by Ann Yost
“There may be a slight problem,” Cam said, rocking back on his heels. “You’ve got Space Station Barbie and Mermaid Barbie. Neither of them needs
a fully furnished dream house.”
“The house isn’t for the Barbies,” Daisy said, seriously. “It’s for Wilbur Junior and his babies.” She held up Hallie’s gift, a plush pig with piglets attached.
“You’re naming the pig, Wilbur?” Hallie was touched.
Baz frowned. “You know it’s a mommy pig, right?”
“I know.”
“Maybe you’d like to give it a girl name.”
Daisy’s blonde curls danced as she shook her head.
“Hallie said girls can be shepherds and vets and everything. That means boys can do everything, too.
So Wilbur can be a mom.”
Hallie nodded, gravely.
“I see your point. Welcome to your new home, Mommy Wilbur.”
The family patriarch seemed restless as the day wore on. He kept disappearing into his study then returning and joining one or the other of the groups.
Whenever he was in the parlor, though, he couldn’t take his eyes off his eldest son. Hallie recognized the happiness in his gaze, but she saw something underneath it. Concern. Her heart ached for the older man. He was, no doubt, anticipating the moment Baz would leave and wondering whether they’d be apart another twenty years.
Guilt slithered through Hallie.
Jesse’s fear was Hallie’s dream.
Baz was sitting cross-legged on the floor. He looked up, caught her eye, and grinned. Then he rang the bicycle bell a couple of times. Daisy catapulted across the room and threw her thin arms around his neck. His big hands came around her back to support her. Hallie looked away quickly as longing, pain, anger, and despair tumbled through her. The emotions were like clothes in a dryer set on spin cycle.
The Christmas she’d awaited with anticipation had turned into a mockery of what might have been. She’d worked hard to let the disappointment go, to keep from blaming him. His rejection had been prudent under the circumstances, and her infertility was not his fault. But gazing at Baz with Daisy, she imagined him as a father. The picture looked right, but there was no place in it for Hallie.
If he stuck around Eden long enough, she’d tell him that.
The snapshot looked blurry; Hallie realized she was blinking back tears. Daisy bounded over to give her a hug, too. “Thank you for my presents, Hallie.
Wanna play poker? Uncle Baz gived me a special pack of cards.”
Poker and a Barbie Dream House. She had to give him credit. He’d disappointed Hallie but found the right answers for his small niece.
“Absolutely,” Hallie said.
Soon nearly everybody had joined in. Hallie tried to enjoy the playful teasing between the siblings. Baz fit in remarkably well considering he’d been out of their lives for so long. She was relieved, though, when Asia stepped into the parlor and asked for some help with the gravy.
“I happen to be a world-class gravy maker,” she said, jumping to her feet. “Lead the way.”
The big, old-fashioned kitchen smelled like roasting turkey and pumpkin pie.
“The gravy’s all done,” Asia confessed. “I thought you might like a little break from the family.”
Asia was the one person in whom Hallie had confided everything. She hugged the wiry housekeeper.
“I b’lieve I’ll go on upstairs and put my feet up for twenty minutes. If you need something to do, you can keep an eye on the bird.”
Hallie leaned against one of the high countertops and admired the dark green tile on the floor, the granite countertops, and the freshly painted white cabinets. She’d helped Jesse and Asia make decorating decisions when they decided to renovate in here last summer, and she thought it had come together very well.
She looked longingly out the window at her apartment. She would have gladly skipped the turkey for a little privacy, but there was no way she could do that without creating a stir.
She was stuck in the big, warm house, and she’d be forced to eat the perfectly prepared holiday meal.
She grinned at her own foolishness.
“Poor me.”
Chapter Three
“Cam must have bought the biggest tree in Maine.”
Hallie felt his presence in the room, and she shivered. That rough, husky voice acted like a four hundred-degree oven on her senses. He made her melt.
It was the voice, combined with the memories.
He’d spoken like that when he’d told her in specific, excruciating detail just exactly how he was going to make her climax.
He’d done it, too.
And then he’d told her just exactly what to do to him.
Another tremor skittered up her spine.
“It’s a big difference from last year,” he added.
You have no idea how big a difference.
“Absolutely.”
He stood in the doorway, one big shoulder resting against the lintel. She could see the memories in his gray eyes. That first kiss by the shabby Charlie Brown tree had been tender and sweet. A friend’s kiss.
The second kiss dropped her to her knees.
Him, too.
She’d whispered his name, and he’d tried to warn her.
“It’ll change everything.”
“I know.”
The sexual assault was so complete she never had a chance to change her mind. Not that she’d wanted to. She remembered the way he probed her mouth, wielding his tongue with the precision of a surgeon. He made her sweat and shiver. He made her moan and writhe.
And that was just the kiss.
Inspired, she slid her hands up under his polo shirt, sifted her fingers through the soft hair on his hard chest, and tweaked the flat male nipples.
Eventually she moved south, down to his flat stomach. His breathing roughened.
“If you move your hand one inch lower, Hallie, there’s no going back.”
She held his gaze and moved her hand. “I don’t want to go back.”
Then he was opening his pants, and she was cupping the thick, throbbing male flesh. She remembered kissing him there.
Suddenly the world turned upside down. She was on her back alarmed by the expression on his grim face.
“Are you all right?”
“I can’t wait any more,” he’d gasped.
It had seemed as though he’d gotten rid of their clothing and sheathed himself in a condom all in one fluid motion. Then he was riding her, moving in her, whispering those shocking things in her ear. Soon her attention was focused solely on the sensations he drew from her with his body and his hands. Her breath grew short, and her insides coiled, tighter and tighter until there was nothing to do but explode, nothing to do but convulse, nothing to do but listen to her name shouted as he buried his face inside her shoulder.
If life was made up of moments, that one had been perfect. At least until a short while later when it had all gone wrong, when she’d asked the wrong question and he’d handed her a one-way ticket out of his life.
Asia’s heavy footsteps sounded on the backstairs. The gray-haired housekeeper, clad in one of her interchangeable cotton housedresses protected with a red-and-green-checked apron, greeted them both with a smile. “Time to eat.”
Christmas dinner was a feast of turkey and baked ham, sour-cream scalloped potatoes,cranberry potatoes, cranberry sauce, candied yams, pecan pie, pumpkin pie, and homemade ice cream. Naturally everyone ate too much.
“Asia, you’ve outdone yourself,” Cameron complained. “I can’t move.”
“That’s too bad, son,” said Jesse, “because Asia’s heading out to her daughter’s place. As I see it, you and Lucy and I will be cleaning the kitchen.”
Baz’s chuckle gave Hallie a start. She realized she’d heard it more in the past twenty-four hours than she had in the months they spent together last year. Something had happened to the taciturn loner she’d known in L.A. In the year they we
re apart, he turned human.
“If you three can get up enough firepower to clear the table, Hallie and I will clean up the kitchen,” he told his family.
Her jaw dropped. No one else seemed to realize how utterly outrageous the suggestion was. No one else seemed to realize that Basil Outlaw employed a cook and a housekeeper in his sophisticated Los Angeles condo. She’d bet everything she owned that he hadn’t washed so much as lifted a fork in his adult life.
“I’ll help, Uncle Baz,” Daisy offered. She jumped up from her seat and grabbed his hand. “I love to wash dishes.”
“I’ll bet you do, pal,” Baz said.
He must have known that the tender note in his voice shook her.
His pointed look sent an unmistakable message. Look how I’ve changed. I can be a family man.
She wanted to scream. Instead she got up from the table and headed for the kitchen to perform the fastest KP duty on record.
Baz’s insides churned. He’d watched expressions play over Hallie’s delicate features all day. He felt her resistance. She wanted him to go home. She didn’t understand yet that his home was with her.
He needed to talk to her, to explain, but the time never seemed right.
And time was running out.
The last thing he wanted to do was blindside her. This was his opportunity, while they stood, hip to hip with soapsuds up her arms and him wielding a dishtowel. He needed to talk, and all he could seem to do was watch Rudolph’s antlers move up and down with every dish she scrubbed. He’d spent the day in a state of semi-arousal as he learned the graphic difference between dreaming about Hallie from five thousand miles away and watching her across the room. He squinted at the antlers and realized they’d started to move faster.
Thank God. She was having as much trouble with the proximity as he.
He slid the dishtowel carefully over the blade of the carving knife. Two questions raced through his mind: how the hell could a man explain himself when he had to watch the thrust underneath those damn antlers? And what were the odds of being interrupted if he pulled her down to the green-tiled floor and buried himself in that warm, buttery, tightness?
His slacks pulled hard over his groin, and he bit back a groan even as he heard voices out in the hallway.
The odds were too damn high.
Anyway, he needed to talk to her.
He dropped the dishtowel, stooped to get it. and took the opportunity to readjust himself in a desperate and useless attempt to find some relief. If he didn’t get this settled soon and make his way back into her bed, he’d go mad.
“Baz,” Hallie said, without turning around to look at him, “at the risk of repeating myself, I’d really like to know why you’re here.”
He couldn’t stop looking at her soft neck and those shining curls. This was the first time in his life he’d wanted a specific woman. Unable to help himself, he stepped behind her, close enough to brush against her backside.
Hallie jumped and turned around. He heard the harsh crack as the china in her hand met the newly tiled floor. Her eyes had turned into gold half dollars. She was Rudolph caught in the headlights.
She strafed his body with those glowing eyes; her attention was caught and held just below his belly.
He made no effort to conceal his erection. “Not much point trying to hide your effect on me.”
He reached for her hand. It was wet and sudsy, but he pressed it against his distended fly, anyway.
He felt her shudder.
“Baz, I…”
“Don’t argue.” He pulled her into his arms and smoothed one hand down her spine until he was lodged securely between her thighs. He ground himself against her then heard a low rumble and realized it had come from him.
The door to the pantry creaked. In less than two seconds, someone would join them in the room. He let her go.
“If you two are done with KP I’d like to talk with you in the study.” Jesse’s voice trailed off. Did he feel the unnatural stillness in the room? “Everything all right in here?”
He opened his mouth, unsure whether words would come out. “We’re good. We’ll be right there.”
It wasn’t loud enough.
“What’s that?”
Hallie bailed him out. “We’re almost done, Jesse,” she said.
Baz heard the door close on his dad and on his plans. He’d fouled things up now. Instead of using their time alone to put a positive spin on things, he’d jumped her like a wolf at mating time.
Well, hell. It was too late now.
****
Hallie sat on the brown leather sofa in the study next to Cam. She tried to forget the way Baz’s body had turned her into warm maple syrup and, instead, to concentrate on figuring out why she was included in what was clearly a family conference.
“Hallie,” Jesse said, “I’ll get right to the point.
I’ve booked a cruise. My doc says it’s time to slow down and I’ve chosen to do it in the Caribbean. I’ll be gone three months.”
Hallie’s heart contracted. “Are you ill?”
“Just tired. The thing is you’ll need some help while I’m gone.”
She didn’t like the way this was going. “I can handle it alone.”
“Not the large animals. It’s too much for any one doc. That’s why I hired you.” He grinned at her. “And you’ve been better than I could have imagined.
The good news is, Baz has agreed to take a sabbatical from his job. He’ll help you with the clinic while I’m gone.”
There was no way she could refuse to work with his son, and he knew it. Jesse Outlaw was nobody’s fool.
“I know you’re happy to have your son back in Eden.” she chose her words carefully, “but I’d like to remind you that Baz is a researcher. He hasn’t been as near to a cow as a glass of milk in years.”
Two of the men chuckled. The other watched her with stone gray eyes.
“It’ll come back to him,” Jesse assured her.
“Kind of like riding a bicycle. In any case, you’re in charge.”
“I’m in charge?”
“You sound surprised.”
“Have you ever worked with your son? He’s always in charge.” Anger surged through her voice but she was helpless to stop it. “He would have told Wellington how to fight the battle of Waterloo.”
“You know more about running a general practice clinic than I do, Halliday,” Baz said, with what she knew was false modesty. “I’ll learn at your knee.”
Hallie shook her head. “Why? Why would you want to do this? You’ve got tenure at the university and you’re heading for some real breakthroughs.
Why would you want to interrupt your career?” She knew she sounded hysterical, but it was only because she felt hysterical. She could see her entire life circling the drain.
“The tenure means I don’t have to worry about my career. It’ll be there when I return. I figured it was about time I did something for my dad. Beyond that, I’d like a chance to get to know my family.”
Her eyes narrowed on him. Who could argue with a man getting to know his family?
“Baz is doing this as a favor to me. It’s temporary. There’s no need for you to feel threatened, Hallie.” Jesse smiled at her, but there was a glimmer of anxiety in his gray eyes. “You know you’re like my own daughter.”
Yeah. She was like a daughter, but she wasn’t a daughter. This wasn’t the first time in her life she’d been hit with the truth of the adage ‘blood is thicker than water.’ She’d learned the lesson well. She had two choices here. She could work with Baz, or she could hit the road.
She stared at the man whose eyes had never left her face. “Let me get one thing straight. This is really about helping your father and getting to know your family. It has nothing to do with me.”
Baz didn’t smile. “It has everything to do with you,” he said, quietly, unselfconsciously. “I told you last night. I want to marry you and have a family.”
Her jaw snapped shu
t. She didn’t say another word. There was nothing left to say in front of Jesse and Cam. Later, when they were alone, she’d talk to him. She’d tell him not to waste his time in Eden.
She’d tell him the heartbreaking truth. It was too late.
Much, much too late.
“This is your home, Hallie,” Cam said. “If working with Baz will be too hard on you, tell us and we’ll make other arrangements.”
She tried to smile at her friend. It was a wonderful offer, but she couldn’t ask the man to turn on his newly rediscovered brother any more than she could ask Jesse to withdraw his invitation to his long, lost son. She could leave, or she could view this as a combat tour of duty.
“It’s only for three months, right?”
The other two nodded. Cam’s eyes were grave.
She turned to Baz. “I’ll do it as long as our relationship is strictly professional.”
He nodded much too quickly. Did he think he could change her mind? Probably. Half of her thought that, too. “I’ll do this any way you want,” he assured her.
That, of course, was what she was afraid of.
A moment later Hallie excused herself.
“I’ll walk you home,” Baz offered.
“Hang on, son,” Jesse said. “I’d like to have a word with you.”
Baz gritted his teeth and watched her leave. She was Hiroshima after the bomb. He needed to start in on damage control.
“A year ago I agreed to hire her no questions asked, and she’s fit in just fine. Better than fine.
She’s like a daughter to me. She’s not happy you’re here, boy. I think it’s time you gave me the whole story.”
It wouldn’t be easy. Baz wasn’t used to confiding in anyone, and this business was delicate and complex.
Baz tried to figure out exactly how much to tell. If Jesse and Cam didn’t know about her fertility concerns, it wasn’t his place to tell them. He spoke slowly. “Last year, out in L.A., we became friends and a bit more.”
“I assumed the ‘bit more’ was what prompted you to get me to offer her a job.”