by Neesa Hart
Resolutely she snapped the lid on the bowl of dip. They were good kids—a little rowdy, but good. They’d made so much progress in the eight months they’d been with her. They didn’t deserve to have the Odelias of the world dump on them. As long as they were hers, she’d see hell before she let Odelia, or anyone else, hurt them. Zack Adriano was just going to have to accept his new neighbors the way they were, like it or not.
“Mr. Adriano’s on his way over, August.” Bo ran from his self-appointed watch on the front porch into the kitchen. He skidded to a stop in front of August. “He just left his house.”
August shot a quick look at the clock. He was fifteen minutes early. “Great,” she mumbled. She started packing fried chicken in a large plastic container.
“Can I help?”
Despite her agitation, August smiled at Bo. He wore a pair of pressed khaki shorts, an immaculate white T-shirt and a vest with Bugs Bunny embroidered on the back. The vest was a favorite. He wore it when he wanted to impress people. August thought about the three different outfits she herself had tried, then discarded, while dressing for the day. She’d finally settled on a short-sleeved red knit shirt and flattering navy-and-white polka-dot shorts. Evidently, Bo wasn’t the only one trying to impress.
“Yes, you can help.” She hooked her foot into a high stool and dragged it to the counter. “Up here.”
Bo scrambled onto the chair. She handed him a bag of peeled baby carrots. “Here. Take the carrots out and arrange them around that bowl of dip.” She pointed to the sour-cream mixture.
Bo started laying the carrots in neat rows on the plate. “Like this?”
“Like that.”
August was in the process of packing plates and silverware in the picnic basket when she heard Zack’s knock on the door. “Boys!” she yelled. “Someone get the door, please!”
“I’ll get it!” Chip yelled as he bounded down the stairs.
August heard the screen give an anguished groan. “Hi. Did you decide yet?”
“Hi, Chip. Not yet.” The deep rumble of his voice made sweat break out on her palms, and she nearly lost her grip on the stack of plates. Chip’s reference to Zack’s “decision” wasn’t the first she’d heard from the boys that day, but so far, she’d been unable to get information out of them. Even Bo, usually the pushover, had refused to budge.
“Whatcha got?” she heard Chip ask Zack.
There was a rustling of paper. “It’s apple cider,” Zack said. “I thought maybe we could drink it with dinner.”
“Ned always brings wine,” Chip told him. He sounded disgusted. August groaned. Leave it to Chip to drag Ned Jacobs into the picture.
“I didn’t think you guys would like wine,” Zack answered. His voice was closer.
August glanced over her shoulder to see Chip dragging Zack into the kitchen. Just what was a woman supposed to do when a man bribed her kids with apple cider?
Chip flashed her a precocious grin. “Look, August. Zack brought apple cider. Three bottles. Can we have some now?”
August finished stacking the plates in the basket, using the mundane task to help her collect her wits, before she turned around. “Get the glasses out of the cabinet” she told Chip before she finally made herself meet Zack’s gaze.
He wore a purple short-sleeved shirt, open at the throat to expose his white T-shirt. His jeans, faded almost white, clung to strong thighs and lean hips. He’d brushed his thick black hair back from his face, but one persistent lock drooped across his forehead. If it was possible, he looked even more like a pirate than he had before. August swallowed. “Hi.”
He met her gaze with a steady calm that told her he knew exactly what she was thinking. “Hi. I’m a little early.” He set the bottles of cider down on the counter. “Hello, Bo.”
He got a shy smile for his troubles. “Hello, Mr. Adriano.”
“When you gonna start calling me Zack?”
“I don’t know.”
Zack leaned one hip against the counter. His close proximity made the hairs on her neck stand at attention. Deliberately she focused on packing the basket. “You looking forward to today?” Zack asked Bo.
“Sure. The picnic’s fun.”
“What’s your favorite booth?”
“I like the horseshoes. I’m real good. Last year I won a medal.”
“No kidding?”
“Nope. And wait till you seem Sam. He can spit a watermelon seed almost ten feet.”
“Ten feet? You sure?”
“Uh-huh. He might not be able to do it so good this year, ’cause his front teeth came in.”
“I’m sure that would make it more difficult” August slanted him a wry look. Only Zack could have said that with a straight face. His gaze remained fixed on Bo. “Are Sam and Jeff going with us?”
“They’re coming with their dad. They’re going to enter a pig in the judging this year.”
“And what about Josh?”
“He’s with Mrs. Prentiss. They’re supposed to meet us after lunch.”
“I see.”
August rubbed her hands on a dishtowel, then turned to face Zack. “Sounds like a ripping good time, doesn’t it?”
His eyebrows lifted a fraction. “Yes, actually.”
“I’m sure it’s not what you’re used to.”
“Change isn’t always a bad thing. It helps you learn.”
She managed a slight laugh. “I’d think after the goat fiasco, you’d have learned all you wanted to know about life in rural America.”
He rolled his shoulders. “The goats weren’t so bad. I’m a little sore, but that’s all.”
“No bruises?”
“Just the one May Belle gave me on my butt. I noticed the goats are gone. The dogs, too.”
“Yep. Fletcher’s goats have all been treated, and I was just keeping the dogs until Caspar Wilding’s prize bloodhound went out of heat.” She paused, then couldn’t resist asking, “How was your week?” She resumed the task of packing the basket. It disconcerted her too much to look at him. There was something in his expression that had her insides shaking like gelatin.
“It was all right,” he assured her. “A little dull after the vaccination adventure.”
August added a stack of napkins to the supplies. “Sorry to hear that. I would have thought Betsy May would make a good tour guide.”
“Euwwwwwwww…” Chip’s voice came from inside the cabinet where he was searching for wineglasses.
“Betsy May Keegan?” He stuck his head out to look at Zack. Zack nodded. Chip scrunched up his nose. “Did she try to kiss you? She tried to kiss me once, you know?”
August stifled a groan. Zack slanted her a look that could have melted an iceberg, then glanced back at Chip. “She didn’t try it on me,” he assured him. “I wouldn’t have let her.”
Chip shuddered as he crawled back into the cabinet, mumbling, “She’s gross.”
“Besides,” Zack drawled, “I’m partial to women with red hair and needles,” he said.
August changed the subject. “Bo, would you please go upstairs and tell the guys we’re waiting for them?”
He slipped from his chair, then gave Zack a shy wave as he hurried from the room. Chip crawled from the cabinet with a handful of plastic wineglasses. He studied Zack as he placed them in the basket. “When are you gonna make up your mind?”
“I told Jeff I’d let you know today,” Zack told him. “And I will. Right after lunch.”
August frowned. “Does somebody want to let me in on what’s going on?”
“Traid I can’t,” Zack said. “It’s between me and the boys.”
Just barely, she refrained from pressing the point. He’d drawn his line in the sand, and it would do her no good to cross it. She’d have to wait and confront him when the boys weren’t listening. “Well, then,” she told him, “let me go get my shoes, and we can go.”
“Good. I’m getting hungrier by the minute.”
He watched in masculine appreciatio
n as August retreated through the swinging door. By the time he arrived that morning, he’d lost any semblance of patience he once possessed. In the past three days, he’d spent countless hours in Hampton Roads, examining court documents and custody records. He’d seen things that made his hair stand on end. From the paper trail, he knew that August had been surviving Odelia’s threats to take her house and reverse her custody of the children on wits and bravado alone. If she had the first clue as to how tenuous her hold on the boys’ future was, she should have been running scared a long time ago.
As far as he was concerned, he’d given her more than enough time to prepare for today. She was a smart woman. There was no way she wasn’t aware of the electricity between them. Each time he thought of her in the past few days, he’d found his body heating. The sensation was simultaneously disconcerting, frustrating, and arousing as hell. He wasn’t used to this, and wasn’t at all sure he liked it. In the years he spent in New York, he’d carefully cultivated a few well-managed relationships. The women in his life were sophisticated, cultured, disciplined.
All had lacked the impulsive fire he sensed in August.
Yet he’d been unable to set thoughts of her aside as he delved into the mountain of legal red tape. An inner voice warned him that he was getting in way over his head, that the nagging sense of loneliness, of aimlessness, that had plagued him since he reached Keegan’s Bend was about to create havoc in his life. But an irresistible urge to know her, to understand all the complexities and facets of the woman across his fence, was irrevocably drawing him further into a vortex of uncontrollable want.
And he was losing his mind over it.
In the past three days, he’d dodged three phone calls from Ginny DeLark, a New York business associate who’d made it quite clear that she hoped to deepen their relation- ship when he returned to the city. Sheer connivery had helped him avoid Betsy May Keegan. But no amount of willpower could keep his mind off August Trent.
In three days, he’d learned enough about her past and the boys' future to go from impatient to downright frustrated. August owed him answers, and he wanted them today.
The sight of her, barefoot in her kitchen, with her red shirt hugging her breasts, and her blue-and-white shorts clinging to her luxuriant curves, had undone him. In an instant, he’d remembered why he found her so irresistible. She probably hadn’t meant the outfit to be alluring, probably hadn’t even thought about it. That combination of innocent and seductress had him dragging his gaze from the place where the cuff of her shorts lay against her peach-tinted thighs.
The fact that she appeared to be as nervous as a cat soothed him somewhat, but he still found himself oddly on edge as he imagined spending a day with her and her four chaperons.
As if on cue, Teddy bounded into the kitchen. He gave Zack a friendly wave.
“How you doing, kiddo?”
Teddy shrugged. Chip walked over to join them. “You know what, Zack?”
“What?”
“We got five whole dollars to spend on games and stuff,” Chip told him. “I’m gonna win a bear.”
Zack glanced at Teddy. “You got five bucks, too?”
“Sure he does,” Chip explained. “August gave us each five dollars to spend.”
The heavy fall of sneakered feet heralded Lucas’s arrival. He entered the kitchen, with Bo trailing a few paces behind, then gave Zack a sullen look. “Where you been?”
“Working on your case,” Zack told him.
Lucas seemed to consider the information. “Found anything out yet?”
“A few things.”
“You gonna tell us?”
“Not till'I discuss it with August.”
Lucas looked like he wanted to protest, but Chip was tugging on the leg of Zack’s jeans. “Will you show me how to win a bear? I want a red one.”
“You can’t win at those things,” Lucas told him with pained patience. “They’re all rigged.”
“Are not,” Chip insisted. “August said I could win if I threw the ball hard enough.”
Lucas snorted. “August believes in the tooth fairy.”
As if on cue, Chip’s mouth dropped open to show Zack his toothless gums. “The tooth fairy brought me a quarter when I lost my front teeth.”
“No kidding?”
“Yeah. Lucas said it was really August, but I don’t believe him.”
“Then you’re a doofus,” Lucas said.
“Am not.”
Zack moved quickly to head off the brewing argument. “Lucas, give him a chance,” he warned. “Somebody brought him a quarter. Might as well be the tooth fairy.” Before Lucas could protest, Zack looked at Chip. “And, yes, I’ll help you win a bear.”
“What are you going to win?” Bo asked him.
August chose that moment to reenter the room. Zack watched her approach with a growing sense of heat and want. “I’m thinking of spending my money at the kissing booth.”
August leaned back against the wide oak at the top of the hill. During the short walk to their picnic spot, the boys had maintained a constant stream of chatter, keeping Zack occupied. She’d been all too aware of his eyes on her, however. There was a promise in his gaze that made her knees feel week. She’d almost dropped to the ground in relief when they finally reached the top of the hill. She didn’t think she could have taken another minute of the close tension. The easy camaraderie they’d shared while injecting the goats was gone, replaced by an awareness that made the air seem to sharpen and sizzle.
After studying her for several seconds, Zack had stretched out on the blanket. He was close enough that she felt his heat, close enough to make her nerve endings sparkle like fireworks.
His expression told her he noticed her discomfort. His lips twitched into a knowing smile as he calmly began filling glasses with bubbling cider and glanced at Bo. “So, when you boys aren’t chasing goats around your backyard, what do you do to stay out of trouble?” he asked.
The tension broken, the boys immediately took Zack’s cue, leaving August the rest of the meal to study Zack’s interaction with her small brood.
Lunch, she had to admit, was a surprisingly lively and pleasant affair. Zack concentrated most of his attention on the boys. He had a remarkable camaraderie with them. When he made casual references to his brothers and sisters, who seemed to have an endless stream of names and anecdotes, she started to understand why. He’d obviously grown up in a large family, and he was used to interacting with children.
The boys chatted amiably with him through most of the meal. He seemed at ease with the conversation, casually asking questions that were sure to elicit detailed responses. He charmed them just as easily and fully as he’d charmed her. When he admired Bo’s Bugs Bunny vest, he earned an adoring smile.
For her part, August marveled at his instant rapport with her kids. All of them had come from difficult family situations. Despite their precocious nature, they rarely formed attachments to other people, with August being the one notable exception.
Yet they seemed inclined to trust Zack. Even Lucas, the wariest of them all, entered the conversation. Except for the veiled references to whatever bargain had been discussed that afternoon in Zack’s yard, she couldn’t find fault with Zack’s easy responses to their questions.
August fiddled with her fork while she listened to Chip rattle on about his rock collection. Zack was giving the discussion all the gravity of a lecture from the National Geographic Society. Occasionally, he would slide a smol dering look at her, or roll a carrot on his tongue in such a way as to make her toes tingle. His comments, while innocent enough, held an unmistakable double meaning. The longer he toyed with her, the more tense she felt. His generous interaction with her boys made him an easy man to like, but she still wasn’t sure she trusted him.
The final straw came when she felt his fingers settle on the bare skin of her forearm. A jolt of pure desire raced from the spot where his fingers were rubbing lazy circles on her skin to the pit of her stomach. Wi
th a measured calm she hadn’t known she possessed, she put her fork down, afraid she’d throw it at him if she didn’t. While the thought of her fork protruding from his forehead was mildly amusing, the heated sensations traveling up and down her arm were not. “Boys?” she asked.
Four heads turned to look at her. Chip stopped in the middle of an explanation about how applesauce was only good if it had pieces of peel in it.
“Are you through eating?”
They answered in yeses and nods.
“Then go ahead and scrape your plates. I’m sure Josh, Sam and Jeff are waiting for you.”
“You want to come with us, Zack?” Chip asked. “You can show me how to win a bear.”
Zack studied August for a few long seconds before he turned his gaze to the boys. “If you give me a couple of minutes alone with August, I’ll meet you down the hill.”
Before August could protest, the boys began scrambling from the table. Plates were scraped and dropped into the picnic basket in rapid succession. In seconds, the boys were fleeing down the hill. August’s strict warnings about good behavior and staying clean fell on quickly retreating ears.
“Is it safe to let them wander off on their own?” Zack asked.
“Emma and Henry will look after them.”
“Emma Prentiss?” he asked, referring to Josh’s grandmother.
“And Henry Derden. He’s Sam and Jeffs father.”
“Can they control them?”
“Can anyone?” She gave him a wry look. “Now, you want to tell me what you were thinking when you told the boys you were going to spend your money in the kissing booth.”
He chuckled. She felt the sound in the tips of her toes. “I was watching you. What do you think I was thinking?” Reclined back on one elbow, plucking fat red grapes from a laden cluster, he looked every inch the decadent temptation she’d been trying to ignore for the past three days.
“No telling what the boys thought.”
He plopped a grape into her mouth. “I’d wager Chip, Bo and Teddy thought it was a terrible waste of five dollars, and Lucas, who probably knows a lot more about kissing than he should at his age, still doesn’t trust me.”