The First Kiss

by Grace Burrowes

  No, it would not.

  She gave up on her music, went upstairs, and packed what few belongings she and Twy had brought over to James’s house. They’d been happy here, Twy especially, and James had seemed happy to have the company too.

  Vera wanted to make a gesture of thanks, and racked her brain for what would be personal, but not too presumptuous. James had all her CDs; his house was tidy; she’d put some meals in his freezer.

  The cookie recipe!

  Twy had passed along a brownie recipe, but never completed the one for the raccoon droppings.

  Vera beelined for the study, thinking to find pencil and paper. Sure enough, James had a neat stack of scrap paper on one side of his computer. Each page had printing on one side—legalese, it looked like—and the back side was blank.

  Vera took a few sheets and brought them to the kitchen table as James came in the back door.

  “Mission accomplished,” he said, smiling. “We even managed to retrieve that blasted social studies book well in advance of the first bell.”

  “I’m writing you a recipe,” Vera said, sitting down. “Not that I’ll leave your cookie tin empty, but I want you to have it.” Her cookie tin, but she wanted to give James something of her own—besides her heart.”

  “Anything ready for me to haul out to the car?”

  “In the hallway, but take your time.” Vera chewed the pencil’s eraser, trying to recall a recipe she’d made by heart for years. She turned the paper over and perused the printout on the back side while she thought.

  A list of…phone numbers? Every name on the list was female.

  Every single one, and there were dozens, and beside each name, a few words: reverse cowgirl, G.O.T., silk necktie…

  “James?”

  “Sweetheart?” He stood in the doorway, Vera’s overnight case in his hand.

  “What is this?”

  Chapter 16

  Vera wore a peculiar expression. That expression made James’s insides slide around, though he could not have said why.

  “What’s what?” he asked, setting down her overnight case.

  “What’s this list? I found it in the scrap-paper pile beside your computer.”

  Without even looking, James guessed what was on the page and felt his life—his entire, stupid life—grinding to a halt.

  “It’s a list.” The Chopin Funeral March started in his head.

  “I can see that. What sort of list?”

  “A scrap-paper sort of list. You ready to go yet?”

  Vera wasn’t buying it, and any prevaricating would just dig him a deeper, colder hole.

  “What sort of scrap-paper list?”

  “It’s old business, Vera, over and done. I don’t use that list anymore, and I never really did. Can we drop it?”

  She stood and backed away from the table, as if that single sheet of paper carried a deadly toxin.

  “You kept a list, a long, detailed list, but you never used it. What’s reverse cowgirl?”

  Oh, God. “A position, an intimate position.”

  “G.O.T.?”

  James wanted to lie, to prevaricate, to disappear. “Girl on top.”

  Vera crossed her arms. “Silk necktie, I suppose that speaks for itself. What would you put beside my name, James?”

  Wife. What he wanted to put beside her name was his own, but he was increasingly doubtful he could make that happen, and all over a stupid, stupid, stupid piece of paper.

  “I threw the list out because I won’t use it ever again, Vera. I have no former spouses, I’m not raising a child, I’m not dragging around the dregs of a nasty divorce or a failed restraining order, but I also wasn’t born yesterday. That list is part of my past, but I’m standing here still hoping you’re my future.”

  He’d beg if that would help—but it wouldn’t. Vera was three for three in the guys-who’d-let-her-down department. She clearly intended to maintain her streak.

  “You kept a list of their favorite positions and their favorite games.” She bent over the table and began counting names, until James snatched the paper away from her, balled it up, and fired it at the wastebasket.

  “You’re hurt because you think this reduces what I feel for you to a name on a list or some bedroom toy, but, Vera, it isn’t like that.”

  “It’s never like that, is it?” She stared out the window at Inskip’s heifers, who were for once behind their assigned fences. “Take me home, James.”

  “Vera, I was the toy. Me. James. I was the one they called when they needed a pity night or a flirt or a wingman to flaunt before their exes. I don’t take their calls anymore. They’ve stopped calling, in fact.”

  He was desperate to make her understand, but this was Vera. Her own confidence was none too sturdy, and all his protestations were having the wrong effect.

  “Take me home now, James, or so help me, I will call your brothers to come fetch me, and they will ask questions, which I will be happy to answer.”

  Old hurt, from dealing with a grieving, unreasonable woman and having no idea how to get through to her, made James desperate.

  “Vera, will you at least listen?”

  “I am listening, James, and what I’m hearing is that you pick up wounded birds and get off on fixing their broken wings. I’m not a bird, and I’m not wounded in any way your magic wand can fix. Take. Me. Home.”

  “For God’s sake, Vera, I’m the damned wounded bird.” He picked up her satchel and Twyla’s smaller bag and made for his car. They drove the short distance in silence, and when they got out at her house, James felt ten times a fool.

  “I suppose you and Twy planted these?” Vera’s tone gave nothing away as she stood gazing at the flowers bordering her front walk, her porch, and the beds around the front of the house.

  “Pansies are hardy as hell,” James said. “They can take frost and even snow. My—my mother always had them out in buckets well before April Fool’s Day.”

  Which had apparently come early this year, in colors of blue, yellow, white, orange, purple, brown, and even peach.

  “You had to have bought out the store, James.” Was there a question in Vera’s eyes?

  “This is your home. I wanted you to feel happy to be here. I’ll put your bags inside.”

  Vera spent a few minutes wandering among the flowers, and James used the time to check each room of the house. The alarm system was installed, and the stickers were up on the windows to let all potential intruders know it.

  Assuming the intruders were literate and could read in the dark.

  “I’ve been through the house,” James said when he joined Vera in the kitchen. “The place is secure, and you’re the only one here besides me.”

  “My thanks.”

  Vera Waltham’s chilly side was close to absolute zero, but James was damned if he’d let her freeze him out entirely.

  “Are we back where we started, Vera? With me trespassing and you kicking me out?” He didn’t want to see her impassive expression, so he stood at the kitchen window and started counting the idiot pansies in the bed outside. He knew how many he’d planted, because he had indeed bought out the store’s entire inventory.

  Pansies. How appropriate was that?

  Vera took the place beside him.

  “I like you, James, and yet I hate that list. I hate knowing that about you.”

  “I’m not too proud of it myself.” He was ashamed, in fact. The admission cost him. Men were supposed to thrive on notching their bedposts, swinging their mighty swords with reckless abandon, but in reality—

  He’d let himself be a notch on far too many bedposts.

  Vera said nothing for a long moment, until James was mentally squirming and fighting back useless declarations. If he opened his mouth now, he’d plead, and that was too pathetic to be borne.

 
“I need to think about this, James. We’re adults, we each have pasts, but those pasts have made us who we are. I might not be so upset if you’d told me about this yourself.”

  Well, of course. Let her think she would have responded more reasonably when he casually dropped the list on her over their one real lunch date. When, between the salads and the entrées, he’d confessed to being a well-dressed, well-educated tramp.

  “Shall I stop by after work tonight?” He managed that question in a level tone.

  “I think not. Let me and Twy get back to the routine here, and then maybe…we’ll see.”

  “My lesson on Friday?” That was begging, of course. Shameless begging.

  “I don’t know.”

  He told himself an I-don’t-know was worlds better than a damn-you-get-off-my-property, but it didn’t feel much better.

  “I will answer any question you ask, Vera. I didn’t bring up the details of my past because they didn’t seem relevant to what’s growing between us.”

  “You’d say that, no matter how or when I found your list.”

  In other words, she had listened as much as she could for one day, and though a prudent man would understand all hope was lost, James was not given to prudence where Vera was concerned.

  “Call me if you need anything, Vera. Anything at all, at any hour.”

  “Call you?” She shook her head. But when James bent his head to kiss her cheek, she turned her face so their mouths met.

  That kiss gave him hope. As kisses went, it was a detail, one more kiss in a long string of kisses. Maybe the kiss should have meant farewell, or it should have meant nothing.

  To James, it meant the world.

  * * *

  Vera made herself walk through every room of the house, unpack her clothes, and sit down at the piano to work through her finger exercises before Twyla came home. While one part of her mind attended to her practicing, another part circled around questions without any answers.

  Why had James kept that list? Or had he truly tossed it out, left it in his pile of scrap paper because it honestly held no more meaning for him?

  Did all men keep such a list, or were they more like Alexander, freelance philanderers?

  Why had James left that list in a place Vera might find it? Or had the list simply slipped his mind, because James could not have foreseen that she and Twyla would be his house guests?

  Why was he so inordinately prone to embracing his new sister-in-law? Family histories revolved endlessly around tales of a woman who married the wrong brother.

  Who was Grace’s father?

  Vera tortured herself for an entire two-hour practice session, then turned to her repertoire and tortured herself some more.

  How could a man make love the way James had made love with her, when he was emotionally entangled with other women, possibly with his own brother’s wife?

  Or was that the reason James was in such demand—because he was that good in bed? A virtuoso, capable of creating in every woman he was with the fiction that he loved her.

  What on earth did it mean that James himself was the wounded bird?

  Vera stewed and fretted and fussed, thrashing through questions and music and more questions until Twyla came banging in the door.

  “You weren’t at the bottom of the lane,” Twyla said, looking puzzled. “I like the gate, though.”

  “I’m sorry.” Guilt punched through Vera’s preoccupations and questions. “I lost track of the time, and I should have been there.”

  “You don’t have to be. I don’t like the walk so much when it’s pouring, but I’m not little anymore. I can ramble up the lane by myself.”

  Ramble. James’s word.

  “I put your things on your bed,” Vera said. “I forgot the cookie tin at James’s though, so we’ll have to make do without until I can replace it.”

  “I’ll call James, and he can bring it over.” A grin split Twyla’s face as she turned toward the kitchen.

  Vera rose from the piano bench and trotted after her. “That might not be such a good idea, Twy.”

  The child paused in the middle of dialing James’s number. “Why not?”

  “He might think we left the cookies for him, as a thank-you.” James might not be gracious when he returned the tin, and Vera did not trust herself to handle that well.

  Not yet.

  Twyla put the phone down. “Should I send him a thank-you note?”

  “That would be polite. And thank you very much for all the pansies. They really make the property look brighter.”

  “James said they’d cheer the house up, but he was being silly. Did you make brownies yet?”

  “Not yet.” More guilt, or preoccupation. “Why don’t you start a batch? I’ll put my music away and then join you.”

  “Deal.” Twyla whisked up the steps two at a time.

  How long would Vera be haunted by James Knightley? Being stalked by Donal was bad, but in some ways, the lingering questions between her and James were worse.

  * * *

  “First you’re not dating,” Mac said, “now the secretaries are complaining that you’re not even flirting. What’s wrong?”

  James looked up from the real estate ads marching down his computer screen when he ought to be…doing some damned piece of legal bullshit.

  “I don’t recall inviting you into my confessional, MacKenzie. How about you go make us some money off a crime wave somewhere?”

  Though the only crime wave James cared about was happening on Vera’s property.

  “For shame, maligning defendant’s rights.” Mac perched a hip on James’s desk, making the wood creak and James’s sense of irritation spike. “Hannah mentioned that she hasn’t caught you practicing your putts. The golf courses will be open in less than a month, James.”

  “Hannah’s concerned about my game?”

  James really, truly wanted his brother to leave him the hell alone, but Mac was more perceptive than he let on, and he meant well—usually.

  Mac picked up a commercial law periodical and flipped through the pages. “The home place is for sale again.”

  Casual as a stampeding herd of heifers, that observation. “I know, MacKenzie.”

  “You want to buy it?”

  “Why would I buy it? I spent five years trying to farm that place when I was little more than a child, and my memories of it leave something to be desired.”

  Mac eyed the door, which was…closed.

  Crap.

  “I always have the sense you haven’t put all your cards on the table, James. Mom took to tippling, but Southern ladies will do that, discreetly of course. Why can’t you just be relieved she didn’t start hanging out on hookup websites, or going on clothing-optional cruises?”

  An image of James’s mother assailed him. “For God’s sake, Mac, leave it alone.”

  “The anniversary of her death is next week,” Mac said, putting the magazine down. “It’s been more than a decade, James. When will you let her rest in peace?”

  “Shut your mouth, MacKenzie. If you want to go best out of three falls, I’m game. I can afford to replace whatever furniture we damage.”

  “But I cannot afford to replace you,” Mac said softly, “and every year, I feel a little more like I’m losing my brother. Oh, I have a crack-shot law partner to show for it, but law partners are thick on the ground compared to the number of people I love. Now what in the goddamn hopeless hell is it going to take to get through to you?”

  James rose, had to move, had to move away from his brother before he decked the guy. “Vera found my phone list.”

  Mac waved a hand in circles. “The list with all the…”

  “Yeah, that list. I’ve deleted it from every place I recall storing it, but I kept hard-copy backups. I thought I’d shredded all of those, but one lurked i
n the scrap-paper pile at home. She was writing down a damned cookie recipe for me… Crap and half. Why am I telling you this?”

  Mac stayed planted on the corner of James’s desk when any other man would have sauntered out the door.

  “You’re telling me this because you’re going nuts, stewing in your own juices. Can you fix this?”

  James didn’t need to turn to see the rare light of sympathy in Mac’s eyes. He could hear it in his brother’s voice.

  “I don’t know, Mac. Mom taught me something.”

  “She taught us all a lot of things.”

  “She taught me you can’t make a woman care, not about you, not about living, not about her own land, not about anything.”

  “Harsh, James.” Now Mac got his ass off the desk and came to stand beside James at the window. “Mom didn’t want to contract ovarian cancer.”

  “And she didn’t accept a single experimental protocol they offered her, either, did she? Didn’t even consider them for twenty-four hours.”

  “Ovarian cancer is bad, James.”

  James’s mother had not died of ovarian cancer, she’d died of a broken heart. To be the only Knightley brother who understood that had abruptly become too great a burden.

  “MacKenzie, do you know what it’s like to be fifteen years old, having to give your mother a bath because she’s passed out in her own vomit again? Gotten it in her hair, her clothes, left broken glass all over the kitchen floor?”

  “So she had a bad moment.” Mac dropped like a boulder onto James’s couch, and he was repeatedly scrubbing his hand over his face. “Losing someone you love is hard.”

  “After a few years, that happened more nights than not, Mac, and as for losing someone you love, we all lost Dad, then I lost you, Trent, and the mother I grew up with.” James said it quietly, gently almost, but he could not keep the words behind his teeth. “Mom would have no recollection the next day—I hope she had no recollection—and yet she’d get into the car and go buy herself more liquor, no matter how often I destroyed her stash. I had to go to school—just to get away from her. I had to go to school—but I hated leaving her alone.”

  Mac was staring straight ahead, as if by visually ignoring James, he could make the words less true.