Kiss Me Hello (Sweetest Kisses)

by Grace Burrowes

  “I have a law degree,” Gideon replied, which was true. Maybe because his dog had scared Miss Delacourt, but more likely because Gideon despised misrepresentation of any kind, he gave her the rest of the truth. “I abhor the whole suit-and-tie drill though. Did it for three years. ‘Yes, Your Honor. No, Your Honor. May it please the court…’ Courtroom attire, bar lunches…that’s not what I do best. I’m litigation support now, fact-checking, investigating, document analysis. Longer hours, but my own hours.”

  More interesting hours too, and every bit as lucrative.

  Miss Delacourt wrinkled a nose nobody would call cute, though Gideon liked the character in that nose. He liked her green eyes too, liked the hint of caution in them, and the shadows that said despite her cordial manners, she valued her privacy.

  “So much education only begins when the schooling is over.” She produced a saucepan from inside her oven. “Baby can drink out of this.”

  While Miss Delacourt poured herself lemonade, Gideon filled the pan from the tap.

  “Probably best if Baby drinks out on the porch. She’s not the tidiest pup.”

  Baby rotated her floppy, silky ears at his mention of her name. She’d taken up residence directly under an AC vent, her expression relaxed and alert.

  “Shall we join her?” Miss Delacourt asked. “I’ve been running around all day, and I chose this place in part for the big trees. Might as well enjoy them while the weather holds.”

  Making conversation with complete strangers was part of Gideon’s job, and he was good at it. That he could enjoy a glass of lemonade on a pleasant fall afternoon with a pretty neighbor was a treat though, one he wouldn’t have encountered were he staining floor boards in his summer kitchen.

  So he settled with his lemonade on the concrete a few judicious feet away from the slurping dog, while Miss Delacourt took a seat on a bentwood rocker that had seen better days. The breeze in the nearby oaks had that dry, leaf-snatching autumnal quality, while the afternoon sun spread a benevolent warmth, and a wind chime tinkled on the next floor down.

  Miss Delacourt took a sip of her lemonade, apparently inclined to enjoy a moment of quiet. Her toenails were painted in a Hawaiian palette—lime green, magenta, cyan.

  Inside Gideon’s back pocket, his phone buzzed. He should dump messages, review his email, and check in with Finn, because his partner was the fretful sort.

  Instead, he took a sip of sweet, tart, cold lemonade, and for the first time in a long time, prepared to spend time with a woman for the sheer pleasure of her company.

  * * *

  Gideon Granville’s speaking voice was as saturated with beauty as Sadie’s shorts were saturated with color. And yet, like an element of a sketch deliberately off center, that Oxford purr made her look at him twice.

  Faded blue jeans, a black T-shirt molded to a trim torso, and scuffed running shoes struck her as a failed attempt at camouflage. Gideon was a couple of inches over six feet—tall enough to catch a woman’s eye across a crowded bar, not too tall to kiss.

  What the hell, Delacourt. Too much country air?

  “Are you from Maryland?” he asked, patting the concrete beside him.

  “I’m most recently from Washington, DC,” Sadie replied, because Damson Valley was a friendly place, and the question was reasonable from a prospective neighbor. “I’ll have to commute into Adams Morgan from time to time, but my job can be done pretty much wherever I have my computers. What about you?”

  The dog left off parting the Red Sea in the bottom of Sadie’s double boiler and padded over to her owner. She flopped onto the concrete and put her damp chin on Gideon’s thigh with an air of weary surrender.

  “I was born in Surrey,” he said, “which is very pretty, much like here. Green and kind to trees. My mum came over with my stepdad when I was sixteen, and this has been my home since.”

  Too bad for Surrey. Gideon was a handsome addition to the scenery, despite his nondescript clothing. Tousled dark hair; blue, blue eyes; and enough breadth of shoulder to suggest he worked out conscientiously.

  And could move boxes.

  “You didn’t like the lawyer shtick?” Sadie’s feeling about lawyers were mixed. Jay-Jay’s lawyers she had liked, despite their exorbitant wages. Hollister’s lawyers should have been disbarred and feathered.

  “I liked lawyering fine when everything went according to plan, and the obvious scoundrel went to jail while the blameless victim was compensated for his troubles. That happened about once a year.”

  He pet his great hound with a slow, stroking caress to her shoulder, and while the dog’s gusty sigh suggested she enjoyed it, Gideon seemed soothed by the contact too.

  “And those few cases that followed the TV script took an entire year,” Sadie added. “The wheels of justice grind slowly and often with a lot of squeaking.”

  “You’re divorced, then?”

  A reasonable conclusion, also a tad nosy, though if Gideon had checked out her left hand, Sadie hadn’t caught him at it. He, however, had mentioned a partner.

  “Never one time,” Sadie said. “You?”

  Still he stroked the dog’s shoulder, much like Sam twitched at his favorite blankie as he fell asleep.

  “Never found the lady who’d have me for the long term. This is very good lemonade.”

  Oh, right. If he’d zipped his jeans when Sadie walked into the men’s bathroom by mistake, his evasion could not have been less subtle.

  Which was fine with Sadie. A friendly neighbor she could use, a distraction, not.

  “Squeezed the lemons this morning,” she said, “before I went on my whirlwind tour of Damson Valley’s lone grocery establishment. I didn’t find the liquor store, though.”

  “Next to the post. Vineyard Street, opposite the college.”

  Which was on the northwest side of town, maybe. “Handy for the students. So what brings you to Damson Valley Apartments?”

  “Renovations,” Gideon said, sloshing the ice in his glass. “My farmhouse is at least 150 years old, and that takes a toll on a building. When I discovered some of the wiring was still wrapped in paper, I decided there’s no time like the present to come up to code. That was in May.”

  “Renovations are like a medical diagnosis. A simple bellyache turns into six weeks in the hospital, the end of your life savings, and possibly the end of your job.”

  His rhythmic petting of the dog slowed. “You speak from experience?”

  “Not direct experience. I take it winter’s coming on, and your contractor hasn’t given you a firm completion date?”

  Sadie knew all about firm completion dates. Several of them had eluded her in the past year. That was another motivation for moving to Damson Valley—without distractions, she’d make faster progress toward her project goals.

  “I also have rather a penchant for clean laundry and properly prepared food,” Gideon replied. “Hard to come by those without proper wiring. Now I wonder if I should have found some obliging farmer to foster Baby over the winter. She needs her exercise.”

  “Get a doggie treadmill,” Sadie suggested.

  A small silence erupted, because Sadie had done it again, had solved a problem nobody had asked her solve. Jay-Jay had an entire lecture on Overfunctioning Is a Coping Skill.

  Jay-Jay, whom Sadie should call.

  “Hadn’t thought of a doggie treadmill. Suppose it could work. I’d hate to part with my best girl for even a few months.”

  The shameless beast lifted her head from Gideon’s thigh and licked his hand.

  “I can see why,” Sadie said, finishing her lemonade. Hollister would have liked Baby, until she had her first accident or splashed a single drop of her drinking water onto his Italian loafers.

  “I noticed you bought salad ingredients,” Gideon said, rising in one lithe movement. “I’m firing up the grill tomorrow night for
the guys helping me move in. A salad would make the meal healthier, and a lady’s presence would ensure Trenton Knightley’s daughter had some company besides Baby.”

  Damson Valley had the reputation for being small-town affordable, rural-pretty, and bedroom-community convenient. In short, an ideal solution to a lot of Sadie’s problems.

  One of which had been an increasing sense of isolation in DC.

  “How old is this daughter?”

  “Merle’s so high,” Gideon said, holding his hand at about his waist. “The Knightley brothers will help me move. Trent is her dad. Mac and James are her uncles. Good fellows; hard workers too, but I get the sense a little girl is sometimes lost in the male shuffle amongst them.”

  Why was Gideon extending this invitation? If he was trying to pick Sadie up, he wouldn’t ask her to join a testosterone party. Maybe he wanted a babysitter for the kid and the dog? If he was trying to be friendly…

  Sadie would not recognize such an overture, no matter how sincere. That’s what the last five years of living in the professional penguin rookery of DC had done to her.

  “What time?” she asked.

  “About five. I’m in 209, around the corner and down a level. Shall I leave you my cell number?”

  Gideon had extended his hand to her. Sadie took the space of an awkward moment to realize he was offering to assist her to her feet. As if…

  Not as if she were incapable of standing. As if—novel, bewildering concept—he were a gentleman, and she were a lady.

  She put her hand in his and rose. “Salad, then, and maybe brownies if I can make enough headway with my unpacking.”

  Because this Merle kid sounded like she was about Sam’s age, because grilled veggies were a treat not to be missed, because everybody could use a muscular neighbor from time to time.

  Gideon squeezed her hand gently. “Thanks. See you then.”

  “Right. Apartment 209. Don’t forget your pooch.”

  Baby had risen to sitting and had become an insistent, gentle pressure against Sadie’s right leg. The dog’s head just happened to be at ideally pet-able height, so Sadie obliged. Baby’s coat was surprisingly soft, plush, and pleasurable to touch.

  “She’s a leaner,” Gideon said. “She’s also a lady of particulars. She must like you.”

  He winked, picked up the nearly empty water pot, and disappeared inside, his dog trailing after him. A moment later, Sadie heard the door close and followed her first guest into the apartment.

  As she rinsed out glasses, Sadie was assailed by an emotion she didn’t at first recognize. Her middle was not quite settled, her thoughts were hopping around, and yet she felt an inclination to smile.

  She’d met a neighbor and through him would soon meet a few more locals, possibly even a friend for Sam.

  She’d made small talk as she’d sat sipping lemonade on her porch—when had that ever happened before?

  Her studio was set up, but she wasn’t, for once, holed up with her computers, oblivious to everything except urgent bodily functions.

  And Sadie had petted Baby as the dog had leaned against her leg, panting gently. Without even thinking, without worrying, Sadie had petted the biggest dog she could recall meeting.

  Surely, surely that was an omen, and relocating to Damson Valley had been a smart move after all, for the emotion crowding against Sadie’s ribs and burbling through her veins was none other than…hope.

  * * *

  “I hope you’re grilling half a cow, Granville,” MacKenzie Knightley said as he put down his end of the sofa. “I spent the morning shoeing fractious equines, and this afternoon wrangling your furniture. I’m as hungry as a bear in springtime.”

  At nearly six foot four, Mac was entitled to his appetites, and Gideon had passed peckish an hour ago.

  “Whine, whine, whine,” James Knightley singsonged, following them in with a captain’s chair rocker and nudging the door closed with his foot. He was the youngest of the three brothers, the only blond, and the family Don Juan. “Here’s your rocking chair, old man. To heck with the cow. I could use a few cold ones.”

  “Somebody sent you flowers, Granville,” Trenton Knightley said, peering out the dining-room window. He was the dad of the bunch, and as such, had an assistant in the task of wiring up Gideon’s entertainment center.

  “They’re pretty,” Merle, his daughter, added. She hopped off the desk and ran a zigzag pattern amid Gideon’s furniture and boxes to the door. She opened the door before the bell had rung. “Are those for Gideon?”

  Baby, not a creature who enjoyed upheaval, took to barking, but didn’t leave Gideon’s side.

  “Stay,” he commanded softly, for behind the colorful bouquet of zinnias, daisies, and asters stood a small red-haired woman in jeans, sandals, and a lime green T-shirt.

  “I’ll get these,” Gideon said, taking the flowers and setting them on a speaker. “Please do come in, and perhaps Baby will cease rousing the watch.”

  “I’m Merle,” Trent’s daughter said. “Did you bring brownies?”

  Baby disobeyed Starfleet orders and ambled over to sniff Sadie’s knee, while Gideon put an arm around Sadie’s shoulders. Cheeky of him, but his neighbor looked leery of joining the pandemonium that was Gideon’s moving day.

  “My friends, please welcome to the madhouse Miss Sadie Delacourt, late of 319 one floor up.”

  “I did bring brownies,” she said, “also salad, vegetable shish kebabs, and some lemonade.”

  Sadie had a reusable green shopping bag looped over her wrist. James relieved her of it, though to Gideon, the point of the exercise was for James to nearly hold hands with Sadie in the process.

  “I’m James Knightley. Pleased to meet you.”

  “My dad is putting together the stuff so I can watch my videos,” Merle offered. “Do you like princess videos?”

  “I do,” Sadie said. “If they aren’t violent.”

  “I’m Trenton Knightley.” Unlike his scamp of a younger brother, Trent offered a proper handshake. “Always a pleasure to meet a woman packing brownies.”

  “Our older brother is MacKenzie Knightley,” James said, waving a hand at Mac. “He’s shy. I’m friendly.”

  “I’m hungry,” Mac said, “and wondering what the lady will think of you, James, if you’re hitting on her within thirty seconds of learning her name.”

  Quite the older brother, was Mac, though James merely grinned at the rebuke.

  “I like lemonade,” Merle chirped, “and flowers.”

  The bouquet was an interesting gesture, also visually out of place in an apartment done in Tidy-Bachelor neutral tones. That bouquet would draw the eye away from the brown leather sofa, the cream rug on the beige carpet, and the cream-and-brown drapes.

  “The flowers should have another inch or two of water,” Sadie said, “and I’ll bet your kitchen isn’t set up yet.”

  “Nothing is set up,” Merle volunteered. “Uncle James said bad words when he tried to put the bed together.”

  “I apologized for the bad words,” James chimed in, “but you’re right. I didn’t finish getting the frame up.”

  “I’ll show you how it’s done, Baby Brother.” Mac took James by the arm. “I’m sure Merle is perfectly capable of guarding the brownies without your help, and Trent was grilling steak before you learned how to drive.”

  As Mac dragged his youngest brother down the hall toward the bedrooms, James aimed a smile in Sadie’s direction. She was rummaging in her shopping bag, oblivious to James’s flirting—or purposely ignoring it.

  “You have something else in that bag?” Gideon asked.

  “A sketch pad,” she said, straightening with a small spiral-bound notebook in her hand. “Merle, you can draw pictures until your dad’s done wiring up the equipment. Baby might like her portrait done.”

  Sadie passed over
the sketch pad, a pencil, and an eraser. Merle took them, her expression suggesting she’d been entrusted with the scepter and orb of some princessly realm right in Gideon’s very living room.

  “Brilliant notion,” Gideon observed as Merle took up a cross-legged seat before Baby’s bed. “The dog’s worn out from policing all the coming and going today, and Trent will make faster progress for having fewer interruptions.”

  “Where’s Baby’s water bowl?” Sadie asked.

  In a sea of boxes, rolled up rugs, stray electronics, and camera equipment, Gideon saw no shiny silver bowl. Baby would drink from a clean potty if she were desperate, which wasn’t much of an excuse for Gideon’s oversight.

  “Good question. Likely in a kitchen box.”

  As Sadie put his kitchen to rights—“Yes, you need shelf paper, Gideon, and, no, the bread can’t sit out on the counter”—Gideon took a moment to lean on the doorjamb and enjoy a cold glass of lemonade.

  “What’s that look about?” Sadie asked as she snitched a lettuce leaf from the salad bowl. “Are you missing your farmhouse?”

  Down the hall, Mac and James were engaged in an argument that, in the language of brothers, was a form of play. From the porch came the scent of good steak on the grill, and in the living room, both dog and child were content in each other’s company.

  “My first plan for today was to ask Dunstan Cromarty to help me move. He’s another lawyer, a Scot with a work ethic that won’t quit. We trade that type of chore, but his back has been bothering him.”

  “He’s a friend?” Sadie asked, passing Gideon an inch-square serving of gooey, dark-chocolate confection.

  “Of a sort. We both have funny accents, though his is much harder to understand than mine.”

  A standing joke between them. Cromarty was one of the most competent and ferocious litigators in Damson County, though Gideon wondered if he weren’t also one of the loneliest.

  “A comrade, then. You have things in common, but don’t pry uninvited. If anybody sees you with that brownie, Granville, you’ll never hear the end of it.” Sadie took the brownie from his hand and held it up to his mouth.