by Gina Wilkins
Speaking of Natalie…
He glanced toward the cabin doors. She’d been holed up in there all day, barely even looking out to check on the progress of the work on the deck. Buddy had been in there with her most of the time, coming out only to relieve himself and spend a few minutes being petted before heading back inside. Almost as if the dog thought Natalie needed him in there.
Casey sighed somewhat wistfully, wondering if he had made a tactical error in telling Natalie about himself. He had thought she deserved to know the truth about him, and he’d hoped the information would encourage her to open up to him. Instead, she had reverted to a distant acquaintance, making small talk with him, even working alongside him without any semblance of intimacy between them. There hadn’t even been a goodnight kiss since he’d told her he was an attorney back in Dallas. And she still hadn’t told him the identity of her visitor yesterday morning.
She finally appeared late that afternoon. She’d let Buddy out and she wandered out behind him, studying the spa while Buddy trotted down the steps and into the yard. “It looks nice,” she said, walking slowly around the tub. “I’m sure this will be a popular feature.”
“That’s the hope.” A little sweaty from the hard work he’d done that day, he pushed a hand through his hair. “We filled it and added the chemicals, so it will be ready to use tomorrow. Kyle said you should definitely try it out and let him know how you like it.”
“Where is Kyle?”
“He got a call from one of the other rentals. Apparently someone’s toddler flushed a toy down the toilet and now they have a plumbing crisis.”
Natalie grimaced. “That can’t be fun.”
“No. Part of the job of being a property manager, though.”
She put her hands into the pockets of the jacket she wore over her sweater and jeans. “It’s getting chilly.”
“Yeah. The forecasters are predicting rain later tonight.”
“Yes, I heard.”
They were actually talking about the weather. And wasn’t that depressing?
He moved closer to her, looking down into her face. The urge to kiss her was so strong that it was all he could do to keep any distance between them. His voice was husky when he said, “Natalie—”
She gazed up at him, her lips parting just a little.
He cupped her face in his hands. “I wish you would—”
“Casey? Hey, Case, you here?”
The call from the other side of the cabin made him drop his hands with a frown. “That’s weird. That sounded like—”
Craning her neck, Natalie asked, “Like who?”
Casey released a little sigh as two tall, dark-haired men rounded the side of the cabin, calling his name. “Like my cousin Aaron,” he said. “Looks like you’re about to meet the rest of the terrible trio.”
Despite their identical faces, friends and family could instantly tell the Walker twins apart, something they had achieved deliberately. Andrew wore his almost-black hair very short, almost military in style. He favored dark clothing, grays and blacks and dark denim, and black boots. Aaron had allowed his hair to grow longer, so that it waved slightly around his face and on the back of his neck. He dressed more casually than his twin, choosing brighter colors and trendier styles.
Casey had heard some girls insist that Aaron was the better- looking twin, even though there was no discernable difference in their facial structure, only their personal styles.
“What the hell are you two doing here?” he demanded, staring at them with narrowed eyes.
“We came to bring you home,” Aaron answered cheerily. “We decided you’ve played handyman long enough. We also figured that Kyle would thank us for preventing you from doing any real damage.”
“Kyle told us where to find you,” Andrew added, glancing from Casey to Natalie and back. “He said you had kind of a mess here from installing the spa and that you could probably use some help cleaning up.”
“Looks like you’ve got most of it under control,” Aaron said, glancing around. “The spa looks great.”
Remembering his manners, Casey moved forward. “Guys, this is Natalie Lofton. Natalie, my cousins, Aaron and Andrew Walker.”
He pointed to each of them as he said the names. He could tell by the way she looked at each of the twins that she was noting their differences and would remember. “It’s very nice to meet you both,” she said.
Andrew nodded. “Good to meet you, too.”
“Pleasure to make your acquaintance,” Aaron said, speaking over his brother.
Both of them studied her rather closely, and Casey suspected they were making her feel a bit like a zoo exhibit. She cleared her throat and said, “I need to get back to my laundry. Can I get any of you anything?”
They all assured her that they were fine. Excusing herself with a pleasant, if somewhat distant smile, she went inside, leaving Casey with his cousins. Buddy stayed outside, moving between Andrew and Aaron to be petted by them.
Casey waited until the door had closed behind Natalie before he spoke. “Seriously?” he demanded. “You’ve really come here to nag me about going back to Dallas? Don’t you two have lives of your own?”
“Before you start chewing on us, you might ask yourself if you’d rather your mother had come instead,” Andrew said evenly.
“My mother?”
Looking up from scratching Buddy’s ears, Aaron nodded. “She was threatening. Your dad keeps telling her you’re fine, but Aunt Lauren is convinced you’re having some sort of breakdown and you need help. When Andrew and I volunteered to come in her place, she agreed to stay behind.”
“Oh.” Suddenly it didn’t seem so bad to have his cousins there. “Well…thanks, I guess. But really, I’m okay.”
“Looked like you’re more than okay to me,” Aaron murmured, glancing at the door through which Natalie had disappeared. “She’s pretty.”
“Listen, it’s almost dark. If you guys really came up here to help, grab some of this stuff and throw it in the back of my truck. I’m sticking the extra pieces of wood in this box, and then I’ve got to sweep up.”
The twins exchanged a look. “You actually want us to work?” Aaron asked.
Casey punched his cousin’s arm. “Pick up the toolbox.”
“Ow.” But Aaron sighed and picked up the toolbox while Andrew started throwing wood into the box of scraps.
Natalie had known who the twins were the minute they’d rounded the corner of the cabin looking for Casey. She had seen from Casey’s expression that he hadn’t been expecting them. Remembering Aaron’s announcement that they were here to bring Casey home, she sighed, figuring her time with Casey was coming to an end. Which had been inevitable from the start, she reminded herself…but it still felt too soon.Mentally replaying her first sight of the twins, she shook her head in bemusement. With their almost black hair and equally dark eyes, they were striking in both their similarities and their stunning good looks. Casey was a very good-looking man, but those two were freaking gorgeous. The fact that she still found Casey the more appealing of the three was an indication of how mesmerized she was by him. And maybe how badly she was going to miss him after he left.
She didn’t want to think about that right now.
Though she’d used it as an excuse to escape the curious looks from Casey’s cousins, she really had been doing laundry that afternoon. She had left a load of jeans in the aging dryer and since she no longer heard the machine running, she assumed the timer had buzzed while she was outside with Casey. She opened the door, only to be met by the sight of a mound of wet jeans.
Sighing in exasperation, she decided she must have forgotten to turn on the machine, though she would have sworn she remembered doing so. Closing the door again, she set the timer and pushed the start button. The dryer made a humming noise, but without the rhythmic thumping that would indicate that the drum was turning.
“Well, darn,” she muttered.
She glanced toward the back door and sighe
d again. She would have to tell Casey about the problem. Whether he could fix it was another question.
She opened the door to find Andrew sweeping up the last of the sawdust from the deck. “Um—where’s Casey?” she asked.
Leaning casually on the broom, Andrew replied, “He and Aaron carried some stuff to the truck. He should be—oh, here he is.”
With Buddy right at his heels, Casey rounded the side of the house and started up the steps to the deck. “Are you looking for me?” he asked Natalie.
“Yes. I—Something’s wrong with the clothes dryer. The drum isn’t turning.”
“Yeah? Okay, I’ll come in and look at it.”
Aaron laughed. “You think looking at it is going to make it work again? What do you know about fixing a clothes dryer?”
Casey lifted his chin and replied with aggrieved dignity, “There’s a chance I can figure out what’s wrong with it.”
“A very slim chance,” Aaron murmured.
Andrew stepped in before his cousin and brother could exchange any further barbs. “Actually, I helped dad work on mom’s dryer once. Maybe I can help you figure it out.”
Casey nodded. “Yeah, okay. Thanks for the offer.”
“I’ll help, too,” Aaron said, following them toward the open doorway where Natalie still stood.
“Oh, yeah, I’m sure you’ll be tons of help,” Casey drawled sarcastically, as Natalie backed up to let the men in.
“I’ll provide comic relief,” Aaron quipped, winking at Natalie. “Although I imagine watching you guys pretending to be handymen will be funny enough.”
Natalie couldn’t help but return his smile. It was hard not to respond to Aaron’s irrepressible charisma. Casey shot her a look over his shoulder that she couldn’t quite interpret. Surely he wasn’t checking out her response to his cousin’s apparently habitual flirting?
She took her wet jeans out of the dryer, piling them into a plastic basket. And then she and Buddy moved into the living room while Casey and the twins tore into the dryer. To give herself something to do, she checked her e-mail—what little there was of it. She had heard nothing more from Beecham since he’d left yesterday, so she had no idea if he was making any more headway on her case. She suspected he had not.
An interesting cacophony of sounds came from the laundry room. Thumps, squeaks, creaks, hammering. Curses—from Casey—and laughter—mostly Aaron’s—interspersed with calm instructions—Andrew’s. After perhaps half an hour, all three came out in the living room, grinning like warriors who had just won a skirmish.
Lifting an eyebrow in Casey’s direction, she asked, “You fixed it?”
“Yep.”
Andrew cleared his throat rather loudly.
“Okay, we fixed it,” Casey confessed. “But I could have managed that one on my own,” he added in Andrew’s direction. “Anyone could have seen that the belt had just slipped off the drum.”
“I expected to find that the belt had broken,” Andrew said. “That’s what happens more commonly. It’s rare to find that it’s just slipped off instead.”
“You can dry your jeans now,” Casey told Natalie. “The dryer should work just fine.”
“Thank you. Thank you all,” she added, glancing at his cousins.
“It was nothing,” Aaron assured her with a smile.
Both Casey and Andrew scoffed at that.
“It was nothing for you, you mean,” Casey accused. “You didn’t do anything.”
“I held the flashlight.”
Shaking his head, Casey turned back to Natalie. “These miscreants and I are going to a little Mexican place downtown for dinner. Molly said it’s pretty good. Would you like to join us?”
“Yes, please come, Natalie,” Aaron seconded with a smile. “I’d appreciate having an intelligent conversation with someone during dinner, something I certainly won’t get from these two.”
She smiled back, but shook her head. “Thank you, but I have some calls to make this evening. I’m sure the three of you have a lot to catch up on.”
Telling them he would join them in a few minutes, Casey sent his cousins outside. Exchanging “Good nights” with them, Natalie noticed that Andrew, especially, looked at her a bit longer than necessary as he moved toward the door. As if he were studying her face, looking for…what? Whatever it was, his scrutiny made her uncomfortable, as if he were seeing more in her expression than she wanted him to know about her.
Casey gazed down at her when they were alone. “Are you sure you won’t come with us? My cousins will be on their best behavior. Mostly.”
“No, not tonight, thanks.”
He put a hand to the back of his neck and squeezed, his expression somber. “We were going to talk before they showed up to interrupt us. There are still some things I think you and I should clear up.”
She knew he was right, but now wasn’t the time. Not while his cousins were waiting outside for him. “We’ll talk later. You’d better go. They’re waiting for you.”
Nodding, he reached out to rest a hand on her shoulder. “I’ll be thinking about you tonight,” he murmured. “I seem to be doing that a lot lately.”
A little sigh escaped her before she could stop it. “I’ve been thinking about you a lot, too,” she admitted. “Too much, I’m afraid. There are things…well, this isn’t a good time for me.”
“I know,” he murmured. “Me, either. But that hasn’t seemed to stop me from wanting to be with you.”
She gazed up at him, moistening her lips as she tried to think of something to say.
He cupped her face in one hand and leaned over to brush a kiss across her lips. “We’ll talk more tomorrow. Good night, Natalie.”
She barely resisted an impulse to grab hold of him and give him a kiss that would make the spicy Mexican food he planned to eat later seem tame in comparison. After he’d let himself out, she sank onto the couch, wishing she had given in to that particular urge.
Chapter Eleven
B ecause he was so dirty from the manual labor he’d done that day, Casey insisted on returning to the cabin where he’d been staying so he could clean up before dinner. His cousins followed him inside, carrying the bags they’d brought with them from Dallas, since they intended to spend the night in the A frame.
“There’s only one bedroom,” Casey warned them, tossing his jacket over the back of a chair. “You’ll have to crash on the couch and the floor.”“We’ll arm wrestle for spots later,” Andrew said with a shrug, tossing his bag next to the couch.
“So, you’ve been spending a lot of time with Natalie, huh?” Aaron asked as Casey starting emptying his pockets on the breakfast bar that separated the kitchen from the living room.
Casey looked up warily. “I’ve been working on her cabin. You know that.”
“Yeah, but I got the distinct impression her cabin’s not all you’ve been working on, if you know what I mean.”
Casey scowled and threw his wallet on the bar. “Don’t,” he warned his cousin curtly.
Wearing his most innocent expression, Aaron shrugged. “Just saying. It’s…interesting that you would meet up with another lawyer while you’re on your leave of absence, isn’t it?”
His hands on his hips, Casey narrowed his eyes. “How did you know she’s a lawyer?”
“Molly might have mentioned it over the phone a couple of days ago. She said Natalie was with a big firm, but she’s looking for another job now.”
“What makes you think that’s anyone’s business but hers? And why was Molly gossiping about Natalie to you?”
“She didn’t tell me much. Only that Natalie’s an attorney from Nashville who’s been spending some time here. Hiding out.”
“She isn’t hiding out,” Casey snapped, annoyed that Aaron had just summed up more than Casey had learned from Natalie herself. “She’s just taking some time off. The same thing I’m doing, remember?”
“Yeah, well, there’s a little more to it than that where Natalie’s concerned.”
Something about Aaron’s tone made Casey’s blood heat. He spun toward Andrew. “You didn’t.”
Andrew grimaced. “I told Aaron you wouldn’t like the fact that we’ve been asking questions about her.”
“But you did it, anyway?”
“Look at it this way, Case,” Aaron said. “You meet a woman who won’t tell you what she did for a living or why she’s not doing it anymore. You get so involved with her that you don’t want to come home, and you seem to stop worrying about your own job. That’s enough to make us a little concerned. Molly said you’ve been spending almost all your time with Natalie.”
“Sounds like Molly’s been saying too damned much.”
“You know how her mouth gets away from her sometimes. And maybe I sort of let her believe you’d been talking to me and I already knew some of that.”
Casey turned again to Andrew. “You’ve been encouraging him in this?”
Andrew didn’t even look guilty when he shrugged. “You really don’t know much about her, do you?”
Sighing gustily, Casey shook his head. “Not you, too.”
“Sorry. It’s a hazard of the job, I guess. I can’t help but wonder about people who are so determined to keep secrets.”
“Damn it, Andrew, people have a right to their secrets.”
His smile crooked, Andrew murmured, “You remember what I do for a living, right?”
“Just how much has Natalie told you about why she left her firm in Nashville?” Aaron demanded.
“Nothing. And I didn’t ask. Because it’s none of my damned business,” Casey answered almost savagely. “And whatever you found out, I don’t want to—”