by Susan Fox
She raised a hand and toyed with a curl of hair, twisting it around her finger as she held the phone to her other ear. But she kept her eyes on him. “Dinner tomorrow would be lovely. Arnold would love to meet all of you.”
Under her gaze, he was growing harder and harder.
She covered the receiver with her hand and swallowed, a loud, gulping sound, but she didn’t look away. “No,” she said distractedly into the phone, “no riding this time. But soon.” A soft chuckle. “Oh, I don’t think Arnold’s the horsy sort.”
Jessica said something that made Brooke laugh. “Yes, you did convert Evan, so anything’s possible.”
He had to touch her. He strolled toward the bed. Her eyes grew rounder as he approached, but she didn’t move. He stopped a foot away from where she sat.
Her gaze focused on his groin, then lifted to his face. Hurriedly she said, “Fine then, we’ll be over about five-thirty. See you then.” She put the phone down, her hand shaking. “Jake?” The word was a breathy sigh.
“Brooke.” He gripped her shoulders, pulled her up to stand in front of him.
“I . . . I’m a grandmother,” she blurted out.
He gaped, then threw back his head and laughed. “What’s that got to do with anything?”
“How can you be . . . turned on by a grandmother? I’m older than you.”
“Do I look like I care?”
“I . . .” Her forehead creased. “Do you have a thing for older women?”
He laughed again. “I have a thing for you, Brooke Kincaid. This thing.” And he pulled her flush against his body, letting her feel the full strength of his desire.
She gasped, her body tensed, and then she began to melt against him.
He loosened his grip on her shoulders so he could wrap his arms around her.
She tensed again and leaped away. “No!” In a flash she disappeared out the door.
Jake let out a groan of pure frustration. “Down, boy,” he muttered. She was right, though. Mixing pleasure with business wasn’t the smartest move.
He hung up his discarded clothing in Brooke’s closet. She had insisted on giving him her own bedroom, pointing out that the bed in the other room—her granddaughter’s room—was too short and narrow for him.
Brooke would sleep there herself. Just across the hall. And they’d share a bathroom. How would he—how would they—survive the proximity?
He tried to turn his mind to business and review the plan they’d developed. Jamal was arranging for a car with plates registered to Arnold Pitt and a wallet full of fake ID. He’d drive up to deliver it, so the two of them could confer in person. Tomorrow at lunch, Brooke would sneak Jake out to meet Jamal at an isolated spot called Zephyr Lake. An hour or two later, Arnold would officially arrive in town, at the beauty salon where she worked. She’d give him her spare key and directions to find her house. They would have dinner with her son and his family.
They had their work cut out for themselves tonight, as he boned up on Arnold’s family history and the news he and Brooke might have exchanged over the years.
He surveyed the clothes she’d bought, and chose neatly pressed khakis and a crocodiled golf shirt. Gag. He wanted well-washed jeans and a T-shirt, but she hadn’t bought that kind of clothing for Arnold. Even in his leisure hours, Arnold was a neat-freak.
He was tempted to leave the glasses lying on her bureau, but he should get in the habit of wearing them. If they left his nose, someone might pick them up and realize they weren’t prescription lenses.
Pleased at how quickly his body was healing, he sauntered downstairs. There was something to be said for rest. Normally, when he was injured, he was back on the job immediately and it took him longer to recover. He began to whistle now, some made-up melody.
A delicious smell drew him to the kitchen, where Brooke turned from stirring something in a pan on the stove. “Jake—”
He didn’t want to rehash being rejected. Quickly he said, “Arnold. How do I look?”
“Very Arnoldy.” She managed a smile. “But are you sure Arnold whistles?” Good, she wasn’t going to mention the scene upstairs.
“It’s his one vice. A guy can’t be serious all the time.”
“I suppose not.”
“Something smells great. Chicken?”
“Yes, it’s chicken paprikash. It has paprika and cayenne. I hope it’s not too adventurous for you, Arnold.”
“I hate that name. You know that, don’t you?”
She laughed—a genuine one—and his heart jumped. “I know you do. That’s what’s so great about it. It’s so unlike the real you. Unlike Jake.”
He liked the way she said Jake. He’d like it a lot if she’d say something like, “Why don’t we go to bed now, Jake?”
Instead she said, “Sit down. You’re still an invalid.”
“I’m fine.”
“Then you can make salad.” She pointed to a basket on the counter. “There’s early lettuce, radishes, and herbs from the garden, and tomatoes and cucumbers in the fridge.”
The lettuce was dark green and leafy, and the radishes were pink and white with dirt clinging to their roots. He washed the vegetables, then began to rip lettuce into a ceramic bowl Brooke had placed on the counter.
The kitchen table was set for two, the cat dozed on a braided rug in the corner, and Brooke had just put a pot of water on to boil. Now, she was assembling oil, vinegar, and herbs on the counter, to mix her own salad dressing, he figured.
He’d had more domesticity since he met this woman than he could remember in years. “You like gardening?” he asked.
“It’s satisfying. Orderly, productive, and economical.” She handed him a couple of tomatoes, half a cucumber, and a wicked-looking knife.
“And you make jam.”
“And I can fruit and freeze vegetables. I make tomato sauce, chutney, sweet corn relish.”
“All that domestic stuff.” He guessed this stuff was new since her drinking days.
“Yes. It probably seems trivial to you, but I enjoy it. It keeps me busy; it’s good exercise. I eat well and I make nice things to share with my family.” She sounded a touch defensive.
“I’m not putting you down, Brooke. It’s good to find the things we enjoy.”
She dropped dried noodles into the now-boiling water. “How about you? What do you enjoy? What are your hobbies?”
“Work takes up most of my time. But I like it.”
“Bringing criminals to justice.” Now she was stirring flour into a measuring cup with sour cream in it. She clearly wasn’t, like so many women, obsessive about calories. Another thing to like about her.
He tossed tomato and radish slices into the salad bowl, and began to cut cucumber. “Yeah. But I also like the excitement, the danger. It gets my adrenaline flowing.”
She tilted her head and studied him from where she stood by the stove, stirring the sour cream blend into the pan of chicken. “The people who care about you must worry.”
“There’s no one. My life doesn’t allow for that kind of relationship.”
“Your life or your job?”
“One and the same.”
“Hmm. So there’s no special woman?”
He gave a quick laugh. “I’m not into relationships. Just casual, short-term stuff. I’m up front about it.” Maybe that was why Brooke had run away, up in the bedroom. It was pretty obvious what kind of guy he was. Just as obvious as her white picket fence and domesticity.
“What about your parents?” she asked. “Siblings?”
“No siblings and I haven’t seen my parents in a long time. They hate what I’m doing.” He was tired of having Brooke probe into his life. It wasn’t that he didn’t like the spark of interest, the hint of concern in her eyes, but he knew he’d only disappoint her. She wanted him to be some noble crusader, and in fact he was just a loser kid who’d been lucky enough to be set on the right course and find a job where he could do some good yet still indulge the daredevil inside him.<
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“What about you?” he asked, watching as she shook the oil and vinegar dressing and drizzled it over the salad.
“Parents and one sister. We’re barely in touch.” She put the salad bowl on the table, then drained the noodles. “I guess you’ll have to know some of the family background,” she said reluctantly. She dumped the noodles in the middle of a platter, then topped them with pieces of chicken coated in a pale orange sauce thick with chunks of onion.
He took the platter to the table, sniffing appreciatively as his stomach growled.
Brooke put her hand on the fridge door. “Would you like a beer?”
“Beer? Thought you didn’t keep alcohol in the house.”
“I bought some today.”
Was this some kind of test? “I don’t need to drink.”
“Well, that’s good news,” she said dryly. “But I don’t mind if you do. I’m not so weak willed I’m going to grab a beer bottle out of your hand.”
“Are you sure?”
She huffed out a sigh. “I wouldn’t have offered if I wasn’t sure.”
He figured it’d be an insult if he didn’t take her at her word. “Thanks, I’d love a beer.”
She opened the fridge, took out a bottle, and handed it to him. “Glass?”
“Nope.”
“Of course not. But when you’re being Arnold, I’d advise you to drink from a glass.”
She poured mineral water from a bottle into a glass, dropped in a slice of lime, and gestured him over to the table. “Let’s dig in. And I’ll tell you about my family.”
They sat across from each other and served themselves. When he tasted the chicken, he almost moaned. “This is great. You’re sure a good cook. Did you learn from your mom?”
She gave a rueful grin. “What a subtle way of easing me into the story. No, I only got into cooking in the last few years. Once I was sober.”
He nodded in acknowledgment of what he’d suspected.
She sighed. “All right, my family. My parents were traditional. Dad worked, came home, drank pretty heavily, watched sports on TV. He might have been an alcoholic, but if so he was a quiet one. Mom was a housewife and she was pretty low key. In these days, we’d probably say she suffered from depression.”
His afternoon’s reading had told him that bipolar disorder could run in families, and was often associated with alcohol or drug abuse. The deck might have been stacked against Brooke from the beginning—in terms of both genetics and environment. And then she’d gotten pregnant in her teens and married a guy who drank. What a life she’d had.
“But on the whole, I was lucky.” Her words were such a contrast to his thoughts. “My parents loved me, Erin wasn’t too bad for a kid sister, I had pretty clothes, lots of friends, enough pocket money to buy lip gloss and go to the movies. Cousins to hang out with—and that’s where you come in.”
“Arnold was your dad’s brother’s kid, and he had a sister?”
She swallowed a bite of chicken. “Good memory. I guess that’s crucial in your job. Yes, Arnold was the youngest child of my father’s brother, Mark. His wife was Becky. Uncle Mark died, leaving Aunt Becky with three kids to look after, Arnold being the baby. There was an athletic older brother, about my age but too jockish and boring to interest me, then a cute, outgoing sister a couple of years older than you. You were the quiet, well-behaved one.”
He snorted. “Oh yeah, that sounds like me.”
“It sounds like Arnold.”
“Fair enough.”
“Anyhow, when Arnold was nine or so, Aunt Becky married Peter Pitt and they moved away. Our families didn’t stay in touch.”
“Okay.” He reflected. “We’ll go through the names, ages, other details later. So, Cousin Brooke baby-sat Arnold and his sister?” He sipped his beer, which went perfectly with the spicy chicken.
“Yes, to make money to buy clothes, music, magazines, make-up. I liked Arnold.” She gave him a teasing grin. “You were a funny little kid, but kind of cute.”
He made a face at her, and she laughed.
“What did you talk about when you were baby-sitting us?” he asked. “Boys?”
“One special boy,” she said, no longer smiling. “Mo. Mohinder McKeen. Evan’s father.”
“Unusual name.”
“His mom was Indo-American and his dad was white. Mo was hot, and he fascinated me. I was fourteen; he was nineteen, a dropout. He belonged to a gang, or maybe that was just macho talk. He made the boys at school seem like children.” One corner of her mouth tipped up in a wry expression. “He had long hair, rode a motorbike, wore a black leather jacket.”
“Uh-oh. Definitely trouble.”
“I’d been raised like a princess in a protected castle, and that life seemed so tame once Mo started to pay attention to me. I realized I had a wild side, just waiting to break free.”
“He took you for a ride on his bike and got you all hot and bothered?”
“Hot and bothered,” she said wryly, “then pregnant. At fourteen.”
“Ouch. What did you do?”
“Our parents were conventional. We got railroaded into marriage. Mo wasn’t thrilled, but he went along, probably figured nothing much had to change. Mo didn’t have a job—he never held a job for long—so he moved in with my family. For the first few weeks it was fun. Great sex, in a bed. Going out with ‘my husband.’ Knowing I’d nabbed the sexiest guy in the neighborhood. The girls were green with envy.”
Jake had almost cleaned his plate but Brooke was toying with her food. “Eat your dinner,” he said. “You can tell me this later.”
She stared at her chicken, then ate a bite. “I won’t let Mo ruin my appetite. Not at this late date.” She dragged some noodles into the sauce and twirled them around her fork.
“I was so young it seemed like a game. I had this gorgeous husband and I was going to have a sweet little baby girl. The baby was always a girl, in my mind, and looked like a doll I’d once had.”
“Blond and blue-eyed?”
“Of course. Though why I thought that, with Mo being so dark, is beyond me. Anyhow, I started to get fat, as Mo termed it. He spent more time at the bar with his friends. Guy friends, and girls as well. He came home stinking of beer and perfume. He admitted he’d been screwing around on me, but said it was my fault. He was a normal guy with normal needs, and he sure wasn’t going to have sex with a blimp like me.”
“Asshole.” Jake wondered what had happened to McKeen. Hopefully, only bad things.
She nodded. “He hit me a couple of times when he came home drunk. My father gave him a talking-to. Dad might’ve been a drinker but he never hit Mom or us girls. Anyhow, he told Mo he couldn’t behave that way while he was living under our roof. Mo’s answer was to enlist in the Army.”
“The Army? A bad-boy gang member?” Jake snapped his fingers. “Sanctioned violence?”
“Yes. An excuse to be a bully; I’m sure that’s what he thought. Access to weapons.”
Her ex sounded like a real prize. What had Brooke been thinking? But of course, at fourteen, who thought with anything but their hormones?
“Anyhow,” she went on, “after he left, I had a baby boy. Kind of a cross between Mo and me. Tawny hair, skin that looked permanently tanned, blue-green eyes. Cute, but an absolute handful. Restless, curious, noisy. Evan drove me crazy. I was really unhappy for a while. Postpartum depression, I guess.”
Or the beginning of her bipolar disorder, he wondered.
“Anyway,” she said, “Evan was like a new lease on life for my mom. She adored him and she was so patient. She gave me an excuse to avoid responsibility, to be a kid again. I started feeling better, went back to school, hung around with my friends, didn’t act maternal at all. Sometimes I almost forgot I had a baby.”
Selfish, yes, but she’d been a child herself. Everyone was self-centered at that age. Besides, where was the baby’s father? “Did Mo stay in the Army?”
“Deserted.” The word fell flatly between t
hem.
Jake let out a whistle. “Couldn’t hack the structure, discipline, hard work?”
“I’m sure he had problems taking orders and I gather he kept getting in trouble, but he did make it through basic training. Then it got personal between him and some lieutenant. Mo said the guy was an asshole, always provoking him. More likely it was the other way around.”
She let out a long, resigned sigh. “One night a group was drinking at a bar, and I guess Mo was drunk—maybe he and the lieutenant both were—and he attacked the lieutenant with a broken beer bottle. He ran away before they could arrest him.”
“And kept running? You said he deserted.”
“Yes, he kept running, picking up Evan and me along the way. He sweet-talked a lady with some peace activism group. Made her think he was one of them, had seen the error of his ways, and that’s why he’d deserted. She and her contacts got us into Canada with fake ID. He went from being Mohinder to plain-old Mo, and we became Kincaids. Someone got him a job as a mechanic in Saskatchewan.”
“Why did you go with him?”
She gave a small, sad smile. “Because we were married. Strangely enough, it meant something to both of us. I wish I hadn’t.”
Jake drained the last of his beer.
“Another?” she asked.
If this was another test, he didn’t know the right answer. “Thanks. I’ll get it.”
“Be Arnold,” she said, as he scraped the chair back from the table.
He squared the chair up neatly and, taking small, almost mincing steps, walked to the fridge. “If there’s no sherry,” he said in a fussy voice, “I suppose I must settle for beer.”
“Why, Arnold,” she said sweetly, “I should have thought of it myself. Tomorrow I’ll be sure to buy a bottle of sherry for you.”
“Do it and you’re dead, doll,” he growled in his best biker-gang voice.
Her laugh was beautiful—an unreserved, melodic sound.
He resumed his Arnold character, opening the beer carefully and pouring it slowly into a glass. “May I bring you anything while I’m up, Cousin Brooke?”
At her head shake, he resumed his seat. “If it wouldn’t be too impolite to ask, cousin dear, how did you and your husband come to part ways?”