by Peggy Webb
She headed to the airport, wondering whether Lance might have kissed her tonight if they’d been alone, and whether Elizabeth would notice the dent in Jolie’s car.
Lance stood in the kitchen listening to the silence and dealing with his inner tumult. Elizabeth’s early homecoming changed everything. There would be no more cozy fireside evenings for two. No more chances to give in to temptation. Why didn’t he feel relieved?
Rather than dwell on Jolie, he seized the opportunity to make his call to Arizona.
Ina answered on the first ring.
“I don’t know whether you’ll remember me, but this is Lancelot from Sunshine Acres.”
“Oh, my goodness! Of course I do. How wonderful to hear from you.”
Now that his private investigation was actually under way, he felt a certain reluctance. Fear of what he would discover? Fear of change? He didn’t know.
“Merry Christmas,” he said.
“The same to you. Tell me, do you have a family now?”
“No, but I’m hoping you can help me. I’d like to try to locate my mother.”
There was a long pause, and then Ina said, “I was wondering when you’d ask.”
“Then you know her?”
“Not exactly, but I’ve always had my suspicions. There was a lovely young girl named Sarah who used to drop by the orphanage selling cookies she and her mother made.”
Lance’s intuition kicked into high gear. The information felt right.
“I know it’s not much to go on, but she was always interested in the children, particularly you. I would watch her watching you, and wonder. There were times when I wanted to ask her, but I never did. We had a policy that if a child was left with us, healthy, we didn’t interfere. She was so young. No more than fifteen, I’d say.”
“Do you know the rest of her name or where she is now?”
“No, but I think I can find out.”
After he had hung up, Lance couldn’t sit still. Taking his harmonica from his pocket, he went into the garden where one red rose was still blooming, and started to play “Swing Low Sweet Chariot.”
Chapter 11
“Lancelot!” Elizabeth, who didn’t have a hair out of place after being on a plane for hours, launched herself into Lance’s arms for a hug that stung Jolie all the way to her toes.
Or maybe she was still stung because Elizabeth had not only noticed the dented fender, she’d ferreted out the cause.
Jolie was turning into a regular Grinch. A jealous Grinch. Why hadn’t she known Lance’s name was Lancelot? Why hadn’t he told her? Why hadn’t she asked?
It fit, of course. All that knight in shining armor business about taking care of damsels in distress. And Lord knew, distress was her middle name.
Elizabeth hugged him for two hours—that’s what it felt like to Jolie’s green-monster mind—then got big-eyed over the cookies and coffee he’d set out on a silver tray.
“Look at this.” Elizabeth nibbled on a chocolate chip cookie while Jolie recalled every last detail of how it had been made: her gobbling up raw cookie dough, while Lance laughingly threatened her with a spoon.
Elizabeth would never gobble. She wouldn’t touch raw cookie dough with a ten-foot pole.
“I thought you might be hungry after your long flight,” he told Elizabeth.
“How sweet of you.” She patted his cheek. Shoot, Jolie didn’t even have the courage to hug him after all his help today. Why couldn’t she at least have patted his cheek? “These are delicious. Homemade?”
“Yes,” he said, and Jolie was about to tell her sister that Lance had made them when he said, “Jolie made them.”
“You did?”
“Well, actually…”
“She cooked all day,” Lance said. “You ought to see what else she has in the kitchen.”
That took the wind right out of Elizabeth’s sails. “I’m beat from the flight. I hope you two don’t mind if I crash?”
“Not at all.” Jolie sounded like somebody eager to get rid of her sister. Which wasn’t the case. Not really. She gave Elizabeth a heartfelt hug. “Rest up. I want to hear all about your film tomorrow.”
“I’ll help with your bags,” Lance offered.
Elizabeth smiled at him. “Always the gallant one.”
The two of them left with big smiles on their faces, and that was that.
Jolie wasn’t about to wait around in the library like a spider after a fly. She had more important things to do.
Heck, the entire fate of Christmas dinner hinged on whether her toenails were painted red or something more festive—say, purple with gold glitter.
She holed up in her room and spent an hour with cotton balls, polish remover, cuticle cream, buffing boards and six colors of polish, telling herself that she was busy.
Then the door next to hers opened and closed. Lance. Her breathing quickened as she heard the French doors to their shared balcony open.
Jolie debated the question, should she or shouldn’t she?
What the heck. It was her balcony, too.
Lance had been leaning against the balcony railing looking at the moon when Jolie walked through the French doors. Backlit by lamps from her bedroom and polished by a silvery winter moon, she took his breath away.
“I heard you out here.”
He loved that about her: no artifice.
“I’m unwinding.” The truth. Partially. Thinking of you was the rest of the story.
She padded across the tiles and leaned against the wrought-iron railing. Barefoot. Toenails shooting sparks in the moonlight. Lord, everything about this woman was appealing. Even her feet.
“Thank you for giving me credit in front of Elizabeth for making the cookies. You didn’t have to do that.”
“I wanted to.”
Jolie tipped her face up to the moon while he stood there riveted, listening to the rush of his own blood.
“It’s beautiful,” she said, looking back at him.
“Yes. Very beautiful.”
She sucked in a surprised little breath, then stood there frozen, her pink tongue slowly licking her full bottom lip.
“How’s your head?” he asked.
“Oh.” She put her hand on her forehead, then winced. “Fine.”
“Let me see.” Closing the space between them, he brushed her hair back from her face. Mistake. The passion between them was palpable, irresistible.
He folded her close, his mouth descended on hers, and time and place slipped away. It wasn’t a nameless orphan invading the home and the lips of a woman whose pedigree probably went all the way back to seventeenth-century nobility. There was only a man kissing a woman, a man with his common sense on hold and a woman with the sweetest lips this side of heaven.
The sweetest lips, the sweetest body. Molded against her, Lance felt branded. He knew he should back off, knew he should refrain from goading the beast that rode him hard, but urgency was not easy to ignore. His desire demanded relief, and so he deepened the kiss, hauled her hips closer.
The kittenish, wanting sounds she made inflamed him, and he delved his tongue inside her mouth for a heady exploration that made her sag against him.
It would be so easy to take her. If he didn’t stop soon, it would be necessary.
Still, Lance couldn’t let her go. He couldn’t lose this fleeting paradise.
Why was that? He was no monk. He’d had his share of flings, his taste of some of the world’s most beautiful women.
How could a mere wisp of a girl, a lively sprite partial to baseball caps, loud music and soccer pads, have embedded herself so deeply under his skin that he couldn’t get her out? How could she bewitch him to the point that he acted irrationally, irresponsibly and totally out of character?
His bedroom was just through the French doors. He longed to carry her inside and possess her. He longed to lose himself in her and forget that he was a no-name orphan in a dangerous career.
Fitted perfectly against him, Jolie was on the edge
of surrender. He was on the edge of losing control.
The moon softened his willpower; the delicious sounds she made threatened to sabotage it. With superhuman effort, Lance grabbed the fringes of sanity and wrested himself back under control.
Jolie would have toppled if he hadn’t held on to her. His breathing came in harsh bursts as he backed off a fraction, still holding her upright.
He opened his mouth to say I’m sorry, but that would be a lie. His only regret was that he had no right to the paradise she offered.
Furthermore, something in her eyes warned him that sorry was not the word she wanted to hear.
“Your feet are going to get cold out here,” he finally said.
“My feet?”
He nodded, and she stood there silently, her cheeks still flushed with passion.
Electric with desire, he held on to her as long as he dared. When he thought he could walk without pain, he said, “Good night, Jolie.”
Inside the privacy of his bathroom, he stripped, then climbed into the shower, his face turned up to the icy blast of water. He would not allow what had almost happened tonight to happen again.
Not until he had something to offer her.
Stunned, Jolie stood on the patio with her arms wrapped around herself and her feet getting cold. It would serve him right if she froze to death. It would serve him right if the temperature dropped twenty degrees and it started sleeting and her whole body turned into an icicle.
As if she wasn’t having a hard enough time reining in her galloping libido, her head started to hurt.
The pain made her forget revenge. She stomped inside, but didn’t get nearly the effect she’d hoped for. Bare feet made muffled sounds.
Inside her bedroom she stuffed her cold feet into a pair of warm, fuzzy sleep socks, and then, because she couldn’t seem to stop shivering, she put on a flannel nightgown, never mind that the temperature inside the house was a comfortable seventy.
It would serve Lance right if she got so hot in the middle of the night she melted. And she just might. That’s the way she felt around him.
Was she falling in love?
She climbed into her bed and pulled up the covers. She didn’t have time for life’s larger questions. She had to get a good night’s sleep. Tomorrow Aunt Kitty, Josh and Michael would arrive; then the day after, her brother and his family, her mother, Ben, Aunt Dolly and no telling who else.
And Jolie had to feed them all.
Jolie usually popped out of bed first thing in the morning, raring to go. But on the very morning she wanted to be the first one downstairs, she overslept. She glared at the offending clock—it was already ten!—then raced into the bathroom and stood horrified in front of the mirror. The bangs she’d cut, then slicked with gel, the day before now stood up like porcupine quills. In addition to being late from oversleeping, she would have to shampoo her hair, which would make her the last person downstairs.
And that meant she’d miss everything—what Elizabeth said to Lance, what he said to her.
Disgruntled, Jolie climbed into the shower and lathered her hair. Not that it mattered what Elizabeth said to Lance. Her sister would never be disloyal to Jolie, but still…Elizabeth had the irritating habit of portraying her as somebody who shouldn’t be let out of the house without supervision.
Jolie made quick work of her hair, then hopped out of the shower and grabbed the blow dryer. Her bangs didn’t look half bad now that the rest of her hair was out of the braid. Everything blended in.
Lance had said her bangs suited her. Maybe he was right.
But then, he had a habit of always saying things that made her feel good. Was that why she liked him so much? Was that why she couldn’t wait to get him alone in the dark? Was that why she was falling in love?
Oh, help.
With her hair dryer poised in midair, Jolie relived last night’s kiss on the balcony. If he hadn’t backed off she’d surely have ended up in his bed. And what would be wrong with that?
Couldn’t she become a new woman while she was falling in love?
Encouraged by that thought, she grabbed her jeans, then changed her mind and put on black boots, a long black skirt and a soft red cashmere sweater. There was no need to lie about why, either. She was doing it so Lance would notice her.
When she was in a room with her older sister, people usually carried on over Elizabeth until they remembered their manners and said, “And Jolie, you look nice, too.”
She sighed. Oh, Lord, she was turning into an awful, jealous person that nobody could love. Not even a mother.
She gave her bangs one last fluff, then headed downstairs to join Elizabeth and Lance. Laughter drifted up the stairs. And voices, one of which she didn’t recognize.
Leaning over the banister, she saw her cousin Josh, her aunt Kitty and a man who could only be Michael Sullivan: if the blond hair wasn’t enough, the Irish brogue was a dead giveaway.
“So…Lizzie.” He grabbed Elizabeth’s hands. “We meet again.”
Michael Sullivan was the only man in the world who had ever called her sister “Lizzie” with impunity. She hated nicknames, particularly that one. She said it made her sound like somebody’s cow.
But there she was, standing in the downstairs hallway, smiling as if he had just crowned her queen of England, and allowing him to hang on to her hands, to boot. No, not just allowing it. Loving it. You couldn’t mistake her glow for anything but pure pleasure.
“How long has it been?” Elizabeth asked. “Nine years?”
“Ten. I’ve been counting the days.”
“You’re full of Irish blarney.”
“And you’re as full of beauty as that wee red rose I saw blooming outside your door.”
Her sister was flirting.
Jolie hurried down the stairs and received another shock. Elizabeth was actually blushing.
Michael saw her on the stairs. “Look who just arrived. Is that you, Kat?”
“It’s me.”
He bounded over, swept her in the air and spun her around. “Look at you, still cute as a button.”
Lance watched them with a face closed tight as a bank vault. Elizabeth was watching, too, smiling in a way that would fool a perfect stranger. But it didn’t fool Jolie. Her sister was faking it.
Good grief. Will wonders never cease? Elizabeth, feeling threatened by me!
Here was Jolie’s golden opportunity to indulge in a little game: pit Michael against Lance and put her sister in a bad light by goading her.
But Jolie abhorred games. And she loved her family fiercely.
So what if everything came easily for Elizabeth, even striking sparks with a man she hadn’t seen in ten years? If Elizabeth wanted Michael Sullivan, then Jolie was determined to see that she got him.
When Michael put her down, Jolie hugged her aunt Kitty and Josh, then announced, “Would anybody like a cookie? I’m starving to death.”
“So am I,” Lance said. “Ravenous.” The way he looked at Jolie made her feel hot all over. “Why don’t I help you serve them?”
He caught her hand, then whisked her off before anybody could say anything. She felt five-eleven and stunning. She felt glamorous and sexy.
And she felt limp all the way to her toes. Melted.
Alone with the copper-bottomed pots and the sweets lined in a row, Jolie and Lance stared at each other, vividly aware, hands still linked.
“I’m beginning to love kitchens,” he said.
“So am I.”
You could have lit bonfires from her skin. You could have baked a whole Christmas turkey. With the stuffing. And two pumpkin pies.
“You’re beautiful,” he said.
“Thank you. I thought the red sweater would be festive.”
“The sweater’s beautiful, too.”
Her head grew too big for her baseball caps. Her heart nearly beat right out of her chest.
Was he going to kiss her? She could almost feel it, taste it. She licked the imaginary sweetness o
ff her bottom lip.
“Don’t do that,” he said.
“What?”
“That sexy thing with your tongue.”
Excited almost beyond control, and nervous, too—what if somebody caught them in the kitchen kissing?—she did it again.
“It makes me want to kiss you.”
Jolie had never known a man like him—intense, tightly wired, his voice husky with passion, his eyes sparking fire.
“Then do,” she said.
She might as well have poured cold water on him. He left her standing there with her heart on her sleeve and her lips unkisssed.
His back stiff with resolve, he started sorting cookies on to a platter. Without pausing to reconsider, Jolie went over to the cabinet and put her hand on his back.
“Lance, what’s wrong?”
She didn’t know where this new boldness came from. Maybe it was the red sweater. Maybe it was her sister’s example.
“I can’t be who you need, Jolie.”
“How do you know what I need?”
What a foolish question. He knew everything she needed, because he’d been taking care of her since he got there.
Naturally, he couldn’t be who she needed. It would take the whole United States Army to take care of a mess like Jolie Kat Coltrane.
When he didn’t answer her, she stomped to the refrigerator without muffling her anger, and let the cold air hit her flaming face.
“Do you think they’ll want cold drinks or coffee?”
Her voice trembled only a little. She was turning into an actress. She was turning into her mother.
“Both,” he said.
“Okay.”
It was the cold drinks that gave her away. One of the traitorous bottles jumped out of her hand and committed suicide against the kitchen tiles.
I will not cry. I will not cry…much.
Lance reached into his pocket and handed her his handkerchief, then put his hand on her shoulder.
“How silly of me,” she said, trying to be brave and failing miserably.
Lance pulled her into his arms and rubbed her back. With his face buried in her hair, he said, “I can’t abuse your family’s hospitality by playing around with the youngest offspring.”