by Judi Fennell
Dave cupped her cheek as he pulled away, his eyes on hers. “Guess that says it all, huh?”
“What?”
He ran his forefinger down her nose with a little tap at the end. “Thanks for spending time with me tonight, Mac. I’ve really enjoyed it.” He stepped back.
“I had a good time, too, Dave.”
He smiled. “But you’d have a better time with someone else.”
“That’s not—”
He put a finger on her lips. “Don’t.” He took his finger away. “Don’t lie to yourself, Mac. And don’t lie to Jared. He’s a good guy. He deserves a good woman.” He ran his hand down her arm and squeezed her hand. “He deserves you. And I hope he’s smart enough to realize it.”
Chapter Twenty
HEY, Jared. This was on your front door.”
Mac handed him an envelope when she breezed into his kitchen the next morning looking way too happy for Jared’s peace of mind. Did that mean her date had gone well? And how well?
She set another dropped-off tray of sweets onto the countertop. “Looks like an invitation.”
Was it wrong that his first thought was to ask her to go with him?
“Thanks.” He took it from her, being careful not to touch her.
He’d tried to ignore the visions of her and Dave all night with the numerous beers he and the old high school crowd had consumed, getting home late enough that he’d had to deal with another round of kitten cleanup, which woke the little buggers up enough to need to be fed, so he’d had about four hours of sleep and his body hurt like hell from moving a ton of boxes around in the attic yesterday. Then, to see her all perky and happy . . .
He picked up the invitation, knowing before he opened it what it was. He’d received a lot of these over the years.
THE HONOR OF YOUR PRESENCE IS REQUESTED AT THE DEDICATION OF THE COMMUNITY CENTER POOL AS OUR HONORED GUEST ON THE PODIUM AND FOR THE RIBBON-CUTTING CEREMONY.
“So I’m guessing from the look on your face an old girlfriend is getting married and invited you to the wedding.” Mac had that smirk that used to bug him but now just made her look adorable.
Not helping . . .
“It’s an invitation for a ribbon-cutting ceremony at the community center pool this weekend. They want me on the podium, which means I’ll have to come up with a speech, and they’ll probably give me a key to the place.”
“And that’s a bad thing?” She cocked her head and her ponytail fell over her shoulder.
For a second he remembered what her hair had looked like out of the ponytail. In the next second, he was wondering if Dave knew what it looked like.
He probably did. Mac wouldn’t wear a ponytail on a date.
“You should wear it like that.”
“Excuse me?”
Damn. Not what he meant to say. He shouldn’t have had those last couple of beers. And he should have gone to bed earlier. “I, uh, mean, you wouldn’t understand. I’m not going.”
“You have that right, I guess, but after Saturday, why wouldn’t you? People know you’re out and about, plus you’re a hometown hero. Of course they’d want to honor you. How is that a bad thing?”
“Like this?” He shook his crutches. “It’s a pity vote. They couldn’t get anyone else because we’re in season. No one’s available. So they ask the injured guy.”
“And you say I have a chip on my shoulder? Geez, Jared, maybe they’re asking you because you’re actually in town for once. No one opens a community center pool in the middle of winter when you’re available, so the fact that you’re actually here is a perfectly good reason to ask you to do this. And they’re honoring you. It shouldn’t be a chore. I don’t get why you’d turn them down. Seems like a good way to make a bad impression.”
Well when she put it like that . . . “Fine. I guess I’ll do it.”
“Good. I didn’t want to have to go to your grandmother.”
“You wouldn’t.”
She raised the invite. “Don’t bet on it. I actually know people on the community center’s board.”
He studied her. He wasn’t used to a Mac who didn’t hero-worship him, and even though that’d gotten old back in the day, he would’ve bet that he’d like one who told him off even less.
That was a bet he would’ve lost.
He liked that she came back at him. Called him on stuff. That she put him in his place and wasn’t bowled over by his profession or his celebrity or his bank account.
He wasn’t so thrilled that she’d gone to dinner with his friend, however. “But you have to go with me.”
“What? Why? No one wants to see me.”
He did.
There. No hiding from that. He wanted Mac with him. If he had to face the pity stares, he wanted someone in his corner who definitely didn’t pity him.
Or maybe you want her to go with you just because you want her with you.
“Think of the publicity. You can wear your uniform and hang out beside me—”
“As your date?”
Hell yes. “You want publicity for the business? What better way to get it? They’ll definitely put me on the air.”
“I thought you didn’t want me to use you for publicity purposes?”
“Let’s call it a mutually beneficial usury.”
“But what do you get out of having me there?”
“Protection.” He pointed to the latest stack of desserts the neighbors had left this morning. “And think of the press coverage.”
“When is it?”
“Saturday at two.”
“Will you wear a Manley Maids shirt? I might as well get as much publicity as possible.”
“Like what you’re wearing?”
She nodded.
“Does it come in any color other than pistachio?”
“It’s not pistachio. It’s green.”
“Pistachio is green.”
“But not this shade.”
“Then what would you call it?”
“Mint.”
“Like that’s so much better. I’ll walk around in a mint golf shirt. Bad enough this injury shreds my masculinity, now you’re throwing a mint-colored maid’s uniform in as part of the deal.”
She crossed her arms.
He really wished she wouldn’t do that.
“Trust me, Jared, your masculinity is perfectly safe.”
His brain went right to his . . . well, other brain at that comment. She saw him as masculine. That was a start. But where did his masculinity fall in comparison to Dave’s masculinity?
And when had he ever questioned that?
Jared shook his head. He needed coffee and lots of it. Never should he face Mac hungover. Especially after she’d been out on a date.
“Still . . . you might want to revamp the uniforms, Mac. At least for the guys. I can’t see your brothers in that getup.”
“Maybe you should stop by one of their job sites because they are perfectly fine wearing these.”
“Then at least give them jeans. Maybe blue instead of green for the shirt?”
“You want to tell our grandmothers that you don’t like what they came up with? You’re a far braver person than I.”
Hell. He was going to wear the green shirt.
* * *
MAC mentally patted herself on the back as she closed the French doors to the study. She’d made it through their interaction without doing anything stupid, given that Dave’s comment about Jared deserving a good woman like her had been mulling about in her head all night.
It was nice that Dave thought so, but Jared had had his chance and done nothing. Matter of fact, he’d actually encouraged her to go out with his friend. Couldn’t say it any louder than that unless he flat out told her to her face that he wasn’t interested. Which he kind of had when she overhe
ard him talking to Dave.
So she’d shoved Dave’s comment out of her head, focused on what she was here to do, and made it through their morning hellos. Now she was just going to clean the study, then join Jared in the attic to look for the ring. She’d considered letting him go ring hunting solo, but they couldn’t put the house up for sale until it was found.
“Mac, have you see Moe?” Jared opened the study door with three of the kittens in his arms.
“I didn’t know it was my turn to watch them.” Okay, so maybe she had a bit of an attitude with him. Sue her. A woman could only take so much and she’d had more than her fair share with Jared.
Actually, Dave had it wrong. Jared didn’t deserve a woman like her and thankfully the guy hadn’t done something when he could have.
“Damn.” He hiked the kittens a bit higher. “Last I looked, they were all in the play yard, but when I went to change the litter just now, she was gone.”
That wasn’t good. These guys were babies. They still needed someone to take care of them. Couldn’t have them wandering off on their own yet as the almost-catastrophe on the basement steps attested to. “Do you think she crawled out?”
“I don’t know how she could. The holes aren’t that big.”
“We have to find her.”
“I know. Can you watch these guys while I grab some chicken wire from the shed? I’ll put it around the bottom of the play yard so they can’t get out before we go looking for her.”
She took the three brothers who were missing their sister.
Oh . . . crud.
She took a seat, a lump in her throat. Four siblings who’d lost their mom. A little sister in need of rescuing. The correlation to her family . . . Maybe that was why she’d been so adamant about Jared keeping them.
Well, hell, they had to find Moe.
Within ten minutes, Mac had cans of tuna spread out around the downstairs and Jared had the play yard lined with chicken wire, as well as a makeshift “lid” to keep the boys where they should be.
Ten minutes after that, Jared did find Moe.
And why wouldn’t he? He’d had a lot of practice rescuing damsels in distress.
Mac didn’t want to go there. He wasn’t Prince Charming and she wasn’t Cinderella. Even if she did clean for a living.
She ran down the stairs and reached for Moe. “What were you doing, you little rascal?”
“She went in search of the litter box in the laundry room even though she had a perfectly good one here. Makes no sense.”
“Those nasty old boys make a big mess for you?” Mac rubbed Moe’s nose with hers. “Were you out exploring all by yourself?”
Wide blue eyes blinked at her.
“I don’t think she thought she was lost,” Mac stage-whispered out of the corner of her mouth.
“Reminds me of someone else I know.” He nudged her with his shoulder. “Like that time we found you in that cave on the trail, remember?”
Mac tucked Moe under her chin, trying to hide a grimace. She hated this story. “I remember.”
She hated that she’d had to be found, hated remembering how scared she’d been—she’d just seen the Wizard of Oz for the first time and those “lions, and tigers, and bears, oh my” had been going round and round in her scared little mind. So when she’d seen the overhang of rocks, she’d butted up against the wall, curled her arms around her knees, and tried to bury her head there, figuring if she didn’t see the monsters, the monsters wouldn’t see her. The logic of a five-year-old.
Jared had been the first to find her—and he’d let her have it verbally until her brothers had shown up.
By then, she’d been so scared and so miserable that she’d gotten yelled at, that she’d yelled back at him, telling him she’d known exactly where she was and he was the idiot. When she’d shoved him out of her way, Liam had scooped her into his arms and carried her home.
She’d been scared witless. “You yelled at me.”
“I know. I’m sorry. All I could think about was you getting hurt.” He leaned against the secretary desk and crossed his arms. “But you scared me, Mac. I’d never lost anyone before. I didn’t know what to do. We were frantic, calling you, looking in the creek, looking down the embankments . . . I thought you drowned. Seriously, Mac, I was ten years old and thought you were dead. Then when I found you . . . You have no idea the relief I felt.”
“Why?”
“Why?”
“Yes, why? You didn’t like me, so why the relief? You made it perfectly clear that you didn’t want me around, so it would’ve been better if I was out of the way.”
Jared took Moe from her and set her back in the pen, making sure to latch the lid. Then he walked up to Mac and tilted her chin. “You know how I was with these kittens, all worried about taking care of them?” He waited for her to nod. “I was ten times as bad with you. You were a child. A little girl. Something not of my universe. But I saw how much your brothers cared about you, I saw how much your grandmother cared about you, and I knew we had to protect you. Yet every time I tried to suggest you do it one way, you purposely went and did it the other.”
“That’s because I didn’t like being bossed around.”
“What you saw as bossing, I meant as caution.” Jared tapped the tip of her nose.
Ohmygod, she felt that all the way down to her—
Wait. That was silly. It was a tap on the nose. The tip of the nose wasn’t an erogenous zone. And, hey, Dave had done the same thing last night and she hadn’t gotten that . . . tingle. “And the teasing? The sarcasm?”
Jared winced and leaned back against the desk, taking his tingling fingers with him. “I’m not proud of that, Mac, but I was a teenage boy. You were my best friend’s kid sister with a crush. I wasn’t sure how to handle it. So I chose the wrong way. It didn’t mean that I didn’t like you; I just didn’t know what to do with you. About you.” He touched her arm briefly. “But, hey, remember the zip line? And the hayride? And the time in the cornfield maze when we overheard your brothers who were so scared that we offered to lead them out if they’d buy the ice cream? Remember how hard we tried not to laugh as we stood on the other side of the hedge with the end in sight? Then there was that time at the lake with the inflatable dock thing that we bounced everyone off of. Remember that?”
Jared kept going with the memories and Mac had to take a breath. She had forgotten those other times, but they existed.
“Can you forgive me, Mac?”
Could she? Jared had been a kid and it wasn’t his fault that she’d looked at him in a whole new light. That she’d gone a few steps further.
She’d been condemning him all those years for something that’d been her doing.
“Of course I can, Jared.”
Chapter Twenty-one
YO, Jare, your chariot awaits.”
Jared, Liam, and Bryan were at the baseball stadium—he’d gotten last-minute tickets for tonight’s game—and Bryan was rattling the wheelchair by the ramp, smiling the shit-eating grin the media called charismatic but Jared, Liam, and Sean called obnoxious. Worked on women, but it wasn’t doing a damn thing for Jared.
“I’m not an invalid, guys.”
“Says the guy with a brace on his leg and a set of crutches.” Liam handed him the damn things. “Just shut up and get in the wheelchair. You know you want us to cater to your every need.”
On a good day, maybe. Now? Not a chance in hell.
But they’d miss the first three innings if he had to gimp his way to their seats, and his leg did hurt like hell. Too much chicken-wire-gathering without his crutches this morning. He’d overdone it. “Fine. Let’s go.”
He pulled his baseball cap down low on his forehead, wishing Bryan would do the same. Mr. Movie Star, however, enjoyed his publicity, and it would only be a matter of time before someone called him on it.<
br />
“Hey, aren’t you Bryan Manley?” asked a kid.
Like now.
Damn. They were right by their seats; they’d almost made it.
Liam nudged Bryan. “Looks like you’re up, baby bro.”
“Don’t call me that,” Bryan muttered as he handed Lee his food carrier. He turned around to the kid. “Yes, I am. Would you like an autograph?”
“Yeah,” said the kid, tugging a teenage girl with him. “On my sister’s arm. She says she’ll never wash it again if you do and I wanna see that fight with Mom.”
Jared had to laugh. He’d never had sibling interaction, but he’d seen the same sort of thing between Lee and his brothers. He’d always wanted a brother, that’s why he’d wanted Liam for a friend. The guy came with two more; it was the family he’d never had.
And then there was Mac—
Thankfully, Liam dropped a food carrier onto his lap before he could go too far down that lane. Tonight was about forgetting Mac. It was his time to hang out with the guys and just chill.
“Here, make yourself useful,” Liam said. “That bogus injury’s not getting you out of doing some work.”
“Bogus?” He twisted to look back at Liam while trying not to upend the beer. “If I could get out of this damn contraption, I’d show you bogus. And trust me, I’m working these days. Your sister . . .” He opted for shaking his head. It was one thing to be frustrated by Mac, it was another to bitch about her to her brothers.
“Don’t tell me she’s put you to work.”
In more ways than one.
But he wasn’t about to share that with her brothers. They all knew how he felt about her—had felt about her. What he was feeling now was his business. “Sorry, Lee, but she’s a pain in the ass even if she is your sister.”
“Hey, you don’t have to tell me.”
Good. Because he wasn’t about to. The last person he’d want to discuss Mac with was her older brother.
Or Dave.
Dave.
He’d cancelled today’s PT session, hadn’t wanted to hear how great the date was and when Dave was going to see her again, and if he’d kissed her goodnight—