by Cara Colter
Despite her laughter right now, there was some sadness in her that would not let her go, that had not been in her when he had escorted her to her prom. She had been shy, yes, and awkward, yes, but almost filled to the brim with an innocent confidence life would be good to her. He wondered, not for the first time, what might have happened to her.
Don’t go there, he ordered himself. Keep it light. You don’t want to go deep with her. You’ll be drowning in the pools of light that are her incredible eyes before you even know you’re in trouble.
That was the whole problem, wasn’t it? He wasn’t that kind of guy, there was nothing twisted or kinky about him. Not even close. But he was not the kind of guy that a girl like her needed, either. As long as both of them were playing by the same rules, as long as both of them remembered that.
“All I am is the kind of guy who likes to make a pretty girl blush.”
“I’m not blushing.” She was trying to stop laughing. She was blushing with the intensity of a house on fire. She had unbent herself and was cracking eggs into the cookie mixture as if her life depended on it. “Keep, er, mixing it.”
As he mixed, she slowly added flour and other ingredients. She was standing close to him, and he could look down on her hair, her gorgeous sunshine-on-sand hair. Would it get lighter if she frolicked on a beach?
The dough began to take on the texture of thick peanut butter.
It was such a blatant lie, about her blushing, that he laughed. Her face, from laughter and racy undertones to the conversation, was nearly as red as the stand mixer.
“And I’m not that pretty, either,” she said quietly.
“What? What the hell?” His own laughter died. So did his resolution not to go there, to her secrets, to her sadness, to some place that had stolen the confidence that had just begun to bloom in her when he had taken her to her prom, a lifetime ago.
“I’m not,” she said firmly.
“What would make you say something like that?”
“Maybe I’m adorable, like a Yorkie,” she said. “But I know I’m not the greatest. All those guys—the ones I meet on e-Us? They never call me back. Not even the Elvis look-alike.”
“That’s impossible,” he said grimly.
“I have an affliction.”
Good grief! “An affliction? Like you’re dying or something?” He could not believe how his heart stopped in his chest.
“Oh, for Pete’s sake,” she said. She actually flicked a piece of cookie batter at him. “Of course I’m not dying.”
He tried not to let his relief show. He scraped the dough off his shirt and licked his finger. He was aware of her eyes on him. He took his time licking his finger. The dough was delicious.
“The affliction?” he reminded her, not allowing himself to be distracted by the deliciousness of the dough, as difficult as that was.
“Even growing up,” she said slowly, “I knew exactly what I wanted. It was so ordinary and old-fashioned. My girlfriends wanted to be doctors and lawyers, writers and scientists. Oh, sure, they wanted to get married, and have families, but it was like an afterthought. I’ll win the Pulitzer Prize, then I’ll have a baby.
“But my happiest moments were when my family was together, raking leaves, or sitting beside the fire on a cold night, all reading our books. I loved plain moments—arguing over whether it was really a word in Scrabble, or my dad trying to explain football to me, yet again.”
It was that thing that he had worried about. That she was painting pictures of all the things he had never had, and it could create an ache in him that would never ease.
“I felt safe and cherished—”
Things he had never felt, except maybe with Beau. He was pretty sure that made him, the guy who had been named businessman of the decade, and who had just returned to his beautiful home from a business trip in Bali, pathetic. But this was not about him.
“And that’s all I ever wanted for my future. To feel that way, forever.”
“And?” He had to force himself to ask the question, because she was taking him on a journey that he did not have a map for. He did not like journeys without maps.
“When my dad died I wanted it even more.”
“That seems pretty natural.”
“I can’t make it happen.” Now that she had started, it felt like the floodgates were wide open. “I’m plagued by first-date anxiety so strong I never get a second one.”
“You’re getting a terrifying look on your face,” he told her, and it was true.
“A terrifying look?” she asked, all innocence.
“As in you want a first date that leads to a second date, and then a third one.”
“And?”
“And then wedding bells and babies.”
He hadn’t thought she could blush any deeper than when he’d been teasing her while whipping the cookies, but she could.
“I had no idea I was so transparent!”
“Believe me, on the transparency scale? You are a perfect ten.”
“My only perfect ten,” she said glumly.
“That’s not true.”
“Anyway, I can’t help it if my dreams are written all over me. It seems deceitful to not let it be known upfront what your end goal is. I mean why lead someone to believe I’m into casual—”
The fiery burn moving up her cheeks increased, if that was possible. No wonder her kitchens caught fire. She managed to avoid using the word sex.
“Casual relationships when nothing could be further from the truth.”
“It seems to me if that dream is what you really wanted, you’d already have it because not all guys are as terrified by such dreams as me.”
“Well, as I told you, I have an affliction.”
“That wasn’t it?” he asked. “Wanting babies and weddings and forever?”
She scowled at him. “No.”
“Okay, give. About the affliction.”
“I get nervous,” she confessed.
“Who doesn’t get nervous on a first date? That’s hardly an affliction.”
She sighed.
“I guess you better give me an example.”
“I blurt out dumb things. I sweat in my dress. I’ve steamed up my glasses, and gotten dust under my contact lenses. I’ve spilled my wine. And dribbled food down my front. Once, I broke a tooth and I had to find an emergency dental clinic. And he didn’t even help me.
“It’s like I have that terrible affliction like the one golfers get. Where they start whiffing or flubbing or whatever it’s called, and once they start thinking about it, they can’t get over it. It just gets worse and worse and worse.”
She had been focusing hard on the cookie dough. She looked up at him. Her eyes were wide and earnest.
He could feel his lips twitching. Anyone who did business with him, or worked with him on a regular basis, knew it was not a good thing.
But she, innocent that she was, looked puzzled. “Are you laughing at me?”
“Laughing? No! I’m feeling really annoyed with you.” The truth was, he wanted to kiss the living daylights out of her, because she had so badly lost who she really was and had painted herself into such a corner of self-deceit.
“What? Why?”
“Because you are believing this line of crap that you are telling yourself. And you know what I’d like to know? What’s really going on? What’s really made you so afraid of your own happiness?”
He inserted a word between your and happiness that was the universal song of displeasure and that meant “I am dead serious. Do not try and snow me.”
CHAPTER TEN
BREE STARED AT BRAND. How had things gone so terribly off the rails? She was supposed to be helping him. She had entered his kitchen with the naivety of a Girl Guide thinking she was doing her good deed for the day.
How h
ad he turned things around like this?
And how could it possibly feel as if she had to tell him, as if to carry this burden alone for one more second would be to be crushed under the weight of it?
How could it possibly feel as if he had unlocked some secret that she had hidden, even from herself? That somehow she was so afraid she was sabotaging her own dreams?
Could that be true? She grabbed a bag of chocolate chips and began to dump them in the bowl. She should have passed him the wooden spoon, but she felt the need to blow off the energy building in her. She started to mash those chips into the cookie dough, when really it should have been a nice, gentle blending motion.
“It was a man,” Brand said softly.
She risked a glance at him. He was regarding her with narrowed eyes, flashing dangerously now, with something that was not mischief. He took the spoon from her and began to pummel the cookie dough with barely leashed aggravation.
“How could you know that?” she whispered.
“I can tell by looking at you,” he said. “Some evil bastard broke your heart.”
You could never, ever forget this about Brand, not even when you were baking cookies, that he was a keen observer, that he saw things that would remain hidden to those not quite as astute.
Don’t tell him, she begged herself. And yet, it felt that if she told him, if she finally said these dreadful things out loud, she would be free in some way. She would solve a puzzle that had mystified her. He already knew anyway. He had guessed it.
“As you know, my dad died shortly after my prom,” she said tiredly. “I had already been accepted at college, and I knew he would want me to go.
“But I was extremely vulnerable. I was grieving. My mom had already moved on, already made a decision to sell our house, all of which shocked me and left me with a sense of my whole world disintegrating. I had never spent time away from home before, or lived on my own. One of my professors took an interest in me. It doesn’t take a psychiatrist to know I was trying desperately to replace my father’s love with the affection of this older man.
“I actually was so naive that I thought my father was in heaven looking after me, that he had sent me this man to ease my broken heart.”
Bree had been focusing intently on the cookie dough, but some small sound coming from Brand made her glance up.
The fury in his face might have been a frightening thing if it was directed at her. But it was not.
“Go on,” Brand said tersely.
“I found out how much I really meant to him when I discovered I was pregnant.”
Brand groaned, a growl of fury and frustration so pure it was almost animal-like. But his voice was soft when he said, “Aw, Bree.”
“Even though the pregnancy was the end of my love affair, and I felt I had to leave school so as never to see Paul again, I was happy about the baby. It made me feel not quite so alone in the world. It made me feel as if I had purpose and meaning.
“And then,” she whispered, “the baby was gone, too. I miscarried.”
She felt his arms go around her. Ever so gently, Brand turned her into his chest. He held her hard and tight. He held her as if there was one solid thing in the world for her to hold onto. He held her in a way that made her finally let go.
At first it was a small hiccup. And then a sob. And then the floodgates opened, and she leaned hard into his strength and his warmth and his acceptance.
“When you told me you knew a thing or two about unforgivable, that day Beau knocked you over, you were right. Really right. And I’m so sorry you had to experience something like that.”
That he remembered something she had said, almost casually, days and days ago, released something more in her.
Brand stroked her hair and her back, and whispered to her over and over again, gentle words of pure compassion.
“Let it go, sweetheart. That’s my girl. Get it all out.”
And she did. She cried until she was exhausted from it, until there was not a tear left, until surely a different man would have given up holding her a long time ago.
But, no, Brand Wallace stood there like a rock—her rock, immovable in his utter strength.
And when the tears finally did stop, Bree felt something she had not felt for a long, long time.
She felt utterly at peace with herself.
“Thank you for listening,” she said. “You’ve given me some things to think about, self-sabotage for one.”
She pulled away from him. His summer shirt had a big splotch on the front of it. She turned to the big bowl of cookie dough. “I think we should just throw this out. I don’t think tears make a good secret ingredient.”
“I disagree completely,” he said. “I think healing is the secret ingredient. Let’s bake them and see what happens.”
And so, side by side, they scooped dough onto the sheets. She had done it millions of times, and so her cookies were uniform and all the same size.
His were haphazard heaps that made her smile. He made big cookies and small ones and lopsided ones, and she found herself loving all those imperfections. And loving being with him. Was it because she had shared her most secret of secrets that she felt so connected to him? So safe? So comfortable?
But not just comfortable. Aware. Maybe even aware in a way she had not allowed herself to be aware since Paul.
Of Brand’s masculinity, in contrast to her femininity. Of his physical size and strength in comparison to herself, of how she had fit against him, of how he smelled, and of his energy.
They put in the cookies to bake, and there was quiet between them as they cleaned up the kitchen, but it was in no way uncomfortable. In fact it was quite lovely, something Bree was aware she had not felt for a long, long time.
It was exactly the gift she had intended to give him, but as was the way with most gifts, she received it herself. Bree had a sense of being home after a long journey away.
The timer rang on the cookies, and she pulled them out of the oven and then she and Brand filled a plate with cookies so warm that chocolate was oozing out of them. Without speaking about it, they both knew where to go, and they retreated to side-by-side chairs in his media room.
She nibbled on one cookie, aware it was his enjoyment that made it the best batch of cookies she had ever made. He ate every one of those cookies they had put on the plate.
And she hoped he was right, that the strange ingredient—tears—had put healing in them. Because just as he had seen so clearly that there was something broken in her, she also saw that in him.
Maybe what had just happened had strengthened some bond between them. Maybe he would share confidences with her, too.
But he fell asleep with crumbs from the last cookie still in his hand. She brushed them away from him and placed the soft wool blanket, the one that she had used earlier, on him.
She tucked it around him, and took advantage of the fact he was sleeping to study him: the sweep of thick lashes on his cheek, the strong nose, the full lips gently parted, his hair, dark as those melted chocolate chips, just touching his forehead. There was something soft in his face that made her realize how guarded he was most of the time.
All that boyish charm hid something deeper. Something he didn’t want anyone to see.
But she had seen it. And as he had said in her apartment that day, it was impossible to “unsee” it now.
He was a man who had absolutely everything. Every material gift that it was possible to own, he owned.
He owned cars, and art pieces and a beautiful house in one of the most exclusive neighborhoods in the world.
And yet, the most precious things of all had evaded him. Children screaming up the staircases, and the Scrabble board open on a table, with a misspelled word on it. Heaps of leaves to leap in, and tying the Christmas tree to the roof with string so it wouldn’t fall off. The smell of dinner
in the oven, or cookies, the little arguments over whether the toilet-paper roll should unroll over or under. All the simple, complex, wonderful things that went into a home and a family he had missed.
Knowing this with her soul, Bree felt something for him so deep and so stirring that it made her want to weep all over again.
She bent over him, touched his warm, rough cheek, and then followed where her fingertips had been with her lips.
She knew exactly what was happening to her.
It was like the words of that tender Elvis song had crept around her from the first moment she had walked in this house and seen the kitchen where he used the microwave and didn’t even know he had a stand mixer, or steam oven or what either of them were, for that matter.
“What exactly does that song say?” she whispered, “That only a fool would rush in?”
She laughed at herself. That’s exactly what it was. Foolishness. Foolish to feel the posters staring down at her. She wasn’t rushing at all.
Still, she couldn’t stop herself from finishing the first line of the beautiful, haunting song.
Her voice a husky whisper, she sang the words softly, as if it was a lullaby to the sleeping man.
Her voice fell into utter stillness.
And she recognized the truth of it. She was falling in love with him. Or maybe, more accurately, had never fallen out.
She had loved him as a girl. Oh, it had been an innocent love, based on his looks and his physique, and his charm, but still, that wild crush on him had been her first experience with love outside of her family. That night that he had walked into the gala, and she had tried to leave before he even saw her, hadn’t she sensed the danger of him?
Hadn’t some part of her known that despite the dating sites, despite going through the motions of wanting love, she hadn’t really? She hadn’t felt brave enough for it. Hadn’t she known as soon as she’d laid eyes on him, he would be the one that would call it from her, that need to be brave, to engage love again, to risk its slings and arrows?
She gazed at him a little longer, and then turned rapidly on her heel, and nearly ran from the room and from his house, and from the hard hammering of her own heart.