Finding Home (St. John Sibling Series Book 2)

by Barbara Raffin

  "Suit yourself," she said, stepping around him and busying herself gathering a plate and glass from the cupboard. She needed to keep her head on straight and her hormones in check if she was going to figure him out. No way did she believe he just happened by and stopped for a meet and greet even though he'd been hesitant to accept her invitation to stay the night.

  She handed him the place setting. "Mind putting these on the table?"

  He took the plate and glass in his free hand, giving her a heavy-lidded look that reminded her of how the Big Bad Wolf might look at Little Red Riding Hood. Michael had never described his cousin as a wolf.

  "Today's beef roast was particularly good," she said, holding his gaze, certain a good stare down would make Sam back-off and stop sending her hormones into a tizzy. "I'll make you a sandwich. You want that hot or cold."

  "Cold will be fine," he said, his thumb stroking the smooth, silver dome of the helmet still braced between his elbow and ribs in a way that made her skin tingle. She'd almost forgotten what it was like to have a man touch her like that.

  So much for cooling Sam's draw.

  "I'm melting, melting, melting." Ben's voice corkscrewed from the front room.

  Melting just about summed up her body's response, too.

  Ben shrieked and Dixie snapped back to reality, a reality that drew a line between her and any possibility she'd ever be lucky enough to be on the receiving end of Cousin Sam's stroking thumb. Sam, above all else, was Michael's cousin and cousins were off limits. Besides, she mothered lost souls and there was still a lost little boy behind those eyes.

  "You were going to put those on the table," she said, nodding at the plate and glass caught between his fingers…his very long fingers.

  His smile twitched and he turned toward the table tucked under the stairs. She shook her head against her own failure to resist. Maybe what had changed from porch to kitchen had been her perspective, not his. Maybe she, with her revived libido, was the one seeing what she wanted to see.

  She opened the refrigerator door and bent into the cool air, gathering containers. "How about an ice tea with that?"

  "Sounds great."

  The nearness of his voice jerked her upright and she turned to find that he now stood in the space behind her. For a moment, she forgot about the condiment jars and packages of beef and cheese she hugged against her chest in spite of their chill. It was his eyes that made her forget, those heavy-lidded, bedroomy eyes. Michael had said women were drawn to "Sam's underdog quality." But a puppy was the last thing she thought of under the seductive invitation of Sam's steady gaze. So much for maintaining motherly thoughts.

  So much for thinking his flirtation was all in her mind.

  "Aren't you quick on your feet," she said, "and quiet about it, too."

  He plucked a precariously balanced pickle jar off the stack in her arms, and winked. "Comes from years of sneaking past Uncle Stu. The less I encountered him, the better."

  What kind of flirtation was he plying on her? The kind meant to camouflage pain or the kind meant to score a conquest?

  "Michael told me Stuart was pretty hard on you," she tested.

  His smile froze. "Michael told you that, huh?"

  "Yeah." And a whole lot more.

  He turned away from her and set the fat jar on the countertop beside the fridge.

  "Want the works?" she asked, dumping her load onto the counter next to the pickle jar, closely watching Sam for further reaction.

  Only a hint of the puppy dog remained in his eyes as he responded. "I place myself completely in your capable hands."

  Did he mean to sound so suggestive?

  He hitched one lean hip against the cabinet where she worked and drummed his expressive fingers against the silver dome of the helmet propped against the other. She couldn't seem to stop herself from glancing at those fingers.

  "There are hooks by the back door," she said, hoping even a few seconds of being out-of-sight would give her a chance to get her head back on straight. "Why don't you hang up your helmet and jacket?"

  But the wide grin he flashed her before heading off toward the back door sent another flush of hormones through her.

  "Get a grip, Dixie," she muttered under her breath as she turned on the faucet and scrubbed her hands. "He's a relative."

  Sam reappeared at the end of the short counter sans helmet and jacket just as she dried her hands. The black t-shirt he wore detailed a trim build with just enough muscular definition to intrigue a woman of modest tastes, and she'd never been one to favor the overly-muscled.

  Related by marriage, not blood, whispered a wry voice behind her left ear.

  Dixie tossed the towel aside and sliced a couple slabs off her homemade wheat bread. "You want hot mustard or regular?"

  He hooked his long thumbs into his jeans pockets, and grinned. "I'll take spicy."

  "Why doesn't that surprise me?" she said, certain now she wasn't the only person in the room aware of the electrically charged air between them. Or, was he using that charge to divert her attention from places he didn't want her going?

  She dropped a stack of thinly sliced beef atop the hot mustard on the bread. "How long have you been back in the states?" she asked.

  "A couple weeks."

  She slapped cheese on top of the beef and rolled a fat tomato onto the cutting board. "Didn't take you long to annoy Stuart."

  "I can annoy Uncle Stuart without even being on the same continent."

  There was a hint of pain to his voice. Her fingers paused in mid-slice, juice seeping from the tomato where the tip of the knife had perforated its skin.

  There's more to Sam than he lets people see. Michael had told her that, too.

  The mother-protector in her wanted to gather Sam into her arms and smooth back the unruly hank of chocolate-brown hair from his wounded brow. The woman in her with the awakened hormones wanted something entirely different.

  Just slice up this tomato, peel off a few leaves of lettuce, pluck out a pickle or two from that big jar Sam had set on the countertop and pile it all on his sandwich. Feed him. That's all she intended to do…and find out why he'd come to northeast Wisconsin.

  "What'd you do to invoke the Carrington wrath this time?" she asked, dipping more hot mustard from the jar, trying to keep the conversation traveling a less provocative path.

  "Just being the family screw-up is enough," he quipped, leaning against the counter—leaning too close.

  The knife slipped from Dixie's fingers, its impact against the countertop sending golden flecks of mustard flying from its blade.

  "Follow the yellow brick road," Ben's little boy voice recited from the next room.

  And a yellow brick road was exactly the path she tripped as long as she reacted to every flirtation Cousin Sam sent her way. Look at the trouble she'd created in the Carrington clan falling for Michael. If only she didn't have to touch Sam. But she'd spattered his shirt with mustard. It would be impolite not to wipe it off.

  Yeah, right. Impolite. Who was she kidding?

  "Sorry," she offered, as she dampened the corner of a hand towel. "I'll just dab those spots away before they dry."

  He'd followed her to the sink, cornering her in the tight space beside the door to the restaurant kitchen. She slipped her hand into the neck opening of his tee, her fingers cushioning the underside of the spatters, her knuckles brushing his warm skin. Couldn't let her guest get wet now, could she?

  She dabbed the damp towel at the yellow spots on the black shirt. She concentrated on the task, ticking off each speck as it disappeared—a masterful job of diverting herself. She could almost ignore the heat of his skin against the backs of her fingers. Then, just as she blotted the last speck of mustard, he swiped his thumb across her cheek.

  Lucky, the woman on the receiving end of his stroking thumb.

  Involuntarily, her heart lurched and she blinked at him. Sam held up a thumb sporting a dollop of mustard. He winked. "Some dishes don't need spicing up."

/>   The sweep of Sam's tongue as he licked the mustard from his finger made Dixie itch in places she'd forgotten. No doubt about it. Sam Ryan was flirting with her and she had better put a stop to his game before she made a fool of herself and fast.

  She released his shirt, folded her arms across her chest, and leveled on him her best this chick's got your number smile. "I bet you charm the socks off your mama."

  The gleam in Sam's eyes evaporated, his lips flattened, and he lowered his mustardy finger from his lips. "The last time anyone charmed anything off my mother, she wound up with me."

  #

  She'd read him like a first grade primer while luring him in with sultry, sideward glances and quippy comebacks. So much for testing her character. Much more of this, and he'd be spilling his deepest, darkest secrets to her.

  And at the top of that hit parade would be the reason he'd come to The Farmhouse. How did Stuart expect him to dig up dirt on a woman to whom even Mickey had succumbed, Mickey who had been infinitely more experienced with women than he, Mickey with his leading man looks and lady-killer charisma?

  Sam jammed his hands into his pockets and wheeled away from Dixie Rae. The maneuver failed to take him out of spiced apple and hot mustard scent range of her, though. The kitchen was just too damn small.

  "Sorry," she murmured with a quietness that penetrated his defenses with the ease of a hot knife through soft butter. "I didn't mean to stir up bad memories."

  Did she or didn't she?

  Heck, she'd by-passed current faults like where had he been the day she and Mickey got married, the day she buried Mickey, and the years in between, instead hitting him deep in his soul. Not that he had a burning desire to explain the cowardice that prompted most of his life choices. He'd just expected the questions at the top of Dixie Rae's hit list to be about his absence from Mickey's life these past five years. He'd expected her to demand those answers the way his uncle had…the way Mickey would have.

  Wrong. Mickey wouldn't have demanded. He'd have asked, his hurt—his disappointment masked by concern. Mickey who smiled back at him from a snapshot fastened to the front of Dixie Rae's fridge by fruit-shaped magnets. What had Mickey been so blasted happy about in that photo? Didn't he know he'd been seduced into marriage by a gold-digger?

  And Dixie Rae had to be a gold-digger. She was too smart not to know what Mickey was worth. Even with the rift between Mickey and his father, she probably figured they'd work out their differences eventually and she'd be swimming in Carrington wealth. She'd even had the foresight to provide the requisite heir which came in handy in the absence of a husband. But she didn't know Stuart Carrington if she thought he would let her anywhere near her son's trust fund as long the old man drew breath.

  Could that be the reason she flirted with him, because she figured Stuart couldn't be long for this world—because she figured Sam would be the next Carrington she'd have to fight for control of any trust fund? If that was her thinking, she was in for a big disappointment. Stuart would never put a ne'er do well nephew in charge of a dime of his money.

  "That was the day we brought Ben home," she said, bringing him back to the moment, back to her world of cinnamon-scented, golden hair tickling his cheek as she touched the corner of the photo.

  Don't get suckered in.

  "That's Ben Michael's holding," she elaborated.

  The reason Mickey grinned in the photo. A son would make any man smile. At least a man should smile at his son. He doubted his father had ever smiled at him and he couldn't remember Stuart ever favoring him with one. Was that the life he would be saving Ben for…?

  "Ben was barely two when Michael had his accident," Dixie said. "Half his life ago. It's getting harder to keep Michael's memory alive for Ben." She looked up at him, barely a hand's width separating them. "I bet you have loads of stories about Michael that Ben would love to hear."

  But to share stories, he would have to stay and risk being found out by Dixie. Or unmask her and condemn the boy buzzing around in the next room, thinking he was the Wizard of Oz to an old man's regimented idea of life.

  Ben entered the kitchen, scuffing the rubber soles of his tiny tennies across the linoleum, his narrow shoulders drooping. He sidled up to his mother and laid his head against her hip.

  "Bear won't play with me," he said.

  Dixie smoothed the hair back from Ben's forehead. "He's probably tired, honey."

  Ben stomped a foot. "But I want him to be Toto."

  Dixie squatted and encircled the child in her arms. Motherliness or indulgence? The actions of a woman who cared for her child's wellbeing, or a woman who play-acted to gain her own ends?

  "It's past Bear's bedtime," she said, her tone gentle in its reasoning.

  Ben squirmed in his mother's embrace. "But I want to play."

  "I've already let you stay up way past your bedtime."

  "No!"

  She winked at Sam. "Somebody's sugar high just came crashing down."

  Then she took the boy by the shoulders, held him away from herself, and looked him in the eye. "No argument. It's time the Wizard hit the sack."

  Ben rubbed his eyes with his fists. Such little fists. Too small to protect himself.

  The kid needed protecting. But from the mother who ruled his world?

  His own mother had blithely handed him over to the care of her stern brother when her new husband didn't want a six-year-old in the bargain. It shouldn't have surprised him, given his own father had abandoned him.

  "Sorry to cut our visit short," Dixie said, straightening, "but the wizard needs to go to bed."

  She tipped her head to one side and murmured in that sultry timbre that called to him like a mermaid's song, "Me, too."

  Was that an invitation?

  "Our days start pretty early," she said. "And tomorrow morning I'm opening for Sunday brunch for the first time. I'm hoping to cash in on the after church crowd."

  'Cash in.'

  There it was. Her motive. The reason she fought Stuart for the kid. Maybe the underlying reason she had flirted with him tonight. The way her eyes had turned all dreamy when he'd swiped the mustard off her cheek could have been as much an act as his action had been.

  "But the restaurant's closed on Mondays so we could have a real nice visit then. You're more than welcome to stay as long as you'd like, Sam."

  "Thanks." But staying has nothing to do with what I'd like.

  She hefted Ben in her arms, braced him on her hip, and nodded toward the stairway. "How about I show you your room? That way if I get tied up with the Wizard here, you'll know where to stow your gear. Bear will come with us so your sandwich will be safe."

  Just like that, she assumed he was staying, this woman who posed in front of him like a Rubenesque Madonna with child.

  But looks could be deceiving. He knew. He was the family black sheep come to spy on a woman who'd never done him any wrong.

  "Lead the way," Sam said, not sure he wouldn't sneak out after the household went to sleep.

  She climbed the steps, the hem of her skirt swinging back and forth across her ankles. Correction, make that the backs of a pair of red high-tops. What kind of woman wore sneakers, red ones no less, under a primly long skirt?

  The same kind that cinched a frilly apron to her very narrow waist, hugged a man's arm to the side of her plump bosom and spoke with a voice that made a man's nerve endings cry out for more.

  "You can move your bike into the garage behind the house," she said as her red-shoed foot cleared the top step.

  He glanced up at the sound of her purr and nodded, knowing he could as easily ride off as park in her garage.

  "Gotta say g'night to Nana." Ben reached for a door from behind which the gentle strains of Brahms drifted.

  "After your bath, Mr. Wizard," Dixie said and continued down the hall. Over her shoulder she explained to Sam, "That's my grandmother's room. You'll meet her tomorrow."

  The elderly relative off whom Stuart said Dixie Rae now mooched. Maybe he'd
meet her. Maybe he wouldn't.

  A skittering noise sounded behind the next door they passed, as though someone withdrew in a hurry.

  "Our renter," Dixie Rae explained.

  "Icky Witch," Ben said, ducking his head against his mother's shoulder.

  Dixie swung Ben to his feet and gave his behind a playful swat that propelled him ahead of them toward the far end of the hall. "Go get your pjs."

  As they followed, her head tipped close to Sam's, she explained in a lowered voice. "Miss Weston isn't into chaos which, unfortunately, is the hallmark of four-year-old boys."

  "Aaah," Sam sighed as though he was focused entirely on what Dixie was saying rather than how her arm brushed his in the narrow hallway.

  "Odd for someone who claims to be a teacher," she commented and stopped in the doorway where Ben had disappeared.

  Peeking inside, Sam saw the sloped ceiling side of the bedroom where Ben dragged pajamas from a sunshine-yellow dresser. The room had been painted sky-blue with a bright rainbow arcing from wall to wall. A cartoon bear dipped honey from the pot where the rainbow ended while bees circled his head and a plethora of toys spilled across the floor at his feet. It was a room decorated by love, not design. But whose love created the room, Dixie's or that of a grandmother who listened to Brahms?

  "I changed sheets this morning so the bed's fresh," she said through a dazzling smile. "It's yours as long as you need it, or can tolerate it."

  He tore his attention away from that mind numbing smile and eyed the low-set bed tucked beneath the room's single window. The bed looked barely long enough to accommodate a full-length male. At least it wasn't a set of bunks.

  Dixie nodded over her shoulder at the closed door of the neighboring room. "If you need anything, you'll find me right next door."

  Right next door. Was that another invitation?

  What to do? Leave and save himself, or stay and save the kid? He knew what was the right choice. What Mickey would do.

  By the time Sam ate his sandwich and moved his bike into the garage, the last tendrils of steam were wafting from the bathroom across from Dixie's bedroom. Her door stood ajar.