by Mindy Neff
Leaving the door slightly ajar, Ethan made his way downstairs, annoyed when more laughter sounded. Didn’t anyone in this household realize there was a baby sleeping? Didn’t they care he’d just spent a grueling half hour trying to quell heart-wrenching sobs, each involuntary snuffle etching parental scars on his soul?
Evidently not. His brothers and Dora were in a hot and heavy game of…Ethan’s brows jerked together and he came to a stop just inside the room.
They were playing poker, of all things. And laughing like demented fools.
“Do you think this is appropriate?” he asked, wisely leaving off the, for a preacher’s daughter part of his thought.
Dora looked at him, her pretty blue eyes sparkling, her smile wide and welcoming and just this side of mischievous. “Ethan! Come join us.”
Ethan had a better understanding of how the first man in creation had buckled to temptation so easily. Dora Watkins made it difficult to remember the merits of honor, restraint and his own vows to resist.
“Gambling, legs?”
“In a manner of speaking. And I’m whipping these guys’ tails.” She waved a handful of matchsticks at him. “Care to see if you can change the house’s luck?”
“Now, Dora,” Grant said. “I wouldn’t exactly say you’re winning.”
“No? Then who, may I ask, just finished kissing his brother on the lips?”
Clay ran a hand down his face, clearly embarrassed, and Grant shrugged, typically unconcerned.
Ethan shook his head, felt a smile tug and sat down before he could think better of it. “My brothers were kissing?”
“Truth or dare,” Dora explained. “Those are the stakes. Grant lost the hand, chose dare over truth, and I called it.”
“I still don’t see why I should have been penalized,” Clay griped.
“Because my full house beat your flush.”
“Yeah, and I’m still flushed.”
Dora grinned. “It’s a becoming color. And you’re such a sport. My brothers kiss all the time.”
“On the lips?” Grant and Clay asked in unison. She had both men eating out of her hand, which surprised Ethan. Like him, his brothers were flirts, appreciated a pretty woman and the fine art of conversational banter. But they usually hid behind a barely discernible emotional wall, affected an unconscious distance and sexual aloofness that kept them in the driver’s seat and had women’s hearts going pitty-pat. Clearly, it was Grant’s and Clay’s hearts that were stuttering, and Dora was holding the reins.
“Not actually on the lips,” she said with a little choke of laughter, “but what’s a dare if you don’t add a little spice?” She anted four matchsticks and expertly dealt the cards, flinging them as smoothly and quickly as a seasoned dealer in a Las Vegas casino. “Standard five-card draw,” she said to Ethan. “And nobody folds since we’re not playing for money.”
“I think I know how to play the game, legs.”
Her blond brows arched impudently. “I’m sure you do, cowboy. Guts to open.”
Typical of the way his luck was running today, he didn’t have a blessed thing in his hand. And his guts had taken a beating from one small little baby. “I’ll bet two matchsticks,” he said, shoving the red-tipped spears into the ante.
When it came back around to Dora, she matched Ethan’s two and raised the pot by one more. “Cards?” she asked the table at large, looking directly at Ethan.
“I’ll take four. Did you learn these gambling skills at church, too?”
“Ah-ah.” She shook her head. “You’re jumping the gun. It’s not time for truths yet.” She passed him the requested number of cards and continued around the table, the momentum of her arm actions causing her body to sway and her knee to bump his with each toss.
It was incredibly distracting, making him want to jerk her right onto his lap and initiate full-body contact rather than intermittent, teasing taps.
“Bets?”
He shoved out six matchsticks, his hand colliding with Dora’s when she shifted again. He almost wondered if she did it deliberately. He considered scooting his chair over a bit, but discarded the idea. Evidently, he was into masochism today.
He was playing poker with a saint, and his thoughts were edging toward pure sin.
Her skin looked smooth, her nails short and clear of polish. He knew what her touch felt like on his arm, both soothing and arousing, wondered what it would feel like against the rest of him.
She had her bottom lip sucked between her teeth, concentrating. That mouth was something. Quick to smile, even quicker to sass.
And it packed a powerful punch in a kiss.
“Ethan?”
His gaze jerked up. Everyone was staring at him—Dora in puzzlement, his brothers in disapproval. He ignored all of them.
“We’ve called your bet, now what have you got?” Dora asked.
He looked at his hand. “Not a damned thing.”
Clay had a pair of twos, which was still better than Ethan’s nothing. Grant smugly fanned out three of a kind, and Dora, trying to look prim and apologetic—and failing miserably—laid down a straight.
All eyes turned to Ethan.
“Truth or dare?” Dora asked, leaning in, her pert breasts brushing the table. His body reacted like lightning, muddling his thoughts.
He didn’t want to kiss his brother or stand on his head, so he said, “Truth.”
Since Dora had officially won the hand, Clay and Grant looked at her to see what she’d come up with.
“What’s the worst thing you ever did?”
“Stole.” It was out before he knew it. For what seemed like an eon, nobody in the room moved. Then Grant and Clay looked away, erecting walls, pretending they didn’t all share memories that scraped them raw. Pretending they didn’t know that the memories were worse for Ethan.
After only the barest pause, as though she were gleefully waiting for more juicy details and found absolutely nothing amiss, Dora flicked her hair behind her ear and defused the tense moment with a crisp shuffle of the cards.
“I stole a quarter from the collection plate once,” she imparted in a mock-scandalized whisper.
Astonished, yanked right out of his self-absorbed focus, Ethan’s brows shot up. “It wasn’t your turn for truth.”
“Oh. I keep forgetting the rules.”
Like hell, he thought.
“I’ve never told another living soul that secret.” She happily gave the cards another crisp shuffle. “Isn’t it cleansing to unburden this way?”
He stared at her, wanted to kiss her so bad he actually leaned forward, forgot all about his brothers and vows and virtues. Dora Watkins was full of verve and effervescence…and an intuitiveness that was sharp and gentle and should not have surprised him as it did.
She’d understood his discomfort, thought to ease it with her own blurted declaration, to let him know it was okay, that he was human just like everyone else.
That he was worthy enough to sit at a poker table with a preacher’s daughter.
Man alive she was something.
At the last moment he checked the impulse to cover that smiling mouth with his own. “Deal the cards, legs.”
“Certainly…cowboy.”
His lips twitched. Yep. Definitely something.
This time Dora lost the hand, and though it was actually Clay’s turn to pose the truth-or-dare question because he’d won the round, Dora barreled right ahead in her whirlwind fashion.
“Truth,” she announced. “I posed nude in art class.”
“Dora!” all three men shouted at once.
She nearly fell out of the chair laughing.
Studying her, Ethan decided they’d been had. Odd that it was his gaze she appeared to seek out, to cling to—even though he wasn’t the only man at the table. And though her obvious, deliberate intention was to shock all three of them, it was his reaction that she seemed most ghoulishly interested in. “You did not.”
“I did, too.”
�
�How could you?”
“It was art!” she defended, affronted.
“You’re really telling the truth?” Ethan asked.
“Of course. We’re not playing liar’s poker.”
She kept him so off balance he had trouble remembering his own name, much less what they were playing.
He scooted back his chair. “I think we should call it a night,” he said, looking at his brothers, who’d lost their scandalized expressions a lot quicker than Ethan had. “I don’t even want to know what she’d do on a dare.”
Grant shrugged and casually leaned back in his chair. “I’d like to know. How about you, Clay? Want to take a vote?”
Clay grinned. “I’m all for it. Seems she owes us, anyway, for that kissing incident.”
Ethan scowled, stood and plucked the cards out of Dora’s hands. “Nobody’s going to kiss anybody else. This isn’t a democracy, and I’m pulling rank.”
“Who said you had rank?” Grant asked, deliberately needling him, Ethan was sure.
“I did. I’m the oldest.”
“Ah, in that case, old man, we’ll defer to your ancientness.” Grant and Clay stood. “Thanks for the game, Dora. See you in the morning.”
Ethan watched his brothers saunter out of the room and he felt like an idiot. Where had all his sophistication gone? Why did he feel as though his world was spinning out of control around him? If he had any sense at all, he’d run right up those stairs and take himself to bed, too. Take himself right out of temptation’s way.
Instead, he looked into the eyes of the temptress. And it was getting harder by the second to remember who she was.
“Well, you certainly know how to clear a room.”
“Me? You’re the one getting naked in art class!”
She burst out laughing. “You mean to tell me, I actually shocked the worldly Ethan Callahan?”
A grin tugged at his lips. The little imp. The urge to pick her up and carry her over to the sofa for a good old-fashioned session of necking was about to get the better of him.
“Yeah, you shocked me. Want a beer? Scratch that. I forgot you don’t like the taste. How about a soda?” He opened the bar refrigerator and peered inside.
“Something without caffeine’ll be fine.”
“Picky, picky. Good thing you didn’t ask for diet.”
“Yuck. Can’t stand the taste. I’m very choosy about what I put in my mouth.”
He cracked his head on the refrigerator door. Looking at her, he realized she didn’t have a clue to the erotic connotations and images her words had evoked.
Preacher’s daughter, Ethan. That adds up to virgin. Which equals off-limits. Remember it.
After that little pep talk, he took a breath, grabbed the beer and soda and went to the couch.
Another miscalculation. She scooted right up next to him, smelling like sunshine and purity. When her lips touched the soda can, he was mesmerized by the tilt of her head, the slender column of her neck, the way tendrils of wheat-colored hair shifted against her shoulders and the back of the sofa.
She leaned forward and set the can on the oak coffee table, then folded her legs beneath her and settled in, turning toward him so that her knees rested against his thigh.
“You know, my curiosity is just awful. Even when something’s none of my business, it still gnaws at me. Ever have that happen?”
He picked up her soda can and put a coaster beneath it. She didn’t appear to notice. “I usually try to stick to things that’re my business,” he said.
“See there. That’s the difference between us.”
“There are big differences between us, Dora. What do you want to know? Why I stole? What I stole?”
“Yes,” she said without an ounce of shame. “You don’t have to tell me, of course. On the other hand—”
Old memories twisted in his gut, dark edges that made his voice sharper than he intended. “Maybe you’d like to know if I’ve got nasty secrets that’ll make me a bad influence on Katie?”
“Oh, Ethan.” Dora scooted closer, put her hand on his shoulder, ran it up his neck to toy with his hair. “That didn’t even cross my mind. I’m sorry. I should never have brought it up. Sometimes I just don’t think.”
The feel of her fingers against his hair sent chills over his spine. He took her hand in his. “No. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap.” Because it seemed so natural, he linked his fingers with hers and drew their joined hands down to his thigh, running his thumb over the back of her smooth, white skin.
“I told you our mom dropped us off at the County Services in Idaho. Before that, we lived in Chicago. None of us have the same fathers, or even know who they are, so there was very little stability—or money—in our lives. My mother just seemed to pop babies out, then go on her next man hunt, forgetting all about us, leaving us to fend for ourselves.”
“That’s horrible.”
“Yes. But what we went through made Grant and Clay and me closer than most pure-breed brothers.”
She found it odd that he would use that term, but didn’t interrupt him.
“We were pals, had to stick together, and a lot of the time, that was on the dirty streets of Chicago.”
“You didn’t have a home?”
“Sometimes. We moved a lot, though. One crummy room looked about the same as the next. And the times she managed to get us in someplace halfway decent, we’d get kicked out soon enough for not paying the rent. I tried to help out, did odd jobs for the buildings’ superintendents, collected bottles and cans for recycling money. But it never was enough to keep the roof over our heads or food in our bellies.”
Dora squeezed his fingers tighter. Through the church, she’d come upon a lot of needy families, but never ones who’d been through such poverty and horror. Never ones whose children had been forced to act as the adults. Oh, she knew it happened, but she’d been insulated from it for the most part. Hearing Ethan’s flat voice, seeing the dull light in his blue eyes as he looked inward nearly broke her heart.
“I was the oldest one, and I felt responsible. The first time I stole, it was a loaf of bread. I couldn’t even eat any of it. The next time it got easier. The day a scumbag tried to offer money for Grant was when I stopped worrying about morality and concentrated on surviving. I had to protect them.”
“Ethan, stop. You don’t have to relive this.”
He rubbed his thumb over the pulse on her wrist. “No, it never got that ugly. I didn’t let it. But that was when I learned about rage. It was like a beast inside me, something nasty that scared the hell out of me. I hit the guy right where it counts with a half-full bottle of whiskey, stole his wallet when he was doubled over, then busted the bottle against his head and got the boys out of there.”
“Good for you.”
He turned to her, traced a finger over her cheek. “I could have killed that guy, Dora. Doesn’t any of this shock you?”
“No.” Maybe.
He studied her for a long moment. “You’re so…I don’t know. Accepting. Forgiving.”
“Ethan, there’s nothing to forgive. You were a neglected child.” She wanted to put her hand over his, press a kiss on the rough skin of his palm, use her lips to worship those hands that had committed acts of lawlessness out of love and honor. His motivation was commendable in her mind.
But if she carried through on her impulse, he’d more than likely pull away from her, etch that line he seemed so determined to draw between them.
“I tried to make sure my brothers worked for their money, and I tried to do the same. But the pay for an eight-year-old wasn’t enough to keep food in our stomachs. So, while the boys took over collecting recyclables out of trash bins, I moved through the streets and picked pockets.” He sighed and rested his head against the back of the couch. “I wish I had names and addresses for everyone I stole from. I’d give it back.”
“What about your mother?”
He shrugged, his broad shoulders pulling at the seams of his white T-shirt
. He was slouched on the sofa, but the relaxed pose didn’t disguise the tension.
“She was like a cat who always landed on her feet. She had plenty of men to take care of her and usually couldn’t be bothered with us much. She saw that we were surviving and left us to it, never wanted to know how we managed. I was always a little surprised she actually took us with her when she left Chicago with the last guy. Anyway, I’ve pretty much told you the rest. She dumped us, then the Treechmans got us, then Dad came along.”
For a moment he seemed to draw inward, and Dora waited quietly, allowing him all the time he needed for a mental walk through his past. His eyes were closed, his chest rising and falling beneath the soft, body-hugging T-shirt that was tucked into jeans the color of an icy-blue lake.
He was a beautiful man, thrilling to look at, with long legs, lean hips and a muscular torso that inspired fantasies that were terribly inappropriate just now.
Still, she wondered if he would flinch if she laid her palm over that washboard-flat stomach, traced the raised pattern of horseshoes on his wide leather belt, leaned down to get a better look at the intricate carvings on his oversize silver buckle.
Realizing those thoughts were even more inappropriate, she raised her gaze back to his face. He had features that might have been carved by the angels, features that would make any student of art clamor to study. Dora’s own fingers itched for her sketch pad and pencils.
He lifted their joined hands, drawing her closer, and Dora realized his inward images had wound down.
“I gave Dad a pretty hard time at first, but he was so filled with love and patience that the anger in me gradually went away.”
But not the memories, she thought. A part of him would always wonder what he’d done to deserve such bad beginnings—or the good that had come his way, for that matter. She wished she could convince him it wasn’t his fault, but if all the years with Fred Callahan hadn’t been able to, she surely couldn’t.
“Did you ever hear from your mom again?”
He shifted his head against the back of the couch and looked at her. “When I was seventeen a lawyer came out to the ranch with a check for an obscene amount of money. Seems good old mom finally married well…and became a rich widow. Before she could enjoy her wealth, though, she got sick, and in an attack of remorse, I guess, she willed her money to us.”