That Thing Called Love

by Susan Andersen

  * * *

  AUSTIN STOPPED DEAD where the lightly wooded path from the parking lot opened into the ballpark. He gaped at the scene in front of them. “Are you kidding me?”

  “Whoa.” Nolan looked as taken aback as he felt. Still, he turned to Austin and grinned, clearly happy to be out and about at last. “Good thing we’re still having summer preview weather, huh? Because it looks like everyone and their freakin’ brother turned out for—” his voice dropped into stentorian tones “—Jake Bradshaw Photo Day.”

  The entire town had been saying those exact words like wannabe sports announcers ever since the Razor Bay Blog had shouted, in bold-font headlines earlier in the week and again this morning, that National Explorer photographer Jake Bradshaw would be shooting the Bulldogs’ team pictures and yearbook. Nolan’s voice returned to its usual register. “WTF, man.” He stared at the dense mob swarming the stands. “Why are all those people jockeying for space on the bleachers?”

  “Beats the crap outta me. Except for a couple, I don’t see anyone who’s got zip to do with the team.” He shook his head. “I’ve never seen so many people in the stands!”

  “I know. You’d think team pictures were a spectator sport or something.”

  “Yeah.” Austin snorted. “We should get such a turnout at our games.” But he feared he might break out in an embarrassing giggle at any minute. Because for all his playing it cool, he was killer excited about today. And now that the initial shock was wearing off, he secretly got a charge out of the whole damn town being here. His dad was a big-deal photographer, he was taking their team photos and everyone wanted to see! How kickin’ was that?

  His stock at school had shot up ever since he’d brought in two issues of National Explorer Magazine and shown off the photos his dad had taken to the kids who had drawled a bored “So?” when he or someone else on the team had boasted that Jake was taking their pictures.

  But that wasn’t the only thing that had him pumped today. He was also beyond relieved at how happy he was to be hanging out with Nolan again. He knew he’d spent a lot of his friend’s bout with chicken pox wishing that it’d take its own sweet time clearing up. But now that Nolan had gotten the green light, Austin was totally jazzed. For a while he’d lost track of how good it felt to be around him.

  The thing he wasn’t looking forward to was having to come clean to his best friend about his feelings for Bailey. But he figured he owed him that.

  The question was, did he tell him before they got their pictures taken? Or after?

  Now, he decided, taking a deep breath. He was just gonna feel like dog crap until he did, so he might as well get it out of the way. He exhaled with gusto. “I got something to tell you.”

  “Yeah?” Nolan gave him an expectant look—and he chickened out.

  “Where’s your cousin? I thought she’d be here.”

  “She was on the phone with Aunt Debbie when I left, so Mom’s gonna bring her over.”

  “Cool.” Then he sucked in and blew out a breath. “I, uh...really like her.”

  “Sure.” Nolan shrugged. “Who doesn’t?”

  “No, I mean I really like her. Like in wanna-kiss-her like her.”

  Nolan stopped dead to stare at him. “You want to kiss her?”

  “Jeez, dude, keep your voice down.” He looked around to see if anyone was paying attention. Still, when he looked back at Nolan, he refused to backpedal like his inner chickenshit was screaming at him to do. He gave the other teen a jerky nod.

  Nolan was quiet for a moment. Then he, too, nodded. “Okay. I guess I sorta get that. I had a massive crush on her last year.”

  Austin felt his jaw sag and he firmed it up. “That’s perverted, dude. She’s your cousin!”

  “Oh, get a grip. It’s not like I wanted to make cross-eyed babies with her. But she’s pretty and funny and she plays baseball better’n half the guys I know. Plus, I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but she’s got boobies.” He raised his hands in a whataya gonna do gesture. “So, I wouldn’t have minded kissing her once or twice myself, ya know?”

  “Did you try?”

  “Nah. One day it just...I don’t know...no longer seemed like the best thing ever, the way it had up until then. The point is, though, for a while I did. So I get that you wanna.”

  Austin was grateful for Nolan’s easy acceptance—but also nursing a major case of discouragement that had been growing the past couple of days and dampening his mood. “Yeah, like I’ve got any chance of actually doing it,” he admitted glumly. He wanted it so bad he could taste it. At the same time, he had an equally strong fear of making a fool of himself. “I’ve been making myself crazy trying to figure out how to go about it.”

  “You oughta ask Jenny.”

  “What?” The question was rhetorical, however, and appalled, he stared at his friend. “I can’t ask her!”

  “Why not? She’s a girl—who better to know about these things?”

  “I just can’t. Dude, she’s...Jenny!”

  “I can’t help you, then, man, because that’s it—that’s all I’ve got.” He shook his head with a little glumness of his own. “Face it, unless there’s a spinning bottle involved, it’s not like I’ve had any success in the lip-lock department, either.”

  * * *

  “WHO THE HELL WOULD’VE THOUGHT I’d have to do crowd control at Little League picture day?”

  “Not me.” Jake looked up at Max from where he squatted next to the third-base coach’s box. He felt a little crowded by all the people tramping over the field and diamond. He hadn’t even started yet and already the damn circus playing out around him had his schedule messed up. “Pass me that gray bag.”

  “Where the hell is Jenny?” Max demanded, leaning down to snatch up the bag in question, then swinging it over to Jake. “I thought you blackmailed her into being your assistant.”

  “Good question. I expected her by now. Hell, I let her off the hook already when I took all the ad shots without her help.”

  “Well, there’s your problem right there.” His brother gave him a pitying look. “What kind of candy-ass blackmailer are you—you violated the first rule! Shit, Jake, demonstrate a weakness like that and you’ve blown any chance you ever had of controlling the sitch. I’m ashamed to call you broth...” His voice trailed away.

  Jake, who was arranging lenses on a piece of felt in the order he’d need them, had no trouble ignoring the critique on his blackmailing technique, but glanced up at the sudden silence.

  “Holy Jesus,” Max breathed, but since both his tone and expression were reverent as a monk’s seeing the Shroud of Turin, Jake guessed it wasn’t a blasphemy. “Who is that?”

  He followed the general direction of Max’s gaze, but too damn many people were trampling the ballpark to pinpoint who Max was staring at. “You’ll have to narrow it down for me a little,” he said drily. “Who’s who?”

  “The babe with Jenny.”

  That got his attention. “Jenny’s here?” He rose to his feet.

  “Yeah. Over there, see? Just this side of the path from the parking lot.”

  Narrowing his search, Jake locked in on her.

  “Woman’s a fucking goddess, right?” Max said.

  Jake’s head whipping around, his eyebrows slamming together, he gave his brother an incredulous stare. “Jenny?” What the hell was Max doing looking at the woman he’d warned him against?

  “What? No, you dumb shit. Her!” Max stabbed his forefinger in Jenny’s direction and for the first time Jake noticed the woman with her.

  “Oh. Wow.” Max was right. The mixed-race woman towering next to Jenny was a looker, if you went for the stick-up-the-ass exotic princess type.

  But his attention drifted back to the petite brunette at her side, and he watched Jenny look around the ground
s. When her eyes tracked in his direction, he set off the flash. It attracted her gaze and he raised an arm to cement her attention.

  She strolled over, the woman who had Max all hot and bothered—which was kind of a kick, now that he thought about it—at her side.

  Jenny flashed them both a friendly smile as she fetched up in front of them. “Hey, there. Sorry I’m late. I was showing Harper around the inn.” She laughed. “Where are my manners—let me introduce you. Harper, this is Jake Bradshaw, the reason today’s turnout is such a spectacle, and his brother, Max Bradshaw—”

  “Half brother,” Max interrupted, and Jake gave him a shot to the shoulder. He put some power behind his fist, too, but Max, being Max, didn’t even rock back on his heels.

  “Time to let it go, bro,” Jake said.

  Max merely hitched a big shoulder, and Jenny picked up as smoothly as though there’d been no interruption, “—Jake’s half brother, Max, who is Razor Bay’s favorite deputy. Jake, Max, meet Harper Summerville, The Brothers’ brand-new fun and games director.”

  “Seriously?” Jake stared at Jenny. “You’re honest-to-God calling her the fun and games director?”

  “Okay, fine. She’s our summer activities coordinator.” She shot him a speaking glance from between narrowed lashes. “If you have to be so damn literal about it.”

  Harper laughed, and Jake noticed it totally negated his first impression of her. That cool-princess vibe disappeared beneath a truckload of warmth.

  “She can call me whatever she wants,” the woman said in a blues-singer-smooth contralto. “I’m just excited to get to work here. It’s a great area. Hi.” She offered her hand to first Jake, who was nearest, then Max. “It’s nice to meet you both.” Letting go of Max’s hand a moment later, she patted his forearm where he’d pushed back his uniform sweater, snatched her hand back rather quickly, Jake thought, but then gave Max a megawatt smile.

  “Goodness. If all the men in Razor Bay are as big as you two, there must be one heck of a growth hormone in the water.”

  Jake laughed, but to his surprise, Max not only didn’t crack so much as a smile, he merely gave the woman he’d all but been drooling over a clipped nod.

  “Ma’am,” the idiot said, as if he’d just written her up and was handing back her license and registration along with a spanking-new parking ticket.

  Harper’s we-are-not-amused princess vibe made a red-hot reappearance, and Jenny, shooting Max a look as perplexed as Jake felt, said hastily, “Well, listen, I’m going to see if Tasha showed up with the rest of the town so I can introduce her to Harper. Then I’ll be back to give you a hand with the photos.”

  “It was nice meeting you, Harper,” Jake said. His socially inept brother gave her another, if this time fractionally less stiff, nod and said again, “Ma’am.”

  Jake watched the two women walk away. Then he turned and smacked the back of Max’s head with his palm. “Ma’am? What the fuck, man?”

  Max shoved his hands in his jeans pockets, his muscular shoulders hunched. “I know. I’m not very good with women like that.”

  A bark of laughter escaped Jake. “Ya think?”

  “Fine, all right?” Max said sullenly. “I suck when it comes to them. You happy now?”

  “Why?”

  “Well, let me think—because you live to see me cut off at the knees?”

  “No, you ass—why do you suck with women like her?” And just what did his big bro consider women like her, anyway?

  Max shrugged, but Jake had a sudden flash of his brother’s perpetually unhappy-looking mother. When they were kids, he’d been pleased as punch to see someone giving Max a rash. It had never occurred to him to wonder what her problem was—or how it affected Max. Now he did.

  “You used to do okay,” he said. “I remember you strutting around with Judy Ziegler tucked under your arm. Man—” he shook his head, remembering

  “—she had like the best tits of any girl in school.”

  “And the T-shirts and sweaters to showcase ’em.” Max cracked a reminiscent smile.

  One that was all too brief. “I don’t have a problem with the flash girls,” he said. “They make it easy by doing all the talking—even if it is all about stuff that you don’t really care about. That’s a trade-off, since they don’t seem to mind all that much if you’re not real good with the chitchat shit.”

  His gaze sought out Harper across the field, where she stood with ramrod posture talking to Jenny and Tasha. Jake watched Max’s frustrated interest as he watched her.

  “The silver-spoon girls are different,” his brother said without taking his eyes off the apparently fascinating Ms. Summerville. “They freeze me up every time.”

  An altercation broke out over in the stands, and Jake witnessed the relief scudding across Max’s expression.

  But his brother merely said gruffly, “Damn that Wade. When’s he going to get it through his head that Mindy is well and truly married to Curt? Five’ll get you ten he came straight here from the Anchor, too.”

  “And that never helps.”

  “No shit. I’d better go intercept him before Curt decks him and I’ve got to arrest the pair of them.” He strode off, happy, no doubt, to be out of the “feelings” biz and back in his natural element.

  Jenny returned a few minutes after Max’s departure and promptly began organizing the boys—and Bailey, whom the coach and team had insisted on including—first for the team photos, then their individual ones. In the lags between shooting the latter, some of the adults he’d already photographed for the album stopped by to exchange pleasantries.

  Jake found he was enjoying himself every bit as much as he did on professional shoots.

  He didn’t know why that should make him uneasy when he thought about it again later that night, after Jenny had slipped from his bed to go back to her own. But as he lay there, hands stacked behind his head, staring up at the ceiling, he acknowledged it did. So he switched his focus to Jenny, wondering when they could get together again and what he’d do to her when they did.

  But that just made him scowl. Because for some damn reason, her apparent contentment with the strictly sexual arrangement they had going itched under his skin like a bad rash. He refused to dig too deeply into the reasons why.

  Hell, she was giving him exactly what he demanded in a relationship. And if this one felt different from the rest—well, he knew better than to trust all these emotions roiling beneath his surface. Bradshaw men just didn’t do the happily-ever-after thing. They didn’t settle down—and after his didn’t-last-a-month-beyond-the-I-do’s with Kari, he for one had never been tempted to profess undying love to any woman.

  Yet, okay, he was tempted with Jenny. And he could almost, maybe, see himself professing.

  Realizing where his woolgathering had taken him, he felt his heart pound as a cold sweat filmed his skin. Think of something else, think of something else.

  Okay, how about this? Today at the ballpark, for practically the first time ever, he hadn’t wished he was anywhere but in Razor Bay, Washington.

  Somehow the realization didn’t do a damn thing to calm him.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  “I GUESS YOU’VE PROBABLY kissed, like, a million girls in your life, huh?”

  Jake looked up from the line he was untangling. He and Austin had been lazily trolling the canal in one of the inn’s small aluminum outboard boats. Austin had chosen it because, he said, it was better than his Bayliner for fishing, a sport at which Jake didn’t exactly shine. His kid knew what he was doing, though, and had taught him a trick or two, a fact that seemed to tickle him no end. “Nowhere close. But I guess you could say I’ve kissed my fair share.”

  “Yeah?” Austin grunted. “So, how old were you the first time?”

  His overly casual gaze made Jake’s newl
y developed dad warning system go off in silent alarm. Oh, man, he thought as he baited the hook with a fresh herring and dropped the now straightened-out line overboard. It had to be the girl, Bailey, that Austin had been spending so much time with. He fit the pole in its holder, rinsed his hands in the frigid canal and met his son’s eyes. “I don’t remember exactly. Around your age, I think.”

  “You were probably pretty dope at it, huh? Knew ’zactly what to do?”

  He snorted. “You kidding me? I wasn’t what you’d call a natural. The fishing you’re teaching me? I’m better at it than I was at kissing.”

  Austin winced. “Oh, man. Not good.”

  “Tell me about it. We bumped noses, our teeth clashed. But funny thing—Mary Beth Brimmyer didn’t seem to notice my less than smooth moves.” He gave his son a wry smile. “Probably because she didn’t have any more experience than I did. Still, we both enjoyed ourselves. And little by little, with each other, and over time with other partners, we improved.” He bounced his fist off his chest. “I’m like king of the good kissers these days, if I do say so myself.”

  Some of the tension went out of Austin’s shoulders. “How did you make your move the first time?”

  A corner of his mouth quirked up. “Oh, I was suave, kid. You’d do well to take notes on this.”

  His son sat straighter in his seat, and Jake continued, “We went to a movie in Silverdale. My mom drove us, which was kind of lowering, but—hello!—thirteen.”

  Austin made a whatcha gonna do face.

  “I bought Mary Beth popcorn and a Coke and waited for the theater to go dark and the movie to get under way. Then I made my move.”

  “How?”

  “I did the prestretch warm-up so I could get my arm up in the air. You know, like this—” Faking a yawn, he raised his hand to his mouth and brought his elbow up. “Then, just as I was starting to straighten it out so I could casually drop it over her shoulder, I caught her right in the ear with the pointy end.” He tapped his elbow. “Made her spill half her popcorn.”