The First Kiss

by Grace Burrowes

  Vera drizzled maple syrup in a figure-eight pattern over her pancakes.

  “Alexander suggested we squeeze in a honeymoon, but I suspect he was looking for another excuse to see and be seen so soon after the wedding.”

  Alas, not such a saint after all. “What about Donal?” James tucked into his pancakes, rather than revisit the topic of his piano lessons.

  “No honeymoon,” Vera said. “It wasn’t that kind of marriage. We had children to keep an eye on, and we were due for a tour that would include Honolulu. Donal gave us an extra two days on the island to remark our marriage.”

  “That’s not a honeymoon.”

  “It was a nice break, even so. Have you ever been to Hawaii?”

  They navigated a conversation around various personal sensitivities and land mines, while James enjoyed watching Vera devour something he’d prepared for her. She wasn’t a picky eater and wasn’t shy about the butter and syrup, either.

  How many women had he bought dinner for, only to have them excuse themselves immediately after, leaving James to wonder if there were any single women left who didn’t have eating disorders?

  “You’re a very good cook,” Vera said, taking the last swallow of her orange juice. “Kitchen skills seem to go with musical ability.”

  James poured half his remaining orange juice into her glass. “Cooking and music go together?”

  “And a talent for algebra. That makes no sense to me, but ask around, and you’ll find a pattern.”

  “I do believe you’ve admitted I have some musical talent,” James said, taking their dishes to the sink. Could the morning be any cheerier?

  “I’ll do those.”

  “No, you won’t. You’re a guest.” Who begrudged James even a sidewise compliment, silly woman.

  “I’m an uninvited guest and enough of a mom to need to pick up after myself, and I haven’t made up my mind about your musical ability.”

  “You’ll dump me if I’m without talent?” Vera’s answer mattered to James more than his casual tone implied, though if she dumped him as a student, she wouldn’t dump him as a friend.

  James knew that now. Maybe Vera knew it too.

  “Everybody has some talent,” Vera said, putting the milk away, “even if it’s only the ability to tap their toe in time with the rhythm. You have plenty of intellectual sense for the music, you understand what’s going on with the notes, and you render them accurately on the keyboard.”

  She took a towel as James passed her a washed plate and half his masculine ego.

  “Now comes the bad news,” he murmured.

  “Many, many people would kill for as much ability as you’ve shown so far, James. Don’t be greedy.”

  “You’re greedy,” he said, resisting the urge to touch her hand when he passed over the second clean plate. “With your music, you’re a shameless, plundering pirate. You want everything it has to give. You give it all you’ve got.”

  “I do, don’t I?” Vera preened at her reflection in the clean plate. “I’m a pirate. Maybe even a pirate princess.” She put the dry plate up on the shelf. “You’re a lawyer.”

  And a CPA. Also a mucker of cow sheds. “A lawyer is a bad thing?”

  “You hide in the notes, James Knightley, you don’t surrender to the music.”

  “Maybe I don’t like being taken prisoner.” This conversation wasn’t going to James’s liking either. He passed Vera another plate, this time letting their hands brush.

  He liked that just fine.

  “Surrendering to the music isn’t being taken prisoner,” Vera said. “It’s being set free. When did you become so domestic? Doing dishes doesn’t fit with my image of you.”

  What was her image of him? Lawyer and CPA? Was that his image of himself?

  “I was the last son at home on the farm for about five years,” James said, “and that meant a lot of domestic chores. Then too, I like good food, so I had to learn to cook.”

  “Mac mentioned something about your years at home last night.”

  James mentally made a date to take his nieces bathrobe shopping for Uncle Mac. “Mac talks too much.”

  Except Mac never talked too much, not to anybody, and most especially not to women. A suspicion formed in James’s mind about why Mac had developed a sudden penchant for loquacity, one James would explore with his brother when they had a grassy surface to wrestle on, and a referee who could be trusted to call the fight a draw before James disgraced Mac too badly.

  “Mac loves you,” Vera said, taking a glass from James’s hand because he was not fool enough to put it directly in the drain rack.

  “I love Mac too, but that doesn’t excuse him from gossiping. I could tell you stories about him that would put his entire personal fortune at your disposal, but because he’s already going to kiss your feet before witnesses, I will exercise my vast stores of fraternal discretion.”

  For now.

  “We never did decide what to do about your piano lesson.”

  “I’ll come to your house,” James said. “The girls won’t mind, will they?”

  “Twyla hasn’t had company over of her own since we moved to that house,” Vera said. “She’ll be in transports.”

  Doing dishes with Vera before the sun was even truly over the horizon, James was in a few transports of his own.

  * * *

  “You can go back to bed,” Katie MacKay told her brother. “Dad was out later last night than you were, and he won’t be down for hours.”

  Darren dug the heels of his hands into his eyes and cracked his neck. Though he wore sweats and an undershirt, Katie could see he was beginning to fill out, starting to lose his adolescent gauntness, or maybe it was the divorces that had honed him down. Katie’s friends thought Darren was hot.

  Katie thought he was lucky to be leaving for college in the fall.

  “How do you know when I got in?” he asked.

  “You forgot to turn off your headlights when you pulled up the driveway.” She put water on to boil, because Darren did not wake up without liberal doses of joe. “I’m told pot affects memory and sperm count first.”

  “Shut up.” Darren bopped Katie on the shoulder, though his tone was affectionate. “Do I have any clean clothes?”

  “In the dryer. You want some coffee?”

  “Yeah.” He disappeared into the laundry room, leaving Katie to fix his coffee. Being lady of the house at age fifteen was sort of cool—she did the housework, she and Darren did the shopping, she did what cooking her father and brother expected, and she was proud of her efforts.

  Most of the time. Then there were times like last night, an increasingly frequent occasion of being left home alone. Donal had wanted a McMansion this time around, and so the house sat in lonely splendor in the middle of a five-acre parcel. Katie would not have felt safe walking to a friend’s house after dark.

  She didn’t quite feel safe in her own home that late at night, but what could she do about that? Call her mother and hope Mom wasn’t at a support group meeting?

  Or passed out?

  Katie could call Vera, but that seemed disloyal, and the last thing Katie wanted to do was piss anybody off—again.

  “You eat all the muffins?” Darren asked, emerging from the laundry room. He’d bothered to put on socks and carried off a rumpled sort of cool.

  “I made more. Butter’s on the table.”

  “What do you suppose Donal’s doing out past his curfew?” Darren asked.

  “He says he’s doing the concerts and recitals in DC and Baltimore, looking for fresh talent.”

  “You don’t believe him?”

  “Check the odometer,” Katie said, measuring out fresh grounds. “Last time I looked, you had to go more than thirty miles round-trip to get to either city from here.”

  “My, my, my.” Darren salute
d with his muffin. “Quite the little sneak you are.”

  Katie resealed the bag of muffins, though Darren would probably eat half the batch before he went back up to bed.

  “You’re the one who taught me to do that when we were still living with Mom,” she said.

  “Maybe we have two parents with drinking problems,” Darren mused around a mouthful of blueberry muffin. “Could be worse. Vera might turn lush on us.”

  “That isn’t funny,” Katie said, pouring the boiling water over the coffee grounds. “Why you insist on being so friendly with her is beyond me. She was our stepmother for less than two years.”

  “We’ve known her since we were little, Katie, and she’s not a bad person. You feel guilty because Dad lost his temper with her over your sneaking out.”

  Katie felt horrible about that and had never apologized to Vera for it.

  So Katie smacked Darren on the back of the head. “Who told me everybody sneaks out when they turn thirteen, and I must be some sort of dweeb, actually sleeping all night in my own bed?”

  Darren opened the bag of muffins and took out the last three.

  “They don’t sneak out with nineteen-year-olds, Katie-did.”

  Katie took one of his muffins. “Who introduced me to him?”

  “He’s not my friend now, is he? Where are the rest of the muffins?”

  She got the basket out of the breadbox—where else would it be?—and passed it to him. “What do you think Dad is doing when he’s gone five nights a week?”

  “Only five? Old age must be slowing him down. Maybe he’s visiting Vera.”

  No, he wasn’t. Of that, Katie was certain. “He’ll get put in jail if he’s caught.”

  Darren dabbed liberal amounts of butter on a muffin. “Not for long. The restraining order runs out soon. They can be as cozy as they want after that.”

  His words were spoken with the casual disregard of a hungry young man intent on his breakfast, but Katie sensed unease beneath them.

  “Mom said Vera didn’t deserve what she got from Donal,” Katie said as Darren demolished yet another muffin and about a quarter of a stick of butter.

  “Mom’s too nice for her own good, drunk or sober. These are not bad,” he said, gesturing with his muffin and leaving crumbs on the floor. “What are you doing for fun today, Katie-did?”

  Cleaning up after my brother. “Thought I’d vacuum the whole house, maybe make some soda bread, get all my homework out of the way, and look for your stash when you nod off around lunchtime.”

  “You won’t find it. I’m not that stupid.”

  Katie had already found it. “Yeah, but if you weren’t doped up so much of the time, we might have something left to eat when I get an honest case of the munchies.”

  “Keep your voice down, or Donal will hear you, and he’ll be as pissed at you for not telling him as he will be at me for spending my own money the way I please.”

  Some of his own money. Katie knew Donal took a portion of Darren’s wages too, saying he was saving it toward Darren’s college tuition, but Katie had her doubts. Without Vera to represent, Donal’s income was in the toilet.

  “What will you do with the day?” she asked.

  “Same thing I do every day,” Darren said, getting down a coffee mug. “Avoid Dad, cruise, coast, loaf, score.” He winked.

  Katie stuck her tongue out at him. “While you get straight A’s. It isn’t fair.” Though the only thing he was scoring was pot. Katie knew that much.

  “Yeah, but I got saddled with you for a sister, so things balance out.”

  The hell of it was, Katie would miss Darren when he went off to college. “What did I ever do to deserve you for a brother?”

  “I don’t know, but at least you have one family member who gets up in the morning, most days.”

  Darren sauntered out with his coffee, probably going upstairs to roll himself another joint. He kept his stash in his own room, between the mattresses with his dirty magazines, which was hardly original. Katie had friends whose brothers hid drugs in their sisters’ rooms.

  And Darren did get up most mornings.

  Vera got up every morning though. Katie had liked that about her. Vera got up, made sure the kids were decently fed, clothed, and off to school, and then she started practicing. With Vera as a stepmom, it had been a very different less-than-two years, and Katie’s grades had never been better.

  She finished her coffee, put away the butter and the muffins, wiped off the table, made sure the pot was on simmer, and got out the vacuum.

  Chapter 11

  James’s SUV was warm when Vera climbed in, her side’s seat heater already toasty.

  “Spring is just around the corner,” James said as she buckled up. “You can feel winter losing its grip almost by the day. Days are getting longer. Birds are coming back. Ground’s getting soft where the sun can get to it. This is one of my favorite times of year.”

  “You miss the farm, don’t you?” Vera asked

  “I go by the farm every day, most days twice.”

  Maybe James was glad to be free of it?

  “I didn’t realize the property was this close,” Vera said.

  James was relaxed behind the wheel, making even driving an exercise in effortless competence.

  “I wish the farm weren’t quite so near,” he said. “The property has been sold twice since we put it on the market, and my guess is whoever has their hands on it now is trying to hold on until development picks up again out this way. You warm enough?”

  “Warm and full of delicious pancakes.” Vera let James turn the subject to what the girls might find to do, and what he and Mac would do with their Uncles’ Day Off.

  “Mac will go into the office, and I will get ready for my piano lesson.”

  “You can’t cram, James. It doesn’t work like that.”

  “I’m not cramming. I’ll read Chopin’s nocturnes so I won’t have to suffer through them for the next few weeks, or maybe those Bach fugues. They’re nice and complicated.”

  The fugues were also highly technical, all the passion in them going into their structure. Now that Vera had seen what emotion James was capable of—what caring—she was more bothered that he was so reserved with his music.

  “Want to listen to something?” James asked.

  “Something of mine?”

  “You choose.” He gestured to a CD case between the passenger’s and driver’s seats. She flipped through them, pausing at a recording by Ashkenazy of the Chopin nocturnes and ballades.

  She passed over that one without comment—a recent purchase, no doubt—and chose The Academy of St. Martin in the Fields orchestra performing Vivaldi. Cheerful, energetic, and beautifully nuanced, it made for a good start to the day.

  They rode along without conversation for a few minutes until James spoke again.

  “That used to be our property,” he said, nodding toward the right. “You can see the neglect. Nobody has graded the lane lately, the fences are getting tentative, the winter wheat went in late, and I haven’t seen any lime on the pastures in forever.”

  Set back from the road about a quarter of a mile, the farmstead itself looked picturesque and serene. The house was a big gray fieldstone structure that might have been called a mansion in the proper setting. A few hundred feet from the house sat a stone bank barn with a tin roof, and a few scattered outbuildings, some also made of stone. The occasional stately oak punctuated a post-card pretty scene, even at the end of winter.

  “What kind of cows are those?” Vera asked. They were stocky with a unique red-and-black brindle coat pattern.

  “Limousine. A bit of a boutique breed for this region, but they’re handsome.”

  The farm passed from sight, though Vera would study it every time she drove by.

  “The property is still salvageable,” James s
aid, “but the day that barn comes down so somebody can put up a damned subdivision, I don’t know what I’ll do.”

  “Maybe you’ll play Chopin then.” Why would James mourn the barn more than the house where he grew up? Vera was still pondering that question when he turned up her lane.

  “Putting up a gate here would be easy, Vera. Your property would be a lot less accessible then, and a trespasser would have to park in plain sight on the road a mile from the house.”

  “The restraining order runs out soon, James. Whom would I be trying to keep out?”

  “Donal,” James said as the SUV bumped along her lane. “You can put him behind bars or get an extension on the restraining order if he threatens you in any way, and trespassing on posted, gated land is threatening. You prove that, and you can reactivate the assault charges.”

  More lawyering, which hadn’t resolved anything where Donal was concerned. Where anything of importance was concerned.

  “I have to deal with Donal sooner or later, and we can’t prove he violated the order.”

  James parked right in front of the garage, set the brake hard, and came around to open Vera’s door. She liked that he’d let the argument drop, and liked more that he had such an automatic grasp of old-fashioned manners. Alex had been capable of gallant manners, but within six months of the wedding, he’d put them on and taken them off, depending on mood and situation.

  Or the presence of the press.

  “I could do with another cup of tea,” James said. “Or maybe even a brownie chaser, not that I’m shamelessly begging for a few more minutes of adult companionship free of the thunder of little feet, mind you.”

  He gave her one of his charming, crooked smiles, and Vera was about to admit that she was susceptible to the same temptation, when her gaze fell on light glinting off the walkway at the side of the house.

  “What’s that?” She was already moving when James’s fingers wrapped around her wrist.

  “Slow down.” He fell in step beside her, but Vera was still pulling him along when her mind figured out what her eyes had been trying to tell her: both windows on the side wall of the garage had been shattered.