “You really seem to like that not-quite-civilized, ruler-of-his-own-destiny type.” She narrowed her eyes and paused, then her lips tilted in a slow smile. “I think I may have the perfect man for you.”
The perfect man was out of town for the next few weeks, so Lisa accepted a few other recommendations Senada made. Between the spring wedding receptions, rehearsal dinners, graduation parties and dates with a purpose, though, Lisa felt burned out enough to accept an invitation from Brick to attend a fair in Beulah County.
She told herself it was to prove that they were indeed friends. The “lover” part of their relationship was passed, finished, completely done, never to be repeated. If she felt a twinge of regret at the thought, she ignored it. She also told herself she wasn’t the least bit curious about Brick’s family.
At the fair, however, she stared at the sight of all those Pendletons as they crowded outside Brick’s car.
Four tall men of varying ages with dark hair and Brick’s violet eyes stood with three women, two of whom appeared to be pregnant. When Lisa noticed the differences between Brick and his brothers, she saw that Brick was the tallest, his hair was slightly lighter and he exhibited a subtle masculine power that translated to pure sex appeal.
The pull was so strong that even with all these people around she had to force her attention away from him. It took a moment, but Lisa recognized the feminine version of the Pendletons as the young, slim woman who was not pregnant.
Brick instinctively put his hand at Lisa’s back as he made the introductions. “This is Lisa Ransom. She’s—” What? The woman who’d wrecked his mental health. The woman who’d left him because he couldn’t make a commitment. The woman who was planning to marry anyone but him as soon as possible. He began to sweat.
“I’m a friend,” Lisa said, giving Brick a meaningful smile. “I’m glad to meet you.”
He clenched his jaw briefly, then smiled and gestured with his hand. “Daniel and his wife, Sara.”
Lisa shook hands as he continued. “Garth and Erin, Jarod, Troy and Carly.”
A little boy wiggled between Garth and Erin. “Hey, I’m a Pendleton now too!”
“That’s right,” Brick said with a chuckle. “This is Luke, Garth and Erin’s son.”
“Lucky them.” Lisa took one look at the bright-eyed boy with a cowlick on the crown of his head and smudges on his chin, and she fell in love. “And it looks like more Pendletons are on the way, so I guess congratulations are in order. When are you due?”
“September for us,” said Erin, patting her stomach.
“Ours is due in November,” Daniel said, taking Sara’s hand.
Lisa sensed the love that flowed between them and felt a twinge of envy. She brushed it aside, though, and focused on getting a fix on the different personalities of Brick’s family. Daniel was extremely solicitous of his wife, Sara, but she supposed the same could be said of Garth and Erin. Jarod seemed to observe in silence, while Troy was loud.
“Are we overwhelming you?” Carly asked.
“Not really. When Brick told me how many brothers he had, I imagined six ‘Bricks.’”
“Heaven help us all,” Carly said, rolling her eyes.
Lisa laughed. “Now I see that one’s taller, one’s quiet, one cracks jokes.”
“Well, if you forget any names, don’t feel bad. Just ask me and I’ll be glad to give you a prompt. The twins, Ethan and Nathan, live out of state, so you’ll be spared remembering their names this time.”
“You own the riverboat, don’t you?”
Carly nodded. “My husband, Russ, and I do.”
“Oh, I didn’t realize you were married.”
Carly hesitated and lowered her voice. “Brick hasn’t told you very much about us, has he?”
Lisa felt another twinge of pain, despite a hundred silent reminders that she shouldn’t because her romantic relationship with Brick was over. “He, uh, mentioned you a month or so ago and…”
“Yeah, well, he mentioned you to us the last several times he visited.”
That stopped Lisa in her tracks. She glanced at Brick and found him gazing at her while his brother Troy was talking. For an instant, his eyes seemed to meld with hers. She felt a shudder inside her, like the first rumblings of an earthquake. His gaze was so determined. She shuddered again.
The corners of his mouth lifted in a slow, knowing smile that made her heart pound against her rib cage. Lisa absently pressed her hand against her chest to make her heart behave.
“If you decide to stay overnight, you’re welcome at my house,” Carly offered.
Lisa ripped her gaze from Brick’s. “Oh no. That won’t be necessary. I’m not—”
“And if you have any questions about Brick,” Carly said with a mischievous grin, “I’ve known him for twenty-plus years.”
Lisa was severely tempted. A dozen unanswered questions came to mind. She told herself it was normal. After all, she’d been involved with Brick for months, and there was so much she had wanted to know about him.
Before. Not now.
She stifled the urge to ask, and instead mustered a smile. “Thanks, but I think I’ll pass this time.”
Brick overheard Lisa’s response and didn’t know whether to be disappointed or relieved. He fought the overwhelming instinct to stuff Lisa in his car and drive back to Chattanooga. It was tough to explain why, even to himself, but he thought it had something to do with wanting to keep her to himself.
Selfish as hell, he acknowledged, but it didn’t change the way he felt. He didn’t want anyone messing with his relationship with her. He snorted. Why should he worry about them making matters worse when he’d already made a mess of it himself?
Brick dismissed the disturbing thoughts and snagged Lisa’s wrist. “C’mon. Let’s go throw a pie for charity. My old junior high school principal is the target, and I owe him.”
Lisa stumbled after him. “Owe him for what?”
“He stuck me in detention for my whole seventh grade year.”
“And you didn’t deserve it at all?”
Brick stopped and grinned sheepishly. “Maybe a little.”
“How little?”
“It was just a few harmless pranks…involving a frog and the English teacher, a food fight in the cafeteria and…” He hesitated and his smile faded slightly. “And the homework I didn’t do.”
“I can imagine the frog and the food fight, but my father would have killed me if I hadn’t done my homework.”
Brick looked away, squinting his eyes under the glare of the sun. “Yeah, well, my dad wasn’t paying much attention, my mother had died and my stepmother was a witch.”
The breeze picked up a strand of his sun-lightened hair, and Lisa felt a clutch in her chest. “Sounds rough,” she murmured.
He shrugged his wide shoulders. “You don’t want to hear about that, so—”
“But I do,” she said impulsively, then bit her tongue. “I mean, I enjoy hearing about your childhood. You haven’t really talked about it much before.”
He rubbed his thumb back and forth over her knuckles in a mesmerizing motion. “It wasn’t all happy, Lisa, and the time you and I had together was happy and good. Being with you was too special. I didn’t want to drag it down.”
She felt that same clutch again and swallowed hard. “Now that we’re friends,” she said in an effort to remind both herself and him, “maybe you won’t feel like you’re dragging anything down.”
He lifted an eyebrow and glanced meaningfully at her lips. “We’ll see.”
He tugged her toward the pie booth, and Lisa surreptitiously wiped her mouth with the back
of her hand. It felt as if he’d put his mouth there, against hers.
“You wanna go first?” he asked as he paid the attendant a few bucks.
“I don’t know.” Lisa looked doubtfully at the principal’s friendly face behind the cutout cardboard. “I was never good at throwing things, or catching them for that matter,” she said under her breath.
“Then let me help you.” Brick gave Lisa a pie and positioned himself directly behind her. He wrapped one hand around her waist and meshed the front of his body with the back of hers. His chest rubbed against her back, the heat of his belly nearly scorching her skin, and his masculinity was deliciously pressed against her buttocks.
Lisa nearly dropped the pie.
“Whoa!” Brick caught it and reinforced her grip on it with his hand.
He stood so close that his familiar scent and the thud of his heart seemed to invade her body. He had a musky scent that she associated with sex and satisfaction. It was the closest she’d come to this kind of intimacy in weeks, and Lord help her, her breasts were tightening beneath the knit shirt she wore.
“I’m not sure—” She tried for a normal tone.
“C’mon. Just throw it a little high.”
Lisa closed her eyes and tossed it.
“Not close enough,” he muttered. “Let’s do it one more time.”
She remembered when he’d said those same words to her right after making love. “Oh, no.” She moaned.
“You can do it.” He placed another pie in her hand. Her surroundings began to feel surreal. The principal taunted Brick, but it was Brick’s voice and body that became her focal point.
“C’mon, baby. Just a little higher and a little harder,” he coaxed.
She blinked at the sensations his voice evoked, but she felt her nether regions begin a slow, sweet swell. “Higher and harder,” she murmured, and tossed the pie as hard as she could.
She hit the principal dead center, and the surrounding crowd screamed with glee. Brick squeezed her waist and quickly kissed the side of her neck. “You were great, Lisa.”
He meant throwing the pie, but all Lisa could think about was that last time they’d made love.
“That’s some friend you got there, Brick.”
“Shut up, Troy,” Brick said with a growl.
“Ooh, I’m all shook up. Have you told her you and Elvis share—”
“Shut up!”
Troy raised his hands in appeal and backed away. “Just asking.”
Lisa didn’t have a clue what their exchange was about, but Troy’s first comment hit her like a bucket of cold water. She wiggled out of Brick’s hold on her. Avoiding his gaze, she took a few sanity-inducing steps away from him. “Your turn to throw a pie.”
She stood, taking a few moments to regain her equilibrium. Frowning, she admired Brick’s well-muscled form. His body attracted her, but it was his inherent male magnetism that drove her to distraction. She didn’t like how quickly or easily she’d lost her perspective.
When his pie hit the principal, Brick tossed his head and laughed. His vitality seemed to spill over onto her. She wanted to be immune to him. She didn’t want this dizzy, desperate feeling he caused. She didn’t want it and she didn’t need it.
Brick pulled Lisa against him for a quick hug and felt her stiffen. She’d been so soft and pliant against him moments before that his body had begun to respond. He hoped nobody was studying the front of his cutoffs right now, or the swollen ridge behind his zipper would make a joke out of everything he’d suggested about being “friends” with Lisa.
She tugged her hand away from his when he tried to hold it. Brick sighed. “Don’t pay any attention to Troy. He’s always had a big mouth.”
Lisa fiddled with her fingers then folded them in front of her. “He reminded me that you and I are friends. That’s all,” she added emphatically. “And I’m looking for a husband.”
Brick’s view of the day took a sour plunge. His stomach felt unsettled. He pulled an antacid out of his pocket and slipped it in his mouth. Lisa’s head was averted so that her gaze didn’t meet his. A brooding feeling settled over him. “That’s right,” he muttered impatiently. “I forgot to ask. Any proposals lately?”
Lisa’s head whipped up. She narrowed her eyes as if she hadn’t missed the hint of a sarcastic edge in his voice. He could practically feel the heat of her indignation. She straightened her shoulders and lifted her chin.
Lord help him, there was that chin again. He should have kept his attitude under wraps. “Hey, that was out of line. I—”
“As a matter of fact,” she said, overriding his apology, “I have received a proposal for marriage. Not just one, but two.”
Chapter Four
Lisa immediately regretted her words. It wasn’t as if she had any intention of marrying either man who’d proposed to her, and she didn’t want to have to elaborate on the motivations behind their proposals. Based on the expression on Brick’s face, however, she was in for the third degree.
And she would rather eat dirt than give him the details.
She smiled brightly. “I want a hot dog. I smelled them the minute I walked into the park, and my mouth’s been watering ever since.” She turned away from Brick. “You think they’re over—”
Brick snagged her arm. “Just one minute,” he said in a quiet, lethal voice. “Don’t you want to tell me the rest of the story on these proposals?”
Lisa’s nerves jangled inside her like a bunch of bells. “Not really. What I want is a hot dog,” she said, relieved that she’d managed not to meet his gaze. “And cotton candy,” she added for good measure.
Brick lowered his lips to her ear. “I thought since I was your friend you’d want to tell me your secrets.”
Lisa felt a sensual shiver buck and shimmy down her spine. Brick already knew far too many of her secrets. It was too easy to want to lean in to his strength, to turn her head and bury her face in his strong neck and breathe in the scent and sensation of him. Too easy, and she couldn’t do it. Fighting the fine edge of desperation, she arched away from the lure of his mouth. “If you were my friend, you’d point me to the nearest hot-dog stand because you could see I’m about to starve to death.”
Still holding her wrist, Brick narrowed his eyes. He wanted to press her. She could feel the desire to demand war with the struggle for restraint emanating from him. In an instant his gaze changed and he shifted his clasp so that his fingers twined around hers. For all they’d shared, the gesture felt incredibly intimate, almost as if he were claiming her.
“I wouldn’t ever want to be accused of not meeting your needs, Lisa.” His voice caused a deep visceral clench in her stomach. “Remember that.”
Her heart fluttered in her throat. She swallowed hard, but couldn’t manage the words to tell him to let go of her hand.
Eight hours later after a full day at Beulah County’s fair, they were flying up the highway toward Chattanooga with the T-top down and the night breeze blowing over them. Lisa sighed. She was pleasantly tired. At a different time, she would have snuggled closer to Brick and he would have rested his hand on her knee.
That was another lifetime, she told herself, straightening in her seat. Better to focus on something else. “Your family is nice. I like them, but with all those boys I can’t help wondering if you fought a lot when you were growing up.”
Brick nodded. “My father let us knock each other around until we were teenagers. By then I guess he got tired of the furniture getting smashed.” He paused. “He worked on me a little earlier since I was the biggest.”
“Worked on you?”
“Yeah. I developed a nasty temper the year my mother got sick. I got sent home from school one day with a shiner.” Brick grinned. “The other guy had two, but my dad wasn’t amused. He didn’t scream or yell, though. He just told me to get to work on the lower forty. It took the whole summer on the working end of a hoe before I got my temper under control. I haven’t hit anyone since.”
�
�Even Troy?” Lisa asked with a knowing smile.
Brick laughed. “Even Troy.”
“You must get angry sometime. What do you do now?”
“Not often,” Brick said, thinking, however, that he’d experienced some nearly uncontrollable frustration lately. He couldn’t exactly explain that fact to Lisa if he wanted her to continue letting him be her friend. What a hell of a farce this was. He didn’t want her trying out other men for husband material. He didn’t want to stay away from her. He wanted her back. His eyes were focused on the road, but the sound of her voice and the every-now-and-then trace of her scent sent his libido into overdrive and his guts into a tangled mess.
Noticing that she was still waiting for him to respond, he shrugged. “I guess I do the usual things—count to ten, leave the room, crack my knuckles. And if it’s really bad I—” He stopped, suddenly self-conscious.
Lisa leaned closer. “You what?”
“It’s nothing. I just—”
“You just don’t want to tell me,” she finished, disappointment coloring her voice.
Aw hell. “Okay. I’ll tell you one of my secrets if you tell me one of yours.”
She paused only a fraction of a moment. “Deal.”
“When I feel like I’m close to losing it, I whistle.”
There was a long gap of silence, then Lisa smothered a giggle. “Whistle?”
Brick threw a quick glance at her and grinned despite the fact that the joke was at his expense. “Yeah. Go ahead and laugh. You look like you’re about to bust.”
Lisa let out a full-bodied, throaty laugh, the kind that made Brick’s gut clench in memory.
“I’m just—” She coughed over another laugh. “I’m just trying to imagine how you do it.” She cleared her throat. “And why?”
“Well, it takes a lot of concentration if you whistle something intricate.”
“Okay. I’ll buy that,” she said, sinking down in the leather seat. “But you know, I don’t think I’ve ever heard you whistle.”