Finding Home (St. John Sibling Series Book 2)

by Barbara Raffin

  The most brazen invitation of all? If so, should he accept?

  Should he learn right now what kind of woman Dixie Rae was?

  He resettled his travel-pack over his shoulder and tiptoed closer to the door. He could hear Dixie's voice and how it drifted sweetly, rhythmically, playfully. That voice invited him.

  But the words were all wrong. Though they were familiar words, words he'd heard over and over again, a very long time ago.

  He stopped outside the partially open door and spied on the woman with the voice of a temptress. She was curled up on the edge of a double bed, one shoulder against the headboard and a large, thin book cradled in her lap. Ben was snuggled under the covers beside her listening to her read the bedtime story.

  He'd misread her intention, misinterpreted what she'd meant when she'd informed him that her room was right next to his. She hadn't invited a rendezvous, not with her son tucked in beside her. Stuart had to be wrong about her.

  Tomorrow morning, right after a hardy farmhouse breakfast, he was outa here.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Dixie charged the length of the upstairs hall after a giggling Ben. She couldn't yell for him to stop running without waking the entire household, something she was trying to avoid at this early hour. If only she'd thought to retrieve a few of his toys before she'd given Ben's room to their new guest. If only she'd remembered last night that an active four-year-old needed more than leftover party favors and Sunday morning TV to occupy him until Nana woke or the twins arrived with their mother when her shift started. But toys had been the last thing on her mind when she'd shown Sam Ryan, with his boyish grin and puppy-dog eyes, to her son's bedroom.

  Just as she snagged her son by the back of his crew-neck collar, he turned the doorknob to his room. Being an old house, nothing was quite square any more. Windows no longer sealed out drafts, walls had grown lumpy with layers of wallpaper, and floors were slanted. Slowly, the bedroom door swung open.

  Light fanned inward across the scuffed floorboards and climbed a tangled, Winnie the Pooh sheet. That sheet covered the sleeping form beneath only to his naked shoulder blades. The sight of all that flesh could set a girl to wondering what the man under that sheet wore…or didn't wear.

  Ben squirmed in her grip, demanding, "Want my Hot Wheels."

  She squatted, turned him to face her, and whispered, "If you go in there, you'll wake Sam."

  Ben's faced brightened. "Then you get them, Mommy."

  Her in a bedroom with Michael's very appealing, half-naked cousin. Nothing like flying into the face of temptation.

  "I can't go in there, either," she told her son.

  "But I want—"

  Dixie pressed a finger against Ben's lips. "Sorry, Honey Bear, but we don't always get what we want."

  She knew. She wanted Michael back, that he'd never gotten into his car on that fateful night when icy roads had conspired to end his life. She wanted Ben to grow up knowing his father.

  She wanted Sam Ryan not to be a relative.

  Whoa. She would not entertain romantic notions about her husband's cousin. Heck, she didn't have time for romance with anyone, especially not today when she was about to serve Sunday brunch Farmhouse style for the first time.

  Ben stomped his foot. "Want my Hot Wheels!"

  Across the room in the narrow bed, Sam stirred and the tangled sheet slipped down to his back. If she didn't head off this tantrum, that sheet would be around Sam's ankles and she wouldn't have to imagine what else he did or did not wear.

  Besides, she had to go into the room to close the door. How much further was it to Ben's car collection?

  She peeked inside. All the way across the room to the dresser next to the bed where Sam Ryan slept. There, two dozen miniature cars over-spilled their carrying case.

  "Figures," she muttered, making a mental note to work with her son on what 'picking up your toys' meant.

  "Mommy, please?"

  Heavy-lashed eyes pleaded up at her. She knew Ben was trying to manipulate her. She also had a cranky chef downstairs in her kitchen who expected her to be helping him with prep-work, a restaurant minutes away from opening and no one to babysit Ben until her cousin arrived with her girls. Nana couldn't have chosen a worse time to suffer one of her spells. The Proper Parenting Police were going to have to forgive her this morning.

  She gave Ben's shoulders a gentle squeeze. "I'll get your cars."

  His face lit up.

  "But you have to promise me something in trade. You have to stay in the living room and play quietly until Lola and Lulu get here."

  He nodded enthusiastically. She hoped he'd remember his promise fifteen minutes from now when Cousin Annie was due.

  Midway through the room, the floor squeaked under her foot. Sam rolled toward the sound—rolled onto his back, the movement ripping the top sheet from its last, tenuous mooring at the foot of the bed. One leg slipped out from under the sheet. It was a rather nicely turned, darkly furred leg.

  For an instant, Dixie wondered what that leg might feel like entwined with hers. But only for an instant. She didn't have time for fantasizing, not this morning.

  Besides, it wasn't like she'd never seen a naked, male leg before. Growing up with four brothers, she'd seen plenty. Of course, the sight of her brothers's legs had never made her heart go pitter-patter.

  Then there'd been Michael's legs, tan and sinewy—a runner's legs. Judging by Sam's exposed limb, he wasn't the athlete his cousin had been. Yet Sam attracted her.

  Probably all that wounded boy stuff Michael had told her about. And she was a sucker for the walking wounded. Come to think of it, Sam did remind her of a ten-year-old boy what with his shaggy mane ruffled against the pillow beneath his head, lush lashes fanned out across cheeks, and full lips puckered ever so slightly in blissful slumber.

  A boy with the dark shadow of a beard and wide-flung, woolly limbs. Yeah, right. This was all about his wounded boyishness…not.

  She finished her trek to the dresser where she swept the tiny toy cars into the rectangular compartments of the carrying case. The metal cast bodies clicked together and tiny tires whirred. Beside her, Sam stretched. The sheet worked its way down around his waist.

  She flipped the soft lid over the loosely packed toys, tucked the little case under her arm, and turned. Ben still stood in the doorway, but something or someone down the hall had caused him to tilt his little, round chin away from her. In the next instant, Ben wheeled away, shouting, "Nana!"

  Beside Dixie, Sam jerked upright in the narrow bed, his uncovered foot simultaneously hitting the floor. Reflexively, she glanced at that naked limb below where the Winnie the Pooh sheet dipped low over Sam's hip. As low as it was, she no longer had to wonder if Sam wore anything.

  #

  "You wake up all your guests this way?" Sam asked through a yawn.

  A slow smile spread across Dixie's lips. "Only the cute ones."

  He settled onto his hip, braced an elbow against the edge of the mattress, propped his head in his hand, and gazed up at her from beneath sleepy lids. "So, you think I'm cute, huh?"

  One corner of her smile tugged upwards; and she leveled in a voice that, this morning, reminded him more of a young Lauren Bacall than a salty Mae West. "You figure it out."

  He half expected her to give him a lesson in whistling next. Oh, he'd happily put his lips together and blow for her. Never mind that she wore another ankle-length skirt and another buttoned-to-the-throat blouse, both cinched to her narrow waist by another ruffled apron. In his dreams, his fingers had spanned that waist…and slowly popped the pearl buttons on her blouse from their buttonholes at her throat…and lower.

  "I think I'm cute enough," he said, smiling dreamily.

  "Hate to burst your bubble of self-delusion," she returned, "but I came in here to get something for Ben to play with."

  "Something to play with, huh?" He was tempted to fold his hands behind his head and roll onto his back—to let fate, accident, or desire rule the
precarious perch of the sheet over a certain part of his body. A rapidly responding part of his body.

  "Toys—" Her grin twitched. "—for Ben."

  Ben. Mickey's boy. The child he'd vowed to protect in a weak moment. The child this woman mothered…Mickey's wife.

  Sam drew a quelling breath, willed the blood to stop pooling in the lower regions of his body, and glanced at the empty doorway. "Where is the Wizard this morning?"

  "Abandoned me like a rat off a sinking ship."

  Funny, she didn't look the forsaken woman. She looked downright amused to have been caught at the side of his bed. And here he was, in the all-together, baiting her. Maybe if she hadn't wakened him in the middle of an erotic dream that featured the very woman at his bedside. Maybe if she weren't so damned desirable.

  Maybe if he weren't so weak.

  No, he had no business flirting with Mickey's widow, especially since she'd passed his test of her moral resolve last night. Maybe he best pass on the farmhouse-style breakfast and leave before he compromised them both.

  #

  "It's burnt," shrieked the woman who'd invaded Dixie's restaurant kitchen. "That's what's wrong with it!"

  Dixie examined the omelet on the plate her boarder shoved under her nose while, behind her, her chef grumbled over the grill. "First she complains it's too runny, then I don't have enough cheese in it for her liking, now she says it's burnt."

  "It is hard cooked," Dixie allowed.

  The chef slapped his spatula against the griddle. She hoped he was flipping pancakes and not eggs.

  "But not burned," she added in part to appease her irate chef, but mostly because it was true.

  Miss Weston's thin lips disappeared altogether.

  "If it is too well cooked for your taste," Dixie offered, "we'll be happy to cook another to your liking."

  "I ain't cookin' nothing more for that woman!" howled the chef. "She's as impossible to please as my ex-wife!"

  It wasn't by accident that she'd placed herself between her chef and her renter when the woman stormed into the restaurant kitchen. Every day, these two fought. It was like mediating between two six-year-olds.

  Though her chef was right in this instance. There was no pleasing Miss Weston. Still, Dixie had to try. She had a dining room full of breakfast customers within earshot of the woman's screeching complaints.

  "I'll cook it personally," Dixie offered, hoping to appease both boarder and chef.

  "No," Miss Weston commanded in a screech that was sure to clear the bats from every belfry within a thirty-mile radius, not to mention the customers from her two small restaurant dining rooms. "I want him to cook it—" She jabbed a bony finger over Dixie's shoulder at the chef. "—And I want him to cook it right."

  "That does it," roared the chef. "I'm outta here!"

  Dixie spun at the man. "You don't mean that."

  But he was already halfway to the door, apron untied. Dixie caught up to him just as he reached the service entrance.

  "Please. You can't leave. I have a restaurant full of customers who love your cooking."

  "As long as that woman—" It was his turn to jab a finger. "—eats under this roof, I don't cook here."

  Dixie placed her hand on her chef's forearm, reined in her panic, and lowered her voice. "Carl, I hired you out of a drug rehab program when no one else would give you a chance."

  Never mind that no one else had applied for the job.

  "And for that, I've put up with her—" He jabbed his finger again in Miss Weston's direction. "—for two weeks. No more. I'm gone." He swiped off his chef's cap, peeled away his apron, and dumped them both into Dixie's hands.

  The next thing she knew, the door had slammed shut between her and her chef and the scent of scorched pancakes curled across her nostrils. Her boarder had just cost her her chef when she needed him most. Forget the needed rental income the woman provided. Miss Weston had to go.

  Dixie wheeled about, mayhem in her heart, and stopped dead. Sam stood in the doorway between restaurant and private kitchens.

  Okay, he wasn't quite that far into the restaurant kitchen, he held the door open barely a foot. But his presence was enough to remind her of something else Michael had told her about his cousin, something that might keep her from killing Miss Weston and winding up in jail, which would no doubt bring Stuart Carrington circling like a buzzard.

  She grabbed Sam by the front of his jacket, and hauled him into the restaurant kitchen—hauled him close. "Michael said you're a European trained chef and that's exactly the kind of help I need right now."

  #

  "Ah-ah," Sam stammered partly because the fingers gripping his jacket also had a fistful of t-shirt and a pinch of skin, but mostly because he didn't know how much to confess to Dixie.

  She jerked him closer still, her chin almost touching his. "Michael said you trained at the Cordon Bleu. Is that true?"

  Her eyes were more like blue flames than sun-soaked cornflowers. There was nary a hint of the temptress left who'd teased him from beside the bed—the temptress with whom he'd flirted shamelessly. He'd already decided he needed to get away from that woman ASAP or suffer the failings of his weak will. This woman was even more of a threat—this Dixie with the no-nonsense focus of a homicide detective. Shades of last night on the porch flashed through his mind. He needed to be careful how he answered her questions.

  With a slight nod, he murmured, "Technically, yeah. But…"

  She shoved the chef's apron and hat into his fumbling hands, muttering, "Whatever. Just play along with me."

  Turning, she towed him between prep table and cooking surfaces toward the kitchen's far end. Not the least sure of what he'd agreed to play along with, he followed. Besides, she had the grip of a wide receiver on his wrist.

  When Dixie stopped short, he nearly ran into her. He blinked over her shoulder at a stiff-postured woman garbed from throat to toe in black. The border no doubt.

  Mud-brown eyes peeked at him from between cut-to-the-eyelashes, dark bangs and the mound of omelet on the plate she held in front of her face as though she were hiding from him. Did she know him? Should he know her? Weirder yet, was that a hint of fear he saw in the wide, rounded eyes?

  Heck, nobody feared him; and the harpy he'd heard moments ago shrieking complaints didn't sound like the sort to shrink from anybody. Though, Ben had called her a witch. Maybe the expression he read as fearful was her version of the evil eye.

  "Miss Weston," Dixie said. "This is Sam Ryan, my husband's cousin and our house guest. Sam is a European trained chef."

  When had he last called himself a chef? When had he last even considered himself a chef? He ran a fingertip along the starched edge of the white chef's cap in his hand. Something akin to nostalgia bubbled up in him.

  He glanced at the rack of pots and utensils hanging over the prep table running the center of the room, surveyed the stainless sinks beyond, wire racks of supplies, and stainless steel cooler and freezer units back by the service door. He eyed the multi-burner gas range, flattop, and deep fryers occupying the nearest wall. A familiar environment. Comfortable.

  "How about if I ask Sam to cook your omelet?" Dixie asked.

  His attention jerked back to Dixie. What had she just asked Miss Weston?

  He blinked from Dixie Rae to her renter just as Miss Weston gave the scantest of nods. What had the woman just agreed to?

  Releasing him, Dixie steered Miss Weston out the kitchen door. "You go back to your table and get comfy. I guarantee you an omelet that'll knock the socks off your obviously sophisticated taste buds."

  Had he, somewhere in his befuddled state, agreed to cook an omelet? This was why he had to give Dixie Rae a quick good-bye, hop on his bike and ride away. She distracted him with her smoky voice and soft curves, with the promise of what her high-collared, long-sleeved, ankle-length attire hid from him…aside from a resolve of steel. Steel magnolia type of woman scared the bejeebers out of him. But she needed him now, what with her chef walking out a
nd Sunday brunch to serve. He'd overheard that as well from the doorway separating the kitchens.

  She needed him.

  It struck him then, for the first time in his life, someone really did need him. And she needed him in a way he could help. His fingers tightened on the chef's apron she'd stuffed into his hands. Helping her would mean sticking around longer.

  The swinging door swept to and fro behind the departing Miss Weston. Dixie strode toward him, Weston's rejected omelet in one hand and red tennis shoe toes peeking out from her swirling hem.

  No. No. No.

  He couldn't stay because even one more day near those voluptuous curves and ridiculous red high-tops were enough to do him in, let alone the way she now looked at him—smiled at him. Those inviting lush lips too easily made him forget the steel maiden behind them. Good intentions be damned, a hot kitchen and tight quarters was no place to be with his cousin's widow.

  "Look, Red—"

  Her eyebrows rose questioningly as she stopped short of the corner of the prep table—short of him. "Red?"

  "Yeah, because your shoes."

  She glanced down at the toes of her tennies poking out from under her ankle-length skirt, nodded and cocked her head at him. "They are red."

  She planted her free hand on one hip, expectancy sparkling in her amazing eyes. "You were about to say?"

  He stared into the bright eyes peering back at him like he was her hero. No one had ever looked at him that way. Damn, he'd hate to chase that look away, but he was nobody's hero. Besides, Mickey's widow deserved the truth and the truth was…

  "I didn't finish my training at the Cordon Bleu."

  The hero-worship gleam didn't dim one iota from Dixie's eyes. "You telling me you left the program before you got even as far as omelet making?"

  At least she hadn't assumed he'd been kicked out. Then again, that her first thought had been that he'd left training could mean she knew about his tendency to bail when the going got tough.

  Heat climbed his cheeks and not because of the bacon spitting on the griddle behind him. Eager to end the exchange—to get away from Dixie and her wonderful kitchen—the words rushed from him.