by Nora Roberts
“Perfect.”
“So, is it just glands, or is it more?”
“Well, it started with glands. My glands are very susceptible to big, strong men—and their tool belts.”
While Freddie snorted with laughter, Kate rolled over on her back, studied the ceiling. “Could be more. He seems like— I don’t know, just a very nice man—solid, responsible, loving. The kind of man I haven’t seen much of. Gun-shy, too, in a really sweet way, which makes him a wonderful challenge.”
“And nobody likes a challenge more than you.”
“True. Unless it’s you. And I wouldn’t mind pursuing the whole thing at that level. But every time I see him with Jack, there’s this little…tug inside. You know?”
“Yeah.” Freddie had started experiencing those tugs where her own husband Nick was concerned at approximately the age of thirteen. “Are you falling for him?”
“Too soon to know. But I really like him on all the important levels, which balances out nicely with all this wild lust.”
She lifted her leg, pointed her toe at the ceiling. “I really want to get him alone somewhere and rip his clothes off. But I know I can also have a good conversation with him. Last night we watched the last part of that movie about the giant eye from space.”
“Yeah. I love that movie.”
“Me, too. That’s what I mean. It was really comfortable and easy.” And sweet, she thought with a long, lazy stretch. Absolutely sweet. “Even though he gives me that zing in the blood, it’s nice to just sit on the couch and watch an old movie. Most of the guys I dated, it was either dancing, partying, dancing, art shows, dancing. There was never any let’s just stay home for a night and relax. I’m really ready to do that.”
“Small town, ballet school, a romance with a carpenter. It suits you, Katie.”
“Yeah.” Delighted Freddie could think so, she rolled over again. “It really does.”
Yuri Stanislaski, a bull of a man with a fringe of stone-gray hair, stood in the center of the room destined to be a dance studio.
“So, this is good space. My granddaughter, she knows the value of space. Strong foundation.” He walked over, gave the wall a punch with the side of his fist. “Good bones.”
Mikhail, Yuri’s oldest son, stood at the front windows. “She’ll relive her childhood out here. It’s good for her. And—” he turned, flashed a smile “—people look in, see the dancers. Advertisement. My niece is a clever girl.”
There were pounding feet on the steps. Brody had no idea how many of the young people had come down with them. He thought most of them belonged to Mik, but it was impossible to keep track when there were so many of them, and all almost ridiculously good-looking.
He wasn’t used to large families, all the byplay and interaction. And he had a feeling the Stanislaskis were about as big as a family could get without just bursting at the seams.
“Papa! Come on up. You gotta see this place. It’s ancient. It’s great!”
“My son, Griff,” Mik said with a twinkle. “He likes old things.”
“So, we go up.” Yuri gave Brody a pat on the back that could have toppled an elephant. “We see what it is you do with this ancient great place to make my little girl safe and happy. She is a beauty, my Katie. Yes?”
“Yes,” Brody said, cautiously.
“And strong.”
“Ah.” Unsure of his ground, he glanced toward Mikhail for help and got only that thousand-watt grin. “Sure.”
“Also good bones.” Yuri let out another hearty laugh, and twinkling at his son in what was an unmistakable inside joke, started up the stairs.
Brody didn’t know how it happened. He’d meant to do no more than drop in on the Kimballs. To be polite, to thank Natasha for thinking of him and Jack.
He’d gotten swept in. Swallowed was more like it, he decided. He wasn’t sure he’d ever seen that many people in one place at one time before. And most of them were related in one way or the other.
Since his own family consisted of himself and Jack, his parents—with three aunts and uncles and six cousins scattered down south—the sheer number of Stanislaskis had been an eye-opener.
Frankly he didn’t see how they kept track of each other.
They were loud, beautiful, boisterous, full of questions, stories and arguments. The house had been so full of people, food, drink, music, that although he’d ended staying until nearly eight, he’d had no more than a few snatches of conversation with Kate.
He’d been dragged off to the building, grilled over his plans—and he wasn’t dim enough to have been fooled that the grilling had been exclusively on rehab.
Kate’s family had been sizing him up. Connie’s had done the same, he remembered. Certainly not with this good humor or affection or, well, sheer amusement, Brody decided. But the bottom line was identical.
Was this guy good enough for their princess? In Connie’s case the answer had been an unqualified no. The resentment on both sides had tainted everything that had happened afterward with shadows.
His impression was the Stanislaski verdict was still pending. Nothing he’d done to tactfully demonstrate he wasn’t looking to sweep the ballerina off her toe shoes had stopped them from cornering him—good-naturedly. Asking questions—politely. Or giving him the old once-over—without the least bit of subtlety.
It was more than enough to make a man glad he was single, and intended to stay that way.
Now the party was over. The holidays were, thank the Lord, behind him. He could get back to work, remembering that Kate Kimball was a client. And not a lover.
He spent a week tearing out, cleaning out, prepping walls, checking pipes.
She never came by.
Every day when he arrived on the site, he imagined she’d stroll down at some point and check the progress. Every evening when he loaded his tools back into his truck he wondered what she was up to.
Obviously she was busy, had other things to deal with. Didn’t care as much as she’d indicated about the job. Very obviously, she wasn’t as interested in him as she’d pretended to be.
Which was why he’d been very smart to avoid getting tangled up with some sort of fling with her. She was probably staying out half the night living it up, and spending the other half with some slick New Yorker. He wouldn’t be surprised at all. Not one bit. He wouldn’t be surprised if she was already making plans to sell the property and shake the small town dust off her dancing shoes.
But he was surprised to find himself striding up the steps to her front door and banging on it.
He paced the porch. She was the one who’d wanted to nail down every detail, wasn’t she? He strode back to the door, banged again. The least she could do was maintain some pretense of interest in the project for a lousy week.
He zigzagged back and forth across the porch again. What the hell was he doing? This was stupid. It was none of his business what she did or how she did it, as long as she paid the freight. He drew a deep breath, let it out slowly and had nearly calmed himself down when the door opened.
There she was, looking all heavy-eyed and sleepy, her face flushed, her hair just a little tumbled. Like a woman who’d just slid herself out of bed, and had plans to slide right back in again.
Damn it.
“Brody?”
“Yeah. Sorry to wake you up. After all it’s only four in the afternoon.”
Her brain was too fuzzy to register the insult, so she gave him a sleepy smile. “It’s all right. If I go down for more than an hour in the afternoon, I don’t sleep well at night. Come on in. I need coffee.”
Assuming he’d follow, she turned and walked back toward the kitchen. She heard the door slam, but since it often did in this house, she didn’t think anything of it. “I just got in a couple of hours ago.” She started a fresh pot, willed it to hurry. To stretch out fatigued muscles, she automatically moved into the first position. “How are things going on my job?”
“Your interest in stuff always blow hot and col
d?”
“Hmm? What?” Third position, rise to toes. Get coffee mugs from cupboard.
“You haven’t been to the site in a week.”
“I was out of town. You take it black, right? A little emergency in New York.”
Instantly his annoyance shifted into concern. “Your family?”
“Oh, no. They’re fine.” She arched her back, twisted a little, winced. “Can you…I’ve got this spot right back…”
She curved her arm over her back, trying to reach a sore muscle between her shoulder blades. “Just press in there with your thumb for a minute. A little lower,” she said when he complied. “Oh. Mmm, that’s it. Harder.” She let out a low, throaty groan, tipped her head back, closed her eyes. “Oh, yes. Yes. Don’t stop.”
“The hell with this.” Viciously aroused, he spun her around, slammed her back against the counter and crushed his mouth to hers.
Heat flashed through her logy system, lights slashed through her sleep-dulled brain. Her lips parted on a gasp of surprise, and he took the kiss deep. Took her deep before she could find her balance. She lifted her hands, a helpless flutter, as she tried to catch up.
She was trapped between his body and the counter, two unyielding surfaces. All the fatigue, the vague aches, burned away in the sudden fireball of sensation.
Frustration, need, temper, lust. They’d all been bottled up inside him since the first moment he’d seen her. Now that the cork was popped, the passion poured out. He took what he hadn’t allowed himself to want, ravaging her mouth to feed the hunger.
And when she gripped his shoulders and began to tremble, he took more.
They were both breathless when he tore his mouth from hers. For a long moment they stayed as they were, staring at each other, with his hands fisted in her hair, and her fingers digging into his shoulders.
Then their mouths were locked again, a reckless war of lips and tongues and teeth. Her hands tugged at his shirt, his rushed under her sweater. Groping, gasping, they struggled to find more. His back rapped against the refrigerator; her teeth scraped along his neck. He circled around until they bumped the kitchen table. He molded her hips, was about to lift them onto that hard, flat surface.
“Katie, is that fresh coffee I…” Spencer Kimball stopped short in the doorway, slapped hard in the heart by the sight of his baby girl wrapped like a vine around his carpenter.
They broke apart, with the guilty jerk of a child caught with its hand in the cookie jar.
For an awkward, endless five seconds no one spoke nor moved.
“I, ah…” Dear God, was all Spencer could think. “I need to…hmm. In the music room.”
He backed out, walked quickly away.
Brody dragged his hands through his hair, fisted them there. “Oh, God. Get me a gun. I’d like to shoot myself now and get it over with.”
“We don’t have one.” She gripped the back of a ladder-back chair. The room was still spinning. “It’s all right. My father knows I kiss men on occasion.”
Brody dropped his hands. “I was about to do a hell of a lot more than kiss you, and on your mother’s kitchen table.”
“I know.” Wasn’t her pulse still banging like a kettledrum? Couldn’t she see the blind heat of desire in those wonderful eyes of his? “It’s a damn shame Dad didn’t have late classes today.”
“This is not good.” He hissed out a breath, turned on his heel and yanked a glass out of a cupboard. He filled it with cold water from the tap, considered splashing it in his face, then gulped it down instead. It didn’t do much in the way of cooling him off, but it was a start. “This wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t ticked me off.”
“Ticked you off?” She wanted to smooth down all that streaky hair she’d mussed. Then she wanted to muss it all again. “About what?”
“Then you get me to touch you and you start making sex noises.”
The hell with coffee, she decided, she wanted a drink. “Those weren’t sex noises.” She wrenched open the fridge, took out a bottle of white wine. “Those were muscle relief noises, which, I suppose, could amount to roughly the same thing. Get me down a damn wineglass, because now I’m ticked off.”
“You?” He slammed open another cupboard, plucked out a simple stemmed glass, shoved it at her. “You go traipsing off to New York for a damn week. Don’t tell anybody where you are.”
“I beg your pardon.” Her voice cut like ice. “Both my parents knew exactly where I was.” She poured the wine, slammed the bottle down on the counter. “I was unaware I was required to check my schedule with you.”
“You hired me to do a job, didn’t you? A big, complicated job which you stated—clearly—you intended to be involved in, step by step. It so happens several steps have been taken during this week while you pulled your vanishing act.”
“It couldn’t be helped.” She took a long sip of wine and tried to find the control button on her temper. “If you’d had any problems, any questions, either my mother or father could have put you in touch with me. Why didn’t you ask them?”
“Because…” There had to be a reason. “My clients are usually old enough to leave me a contact number and not expect me to hunt them down through their parents.”
“That’s lame, O’Connell,” she said, though the statement stung a bit. “However, in the future, you are directed to consult with either of my parents should you not be able to contact me. All right?”
“Fine.” He jammed his hands into his pockets. “Dandy.”
“And keen,” she finished. It was a ridiculous argument, she decided. And though she didn’t mind a good fight, she did object to being ridiculous. “Listen, I had to go to New York. When I left the company, I gave the director my word that should I be needed, and it was possible, I would fill in. I keep my word. Several of the dancers, including principals, were wiped out with the flu. We dance hurt, we dance sick, but sometimes you just can’t pull it off. I gave him a week. Eight performances, while sick dancers recovered—and a couple more dropped.”
She leaned back against the counter to take the weight off her legs. “My partner and I were unfamiliar with each other, which meant long, intense rehearsals. I haven’t danced professionally in nearly three months. I was out of shape, so I took some extra morning classes. This didn’t leave me a lot of time or energy to worry about a project I assumed was in capable hands. It didn’t occur to me you’d need to reach me this early in the project, after we’d just spoken. I hope that clears things up for you.”
“Yeah, that clears it up. Can I borrow a knife?”
“What?”
“You don’t have a gun handy, but I can use a knife to slit my throat.”
“Why don’t you wait until you get home?” She sipped her wine again, watching him over the rim. “My mother hates blood on the kitchen floor.”
“Your father probably doesn’t like his daughter having sex on the kitchen table, either.”
“I don’t know. The subject’s never come up before.”
“I didn’t mean to grab you that way.”
“Really.” She held out her glass. “Which way did you mean to grab me?”
“Not.” With a shrug he took the wine from her hand, sampled it. “You can see this is already getting complicated and jumbled up. The job, you, me. Sex.”
“I’m very good at organizing and compartmentalizing. Some consider it one of my best—and most annoying—skills.”
“Yeah, I bet.” He handed her back the glass. “Kate.”
She smiled. “Brody.”
He laughed a little, and with his hands back in his pockets, roamed the room. “I’ve done a lot of screwing up in my life. With Connie—my wife—and Jack. I worked really hard to change that. Jack’s only six. I’m all he’s got. I can’t put anything ahead of that.”
“If you could, I’d think a great deal less of you. If you could, I wouldn’t be attracted to you.”
He turned back, studying her face. “I can’t figure you.”
“Maybe you should see if you can organize your schedule, so you can spend a little time on that problem?”
“Maybe we should just rent a motel room on Route 81 some afternoon and pretend there isn’t a problem.”
To his surprise, she laughed. “Well, that’s another alternative. Personally, I’d like to do both. Why don’t I leave it up to you, for the moment, as to which part of the solution we approach first?”
“Why don’t we…” He glanced at the clock on the stove, swore. “I’ve got to go pick up Jack. Maybe you could come down to the job tomorrow lunchtime. I’ll buy you a sandwich and show you what we’re doing.”
“I’ll do that.” She tilted her head. “Want to kiss me goodbye?”
He glanced at the kitchen table, back at her. “Better not. Your father might have a weapon in the house you don’t know about.”
Spencer Kimball wasn’t loading a shotgun. Kate found him in his studio going over his lesson plans for the current semester. He’d been going over the same page for the last ten minutes.
She crossed to where he sat at his desk looking out the window. She set a cup of coffee at his elbow, then wrapped her arms around him and propped her chin on his shoulder. “Hi.”
“Hi. Thanks.”
She rubbed her cheek against his and studied his view of their pretty backyard. She would ask her mother to help her plan the gardens for the school.
“Brody seems to be concerned you may shoot him.”
“I don’t have a gun.”
“That’s what I said. I also told him that my father knows I’ve kissed men. You do know that, don’t you, Daddy?”
She only called him Daddy when she was trying to charm him. They both knew it. “What I know intellectually is a far cry from walking in on… He had his hands on your…” Spencer set his teeth. “He had his hands on my little girl.”
“Your little girl had her hands on him, too.” She scooted around, wiggled into her father’s lap.
“I hardly think the kitchen is the proper place for you to…” What? Exactly what?
“You’re right, of course.” She made her voice very prim, very proper. “The kitchen is for cooking. I’ve certainly never seen you and Mama kissing in the kitchen. I’d have been horrified.”