by Jillian Hart
They were friends, that was all. In that, she’d told Karen the truth. As hard as it was, Michelle accepted it. Brody treated her like a friend. He could have taken that friendship to a new level this afternoon, on their trip together.
But he hadn’t. No. She knew he never would.
Setting aside her disappointment, Michelle greeted her sister and concentrated on unpacking the game.
Michelle tried to pay attention as Kirby rolled the dice across the crowded board.
“Ha!” Karen’s cry of victory echoed in the high ceilings of the kitchen nook. She’d apparently already counted ahead and was consulting her property deeds for the amount of rent due, even though Kirby hadn’t moved her token yet and Allie was yawning, just awake, on her lap. “Let’s see, since I own all three properties and I have houses, you owe me seven hundred and fifty dollars.”
“I’m going to go broke!” With a good-natured laugh, Kirby counted out her play money, handing over one butter-colored hundred bill after another. “Michelle, want to partner up with me?”
“No, I want to win, thank you very much.” Her sisterly teasing made everyone laugh and neatly covered up the fact that her thoughts had drifted off to Brody. Again.
Kendra stole the dice, rolled and gave a victorious “All right! Ventnor Avenue. I’ll buy it,” she said of the last few available properties.
The image of Brody, powering the motorcycle over the lush grass hills flashed into Michelle’s mind. Even though he’d been riding away from her…
“Earth to Michelle!” Karen thumbed through the property deeds and tossed the one marked in yellow across the board to Kendra. “I don’t think she’s paying attention. I wonder where her thoughts could be?”
“And on whom?” Kirby asked, as if she already knew the answer.
“I was wondering if I should buy more houses.” Okay, that was a lie; the second one she’d told in two hours! Horribly guilty, she grabbed her assortment of deeds and thumbed through them. Now she would have to think about what to buy to make an honest woman of herself.
Kendra gathered up the dice and slid them across the Free Parking square to Michelle. “I don’t know. I haven’t met the man, and I know Mom and Dad are singing his praises, but that Brody looks like trouble to me.”
“That’s what we like about him,” Kirby added.
“Not that kind of trouble. The bad kind.” Kendra refused to budge on her opinion. “I just think Michelle should be careful.”
“Why should I be careful?” Michelle grabbed hold of the dice and shook.
She let go of the dice and they somersaulted across the board and into one of Karen’s hotels. She hadn’t breathed a word to anyone how she really felt. But if they already suspected she had a major-league crush on the guy, then how could she act as if he were no big deal? If she admitted it, then she’d never hear the end of the teasing from Karen and Kirby and the scolding from Kendra, who was very suspicious of men in general.
“Brody is just some guy Dad hired to help with the haying, right? No big deal.”
“You just keep telling yourself that,” Kirby told her.
“Uncle Mick doesn’t like him,” Kendra added.
No big deal. Just keep saying it over and over again, Michelle. Brody Gabriel was just an average, ordinary, no-big-deal kind of guy.
Wrong, her conscience reminded her. Everything about Brody was a big deal. The palm of her hand, when he’d helped her off the bike, still tingled from his touch, as if he’d left stardust there to shimmer with a warm glow.
She wasn’t going to pretend that she hadn’t had a wonderful afternoon with him. She had. Did she hope for more? Yes. Did she expect more? No.
Sure, he’d charmed her today with his humor and his gentlemanlike behavior. It was probably easy for a man of the world like him, who’d traveled all through the south and southwest, and probably most of the country, rodeoing and probably winning one championship after another, to know what to say to a sheltered, small-town girl.
The fact that she was in love with him wouldn’t matter when it came time for him to fire up his polished red motorcycle and ride away forever.
She looked up at the sound of giggling. Kirby was moving the little silver shoe, Michelle’s token, all seven squares according to the number indicated by the dice.
“No, she doesn’t like Brody at all,” Karen commented wryly.
Michelle’s face turned hot. She’d been caught. Okay, so she was a terrible actress. But she was trying to keep her head on straight, thank you very much, and that wasn’t always easy.
Kendra consulted her deeds. “Michelle, you owe me seventy bucks.”
Michelle blinked. “How much?”
“I’ll just take it.” Kendra tugged a fifty and a twenty out from where Michelle had tucked them beneath the edge of the board. “You’re in big trouble if you’re that far gone on him.”
Michelle knew her face had to be bright red. Her skin felt hot enough to cook eggs on. “Can’t we change the subject? What about Uncle Mick buying out Mom and Dad?”
“I don’t know. Uncle Mick is great and everything, and he’s always been good to us, but he’s declared bankruptcy twice.” Karen searched for the dice. “I’m afraid he’ll let Dad down. What if he breaks up the land and sells it off to development?”
“That’s the kind of thing he’d do,” Kendra agreed. “He’s always looking for easy money.”
At least that worked, although the new topic wasn’t any better. She loved her uncle. They all did. He was fun and sent great presents and always doted on them. But he had problems, just like anyone else. A lot of them.
“At least Dad’s making Uncle Mick work this time.” Karen rolled the dice. “Of course, he had to hire Brody to pick up the slack.”
Kendra looked troubled. “Mick’s not pulling his fair share and he’s moved into the bungalow rent free. It’s hurting Dad. What if Brody is just another man cut from the same cloth Mick is?”
“He’s not. I know it.” Michelle bit her tongue. Had she really said that? Had she really leaped to his defense with that much oomph?
Across the table, Kirby sparkled with delight. “I saw him in church, too. Of course he was hard to see behind Mrs. Pittman’s impressive hat. He’s not a bad-looking man. Not as handsome as my Sam, but then, who could be?”
“Or my Zach,” Karen agreed. “But Michelle’s Brody is a close third. What do you think, Kendra?”
“He’s not my Brody!” Michelle protested. This was why she didn’t want them to know!
“His looks may be all that he has going for him, but Dad did say he was a hard worker,” Kendra conceded. “Still, it takes a long time to know a person. People have many layers. Everyone has things they don’t want you to see.”
“That’s not necessarily a bad thing,” Kirby added.
Pain flashed in Kendra’s eyes from past experience, and Michelle guessed that whatever had happened to her sister wasn’t something she ever talked about. It had been something that changed her opinion of men forever.
Kendra stood her ground. “Look at Rick. We all thought he was a good guy, but he was lying to Michelle. To all of us.”
It hurt to remember how gullible she’d been. How much she’d trusted him. But what else should she have done? Approach the potentially most important relationship in her adult life with suspicion and a closed heart?
“Take your time if you’re interested in this man, this Brody,” Kendra advised. “Promise me. There’s no hurry to fall in love. No hurry to trust someone until you’re sure they deserve it.”
“Love?” Karen’s mouth dropped open and she searched the board for her token.
“I didn’t say I was in love with him!” Michelle tipped over her iced tea.
Kendra jumped up with a napkin and came to the rescue. “Awfully defensive, aren’t you?”
“No! I’m not in love with him!”
“Yes, you are. Ooh, it sounds like my husband is back from his ride.” Karen loo
ked up at the sound of a motorcycle pulling into her driveway and seemed to remember she had a hold of her token, and so she moved it. “Not so good. I’m in jail.”
“Yeah, you derelict.” Michelle had enough talking about Brody so she bounced out of her chair and wanted possession of her niece. “Allie can’t stay in jail with you. She did nothing wrong.”
“Not Allie, the most perfect baby ever,” Karen agreed as she lifted her infant with one hand on her bottom into Michelle’s waiting arms. “Perfect timing. She needs changing.”
“Fine. That’s the price I pay to get away from you guys and all your gossiping and making up wild stories about me.” Michelle cuddled Allie, who promptly grabbed a handful of Michelle’s hair and pulled.
“We’re not imagining the blush on your face,” Kirby called out. “Karen, you get to roll again.”
“I’m not blushing!” Michelle said it with enough force, hoping it would make the heat on her cheeks fade. Of course it didn’t. She cradled Allie close as she made her escape while she could. “And I’m not in love with him,” she called over her shoulder, just to have the last word.
Did it work? No.
“Are you at least starting to fall in love with him?” Karen asked.
“No!” Her denial echoed in the stairwell as she started up the carpeted steps to the second story.
“Liar!” Kirby accused.
“Okay, I admit it. Just don’t tell anyone else.” Michelle paused on the landing where she could just see her sisters at the kitchen table around the polished newel post. “Maybe I’ve got a little bit of a crush on Brody. Okay, a huge crush.”
She hadn’t taken two steps before she heard the screen door rasp open and a man’s boots hit the wood floor. Did Zach hear what she’d said? Her face flamed again. How could he have missed it? The back door had been open.
Then a second set of boots struck the kitchen floor. A tingle crawled along the back of her neck. Brody? Please, Lord, don’t let that be—
“Hi, Brody.”
“It’s Brody.”
Her sisters sounded way too pleased.
He’d had to have heard what she’d said. Ready to die, Michelle hugged Allie harder, glad her beautiful little niece was giving her an excuse to never go downstairs again.
“Root beer or cola?” Zach asked from behind the open refrigerator door.
Brody tried to force his stunned mind to function. Michelle’s words were still ringing in his head. Maybe I’ve got a little bit of a crush on Brody. Okay, a huge crush.
She did?
He felt the weight of three women, Michelle’s older sisters, watching him and wondering. He might be a seasoned agent, trained to handle any situation, but he wasn’t prepared for this. For two women smiling at him like he was the best joke they’d ever seen, and the third looking at him as if she expected him to have a rap sheet twenty pages long.
“Uh, root beer.” He was relieved when Zach handed him a cold can over the top of the refrigerator door.
He almost dropped the can. His fingers didn’t work. What was with him? All he could think about was Michelle’s voice replaying in his head like a recording. A huge crush.
He could see his new friend’s amused response as he took a soda for himself and shut the door. Zach seemed amused but not accusing, as if they were only two men and outnumbered, so they had to stick together.
“Hey, Brody.” Zach gestured with the liter bottle of soda he carried to the round table where Michelle’s sisters were watching him over their Monopoly board. “Meet the rest of the gang. This incredible lady is my wife, Karen. Kendra is the horse lover of the family, and that’s saying something. Kirby, here, is the sister we pretend we don’t know.”
“Yeah, I’m out on five different warrants. It’s shameful.”
“Says the quietest one of all,” Zach interjected. “Would any of you ladies like a refill?”
“Such service. Thank you, handsome.” Karen rewarded her husband with a sweet and affectionate kiss.
Brody popped the top of the can and sucked down a couple gulps of soda. The fizzy sweetness wasn’t enough to wash away the ache of emotion in his throat. This nice new home with the roomy kitchen and large bay window eating area, with its warmth and simple charm and framed pictures of family on the walls. It was a house filled with love.
It amazed him that families existed like this. So one family was raised in love, and now those daughters were making homes and families of their own. Little baby things were everywhere. A swing in the family room by the sofa. A scattering of toys on the floor. It was like something out of TV.
It was new to someone who’d been alone for all his adult life. The man in him ached for what these people had. Family. Love. Friendship. The agent in him acknowledged they weren’t criminals. He didn’t need more surveillance to know it.
“C’mon and join us,” Kirby invited as she started collecting up the colorful play money. “We’ll start over. Everyone was about to lose to me anyway. You guys come join us.”
“I’ll pop corn,” Zach volunteered as he added soda to the rest of the glasses on the table. “Kirby, give Sam a call. See if he’s done at the airfield. What do you say?”
A round of feminine “yeahs” filled the room, and the warmth and coziness left Brody spinning.
An evening of Monopoly? He’d done a lot in his line of work. He’d lain on his stomach in mud and rain in the cold foothills of the Cascade Mountains surveilling an extremist group gone bad. That hadn’t been pleasant.
He’d been in shoot-outs and riots. And there was the time he spent three months in east L.A. as a homeless man. That had been a tough assignment. He’d handled escaped felons, drug dealers, gang members and murderers, but never something like this.
Television shows were made of this. Not experiences in his life.
He ached with a need he couldn’t name. A need he’d never paid attention to before. It overwhelmed him as everyone in the kitchen watched him expectantly.
“Sure.” He shrugged in agreement. “A game of Monopoly won’t kill me.”
“No,” Karen agreed, “but Michelle might kill you, Kirby, when she realizes you invited Brody to stay after—” She lifted her brows suggestively.
Michelle’s words played through his mind again. I’ve got a little bit of a crush.
It blew him away. Michelle had feelings for him? He wanted to shout so everyone would know how incredible that felt. How impossible.
He couldn’t—and not because it would make him look like a nut. He was on assignment—undercover, with the objective to observe the family and gather evidence to either indict them or clear them. Tonight would be an agent’s dream of infiltration. They’d extended an invitation and their trust.
But there was nothing typical about this assignment or this family or this girl. No, Michelle was amazing. One of a kind. Even though she’d left the room, he could feel the echo of her heartbeat between his own. He could feel a tug of connection like an unseen string binding them together.
He felt alive for the first time in his adult life.
These feelings were new and they weren’t because he’d been alone for nearly two decades. Or because he’d lost his family long ago. He knew these feelings weren’t because the years since had been solitary and colorless, like a black-and-white photo with no vibrancy and no life.
He felt this way because of Michelle.
Zach brought in two chairs from the dining room table, and Brody moved to help him. Karen scooted her chair over so there was room for him right next to Michelle. The tall, silent sister, what was her name? Kendra, glared at him with warning in her eyes. He couldn’t blame her. In a good family, a big sister looked out for her little sister.
“Which token do you want?” Kirby asked him as the sisters handily restocked the money and turned in the houses and hotels and property deeds. “Michelle always takes the shoe.”
“Doesn’t matter.” He didn’t care. He hadn’t played Monopoly since he wa
s a boy.
Kirby picked the top hat for him before she tossed the car at Zach.
Everybody seemed used to the routine. Zach began popping the corn. Kendra gathered up the houses and hotels. Kirby divided the play money by color.
What should he do?
Karen leaned close. “Someone’s going to have to tell Michelle to come down. I could do it, but she’s going to resist my best efforts. If I know Michelle, she’ll find a way to stay up there forever. She’s a little embarrassed.”
All eyes turned to him, and Brody could feel their amusement. And their expectations.
“Go on up,” Kirby urged with a wink.
Don’t you do it, the seasonal agent in him ordered. There was no sense spending more time with Michelle. Not until he could close this case and come to her a free man, his work done.
But the man in him, who’d been alone for too long and saw an end to it, couldn’t help it. He looked in the direction of the stairs and along the polished wood banister leading up and out of sight. If he followed that path, would it change his future?
He had evidence to find. A case to investigate. The Bureau depended on him to do his job and do it well. And to do that, he had to stay focused.
It wasn’t his loneliness, he realized, that he felt so keenly here among this loving extended family. It was something greater. Something as powerful as gravity that kept the planets in alignment around the sun and the stars in place in the galaxy, and the power of it lit up his soul. Made him see what he’d been fighting so hard to ignore. For like gravity holding the moon to the earth, and the earth to the sun, so his soul was bound to Michelle’s.
He set his soda can on the table and his feet led him to the stairs. Inexorably, it felt as if every moment in his life had happened for the sole purpose of bringing him here. To this place and time.
He took the first step and the next, rising up to the second story, where Michelle was. He wasn’t sure his boots were touching the carpet.
Fear gathered in the pit of his stomach. He felt numb. He felt as if the love that bound them was pulling him forward, like a boat in a strong current. This was a different kind of fear than he’d known before. He was used to shoot-outs and takedowns and violent criminals. Life and death situations.