The First Kiss

by Grace Burrowes

  Mac looked like he wanted to say more but thought better of it. “I’ll thank Vera one last time then, and bid you both good night.”

  Tension that had been filling the kitchen left with him, the fraternal sort that could flare or dissipate with a word or a look.

  James put a quarter in the mason jar—probably for the “damned” banks—then crossed to the stove and put on the teakettle.

  “I’m not sure what Mac told you,” he said, “but I’m sorry you had to witness that last exchange. Would you like some tea? We have decaf.”

  “I’m still working on my last mug,” Vera said. “The essence of what Mac said is that he worries about you.” Mac loved James too. Ferociously.

  “He worries.” James stared at the teakettle, a plain metal teakettle like a million others. “He’s prone to fretting, is our MacKenzie. That’s part of what makes him hell in a three-piece suit in the courtroom. You don’t catch him unprepared, not with the latest changes in the law, not with fresh appellate opinions. He’s damned good.”

  No quarter this time. James was apparently damned irritated with his brother.

  “Mac thinks you’re damned good too,” Vera said.

  This late, and after the evening they’d had, some of James’s smoothness had eroded, leaving Vera a slightly different companion than she’d known previously.

  James set an oversized Winnie the Pooh mug on the counter and fired two stringless tea bags into it.

  “Mac thinks I’m sixteen years old and barely holding it together. Trent’s not quite as bad, but sometimes I want to grab one brother in this hand, another brother in that, and …” He pantomimed banging two fraternal heads together. Hard.

  “I felt the same way about my brothers,” Vera said, “until Alex took over as my manager and Donal became my agent, and then I realized brothers have their uses.”

  “Your brothers are older than you?”

  “A few years, and we used to be close, but then I started competing and touring, and they couldn’t come to every performance anymore, and life has moved us in different directions.”

  That hurt. Every time Vera came to that realization, it hurt. Twy had cousins she barely knew, and the time had come to fix that.

  “You’re reminding me to be grateful I have the brothers I do,” James said, scrubbing a hand down his face. “Believe me, I am, but tonight, I was more than grateful to have you along. I’ve heard of bladder infections, but when Grace first said how she hurt…” He hiked himself up to sit on the counter, then leaned back against the cupboards with an air of utter weariness. “I don’t know how you people raise children. The whole idea scares the hell out of me.”

  You people? “When Grace told you it hurt to pee, what did you think, James?”

  The teakettle started to hiss. James flipped the burner off and let his head fall back against the cupboards.

  “I thought someone might have hurt her intimately, and, Vera, the idea, merely the idea—I can honestly say that was one of the worst moments of my life. Simply having to consider the possibility made my stomach heave.”

  He poured the boiling water into the oversized mug. The scent of peppermint wafted across the kitchen as he squeezed a few drops from a bottle on the counter into the fragrant tea.

  “Grace will be fine,” Vera said, using the tone that usually worked on a student threatening to choke at a recital. “You got spooked, and you should be glad you knew enough to be spooked. Bad things happen to good little girls every day, James. Not everyone can even face that possibility.”

  While the worst thing that had happened to Vera as a girl had been the occasional poor showing in a concert hall. Some consolation lay in that thought, some perspective.

  “I’m a lawyer,” James said, holding the squeeze bottle as if he might hurl it against the wall. “I know about all the bad, awful things people do to each other, but bad things shouldn’t happen to Grace.” He set the squeeze bottle down a little too hard and scooted off the counter. “Not to Merle, not to Grace, not to Twyla, and not to you.”

  He picked up his tea, brought it to his mouth, but didn’t drink. “I’m sorry.” He set Pooh away from him. “I’m more tired than I know and wound up and rattled.”

  Rattled. Vera knew exactly how that felt, and could not stand for James to wrestle with the same overwhelming, unfocused demons while she watched and did nothing.

  She was across the kitchen without having made a decision to go to him, her arms wrapped around his middle.

  “She’s all right,” Vera said, bundling in close. “Grace is all right. You and Mac got her the help she needed. I’m all right. I got spooked too—you had a word for it—and I’m not one hundred percent yet, but I will be.”

  Tension vibrated through James, and dark, unhappy emotion as well, but he closed his arms around Vera slowly as she laid her cheek against his chest.

  His heart was pounding, at midnight, in his brother’s kitchen; when to appearances, James would look merely tired, his heart was pounding.

  Vera smoothed her cheek over the flannel of his shirt twice. His breath fanned past her neck in a long, slow sigh, and still she held him while he stood immobile in her embrace. Vera was about to drop her arms and start stammering her apologies, when James’s hand landed on her nape.

  She remained quiet and waited as he sank his fingers into her hair. A few heartbeats went by before he pulled her close.

  She stroked his back and his hair while he held her—held on to her—and she tried not to breathe too deeply lest he realize how tightly they embraced. It felt good—it felt wonderful—to be held so fervently, to be pressed this close against another human being in a moment of sheer, honest emotion.

  This close to a man Vera…cared for.

  “I’m not at my best,” James said, his voice low and very near Vera’s ear. “I’m sorry. My stomach won’t settle, and I keep thinking what if it were serious? What if that dear little girl was hurt on my watch? What if she’d been admitted to the hospital with a bad appendix and I had to tell Hannah?”

  “Hush, you. Stop awfulizing. You coped. You kept your head. You’re tormenting yourself for nothing.”

  Very likely reliving old torments too, of being that kid stuck on the farm with a grieving mother and oblivious older brothers off at college.

  “I’m an idiot.”

  James’s voice held such a wealth of fatigue and resignation, Vera had to smile.

  “You’re an uncle who loves his niece and got stuck with a tough night. If it’s any consolation, I went through the same thing almost to the minute with Twyla last year.”

  He was quiet for a moment; his breathing slowed, and his heartbeat calmed.

  “Who gave you tea and sympathy at midnight?” he asked, offering Vera a sip of his tea. “You would have been in the middle of a nasty divorce, living by yourselves in the back corner of those woods, late at night…”

  Vera took a taste of peppermint, both soothing and reviving, rather like a stout hug. She stepped back but not far.

  “Tough nights go with being a parent, James.” She passed him the mug. “Do you have an extra bedroom here?”

  “We’re not full up. The master bedroom is unoccupied, because I’m taking the sofa bed in Trent’s study. I assumed you’d want to sleep in your own bed tonight.”

  The mug went another round. If they kissed right now, it would be a peppermint kiss, but a kiss would be…superfluous?

  “It’s near midnight,” Vera said. “We’re both bushed, and now that the moment to leave Twyla here is upon me, if it’s all the same to you—”

  James set the tea aside and fired off another round from his arsenal of smiles, this one tired, understanding, and hopelessly dear.

  “When was the last time you two were separated?” he asked.

  “When I last toured, which was several years ago. T
hen Twyla had Katie and Darren at home with her, as well as the au pair, but Twy had reached school-age, so I made myself go off and leave her.”

  Or had Vera allowed Donal and even Alexander’s ghost make her go?

  “You don’t have to leave Twyla now. The sheets on the bed are clean, and we’ll find you the extra toothbrush.”

  James was a good host, and Vera hoped she wasn’t imagining his relief at not having to stay up yet later to get her home.

  To a cold bed, alone, no one to wake up to but dog-eared, old Pischna.

  James gave her one of his flannel shirts to sleep in, and loaned her a bathrobe of his that hung nearly to the floor on her. The garment was flannel and smelled of cedary aftershave and fabric softener. Vera was reminded of the times she’d borrowed Alexander’s clothing, and the thought made her more glad she hadn’t gone home to sleep all by herself in her own bed.

  “This bed has more controls than a lunar module,” James said, sitting on the wide bed and picking up a gadget from the night table. “It heats, and it changes firmness on each side, and probably makes you breakfast.”

  “You will not figure it out for me at this hour,” Vera said, settling beside him. “What is it with men and equipment?”

  “Not men. It’s me. I can’t resist a machine, a tool, or anything that lights up, beeps, or makes noise.”

  Vera did none of those things, though around her heart, liking for James glowed softly. “I’m too tired to play with the bed, James.”

  “Are you too tired to play on the bed?”

  The glow warmed to fondness. “Idiot. You felt compelled to flirt, didn’t you?”

  James wrapped a purely friendly arm around Vera’s waist, and the moment was perfect, like that shared cup of tea. Like a Bach two-part invention.

  “Habit, probably,” James said. “That reflects poorly on me, not present company.”

  “Not habit,” she said, patting his knee. “Coping mechanism. Go to bed. You can run me home in the morning before the girls wake up, and I’ll get my exercises done first thing. As a gesture of good will on my part—and not to encourage your silliness further—I’ll take the girls starting about mid-morning. You and Mac can sit around in your sweats and belch and scratch like real men all day.”

  While Vera would make cookies, read through the Chopin nocturnes, and call her family.

  “I ought to tell you that won’t be necessary,” James said, setting the bed’s remote control on the nightstand. “I ought to turn you down flat, stand up for the pride of uncles everywhere, but Mac will kiss your feet, and that I have got to see. Then too, I might take one of Trent’s horses out for a trail ride, and even get Mac to go with me.”

  Lucky MacKenzie.

  “Now shoo,” Vera said, getting off the bed. She’d meant it when she’d said she was too tired to play. Though how lovely, to know she could ask for space and have her request respected.

  “I’m shooing,” James said, standing in the space between Vera and the bed. He brushed a hand over Vera’s brow, a grace note of a caress.

  “I owe you, Vera Waltham. Not only for coming along with us tonight.”

  “You don’t owe me. You’ve been my friend too, James.”

  “I am your friend, and you are my friend.” He kissed her cheek and left, closing the door quietly.

  In the kitchen earlier, he’d been wrung out, nearing the end of his emotional rope, and he hadn’t pushed Vera away. How long had it been since she’d felt a purely affectionate impulse toward a grown man?

  Not quite purely affectionate—protective. Vera had felt protective of big-but-not-so-bad James Knightley, and surely when a victim of domestic violence feels protective of a man like James, she’s making progress toward her own recovery.

  Better yet, Vera expected to spend half her night dreaming of James, his smiles, his kisses, and the feel of his callused fingers brushing softly over her brow.

  Progress, indeed.

  * * *

  James had fallen asleep like a farm boy who’d stacked the hay wagons in ninety-five-degree heat when rain threatened. One moment he’d been sorting through what Vera Waltham’s version of friendship meant; the next he’d been dreaming of a man in a top hat playing Chopin.

  He woke the same way, immediately aware of his surroundings, fully cognizant of the developments of the night before.

  As he tended to his morning routine, James silently thanked a benevolent deity for antibiotics and late-night ER staff and friends who came to help when they were asked.

  Could have used some of those friends when he was seventeen.

  And sixteen.

  Vera was puttering in the kitchen when James came downstairs. She wore a bathrobe “Merle” had given James for Christmas a couple of years back—Disney characters, including Tinker Bell. Surely the work of a twisted fraternal mind.

  “Good morning.” Vera smiled at him as she filled the kettle at the sink. “I’m surprised you’re up so early.”

  “Old farm boy habits die hard. You putting enough in there for two?”

  “I am.” She set the kettle on the stove and turned on the burner. Her dark hair hung down her back in a soft mess of curls and waves, and James wanted to touch it so badly he…got out the milk.

  “You slept all right?” he asked.

  “Like a log. You?”

  “Like a tired log. I spy with my hungry eye a batch of pancake batter in here, and some blueberries to throw in it. The maple syrup and the butter are local, organic, and fresh.”

  James wanted to cook for Vera, to share a meal with her.

  “A real breakfast would be a nice change.” Vera unbelted her robe and retightened the sash, giving James a glimpse of his new favorite flannel shirt, shapely calves, feminine knees, and a bit of thigh.

  James set the bowl of batter on the counter and cast about for witty repartee. “Behold, breakfast.”

  He simply wasn’t used to being around a lady in the morning.

  “Should I water the violets?” Vera asked.

  “The violets?” What violets? James’s gaze landed on pots of purple flowers gracing the windowsill above the sink. “That would be a good idea.”

  She filled a glass at the sink. “Because you haven’t done it all week?”

  “Me, personally? No, I haven’t. Hannah left lists, but the violets are Trent’s domain, and his instructions were to listen to Hannah.”

  James tried to keep his cooking racket to a minimum, lest someone, for example some nosy older brother who was worthless in a crisis for once—that made James smile at his pancake batter—come thumping down the stairs and ruin this breakfast tête-à-tête.

  “What kind of tea for you?” Vera asked when she’d finished giving the flowers a drink.

  “With blueberry pancakes? Lemon decaf. I put a squeeze of cactus juice in mine. You’re barefoot.”

  She looked down at her feet as if this oversight had been committed by somebody else. “I’m fine.”

  He and Vera were beyond “I’m fine.” James had seen to that last night, and Vera had come through for him with flying colors.

  “Watch the pancakes, please.” James fetched a pair of his organic wool socks. They were thick enough to keep feet warm in the worst weather and in the least insulated boots. Also big enough to fit a draft horse.

  “Sit,” he said, patting the back of a chair.

  Vera sat, and let him—let him—put the socks on her feet. She had graceful feet, with high arches and the second toe longer than the first. Feminine feet, and James enjoyed handling them just a little too much.

  He enjoyed even more that she let him handle her feet.

  “I think your pancakes are done, James.”

  “And, thank the unicorns, no hordes of little girls to eat them faster than I can cook them,” James said. “You pour us some OJ.
I’ll find the silverware.”

  Had he ever made breakfast with a woman before? As a younger man, he’d occasionally hung around in the morning long enough to grab a cup of coffee, but in recent years, he’d taken to stealing away in the night, or if he lingered until dawn, hitting a drive-through rather than creating awkwardness in the morning.

  Awkwardness for whom?

  Everybody, he decided, dividing the first batch of pancakes between two plates, turning the heat down, and starting a second.

  With Vera, for all she’d taken exception weeks ago to his first attempt to kiss her, he felt the opposite of awkwardness, whatever that was.

  “It’s Friday,” he said, taking the plates to the table. “If the girls are underfoot at your place, do you want to postpone my lesson?”

  Vera put the orange juice back in the fridge, and when she turned to face him, she managed to look very much like his demanding piano teacher, even in thick socks and a Tinker Bell bathrobe.

  “I do not favor skipping lessons, James. If you fail to prepare, you need to suffer the consequences, but in this case, I’ll leave it to you.

  “I’m prepared,” he said, setting out cutlery as quietly as he could. “Mac and I took turns with the girls when they weren’t in school, and I got in my practicing.”

  He’d also cleared out the loafing shed in Hiram Inskip’s pasture, a smelly, gratifyingly physical job that neither Wellington nor Josephine would appreciate, though the heifers had seemed entertained.

  “You haven’t told your family you’re taking lessons, have you?” Vera asked.

  “It hasn’t come up. Shall we sit?”

  She said nothing, which was cause for concern. James adored the female body. Adored it in all its variety and details. The female mind was mysterious to him, though, as he supposed it was to every other male over the age of seven. He held Vera’s chair for her out of habit, and she waited until he sat to put her napkin on her lap.

  Like a date, but not like any date James had been on.

  “Are Trent and Hannah enjoying their time away?” she asked.

  “They’re enjoying each other. Their marital bliss would be nauseating, but they both deserve somebody to appreciate them, and their road hasn’t been easy.”