The First Kiss

by Grace Burrowes

  “Shy bladder,” Mac said, nodding once and not meeting James’s gaze. “It’s genetic. They have nurses, though, at the hospital. Haven’t you dated any nurses you could call?”

  James stifled the urge to deck dear old Uncle Mac. “I avoid the medical types. Too controlling, while they call it a helping profession.”

  Mac was on his feet again. “What are we in, if not a helping profession?”

  “Deep doo-doo.”

  They fell silent, though Mac was pacing. Mac didn’t pace when his client was charged with first-degree murder.

  “We need a mom,” Mac said. “You’ve dated moms, surely?”

  “I tried to pick up Hannah, once, just to test her intentions toward Trent, but she laughed in my face, which was a much bigger relief than it should have been.”

  “Does Trent know this?” Mac asked. “I’ve kind of enjoyed having you for a brother. Gotten used to it, in fact.”

  Kind of good to know. “Trent laughed too. I don’t date moms. They have no use for me.”

  Mac looked puzzled, then his expression brightened entirely too much. “Vera Waltham is a mom, and she lives not five miles away. We could call her.”

  A drop of calm landed on James’s roiling insides. “What is this we shit, Uncle Mac?”

  “Bad word, Uncle James.”

  “F-Phooey… Sh-Sugar, I just nearly dropped the f-bomb. It’s almost nine o’clock, and Vera has her own kid to tuck in.” Though Vera would come. If James asked her to, she’d come.

  “So bring the kid here.” Mac said. “We’ll have a slumber party, and you and Vera can nip off to the ER and take care of Grace’s whatever.”

  Managing partner, indeed. “A fine plan, MacKenzie. I’m dealing with a whimpery little girl and a pack of nosy doctors, while you’re up past your bedtime, eating popcorn and watching princess movies.”

  Mac’s bright expression dimmed. “Princess movies?”

  “Merle will be too worried to sleep until Grace gets home, and Bronco’s coming with us,” James said. “How do I explain an imaginary winged unicorn who’s in truth a guardian angel, and not have the hospital think the kid is nuts?”

  “It’s the spots on his butt that people just don’t understand. You’d better call Vera.”

  You, not we.

  Grace was upstairs, needing her mother, afraid to pee, mortified, in pain, and too worried to sleep. James didn’t want to call Vera Waltham, not really, but he’d better.

  Yeah, he’d better.

  * * *

  Vera accompanied James into Trent’s house, with James carrying a sleeping Grace. He’d been so worried over a simple bladder infection, Vera had been hard put to credit it.

  Cool, calm, sexy James Knightley had been nearly unglued at the prospect of asking a little girl to pee in a cup at the local urgent-care facility. Or maybe—possibly?—Grace was feeling miserable, and James was too tenderhearted to deal with it.

  Fortunately, Vera had met Trent’s daughter Merle months ago in Trent’s office, and Grace had been too relieved to see a friendly adult female on the scene to stand much on her dignity.

  MacKenzie Knightley looked the worse for wear as he rose from the couch. “Is Grace OK?”

  “She has a bladder infection,” James said quietly, because Grace was dozing against his shoulder. “It’s a little-girl thing, and antibiotics will fix her right up.”

  “Thank God,” Mac said, “and thank you, Vera Waltham. Your daughter is fast asleep upstairs, and what a delightful child she is.”

  “She spared you having to watch princess movies,” James said, kissing Grace’s crown. “You’re in Twyla Waltham’s debt, old man.”

  How protectively he held the child, and how comfortable Grace was in his embrace. At the hospital, the physician had assumed they were father and daughter.

  “I am happy to be in Twyla’s debt,” Mac said, “but I’m also happy to head off to bed. Want me to tuck the patient in?”

  Grace yawned without opening her eyes.

  “Now you’re the Chief Tucker Inner?” James asked. “I don’t think so, Mac the Wimp. Make Vera a cup of decaf tea, and I’ll be back down shortly.” He sauntered off with his burden, while Grace roused enough to wave a sleepy good night to Vera and Mac.

  “James has never been the possessive sort before,” Mac said. “The kitchen is this way, though I’ve left James a few dishes in the sink for form’s sake.”

  “You are brothers, after all, aren’t you?”

  Mac’s smile was astoundingly sweet, transforming his otherwise forbidding features. “Now more than ever, we’re brothers, though I’m thinking a princess-movie marathon might be the ultimate bonding experience. Decaf or high octane? Or would you prefer coffee?”

  Vera would prefer hot chocolate with whipped cream and a dash of nutmeg.

  “Anything without caffeine,” she said, struggling a bit with the novelty of having a man wait on her.

  Kitchens told the tale of the family, and until recently, this had been exclusively Trent’s kitchen. It was spacious, tidy, and inviting, with a liberal sprinkling of African violets on the counters and shelves. The refrigerator door held photos and drawings, his and hers already on the way to being ours.

  “James and I were in a panic,” Mac said as he put on the kettle. “James cannot stand to see a female in distress, much less a little girl whom he loves.”

  “He’s known Grace, what, only a few months?”

  “How can anybody not love Grace?” Mac asked.

  Mac was genuinely perplexed, God and the unicorns—James had explained about that part—bless him.

  “Grace is very dear,” Vera said, “but maybe you were equally upset to see James rattled.”

  Mac stopped in the middle of setting mugs and the sugar bowl on a tray and shot Vera a look over his shoulder.

  “Trent likes you,” he said. “I should have realize that means you’re a bright lady. I think James likes you too, though the theory did not originate with me.”

  “Oh?” This was interesting.

  “Trent takes credit for it, but Hannah was doubtless the one who put the pieces together, so it’s marital property.”

  Hadn’t James said anything to his family about his piano lessons? And if not, why not?

  “James is six years my junior,” Mac went on. “Dad died when James was thirteen, and Trent and I were focused on college. When classes started in the fall, that left James home with our mother, whose grief took her in some unhealthy directions.”

  “James was only thirteen?” And he’d lost father and both brothers. No wonder Chopin’s flooding emotion spooked him.

  “Unlucky thirteen,” Mac said, “and he became the little man. Trent and I were too stupid and too young to understand the position we’d left him in.”

  “What position was that?” What position was Mac putting Vera in with this family history chat?

  Mac took the kettle off before the whistle sounded loudly, and poured two mugs of boiling water. He knew his way around a kitchen, and wasn’t too proud to leave a dish towel draped over his shoulder.

  “Mom held it together OK for the first year after Dad died,” he said, “but then it was like she expected her grief to up and go away, and it didn’t. My sense is she’d go for months without a slip, then fall off the wagon in a spectacular way. I didn’t know how bad it was until I came home for the weekend unexpectedly one Easter break, and she was a wreck.”

  Mac paused, teakettle in hand, steam curling up from both cups. Inside a criminal defense mastermind lurked the heart of a worried older brother—and a touch of Martha Stewart.

  “There was my little brother,” he went on, “doing all the housework, managing the help we hired to do the farm work, pulling straight A’s in advanced placement courses, and not saying one damned word to me or Trent, because
Mom wouldn’t want us to know. Excuse my language. I’m an uncle. I should know better.”

  He fished a quarter out of his pocket and put it in a mason jar on the counter labeled, “Bad Word Restitution Fund,” with the d in “fund” crossed out.

  “Why are you telling me this?” Even as she asked the question, Vera tried to square what she knew of James with this sad and yet somehow predictable tale.

  Mac brought the tea tray to the table and gestured for Vera to have a seat. “I suppose this is in the nature of a confession,” he said. “I let my brother down, and feel responsible for some of his shortcomings.”

  “James has shortcomings?” Vera meant it as a joke, but Mac only looked thoughtful.

  “He’s a caretaker,” Mac said, as if a family were allotted only one of those oddities. “We were all raised to be responsible. It’s hard to grow up on a farm and not be responsible, but James cares almost too much, which is why we don’t let him have the family law cases, though he dealt with them brilliantly. He’s never had a pet, you know?”

  Vera hadn’t known, but Mac wasn’t finished.

  “He rode like a demon, or he did as a younger man, but the competition horse he leased in college colicked and had to be put down, and James stopped riding altogether. Just walked away from the whole business, and he was very good at it. Sugar?”

  At first Vera didn’t understand what Mac was asking, because a picture was forming of the boy James had been, openhearted, probably sheltered by his older brothers, and then—bam!—his entire family dead or off to college, except for a mother who didn’t cope well.

  “Just a dash of sugar,” Vera said. “And a drop of milk would be appreciated too.” The conversation needed brownies though, or homemade cookies.

  Mac got to his feet and went to the fridge, bringing back a full gallon jug of milk and thunking it on the table. Vera hadn’t seen her own brothers for two years, but she knew they would have done the same.

  “Thanks.” Very carefully, she added a dollop of milk to her tea. “Will James want some tea?”

  “He can fix his own.”

  Vera put the milk away, contemplating the strange blend of gruff concern and casual indifference that was fraternal love.

  “What happened to the farm?” she asked when she returned to the table.

  “We sold it when Mom died, and divided the proceeds to pay for our various educations,” Mac said. “It’s ironic, because our great-great-grandfather was a lawyer, and in his later years a judge, and his profession was sufficiently lucrative to allow him to buy that ground. In hindsight, selling was a mistake, though a well-intended one.”

  Hindsight and mistakes went hand in hand, and everybody hit wrong notes. “Why do you say that?”

  Mac stirred his tea slowly, staring at the mug as if it held answers.

  “Our dad said we could be anything we chose, anything at all, but we had to get an education first, so off to college I went, and Trent followed, but James…” Mac made a face at his tea. “Trent and I started off on loans, scholarships, and part-time jobs, and our shares of Dad’s life insurance. When Mom died, we assumed James should get himself to college, but if we’d asked him, he might have stayed on the farm, at least for a few years.”

  Vera’s tea was delightful, an Earl Grey that managed to savor wonderfully of black tea and bergamot, even though it was decaf.

  “You didn’t ask him if he was ready to give up his home?” she asked. Had anybody asked Vera if she wanted to perform?

  “Do you have older brothers?”

  “Two.”

  “I don’t need to explain the caring that masquerades as bravado, then, do I? Trent and I were eighteen and nineteen when Dad died, legally adult, but emotionally very much orphaned. Trent says I’m wrong, says James had some very unhappy memories of the farm and would not have wanted to stay, but we denied him a choice.”

  More than a decade later, Perry Mason was still passing judgment on himself. “MacKenzie, I think James would have spoken up if he’d wanted to stay.”

  Though maybe not. Maybe James would look after the brothers who’d failed to look after him.

  Mac met her gaze, his expression curious. Did any of his female clients notice that Mac Knightley had lovely eyes?

  “Why do you say that?” he asked.

  “James isn’t farming now, is he? He isn’t raising horses, or cows, or whatever farmers do around here. He could if he wanted to, and he doesn’t.”

  “Now he’s the business partner at the firm, and sees himself as responsible for both of his older brothers, if not every single person on the payroll.”

  As well as his nieces and his new neighbor. “In what regard is James responsible?”

  Though why was Vera probing into this aspect of James’s life? He was a piano student.

  Who had kissed her.

  Who guarded his heart.

  Who sweat bullets over a little girl’s welfare.

  Who’d come without hesitation when Vera had asked him to.

  Who’d called upon Vera when he’d been backed into a corner.

  “A law firm is an interesting entity,” Mac said, taking his empty mug to the sink. “Its day-to-day operations are concerned with handling cases, going to court, meeting with clients, and making money doing that, but if the venture is to be profitable, somebody had better also have a firm grasp of management principles and business law. Somebody had better have some vision. For us, that somebody is James.”

  “He told me he’s a CPA,” Vera said. Which in itself was astounding. Now Mac said James was a CPA with vision, surely a rarity among bean counters. “How does having a partner who knows tax law make you more competitive?”

  Mac glanced at the clock, a sunflower ceramic which pointed to nearly midnight.

  “I’ll give you an example,” he said, leaning back against the sink. “Every other firm in the county rents office space. This is sensible when office space is abundant and you have responsible landlords who keep up the property. James pointed out that the attorneys are all concentrated within a couple of blocks of the courthouse, which is in a historic district. Office space there consists of rickety old houses with narrow corridors and uneven floors, and little in the way of handicapped accessibility.”

  Vera knew the exact area Mac described. Early Dilapidated masquerading as Civil War Historic.

  “So you serve the handicapped clients more easily in your present offices?” she asked.

  “We can, but those historic downtown properties are prohibitively expensive to buy, and very dear to rent and maintain. James did the research, talked to the banks, and figured out we could create a landlord company of our own to build the facility we have, state of the art, plenty of parking, all the amenities, and pay rent to ourselves while we’re building up equity in the property and claiming all sorts of tax benefits.”

  “So you’re financially healthier,” Vera said, though the whole arrangement sounded more complicated than a four-voice fugue. “You wonder why the other firms aren’t doing the same.”

  She took another sip of very good tea, and wondered what James was doing while she interrogated Mac.

  “The other firms don’t have James figuring the angles, pitching the banks like only a CPA can pitch them. James has us leasing our cars from ourselves. He chose our payroll and accounting software and keeps it up to date. He developed the five-year plan for the business and fine-tunes it as we go. Because we have James, we work smarter than the competitors. Ergo, we have more money to plow back into benefits, salary, and training. Ergo, we attract the best people and can charge accordingly.”

  Did people who’d never been to law school use ergo?

  “James is your secret weapon?” Did he see himself in that regard, or was he still the youngest brother, trying to pull his share of a load he’d never chosen?

  �
��I would have said family loyalty is our secret weapon,” Mac said. “Upon reflection, I worry that James has been more loyal to me and to Trent than we have to him.”

  While Vera had figured out too late where her agent’s and manger’s loyalties had lain.

  “You should ask James, then,” Vera said. “He’ll be honest with you.” But kind, too, because in addition to his other fine qualities, James was a gentleman.

  The gentleman himself walked into the kitchen, looking tired and worn around the edges, but no less handsome—no less sexy—for the fatigue.

  “Ask me what?”

  Chapter 10

  “If you’re enjoying the practice of law,” Vera said, “or doing it only to support your brothers.” She aimed a glance at Mac, but he had turned his back to rinse out his mug—again.

  Oopsie.

  “What kind of sorry question is that?” James shot back.

  “An honest one,” Mac said, abandoning the pretense of domesticity. “Trent and I have niches we enjoy and do well, but you more or less took up the business law because we neglected it, and it has occurred to me you might not particularly enjoy it.”

  “Did I sit for the CPA exam because you neglected that?” James replied. “Did I advertise us as having business law expertise because you neglected that too? Did I court the damned banks and accounting firms because you and Trent forgot to do it?”

  James was answering a question with a question, which could be perceived as a dodge, and his tone was challenging, though he kept his voice down.

  “We’re tired,” Vera said, “and it has been a long, long evening. Maybe there’s a better time for this discussion.”

  James sent Mac the kind of disgusted glance a bull might have cast at a matador backing out of the bullring, but Mac took the olive branch.

  “We’ve imposed on Vera long enough,” Mac said. “I can take her home.”

  “I’m the one who imposed on her,” James retorted. “I’ll take her home. I wouldn’t have stayed upstairs so long, but Grace woke up and asked me to sit with her until she fell back to sleep.”