by Tawna Fenske
Or maybe I’m freaking out about the smoke, which isn’t as thick as I expected from the way Sean was yelling back at my office. He’s behind us, too, and the three of us skid to a halt in the dining room as Mark lumbers from the hallway with a fire extinguisher in one hand.
“Fucking smoke detector,” he mutters.
“You got the fire out?” I hate how breathless I sound, how unlike my in-control self.
“No fire,” he growls. “Your smoke alarm—which, by the way, is the loudest, most annoying, screaming piece of shit on the face of the—”
“I upgraded to the museum-grade system.” I jerk a hand toward my living room, which is packed to the gills with Bracelyn family heirlooms. “I’m the one who got stuck with all the priceless antique shit, and I didn’t want anything to happen to it.”
Sean peers around our late grandmother’s 18th century Jacobean style hutch. “Hey, is that Uncle Max’s antique brass spittoon?”
I grit my teeth so hard my molars give a squeak of protest. “Could someone please tell me what the hell is happening here?”
It’s then that I spot the silver Fabergé ashtray in Mark’s hand.
The same fucking ashtray our father has been using to dispose of his unlit cigars, which I know damn well weren’t always unlit.
Mark holds it out to me. “This was smoldering,” he says. “And you left it on the tall file cabinet like a goddamn imbecile, which just happens to be two feet from the fucking smoke alarm sensor.”
I take the ashtray because I can’t think of anything else to do. Mark and Sean are both staring at me, but it’s Lily’s gaze that catches mine. She somehow managed to fasten the top buttons on her dress in the time it took to sprint across the resort property, though her lips are still kiss-swollen, and her red hair is wild and tousled. God, she looks sexy. Lush and beautiful and—
“Yo, big brother.” Sean waves a hand in front of my face, snapping my attention back to them. “You doing okay?”
“Yeah. Yes, of course.” I clear my throat. “Thank you both for—for taking care of things.”
“No problem.” Mark glances at Lily, then glares at Sean. “What’d you do, interrupt him while he was getting laid?”
Sean rolls his eyes. “Way to be discreet, asshole.”
“Discreet?” Mark snorts. “They could hear the goddamn smoke alarm two counties over. I think we’re way past fucking discreet.”
“Hey, what’s going on?” The four of us turn as Jonathan ambles through the front door we left wide open. “Sounded like a flock of seagulls getting run over by a fire engine.”
“Close,” Mark mutters. “Numb-nuts here tried to set his house on fire.”
I sigh and resist the urge to slug Jonathan in the arm for the whoopee cushion. “Fuck you very much for the gift you left in my office.”
His laugh is exactly like our father’s, but warmer. “Burning down the resort seems like a harsh response, but okay.”
My temples are throbbing, and it occurs to me I need to regain control of the situation. I glance at Lily, fully expecting my heart-rate to spin into overdrive again. But she smiles, and honest to god, my shoulders relax and my breathing slows.
I turn back to face my brothers. “Thank you so much for your help.” I extend a hand to Mark, who stares at it like I’ve offered to wipe his ass with my knuckles.
I should hug him, shouldn’t I?
The guy once rescued his mother from a house fire, and still has scars to prove it. Hearing that alarm probably scared the shit out of him, but he ran into the smoke instead of away from it.
I damn sure owe him more than a handshake.
“Thank you.” My chest is tight as I step forward and offer a stiff bro hug. It’s like wrapping my arms around a goddamn redwood, but Mark hugs back, clanging the back of my knee with the fire extinguisher while I thud the ashtray against his back.
“Hey, I should be part of the hugging.” Jonathan jumps in from the side, looping his arms around both of us. “I’m staying in the cabin right behind you, so I could have died, too.”
“No one could have died,” I grumble from the tangled mess of my brothers’ limbs. Why is no one letting go? “It was just smoke.”
“Aw, shit, I need in on this.” Sean launches himself at our awkward knot of limbs, and the four of us embrace like it’s a halftime huddle.
“Beautiful.” Lily breaks into mock applause, then whips out her phone and snaps a photo. “Something for the family album.”
I clear my throat and step back, not sure where we go from here. I turn to Mark, since he’s the one looking the most rattled. “Seriously, man—thanks. I owe you one.”
“You don’t owe me jack,” he says. “Just don’t leave any more flaming shit next to your smoke alarm.”
“Noted.” I nod at Sean. “Thank you for alerting me. I’ll see if I can do something about the sound levels on the smoke detector.”
“Just don’t set it off again, dumbass.” He claps me on the back, then trudges toward the door with Mark ambling behind him. “And that includes those smoldering looks you keep shooting poor Lily.”
Jonathan laughs, then extends his hand to Lily. “Jon,” he says, grinning as he shakes her hand and flashes his damn dimples. “No one formally introduced us at the wedding.”
“Wasn’t it a gorgeous ceremony?” Her smile is normal enough, but the tiny glance she throws me brims with meaning. “I spent the whole time running around like a chicken with my head cut off, so I didn’t get to meet everyone. Bridesmaid duties kept me hopping.”
My brother laughs. “So did your generous efforts to corral my drunk idiot brother.” He slugs me in the shoulder, then dodges back toward the door before I can retaliate. “See if you can help yank the stick out of his ass, will you?”
Lily tucks her hands into the pockets of her dress as she calls out to him. “I’ll do my best.”
He picks up the pace to catch Mark and Sean but can’t resist throwing one last zinger over his shoulder. “I’ve been working on it for thirty years, but I suspect you’re better suited for the job.”
The door slams before I can say anything. I’m alone at last with Lily, though the circumstances are less than ideal. I glance down at the ashtray, which reveals no telltale cigar stub. It’s just a puddle of ash that could have been a candle or incense or—
“Any idea what started it?” Her voice is sweet and curious, and I can’t bring myself to lie to her.
“Cigar.” I move past her into the kitchen and set the ashtray in the sink. Turning the taps, I run water into it until there’s no evidence left of my father’s crime.
If only.
I turn off the tap and pivot to face her. “Sorry about that.”
“No problem.” She smiles. “Did you need to check and make sure there wasn’t any damage?”
Shit. That’s what a normal person would do, right? And it’s not like I didn’t go over the place with a fine-toothed comb this morning after running my dad to the airport, making damn sure the bastard didn’t leave anything behind.
Obviously, I missed the ashtray. Who the hell leaves it on top of a freakin’ file cabinet?
Lily’s looking at me expectantly, and it dawns on me there’s a reason she’s hoping to stick around. That maybe she wants to continue where we left off in my office. I want that, too, so damn much my chest aches. But—
“I can go.” She takes a step toward the door and smiles. “Seems like we kinda lost the mood, so we can pick things up again later.”
“Lily, wait.” I move after her, catching her hand in mine. “Stay. Please, I want you to stay.”
They’re the most honest words I’ve spoken in a long time, and they have nothing at all to do with wanting to get her naked.
The smile that spreads over her beautiful face is full of sunshine, which is something I’ve been missing in my life. “Okay,” she says. “But not because I want to get into your pants. I just want a tour of your house.”
Go
tta admire her bluntness. I crook my arm and offer a courtly bow. “Right this way, madam.”
Laughing, she loops her arm through mine and lets me lead her through the dining room. “We all built cabins on the property before the resort opened,” I explain as we move into the den. “Brandon—he’s my cousin on our dad’s side—he did a ton of the work. His cabin’s right behind mine, but he moved to the reindeer ranch with Jade after they got engaged.”
“That’s where Jonathan’s staying?” she asks.
“That’s right,” I say. “It’s mostly just a guest cabin now. Same with Bree’s place, since she moved in with Austin.”
“Thoughtful of them to hook up with neighbors,” she says. “Very convenient.”
“Yes, it’s Bracelyn family policy to consider the business advantages when choosing spouses.” My words come out more deadpan than I mean them to, and I open my mouth to tell her I’m kidding.
But her laughter saves me the trouble. “You certainly think of everything,” she says. “Mark and Sean are staying put on site?”
“Yeah. Their jobs require them to be here at the resort at odd hours, and their wives were both good with living here.”
“Must be interesting.” She leans back against the solid walnut trestle table that once lived in my father’s Palm Beach penthouse, and absurdly I wonder how many beautiful female butts have graced its glossy surface. “I imagine it’s strange watching all your siblings pair up like it’s Noah’s ark, but knowing you don’t want that for yourself.”
With any other woman, I’d think she was testing me. That she was gauging my commitment to sticking with no marriage.
But it’s Lily, and it’s written plainly on her face that she’s not after anything. She’s as certain as I am that she doesn’t want more, so I don’t read anything else into the question.
“A little,” I admit. “I’m happy for them. Bree, Sean, Mark—it’s been great seeing them meet their matches, fall in love, all that crap.”
She smiles and trails her fingers over the hand-carved vines on the edge of the table. “You’re a real romantic, Bracelyn.” Her fingers keep tracing the carvings, and the balled-up knot in my chest tightens for no reason I can fathom.
Noticing my eyes on her hands, she looks down. “This table’s gorgeous,” she says. “Antique?”
I nod slowly. “Eighteenth century,” I say. “Solid walnut, hand-carved. It belonged to my great-great-great grandmother.”
She leans down to study the base of the table, and I try to see it through her eyes. The urn-form pedestals, the intricate lace of vines carved into the apron, the old-world craftsmanship. “Very nice. French Provincial?”
“That’s right.” I order myself to stop staring at her ass as she bends down for a closer look at the hand-carved paw feet. “You know furniture?”
“A little.” She straightens back up, eyes flashing with amusement when I’m not quick enough to pull my gaze from her backside. “I help my grandma around the antique shop sometimes, so I’ve learned a few things.”
Her gaze sweeps past me into the living room, and I’m mesmerized by her gray eyes flitting from one piece to the next. The early twentieth century Louis Vuitton steamer trunk, the set of sterling silver Tiffany demitasse spoons in a glass case, the Belgian Renaissance bar cabinet. “These are all family heirlooms?”
“Yes.” I clear my throat and turn to take it all in. “We all got to choose the things we wanted from our dad’s estate after—” my breath stalls, snatched by the ache of lying to her, and I have to force the words out. “After our father’s funeral.”
Sympathy clouds her eyes, like she blames my verbal fumble on grief instead of the fact that I’m a lying sack of shit. She rests a hand on my arm. “You don’t have to talk about it if it’s too raw.”
“No, it’s okay.” I clear my throat. “There were a few things Mark wanted—an antique Hungarian carpenters’ bench that belonged to our father, some tools and stuff. Sean picked out a couple chairs and some art he wanted, and Bree did the same. But most of it, no one claimed.”
“Really?” Her brow furrows. “I guess everyone has their own style.”
“It wasn’t that so much,” I say. “Our father had a dozen different homes, and all of them had their own collections of heirlooms. There were so many antiques, and we couldn’t possibly keep them all.”
“But you volunteered to take the biggest chunk?”
Volunteered. That’s an interesting way to put it, and the way her gray eyes are watching me suggests she sees a lot more than I wish she did.
I shrug and glance away. “I couldn’t stand the thought of it ending up in some junk shop.” I shrug again, such a futile gesture. “I couldn’t take all of it, obviously. But this cabin’s pretty big, and it’s just me here, so—” I trail off, not sure where else to go with that.
I’d almost forgotten Lily’s hand on my arm until she gives my bicep a soft squeeze. “So you’re the sentimental one,” she says. “The keeper of your family’s memories. Somehow, that doesn’t surprise me.”
It doesn’t?
Because it shocks the shit out of me.
No one else has ever surveyed my house brimming with priceless antiques and drawn that particular conclusion. Not even my brothers and sister, and they’re the closest people to me in the whole world.
She’s watching me with an intensity that makes my chest burn, so I clear my throat. “Maybe I just like to surround myself with expensive antiques.”
“Do you?”
“Not really.” I glance away, feeling too exposed under the brightness of her gaze. “But I love my family. And I feel an obligation to hold on to this stuff for them.”
She gives one more arm squeeze before letting go. “Come on. Show me the rest of the place.”
As she trails away from me, she pauses to pat my ass. It is simultaneously the sweetest and sexiest gesture she could have chosen, and I stumble over my own libido as I lead her through the living room and down the hall. We pause to admire the antique sideboard, the 17th century Flemish baroque still life my grandfather bought it at an art auction the year I was born. Lily steps ahead of me and pauses at the threshold of my office.
“Oh. My. God.” She claps a hand over her mouth and points through the doorway.
Panic blasts through me like an icy rocket. My father. He left something behind, or worse, he’s here. He’s got his feet propped on my desk and a cigar in his mouth as he—
“You have a zebra.” Lily bounces twice on her heels, then rushes through the doorway. I trail behind her, releasing a breath I didn’t know I was holding.
“Um, yeah.” My heart thuds in my ears, and I grip the doorframe as Lily bounds over to the antique carnival monstrosity that’s mounted in the corner. “Definitely a zebra.”
“Holy shit. A freakin’ life-sized zebra.” She strokes a hand down its back and up the gilded pole that mounts it from floor to ceiling. When she turns back to face me, awe fills her eyes. “Of all the things I expected to see in your home, this wasn’t one of them.”
“What did you expect to see?”
She quirks an eyebrow at me. “A motorized tie rack.”
“Got one.”
“Of course you do.” She steps around the zebra, palm grazing the muscular haunches. “Let’s see…I expected you to have one of those fancy, rich guy wet bars stocked with all kinds of jillion dollar spirits.”
Hell. “It’s at the end of the hall,” I admit.
She moves around to the other side of the zebra, bright eyes surveying the ripple of carved mane and the rainbow-painted hues of the bridle. “I figured you’d have one of those sex dungeons filled with designer flogging tools and some crazy-ass handcuff rack straight out of Fifty Shades.”
I fight hard to keep a straight face. “I’m saving that for the remodel.”
Lily grins, her focus still on the zebra. “Seriously, what’s the story on this?”
“It’s a 1905 Gustav Dentzel carnival
antiquity.” I step forward to join her, trailing my fingers over its mane. The ridges are familiar braille under my fingers, though I haven’t done this in years. “It was salvaged from a carousel in Paris.”
My arm brushes the edge of her breast as she moves past me, and I try to decide if it’s an accident. Her gaze lifts to mine, and she smiles. “The eyes are so lifelike.”
“The glass was imported from Italy,” I tell her. “My father had them custom made.”
She’s so close I can see my breath rustling the fringe of hair along her neckline. I could lean in now and kiss that fragrant spot right behind her ear, catching her with an arm around her waist.
How would she respond?
Her eyes flicker like she’s just read my thoughts. “Tell me more.”
I don’t know if we’re talking about the zebra or what I want to do to her right now, but I force myself to keep it together and focus on the real conversation instead of the one throbbing in the back of my head. “The zebra was part of a carousel in Paris that was dismantled in 1918,” I tell her. “It sat in a warehouse for more than fifty years before my father bought it at an art auction.” I’m embarrassed to say how much the damn thing appraised for, so I don’t.
“It’s in unbelievably good shape.” She’s not looking at the zebra, she’s looking at me. The hunger in her eyes is so palpable that I stop fighting my own urge to let my own gaze wander every delicious inch of her body.
Her bare arms are long and tan, her breasts rounding out the front of that dress. Legs, Christ, I could write a sonnet about those legs, and I’m not even positive I remember what a sonnet is.
Everything about Lily Archer is so beautifully put together that I want to stroke my palms over her from shoulder to calf like she’s a statue made of priceless granite. But I know for a fact she’s the opposite of that, warm and lush and—
“Don’t you just want to jump on it?”
I stop breathing. “What?”
She smiles like she knows damn well what I was thinking. “The zebra. Do you ever ride it?”
“I—no. That never occurred to me.”
“Seriously?” She pats its haunches. “Oh—is it not sturdy enough?”