by Amelia Autin
“Don’t rub it in.” Chris massaged the furrow he could feel forming between his eyebrows. “Anyway, long story short, I found her. But she had a damned good reason for running—her in-laws tried to kill her.”
Annabel gasped. “Are you kidding me?”
“Nope. She’s been living in the Rosewood Rooming House with her boys for the past three months, but she was just about to run again.” He took a deep breath. “So I convinced her it would be safer for the three of them to live in my house for the time being...with me.”
“Your house? You mean the one you built for Laura?”
“Yeah. I couldn’t let her run, Bella. I wasn’t going to tell the in-laws I found her, but I couldn’t let her run. If she did and the in-laws hired someone else...” He knew he didn’t have to draw his twin a picture.
“So you’re living there with her?”
“And her sons,” he was quick to point out. “Just until we can set a trap for her in-laws.”
“We?”
“I was thinking Sam, you and me. Unless you don’t want to.” He knew when he said it what Annabel’s answer would be. Set a trap for would-be murderers? If they pulled it off, it would be another professional coup for his sister.
“Count me in.”
Annabel’s enthusiastic response made Chris smile to himself. “I haven’t asked Sam,” he told her, “so don’t say anything to him yet, okay? This all just happened this morning.”
“No problem. Just let me know when and where. So, what’s her name?”
“Holly. Holly McCay. And her boys are Ian and Jamie.”
“Cute names. What’s she like?”
Chris smiled again. Knowing his sister, he’d known the question—or one very similar—was coming. “You’d like her. She’s very down-to-earth. Very unassuming. And a good mother. You’re not going to believe this, but Holly and Peg are friends,” he said, knowing the message that would convey. “Other than Peg and me, you’re the only one who knows where Holly is right now, and until we can prove anything against her in-laws, that’s the way I want to keep it.”
“Works for me. When do I get to meet her?”
Children’s voices from the hallway outside his office alerted Chris that Holly and her boys were approaching, so he cut off his conversation with Annabel. “I’ll let you know,” he told her quickly and disconnected. He swung his chair around and stood up, but Wally was faster. The dog bounded across the room toward the hallway, tongue lolling out, tail wagging.
“Holly, I—” Chris began but stopped as if he’d been poleaxed when a blonde woman appeared in the doorway with Ian and Jamie. Long blond hair that owed nothing to artifice. Long blond hair that shimmered under the lights with a hundred different layered shades of gold. Long blond hair parted slightly off center, paired—unusually—with pale brown eyes. The eyes he’d seen before, but not with the blond hair. Holy crap, he thought as desire unexpectedly slashed through him, but all he said was, “What happened to the dark-haired wig?”
Holly laughed ruefully. “Ian thought it was funny to pull it off and dunk it in the tub.”
He didn’t mean to say it, but the words just popped out. “Your pictures don’t do you justice.”
She laughed again, but this time a slight tinge of color stained her cheeks. “Thank you... I think.” She stood there for a minute staring at Chris as if caught in the same trance as he was, and her not-quite-steady breathing drew attention to her breasts rising and falling beneath her damp T-shirt. But when the twins tugged free of her hold to play with Wally, the spell—or whatever it was—was broken. “We came to tell you good-night,” she explained, the color in her cheeks deepening.
“Oh. Right,” Chris said, forcing his eyes away from Holly and down to the toddlers and the dog. Their well-scrubbed cherubic faces were misleading, he knew—if they were like most boys, Holly’s twins were no angels. But they were all boy, just as Wally was all dog. Boys and dogs went together like...well...like boys and dogs. And Chris had a sudden memory of his younger brothers Ridge and Ethan—four and two to Chris’s six—and his dog back then, Bouncer, a golden retriever, just like Wally. It was a memory from his early years that didn’t stab at his heart for once, a memory that made him smile for a change. He glanced at the clock on the wall and said, “Kind of early for bedtime, isn’t it?”
“I start early,” Holly explained. “I read them stories, then they get lullabies, and...” She smiled. “All of that can take an hour or more before they finally settle down and go to sleep.”
He didn’t know what made him make the offer, but he said, “How about I read them their bedtime stories?” When Holly looked doubtful, he added, “I’m a pretty good bedtime-story reader. Peg’s daughter, Susan, would vouch for me if she was here.”
Holly chuckled. “Okay,” she agreed. “I wouldn’t mind a few minutes to myself for a change. Let me get the books. We have a ton of library books—I was going to return them on my way out of town today,” she rushed to explain, as if she didn’t want him to think of her as a library thief. “And we have some books I bought for the boys. I let them pick the books they want me to read.”
She was back in no time, carrying a stack of books that Chris quickly relieved her of. “Their favorites are on top,” Holly told him. “But I usually just spread the books out and they choose based on the cover.”
“Fly,” Jamie said. “Want fly.”
“A Fly Went By?” Chris asked him, juggling the stack until he found the Mike McClintock title three books down from the top. He handed it to Jamie, who hugged it.
“You remember that book?” Holly asked, surprised.
“Hell—heck, yeah,” he amended. “That was one of Josie’s favorites. I read it to her so many times I think I have it memorized.”
“Me, too.” Holly smiled at Chris, a somehow intimate smile, and something he hadn’t felt in forever tugged at his heart. Holly’s smile made him realize there was more to life than merely putting one foot in front of the other. More to life than the work he’d thrown himself into with even more dedication after Laura’s death. Except for his relationship with Peg, Joe and their kids, except for his relationship with his sister and brothers, his life revolved around his work. Work that gave meaning to a life that held little else.
But Holly’s smile reminded him he was a man, first and foremost. A man who hadn’t made love to a woman in close to two years, who hadn’t even given it serious thought in all that time.
He was thinking of it now, though. He was definitely thinking of it now. In spades.
Chapter 6
Holly escaped to her bedroom, her cheeks burning. The intently male look Chris had given her the moment before was branded into her memory. He wants you, she told herself as she quickly stripped and stepped into the shower. Just as you want him.
The hot water pummeled her body, which had become hypersensitized merely from that one look from Chris, and felt like a man’s caress. Which was crazy! She didn’t react to a sexy man that way. Yes, she’d been physically attracted to Grant—far more than he’d been physically attracted to her, since Grant had looked on Holly more as a sister than anything else—but she’d been in love with Grant. She couldn’t have carnal urges like this for a man she’d just met that morning... Only, she did. Don’t lie to yourself, Holly, she warned. You want him. Admit it.
“Okay,” she muttered, soaping her body and rinsing off quickly. “Okay, so I’m a normal woman with normal needs and it’s been more than a year since I...”
Not just a year since she’d made love. It had been a lot longer than a year since a man had looked at her with that burning intensity in his eyes, his face. An expression that conveyed how unutterably desirable she was to him, and at the same time triggered those same needs in her.
Holly washed her hair just as quickly as she’d washed her body. No one’s ev
er looked at you like that, she admitted to herself as she rinsed, and the memory made her nipples tighten into tiny buds that ached beneath the warm spray.
She wasn’t afraid Chris would do anything she didn’t want him to do...but that was the problem. She wanted him to do things to her she’d never imagined having a man do to her. And she wanted to do things to him she’d never believed in her heart women really wanted to do for men. And that was a huge problem.
She’d been nothing but Mommy for so long she’d thought she was immune to men. She’d thought wrong.
* * *
Chris knew Peg didn’t allow her dogs on the furniture—not a dictum he would have made, but Wally wasn’t really his dog, so he enforced the rule anyway. Since the twins wanted Wally close enough to pet while Chris read to them, he solved the dilemma by plopping down on the floor in his office with his back to the sofa. Wally lay across his legs and a boy sat on either side of him as he read. He’d finished A Fly Went By and had nearly reached the end of Dr. Seuss’s Green Eggs and Ham when Holly returned.
Her long blond hair was damp and had been sleeked back away from a face that held not a vestige of makeup that he could see, not even lip gloss. But the minute she walked into the room the temperature rose to an uncomfortable level.
Holy crap, he thought as he read aloud the last two sentences, then closed the book and said, “The end.”
He’d thought his sudden attraction to Holly had been nothing more than an aberration, the normal reaction of a man who’d gone too long without receiving an attractive woman’s smile. He’d been way off base.
But there was something inherently...unsavory...about lusting after a woman when her eighteen-month-old sons were cuddled on either side of him, enthralled by his renditions of children’s stories. So Chris tamped down his desire and smiled up at Holly without letting her see how much she affected him. “You’re just in time,” he told her. “We’re done here.”
Jamie scrambled to his feet, tripped over Wally’s thumping tail and picked himself up again, patting Wally’s backside as apology. “Sor-ry, Wally, sor-ry.” Then he turned to his mother and demanded, “Ma-ma sing now.”
“Later,” she replied, bending over and picking him up, settling him against her hip. “Did you thank Mr. Colton for reading to you?”
Ian piped up, “Unca Cwis.” He patted Chris’s arm, and repeated, “Unca Cwis.”
“Sorry,” Chris said swiftly. “I told them to call me that. That’s what Susan calls me, and I figured it was easier than saying ‘Mr. Colton.’”
“Not a problem,” Holly replied, then asked her boys, “Did you thank Uncle Chris?” A chorus of childish thank-yous followed her pointed question before she explained to Chris, “They don’t have any real uncles. No aunts, either. Grant was an only child, and so was I.” She sighed and added wistfully, “I always wanted a brother or a sister. So did Grant. I think that’s one of the reasons we were such good friends growing up.”
“You can have one of mine,” Chris joked. “I’ve got plenty.” He paused for a second. “Not Annabel. Not my twin. But you can have one of my brothers.” He tilted his head to one side and thought about it for a moment, as if seriously considering his offer. “Not Sam, either. Or Ethan. They’re too young—you don’t want a younger brother. How about Ridge? He’s twenty-nine, same age as you.”
“Ridge, as in ‘big and bad and nobody messes with Ridge’? That brother?”
“Yeah, him.”
Holly shifted Jamie to her other hip. “I’m not sure I want a brother who will scare away all my dates,” she teased, getting into the game. “I’ll bet you heard that same line from Annabel. Am I right?”
Chris winced and held up both hands in mock surrender. “Guilty as charged,” he admitted. “But it was for her own good. Honest. And I didn’t scare away all her dates, just the ones who had something nefarious in mind.”
“Mmm-hmm.” She nodded. “I’ll bet. What would Annabel say, though, if I asked her?”
He chuckled softly. “Funny you should ask me that. My sister just got engaged last month, so I guess I didn’t scare them all away. Her engagement was kind of late in the game, though, especially since that’s all my brothers and I wanted for her—that she find Mr. Right and settle down.”
“Finding Mr. Right doesn’t happen for all women.” The suddenly serious way she said this made Chris wonder. “I should get these two down for the night. Come on, Ian. Say good-night to Mr.—to Uncle Chris, and let’s go.”
Ian patted Chris’s arm to get his attention and in a plaintive tone asked, “Cawwy me?”
“Carry,” Holly corrected automatically. “And you don’t need to be carried, Ian. You’re a big boy.”
Before she could put Jamie down and make him walk, too, the same as Ian, Chris stood and swept Ian into his arms. Then he effortlessly lifted the toddler up onto his shoulder. “Hang on, buddy,” he told Ian as the boy chortled with glee at being so high up.
“Me too, me too!” Jamie pleaded, holding his arms out to Chris, and Holly was so startled she almost dropped him. Jamie never voluntarily went to anyone other than her, so for him to want Chris to carry him was a shock.
“You don’t have to,” she protested in an undertone as Chris took Jamie from her arms.
“Fair’s fair,” Chris retorted, hefting Jamie onto his other shoulder. “Nobody wiggle,” he told both boys. “And watch your heads as we go through the doorway.”
Holly followed Chris through the hallway to the master bedroom, sighing a little at how easily he carried the twins. Ian and Jamie were off the charts for eighteen months, and it was getting harder and harder for her to carry one boy, much less two. But it wasn’t just that. She also ruthlessly suppressed the little pang of motherly jealousy that her twins preferred Chris over her, even in something as simple as this. If Chris was their father it would be different, she reasoned. I wouldn’t be jealous. Would I?
She wasn’t quite sure, and that bothered her. She wanted so badly to be a good mother, wanted to raise strong, independent boys who would become strong, independent men. She didn’t want to be one of those mothers who spoiled her children but kept them emotionally dependent on her, tied to her apron strings. Not that you wear an apron, she thought with a flash of humor. But that phrase perfectly described what she didn’t want for her boys.
So this is a good thing for Ian and Jamie, she reasoned. A little masculine attention from a man she already knew would be a good role model...after knowing him for only a day. She stopped short at the realization that, yes, she’d known Chris for only a day. Not even an entire day at that.
Chris and the twins disappeared into the master bedroom, and she hurried after them. She was just in time to see Chris swing each boy down from his shoulders into his crib and was surprised he got them right. Jamie was in his crib, the one with baby pandas adorning the sheets, and Ian was in the crib with dolphins on the sheets. He doesn’t miss a thing, she realized. He notices...and he remembers.
There was something very appealing in that revelation.
* * *
Chris had started down the hallway back to his office when he heard a warm, sweet contralto voice coming from the master bedroom, singing a lullaby he recognized with a sense of shock. And though he told himself not to, that he had no business intruding on Holly’s private time with her children, he was drawn back to the doorway.
The room was dark, but the light was on in the master bathroom and the door was cracked open—a makeshift night-light for the twins. Chris could make out Wally’s shape on the floor—the twins had begged to be allowed to have Wally sleep with them, and Chris hadn’t been able to refuse. Neither had Holly. So Chris had used a folded-up blanket as a dog bed for Wally and had placed it meticulously equidistant between the two cribs.
But he wasn’t really looking at the dog. And he wasn’t
really looking at the twins. All he really had eyes for was Holly, her back to him as she sang the haunting cowboy ballad he knew as “Utah Carl.”
Chris closed his eyes, and in his mind he was four years old, listening to his mother, Saralee, singing that very same song to a two-year-old Ridge as she rocked him to sleep. She’d been almost nine months pregnant at the time—that would have been Ethan, he realized now—but despite her financial worries and her constant pregnancies, his mother had never let her children know her life was hard. The love she’d felt for each and all of them had shielded them from the knowledge of the trials she faced on a daily basis, not the least of which was loving Matthew Colton and standing by him through thick and thin.
There hadn’t been a lot of money in the Colton household, but none of the children had known it at the time. There had always been enough money for the important things—school clothes, books, birthdays and Christmases. And Saralee had made sure all her children knew they were loved, from Trevor right down to baby Josie.
The ballad came to an end, but Holly barely skipped a beat, moving right into another song Chris also remembered from his childhood. A desolate ache for that long-ago time and for the mother he still mourned ripped through him, and his face contracted in pain. His eyes were damp when the song ended, and he quickly rubbed his fingers over his eyelids to remove that betraying moisture.
Then, before Holly could start another song, he slipped noiselessly away from the doorway. He went into his office and shut the door behind him. Firmly. As if he could shut the door on his memories the same way.
* * *
It was almost midnight and the house was shrouded in darkness when Holly turned over restlessly in bed. Ian and Jamie were fast asleep—she could hear their rhythmic breathing—and she envied them. If only she could sleep with that same innocent abandon. If only she could sleep believing all was right with the world.
“Shouldn’t have had that nap this afternoon,” she whispered to herself, although she knew it was a lie. It wasn’t the nap preventing her from sleeping, it was her conscience.