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If a person was trying to impress, this room would probably not forward their cause. But Jessica could not remember the last time she had felt the need to be anything but herself.
She had left that painful teenage world—full of angst, self-doubt and pain—so far behind her that it was easy to imagine it had never existed.
Until a six-foot-something reminder appeared in her driveway. She was pretty sure that was even the same truck.
“Why did you bring O’Henry here?” she asked the girl, keeping every hint of her resentment for Brian’s unexpected and unwelcome reappearance in her life from her voice.
The child reminded her of a bird with a broken wing, hurt and fear broadcasting past the mask she had painted on her face.
“My uncle said he had seen you do a miracle once.” Her voice was more that of a child who still believed in the impossible than a young woman who had lost so much.
A miracle? How could Brian bring this poor sweet, damaged child here with such an expectation?
Despite her irritation with him, Jessica kept her tone light. “If I had those kind of powers, I would have turned your uncle into a toad.”
The girl regarded her steadily, and then asked, deadpan, “You mean you didn’t?”
Despite the gravity of the situation, or maybe because of it, a little giggle escaped Jessica. And then Michelle. And then they were both laughing.
“Hey, I don’t find that funny.”
Which, of course, only made them laugh harder.
Brian tried to look insulted, but Jessica could tell he was relieved to hear his niece laugh. She didn’t like the small ripple of tenderness this made her feel for him.
How nice it would be if he just remained the black-hearted popular boy who had promised to call the school’s worst social misfit and then reneged.
But he seemed so much more human now, than he had been then, far less godlike. His eyes, in the light of her kitchen, had a deep sorrow in them. And it was evident, from the sideways glance at his niece and the puppy, where those furrows on his forehead were coming from.
He had lost his brother and his sister-in-law and had become an instant parent to a teenager. Life extracted revenge, but somehow she found no comfort in the fact that he had suffered.
Jessica cleared a space at her table and made a nest for the puppy in an old towel. Michelle crowded close to her. “The vet told me he didn’t want to live,” she whispered, and Jessica glanced at her to see her shoulders hunching. Her voice cracked as she continued, “How could he not want to live when I love him so?”
If only love had the power to make things as a person wished, Jessica thought, and despite herself sent a sideways look at Brian.
Years ago, as a lonely high school senior who had fit in nowhere, she had fallen in love with popular, gorgeous Brian Kemp. But all the force of that love could not persuade him to do the thing he had promised. One small phone call.
A chance. She had been sure that, if given a chance to show him who she really was, he would love her. Instead, he had loved Lucinda Potter, or so it had seemed from the hungry kisses Jessica had witnessed them exchanging behind the Coke machine in the main foyer.
Instead, she reminded herself briskly, he had given her the best of opportunities. She had learned very young that she would have to love herself. No prince riding in on a white charger could make her life wonderful, she would have to do it. And she had done just that.
And now, she had to share some of that wonder with this troubled young girl and never mind the man who had brought her.
“The vet was wrong,” Jessica said firmly. “Every creature wants to live. Even a bug.”
“That’s what I thought,” Michelle said, her voice stronger.
Jessica closed her eyes and tried to clear her mind. It was a more difficult task than normal. Her kitchen seemed far too tiny with Brian’s bulk in it. Over the powerful scents of mint and sage, she could feel his restlessness and detect his presence.
Powerful. Masculine.
She opened her eyes to see him prowling restlessly, looking at her plants and jars with a scowl on his face.
“Brian, why don’t you wait outside for a minute?”
Rather than looking insulted, he looked relieved. She felt his energy leave the room with him.
She composed herself after he left by taking a deep steadying breath. She held her hands above the small, dangerously-close-to-death dog. Slowly, her mind emptied of all thought and filled with pure and brilliant light, a spectrum of colors, dancing. Her fingertips began to tingle. All else faded, except the energy moving between her and the puppy.
Finally, she opened her eyes and gazed down at the little dog. She touched him with great and reverent affection.
“Is he going to live?” Michelle asked.
“I don’t know,” she said, unwilling to give the girl false hope. “But there are a few things I’d like to try. I’ll give him some of this.” She chose a small jar from a case of them and squeezed a few drops into his mouth.
“Is that like medicine?” Michelle asked.
“Something like that. We’ll pick some fresh herbs from the garden and make him his own concoction.”
Brian was outside, sitting on her favorite bench. Someday, there would be a small pond there. The rocks and mortar waited there for her to find the time and the energy to undertake such a big project.
Meanwhile, Jessica could only hope the memory of his sitting there—his handsome face lifted to the sun, his hair touched by the wind, his posture so relaxed—was not going to spoil that spot for her.
He didn’t appear to notice them, and so she took Michelle to her herb garden and began to pick, explaining each plant carefully to the surprisingly eager young student.
“Well?” he said, coming up behind them, quiet and graceful for such a large man.
“It’s too soon to say,” Jessica said, with a shrug. “I’d like to keep him for a day or two.”
“What’s wrong with him? What can you do for him that the vet couldn’t?”
“There are many possibilities,” she said stiffly. Why had he come here if he planned to scoff and be cynical? “You are, of course, free to take him back to the vet if you want.”
“No!” Michelle said, and gave Brian a look that could have stripped paint. “The vet wanted to put him to sleep.”
He looked between the two of them, and Jessica had the feeling he was deciding she and Michelle made a dangerous combination. Her suspicion was confirmed by his next words.
“Michelle, how about if we leave O’Henry with Jessica? We’ll come back in a day or two and see how he’s doing.” He correctly interpreted the black look he was being given by his niece. “Of course, we’ll phone.”
It was written on his face that he was sorry he had ever come here, a regret that Jessica mirrored exactly. Her life was so nice, now. Predictable. Stable.
A man like Brian Kemp could turn that upside down without half-trying.
She waited for him to take his niece and go, but to her be-musement Michelle folded her arms over her chest and planted her legs in a fashion that gave her a surprising amount of presence.
“I’m not leaving.”
He ran a hand through his hair, looking at his watch. “Look, Michelle, I have to be at work in an hour, okay?”
“I’m not going anywhere,” the child announced, her resemblance to her uncle pronounced with her face set in those stubborn lines. “I’m staying right here with O’Henry. And Jessica.”
Chapter Two
“Get in the truck.” Brian’s voice was low and dangerous. Jessica had heard he was a policeman in Victoria; his voice held deep and unquestionable authority.
His niece, however, looked unimpressed. “No.” Jessica knew now would be a good time to insert herself in the argument and tell Michelle she had to leave with her uncle. But she was no saint and to see the man who had humiliated her suffer at the hands of his headstrong niece was just a little bit satisfying.
In fact, Jessica had to stifle a laugh after seeing the look on Brian’s face. He obviously wanted nothing more than to pick up his ninety-pound niece and toss her in the truck. The lines of his face were chiseled with irritation. On any other man it might have marred his good looks, but not on Brian. With his brows lowered like that, and the line of his mouth grim, he had the look of a warrior.
Still, under the fierce mask, Jessica sensed something rather astonishing. Brian was purely, helplessly baffled. Despite the fact that he looked like the most self-composed man ever born—one who could handle anything life threw at him—he was at a total loss when it came to dealing with his five-foot-one-inch niece.
Tell Michelle to go with her uncle, Jessica ordered herself. She wanted Brian out of her space, the quicker the better. On the other hand, she didn’t feel inclined to make his life any easier, wonderful life lessons owed to him aside. Surely it wouldn’t hurt to stay on the sidelines and let them settle their own argument? Finding his helplessness mildly entertaining was only human, not mean-spirited.
“You can’t just stay here with a complete stranger,” Brian said to Michelle, “Not that you’ve been invited. And I have to go to work. So, march.”
“She’s not a complete stranger,” Michelle said.
On very short acquaintance Jessica knew Michelle to be the girl least likely to march anywhere, but she offered no comment.
“I don’t know the first thing about her,” he said, his patience obviously thinning even more. A muscle working in his jaw showed the fine, strong line to perfect advantage.
His niece was just as obviously not about to be intimidated by the facts, or by him. “You do so know the first thing about her. You knew where she lived. You knew her name. You knew…”
“Nothing important about her,” Brian interrupted, aggravated.
“Like what?” Michelle asked, her voice challenging.
The debate raged in the darkness of his eyes—reason with her, or put her in a choke hold? Reason won out, but not by much. It was evident he was not a man accustomed to having his authority questioned.
“I don’t even know if she’s married. I don’t know what she does for a living,” Brian said.
Jessica pondered what it meant that he wondered that about her first. She had not had to debate whether or not he was married. He wore no ring, but it was something more that gave away his single status. He looked like one of those men who have developed an allergy to relationships, carrying his independence around himself like an invisible shield. She was willing to bet that his most successful one was with his truck, which seemed to be the same one he had driven in high school.
Not exactly observations that painted him in a sympathetic light, though he also had the look of a man beleaguered. He was absolutely alone with the challenge of his niece, and it showed.
“She’s not married,” Michelle said. “Did you see any signs of a man inside that house? Size ten muddy boots at the back door? Smudgy handprints around the light switches? Dishes in the oven? Laundry waiting to be folded in the living room? Root beer rings on the coffee table?”
“Okay, okay, we get it,” Brian said, and despite Jessica’s desire to be entertained by his discomfort, she was a little embarrassed for him at this unexpected glimpse of his house.
But Michelle was not finished detailing how to spot a single person. “And what do you think her bathtub looks like?”
“I have no idea,” he said tersely.
“I bet there’s not a sooty ring around it.”
“There’s a sooty ring around my bathtub?” he asked, and glared at Jessica as if she had discovered it and chastised him for it.
“Every time you tinker with that ugly old truck.”
“My truck is not ugly,” he said dangerously. “It’s a classic. And to get back to the point, I didn’t look in Jessica’s oven, not that its contents could be taken as an indication of character. And I certainly didn’t look in her bathtub.”
Jessica’s plan to remain detached seemed to be crumbling. In fact, she was finding these tiny glimpses into the personal life of Brian Kemp utterly fascinating.
But only, she defended herself fiercely, because she could feel satisfied he wasn’t living nearly the life she would have thought. What would she have imagined? Ferraris, glamorous women, a whirlpool tub, no rings of soot or root beer. Maybe champagne.
“Well, if you did look in her oven,” Michelle informed him, “there wouldn’t be any dishes in it. Not like at your house.”
“Our house,” he corrected her.
“Whatever,” she said with perfect indifference.
Jessica noticed how the indifference stung him. Why did he send a quick sidelong glance her way? Did he care what she thought about where he stored his dirty dishes? Why? When her character was under question? But apparently he did care because he gave his niece his sternest look.
“Michelle,” he said, “having a conversation with you is like playing Ping-Pong with ten balls on the table at once. You seem to be deliberately missing the point, changing the subject and confusing the issue. It’s not about bathtubs. I don’t know Ms. Moran well enough to let you stay here. Not that you’ve been invited.”
“Can’t you tell everything you need to know by looking around?” Michelle said. “You said yourself it looked like Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs could come singing out of the woods at any moment. This is not the home of someone of questionable character!”
“You’re going to be a lawyer,” he groaned. “I just know it.” Jessica noticed he sent another look her way. He was embarrassed, not only by his lack of control over his niece, but also about the fact that he was familiar with fairy tales. Well, it was true that he did look like the man least likely to be familiar with magical princesses.
Considering how much she had planned to relish his discomfort, she found her plan backfiring. She felt a little sorry for the man. Not much. Not enough to damage her resolve, just a thimbleful of pity.
“Even if Dopey or Snoozy or Sneezy or whatever comes forward with a character reference, you have not been invited. So…”
“A character reference?” Jessica repeated. He’d used up his thimbleful mighty fast. Of all the nerve! “May I remind you, you came here? Expecting a miracle? What kind of person wants a character reference from somebody they think can work miracles?”
She realized that, despite her vow to remain detached, she was feeling a passionate desire to pick up one of her garden shovels and clunk him over his handsome head.
“Nothing personal,” he said, as if that would take the sting out of it. “My job makes me cynical.”
“This is not the type of place an ax murderer lives,” Michelle informed him. “I bet she gardens for a living. Right?”
Maybe a shovel murderer, Jessica thought. “I’m a horticulturist.”
“You don’t know the first thing about murderers of any kind, Michelle,” he responded, coolly.
“And you have the inside track ’cause why? Handing out speeding tickets and eating doughnuts has made you an expert?”
Brian went very quiet. Jessica could see the muscle working in his jaw again, and she knew instinctively he was counting to ten.
Michelle seemed to realize she had overplayed herself, but her confrontational tone softened only slightly. “Are you worried she might be growing a little hemp among the roses? Is that it? Are you going to shine your flashlight in her eyes and say, ‘are your pupils dilated?’” She turned to Jessica. “He did that to me, you know.”
Jessica knew that to give Michelle the sympathetic reaction she was looking for might be a mistake, but she let her annoyance at Brian cloud her judgement. “Really?” she said indignantly. “That’s horrible.”
Brian shot her a look that was not the least bit hard to interpret, and then he returned his attention to Michelle. Despite herself, Jessica was beginning to find his restraint admirable, which was unfortunate, since she really didn’t want to find anything about him admirable.
“I said I was sorry I did that to you. Don’t you let go of anything?” he asked.
Not if it could be used to her advantage, Jessica realized. She found this interchange very telling, but she was annoyed by her own less-than-stellar ability to detach. She was not sure how she could want to hit Brian on the head with a shovel and feel just a wee bit sorry for him at the same time, but she knew it was the kind of complication that spelled danger for her quiet little life.
Still, he just had it so wrong. Michelle wasn’t the kind of girl who would unquestionably accept his authority. Had he been engaging in these power struggles with her for months? Had he won any?
“You knew Jessica in high school,” Michelle pressed. “You said you saw her do a miracle. Jeez, you’d probably ask Moses for a character reference, even if you saw him part the Red Sea.”
“I probably would,” Brian said, without apology.
Michelle changed tactics with head-spinning swiftness. Suddenly, she smiled sweetly, touched her uncle’s arm, blinked up at him.
“Please let me stay, Unkie. I won’t be a nuisance. I’ll help out. I’ll sleep on the floor. I have to be with O’Henry. I have to.”
Knowing it would be very unwise to take a side and knowing it would be even less wise to do anything that would put her in close proximity to Brian on a daily basis, Jessica still couldn’t stop herself. Because, the argument aside, she had heard the very real need in Michelle’s voice.
Jessica saw the truth, shining clearly, rising above all her confusion about Brian. The child needed to be with her dog.
And Jessica had to help the right thing happen. Yes, she had been hurt by life and hurt by love and some of that hurt could be attributed to this man in front of her. But had she let those hurts make her into the kind of a woman who could turn her back on what needed to be done for a wounded child?
Michelle was here, now, and so was the dog, and it was perfectly clear they both needed her. She couldn’t turn her back on that, even if it would make her life so much easier and less complicated.
“Okay,” she said. “Michelle can stay.”
Brian turned and stared at her. That muscle in his jaw was really very attractive, probably because it worked so hard.
“Excuse me? I don’t think that’s your decision to make!” Despite his level tone, he was furious, his eyes snapping with anger.
“I think it would be a good idea for her to stay. I have an extra room.” Jessica lifted her chin to meet his glare. She did not want or need this aggravating man’s approval. Not by a long shot.
So, even if the look he gave her made her want to retract the invitation and run, she would not give him the satisfaction of having that kind of power over her. Instead, she smiled as sweetly at him as Michelle just had.
“Now, I’ve been invited!” Michelle crowed.
Brian glared at his niece and then at her. Jessica was very glad she was not on the wrong side of the law at the moment. She had a feeling he’d have her up against the wall and in cuffs in a heartbeat. She wondered if he would search her.
The thought, so naughty and so out of character, was a stern reminder of why she should not have done what she just did: tangle her life with his.
“Could I see you privately for a minute, Ms. Moran?” he said through clenched teeth.
Michelle rolled her eyes. “This is where he takes you aside and grills you. He did it to my friend Monica’s mom before I could spend the night there. How embarrassing. ‘Mrs. Lambert, are there weapons in your house? Do you use illegal drugs?’”
“How do you know that?” he snapped at his niece.
“Mrs. Lambert told me. She thought it was funny. And cute. But I didn’t.”
He’d obviously had enough of the exchange with his niece because he gave her a look so smoldering that it bought her sudden silence. Michelle could not hold his gaze and scuffed at the dirt in front of her with the toe of her sneaker.
Jessica felt his fingers bite into her elbow. She should have been insulted by his rough touch, but, unfortunately, it made her think more very naughty thoughts and made her highly aware of the threat he was to her well-ordered world. She was unceremoniously hustled out of Michelle’s earshot.
He dropped his hold on her elbow, but it stung where he had touched, as though he had branded her with his anger. She found herself looking up into those chocolate-brown eyes. It felt like the years melted away, and she was sixteen all over again, her heart beating too fast, so filled with wanting that it hurt.
She reminded herself, firmly, that she had banished that girl who wanted things she could not have. Still, did he have to smell so good? So clean and purely masculine? Did he have to stand so close that she could count the lashes—thick and spiky—around his eyes?
His unsettling proximity made a dangerous question tease the corners of her mind. Could her adult self have what the younger version could not?
She was so different now. Slender. Confident. She might even go as far as to say pretty. Had she become the kind of woman who would stand a chance with him?
It was way too complicated a question. Wouldn’t a relationship with him be a betrayal of who she was now, not to mention of who she used to be? Oh, sure, he was big and muscular and good-looking and smelled of some kind of heaven. But who was he? If he was still the insensitive, self-centered jerk he had once been, why would she want his attention? Why would she want to stand a chance with him?
For the pure fun of it, a renegade voice inside her whispered. Come on, Jessica, wouldn’t it be just a little bit fun to flirt with danger?
Danger. That was what he represented to the sense of self she had developed over the past fourteen years. It felt like he could knock it all down with a wink, a smile, a kind word or a kiss.
She looked at his lips. “No!”
“Pardon?” he said.
She flushed, sure her cheeks would now match the color of her Agrippina China rose. “Uh, nothing. I was just thinking out loud.”
“I hope about your answer to Michelle staying here.”
It was true. Michelle had to go. To keep her here would be intertwining her life with that of this man who so obviously still wielded some kind of power over the part of her that wanted the things that made a woman weak and powerless: a man’s smoldering lips, his hands, the touch of his skin beneath her fingertips, the dream of a soul mate.
And yet Jessica could not bring herself to retract her invitation to Michelle, even in the interest of her own self-preservation.
She had felt the neediness and loneliness radiating from that child, raw and painful. To turn her back on it would be like turning her back on her own younger self and on everything she believed.
Jessica’s motto was do no harm. To turn away from Michelle’s obvious need would be to do harm in a way she did not even fully understand.
“Your niece is welcome to stay,” she said firmly. She folded her arms over her chest and tossed her curls. “I think she should.”
His expression darkened, and his brows lowered. Unless she was mistaken, he was counting to ten again. She recognized the good in that. A certain animosity between her and Brian would be a defense against that ridiculous part of her that thought it would be fun to flirt with danger.
And he looked dangerous now, an angry light changing the landscape of his eyes to storm-tossed. The line around his mouth grew firm and hard, and he folded his arms over his chest. It made her own gesture seem silly. She doubted her movement had made her look the least bit massive or intimidating.
Of course, that was the point. He was trying to intimidate her. And it was working—not that she would ever let him see that. She tilted her chin a little more, gave her curls another careless toss.
But his voice, when he spoke, was hard and cold, the voice of a man too accustomed to giving orders and being listened to. Which of course only deepened her own determination not to see anything his way.