Brambleberry House

by RaeAnne Thayne

  As she spoke, she finally managed to tug the boot off his ankle.

  Before he could jerk his foot away, she rolled the sock down and then gasped. “Oh, Max. That looks horrible! Are you sure it’s not broken?”

  His entire ankle was swollen to the size of a small cantaloupe and it was already turning a lovely array of colors. He felt like a graceless idiot all over again.

  “It’s only a little sprain. I just need to wrap it and everything will be fine. Thanks again for your help.”

  He was determined this time he would make it out of the apartment as he picked up his boot and leaned forward to rise to his feet.

  “Max—” she started to argue, and he decided he just couldn’t take another word.

  Driven by the slow, steady hunger of the last half hour and his own frustration at himself, he bent his head and captured her mouth with his, knowing just a moment’s satisfaction that at least he had discovered an effective way of shutting her up.

  Okay, it was just about the craziest thing he had ever done in a lifetime of crazy stunts but he couldn’t regret it. Not when her mouth was soft and slightly open with surprise and when she tasted like cinnamon and sugar.

  Before this moment, he would have thought a kiss where only two sets of lips connected would lack the fire and excitement of a deep, full-body embrace, when he could feel a woman’s soft curves against him, the silky smoothness of her skin, each pulse of her heart.

  But standing in Anna Galvez’s living room with every muscle in his body aching like a son of a bitch, simply touching her mouth with his was the most intense kiss he had ever experienced.

  He felt the electrifying heat of it singe through him like a lightning strike, as if he stood atop Neah-Kah-Nie Mountain with his arms outstretched in the middle of a thunderstorm, daring the elements.

  Hunger surged through him, a vast, aching need, and he couldn’t seem to think straight around it.

  This wild heat made no sense to him and contradicted every ounce of common sense he possessed.

  If she wasn’t a con artist, she was at least an opportunist. She struck him as tight and contained. Buttoned-down, even. Very much not the sort of woman to engage in a wild, fiery romance with a wounded soldier who would be leaving in a few weeks’ time.

  Despite what logic was telling him, he couldn’t ignore her reaction to his kiss. Instead of jerking away—or even slapping his face—she made a breathy kind of sound and leaned in closer.

  That tiny gesture was all it took to send his control out the window and he pulled her closer, suddenly desperate for more.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  SOME TINY, LOGICAL corner of her brain that could still function knew this was completely insane.

  What was she thinking to be here kissing Harry Maxwell—she barely knew him, he was her tenant, and right now the man couldn’t even stand upright, for heaven’s sake!

  Usually she tried to listen to that common-sense corner of her mind but right now she found it impossible to focus on anything but the heat of him and his strong, commanding mouth on hers.

  As he pulled her closer, she wrapped her arms around his waist. This was a little like she imagined it would feel to stand in the midst of the battering force of a hurricane, holding tight to the hard, immovable strength of a centuries-old lighthouse. His body was all heat and hard muscles and she wanted to lean into him and not let go.

  She closed her eyes and savored the taste of him, heady and male, and the thrum of her blood as his mouth explored hers.

  The house faded around her and she was lost to everything but the moment. Right now she wasn’t a struggling businesswoman or an out-of-her-league homeowner. She wasn’t a failure or the victim of fraud or an unwilling dupe.

  She was only Anna and at this frozen moment in time she felt beautiful and feminine and wanted.

  She didn’t know how long they kissed, wrapped together in her living room with the sounds of their mingled breathing and the creaks and sighs of the old house settling around them.

  She would have been quite willing to stand there forever. But that still-functioning corner of her mind was aware of him shifting his weight slightly and then of his sudden discordant intake of breath.

  Awareness washed over her like the bitter cold of a January sneaker wave and she froze, blinking out of what felt like a particularly delicious dream into harsh reality.

  What was wrong with her? He was a stranger, for heaven’s sake! She’d known him for all of twenty-four hours and here she was entangled in his arms.

  She knew nothing about this man other than that he could be kind to her dog and he disliked being fussed over.

  This absolutely was not like her. She always tried to be so careful with men, taking her time to get to know them, to give careful thought to a man’s positive and negative attributes before even considering a date with him.

  And wasn’t that course of action working out just great for her? a snide little voice sneered in her mind.

  She pushed it away. She barely knew the man. Not only that, but he was injured! He could barely stand up and here she was throwing herself at him. She couldn’t even bring herself to meet his gaze, mortified at her instant, feverishly inexplicable reaction to a simple kiss.

  Why had he kissed her, though? That was the real question. One moment she had been urging him to take it easy with his sprained ankle—okay, nagging him—and the next moment his mouth had been stealing her breath, and whatever good sense she possessed along with it.

  This sort of thing did not happen to her.

  Still, she found some consolation that he looked as baffled and thunderstruck as she was.

  In fact, the only one in the room who didn’t look like the house had just imploded around them all was Conan, who sat watching the two of them with an expression that bordered on smug delight, oddly enough.

  Max was the first one to break the awkward silence.

  “Well, your nursing methods might be a little unorthodox, but I suddenly feel a hell of a lot better.”

  Her flush deepened. “I’m so sorry. I don’t know what... I shouldn’t have...”

  He held up a hand. “Stop. I was trying to make a stupid joke. I completely started it, Anna. I kissed you. You have nothing to apologize about.”

  She tried to remember the steps in the circle breathing Sage was always trying to make her practice but her mind was too scrambled to focus on the calming method. She also still couldn’t quite force herself to meet his gaze.

  “I was way out of line,” he added. “I don’t know quite what to say, other than you can be sure it won’t happen again.”

  “It won’t?” Now why did that make her feel so blasted depressed?

  “I don’t make it a habit of accosting people who are only trying to help me.”

  “You didn’t accost me,” she mumbled. “It was just a kiss.”

  Just a kiss that still seemed to sing through her body, moments later. A kiss she could still taste on her lips and feel in her racing pulse.

  “Right,” he said after a moment. “Uh, I’d better get out of your way and let you get back to...whatever you were doing before we showed up.”

  She fiercely wanted him gone so she could try to regain a little badly needed equilibrium. At the same time, she couldn’t help worrying about his injuries.

  “Are you sure you’ll be able to make it up the stairs?”

  “Unless Conan stands in my way again.”

  “He won’t,” she promised. If she had to, she would lock the dog in her bedroom to keep him from causing any more trouble.

  He paused at her door. “Good night, then. And thank you again for all your help.”

  A shadow of something hot and intense still lingered in the hazel depths of his eyes.

  She told hers
elf she shouldn’t be flattered by it. But her ego had taken a beating the last few months with the trial and Gray Fletcher’s perfidy. She felt stupid and incompetent and ugly in the knowledge that Gray had only pursued her so arduously to distract her from his shady dealings at her company—and that she had been idiot enough to fall for it.

  Harry Maxwell didn’t work for her, he didn’t want anything from her. He seemed as discomfited by the heat they generated as she was.

  At the same time, the fact that this gorgeous man was at least interested enough in her to kiss her out of the blue with such heat and passion was a soothing balm to her scraped psyche.

  He grabbed his boot and headed into the foyer. Though she knew his ankle had to be killing him, he barely limped as he headed up the stairs.

  Abigail would have followed him right upstairs with cold compresses and ibuprofen for his ankle, no matter what the stubborn man might have to say about it.

  But Anna wasn’t Abigail. She never could be. Yes, she might invite the man over to breakfast to make him feel more welcome in Cannon Beach and she might fill his room with guidebooks and put a little first-aid ointment on his scrapes.

  But Abigail had possessed unfailing instincts about people. She didn’t make the kinds of mistakes Anna did, putting her trust in the completely wrong people who invariably ended up hurting her....

  Though she knew he wouldn’t appreciate her concern, she waited until she heard the door close up on the third floor before returning to her living room.

  She closed the door and sagged into Abigail’s favorite chair, ignoring Conan’s interested look as she pressed a hand to her mouth.

  What just happened here? She had no idea a simple kiss could be so devastatingly intense.

  She had certainly kissed men before. She’d been engaged, for heaven’s sake. She had enjoyed those kisses and even the few times she and her fiancé had gone further than kisses.

  But she had always thought something was a little wrong with her in that department. While she enjoyed the closeness, she had never experienced the raw, heart-pounding desire, the wild churn in her stomach, that other women talked about.

  Until tonight.

  Just another reason why her reaction to a wounded soldier was both unreasonable and dangerous. She wanted to throw every caution to the wind and just enjoy the moment with him.

  How on earth was she going to make it through the next few months with him living just upstairs?

  Julia and the twins would be back in a week. Their presence would at least provide a buffer between her and Max.

  Whether she wanted it or not.

  * * *

  SHE DIDN’T SEE Max Saturday morning before she left for the store. His SUV was gone and the lights were off on the third floor, she saw with some relief as she backed her van out through a misting rain that clung to her windshield and shimmered on the boughs of the Sitka spruce around Brambleberry House.

  He must have left while she was in the shower, since his vehicle had been parked in the driveway next to hers when she returned with Conan from their morning walk on the beach earlier.

  She spent a moment as she drove to By-the-Wind wondering where he might have gone for the day. Maybe the Portland Saturday Market? That was one of her favorite outings when she had the time and she was almost certain this was the opening weekend of the season. But would Lieutenant Maxwell really enjoy wandering through stalls of produce and flowers and local handicrafts? She couldn’t quite imagine it.

  Whatever he had chosen to do with his Saturday was none of her business, she reminded herself. She only hoped he didn’t overdo.

  She had fretted half the night that he wouldn’t be able to get up and down the stairs with his ankle, that he would be trapped up on the third floor with no way of calling for help.

  It was ridiculous, she knew. The man was a trained army helicopter pilot who had survived a crash, for heaven’s sake, and she had no idea what else during his service in the Middle East. A twisted ankle was probably nothing to someone who had spent several months in the hospital recovering from his injuries.

  Her worry was obviously all for nothing. With no help whatsoever from her or Conan, he had managed to get down the stairs, obviously, and even behind the wheel of his vehicle.

  Since he was apparently mobile, she needed to stop worrying about the man, especially since she had a million other things within her control she could be stressing over.

  She barely had time to even think about Max throughout the morning. Helen Lansing, her wonderful assistant manager who led the weekly preschool story hour on Saturday mornings—complete with elaborate puppets and endless energy—called in tears, with a terrible migraine.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Anna told her as she mentally reshuffled her day. “Just go lie down in a quiet, dark room until you feel better. Michael and I can handle story hour.”

  The rain—or probably their parents’ cabin fever—brought a larger than average crowd to the story hour. It might have been not quite as slick and polished as Helen’s shows usually were but the children still seemed to enjoy it—and as a business owner, she certainly enjoyed the sales generated by their parents as they waited for their little ones.

  By the time the last child left just before lunch, she was ready for a little quiet.

  “I’ll be in the office for a few moments working on invoices,” she told Michael and Kae, her two clerks. “Yell if you need help.”

  She had just settled into her desk chair when her office phone rang. She didn’t recognize the number and she answered rather impatiently.

  “Sorry. Is this a bad time?”

  Her mood instantly lifted at the voice on the other end of the line. “Sage! No, of course it’s not a bad time. It’s never a bad time when you call. How are you? How are Eben and Chloe?”

  There was an odd delay on the line, as if the signal had to travel a long distance, though the reception was clear enough.

  “Wonderful. Guess where I’m calling from?”

  Eben owned a chain of hotels around the world and he and Sage frequently traveled between them, taking his daughter, Chloe.

  Last month Sage had called her from Denmark and the month before had been Japan.

  “Um, New York City?” she guessed.

  “A little farther south. We’re in Patagonia!”

  “Really? I didn’t know Spencer Hotels had a location down there.”

  “We don’t. But Eben’s considering it. He wants to capitalize on the high-end ecotourism trend so we’re scouting locations. Chloe is having a blast. Just yesterday we went horseback riding through scenery so incredible, you can’t imagine. You should have seen her up on that horse, just like she’s been riding her whole life.”

  Sage’s love for her stepdaughter warmed Anna’s heart. When she and Sage inherited Brambleberry House, she used to be so envious of Sage for her vivid, outgoing personality.

  Sage was much like Abigail in that every time she walked into a room, she walked out of it again with several new friends.

  Anna never realized until they had become close friends how Sage’s exuberance masked a deep loneliness.

  That was gone now. Sage and Eben—and Chloe—were genuinely happy together.

  “Sounds like you’re having a wonderful time.”

  “We are. And how are things there? What’s going on with the trial? I tried to call a few times last week to check in and got your voice mail.”

  “I know. I got your message. I’m sorry I haven’t called you back. I’ve just been busy...”

  Her voice trailed off and she sighed, unable to lie to her friend. “Okay, truth. I purposely didn’t call you back.”

  “Ouch. Screening my calls now?”

  “Of course not. You know I love you. I just... I didn’t really want to talk
about the trial,” she finally admitted.

  “That bad?”

  The sympathy in Sage’s voice traveled all the way across the phone line from Patagonia and tears stung behind her eyes.

  “Not at all, if you enjoy public humiliation.”

  “Oh, honey. I’m so sorry. I should have been there. I’ve been thinking all week that I should have just ignored you when you said you didn’t want either Julia or me to come with you. You’re always so blasted independent but sometimes you need to have a friend in your corner. I should have been there.”

  “Completely not necessary. We’re on the homestretch now. The defense should wrap up Monday, with closing arguments Tuesday, and a verdict sometime after that.”

  “I’m coming home,” she said after that short delay. “I should be there with you, at least for the verdict.”

  “You absolutely are not!”

  “You’re my friend. I can’t let you go through this on your own, Anna.”

  “I can handle it.”

  She would rather have her tongue chopped into little pieces than admit to Sage how very much she longed for her friends to lean on right now.

  “You handle everything. I know. And usually you do a marvelous job at it. But you shouldn’t have to bear this burden by yourself.”

  “If you cut short your dream trip to Patagonia with your family on my account, I will never forgive you, Sage Benedetto-Spencer. I mean it. You and Eben have already done more than enough.”

  “I should be there.”

  “You should be exactly where you are, horseback riding through incredible scenery with your husband and daughter.”

  Sage was silent for a moment and Anna thought perhaps the tenuous connection had been severed. “And you have to deal with a new tenant in the middle of all this, too. He’s arriving any day now, isn’t he?”

  She rolled a pencil between her fingers. “Actually, he showed up a few days ago.”

  “And...?” Sage prompted.

  “And what?” she said, stalling.

  “What’s he like?”