“God,” he muttered, then pushed himself off her and sprang to his feet. He was wearing only boxer shorts and a T-shirt.
He was gorgeous, she thought.
“Give me that.” He took the wooden spoon from her and tossed it on the bed, then offered both his hands. He had a few red welts on his cheek and forehead, she noticed.
She took his hands and let him pull her to her feet.
“Again,” he said, squeezing her fingers, “I’m sorry. You’ve got to stop coming in here when I’m having nightmares.”
That would be right, of course, if she wasn’t conditioned to care for someone in distress—and inclined to care about this someone in particular.
“I can’t just listen to you crying out and not do something about it.”
The apology in his eyes was now replaced by humor. “Well, if the something you’re going to do is hit me in the face with a wooden spoon...”
It was a relief to laugh. “You kept trying to take it away from me. And when you tackled me to the carpet, it was my only defense.”
“Yeah. Sorry.” His voice was just above a whisper. “In my dream, it was a gun.”
Suddenly overwhelmed with empathy for what he must be going through—memories of a terrible mother, sisters now lost to him, pictures in his mind of war and suffering, she instinctively wrapped her arms around his neck. “It’ll get better, Jack. The bad memories will fade and you’ll find your sisters. Another year down the road, this will be behind you and you’ll have so much to look forward to.”
They shared a moment of stillness, then her own body recognized the instant her embrace stopped being about comfort and became something else.
He had relaxed while she held him, but every muscle with which she had contact was now a steel coil. The gentle arms that had enfolded her now held her with purpose.
“Sarah,” he whispered.
He pushed her slightly away, looking down into her face. She looked up, snared by his gaze. His mouth came down, hers reached up. The kiss was a gentle communication—for about a second—then it seemed to take his eager initiative and her tentative participation and give them sudden power. His fingers caught in her hair, hers clutched at his shoulders and they kissed away all the shadows that made a relationship between them seem impossible.
They kissed until she had to pull away and gasp for air.
He wore a look of complete surprise. She wasn’t sure what to make of that.
He said, as though confused, “Ah...”
Deeply affected by the kiss, Sarah looked into his face and worried that it hadn’t had the same impact on him. So she punched him playfully in the gut. “Relax, Jack. It was just a kiss. Now, if I can have my wooden spoon back, I can go.”
He gave her the spoon and then caught her wrist as she headed for the door. He looked out of sorts. She felt worse.
“That was not just a kiss,” he said.
Her pretense collapsed. “You look like you don’t want it to be more.” Though he had said he couldn’t think of her as a sister. “So—” she sighed wearily, suddenly exhausted by the scare of his shouting, the tussle off the bed, the pressure of his weight and muscle on top of her “—we won’t let it be anything more.”
He dropped her wrist, but the turmoil in his eyes kept her rooted to the spot.
“It’s not that I don’t want it to be important,” he said. “I just wonder if you understand the problem.”
“Problem?” she asked. She felt encouraged to know that it had been more than just a kiss to him, but if that something more was a problem for him, she was glad she held the wooden spoon. “What was problematic about that kiss? It was...” She struggled to find the right word and finally settled for “Wow.”
* * *
WOW. YES, THAT said it. He couldn’t stop staring into her soft blue-gray eyes.
Didn’t she get it? “The kiss wasn’t problematic. The fact that my brother wants you, too, is.”
She swallowed and studied her fingers. “But he wants children.”
He shifted his weight and folded his arms. “So do I. Not that we’re anywhere near that place, but there it is.”
“Yeah,” she whispered and walked away, a terrible sadness in her eyes.
* * *
SHE HEARD HIM follow her.
Annoyed with him because he couldn’t just make things easy for her, she stopped abruptly in front of the kitchen table and put a hand out to prevent him from bumping into her. “If you recall, I’m the one who said it was just a kiss. Forget it, Jack. It was all the result of a dream.”
He stood at her back. “Was it?”
“Yes.” She turned to look him full in the face, needing to hurt him. “You have such awful stuff to deal with. I felt sorry for you, so I kissed you.”
He looked shaken for a moment, then something ignited in his eyes and he shook his head. “Nice try. That was not a pity kiss. We have to deal with this.”
What neither had noticed was that Ben had just come home and was standing inside the kitchen door, his uniform hat in one hand, a bag from McDonald’s in the other. Sarah spotted him over Jack’s shoulder and felt embarrassed and a little upset that it must now be clear to him what she and Jack were fighting about.
“Good morning, Ben,” she said. She met his gaze, refusing to look guilty. She wasn’t. She’d turned down his proposal. She hadn’t done anything wrong. He wanted children. He should just move on and find someone else to love.
Her interest in Jack wasn’t wrong, at least in regard to fidelity. Sanity was another matter.
Jack turned toward him, his expression giving nothing away. “Hey, Ben.”
His brother smiled blandly. “Still talking about hydrangeas in the fireplace? Blue ones? A variety called kiss, maybe? I heard a lot of talk about kisses.”
Sarah ignored him and dug coffee cartridges out of a drawer, while Jack went to get utensils.
“No, huh? Okay. Well, I brought breakfast home, and a good thing, since the two of you have obviously been too busy to cook anything for the man who left early this morning. I had to take the last two hours of the shift of a guy who got the flu or something, and I’ve been risking life and limb ever since without sustenance.” He indicated the ingredients for pancakes spread out on the counter but clearly ignored, then frowned at Sarah. “Aren’t you late for Vinny?”
“No,” she replied with a glower. “The seniors’ bus took everyone to breakfast, then grocery shopping.”
“Ah.” He put the sack in the middle of the table and dug out all the contents. “Three Sausage McMuffins, six hash browns because Jack and I like to double up on them, and three yogurts with fruit.” He turned to Sarah with a theatrically questioning eyebrow. “Do you think you could trouble yourself to make coffee?”
“Depends,” she replied. “How much of your smug smartness do we have to listen to before we can eat?”
“That was it,” he replied. “Please make the coffee and come and eat. Or would you like me to leave so you two can continue your argument?”
“Shut up, Ben,” Jack and Sarah said simultaneously.
“Right.”
* * *
JACK STOOD IN the middle of the carriage house’s bedroom. Sarah had taken off after breakfast for a fund-raising committee meeting, and he was assessing his skills as a painter. He’d done well. The pale green color his mother had chosen was relaxing, the white woodwork a crisp, sharp contrast. Glenn Stapleton, an old friend who installed hardwood floors, was coming the following day. His mother had left new curtains to hang and a coverlet for the bed.
He could install the new, wrought-iron curtain rods, but he might need Sarah’s help with the curtains. That could be iffy. She’d left without speaking to him. Ben had given him a look that spoke volumes—lethally.
; He needed counseling. He’d been attracted to Sarah from the first time he’d seen her, and that attraction was now turning into outright lust.
No, it was worse than that. It was love. When he’d had her in his arms after his nightmare and felt her, soft and pliant under his hands, he’d understood just how much he wanted her. Then the kiss had proved that she shared his feelings. He’d had a clear opportunity to tell her how he felt and he’d brought up obstacles instead. Though the fact that his brother loved her, too, was a serious obstacle. What was wrong with him?
He was a damaged human being, that was it. He loved his brother’s girlfriend, though he’d die before he hurt Ben. He loved a family he hadn’t seen in over twenty years, and he wondered if the family who’d adopted him and given him everything his life had lacked for eight years would understand. It was as though his life was stalled. The war finally over for him, yet there was no apparent peace in his future.
He went back to the kitchen in the main house to pour himself a coffee, desperate for caffeine. He heard a car, then the front door opening. Sarah must be back.
She walked down the hallway toward the main part of the house without noticing him. He cleared his throat noisily.
Footsteps came back and her head peered around the kitchen doorway. She was pink cheeked and she’d tied her hair back. He liked it best when she wore it down, but pulled back had the effect of making her eyes seem enormous, and they were interesting now with their turbulence and flash.
She had a sheaf of papers in her hand and she thrust one at him. “I’ve just been to the printers. This is the flyer for the talent show I was telling you about. Ben and the De Angelis brothers have agreed to participate, but they say their group doesn’t work without you.” She paused for a breath and gave him a look intended to intimidate. “You have to help us.”
“I told you I don’t—”
She silenced him with saying, “Jack. You have a good voice. You run your own business and therefore set your own hours. You’ll have lots of time for rehearsals and to psych yourself up to appear in front of an audience.”
He caught the strap of the little purse that was draped across her body and pulled her to him. It was one thing for her to be upset with him, but another to let her think she could push him around. She could, but he was pretty sure it wasn’t good for him to let her think she could. He looped his arms loosely around her.
“I might be charmed into helping,” he said, noticing that she wasn’t struggling to get away, “but telling me I have to help isn’t going to do it.”
“If you don’t agree,” she said in a reasonable tone that belied the deepening pink in her cheeks, “Ben and the De Angelis brothers won’t do it.”
“Ah. So it isn’t as much that I have to do it as you need me to do it.”
She considered that. “Yes,” she said finally.
“Then, maybe...” He tipped his head back as though thinking through a solution. “Oh, something like ‘Jack, I need you’ might spur me to be helpful.”
Her lips quirked wryly. “Honestly, Palmer. You can be such a pill. And pills used to be my line of work, so I know whereof I speak.” He watched her fight against a smile.
“Hmm. That didn’t sound like ‘Jack, I need you.’”
“Is that going to guarantee me anything?”
She met his gaze and doubtless realized that he considered the scope of those few words went beyond the context of the talent show. Her eyes softened and he felt their pull as he tugged her closer. “In the right tone of voice, those words could get you anything you want.”
When she didn’t immediately reply, he said, as though reconsidering, “Or one could consider my offer to renovate the Cooper Building at cost enough of a contribution that I wouldn’t—”
This time she kissed him. He had to get past the shock he felt to realize she held his face in her hands, met his lips with fervor and impressive skill, then wrapped her arms around him and held him as though he was the only steady handhold in a storm-rocked world. Then she sighed, dropped her hands and stepped back.
“Jack,” she said, her manner sharpening a little, though the kiss lingered in her eyes, “I need you. Are you in or not?”
That didn’t sound as though he got the words out of the context of the talent show, but it was progress of a sort.
“The Wild Men really weren’t very good,” he said. “I mean, I can carry a tune, but I’m no Bruno Mars.”
“The Wild Men?”
“Our group.”
“Oh. I don’t care.”
“What if the audience boos and hisses?”
“I imagine your ego can deal with that. If they start throwing things, we’ll have a lot of cops participating, so we’ll have built-in crowd control.”
He exhaled noisily. “Then I guess I’m in.”
“Thank you.” She started to walk away.
“Do you want to seal the deal with another kiss?” he called after her.
She turned and walked back to him. His pulse quickened and he reached a hand out for her. “No,” she said, keeping herself beyond his reach. “But maybe you could put that offer to work at cost in writing.”
* * *
“YOU TOLD HER the Wild Men needed me?” Jack confronted Ben in the driveway. He’d gone out to the truck to get another tarp and Ben was on his way to work a swing shift. His schedule was now completely crazy. The number of officers who weren’t down with the flu was continually diminishing.
Ben opened his door. “Yeah. If I have to do this, so do you. And why don’t you want to do it for her? Don’t insult my intelligence by denying that anything’s going on between you, because you’re both wearing it like hazmat suits.”
“I’m doing it, okay? It’s just that the Wild Men weren’t really very good.”
“We’ll rehearse.”
“I doubt seriously that will help.”
“Community talent shows are about effort and good humor, not real talent. Which, I admit, is a good thing in our case. A willingness to laugh at ourselves will work in our favor. But the Cooper guy is bound to be a big draw.” Ben climbed into his truck. “I’ve got to go.”
Jack tapped on his window. “One more thing,” he said when Ben opened it.
“Yeah?”
“Are you still in love with her?”
Ben looked him in the eye. “Of course. Are you going to nobly step out of my way so I can keep seeing her and convince her that she’d love to have my children, after all?”
“No.”
Ben grinned with what appeared to be satisfaction. “She seemed to be pretty mad at you this morning.”
Jack had to let him have that one. “That seems to be the way this relationship rolls. She’s mad at me a lot.”
“I don’t ever remember her being mad at me.”
“Maybe that means something. Deep feelings aren’t always easy to manage peacefully.”
His smile dying, Ben stuck a hand out the window and pushed Jack out of the way for his own safety, then sped backward with a squeal of tires and raced away. Jack felt both guilty and triumphant. But that was his life’s story. He’d always felt responsible for everything and everyone, treasured his small victories, then felt guilty about being happy. The fact that his happiness would come at the expense of Ben’s was hard to accept. But he couldn’t help exulting over Sarah’s kiss.
Then he had a new thought. There was a solution to this tension among the three of them that didn’t involve giving up Sarah. Granted, it was only temporary, but it might alleviate some problems. And it would prevent him from throwing Sarah around while he was dreaming.
* * *
JACK WAS CARRYING BEDCLOTHES, a pillow and a suitcase out the kitchen door when Sarah came home from work. It had been a long day. She felt a stab of alarm at wha
t appeared to be a moving-out process. “What’s going on?” she asked.
“I thought it would be better if I moved into the carriage house for a while,” he said casually, apparently trying not to make a big thing of it. But she knew it kind of was; all three of them were at odds with one another far too often. “This way, if I’m shouting in my sleep, you won’t hear me and be tempted to help me and I won’t throw you off the turret.”
“The turret?” she asked. She followed him down the walk and into the carriage house, holding up the dragging end of a blanket. They turned into the bedroom.
He dropped everything onto the mattress and nodded. “My mother always climbs up onto the Humvee’s turret to confront me. That’s when I throw her off. And you.”
She hated this. “I’m sorry my being here is causing problems between you and Ben. I should be the one to find someplace else to live.”
“No, this will work out fine. I’m going to take a few things from the kitchen in the house for the kitchen here.”
“You have to come to the house for breakfast every day. I promised your mom I’d cook for you.”
“What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her.”
She punched him with a look. “We’re not lying to your mother.”
“It’s not lying, precisely.”
“When you have to add ‘precisely,’ it’s lying. We can’t run away from the problem.” She was upset and confused and couldn’t imagine how she’d gotten into this, or how she could ever resolve it. And what did it matter, anyway? She didn’t want children and Ben and Jack did. So, nothing could happen for her with either man. Fate, however, didn’t seem to know that.
He turned on her hotly. “I’d love to just let myself fall in love with you, but Ben doesn’t want it to be over between you. I keep telling myself that I’ve never in my life sat back and let Ben take something from me just because I owe him for getting me into his family. But this time...”
“What’s different about this time?”
He met her gaze, his own sad and perplexed. “This time, it’s you. And you’re right between my brother and me. Not your fault, just the way it is. All that’s kept me sane through the nightmares was the thought of finding a woman to love and raise children with.” He made a rueful gesture in her direction. “I found the woman, but she doesn’t want children, and my brother loves her. Damn.”
In My Dreams Page 10