“I guess that ledge has room for two,” he whispered so softly that she wasn’t completely certain if he actually said the words, or if she just heard them in her heart.
Because she wanted to.
And then he kissed her. And she knew in that moment that Devin felt exactly the same way she did, was affected by the kiss exactly the same as she was.
It made the excitement twice as spectacular. Twice as overwhelming.
She could hardly breathe. On her toes, she wrapped her arms around his neck, around the safe haven his kiss created for her. It felt safe and perilous at the same time, impossible as that might seem.
And it seemed impossible to have a kiss mean absolutely everything to her.
But it did.
It made her feel wonderful, reborn and so happy she could cry. It was beyond anything she could have ever imagined.
And if this somehow turned out to be dangerous, she didn’t care. Not at this moment. Like a lemming, she was going to take the plunge. Because, like a lemming, she had no real choice in the matter. Her response was as instinctive, as deeply ingrained as breathing.
With an urgency she didn’t know she was capable of, Blair pressed her taut body against his and savored the strength, the hardness she discovered there.
He heard the soft moan as he deepened the kiss and it almost undid him. Unable to help himself, he slid his hands up along the curve of her waist, slowly up her sides, until he swept just his fingertips around the swell of her breasts.
He felt her breath quickening, her body quiver.
Damn, but he wanted her, wanted her more than he’d ever wanted anything or anyone before. More, he knew, than he would ever want anyone again.
But there was still so much unfinished business before his conscience could let him do what his body demanded.
She would never know what it cost him to be so noble, he thought as he braced her shoulders between his hands and then moved her back, away from him. Another moment, and he wouldn’t have been able to. Even now, he could feel regret ravaging him. Why did the right thing have to feel so wrong?
There was confusion in her eyes. Confusion and hurt lingering just on the outskirts. It was almost more than he could take. But he had to. For her sake.
It sure as hell wasn’t for his own.
Devin waited a moment, until his breathing steadied, until he could talk without sounding like a damn fool. “I’d better leave before I do something you’re not ready for.”
How could he stand there and say that? She was ready, oh, dear heaven, she was ready. Her body felt as if it was vibrating like a tuning fork.
There was almost resentment in Blair’s voice as she asked, “What makes you think you can make those decisions for me?”
“Experience.” It certainly wasn’t because he wanted it this way.
Blair stiffened. Experience. The word was like a slap in the face. She’d been acting like a fool, melting away, feeling as if this was something wondrous and rare, while to him, it was all just run-of-the-mill.
“Is this what you do with most of your female clients?”
He saw his mistake. “No, I didn’t mean that kind of experience. I meant that right now, you’re vulnerable.” The flash in her eyes indicated she didn’t appreciate the judgment, but he pressed on. “I know what vulnerable looks like, and you are,” he told her firmly. “I don’t want anything happening that you might regret. When it happens between us, there aren’t going to be any regrets. Ever.”
When, not if. Devin had said when, as if he was making a prophecy.
Slowly, she nodded. Maybe he was right. Maybe this was happening too quickly. Maybe she would regret it once it was over. She struggled to throw a blanket over the hot, scrambling emotions that were bouncing through her.
She blew out a breath, wishing that could steady her. “Why don’t you go follow your lead?”
He stepped over the threshold. The chill in the air was downright cold.
“Yeah,” he agreed, his mouth as dry as cotton, his body taut from wanting. Nobility exacted a hell of a price, he thought moodily. “Why don’t I?”
He heard the door slowly shut behind him. For one conscience—wrestling moment, he was tempted to turn around again. To push open her door, stride in and take her back into his arms. To do what every fiber of his being begged him to do. What the look in her eyes had urged him to do.
But he’d meant what he said. He wanted no regrets. For either of them.
Devin got into his car and drove away.
8
Blair looked around at the people surrounding her at the dining—room table. Or, more accurately, surrounding the Thanksgiving dinner at the dining—room table.
But it certainly felt as if they were surrounding her.
She still wasn’t really clear just how it all happened, how she had gotten here. Or why she hadn’t said no to Devin when he had suggested coming to his mother’s house to spend a few hours here and share a holiday meal.
Actually, Blair thought as she caught his eye across the table, she had said no. She very distinctly remembered saying the word, distinctly remembered her lips forming it when he’d asked her to come to his mother’s house for Thanksgiving two days ago.
But even though she’d turned him down, she was still here, ensconced between his mother at the head of the table and one of his sisters, listening to their good—natured bantering.
And having, she had to admit without qualification, a very good time.
Lord knows she hadn’t really wanted to come. When he had shown up at her door over three hours ago, she had been all set to resist with every fiber of her being. If she wasn’t going to spend Thanksgiving with the people who had once been her family—and she had already turned down Aunt Beth’s invitationthen she certainly wasn’t about to spend it in the company of someone else’s family. Never mind that she was dressed for it, she wasn’t going.
But Devin had looked so handsome, and he’d been so damn persuasive, that resistance had turned out to be utterly futile. She had no doubt that he could talk the feathers off a bird if he wanted to.
That should have been a major warning to her that she was in way over her head, but she hadn’t heeded
it. She thought she could look out for herself no matter what the circumstances.
What did she know?
She was no match for him and no match for his family. They’d all managed to worm their way into her affections in absolutely no time at all. And she thought she’d put up a fight. Ha.
At least, she’d tried to put one up, starting with Devin. “I really think I should be alone,” she’d told Devin when she’d opened the door to his knock.
That is, she’d told him after she’d found her tongue and got it back into working order. Blair hadn’t seen him in anything other than chinos and an ordinary shirt before. How could a simple navy blue sports jacket and gray trousers make such a difference?
It was the tie, she decided. The blue silk tie made him look suave and dashing. Civilized.
Almost.
“No, you shouldn’t be alone,” he’d replied easily, walking into her house without waiting for her to invite him in.
She was staring at him, a bemused, perplexed expression on her face. He grinned, though he caught himself before brushing her lips with a kiss. That could wait for now. He didn’t want to make her feel as if he was rushing her too much. Getting her to come to his mother’s was a very important step in his plan and he didn’t want to jeopardize it just because she looked good enough to eat.
“It’s the clothes, isn’t it?” He looked down at himself as if seeing them through her eyes. Devin held the front of the jacket away from him. “Ma insists on having us dress up for holidays and birthdays. She’s been like that ever since I can remember.” He shrugged, letting the jacket go. “I figure if she sat up with us nights when we were sick and held our heads when we threw up, we owed her this much. It makes her happy. The others don’t seem to mind, es
pecially Evan.” Except that Evan wouldn’t be here this year, he thought. But that wasn’t his brother’s fault. There were extenuating circumstances; certain complications that had to be ironed out were keeping him away. “Me, I won’t be comfortable until tonight, when I can throw this into the closet until Christmas Eve.”
She wasn’t even going to think about Christmas Eve. It was too painful.
Instead, she circled him, paying attention to the here and now. The man looked good from any angle. “You do look very nice.”
“Thanks.” His eyes swept over the slim, longsleeved black dress she was wearing. She could probably look like a queen wearing a paper bag, he thought. Someday, he meant to test his theory. “So do you. Really good. You don’t want that to go to waste, do you?” he’d prodded, reaching for the wrap she’d tossed on the arm of the sofa.
There’d been a knowing look in his eyes, as if he’d stood beside her during the last hour as she had tried on everything in her closet and found it lacking.
She vaguely remembered saying no, she didn’t want it to go to waste, as he slipped the wrap around her shoulders. Somehow, she found herself being ushered into his car. The rest was a blur.
As was the conversation once she’d arrived. Or maybe a blizzard was a better word for it. A blizzard of words. He’d introduced her to his mother, Dorothy, and his sisters, Paige and Krystle. Not a shy one in the lot.
Within moments of crossing the threshold of the small two—story house with its warm, delicious smells, Blair had been taken on a tour of the house, shown a pile of photo albums and regaled with a slew of memories. Devin was prominently featured in the last two. And if he wasn’t actually in a photograph, there was a story that linked him to it.
By the time dinner was on the table, at a very early hour by her reckoning, Blair felt that she knew everything there was to know about Devin. Or, at least, everything that Devin had wanted the women in his life to know.
She had a distinct feeling that there was far more to the man than what his family knew. There was an exciting, almost dark area that was reserved for a very limited audience of one.
She caught herself thinking that she wanted to be that audience.
Blair was also surprised at how completely alike he and his twin looked in the photograph. Like two halves of a whole. And yet, there were subtle differences. Differences that she could pick up on by the time Paige and Krystle had shown her the last album. Differences that went beyond just the fact that Devin’s smile was crooked while Evan’s was as perfect as an orthodontist’s dream, or that Devin wore his hair longer than his brother did. There was something in the eyes, a liveliness that the camera managed to capture in Devin’s expression that seemed to be absent in Evan’s. Evan, from what she gathered, was the sedate one. The one who crossed every t and dotted every i, while Devin left shorthand in his wake.
It was to his credit that Devin bore up dutifully under all of this. Although once or twice Blair was sure she’d seen him wince or grit his teeth, as if searching for patience, when his mother had trotted out a particularly embarrassing story.
Throughout it all, she was aware of one very important factor. Devin dearly loved these women who comprised his family, and they loved him in return. It was a circle.
A circle not unlike the one she thought she’d belonged in, she thought with a sudden, unwelcome pang.
But she’d been wrong about that. She didn’t belong. She was an outsider.
By all rights, Blair thought that she should have felt that way here, in his mother’s house. After all, she’d just made their acquaintance and she hadn’t even known Devin that long. But his mother and sisters, not to mention Devin himself, had somehow managed to weave a spell over her so that she didn’t feel like someone looking in through a plate—glass window, watching a scene unfold that she longed to be a part of.
She felt like someone who had been magically absorbed into the framework of the picture, transported into the very heart of it.
They were treating her with a combination of politeness and familiarity that she couldn’t quite unravel. And it was weaving itself into the tapestry of her life with breathtaking speed.
Just as Devin was.
She couldn’t find it in her heart to even make a feeble pretense at protesting. She just let it happen. For the duration of the day and the evening that was to follow, she was going to pretend that she was part of them. And love it.
“I really don’t know how he even made it,” his mother was saying to her as she cut a second helping of lemon chiffon pie and slid it onto Blair’s plate. Blair thought she was going to explode if she even opened her mouth, much less put anything into it. “Not a year went by when something didn’t happen that I thought was going to be the end of him.”
Dorothy Quartermain beamed as she watched her son finish the apple pie. His third piece. She’d counted. A little more meat on his bones, that was what he needed. She knew that he just didn’t eat regularly enough. Maybe once he settled down with Blair, she would teach him better habits.
She looked at Blair. “Did he tell you about trying to fly from his tree house?”
Finally, something she could say yes to. Blair smiled in triumph. “Yes, he did.”
Hand drawn dramatically to her very small bosom, Dorothy rolled her eyes heavenward, as if to contact her late husband and commune with him about the wild son they had created. “Well, that was the sanest thing he attempted. Once, while he was in high school—”
Devin knew where this one was heading. The pool story. Apparently his mother was just warming up. But Blair didn’t need to hear every crazy stunt he’d pulled her first time here. He didn’t want her thinking he was some kind of a lunatic.
He raised a warning eyebrow—as if that would have an effect on his mother. “That’s enough, Ma.”
“What, you’re afraid I’ll scare away your girl?” A very pleased smile widened her broad mouth. “If she’s come this far, she’s not going anywhere.”
They had the same mouth, Devin and his mother, Blair thought. And the same way of pulling people out of their own lives into theirs.
To her surprise, Devin actually flushed. “Ma, she’s not—” Belatedly, Blair realized that his mother had wrongly assumed she was Devin’s girlfriend. Embarrassment colored her cheeks as well.
But Dorothy Quartermain was oblivious to the colorful, silent denials. She leaned over, placing her hand on top of Blair’s with a familiarity that spoke volumes. Her dark blue eyes were shining.
“You know he’s never brought a girl home, before, don’t you?”
Paige, looking sympathetic, was quick to switch the focus of the topic. “Mom, we’re not called girls anymore. We’re women now.”
Dorothy sniffed, completely unimpressed by the strides her daughters believed they’d taken. She’d grown up frowning at wolf whistles and secretly reveling in the harmless flirtations they represented. The whistles were now fewer and farther in—between, but she was still what her friend Albert called a handsome woman and she made the most of that.
She waved a hand at her daughter. “You go be a woman. Me, I want to be called a girl again. When you get to be my age, you’ll understand.” She winked conspiratorially at Blair.
Something within Blair reached out, hugging that to her. She was so glad Devin had overridden her protest and brought her here. Not because she would have otherwise spent it working and absently chewing on a ham sandwich, but because she had gotten to meet his family. They were wonderful people and she could see why he had turned out the way he had.
Devin rose, moving his chair in under his mother’s watchful eye, then rounded the table to stand behind Blair.
“I think your job here is about done,” he teased. “Don’t you, Ma?”
She lifted her chin, feigning ignorance of his meaning. But her eyes gave her away. And gave her son tacit approval of his choice.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Besides, a mother’s job is never done.
Not even when her children are grown and married.” Her eyes held Blair’s as she slowly rose and stood next to Devin. “It just rings in a new generation. Not that I would know anything about the latter.”
Sharp blue eyes made the rounds of the remaining occupants at the table, then looked up at Devin. Not a married one in the lot. Not even a single engagement. But she could hope, she thought, glancing at Blair.
“I would have thought that at least Evan would have come through.” She shook a dark head that was only now beginning to sport a few gray strands. “But he can’t even come for Thanksgiving dinner.”
“Evan lives up in San Francisco,” Paige explained to Blair as she gained her feet. She reached over to collect her plate as well as an empty serving dish that had held homemade candied yams. “Don’t worry, he’ll be here for Christmas, Mom.”
Dorothy frowned, masking her true concern. It wasn’t like Evan not to be here. And his excuse had been so vague.
“That’s what he said.” She picked up her dish, only to have Devin take it from her and carry it out to the kitchen, along with his own. “But watch, first one excuse, then another. It gets easier not to come than to go through the trouble of making a trip. Suddenly, you don’t see him for five years.” She sighed, shaking her head. “And I always thought he was the dependable one.”
Devin returned from the kitchen. “He is, Ma.”
He knew why Evan wasn’t here. He’d been in contact with his brother just yesterday, but since Evan had actually retained him in his professional capacity—or would have if Devin hadn’t told him what he could do with his money when Evan had offered to pay for his services—he wasn’t at liberty to say anything about it to his mother or sisters.
Everything, he knew, would work itself out in the end. There was an upside to not coming to Evan’s defense with the truth. His mother got a chance to vent her displeasure. She enjoyed venting. They all knew it was her hobby, just as they knew that she meant nothing by it.
Desperately Seeking Twin... Page 10