by Cara Colter
Of course, Oliver was not ready to meet Beau, but really that was just a convenient excuse not to invite Brand in. It wasn’t the real reason, and she suspected he knew it, too. There was something lovely unfolding between them. It felt new and fragile. To move things to a physical plane too soon would bring a layer of complication to what was going on between them that she knew she was not ready for.
He seemed to feel the same way. He kissed her on the lips. It was a beautiful kiss. Welcoming and tender. Brand seemed to recognize exactly where she was at, because he pulled away and looked at her with a kind of respect and reverence that she had never experienced before.
“I usually take Beau for a really long walk in the morning,” he said. “Are you game?”
“Absolutely.”
* * *
And so they began to tangle their lives together in lovely ways: walking the dog, grabbing a bite to eat, watching a movie at his place, cooking dinner at hers. One memorable afternoon, they opened the Klingon-dictionary app on her phone, and they sat out in his backyard in the spring sunshine trying out phrases until they were both rolling on the ground laughing, with Beau leaping joyously between them.
A commercial kitchen space opened up for her, and she moved out of his kitchen. In a way she was sad to be leaving it, because it was so beautiful and she had felt so at home there, but in a way she was happy that their business interests were separating.
They did such ordinary things, but they did things that reflected his wealth and status as well. He took her on a helicopter tour of Vancouver, he rented a yacht for a day, complete with a chef, and he flew them on a private jet one night for a play in San Francisco, where they met Bree’s mother and her husband.
It was a beautiful evening.
Her mother looked at her, when they had a moment alone together in the theater powder room, and hugged her hard.
“I know you thought I moved on too quickly from your dad,” she said. “But when you love someone the way I loved him, the thought of not having love in your life is unbearable. Of course, every love is different. What Mike and I have is not the same as what your father and I shared. And yet, it is lovely, too. So lovely.”
And then she added softly, “But you know that now, don’t you, my dear Bree? That a life without love is unbearable?”
Bree thought, just as her mother, she had probably known that all along. Life without love was unbearable. It had made her such easy prey for a bad person. And then it had made her back off of love altogether.
But her mother was so right, that life without love was like crossing an endless desert, thirsty for water you could not find.
Her mother confirmed what Bree already knew in her heart. She was not going down that road again. She felt like a completely different person than the girl she had been before.
“Brand is such a good man,” her mother said. “Your father always knew that about him. I have a feeling he’d be extraordinarily pleased right now.”
But, for all that, for all that Bree got to experience lifestyles of the rich and famous, it seemed to be the small and ordinary things that had taken on a shine, that made Bree feel alive and engaged and as if happiness was a ball of light in her stomach that glowed ever more strongly outward.
Everyone noticed it. Her clients, Chelsea, her neighbors, her girlfriends.
When Brand went away on business trips, she stayed at his place and looked after Beau, who had completely stolen her heart. Oliver began to come along, and soon ruled Beau with an iron paw.
Brand would always bring her back small, enchanting gifts—a crystal butterfly from Sweden, an exquisite wooden carving from Thailand, a soapstone polar bear from the Canadian north. They even had a tradition: as soon as he came home, they baked cookies together, sometimes in her tiny apartment kitchen, sometimes in his state-of-the-art kitchen.
By the time of the charity ball, they had been seeing each other for a month. Bree was certain of how she felt. She was certain it was not an infatuation, certain where she wanted it to go, certain of Brand’s place in her future.
Everything she had known the night she had heard that song in her head—“Can’t Help Falling in Love”—was confirmed.
And so Bree decided to find a dress for that charity ball that would tell him all that as much as words ever could.
That would tell him beyond a shadow of a doubt that she was ready for whatever came next.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“I CAN’T FIND the right dress,” Bree wailed to Chelsea a week later as they were locking up the new kitchen for the day. “Time’s running out. I can’t go to Brand’s charity ball looking like the very same person I was at my high-school prom. And yet everything I’ve tried on does exactly that. It makes me feel as if I’m a kid pretending to be a grown-up.”
“We could remake one of my salsa costumes,” Chelsea said. “It would be easy.”
Bree had attended a number of Chelsea’s dance competitions. She made all her own outfits. “Chelsea, I don’t know. Your outfits are gorgeous, but kind of over-the-top sexy.”
“You just said you wanted to be sexy.”
“Yes, but—”
“I have a red one. Red always makes men sit up and take notice. It’s short, but I could add some layers to it. We’re almost the same size. I think it would look phenomenal on you. Come home with me right now, we’ll try it. You have nothing to lose.”
That was true. She had nothing to lose. It was not as if she had found the right dress anywhere else. Plus, the price was right.
Chelsea lived in a cute little basement suite not very far from the new kitchen. It was an easy walk, and they went in.
Bree stopped. There was a large pair of men’s sneakers at the door.
“Oh,” Chelsea said with a blush, “Reed left those here.”
“Reed?” Bree asked. She looked at her young assistant closely. She had been so wrapped up in herself that she hadn’t notice a different kind of sparkle about Chelsea. Who was now blushing pink.
“He’s the fire investigator our side hired.”
Meaning the one Brand had hired.
“Don’t look at me like that. Of course, he can’t get involved with me while he’s doing an investigation.”
Which, of course, begged the question, why his shoes would be there, but Chelsea looked so pretty and so flustered that Bree didn’t have the heart to pursue it.
Chelsea, eager to change the subject, brought out the dress, still in its dry-cleaning wrapper.
Bree took off the wrapper. The dress slid into her hands, surprisingly cool, since it looked so hot, like flames.
“Put it on,” Chelsea insisted, and Bree went through to her tiny bathroom.
“No underwear,” Chelsea shouted.
Good grief! Still, Bree put the dress on, then turned to face herself in the full-length mirror on the back of the door.
“Cripes,” she said, astounded.
The dress fit her like a glove. The top was pure red, with tiny spaghetti straps at the shoulders. The neckline plunged to a narrow waist, where it took on the color of flame, leaf-like layers of fabric in colors of orange and yellow and several shades of red.
“Come out,” Chelsea said.
“I’m scared to,” Bree answered back, but then opened the door and stepped out. Chelsea’s eyes widened.
“It’s all wrong,” Bree said at the very same time Chelsea said, “It’s so right.”
“It’s too short.”
“I knew that. But I’ve got lots of that fabric, and an idea how I can make it floor-length.”
“And the neckline is too—”
“Shush. One little stitch. Here, I’ll get a pin and show you.”
That single pin changed everything.
And then Chelsea was at her feet, pinning and tucking and pinning some more. “
This is just to give you an idea. It will be way more sophisticated. Fall leaves, until you move, and then each piece of fabric will move differently and catch the light differently. It will change from fall leaves to flame.”
Finally, Chelsea was satisfied and told Bree she could go back into the bathroom, the location of the only full-length mirror in her tiny apartment.
Bree was almost afraid to look. She turned to the mirror with her eyes closed. Slowly, she opened them, and when she did, her heart beat double time. The dress was incredible, with its beautiful silk leaves falling to the floor, dancing around her. Just as Chelsea had promised, when she moved, the light caught the fabric and turned it to flame.
Chelsea managed to squeeze through the door to join Bree. “These outfits are made to celebrate the female form,” she said, “and to move all on their own. It’s really a seduction.”
A seduction? Bree gulped. Was she ready for that?
She realized it wasn’t Brand who had looked at her like a child pretending to be an adult, but that that was the role she had cast herself in.
And suddenly she felt so completely adult, she could feel herself stepping over some imaginary line that separated a girl from a woman.
Oh, yeah, she felt so ready for that! These weeks of keeping each other at arm’s length, of only sharing chaste kisses, the longing building to something almost unbearable...
Chelsea moved in behind her and scooped up her hair. It made Bree’s neck look long and elegant, and her eyes look huge, dark and startled, like those of a doe.
“I don’t know how I can thank you,” Bree said.
“Oh, Bree, you already have. You have had faith in me in the face of evidence you should not have. I know you think there’s a possibility I set the kitchen on fire. Thank you for not suing me.”
“That’s ridiculous. The suing part.”
“But not the catching-the-kitchen-on-fire part?” Chelsea said with wry self-recognition. And then they were laughing, and Bree felt as if she had been given many gifts.
A man she loved, and the sister she never had.
“It will be ready before the ball,” Chelsea promised. “And you will be the most ravishing woman Mr. Brand Wallace has ever laid eyes on.”
Bree slipped out of the dress and came back into the main area in her ordinary-girl clothes. But Chelsea wasn’t finished with her yet.
“I’m just going to show you a few moves,” she said. “Subtle, but sexy as hell.”
Bree’s eyes got very wide as Chelsea demonstrated exactly what she meant!
* * *
The night of the ball arrived and if Bree had had another outfit suitable to go change into before Brand arrived, she probably would have. She felt nervous and naked. Who did she think she was? she wondered. Julia Roberts?
She, indeed, looked like a movie star—red-carpet ready, which was, as Chelsea had assured her, a very good thing.
Tonight was as close as Vancouver got to a red-carpet event!
But as soon as Bree opened the door, and saw the look on Brand’s face, she was happy—almost deliriously so—that she had not lost her nerve about the dress.
Because Brand looked like a man slain. His mouth fell open, and his eyes darkened with heady desire and drank her in with a kind of thirst that could never be quenched.
“You look absolutely stunning,” he said, his voice hoarse.
He reached for her and kissed her on the cheek, put her away from himself and stared. “It seems not so long ago you were telling me how ordinary you were,” he said.
She realized, with a shiver of pure appreciation, this was true. Being with him, feeling cherished by him, had made her feel beautiful and confident in a way she never, ever had before. He took her hand and walked her outside her building.
A long, sleek, white limo waited, the uniformed driver holding open the door for them. He tipped his hat to her, and called her “Miss.”
Sinking into the luxurious leather and having Brand pour her some champagne into a flute was the beginning of a night out of a fairy tale. She floated through every minute of it. The entrance, chatting with people, nursing a drink and, finally, what she had been waiting for her whole life.
The thing she had got the tiniest taste of the night of her prom, a taste that had left her wanting. She danced with Brand.
Not as a child, dancing with the man who had been talked into escorting her to her prom.
But as a woman who knew exactly what she wanted. It was an evening out of a dream. His eyes never left her. Every move he made was subtly sensual, welcoming her in a different way. Brand was so comfortable with himself, and with his body, and it made her more comfortable with her own newfound sexy side.
She demonstrated some of the moves Chelsea had shown her. They had exactly the right effect on him, making his eyes darken and his hands linger on the curves of her back and hip.
They laughed. They teased each other. They danced and their hands touched each other, as if they could not get enough.
Despite the fact there were so many beautiful people there, in gorgeous clothes and jewelry, moving in amazing ways, it felt as if the ballroom belonged to them and them alone. Their eyes rarely left each other. Even when they spoke to other people, it was as if they were in a bubble that really held only them.
Bree had that first glass of champagne, and then one more, not enough to be making her feel as intoxicated as she did.
The evening went both too quickly and too slowly, because she was anticipating the moment they were alone.
So, here they were, seemingly only a breath after he had picked her up, facing the last dance of the evening.
Bree was stunned when she heard the opening notes of the Elvis song “Can’t Help Falling in Love.” Had he requested it? She didn’t think so.
It was the universe conspiring.
His hand found the small of her back and he pulled him in to her. They might have been the only two people in the room.
She put her head back so that she could look up into his beautiful face, so beloved to her now.
The last bars of the song melted over top of them and then the music ended, but what was flowing between them did not. He lowered his head. He took her lips. She reached up, almost on tiptoes, and returned his kiss. It was as if they were in the room alone together.
The heat was scorching.
“Do you mind taking a miss on the midnight buffet?” he whispered in her ear.
“No,” she said, trembling.
His hand found the small of her back. Nodding here and there, he propelled her through the crowd. Suddenly they were out on a wet street, the rain refreshingly cool on her scorching skin.
And then they were in the back of the limo.
He stared straight ahead. So did she. She knew if they even glanced at one another, the chauffer was going to get much more of a show than he’d bargained for.
They tumbled out of the limo when it stopped at her apartment, almost running to the building’s entrance. To a passerby it might have seemed they did not want to get wet.
But there was urgency between them now. To open the last chapter, to go to the place between them that had not yet been mapped.
That exquisite new country of pure discovery.
“Security cameras?” he whispered in the elevator.
“No.”
He was on her. He had her backed against the wall of the elevator, his hands around her back, crushing her to him, her hands twined around his neck, pulling his lips to her own.
By the time the elevator door opened, they were both gasping with need, with red-hot desire. They tumbled from the elevator. Thank God, at this time of night, her hallway was abandoned.
With great effort, nearly dumping the contents of her tiny evening bag on the floor, she found her key. Her hands were shaking so badly she could n
ot make the lock work.
He reached by her and took the key, inserted and twisted it.
The door fell open.
She stared at him.
He stared at her.
“Are you sure?” he growled.
“Yes,” she whispered, and then stronger, because she had never been more sure of anything, she repeated, “Yes!”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
THEY WERE IN the kitchen, their coats wet puddles of fabric on the floor. He lifted her onto the counter and, with her legs wrapped around him, she tasted him as if she could never get enough. Hungry. Starving.
All grown up. So filled with passion she was trembling with it. She could feel him trembling, too. He rubbed his whisker-roughened cheek down the delicate skin of her neck, as her nails dug into the broadness of his back.
His lips found hers again, no gentleness in them now, no tenderness.
He was a warrior conquering, he was taking what he wanted. But she was no captive, except maybe of her own heart’s longings, because she met his savage taking of her lips with an answer of her own that was bold and uninhibited.
The woman in her explored the man in him—she tasted it, and touched it, and rode the enormous energy of it. It sizzled and hissed between them like a fire out of control. She was pulled toward the heat of it, helpless as a moth to a flame, sure to be scorched and yet unable to move away from what was happening between them.
His hands went to her hair. It tumbled out of its knot and scattered wildly around her shoulders. He kissed the low-cut space in her dress, between her breasts, and she moaned with desire, lifted his questing lips to her own and took them again.
And then a sound.
An insistent sound.
The quacking of a duck.
Stunned, she realized it was coming from him. She realized it was some kind of ringtone. Bree was even more stunned when Brand took his phone out of his pocket and answered it.
Bree had never heard that ringtone come from his phone before. In fact, he rarely answered or looked at his phone when they were together.