He switched his gaze from the letter to his sister’s face. “Zan? Mac, Zan is sending you postcards?” Alexander “Zan” Elliott, Brett’s one-time best friend and the boy that Poppy claimed had ruined her sister for all other males.
She wouldn’t meet his eyes. Instead, she half rose to snatch the card from his hand. With another quick movement, she opened the bottom drawer of her desk and flipped it inside.
Brett felt the whites of his eyes drying out, they’d gone so round. “What the hell, Mac?” There’d been a heap of postcards in the drawer. “You’ve been writing to Zan and nobody knows about it?”
It pissed him off, thinking that the other man had been corresponding with Brett’s sister and not with him, the best friend who had considered him as close as a brother.
Zan had left at twenty-one, never to be heard from again—or so he’d thought—causing his reputation to morph from Blue Arrow Lake bad boy to the most interesting man in the world. Outrageous rumors circulated every few months or so. That he was the true founder of Bitcoin. A European circus starred him in a high-wire act. He’d been adopted by an indigenous tribe in Antarctica. Brett had snorted at that one, informing the person who repeated this nonsense that unless Zan called a penguin Mom or Pop, this was pure, stinking bullshit.
Mac slammed her arms over her chest. “I’m not writing to Zan.” Two spots of color flagged her cheeks. “He sends me the occasional card.”
Ignoring her sputters, he strode over to yank open that drawer and grab a handful of colorful missives from the pile. “Those are private!” Mac protested.
He held them over his head to avoid her reaching fingers. Being the big brother had its occasional perks. Torturing younger sisters being one of them. The cards captured scenes from all over the world. Australia. Sweden. South Africa.
His puzzled gaze sought out his sister’s. “What’s with this? There’s nothing written on any of them but his initial.”
Mac collapsed back in her chair. “Yeah.” She shrugged, indicating indifference.
“The one that just came from San Francisco is no different.”
Her spine snapped straight. “San Francisco?”
He found it, tossed it atop the desk.
Mac watched it as though it was a coiled snake ready to strike. “That’s the closest he’s been,” she murmured, as if to herself. “How many miles away is that?”
“Four hundred fifty, give or take a mile or two.” But Mac wasn’t listening. She’d gone somewhere in her head and it unnerved him. He’d come here to return to his regular skin. He’d looked forward to being resettled like a phonograph needle finding a comfortable, vinyl groove.
Brett Walker, dedicated, enthusiastic bachelor.
But even though he’d been contemplating meeting the postman’s daughter for drinks...
Mac suddenly didn’t look like Mac.
Which somehow threatened his grasp on his usual, cynical self.
Zan had been writing to Mac for, what, years?
His sister apparently wasn’t going to explain any more about that, so after a few minutes Brett escaped. Still hoping to return to his former, comfortable identity, though—the one that didn’t worry about secretive women and mysterious missives—he dropped by the house his youngest sister shared with her fiancé and his daughter. As he pulled up to the massive modern structure, he saw London hop into a light truck and take off in the opposite direction.
“Car pool,” Shay explained, when she let him in the door. “I’m afternoons this week...or Jace is afternoons, if he gets back from LA in time.”
The other man ran a worldwide construction business. Because he loved Brett’s sister and the daughter he was just becoming reacquainted with, he was reorganizing his company so that he could spend the majority of his time in the mountains.
Shay led him to her enormous kitchen and he pulled up a stool to her stainless-steel island. Though he was risking a caffeine overload, he didn’t say no to a mug of coffee.
“What brings you by?” she asked.
Poppy was soft, Mac was flinty, and he’d always considered Shay to be a balance of the two. His littlest sister had also suffered from unfounded guilt over their father’s early death. In trying to help her with that over the years, he’d revealed some of his own interior landscape.
Studying her over his coffee, he took a sip. She had elegant bones and an air of complete serenity. Damn, Jace was good for her. “How are your nightmares?” he asked, knowing they must hardly bother her any longer.
Her gaze narrowed on him, turned shrewd. “How are yours?”
That wasn’t exactly what he’d term them, since they didn’t happen during sleep. They were actually flashbacks to a string of black events that had put increasing pressure on his heart, squeezing down until it was dense and inflexible. Coal.
Instead of answering, he deflected. “I wish you’d talk to Angelica,” he said.
Shay’s fingertips touched her chest. “Me?”
“You’re a good listener. Something bothers her. She has secrets.”
“Everybody knows about her swindling father.”
He glanced down at the gleaming countertop. His reflection was discernible, yet hazy. The outline of himself was there, but it showed him as he’d felt since meeting Angelica...as if his hard edges were becoming blurred.
“This is not about her father,” he said. “It’s something else that I think is hard for her to share.” Something sexual, that was clear. A prior bad experience that had left her skittish. No, scared.
“Try taking her into your confidence,” his sister advised. “Tell her about the things you can’t let go of.”
He looked up, alarmed. “Why would I put what’s in my head in hers?”
“Because that’s how you build trust, Brett.”
“Shay—”
“Listen to me.” She leaned across the countertop, her gaze boring into his. “If you want to lessen her load, you’re going to have to show her some of what you’re carrying yourself.”
His hand went to the top of his hair and he rubbed it there, over and over, as if he could wipe free from his skin what never seemed to wash away. He yanked at his short hair as if he could yank from the roots the memories that had lodged inside his head.
Whop whop whop. They always started with that sound. Ended with the wash of red, the feel of it, the coppery smell. He didn’t want to tell anyone about that. About life dying out of a pair of pain-filled eyes.
If you want to lessen her load, you’re going to have to show her some of what you’re carrying.
It would be unthinkable, except that at the moment he didn’t know how else to get beneath Angelica’s defenses. If Shay was right, it was his way to reach those shadowy places in Angelica. And, God help him, he wanted into those. He wanted to shed light there, in order to flush out her demons.
Damn his protective streak.
Somehow she’d exposed it. And though he cursed her for that, it didn’t make him any more able to ignore it.
* * *
ANGELICA HEARD A KEY turn in the lock of her cottage’s front door and realized that this time Brett hadn’t bothered with knocking. From her place on the drop cloth covering the living room floor, she glared as he came in.
“I could have been taking a nap.”
“Saw you through the window,” he said, without a ripple in his neutral expression.
Once again, he appeared just out of the shower. His hair was damp, and the clean scent of soap carried through the air, reaching her even over the odor emanating from the open cans of paint and the carton of ice cream she’d set on a card table she’d found in a closet and covered with newspaper.
Brett approached, his eyes on the experiment she was conducting.
Planting her feet on the floor, she continued her offense. “Well, you still could have indicated your interest in chatting in the normal manner. Knuckles to wood—you recall that, right? It’s called knocking.”
“Told you,
babe, men don’t ‘chat.’” He stopped on the other side of the square table and his gaze roamed over the containers. “What’s all this?”
“Returned paint.” Using a clean wooden stirrer, she indicated the cans that Glory had given her for free. “I’m mixing them to make my own custom color. Well, I’m trying it out, anyway.”
In a plastic bowl, she’d combined a couple of colors. Now she gave the concoction a stir.
Brett rubbed his hand over his chin. He hadn’t shaved, and she could hear the scratch of the bristles as he brushed his callous palm over them. The small of her back prickled as she imagined that work-roughened hand touching her there.
Then she had to swallow, hard, thinking of the whiskers surrounding his lips ghosting down her neck.
“I guess I have to ask about the ice cream.”
“I left out a half gallon of Neapolitan ice cream once and it melted. When I stirred it, the color was a dawn-tinged shade of light cocoa brown. If I can match it with real paint, it might look nice in the bedroom.” Reaching over, she gave the wooden spoon poking out of the carton a twist, folding the liquidy milk-and-sugar concoction.
He was shaking his head and fighting a smile. “You’re something.”
She lifted her chin. “You can take inspiration from anywhere.” Then she cleared her throat, anxious to return to her color-combining without his distracting presence. “Can I help you with something?”
“You trying to get rid of me, angel face?”
Duh. Because being around Brett was increasingly a trial. Kissing him hadn’t made him any less appealing. Reacting to his touch like a frightened fool didn’t mean he’d lost an ounce of attraction.
But it was torture that she couldn’t follow through with the desires he kindled inside her.
At the thought, she returned to stirring the paint, moving it around with such vigor that it slopped over the side, sloshing liquid on her wrist. Though she knew it wasn’t a disaster, hot pressure built at the back of her eyes. “I’ll never get this right,” she muttered, abandoning the stick in frustration.
“Relax, sweetheart.”
That’s what she couldn’t manage, no matter how much she wanted to be at ease in his arms, lose herself in his kiss, open herself to his touch. Setting her jaw, she directed her attention to the melting ice cream once more, grasping the wooden spoon to work at the soupy mass.
It didn’t look right to her now either, and she cursed it under her breath.
“Wow,” Brett said. “I’ve never seen you in such a temper.”
The warning look she sent him should burn. “It’s fiery.”
His lips twitched.
Aggravation leaped. The light in his gray eyes had turned them to silver and with amusement written all over his handsome face he appeared years younger. “Are you laughing at me?” she demanded.
He shook his head. “Laughing with you?” he asked, fakely hopeful.
“Nothing’s funny,” she hissed, and when he actually tried to cover a chuckle with a cough...it happened.
Yanking the spoon from the thawed ice cream, she flicked it toward his face, like a spasmodic witch casting a spell with her wand. Droplets of pinky-beige liquid landed on his forehead, his nose, his chin.
“Uh-oh,” he said.
Uh-oh, she thought. He glanced down at the table and she swiped up the carton, holding it close to her chest.
“I’m in a mood,” she said. “Go away,” she added, pointing toward the door with her spoon. Another spray of ice cream landed on his shirt. Oops.
He glanced down at it, then took a step forward. “Angelica...” His tongue made a tsking sound.
Shuffling back, she dipped her spoon in the carton. “I’m armed,” she said, swirling the wooden handle as if reloading it. “You don’t want to mess with me.”
He took another step, rounding the table between them. “I have three younger sisters. I don’t scare easily.”
Her heart was pounding too fast and her blood was rushing through her veins, sweet and bubbly like soda pop. Without a first thought, let alone a second, she flung a spoonful of the viscous liquid in his direction. It landed in his hair and she gasped, then scurried in reverse even as a wild giggle climbed her throat.
Brett kept coming. She managed one more sloppy sling of ice cream before he wrenched the carton from her curled arm and the spoon from her hand. For an instant, she froze, then she darted forward to reclaim the utensil, getting her fingers around the sticky tip.
Her move must have surprised him, because one tug and it was hers. Dancing back, she crowed in triumph.
“Sweetheart,” he said, a smile playing at his mouth as he weighed the carton in one big palm. “You forget, I have the ammo.” He dipped a hand inside and his fingers came out, covered with ice cream ooze. Without hesitation, he flicked them. Drops landed on her face and in her hair.
She gasped.
“Play with fire, gonna get burned.” His hand returned to the carton.
With a squeal, she prepared to run. On a lunge, he snagged her with his hand, his sticky fingers curling around her biceps.
“We’re just starting to have fun,” he said, drawing her close.
He was smiling and she was breathing hard, her gaze following the carton as he lifted it over her head. “You wouldn’t dare,” she said, between pants.
“If it keeps you from thinking so hard, I very much would,” he said. He tipped it so the runny ice cream drew dangerously close to the rim.
“Really, you wouldn’t,” she said, staring at the foamy liquid, then at him.
His eyes laughed. “What’ll you give me if I don’t?”
And because she needed to take back control of the moment, she popped onto her tiptoes and pressed her mouth to his.
He accepted the kiss, his grip only slightly tightening around her arm. When she landed on her heels, it was to notice the carton still hung over her head...
Like her inability to have a normal sexual encounter with him.
“You’re thinking again,” he warned. The carton tilted deeper. On instinct, she leaped for it, but he was faster, lifting it higher. Then he pressed his body into hers, moving her backward until her shoulder blades thumped into the wall and she was pinned, the two of them torso to torso.
“Brett,” she protested, not sure what his manhandling was leading to. “I’m sticky. There’s ice cream on my face. I think we’re fair and square.”
“Not even close,” he said. And with both hands now free, his fingers went back in the carton. Two came out, covered with melted cream.
She shrank back. “No.”
He smiled. “Yes,” he said, and he drew them along her eyebrows, then down her nose. Then he bent his head. “Sweet,” he murmured, his mouth following the sugary path. “So sweet.”
This time, when she trembled, it wasn’t a response to an ugly past incident. It was a reaction to Brett’s lips on her skin. She closed her eyes, relishing the sensation, maybe more so because she worried that at any second the old memory would grab her like a mugger in a dark alley.
“Stay with me, babe,” he murmured against her cheek. Then he lifted his mouth so he could watch himself dip into the ice cream once again and paint her lips with the liquid. When his mouth found hers, the tackiness of the sweetness glued them together, until he used his tongue to lick it all away.
Her head swam, and she let it rest on the wall behind her as he nipped at her jawline. His lips trailed down her neck, his whiskers scratching delicately. Her nipples beaded, their tightness almost painful. She wasn’t wearing a bra, and for an embarrassed instant she wondered if he could tell.
Then she didn’t have to ponder any longer because he’d palmed her breast. As she squirmed, caught between the wall and his heavy body, he groaned, and bit her shoulder.
Face burning, body quivering, she glanced down at his hand, the thumb pressing the beaded tip she could clearly see beneath the old, paint-smeared T-shirt. “You’re getting ice cream on my
clothes,” she told him, as if dressed in silk.
He glanced up and caught her eyes, one brow winging high. “’Spose we should take them off then.”
She shrugged, as if adrenaline wasn’t making her feel as if she’d inhaled helium. Her toes curled as if she was standing on a cliff and about to dive. “’Spose.”
His grin flashed. “Go, girl.”
The brief praise added an additional layer of warmth to already-heated skin. Her belly twitched as he found the hem of her shirt and yanked upward. It was gone in an instant, and she froze, her pretend insouciance gone.
If he realized her mood change, he ignored it. “Hold this,” he said, thrusting the melted ice cream into her hands. Then he drew off his own shirt.
Oh, God. It was his second baring for her. For her. She’d ogled him shirtless many times before, but this was for her pleasure. And it did, it pleased her, as she ran her gaze over the strong column of his neck, across his collarbone and heavy shoulders, down the slight mounds of his pecs and the rippled muscles of his abs. His body hair was light, blond, but there was a dark brown sprinkling of it below his belly button, leading to territory hidden by his jeans.
She could look forever.
Slowly, he held his arms away from his body. “You want to play?”
Her gaze flew to his. Play?
“Nothing wrong with fun and messy,” he said, a gleam in his eyes.
“No?” But the look on his face was giving her permission for anything. Everything. Excitement surged through her veins, more bubbly and sweet.
“You like to paint?” He nodded at the ice cream carton. “Paint me.”
Her hand clenched, denting the soft sides of the cardboard. Inside, the mixture was completely thawed. Warm, even. Warm enough not to pucker his nipple if she touched it with a dab.
It contracted before she even brushed it with her forefinger.
He drew in air, a sharp, audible sound that set another match to her blood. Then she made contact with the hard point, bathing it in sticky liquid.
Leaning in, she tongued it away.
His body tensed, and he felt bigger than before...and, strangely, less scary. She affected him.
Can't Fight This Feeling (Cabin Fever) Page 16