by Lori Foster
Jacki flopped back on the bed. “How did I know you’d ask that?”
“I’d like to think we’re still close.”
Jacki groaned. “So we’re not going to talk about Eve and Dean?”
It wasn’t any of their business, but…“Maybe later.” Right now, emotional and physical exhaustion pulled at Cam. She couldn’t think clearly. “I would have come for you, Jacki.”
“I know. But you had a full day. Why should you be responsible for me?”
Fierce protectiveness reared up inside Cam. “You’re my sister.”
“Yeah, sure. But I’m twenty-one, not twelve. Only a few years younger than you.” Jacki rose up on her elbows. “Do you realize that just because Mom and Dad died, you treat me like I’m fragile?”
Did she? Cam bit her lip, knowing that she did. But she loved Jacki so much that she didn’t ever want her to feel alone.
The way she often had.
“Dean’s a hoot.” Jacki bounded back off the bed and paced the confines of Cam’s midsized bedroom. As a night owl, Jacki was more awake now than at any other time of the day. “Talking to him isn’t like talking to other guys, though.”
“He’s your brother.” Cam gave up on her hair and pulled it into a damp, snarled ponytail. “We’ve never had any male relatives around and no close male friends. Naturally, Dean’s interaction with you would feel different from other men.”
“Right. I get that. But he’s a brother who doesn’t know us, Cam. He can’t possibly care about us.”
Cam didn’t know about that. After all, she barely knew him, but she cared. A lot.
A sudden hammering on the roof had them both going still.
“He found the hammer.”
Jacki grinned. “Sounds like. And I’d say he’s not cautiously tapping in tacks the way you do.”
They both winced when heavy footfalls sounded across the roof, and then more hammering.
A door banged open in the hallway. “What is going on?”
Jacki rolled her eyes. “Here we go with the drama queen.”
“Behave.” Pasting on a smile, Cam opened the door and stepped into the hall to greet her aunt. “I’m sorry we woke you, Aunt Lorna.”
At one end of the second floor, her aunt had the largest bedroom with her own private bath. Jacki and Cam had smaller rooms connected by a bathroom that they shared, at the other end.
Just outside her door, Lorna looked from one sister to the other, and her frown of anger turned to one of confusion. “If you’re both here, who’s on the roof?”
“Dean.”
Lorna’s face pinched, making her look…ridiculous. She slept with her hair in a cotton turban to protect her salon style. Expensive cream left her skin shiny, and small pieces of what appeared to be tape concealed the worst of her wrinkles.
Cam tried not to stare, she really did.
Jacki wasn’t so discreet. “Aunt Lorna, did you cut yourself shaving?”
Lorna’s tense gaze went to her. “What are you talking about?”
“You have little strips of surgical tape all over your face.”
Like a fresh pasty, Lorna puffed up. “Imbecile. A woman does not shave her face.”
Cam hid her grin. With the tape between her brows, over her upper lip, and at the corners of her eyes, shaving did sound absurd.
Jacki just frowned in mock concern. “Then why are you all taped up?”
“It’s a wrinkle treatment.”
Hoping to intercede before her aunt got truly angry, Cam stepped between the two of them. “Name-calling is childish, Aunt Lorna.”
An explosion seemed imminent.
Before Lorna could give voice to her anger, Cam added, “And you don’t have wrinkles, so why would you need that stuff?”
Lorna deflated suitably. “Don’t try to distract me. I want to know why that man is here.”
Jacki leaned around Cam. “That man is our brother.”
“Not that he cares! He made it clear that he—”
“That’s enough.” One way or another, Cam was determined to have Lorna accept Dean.
“No, young lady, it is not.” Lorna stormed down the hall toward Cam. “Why is he here at this ungodly hour?” she demanded. And before Cam could answer, she added suspiciously, “What is he telling you?”
“Telling me?” Her aunt made no sense.
Lorna shook a fist. “He’s here to meddle, to cause trouble, I tell you. You should never have allowed him into our lives. He’ll only—”
That did it. “He’s on the roof,” Cam shouted, charging forward three big steps. “In the rain, making repairs so that your bedroom doesn’t flood!”
“Well!” Lorna drew herself up. “You already put out a bucket to catch the drips. There was no need for him to do a thing. And why didn’t you call Roger instead? In case you’ve forgotten, he’s your fiancé.”
“Not yet, he isn’t,” Jacki insisted. “You keep forgetting that Cam hasn’t made him any promises at all. In fact, you’re the only one—”
Again trying to avoid a full-fledged argument, Cam caught Jacki’s arm and started for the stairs. “Go back to bed, Lorna.”
“I’m not done talking to you.”
Cam said over her shoulder, “Yes, you are.” Still dragging Jacki, Cam neared the open stairwell overlooking the main living area. Dean stood at the bottom of the stairs.
Dripping. Listening.
Oh God.
He sized Cam up in a single long look. “And I was worried that I’d make too much noise.”
He must have heard Lorna, not that Dean would show any reaction to it. As usual, he looked calm and in control—while she’d just been in a shouting match with her aunt.
Cam was so tired of false smiles, but she drummed up another one. “Dean, I didn’t realize you were done. I’ll have the coffee ready in a minute.”
His light brown eyes—eyes identical to her own—shifted over to Jacki. “I thought she was going to make it.”
“She and I were talking.”
Jacki slipped down the stairs past Cam. “I’ll do it.” When she neared Dean, she leaned in and said, “But if you lose all your chest hair from drinking it, you have no one to blame but yourself.”
He smiled.
Until he looked at Cam again. “You and I need to talk.”
“Of course.” He’d pushed his wet hair back and removed his sodden shoes, but his shirt clung to his wide chest. “You need to dry off first though. Let me get you a towel. And if you want, I can put your shirt in the dryer.”
He caught her arm before she could rush past him. She turned automatically and saw his cold gaze directed up the stairs—clashing with Lorna’s.
Now what?
“Show me where the leaks are in the house.”
Oh boy. “They’re, uh…mostly in Aunt Lorna’s room.”
“All right.” He started up the stairs and since he still held her, Cam could either cause a bigger scene by pulling away or go along with him.
She chose to go along.
Only Lorna didn’t move. She blocked the top of the stairs, and Cam didn’t know what would happen.
Dean stopped in front of her. Even one step below Lorna, he towered over her. He waited two heartbeats, then said, “Move.”
And she did just that.
Grumbling and complaining, Lorna sidled out of the way, but followed directly on their heels as Dean compelled Cam along, going the wrong direction in the hall.
She dug in her heels. “That’s where my and Jacki’s rooms are. Aunt Lorna’s room is this way.”
He glanced back at Lorna and smirked. “You took my parents’ room?”
“It was empty.” As if she immediately regretted those words, Lorna put a hand to her forehead. “It seemed best not to unsettle Jacki and Cam any further. They’d just lost their parents. Their rooms were familiar to them.”
Dean paused, looking toward the forth bedroom upstairs—across from Lorna’s room.
Realiz
ation brought a lump to Cam’s throat. She put her hand over his, where he clasped her arm. “That was your room?” The room that had been familiar to a nine-year-old little boy who’d also lost his parents.
It hurt so badly for her to think about it. How must it feel to him?
“Yeah.” Dean shook off the sentiment as if it had never been there. “Show me where the leaks are.”
Lorna trotted to get ahead of him. She stationed herself at the door, barring him from entering. “I don’t want you in my room.”
“Tough.” He turned to Cam. “Do you want the leaks fixed or not?”
“Fixed? As in actually repaired?” Surely he wasn’t offering to—
“Patching them every time it rains hasn’t helped, has it?”
Not even a little. Cam shook her head, but had to ask, “You saw my patches?”
Real humor lifted Dean’s mouth, and for a second there, he looked as if he might laugh. “Yeah. Pretty pathetic.” Then his gaze shifted to Lorna, and the humor vanished. “But at least you tried.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Lorna insisted. “We’re selling the house anyway.”
Dean chose to ignore her and instead turned back to Cam. “You need to reshingle the whole roof. It should have been done five years ago.” His eyes narrowed. “Of course, you were only eighteen then, probably still in high school.”
He deliberately baited Lorna, and Cam knew from experience where that’d go. “Everything seemed to break on the house at once.”
“That’s usually how it is, especially if no one maintains the property with regular upkeep.”
Propping his shoulder on the wall beside Lorna, Dean continued as if she didn’t stand there in a turban, wrinkle tape speckling her face, guarding her door against him.
“There are already two layers of shingles on there, and they’re in pretty bad shape, so we’re probably going to have to take them off.”
Surprise put a stranglehold on Cam’s throat. “We?” she squeaked.
“I need some physical activity to keep me in shape. And Jacki’s new sweetheart can help.”
Whoa. The squeak left in a hurry. Hands on her hips, Cam straightened. “Jacki has a sweetheart?”
“She didn’t tell you?”
“She said she had a story that she’d have to share with me later.”
“That’s probably it.”
Dean smiled again, and Cam got distracted with how handsome he looked when he let himself relax.
“Gregor ‘The Maniac’ Marsh,” he told her.
“Oh my God.”
Dean laughed. “He’s a fighter, Cam, like me.”
“Like you?”
“In the same organization but not as good as me. Since he’s trying to court me into a match, and trying to court your sister for the obvious reasons, we should be able to finagle his help.”
Cam went blank. So much to think about! Dean and Eve were having an affair; her sister was seeing someone called “The Maniac,” and her brother wanted to help her with her roof.
She opened her mouth, but nothing came out.
“That is totally unacceptable!” Lorna screeched. “It’s a ridiculous waste of money to do anything to the roof since we’re selling the house anyway.” She shoved herself away from the door. “Cam, you listen to me—”
The moment Lorna moved, Dean opened her door and moved inside her bedroom.
He’d barely taken two steps when he drew up short. A long, shrill whistle conveyed his shock.
Cam gave an apologetic shrug to her aunt and slipped inside, too. Dean stood staring at the fat bubble in the ceiling.
Since Cam had last seen it, it had doubled in size. “Wow. It’s like the blob, growing and growing.”
Dean looked down at the five-gallon bucket already half-full and shook his head. “You’re going to need something a whole lot bigger than that. And you’re going to need it fast.”
“Bigger?”
“A lot bigger. Like a tub or something. That bubble is getting heavier with water.” As Dean spoke, he picked up the bucket to empty it in Lorna’s bathroom. “It’s not going to hold much longer.”
Cam watched Dean disappear into her aunt’s bathroom. She looked back at the ceiling bubble, now as big as a basketball. Not good. Dashing out of the room and racing down the stairs, Cam headed for the kitchen.
Jacki said, “So you’re finally ready to join me?”
“Not yet!” She went into the laundry and rummaged around until she found a ten-gallon bucket. But nothing else appeared. “Jacki, find a bucket. Or two or three. Hurry. The ceiling is going to burst.”
“Lorna’s ceiling?”
“Yes.”
Jacki snorted as if she didn’t care.
“Jacki!” Cam paused to glare at her sister. “Dean is alone with Aunt Lorna in her bedroom.”
“Oh shit.” Jacki went past Cam, through the laundry room, and into the garage. She came back with two more buckets. Nothing too big.
It’d have to do.
A sudden uproar had them both cringing. They recognized Lorna’s shout of pure outrage.
But that other sound…
The sisters stared at each other for a split second before they dashed up the stairs, down the short hall, and into Lorna’s room.
They spotted Dean against the far wall, roaring with hilarity. He laughed so hard, that he couldn’t stand upright and instead slouched into the corner, the now-empty bucket dangling from his hand.
In the middle of the floor stood Lorna. She was soaked to the skin, her turban askew, her wrinkle tapes barely hanging on.
A nervous laugh escaped Jacki before she slapped a hand over her mouth.
Cam stared. “What happened?”
Dean couldn’t stop laughing long enough to answer.
Lorna, however, saw nothing humorous in the situation. She rolled her eyes toward the ceiling, and snarled, “Dean was right.” Turning her back on them all, she sloshed toward her bathroom. “The ceiling blew.”
CHAPTER 11
THE knock sounded just as Eve zipped up her favorite halter dress. It was flowery and feminine, made of soft georgette fabric that showed off her every curve. She stepped into her high-heeled sandals and, as she dashed to the front door, slipped her earrings into place.
It was too early for most people to come calling, so she opened the door with curiosity, then smiled in delight at her visitor. “Hey you.”
“Hey.” Dressed in jeans and a snowy white cotton T-shirt, Dean looked beyond her, ensuring they were alone. When none of her meddling family appeared, he slipped one arm around her waist and drew her close for a long, leisurely kiss. “Damn, woman, you taste even better than I remembered.”
Everything inside Eve went soft and jittery. “You, too.” Assuming he’d follow her in, she stepped away from the door. “But I’m sorry to say you caught me at a bad time. I have to be out the door in ten minutes.”
“That’s okay. I can’t stay anyway.” He trailed her into the kitchen. “I just wanted to apologize for running out on you last night.”
“You’re kidding, right?” She lifted her coffee cup for the last drink. No way could she start the day without caffeine. “I want you to spend time with your sisters, remember? In fact, I was hoping—”
He held up his hands. “Don’t go there.”
“Come on, Dean.” Smiling, feeling very giddy, Eve set her cup in the sink, went to him, and cupped his gorgeous, bruised face. Even freshly shaved, he looked tired—and so sexy she wanted to cancel her appointments and stay home with him. “I’m Cam’s best friend. You and I are sleeping together. It’s going to come up.”
His hand slid boldly onto her behind, nudging her into intimate contact with his body. “Now that you’ve told me what I wanted to know—that we didn’t just have a one-night stand—it’s already up.”
Laughing and swatting at him, Eve tried to wiggle away. He countered her every move with ease. “Dean,” she only half-complained.
�
��Eve.” Nuzzling her cheek, her jaw, he whispered, “I need to cancel our date for tonight.”
Disappointment crowded in. “I see.”
“I could come by tonight.” His damp tongue touched her ear, making her shiver. “Around nine or so.”
A cold dash of ice water wouldn’t have been so startling. He had to be kidding. Eve shoved back to see his face.
He looked serious enough. Of all the nerve!
Equal parts furious and hurt, she stated, “To get laid?” She curled her hands into fists. “That’s what you meant, right?”
His smile caused chaos to her already roiling senses. “Call me optimistic.”
Somehow his leg got between hers, and the next thing Eve knew, they were belly to belly, solid chest to soft breasts. Her heartbeat galloped in excitement.
Dean looked at her mouth. “You know you want me, too.”
She did, but pigs would fly before she made this easy on him. “Not happening, big boy, so forget it.”
His gaze came up to hers. “Wanna bet?”
Oh God, he sounded so damn sure of himself! Probably with good reason, too. Not that she’d cave. “Absolutely. How can I lose?”
“Hmmm.” He eyed her breasts displayed by the deep V of the bust-enhancing cups. “So what should we wager?”
To distract herself from the way he so easily seduced her, Eve said, “Whatever. You name it.”
Another dazzling smile. “All right, I will.”
She could get used to seeing him like this.
She could get used to him, period.
And here he was, already pulling away from her after only one night.
He pressed a soft, quick kiss to her mouth. “But first, I have to cancel because Cam’s roof is ready to cave in. Patching it isn’t going to help her this time. I’m heading to the car dealership to pick up my new lease, and then I’m heading to the hardware store to rent some tools and buy new shingles.”
Her lips parted in surprise. “You’re going to do the work?”
That odd, indifferent mask fell over his face. He lifted one heavy shoulder in a negligent shrug. “Why not? I used to do all kinds of construction with my uncle. I’m as good as she’d get if she hired it out, without costing her an arm and a leg. And since I’ve got some time off, I can have it done in a few days as long as the weather holds out.”