Of course, that was all the encouragement his imagination needed to toss out suggestions as to things he and Brynn could do that would be a lot quieter than talking. His only consolation was that, judging from the pink in her cheeks, her thoughts had taken the same direction.
That was fine. There was nothing that said they couldn’t be traveling down the same road. The important part was to make sure their paths stayed parallel instead of intersecting.
“So about this morning,” he began, but she shook her head.
“Not to worry. I know it caught you by surprise as much as it did me. We’re two adults who are together a lot and who, if I might be so bold, have both been without adult companionship for a while. It makes perfect sense that there should be some sort of attraction between us. But we’re both smart enough to know that there would be no point in taking it any further, because it would be too damned complicated and I will be out of here before you know it. So. It was a heck of a—a moment, but now it’s behind us and we need to talk about the things that really matter.” She breathed in deep. “Like, you owe it to your daughter to be part of the family dance at the festival.”
He was pretty sure that his mouth was hanging open, and definitely certain that the past minute was the closest he would ever come to a hurricane in his life.
Brynn continued rattling off her obviously rehearsed speech as if he hadn’t made a sound. Come to think of it, he hadn’t. His pleas for mercy were all in his head.
“Now. I know about high school and all that nonsense. But really, Hank, you need to—”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold on.” He raised his hands as if he could stop the flow of words by force. “What do you mean, no adult companionship for a while?”
“I— Oh, come on, Hank. You’re not going to distract me. Millie is being bullied at school and you have the perfect chance to show her how to stand up to that kind of behavior. You owe it to her to—”
“You mean you’re going to pretend it never happened?”
Her expression lost some of its zeal. “Of course not. Nothing is ever accomplished by ignoring the truth. I’ve just found in life that it’s better to...to accept what’s happened and move on.”
“Move on.”
“Right. Which is exactly what will happen when you take part in the dance. You’ll put those last fears and memories behind you and provide Millie with a positive role model that will help her stand up to—”
“What did you have to put behind you, Brynn?”
She stopped. Blinked. “Pardon me?”
“You heard me.” He leaned forward, noting the way she pulled back, the sudden wariness in her eyes. “It’s pretty obvious that you’re speaking from experience. So, since it’s also pretty obvious that you have uncovered all my secrets, it’s my turn to do some snooping. What have you had to put behind you so you could move on?”
This time, he knew that her flush had nothing to do with awareness. “None of this is relevant right now. You’re trying to get me off-topic.”
“Could be. Or I might be a little ticked off that you seem to know everything about me and my past but I know next to nothing about you.” His voice softened. “Or maybe I’m asking because I think you’re a hell of a woman and I want to know what made you who you are.”
He knew that was a mistake as soon as he said it. He was supposed to be distancing himself from her, not delving into her past. Nothing would be served by learning more, finding points of commonality, being tugged closer.
Except he really wanted to know.
“I— Fine.” She sat up a little straighter. “If it will make it easier for you to focus, then fine. When I was sixteen, my mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer. The terminal part turned out to be wrong, thank God, but my father decided that a dying wife and four kids were too much for him to handle. So he left.”
Holy— He hadn’t felt this kind of a kick to the gut since the night Heather handed him a crying toddler and picked up her suitcase. “Son of a—”
“Yeah. That was about it.”
“So those jokes you made about learning to cook to feed your brothers—they weren’t really jokes. You were the one who kept them going.”
“Sam and I, yes. It was really harder for him, I think, because it was his first year of university. He wanted to be home, to help, but we agreed that the best thing he could do was to focus on the game and hope for a pro contract. As it turned out, that’s what happened.”
“So you were running the household by yourself.”
He knew her well enough to realize that her casual shrug wasn’t an attempt to minimize what she had done in the past. She simply didn’t want it to take over the present.
Her suggestion that Millie walk away from Noelle suddenly made a lot more sense.
“I did what had to be done. It wasn’t like he was much of a father in the first place, though I didn’t understand that until later. Mom pulled off a miracle, Sam’s team won the Stanley Cup, Trent joined the military and Lukie started university last year. Happy endings all around.”
Did she realize she hadn’t included herself in that list?
“So that’s my story. It sucked and then it got better and now it’s time to move on. The first dance rehearsal is tomorrow night, in the lobby at the office. You and Millie should be there by seven.”
His knee-jerk reaction was no way. Not because it was a school night, which should have been his reason, but because he was in no hurry to don the spiked hair and ripped jeans of his youth to relive one of the most cringe-inducing episodes of his school career.
Which meant that—crap—she was absolutely right. He had to do it.
He could tell Millie to stand up for herself until he was as blue as a Smurf, but that was just talk. If he really wanted to help his little girl, he needed to walk the walk. Stand his ground. Look like an idiot for the greater good, and do it with a smile.
God, Millie was gonna owe him for this one.
He sighed and leaned back in the chair. “You know I’m not doing this because you decided I should.”
“Of course not. I can’t make anyone do anything they don’t want to do.” A shadow crossed her face, so fast he wasn’t sure if he had seen it or imagined it. “All I can do is help people see things in a different light. What happens next is entirely up to them.”
“You honestly believe that line?”
“It’s always worked before.”
“I might have to start taking notes. Some of your tactics might come in handy once Millie gets older.”
“You make me sound so mercenary.”
He couldn’t help it: his gaze went straight to her mouth, to those lips that were burned into his awareness. “I don’t think mercenary is the word I would use.”
She stilled.
“Hank.” Her usual confidence was nowhere in sight as she traced the seam of her leggings. “I wasn’t kidding before. Another time, another place...”
“You took the words out of my mouth.” And the breath from his lungs, but nothing would be served by mentioning that.
“I guess I should head back. Unless there’s anything else to discuss.”
The only things he could think of were all in direct violation of everything they had just agreed on, so he settled for a simple nod.
“Then I’ll get out of your way.” She flashed her smile, gathered her laptop, unfolded herself from the sofa.
“Brynn. You want to ride with me and Mills tomorrow?”
“Sure.”
It didn’t mean anything, he told himself as he walked her to the door. Millie would be with them. There was nothing that said they couldn’t be friends, and carpooling was nothing more than that—a friend thing. Totally innocent. Totally within the boundaries of being safe and permitted.
And if, se
cretly, he knew he was totally blowing smoke out his ass, well—that was for him to know and no one to find out.
* * *
FATHER OF THE YEAR that he felt like sometimes, Hank almost forgot Millie’s dentist appointment the next morning. Consequently there was a hustle to rearrange his plans, a rush to call the school and a race to get to the office on time. Then, when she was finally in the chair, things really went downhill.
He staggered back to the truck with his head full of warnings and consequences. The drive to school was spent trying to come up with a strategy. Once Millie had been delivered to her classroom, he climbed back in the cab, slumped behind the wheel and let out the string of curses he’d been holding in since the dentist looked up from Millie’s mouth and asked, “Is she still sucking her thumb?”
Decay. Speech problems. Braces. All because he’d been too much of a softie to make her stop.
Well, those days were over. Millie wasn’t happy, but he and Google were about to spend some quality time researching the most effective ways to put an end to this. If he didn’t find anything helpful there, he would bite the bullet and call Moxie. God knew she would have suggestions.
And maybe Brynn—
He shook his head. He couldn’t let himself become dependent on her. A little blurring of the lines, okay. But he would be the world’s biggest idiot if he let himself see her as anything other than exactly what she was—a very smart, very attractive woman who was here to do a job and then leave.
I’ve just found, in life, that it’s better to...to accept what’s happened and move on.
She’d been talking about herself when she said that. But the words had kept sounding in his head through the night. Not about Brynn, and not about Millie or even the stupid dance he’d been conned into doing. But about someone else. Someone who was soon going to be a lot more involved in Millie’s day-to-day, maybe for the rest of her life.
Heather was trying. Which meant he should try, too.
His mind made up, he grabbed his phone.
“Hey, Heather, it’s me. Don’t worry, nothing’s wrong. But I wanted to bring you up to date on a couple of things.”
Slowly, picking his words very carefully, he told her about the dentist’s concerns and the troubles with Noelle. She listened and commiserated and even had a couple of half-decent suggestions. By the time he said goodbye, he almost felt like this could work. Like maybe, even though he and Heather would never be together again, they and Millie could create a new kind of family.
Maybe, just maybe, it was time to move on.
* * *
IN ALL THE WORRY of convincing Hank to take part in the dance, Brynn had managed to overlook one teeny tiny little problem. She didn’t know how to dance.
Oh, she could fake it pretty reasonably at weddings. She could do the Macarena with the best of them, and she had long ago mastered the Electric Slide, the Cupid Shuffle and the YMCA. But actual dancing, all the ballet terms and official moves and graceful motions—no.
Online research had taught her how to chart the song. Like a first-grader learning to print, she had sketched out page after page of lineups in a lucky blue notebook. Her final routine drew heavily from those group dances she knew, generously salted with moves copied from YouTube videos. She had practiced it over and over by herself until the steps were deep in her muscle memory, so ingrained that she could start the song at any point and immediately jump into the proper step, turn or kick.
Her brain told her that the Norths would be too focused on learning the steps to spare a thought for her lack of knowledge, but she knew. Feigning ability in an area where she had training or related experience was no problem. Faking a skill that wasn’t part of her usual toolbox left her feeling the slightest bit like a fraud.
A fraud wearing a blouse that—as she realized when she ran into the bathroom off the Northstar lobby—was an invitation to disaster.
She scowled at her reflection. Two minutes before departure time, after spilling milk on her plain black tee, she had grabbed this top. It was a simple white peasant number embroidered with red and blue flowers around the neckline. Modest, short-sleeved and lightweight. Plus, it was elasticized at the waist, affording easy movement without hugging or revealing.
But she hadn’t worn it since last summer and had forgotten that the scoop neck had started to sag, revealing a hint more cleavage than she had anticipated. The shoulders were a tiny bit too big, giving them the tendency to slip off her shoulder. And the fabric was just sheer enough that if she wore the wrong color bra, the outline could be detected.
Because, of course, when she made her last-minute change before leaving tonight, she had forgotten that the girls were clad in hot pink satin.
Forget confident, competent professional. After a half hour of dancing in this outfit, she was going to look like a milkmaid in heat.
There was nothing to do about it now. She had to go out there, fake her way through this and try to forget that Hank would be one of the ones whose eyes would be glued to her every move. But only her feet, right?
“Right,” she told her reflection, fully expecting it to burst into laughter at her pathetic attempt at rationalization.
She gave her neckline one final tug, let loose with one of her favorite Russian swear words—sometimes it was very handy to have a brother who played hockey—and pushed herself out the door.
Showtime.
* * *
HALF AN HOUR into the first rehearsal, Hank made two decisions. The first was that if he were going to put himself through this—onstage, no less, in front of a town full of people who would be only too happy to remember his last public attempt at dancing—Millie was going to owe him a nursing home approximately equivalent to the Taj Mahal.
The second was that bright pink had become his new favorite color.
Not that he was trying to look. Hell, no. At first all his energy went to following the steps. Brynn kept up a rousing line of chatter, praising, teasing, cajoling. Cash stumbled a lot, Carter was frustratingly good and Moxie strutted like someone forty years younger. Millie’s cheeks glowed and her thumb was nowhere near her mouth, so he called that a double win. His own movements were stiff and jerky at first, but if he focused very hard on what would come next, he could push the thoughts of public humiliation to the background.
Too bad he couldn’t do the same with thoughts of Brynn.
She faced the wall of windows as she demonstrated the steps for them, so she couldn’t see that he was drinking in her every move. At first he told himself it was necessary. Hey, it wasn’t like he had a lot of practice with this stuff. But as time went by and even his mother was staring at Brynn, he decided it was okay to look. So look he did. He couldn’t kiss, couldn’t touch, couldn’t do any of the hundreds of other things he longed to do, but dammit, he could look.
So while he stumbled along, his eyes feasted. Her feet were smaller than he’d realized until he watched them point, tap and scuff. Her leggings ended just above her ankle, revealing the bottom edge of what he was pretty sure was a tattoo. Maybe someday he could cradle her foot on his lap and push up the edge of those leggings while pulling down her sock. He could run his finger over the edges of whatever design she had inked there, tapping and sliding and tracing until his palm flattened over it and slipped higher, sliding over her skin, and—
No.
Her calves seemed more muscular than he’d thought, though given the number of times he’d spotted her heading out for a morning run or jumping from rock to rock with Millie, he shouldn’t have been surprised. Her blouse came to midthigh but didn’t conceal the swing of her hips as she stepped and turned.
Maybe they could do a conga line. He could be behind her. His hands would close over those swaying hips and he would be able to feel the muscles ripple beneath them slower, then faster, sideways, then back and forth�
��
No!
He dragged his gaze higher. Her back. He could look at her back. Sure, hers led to curves and valleys that called to him, but her back itself was safe. Maybe even a little too wide across the shoulders if he were being totally objective. Yes. He could look at her back as much as he wanted.
Until the dance went on and the body heat went up and her blouse began to stick to her skin. And the outline of her bra—so flimsy, so forbidden, so magnetic—grew ever more impossible to ignore. When her blouse slipped off her shoulder, exposing another strip of mesmerizing pink, he stumbled straight into Millie and almost knocked her to the floor.
And he’d thought that making himself dance again would be the definition of torture.
At last the hour was up and Brynn called a halt. The music ended and was replaced by laughter and groans echoing through the lobby. Millie ran to her grandpa. Carter and Cash swarmed Moxie. Taylor handed Brynn a water bottle. She took it with a smile, tipped it up and drank. His eyes traced the exposed skin of her neck. His hands relived the heat they had found there. Her hair flowed back. His fingers curled as if they were once again cradling her head and filling himself with her want, her need, that had matched his. His breath caught and his mouth went dry and he knew he had to find some reason, some excuse, to touch her again. Her hand, her arm, maybe the small of her back as he helped her into the truck.
Then she turned back to them and he spun away—
And caught his mother watching him with a look of total satisfaction on her face.
* * *
BRYNN CLIMBED INTO the Tundra while Hank got Millie settled into the second seat. Despite her fears, the evening had gone off well, at least from what she had seen. No one had laughed at her, no one had caught the moments when she screwed up, no one had been unkind enough to mention that by the end of the evening she might as well have been wearing searchlights on her breasts. Taylor had never mentioned Carter or gone near him. Yep. Total success.
Except that with every step and every twist, she had practically felt Hank watching her. And instead of doing the smart thing and ignoring it, or trying to discourage it, she had, well, reveled in it.
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