His uncle would have liked these people.
The realization had quietly sneaked up on him from the deep recesses of his mind. He hadn’t thought very much about Uncle Wayne lately. Probably because he didn’t want to dwell on what his uncle might have had to say about the direction his life had taken over these past ten years or so. The world he had come to inhabit was more like the one his father existed in than the one his uncle had been dedicated to.
The thought bothered him more than he liked to admit.
“Another helping of dessert, Sin-Jin?” On her feet, Sheila was already cutting another slice of chocolate cream pie, confident of the response.
The dinners he was used to partaking of were artfully arranged meals surrounded by a great deal of plate. He’d astonished himself tonight by the amount of food he’d consumed. There’d been two helpings of the main course, followed by the same amount of servings of dessert. He was already in danger of needing the jaws of life to remove him from his clothing.
“No, really, I’ve eaten a great deal more than I usually do.”
Connor eyed their guest, then chuckled. “You’re one of those people who eats to live, aren’t you?” He snaked his arm around his wife’s middle, drawing her closer to him as he sat at the table. Sheila squealed, swatted his arm away. But she remained standing beside him, her expression that of a woman who was loved and pleased to allow the world to know it. “I was like that myself until Sheila here came into my life.”
Sheila winked broadly at her guest. “Married me for my cooking.”
“Hell, woman,” Connor snorted, “if I’d just wanted you for what you could do in the kitchen, I would have hired you instead of giving you my name.”
Sheila sniffed, tossing her head, the ends of her hair brushing along her slim shoulders. “You didn’t give it, I deigned to take it.”
Connor sighed, shaking his head as he looked at Sin-Jin. “Modern women, it’s a wonder any of us men have managed to survive ’em.”
“Sure I can’t tempt you?” Having cut a healthy slice of the pie, Sheila now held it just above his plate, ready to set it down.
It was time for Sherry to come to the rescue before the man beside her became annoyed, overwhelmed or exploded. “No means no, Mom. Stop feeding him before we have to roll him out the door.” Sherry turned to Sin-Jin. “Mom’s destiny, she thinks, is to fatten up the immediate world.”
Temporarily surrendering, Sheila placed the slice on her husband’s dessert plate instead. She gave Sherry the once-over. “You could stand to gain a pound or seven, yourself, missy. Seems now that the baby’s out, you’re your former too-thin self.”
“I think she looks just fine.”
Three sets of eyes turned to look at him. Sin-Jin coughed, realizing that once again he’d said too much. It was getting to be an unnerving habit around anyone named Campbell.
“Would you mind if I took a peek at my godson-to-be?”
My God, one evening in their company and he was even beginning to sound like these people. He didn’t dwell on how odd it felt to refer to any child as his godson. He’d long ago stopped thinking of the concept of any sort of family, even an extended one. Since he had no example to look back on, he couldn’t trust himself to be involved in any relationship that wasn’t doomed to fail right from the start. And he wasn’t about to bring a child into the world to have only half a family. Besides, what did he know about children anyway?
She knew a call for help when she heard one. “I thought you’d never ask.” The baby had required one feeding since Sin-Jin had arrived. She’d excused herself while her father had held Sin-Jin captive with one of his long-winded stories. When she’d returned, she’d been surprised to find that Sin-Jin hadn’t bolted. Sherry rose to her feet, pushing back her chair. “Right this way.”
Following behind Sherry, Sin-Jin missed the knowing look that was exchanged by her parents, but as she turned on the stairs, Sherry had caught it. She knew that for once her parents, in their unfailing optimism, were dead wrong.
She opened the door to the baby’s room and motioned Sin-Jin inside. It amused her that he seemed to be tiptoeing in. Leaning his arms on the railing, he looked down at the sleeping baby.
“He looks tinier than when I saw him in the hospital,” he whispered to her.
The whisper, low and sexy, seemed to slip along her skin. She leaned her head toward him just a little to keep from having to raise her voice to be heard.
“That’s because the crib dwarfs him.” He did look tiny, she thought. She’d already nicknamed him “peanut,” but that was going to have to change by the time he was old enough to understand. She wasn’t about to give her child any deep-rooted psychological problems because of a pet name. “It just means he’ll get more use out of his clothes.”
Sin-Jin was amazed. There were people who would be beside themselves in the same situation she was in, already booking specialists for their infant. Yet Sherry seemed calm and confident. “You always think so positively?”
There was a smile in her eyes when she looked at him. “Always. Focusing on the negative never makes you anything but unhappy. It certainly never gets you anywhere.”
“It prepares you for things when they go wrong.”
She turned toward him. “But if they don’t go wrong, think of all the time you’ve wasted, despairing.”
“And if they do go wrong?” he challenged.
“Well,” she said, shrugging philosophically, “then at least you’ve had a little hope in your life to make you feel better.”
The woman certainly wasn’t an idiot, and yet, as intelligent as she was, she still managed to be optimistic. Coming from a world grounded in reality and worst-case scenarios, he found her attitude unsophisticated—and incredibly appealing.
Maybe it was time to leave.
Sherry saw him looking at his watch and was struck not just by the fact that a great deal of time had gone by and he was still here, but by the watch itself, as well. She would have expected someone with Sin-Jin’s affluent lifestyle and penchant for the finest that life had to offer to be wearing a Rolex, or at least a similar ludicrously expensive watch. Instead he was wearing a watch whose face had seen better days and whose metallic black band was worn and tarnished in several places. It seemed entirely against type.
Sin-Jin saw her looking at his wristwatch. He lowered the cuff of his jacket back into place, not to hide the watch but to protect it.
“It was my uncle’s.”
That was the second time he’d actually mentioned a family member to her. “The same uncle who was a doctor?”
She’d been in the throes of pain when he’d said that to her. He was amazed that she remembered. “You don’t miss a thing, do you?”
Taking his arm, she led him out of the room and back to the stairs. “I try not to. Am I right?”
She fell into place far too easily beside him. Alarms should have been going off, but they remained dormant. Why was that, he wondered. “Yes, he left it to me when he died.”
“Doesn’t seem like much of a legacy.”
He thought of the one photograph of his uncle he carried in his wallet. The man had looked like an aging hippie, long gray hair pulled back in a ponytail, a beard and worn work shirt and jeans that had more than seen their day of service. The man had meant more to him than all his other relatives combined. “His legacy wasn’t in material things.”
“And he was a doctor?”
Sin-Jin walked down the stairs in front of her. “The kind that goes off to practice medicine in the poorest sections of the country because that’s where he’s needed the most.”
He didn’t add that when his uncle was preparing to leave for the Appalachian area, Sin-Jin had been all of ten years old. He’d begged the man not to go, saying that he needed him to stay in his life. His uncle had talked to him for hours, finally making him realize that there were children who needed him even more than he did. It was the first time he’d been confronted with
the concept of charitable giving.
Sin-Jin turned to look at Sherry, who had stopped at the base of the stairs. Her expression was thoughtful. He did what he could in the way of damage control, berating himself for having mentioned anything. “He was kind of the black sheep of the family.”
Not so black, Sherry thought. And he’d meant something to Sin-Jin. Anyone with ears would know that. “What happened to him?”
Sin-Jin’s face sobered. “He died.”
There was a note of finality in his voice that forbade her asking any more questions.
She was curious even beyond her realm of investigative reporter, wanting to know particulars of the man’s life before his death, but she wasn’t insensitive. For now she let the matter drop.
“So you said. Well,” she said, glancing toward the living room. They were going to have to run the gauntlet in order to get to the front door. “Let me walk you to the door and help make good your escape before my father suddenly thinks to engage you in a ‘friendly game of poker.”’ She saw Sin-Jin raise an eyebrow in silent query. “Believe me, it’s not all that friendly. My father hates to lose. At anything. It’s his one flaw.”
“A lot of men are like that.”
Was he putting her on some kind of notice? “Including you?”
His eyes held hers. “Including me.”
She felt a shiver of electricity dance along her skin, but held her ground.
“Then you had really better not get in a card game with him.” She saw her parents already turning in their direction. “Ready?” she murmured.
She made him feel as if he was about to navigate the rapids in a paper raft and no paddle. Rather than answer, he made his way into the living room.
Sheila was the first to meet him halfway. “Oh, but you’re not really leaving.”
“Mom, if he stays here any longer, his people’ll probably be expecting a ransom note of some kind to be delivered.”
“Well…” Moving forward, Sheila enveloped him in a warm embrace that caught him completely by surprise. “If you must, you must.” Stepping back, she looked genuinely disappointed that he wasn’t staying longer.
Ordinarily when people tried to detain him, it was to talk about business, to try to get him to back a deal, or something equally based on money. The look on Sheila Campbell’s face was rooted in emotion. It stirred feelings that he had long ago placed under lock and key, when he’d decided that he was not destined to have the kind of family he ached for.
The kind of family Sherry had.
Connor wasn’t as easily put off. He placed his arm around Sin-Jin’s shoulders, having to reach up a little as he did so. “Sure I can’t talk you into a friendly little card game?”
Sherry quickly wedged herself in between the two men, brushing against Sin-Jin in order to do it. She seemed to be oblivious to the contact. No such lapse was experienced on his side. The lady’s soft contours telegraphed themselves to him with the speed of lightning traveling up a rod.
“It won’t work, Dad,” she informed her father. “I’ve already warned Sin-Jin about your friendly little games.”
Connor frowned. “Whatever she said, she was exaggerating.” He nodded his head toward his wife. “Gets that from her mother, she does.”
Sheila pretended to be incensed, crossing her arms over her chest, her accent thick enough to rival the pie she’d served earlier. “I’ll be begging your pardon, sir, but you’re the one given to blarney, not me.”
Connor turned, laughing as he caught his wife up in his arms and kissed her soundly. “And you love it.”
Sheila rested her head against her husband’s shoulder. The two formed a contented picture. “Never said I didn’t, did I?”
Taking Sin-Jin’s arm, Sherry ushered him to the door. “I think you’d better go before your stomach decides to rebel against what you’ve just witnessed. They only get worse with encouragement.”
“Sherry Lynn Campbell,” her mother protested, “what a thing to say. And before a guest, too.”
“True,” Sherry testified, “every word of it.”
Escorting him to the door, she surprised him by closing it behind them. She walked with him to his car in the driveway.
“Your parents seem very nice.”
She smiled. There were times they embarrassed her, but she loved them both dearly. If they hadn’t been there for her in the beginning months, she didn’t know what she would have done.
“There’s no ‘seem’ about it.” She looked toward the house. “They are nice. I couldn’t have asked for a better set—” Her mouth curved in self-deprecation as she remembered. “Something I wasn’t all that sure of twelve years ago.”
He took a guess. It wasn’t that much of a stretch. “The rebellious years?”
She inclined her head in semiassent. “Something like that. I’m surprised they didn’t raffle me off to the highest bidder.”
He caught himself thinking he would have liked to have been part of that auction.
Suddenly feeling oddly self-conscious beneath his scrutiny, she ran her hands along her arms. “Well…thanks for coming by, and I’m sorry if they came on a little strong. That’s just their way.”
There was no need to apologize for her parents. He only wished that there had been a mold and that his could have been formed from the same one. “Actually, I found it kind of refreshing.”
“Even though my dad’s a former reporter?”
“Even though,” Sin-Jin acknowledged. The man didn’t seem like any reporter he’d ever met. But then, he was beginning to think the same thing about Sherry. All the reporters who had crossed his path were like sharks, waiting for the first sign of blood. “Besides, the key word here is former. Can’t hold things against someone forever.”
She didn’t want to go inside just yet. Didn’t want to see him leave. “So you hold my vocation against me?”
What he wanted to hold against her, he realized, was himself.
But he gave her the answer he knew she was expecting. The answer he would have been expecting himself—except now he wasn’t completely certain of it any longer. “As long as you keep your pen sheathed, we’re all right.”
As a rule, Sin-Jin wasn’t a man given to impulses, not since he’d walked away from his life all those many years ago and forged a new one for himself. Not until Sherry had burst into his life with the force of an unexpected squall at sea.
Impulse was guiding him now.
Again.
Maybe it was the moonlight caressing her skin. Maybe it was the warm environment he’d just left, an environment that had, however temporarily, broken down his barriers.
Or maybe it was the woman herself, half annoying, half enticing and completely exciting.
Whatever the explanation behind his actions, Sin-Jin found himself wanting to kiss her again.
And then he found himself kissing her.
The wanting didn’t go away.
Sherry thought that this time she was ready. Braced. Forewarned was forearmed and all that.
It turned out to be the kind of slogan that did better inside a fortune cookie than out in the real world, because she wasn’t forearmed, not in the slightest. What she was, instantly, was intoxicated.
One taste of the man’s mouth had her wanting more, even though denial had been her constant companion since the last time he’d kissed her. She’d told herself then that it had just been a fluke. That having lived a life that would have bored a nun was responsible for her intense reaction to the man.
She’d told herself lies.
The moan that escaped her lips was involuntary.
Hearing it created an even greater rush in Sin-Jin’s system than the taste of her lips already had. His body heating, he slipped his hands from her face to her shoulders, holding her closer to him. And then his arms went around her. Drawing her essence inside.
This had to stop.
He wasn’t sure why.
Like a swimmer submerged for too long, his l
ungs aching, his body tingling, Sin-Jin came up for air. Taking a breath, he looked down at her. Funny, she didn’t look like a witch. And then he thought of the Sirens. The mermaids who called sailors to their doom. The Odyssey, wasn’t it? One of the books Mrs. Farley had assigned him to read so many years ago. They’d been beautiful, too. Beautiful but deadly, to be avoided at all costs.
So why wasn’t he avoiding Sherry?
He had a hunch he knew why. “I have two tickets to the opening of a new performing-arts theater my company recently acquired and renovated. They’re for two weeks from Saturday.” Though the gala affair called for his attendance, he’d already made up his mind to give the tickets away. Until just now. “It’s not a command performance or anything—”
“I’d love to.” Afraid that he would change his mind before he finished asking the question, she fired her answer faster than a bullet.
He almost laughed. If he didn’t know any better, he would have said she was eager. “We can have dinner first.”
Sherry nodded. She knew her parents would be more than willing to baby-sit. They’d both been after her to resume her usual routine. “Sounds good to me.”
“All right, then.”
Getting into his car, he drove away. The official story he gave himself was that he was trying to cure himself of her. The best way was to sleep with her. Once the thrill of the conquest was over, he would be ready to move on. It always worked that way for him when it came to business. He saw no reason why it wouldn’t work with this woman. It was a matter of self-preservation. He needed a clear head to conduct his work, and she was definitely blurring things for him. Ever since that day up at the cabin, he felt like a crayon that was continually being forced to draw outside the lines.
Sherry’s heart was still pounding hard as she slipped back inside the house. Her parents were off in the kitchen and for that she was extremely grateful. She needed the time to pull herself together.
It took her a moment to get her bearings. Taking a deep breath and then releasing it slowly, the way she’d been taught to in Lamaze class, she took out the small pad she kept in her pocket. The pad she’d been carrying around ever since Owen had first given her this assignment. Drawing in another deep breath to steady her pulse, she jotted down the latest information Sin-Jin had inadvertently given her. She might be on maternity leave, but that didn’t shut down the journalist in her.
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