On a whim, he leaned forward, intending only to brush his mouth just to the left of her injury, as he might have once done to Taryn’s owies, as a sort of lighthearted joke. But once he tasted her skin, sweet and smooth and smelling of flowers and spice, he couldn’t stop. He trailed a soft kiss above the bandage to the other cheekbone and then unerringly found her mouth.
Only a friendly kiss, he told himself. Casual. Easy. Comfortable. That might have been great in theory, but her mouth was silky and soft and she hitched in a ragged little breath that slid across his shoulders and down his spine as if she had just trailed her fingers there.
She tasted sweet and delicious, like berries and cream, and he couldn’t seem to get enough. He kissed her again and again, savoring her lithe curves pressed against him. Her arms circled his neck and he could feel her fingers dancing in his hair and he took that as permission to do the same. She had pulled her hair back loosely with a beaded clasp and he pulled it free, releasing all those delicious waves. He wanted to bury his face in her hair and just stay there for a few weeks, but right now her mouth was too delicious to abandon so he contented himself with letting the silky curls cascade through his fingers.
“Brodie,” she murmured against his mouth and he smiled a little at the ragged note in her voice and deepened the kiss again, wanting nothing but to lose himself inside her.
Reality intruded slowly but with unfortunate insistence. They were standing in his guest bathroom, for pete’s sake. Not the most romantic of places to seduce the woman he couldn’t get out of his mind. With great effort, he wrenched his mouth away, his breathing harsh.
“This is completely crazy,” he murmured, his forehead pressed to hers.
Her chest rose and fell as she tried to catch her breath, something he would have found incredibly sexy even if it didn’t press her curves against him with every breath.
“Tell me about it,” she finally murmured. “I don’t even like you.”
He decided not to be offended, especially since her arms were currently still wrapped tightly around his neck.
“What would a guy have to do to change your mind about him?” He very much wanted to know the answer to that, suddenly.
“Brodie...”
“I’m asking for purely academic reasons.” Though the effort made him just about grit his teeth, he managed to step away—mostly to keep from backing her up against that wall and kissing her again until neither of them could think straight.
She stood frozen for an instant and then she curled her hands together. “I’m not going to change my mind about staying on. I won’t be working here after Tuesday. You know that, right?”
“At this point, I’m seeing that as a good thing. When you’re no longer theoretically in my employ, you can’t sue me for sexual harassment if I were to ask you to dinner.”
She chewed her delectable lip and he suddenly wanted to step forward and offer to take care of that for her.
“Why?” she asked.
“Rumor has it that once in a while, I like to eat. I do own five restaurants, after all.”
“Why do you want to eat with me?”
“I enjoy your company.” He debated for a moment and then decided that, given the circumstances, he owed it to her to be bluntly honest. “I care about you, Evie. More than I expected, but there it is.”
She stared at him, blue eyes wide and still slightly unfocused. “This isn’t real. This heat between us. You understand that, right?”
He leaned a hip against the sink and crossed his arms, wondering why she was so very determined to push him away. “Funny. It feels pretty damn real to me.”
She drew a breath. “I’m sure it does. Feel real, I mean. But it’s not, uh, uncommon for patients or their families to develop...inappropriate feelings for therapists and doctors and other caregivers. When someone helps you out during a...a stressful time, it can sometimes be easy to confuse gratitude and appreciation with something deeper.”
She was absolutely adorable, all pink and flustered. “You’re saying this is all in my head. How you wrapped your arms around me and kissed me back and murmured my name in that sexy low voice I can still hear?” he asked.
She turned even more pink. “No. I...no. But this isn’t... I’m not looking for a relationship right now.”
“I didn’t say anything about a relationship. Only dinner.”
Her mouth firmed into a tight line and she looked away. “Right now your focus should be on your daughter, don’t you think?”
“Don’t tell me where my focus should be, Evie. For nearly the last five months, everything I’ve done has been for her. You know that.” He straightened from the counter, annoyed with her for throwing up roadblocks where there didn’t need to be any. “My business has suffered, I’ve had to put several lucrative projects on the back burner for the foreseeable future and I haven’t so much as looked at a woman in a physical way for months. In fact, not until you came into our lives.”
“Until you dragged me into your lives! I didn’t want to be here, remember? I can’t afford to get involved. Can’t you understand that?”
“Not really.” His words sounded harsh but he couldn’t help it. “This is not just a physical thing between us. Don’t lie to me and say that’s all it is. I care about you and I believe you’re beginning to care about me. All this I don’t want a relationship right now. That’s bullshit. You’re just scared.”
“You’re absolutely right.” She let out a shaky breath. “You terrify me, Brodie. You and Taryn. I’ve spent the last two years trying to piece my life back together from losing Cassie. I was in a good place until you asked me to help you. I need to get back to that place. Can’t you understand?”
He wanted to argue with her, tell her he didn’t understand throwing away something between the two of them that could be incredible, but she didn’t give him a chance. She left the room and headed down the hallway back to Taryn’s room, leaving him no choice but to follow her.
By the time he’d walked into the room, just half a dozen steps behind her, she was already reaching for her slouchy bag and the dog’s retractable leash on the hook behind the door. Taryn must have transferred herself to the bed while he and Evie were out of the room.
He still marveled at how much better Taryn was becoming at that sort of thing. She was stretched out on her bed now, flipping through channels with the remote, the dog stretched out beside her.
“I’m going to take off a little early, like we talked about,” Evie said, her voice stiff. “Have a great weekend, Taryn. I’ll bring you back something from Crested Butte.”
It took her a few times to work the buttons on the oversize remote but Taryn managed to mute the TV. She looked at Evie’s bandage, and he was happy to see the contrition in her eyes. “I...really am...sorry I hurt you.”
“I’m fine. Your dad fixed me right up.”
“It looks...good.”
Evie smiled. “Dashing, isn’t it?”
“Yes.” Taryn continued petting Jacques, who appeared to be happy, curled up beside her on the bed.
“Come on, Jacques. Time to go.” Evie rattled his leash but the dog didn’t budge from Taryn’s side, probably because she was giving him the love.
“Jacques,” Evie said again.
Taryn looked down at the dog, then at Evie. “Can’t he stay here...while you’re gone?”
“Taryn,” Brodie exclaimed. After the way Taryn had treated her that afternoon, why should Evie allow her to care for the dog she plainly adored?
“I’ll take...good care of him. I promise.”
To his surprise, Evie seemed to be considering the idea. “It is kind of boring for him, sitting around an arts festival for four days. I’m sure he would enjoy hanging out here much more than that, but are you sure you want the trouble of it? He can be a lot of
work.”
“Yes! We’ll have so much fun together.”
“I’m sure you will. Jacques loves you.”
“So can he stay?”
“It’s up to your father, really.”
Evie finally met his gaze for the first time since she had walked away and he didn’t know what to do with this wild surge of tenderness.
She didn’t want to leave her dog. He could see it in her eyes, but she was considering it purely to make Taryn happy. For all her protests about letting them get close, she was sacrificing something she cared deeply about to help someone else. That was just so Evie. No wonder he couldn’t get her out of his head.
“Sure. He can stay. Tomorrow if you’re up to it, maybe we all go for a walk on that paved trail around the reservoir.”
“That would be great! Thanks, Dad.”
“You’re welcome.”
“I’ll send his food and his water dish and a couple of his favorite toys back with your grandmother.”
“Good idea,” Brodie said. “Good luck with your show.”
He wasn’t half as noble as Evie, he thought as he watched her go. He supposed that made him a terrible person. She might be willing to give up her dog’s company for a few days in order to help someone she cared about.
Not Brodie. He wasn’t at all willing to give up what he was discovering he wanted most. Her. If he had to fight to keep her, he was damn well ready.
Eleven
“What can you tell me about this one? What are those gorgeous green beads?”
Evie smiled at the woman holding up one of her favorite pieces. “They’re antique Bakelite. I found this tattered old necklace in a thrift store when I was living in California. It was really quite hideous, missing half the beads and in an awful setting. Since it couldn’t be repaired, I repurposed the beads into this. The rest of it is from your garden variety costume jewelry, though.”
“What a brilliant idea. I have got to learn to bead! I’ve been meaning to take a class for ages.” The woman was round and cheerful, with short red pixie hair, designer jeans, a tailored blouse and off-the-rack jewelry that still managed to be tasteful and well coordinated.
Evie enjoyed this part of working the arts-festival circuit. What was not to like when she had the chance to talk to people about something she enjoyed so much? Most people were browsers, asking casual, basic questions, but once in a while she found someone who had genuine interest.
“You have no idea how much out-of-style costume jewelry I have lying around.” The woman, who had introduced herself as Sandy, rolled her eyes. “My mother had three sisters and none of them had any daughters. Can you believe that? So somehow I ended up with all of it, along with my mother-in-law’s god-awful collection of jeweled kittens. It’s all in boxes at my house and I would love to, what did you call it, repurpose some of it. What do I need to get started?”
“A few basic knots, new findings, some rudimentary tools. I know there are a couple of bead stores around town where you could probably take a beginning class.”
“That would be wonderful except I’m only here for the weekend. My husband is a photographer and has a booth on the other side of the festival. We live in Golden most of the time.”
“I work at a store in Hope’s Crossing, String Fever.”
“Oh, I love Hope’s Crossing! Such a pretty town. We took our kids skiing there this winter. Well, my husband did. I’m more of the stay-at-the-hotel-and-have-a-massage sort. A friend of ours owns a condo there and loaned it to us.”
Evie smiled. “If you come again this winter, make sure you stop in. We teach beginning classes every Saturday.”
“I just might do that. Thank you!” The woman beamed at her. “You know, I think I’ll buy this. My husband will have a cow, but he can’t expect me to hang around all this gorgeous stuff for three days and not come back with anything.”
“That’s wonderful. I hope you enjoy it. You might be interested to know that all the sale proceeds for this particular necklace will be donated to a scholarship fund in honor of a teenage girl killed in a car accident earlier this year.”
“Oh, how sad.”
“A portion of the proceeds for all our jewelry goes into the fund but a few of the pieces were made exclusively to benefit the fund. Right now we’ve got enough in there for an endowment to fund two scholarships. We’re hoping for three, especially since the girl’s father just gave a healthy donation to the fund.”
He could certainly afford it. Chris Parker’s latest album had gone double platinum, but Evie didn’t mention that to Sandy.
“You know, my best friend’s birthday is in a few weeks. She would love a piece of custom jewelry—and I don’t mind spending a little more than I’d planned if I’m helping a charity.”
By the time Sandy left, she’d bought three necklaces, a cocktail ring and a chunky watch and beaded band that Alex McKnight had made out of some of Evie’s extra beads, and had slipped a String Fever card into her bag.
“My husband is definitely going to have a cow. He’d better be selling tons of prints,” she said with a rueful laugh. “I hope I see you this winter—though I imagine he would be happy if our paths never crossed again.”
After the woman left, the crowd thinned. Evie had found that the slow times at art fairs like this were generally first thing in the morning and midafternoon. She sat watching the few stragglers in the ceramics booth across the grassy pathway, wishing she could stretch out in the shade and take a little siesta.
She hated to admit it, but she missed Jacques’s company. He was actually a good draw for the booth. When she had him with her, more than one shopper would dawdle at her booth to ask a question about Jacques’s still relatively uncommon breed and would end up walking out with a necklace or a bracelet.
Jacques was so well-mannered that he usually would just plop on his belly and let everyone fuss over him. He loved children too and would especially put out the charm when impatient little kids would come in, dragged by mothers who often wanted to browse through the beadwork.
Taryn probably was enjoying him. The dog adored her with unconditional love and the feeling was abundantly mutual.
Thinking of Taryn inevitably led to thoughts of Brodie. Had he taken Taryn and Jacques for a walk around the Silver Strike Reservoir trail, as he’d promised? She loved that trail. The sugar maples would be turning red to go with the aspen gold at the higher elevations already and it was a lovely walk in the fall—especially good for the wheelchair, as it was paved and relatively level. Maybe Taryn would even be able to work on her walking on the wide path, as long as Brodie provided plenty of support. She should have suggested he take the girl’s walker with them to give her a chance....
She pressed a hand to the deep ache in her shoulder. The cut on her cheek had been small, the bruise already beginning to heal, but her shoulder where the five-pound weight had fallen before tumbling to the floor hurt far worse. She had been icing it every night back at her hotel but it still ached constantly, probably a deep contusion from the weight striking her shoulder.
Wasn’t that always the way? The worst pains were typically the ones most hidden from the rest of the world.
She leaned her head back against the comfortable lawn chair she’d picked up after the first art show. If she closed her eyes, she would once more be back in the guest bathroom of Brodie’s home, feeling the warmth of his fingers as he washed away the residue of blood and applied a bandage—and then the warmth of those fingers as the moment turned into something much more.
That stunning kiss seemed burned into her memory, sneaking out at the most inconvenient moments to trip up her thoughts.
I care about you and I believe you’re beginning to care about me.
She had been able to think about little else through the long drive from Hope’s Crossing
to Crested Butte. He couldn’t mean it. From all her mother had told Evie, Brodie didn’t go for long-term arrangements. He rarely dated, and when he did it, he picked cool and reserved professional women. They probably spent all their time together comparing stock portfolios.
He couldn’t seriously be interested in her. If he had been, he wouldn’t be now.
I don’t want a relationship with you.
He didn’t seem to have taken that declaration very well but the truth was, she had a lousy track record with men—her fault, not theirs.
Some part of her wondered if losing her father when she was an impressionable teenager had left her somehow broken when it came to men. She tended to push away everyone who wanted to get close to her, from her first boyfriend to the fiancé she had brushed aside.
Paulo, her college boyfriend, had been a study in contrasts: brilliant scientist who would someday probably come up with the cure to all manner of diseases, and passionate Italian who loved to cook elaborate meals and engage in deep philosophical discussions with his hands flying as he expressed his impassioned views about everything from animal rights to Fellini movies.
She had loved him deeply—or thought she had. Though they had talked about moving in together when her lease ran out and she started graduate school, the wildfire that had scorched through her family home her senior year of college had changed everything.
She had rushed home to help her mother and sister and had let her and Paulo’s love wither and die from inattention—phone calls she didn’t take, emails she didn’t return, visits she canceled at the last minute.
Eventually Paulo hadn’t been content to let their relationship slip away into oblivion, as she probably would have preferred by that point. He had confronted her in his intense, passionate way. He couldn’t have picked worse timing. Her sister was dying, her mother still badly injured. She didn’t have time or patience for his drama and moods and had told him so in no uncertain terms.
Six years later, she had repeated the pattern, this time with an actual fiancé. On paper she and Craig Addison should have had a perfect life together. He was a rehab physician and their relationship had been forged on a mutual love of the outdoors, on hiking and mountain biking, sailing in the summer, cross-country skiing in the winter.
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