Or maybe she was just projecting, now that all three of her BFFs had found husbands and were settled into wedded bliss.
“So,” he repeated.
“Um, how about I show you the apartment?” So much for defending her borders. She was such a pushover.
“Let me get my stuff.” Mitchell headed toward his motorcycle, which had his military-issue duffle bag strapped to the back.
He strolled away with the ease of someone who was completely comfortable in his own skin, yet his muscled body flexed and tensed with each step and his head panned back and forth like he was taking in every detail, assessing danger, and sizing up the territory.
The fact that she liked it had her wanting to rattle off the entire military alphabet. His bike parked under the shade of a ponderosa pine right next to her SUV seemed to belong. Like it had been missing all this time and now her home was complete. His watchfulness, protectiveness, and the caring way he’d interacted with Jaycee and Trevor were . . . nice. Way more than nice, actually. It melted her heart and had her looking at him like more than a buddy or childhood friend too.
He grabbed his bag and tossed it over a shoulder. She waved for him to follow and then pointed to the garage as they headed toward the house. “There’s an outside staircase on the far side. I’ll give you a key.” She stomped her feet on the mat when she reached the front door. “It’s locked, so we’ll have to go through my room for now.” She walked through the living room, depositing the trumpet on a chair, and started to climb the stairs. “The only inside entrance is through the master bedroom.” And suddenly, her throat turned to gravel at the thought of him sleeping in the garage apartment with just a thin wall to separate them. “Um, the person who built it was an artist. They used the apartment as a studio.”
His footfalls echoed through the house as he climbed the wood stairs close behind her. So close that his heat seemed to reach for her. Or was that her projecting again?
Good Lord.
She hurried up the stairs and into her room where she snatched up her purse to search for the key.
Mitchell didn’t follow her inside. He stood in the doorway, shoved his hands in the pockets of the worn Levi’s that cupped and hugged and . . . um, bulged in all the right places.
She redoubled her efforts to find the key and dug deeper into her purse. Where was that extra set? Her tongue slid between her teeth as she searched. Tried to concentrate on hunting for the key with a large square base that should make it easier to find. And tried not to focus on the hot and hard man who lounged against the doorframe looking cool and confident and so darned dishy that she had to keep reminding herself he was her friend. Her childhood friend!
And a war junkie who would get on his motorcycle one day soon and roll right out of town looking for another thrill. He’d probably leave rubber tire tracks still smoking as he flipped the bird at the city limits sign on the way out.
He wasn’t someone she could count on. At least not for the long term.
But the way he looked at her and the way he’d watched over her the last few hours like he was her champion made it really, really hard to convince herself of that. Especially while they stood in her most intimate sanctuary. A lavender velvet comforter covered a king-size four-poster bed that was way too big for one person. Fancy accent pillows were arranged just so to look artfully tossed at random. She’d decorated the room for herself, accepting that she might be single for the rest of her life. Truth be told, if not for the boys, she’d have loved to share the space with someone warm and affectionate. Someone willing to show up to the party and give her his whole heart. Not just a sliver of it while the rest belonged to a desert halfway around the world.
Mitchell’s mocha eyes watched her, took her in, studied her. Gave her his full attention. Something she hadn’t had . . . ever. Cameron hadn’t been attentive since they were high school sweethearts, because after his first tour, he’d become a different man. A man she rarely saw, except when he was on leave.
A man she didn’t recognize even when he was home.
The man who had come home just long enough to marry her and get her pregnant twice had been a stranger in her high school sweetheart’s body. All emotion and tenderness gone. Replaced by a distracted and distant person who couldn’t hold a conversation with his own wife. He hadn’t even listed Lorenda as his next of kin. His personal possessions had been delivered to Mitchell, who’d handed them to her at Cameron’s funeral. Just before Mitchell had burned rubber out of town, she’d given him Cameron’s dog tags.
Seemed appropriate.
Her fingertips grazed a square object. Ah-ha! Finally. “Here it is.” She pulled a purple metallic square from the bottom of her purse.
Mitchell’s chocolaty eyes rounded, then twinkled with laughter. He cracked a smile so broad a flash of white teeth nearly blinded her.
She looked at her hand. And wanted to sink into the floor, because she’d proudly produced a condom. A freaking condom. Miranda, Ella, and Angelique—her happily married BFFs—were hounding her so hard to start looking for a man, they’d given her condoms for her birthday. Which she’d thrown into her purse and never thought of again. Until now.
And she was going to throttle all three of them.
Her eyes slid shut for a beat, and blood rushed to her ears, creating a thundering roar that rattled her brain. She closed her fist around the square to hide it. As if that would help the humiliating heat burning up her neck into the tips of her ears.
Mitchell rubbed his jaw and stared at her closed fist. “Thanks, Sparky, but you keep it. I’m okay in that department.”
Oh, she bet he was. She, on the other hand, had been celibate so long that her idea of a good time was setting her cell phone to vibrate, putting it in her front pocket, and calling herself from the landline. Which was why her three blissfully married friends had given her the condoms and dared her to put them to good use.
Lorenda fought for composure. Threw the damn condom that would probably stay sealed for the rest of her life back into her bag and tore through the contents of her purse. “Can you turn the light on, please?” Her tone was huffy because the room was dim, lit only by the late-afternoon sun filtering through her wooden blinds, and that didn’t help the situation.
He reached over and flipped the switch. “I agree. It’s always better with the light on.”
Her head snapped up at the gritty tone in his voice, and she found him laughing at her. That playful smile that she remembered from their childhood and then as teenagers. It had disappeared once he’d gone into the military. Then again, she’d only seen him a few times since then because he wasn’t exactly welcome in Red River.
But that full-on mischievous smile was back. And sexy as hell.
“They were a gag gift.” She searched the bottomless pit she called a purse. Could not bring herself to look at him. “For my birthday. From Miranda and a couple of other girlfriends.” Head still down. Cheeks still on fire. Best friends still in danger of getting a headstone right next to Checkers. Soon. She set the purse on the bed and kept the search going right along with her blathering. “They think it’s time for me to move on.”
Gah!
Her fingers brushed metal, and she finally found the freaking key.
When she held it up like a prize, the look on Mitchell’s face made her still.
“Sparky, you should’ve moved on a long time ago. You deserved better than what you got.”
Every drop of air disappeared from the room. He knew. He freaking knew. Searing anger burned through her, setting all of her nerve endings on fire. Wasn’t it enough that Cameron had cut her off emotionally? That he’d regretted marrying her? He had to share her humiliation with Mitchell? That shouldn’t surprise her. The twin brothers had shared everything, often reading each other’s minds without having to speak a word. But if Cameron held nothing else in their marriage sacred, he could’ve at least protected her from the embarrassment of others knowing she was baggage he’d rather
not have claimed.
She’d had his back even after he’d died, but he couldn’t shield her from this one injustice.
Tears threatened.
Mitchell’s eyes turned dark and raw as they caressed her face. “I’m sorry, Sparky. For everything. A woman as beautiful as you . . .” He toed the floor with his boot. “You should move on.” His eyes lingered on her lips for a beat, then another, before locking gazes with her again. “So why have you stayed single for so long?”
She had no idea why the next thought zinged through her mind, but she bit her lip to keep it from spilling out. Blurting “because I was waiting for you” out loud wouldn’t have made any sense, even though that’s exactly what she was thinking. She hadn’t been waiting for him.
But at that moment, delta if it didn’t feel like she had.
Chapter Five
Lorenda slept in the next morning, because the puppy howling from the laundry room had kept her up most of the night. The badass SEAL sleeping on the other side of the door that separated her room from the garage apartment hadn’t helped lull her into a peaceful slumber either. She’d spent hours wondering what would happen if she knocked on the door.
No. Actually she already knew what would happen. She’d spent the night fantasizing about how good it would be.
Finally, as the first blush of dawn cascaded through her windows, the howling had stopped, and she’d drifted off to sleep. But the fantasies had continued in her dreams.
And now, with late-morning sun filtering through her window, she had to drag herself out of bed and face the man . . . her buddy, her brother-in-law . . . with a straight face and try not to blush at the images that had flickered and floated through her dreams. Dreams that had her insides coiled tight and ready to unfurl.
She took a quick shower, freshened up, and pulled on a fitted light-pink tee, a pair of frayed jeans, and sandals. Of course the holes in the knees were from years of roughhousing with two boys, but apparently, the latest fashion designers had labeled jeans like hers “distressed,” slapped on a hefty price tag, and declared them all the rage. As she walked past the dresser on the way to the door, she stopped to check herself out.
Beautiful was the word Mitchell used yesterday evening. She hadn’t felt beautiful in an eternity. Although she’d taken good care of herself, it had been so, so long since a man had looked at her the way Mitchell had yesterday. It wasn’t just his sweltering gaze of attraction that flipped her switch. The compassion that had darkened his eyes and knitted his brow when he told her she deserved better than Cameron’s disinterest had also ignited the most erotic dreams she’d ever had until she’d woken up close to an orgasm.
She mussed her long blonde hair and snagged a tube of sheer pink lip gloss off the dresser. With two swipes, she pursed her lips at the mirror and struck a sex-kitten pose.
Okay, stop acting like a slut. She’d have to make up a code word for that.
She breathed in a deep, steadying breath and told herself to grow up. She wasn’t in high school anymore, and she’d already been down the long, lonely road of marital misery with one Lawson twin. She still had the last name and the stretch marks to prove it. War-hardened Lawson twin number two wasn’t an option.
He had, however, been an extraordinary fantasy.
She shivered as she drifted downstairs, her nails skimming the banister.
The scent of fresh coffee drew her to the kitchen like a salivating dog.
Speaking of . . .
Lorenda checked the laundry room. Malarkey was gone. Come to think of it, the house was extremely quiet. Which caused a blaring disaster alert to go off in her mind, because the last time the house had been that quiet, the boys had decided to sneak into the garage and figure out how her car engine worked. By taking it apart. Luckily they hadn’t gotten very far when she’d found them with a socket wrench and a hammer.
She hurried to the back door and opened the blind that hung over the glass panel. Her throat closed. In the backyard, Jaycee and Trevor were looking at their uncle Mitch with complete adoration. Down on one knee, he held up a treat, mouthed something to the dog, and to Lorenda’s amazement, the dog sat. He tossed the treat into the dog’s mouth, and everybody cheered while the dog licked and nipped at the squealing boys. Like a happy and complete family.
And the lump in her throat grew to the size of Wheeler Peak.
She fixed herself a cup of joe and headed outside. The boys had followed the loping puppy to the meadow. When she closed the door behind her, Mitchell stood, a black T-shirt stretching taut across his broad chest. It molded to hard pecs and tapered down his torso to a slim waist.
And, good Lord, did she feel a blush coming on? Because he was even hotter this morning than he had been in her dreams last night. Except for the clothes. Nope, he hadn’t had a stitch on in her dreams.
Yep, either she was blushing or her temperature had just shot up to nuclear meltdown levels.
“Morning,” she said, walking over to him.
“Morning,” he said back.
His black hair was a little messy and revealed a smattering of gray around the temples that she hadn’t noticed yesterday. The unfortunate spoils of war.
“Sorry I overslept. The dog kept me up most of the night.” Her insides quivered. Hopefully he couldn’t read the lie by omission on her face, because way more than the dog had kept her up last night. “Um, I hope he gets used to our house.” She ran a manicured nail around the rim of the piping mug and prayed the heat in her cheeks wasn’t obvious.
“He will,” Mitchell assured her. “Bomb-sniffing dogs saved my unit more than once. Some of the canine handlers showed me a thing or two. I can help train him, if it’s alright with you.”
She looked out over the grassy meadow where the boys apparently issued the sit command, because the dog plopped onto its haunches. Jaycee held out his hand for the dog to gobble up a treat. “Looks like you’ve already started.”
“I went to the Red River Market early this morning and picked up training treats, dog food, and a few other things.”
“Oh. Well. I could’ve done that.” She held up the coffee and took a sip. She should’ve been the one to do it, before the boys and the dog became as goo-goo eyed over Mitchell as her.
“Of course the owner, Mr. Garrett, didn’t exactly welcome me back to Red River. He growled something about not getting too close to his fire alarm.”
Lorenda raised both brows and angled her head, waiting for an explanation. More than one of Mitchell’s pranks had been misconstrued as vandalism back in the day.
He kicked the ground with one boot and then looked up at her with a twinkle in his eye that said he was kind of ashamed but not really. “Cameron thought it would be funny. So of course I had to find out for sure.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Wasn’t really all that funny. At least not to the owner, my dad, the fire department, or any of the customers who happened to be shopping in the store that day.”
She put a hand on her hip, and Mitchell followed the motion. His eyes darkened, and one side of his mouth curled into a smile.
His gaze found hers again. “To make up for it, I offered to stock his shelves once a week while I’m in town. He’s a miser, so he didn’t hesitate to take me up on the free labor.” He laughed. “And I didn’t mind getting the dog supplies. I’ve got little else to spend my money on. Besides a leave here and there, most of my military pay has accumulated in the bank.” He shoved his hands in his pockets, and the crown of thorns flexed and rippled.
She really, really liked the flexing and rippling. But she really, really needed to keep her goo-goo eyes to herself.
“Least I can do since you’re giving me a place to stay.”
Right. He was living with her now. Right on the other side of a very thin door. Which she should nail shut and booby trap ASAP before her vajayjay tried to thank him for all the help.
Okay, a different subject might help. A safer subject that didn’t make her girl parts go rogue.
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“Are you staying in Red River for good?” The thought of him being around forever sent a zing of electricity prickling over her arms to settle in her breasts, where her nipples proceeded to stand up and salute.
She wrapped an arm across her chest.
He shook his head, and his gaze trekked to the boys in the meadow. “I came back because Mom asked me to.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Wants me to make peace with Red River, because that will help make peace with the old man.” He chuckled. “You saw how well that’s going.”
“I didn’t know about your dad’s health.” Lorenda let her coffee mug hover at her lips. A big part of her father-in-law’s stress came from Mitchell’s rebellion as a kid. A rebellion that Larry Lawson believed had led to Cameron’s death.
Unfortunately, no amount of atonement would bring Cameron, the favored son, back.
“I know you just got out of the military, but have you figured out what you’re going to do?”
“I’ve been out for a year.” He stared at his boots.
Her lips parted. “And you’re just now coming home? Mitchell, where have you been?”
He kicked the grass. “Here and there.”
Ah, the years of military life had instilled that same wanderlust spirit in his brother. The same unsettled sense that he didn’t belong. Anywhere. Lorenda suspected that if Cameron had lived, he wouldn’t have stayed in Red River. Wouldn’t have stayed with her and the boys. And wouldn’t have wanted them to follow him.
“Why now?” She’d asked Cameron to leave the military after his second tour was over. He wouldn’t, claiming that Mitchell planned to stay in and wanted Cameron to stay too. Cameron didn’t want to leave his brother over there alone. It was a twin thing. An inseparable bond that he couldn’t break.
“I’m thirty-two. That’s getting to be an old man in SEAL years. I figured it was time.” He turned his attention to the house. “While I’m here, I can help around the house and yard.” He pointed to the small stack of wood on the far side of the garage. “If I split that thinner, it will burn better. And I can haul in another cord so you’ll be stocked up when winter hits.”
It's In His Arms (A Red River Valley Novel Book 4) Page 5