by Dee Tenorio
It was like watching a lion inspect a kitten—utterly careless, the kitten all but fighting for her life while the lion clubbed it half to death. Cole hid his smile, since neither of them would appreciate his amusement.
“I had a flat,” Amanda explained, her soft voice always such a welcome difference from Locke’s sometimes eardrum-splitting boom.
“You have a cell phone. Wasn’t it charged?”
Amanda rolled her eyes, her exasperation starting to pull the corners of her mouth down. “I can take care of myself, Locke. It was a flat, not an assassination attempt.”
His eyes narrowed, but Locke kept his comments to himself. He slid a glance to Cole, but Cole couldn’t tell if it was to see if he was taking offense to Amanda’s independence or if it was Locke’s way of saying, “You see what I have to put up with?”
Whatever it was, Amanda didn’t appreciate it.
“What about the backfire?” Locke asked, interrupting her just before she put voice to her aggravation.
“What backfire?” she asked, all innocence.
“The one that sounded like the back of your car blew up.” Locke indicated the outside with a sweep of his hand to the front door just past her shoulder. “I keep telling you I’ll get you a new one—”
Cole glanced out the nearby window. He could see directly to the little yellow hatchback Pacer Amanda had been driving since her senior year in high school. When it was already a well overused car. He had to squint through the lace curtains to see it hunched at the end of the walk. Looked like she’d just got it there by the grace of God and maybe a little dragging. He silently had to agree with Locke on this one—some forty-year-old cars deserved to be put down.
“I don’t want a new one. It just does that sometimes. It doesn’t mean anything.”
Cole snapped his attention back to Amanda, who was watching her brother grow an inch all around in pure frustration.
“Doesn’t. Mean. Anything,” Locke repeated, his head twitching to the side. It would be comical, if it wasn’t Locke. He didn’t do comical. Or funny. Or dramatic. About the only two modes the man could operate on were even or explosion.
It didn’t take a genius to figure out what was coming.
“Hey, Amanda, why don’t I take a look at it? I’m sure it’s just your muffler needing some attention.” Cole took her arm and pulled her back outside, leaving Locke to stand sentinel in the doorway. His hand curled around her elbow, which was firm beneath the soft white chenille sweater. That and a pair of jeans were classic Amanda. If he took a deeper inhalation of that lilac scent that was also classic Amanda, no one knew but him.
The braid was a nice change though, her corn-silk hair making the fading sun glint off in various shades of pale, palest and gleaming. Usually, even in the summer months, she let it hang loose down her back. The wind liked to catch the straight strands and blow them in a fan around her shoulders, a sight that never failed to remind him she’d make someone a really great catch someday. But he liked this style too. Honestly, he liked most things about Amanda. She always seemed to fit right into any situation like she’d been made for it, and she’d probably looked great before all the smudging.
“You shouldn’t let him get to you like that. He’ll think you’re afraid of him,” she chided gently.
“He’d be right.” Cole laughed. Fearing Locke was no bruise on his manhood. Only an idiot would think himself up to challenging a man over fifty pounds heavier and five inches taller.
“And here I thought you were above the terror everyone else has of him.”
“First, no one is above terror, least of all when it comes to your brother. Second, didn’t I just step into the path of sure destruction to save you from him?”
She gave him another of those rare smiles that always made some string in his body twang. Eyes bright and happy, she dipped her head down, never aware of the stutter she put in his step. “Thanks, but I can handle Locke.”
“Sure.” Cole laughed, hoping the sound wasn’t as strained as his throat, while they came to a stop at the nose of her yellow gremlin of a car. Overall, he’d seen worse. She kept it clean, and if there was a ding here, there and everywhere else, at least it was lovingly polished. He frowned down at the front wheel, a flurry of images coming to mind, most of which had Amanda mangled or in the hospital. Maybe Locke had a tiny point about his sister’s need for a keeper.
Cole shook that idea off. If Locke was right, he was going to be married in no time. Cole had zero intentions of letting that happen. So, Locke couldn’t be right. Amanda just needed someone to show her how to do things for herself instead of someone insisting on doing everything for her. Not that Locke was going to accept that recommendation, either. He wanted his sister protected at all costs, particularly from herself. To that end, Cole reminded himself that protecting either of them might mean getting Amanda to agree to a little fake dating.
A quick glance to the front door found Locke still framed by the threshold, only now the windows were full of other curious Jackmans too, no doubt thinking they were about to see a proposal. Good loyal friends. Well meaning, even. But dumb as posts if they thought this plan of theirs was going to work.
No way to immediately present the truth to Amanda. She’d explode and they’d kill him. Or she’d explode and kill him herself. Jackman tempers were not to be trifled with.
“Do you have any plans for tomorrow night?” he asked, reaching under the hood to release the hook and at least give the car the look he’d promised.
“Why?” she asked, sounding vaguely suspicious.
“I thought we could…hang out.” That sounded reasonable. Not like a date at all. His conscience wouldn’t let him ask her out on a date only to later slam her with the fact that he’d only meant to get her alone to tell her what was happening.
“We’ve never hung out alone before,” she reminded, making him wince.
“Sure we have. You’re the only one capable of putting up a fight in the house when we play Risk or Trivial Pursuit. You beat the crap out of me in every fighting game we dig up, and I’ve lost count of all the sci-fi marathons we’ve watched together.”
“You were visiting my brothers. I was just there.”
She wasn’t going to make this easy, was she? Another quick glance over to the house showed the Jackmans hadn’t moved an inch. Better to look in the car’s engine.
“I didn’t know you knew anything about cars.”
He didn’t. He had a motorcycle and he liked it that way. “Not much,” he admitted. It was all the same, wasn’t it? Just bigger…and arranged differently, apparently. What the hell kind of engine was this?
“Still trying to save me from my brother?” She dipped her head, a soft grin tilting the corners of her mouth again.
He didn’t twang like before, but he had to clamp his lips tight not to lick them in response. “You have no idea.”
She frowned suddenly. “Whatever.” She put her hand on the hood and pushed it out of his grip and back into place with a bang. Before he finished checking for all his digits, she was already spinning away from him.
“You never said if you were going with me tomorrow,” he called after her.
She froze midstep, her shoulders up near her ears for a whole second before she turned around, all playfulness gone, leaving her looking somewhat pale. “What?”
“Tomorrow. I was thinking we could talk.”
“This is a joke, right? Which one of them put you up to this? Dean? Andrew?”
All of them? “Why would any of them make me ask you to hang out?” It’d be interesting to see if she guessed.
“Because they’re morons,” she answered, her eyes narrowing.
Hey, look at that, she guessed!
“They’d do anything if they thought it was funny enough. No thanks, don’t feel like being a joke this week.” She stomped past him and opened the car door.
A joke? Damn it, he never thought she’d see the invitation that way. God, didn’t
her brothers notice what they’d been doing to her self-esteem with all their overprotection? Given the way Locke was already striding onto the porch, Cole guessed not.
“If you say you’ll go with me, I’ll save you from Locke again.” He crossed his arms over his chest, leaning down to the window when she slammed the door between them.
She was mad now, he could tell by the roses in her cheeks. She rolled down her window with a few jerks of her shoulder and hand. “Oh yeah, how’s that?”
“Your tire—”
“My car’s just fine, Cole. Thanks for looking.”
“Amanda—”
“Mandy?” Locke was on the other side of the car, but his frigid eyes were on Cole, promising sure death for screwing this up. “Aren’t you staying for dinner?”
“No.”
“Yes,” Locke corrected.
Amanda was glaring now.
Cole tried again. “You can’t drive it this way—”
“I told you it’s fine. It’s just loud.”
Cole’s temper tingled. If she’d just let him finish a sentence. “I’m only looking out for you.”
“I’ve got enough people looking out for me. I don’t need you doing it too. I told you, I can take care of myself.”
“So you’re determined to leave?”
“Yes,” she snapped.
“Okay,” he said calmly, took a step closer to the front tire and with a solid whack of his boot, sent the spare tire off the unnutted bolts to the ground, where the weight of the car ka-chunking to the pavement flattened the metal corner with a loud pop.
“I’ll just let you take care of that, then.” He nodded at Locke and stalked back into the house.
Dinner sounded pretty damn good all of a sudden.
Chapter Two
“Calm down, it’s not that bad.”
“Not that bad?” Amanda scrubbed at her forehead viciously with a rough, wet hand towel. She wasn’t cleaning off the black smudges as much as she was adding oh-so-attractive red streaks. She blew at the painfully straight hanks of her bangs falling into her face, despite her clamping most of it at the top of her head like a vise. Hanks she just noticed had new streaks of black from her hand.
Her frustrated scream accompanied her cell phone clattering to the floor of the laundry room. She’d just made herself look like a stubborn, incompetent jerk in front of a man she’d spent more than ten years mooning over, and her best friend thought it wasn’t that bad? On top of that, she’d almost gotten herself killed in her car, and Locke was this close to bursting that vein in his forehead she always worried about. The icing on the cake would be if she’d just destroyed her phone to boot.
Digging under the utility sink for the liquid detergent with one hand and grabbing her phone with the other, she forced herself to settle down enough to undo some of the damage. Any of it. If she could just do that, then maybe this dinner might be salvageable.
The good news, no new cracks on the phone.
Bad news…Susie was still on it. Waiting to dispense advice Amanda couldn’t possibly use. Somehow, Susie refused to believe there wasn’t a physical stick to pull out of Locke’s ass.
Suitably braced, she put the phone back to her ear, dabbed a drop of the soap on her fingers and shoved the hot water on. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to drop you.”
Susie snorted. “Right. Now as I was saying, it could have been worse.”
“Are you high? How could it be worse?”
“Did you accidentally flash him your boobs?” Susie demanded, not about to be dropped this time, on purpose or not. “Make drunken attempts to fondle his crotch? Did you get caught with a tampon string hanging out where the whole world could see it?”
“Eww, no!”
“Then it could have been worse.” Leave it to Susie to put the world back into perspective. Gross perspective, but perspective all the same.
“I mean, it’s not like you started your period on the Pope, honey. You just made a man—”
“Cole.”
“Cole mad enough to kick your car. Pfft. I regularly make your brother so mad he has to bang the hell out of whatever boat he’s building for hours. Men feel better when they smash inanimate objects.”
At that, Amanda couldn’t stifle a giggle. Locke’s sporting goods store did okay, but it was his handcrafted rowboats that truly supported their family. Since Susie had come to town two years ago, Locke’s output had nearly doubled.
“You shouldn’t sound so happy about driving my brother crazy.”
“Hey, he’s the one with the closed mind. He can beat his wood all he wants, but I’m the one with the full assortment of vibrating tools to take the edge off whenever he’s been a pain in my ass.” Amanda’s choke only made Susie’s laugh more evil. “Do me a favor and tell him that, will you?”
“Not even if your life depended on it.” She didn’t think Locke’s vein could handle the combustion. The poor man had lived like a monk without so much as a grunt of complaint for as long as she remembered. His few relationships had been brief, discreet and totally unmemorable. Then along came Susie with her over-the-top sensuality and irreverence, parking her shop directly across the street from his store. If the sight of Susie every day wasn’t going to do him in, all the lacy bustiers and panties in the window probably would.
“Just go on out there and apologize like nothing serious happened because it didn’t. Cole knows what life with your brothers is like. You’re entitled to go postal every now and then.”
A lot more now than then, Amanda conceded. She couldn’t help it, no matter how irrational it was. Her brothers—though she loved every single one of them—had sucked every cell of patience and understanding she could have ever expected to have. She was tired and sick to death of being helpless, of being useless.
She could cook for an army, round up wayward children by the dozen, speak five languages passably and collect hobbies by the pound. Thanks to Susie, she could now fold thongs by the hundred. But when a girl hit twenty-six, she kind of wanted to have a little more experience under her belt than what she picked up online, in books or in a lecture hall. Any kind of experience. Driving cross-country. Or even just upstate. Skinny dipping in a lake. Gambling unwisely in Vegas. Falling in love with someone instead of all by herself.
But she hadn’t done any of those things. And so many others.
She sighed.
None of which was Cole’s fault.
No, the only thing he was guilty of was inspiring ridiculous sexual fantasies with his chocolaty eyes and lean muscles. Or maybe it was his sly humor, those looks and sideways jokes he always seemed to share with only her. If he’d ever been mean or thoughtless or rude or in any way acted like her brothers, she could probably have gotten over him. Instead, she’d come to think of him as the only other rational person in the family.
She sighed now, deflating as the final reason nothing would ever happen between her and Cole fell into stark relief.
It wasn’t because Locke would kill him—even though Locke most assuredly would. It wasn’t even because she’d never get the courage to ask him—though she most assuredly wouldn’t. It was because Cole Engstrom, her brothers’ best friend, was considered family. It didn’t matter that she’d never seen him that way, exactly. He’d never see her as anyone or anything but a sister.
Amanda stopped scrubbing.
“Uh-oh, why am I hearing your hopeless sigh?”
She scrunched her face. “I don’t have a hopeless sigh.”
“Of course you do. I hear it every time you stock the body paint rack.” Which was every week. Who knew Rancho del Cielo was home to so many kinky folks? Susie’s lingerie shop had started off with simple unmentionables and a small supply of fun “marital aids” in a shrouded cage. Now, Susie’s Suite Shoppe had an entire curtained-off section just full of fun stuff Amanda would never get a chance to use.
Well, to be honest, she had used several. She was simply tired of them on her own. Thus the hopeless sigh. But
that didn’t mean she had to admit it.
“I’m just giving up on getting this tire gunk off my hair.” Or hands. Or face… She gave a few more useless scrubs with the towel before tossing it into the laundry basket. Then stopped. For the first time, she looked around and realized the laundry wasn’t overflowing. The room smelled as much like detergent as ever, but the general mayhem she’d dealt with for years was missing.
They’d all handled their own laundry since they were twelve, but since she’d left, it looked like they’d finally figured out how to take care of putting it away themselves without her playing cranky mommy.
There was something kind of bittersweet about that.
She reached out and touched the edge of a folded towel still in the laundry basket. Hard to admit, but she missed this smell. The familiarity of home. Her laundry area was a small closet with a stackable washer and dryer. It wasn’t permeated with years of fabric softener, and it still stung her nose with the sourness of fresh paint. In fact, the whole house, cute little rundown cottage that it was, echoed the silence around her every night. It stayed clean because no one got home before her to mess it up. No one yelled. No one argued over food or dish night. Or laundry. No one laughed.
Sometimes she was so homesick she could cry. But she wouldn’t. Because however much she loved her family—her insane, overbearing, overwhelming family—she couldn’t keep living as if they were all she needed. She needed to stand on her own. Win or lose, she needed to know she could take care of herself. It was a fact Locke just couldn’t accept yet, that was all. Being a baby hiding in the laundry room wouldn’t help improve his understanding, either.
Blowing out a breath, Amanda straightened her shoulders and tugged her dignity around her like a cloak. She stepped quietly out, going a whole two steps back into the kitchen before hearing raised, angry voices. She peered around the doorway, surprised to see Cole and Locke standing nearly toe to toe.