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“I think your sister has a point,” Thad interceded, tightening his grip on Janey as possessively as if they had something passionate and enduring going on between them to defend, instead of just a simple, highly experimental, flirtatious kiss. “She is a grown woman. A savvy businessperson, as well as a mother.”
“Oh, my Lord.” As Mac stared at them, his face began to lose color.
“What?” Janey said, wondering what completely unfounded conclusion her eldest brother had jumped to now.
Mac gave her a frank, assessing look as rain continued to pour down from the sky in heavy sheets, just to the left of them.
“You haven’t…” Mac said with a telltale lift of his brow. “Please. Tell me you’re not…”
“Not what?” Janey demanded impatiently.
“Trying to work off Chris’s camp fees that way, are you?”
Mac was teasing, Janey saw finally.
And he wasn’t.
“Very funny,” Janey said stiffly, irritated her brother could even hint she would be irresponsible enough to use her femininity on some unsuspecting man to get her way. “And no, I am not.”
Now it was Thad’s turn to look as if he felt like punching someone out on Janey’s behalf, Janey noted. She felt oddly pleased as Thad stepped protectively in front of her. “If you weren’t her brother,” Thad warned Mac, “you’d be eating a knuckle sandwich about now.”
No less on guard, Mac shot Thad a warning look. “I’m glad you feel that way,” Mac stated bluntly. “Because if you didn’t want to defend her honor just now that would really say something about your character or lack thereof.”
“Remind me to tell you about the ‘tests’ my brothers put all my prospective beau through.” Janey pushed out the words through tightly gritted teeth. Older or younger, it hadn’t mattered. All five members of the Hart posse had been perfectly capable of saying the wrong thing at the right time to ensure her romances with the guys she dated before Ty went absolutely nowhere. And Janey knew now what she had realized then—that her siblings’ “interruptions” and “interferences” had been as well planned as they had been executed.
“Make fun all you want,” Mac told her smugly. “But they worked, didn’t they? No one tried to take advantage of you as long as the five of us were around.” It was only when she had gone off to Colorado, on spring break with her friends, that she had gotten herself into trouble by getting involved with Ty. And Janey knew her entire family still felt that wouldn’t have happened if they had been nearby to stop it.
Mac looked back at Thad and continued with a candor that was serious now and strictly man-to-man. “Listen, I know my sister comes off as headstrong and impetuous, and I’ll be the first to grant she has a wild streak a mile wide. But bottom line, she’s a lot more innocent and naive than she seems at first look. None of us want to see her hurt. And I am speaking for every one of her brothers, as well as her mother now.”
It was official. Janey felt as if she were back in high school. No. Make that junior high.
“I understand,” Thad told Mac soberly as the two of them shook hands. “And I have no intention of hurting her.”
Janey felt like stomping her foot. “Excuse me. I think I might have something to say about this!” Janey interrupted, mortified.
Oblivious to her upset, Mac looked back at her. Now that he had extracted the chivalrous agreement from Thad, Mac was ready to move on to other subjects. “Mom has been worried out of her mind about you and Chris. You really should have called her to let her know you’d had sense enough to get off the trail,” Mac scolded.
Janey released a sigh. You’d think the goings-on at The Wedding Inn her mother owned and ran would be enough to keep anyone busy. “She’s in the middle of a wedding, isn’t she?”
“That doesn’t stop her from worrying about all of us. You know that. She’s been checking her machine every five minutes. And had she known what you were really up to tonight—” Mac frowned, recalling the kiss he had walked in on.
The kiss Janey would have given anything to have an instant replay of, before the passionate mood was spoiled, perhaps permanently. Not that she was looking for romance, she amended silently. Especially with a sports-minded man like Thad Lantz. On the other hand, there were principles to be adhered to. Ground rules to be set. And she had promised herself she would not allow any familial interference in her life when she left Colorado and moved back to North Carolina.
Janey wondered what it would take to show her family she was perfectly capable of living her life, and even embarking on new romance if she so chose, without their constant commentary and interference. She smiled at her brother sweetly, then warned, “One more word, Mac, and I swear I’m going to punch you out myself.”
“I APOLOGIZE,” Janey told Thad the moment Mac had left.
“Why?” Thad turned to face her, nothing but gentleness on his handsome face. “He obviously loves you a great deal. All your brothers do.”
Janey shrugged, wishing Thad wasn’t so understanding, so completely unruffled by the totally unnecessary family set-to he had just witnessed. It would make it easier for her to keep the emotional barriers up if he weren’t so darn wonderful in all respects. She drew a bolstering breath. “That doesn’t give them the right to interfere in my life,” she countered stubbornly.
Thad took her hand in his and tugged her closer. “They’re just reacting to any perceived dangers to you the same way you react to threats to Chris,” he told her.
Janey hadn’t really thought about it that way.
“I know,” Thad continued understandingly, tightening his fingers on hers in a way she liked way too much, “because I have a younger sister, and I’ve been tempted to lock her up and throw away the key more times than I want to count.”
Janey tried not to think how comforting it was to stand here, talking like this, even as she cautiously withdrew her hand from his lest it lead to anything else unsettlingly intimate—like more kisses. “Right. I know Molly,” Janey said briskly, trying not to get too caught up in the moment and what had happened between them earlier. Like it or not, she still had a son to consider, a well-ordered life she didn’t want turned on end. She’d had enough of that kind of uncertainty when she was married to Ty.
Ignoring the tingles in her hand, Janey continued. “She worked summers at The Wedding Inn before she went off to college. How old is she now?” she asked curiously, aware there was a pretty big age difference between Thad and Molly, as Molly was the child of his mother Veronica and Thad’s stepfather, Lionel Lauder.
“Molly’s twenty-one now and a college senior.”
“At—?”
“Chapel Hill. And yes, she has a boyfriend, a pretty serious one at that.”
Janey thought about what she had learned of local relationships, since she had moved back to town. “Johnny Byrne, isn’t it?” He too had once bussed tables at The Wedding Inn and was now attending the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Thad nodded. “They’ve been dating for three years.”
Janey didn’t find that surprising—both were nice, well-rounded, clean-cut kids with the same strong work ethic and ambitious outlook on life. Yet she sensed a reservation in Thad akin to the one her brother Mac had just demonstrated. “Do you get along with Johnny?”
Thad fell silent, a conflicted expression on his face.
“You don’t like him, do you?” Janey guessed.
Thad shrugged his powerful shoulders. “I’m just not sure he loves her the way he should. With all his heart and soul.”
That was a surprisingly romantic thing for a guy to say.
“But, as you would no doubt point out,” Thad continued with a resolve Janey couldn’t help but respect, “Molly is a grown woman, so I’m just going to have to trust that she knows what she is doing.”
“Mom!” Chris came out of the swinging double doors that fronted the terrace, as exuberant as ever. “There you are! Uncle Mac says we got to call Grandma.”
“Yes,” Janey said, realizing that Mac had sent Chris to make sure a repeat kiss would not happen, even if Chris didn’t realize it. She smiled at her son. “We do.”
Thad said a few kind words to Chris, then excused himself. To her disappointment, Janey did not see Thad again before she and Chris checked out of the lodge the next morning. Because it was still raining, they had decided to go back to Holly Springs. She hoped Chris’s nonstop chatter on the trip home about sports camp would help her get her mind off Thad Lantz and the way he had kissed her the night before.
THAD WAS HALFWAY HOME Sunday morning when he got the message from his mother, asking him to meet her in her office at noon over at the hospital’s physical therapy department. “So what’s the family crisis?” he asked when he got there, knowing immediately from the pinched, worried look on his normally unflappable mother’s face that something drastic had happened.
His mother looked up from the patient records she was going over. She gestured for Thad to have a seat, even as she pushed away from her desk. “Molly called from Gatlinburg. She and Johnny Byrne eloped.”
Thad did a double take. “You’re joking.”
“Believe me,” his mother replied ruefully as she ran a hand through her short and curly black hair, “I wish I was.”
Thad stretched his long legs out in front of him. “Why would Molly do that?” Especially when Molly had been planning her nuptials—at least in theory—for years.
Veronica idly fingered the hospital ID badge clipped to her belt. “I have no idea.”
“Is Lionel upset?”
Veronica made a beleaguered face. “What do you think?”
Given the fact that Molly was the apple of his stepfather’s eye, Thad thought, Lionel had to be furious, as well as hurt, at being shut out of this very important moment of his only daughter’s life.
Veronica removed her glasses and rubbed the bridge of her nose. “I want you to talk to her when she gets back tomorrow, Thad. Try and see if you can figure out why she and Johnny went and did this.”
Thad was glad to help in any way he could. “I’ll try. She may not confide in me, though,” he warned.
“Try anyway. And in the meantime, I’m going to pull together the best reception I can manage for the two of them. I just hope Delectable Cakes can do a wedding cake for them on such short notice.”
Thad grinned as he thought about the pretty baker. “I can handle that for you, Mom,” he said, glad for the excuse to go and see Janey again. “When do you want it?”
“Friday. It’s the only evening I can get The Wedding Inn this week for a reception. And I only got that because of a cancellation.” Veronica lifted a brow. “I wasn’t aware you and Janey were friends.”
“Her son is interested in attending the Storm’s summer hockey camp,” Thad replied casually.
“So are at least six hundred other boys.” Veronica put her glasses back on. “I don’t hear you talking about any of their mothers.”
Touché. Briefly, Thad explained about the heart-rending letter he’d received from Chris.
Veronica’s expression softened compassionately as she listened. “And something about Chris’s plea really got to you,” she noted finally.
Thad nodded. “I know how much it meant to me when Lionel helped me find the proper outlet for my own athletic ambitions.” Thad loved his real father, but Gordon Lantz had never really understood Thad’s desire to become involved in professional sports. Gordon had wanted Thad to become involved with the garden and landscape business that his own father had begun. It was his stepfather, Lionel, who had come into Thad’s life when he was ten, and helped him find his way, in that regard. It was also how they’d became close.
“I can understand how you would want to do for someone else what Lionel did for you,” Veronica stated gently. “And I know firsthand what a personable and winning kid Christopher Campbell is. I met him one day when he was out with his grandmother.”
“But?” Thad prodded, hearing the concern underlying her words.
Veronica got up and removed two bottles of orange juice from her minifridge. She tossed one to him. “You’re facing two major pitfalls here. The first is that anything you say or do on the subject has the potential to further the rift between Janey and her son Chris. And unless you want to make a sworn enemy of Janey, you need to make sure that doesn’t happen. Because her relationship with her son is everything to her.”
Thad hadn’t needed to be told that. In Janey’s place, he would have felt the same. But he let his mother have her say, anyway. “And the second?”
“Issue concerns your own heart and happiness,” Veronica continued with the practical plainspokenness she was known for both inside and outside the hospital. She paused, measuring her words carefully. “I know how much you enjoyed being a father when you were married to Renee, and that there’s a hole in your life you’ve never really been able to fill since you lost your own stepson. According to his grandmother, Helen Hart, Christopher is reeling, too, from the loss of his dad.”
So maybe it was destined, Thad thought, that he and Chris meet.
His mother, unfortunately, did not see it that way. She looked him straight in the eye and continued, “I would hate to see you use Chris—even subconsciously—to assuage that loss, Thad.”
As if he would ever put the needs of any kid second to his own. “So you’d rather see me what?” Thad shot back angrily, setting the orange juice down unopened. “Walk away from a kid who looks up to me so much he asked for my help?” Thad had already abandoned one child—albeit reluctantly. It wasn’t an experience he was looking to repeat. With anyone.
“I’m saying, honey, that I don’t want you to make the same mistake twice. And from what I’ve heard, Janey had a rough enough time in her first marriage. Even if she won’t quite admit it.”
Thad got to his feet. He squared off with his mother over her desk. “I have no intention of hurting her,” he said evenly. Or Christopher.
Veronica removed the plastic wrap from the top of her bottle and tossed it in the waste can. “You had no intention of hurting Renee and Bobby, either. And look what happened.”
THAD LEFT, furious with his mother.
He knew she was trying to help, but she had completely misunderstood the situation. Yes, he was drawn to Janey’s son, Christopher. Who wouldn’t be? The kid was remarkably bright, energetic, ready to tackle life with so much gusto. Thad couldn’t walk away from the raw hope and need for understanding he had seen shining in the boy’s eyes. Chris had reached out to him and Thad was honor bound to help him. It was that simple.
As for Janey, well, Thad was mysteriously drawn to her, too. He had known that the first second she crashed into him, in the alley behind her bakery.
And that fascination had been confirmed every second since. It didn’t matter whether they were talking, sparring, or just looking at each other. When he was with her, he was more completely in the moment than he could ever recall being. And she felt it, too. He saw it in her eyes, and he sure as heck had felt it in her kiss.
Which gave him every reason in the world to pursue her.
And lucky him, he even had a rock-solid reason to search her out immediately. And spend even more time with her.
Sunday afternoon, the Delectable Cakes bakery was closed.
Janey’s minivan was parked in the driveway of her home. A magnificent white Bentley was idling at the curb. Hannah Reid, chief mechanic of Classic Car Auto Repair, and part-time chauffeur was seated behind the wheel. She was dressed in the usual man’s tuxedo, cap tucked jauntily over her wavy auburn hair. Wondering what was up, Thad parked on the street behind the limo and walked up to say hello. Hannah put down her window. “Hey, Thad.”
“Hey, Hannah.”
“Do me a favor?” Hannah persuaded with a smile.
“Sure.”
“Go around back and see if you can’t get Dylan Hart to get his sorry self back in the limo. He’s going to miss his flight to Chicago if we don’t get a move on.”
“No problem.”
Thad headed around the side of Janey’s small cottage-style home in the older section of Holly Springs. He had nearly rounded the corner of the one-and-a-half-story home when he heard the voices.
“Listen to me, Janey. Joe has had a rough enough start with the Storm, given what happened between him and the owner’s daughter, without you luring Joe’s coach out of town and kissing him like there’s no tomorrow!”
“First of all, Joe and Emma are happily married now. Joe’s conflict with Saul Donovan is a thing of the past. And second, I did not lure Thaddeus Lantz anywhere!” Janey protested heatedly as an interested Thad stopped where he was.
“Then how do you explain Thad following you out to Lake Pine?” Dylan asked.
That was just it, Thad thought. They couldn’t. Because to tell the truth, it was quite unlike him. Usually, he didn’t give the women around him—even those he was wildly physically attracted to—a second thought. These days, his thoughts were all on the team he was coaching, and his desire to make it to the Stanley Cup finals. Not sometime in the very far future. But this very year. With the very team he was going to be coaching through training camp, come the second week of September.
Usually, this time of year, he was focused on the upcoming season, and figuring out how to make sure each and every player on the Storm roster reached his full potential. Instead, he was, more often than not, thinking about Janey Hart Campbell and her son.
“For Joe’s sake,” Dylan continued firmly, in much the same vein as his brother Mac. “You have to stay away from Thaddeus Lantz! I mean it, Janey. No more kissing Joe’s coach!”
Thad rounded the corner. He looked from Janey to Dylan, and back again, before asking lazily. “Bad time?”
“Actually,” Janey said sweetly, her temper obviously getting the best of her at long last, “It’s the perfect time.” Her chin set determinedly, she marched past Dylan, wrapped her arms around Thad’s shoulders, went up on tiptoe and planted one on him.
Her lips were every bit as soft and sweet and warm as he recalled. Pleasure zinged through him as he wrapped both his arms around her, as casually as if they did this every day. Following her lead, he kissed her right back, every bit as thoroughly as he had the evening before, until he felt her melting against him. And then, only then, did he let the heated caress come to a lazy halt and lift his head ever so slowly from hers.
Janey looked up into his face, a mixture of shock and passion reflected in her soft amber eyes. Clearly, she had wanted him to play along with her, to pretend this was some grand passion to simultaneously egg her brother on and punish him for getting involved in her business. She hadn’t wanted Thad to get so carried away… But that, Thad thought, was just what happened when they kissed, even when it was all for show.
“Okay,” Dylan grumbled from the left of them. He glared at Thad, then Janey. “You’ve more than made your point, sis. You can kiss whomever you want. And it appears Thad here can take care of himself.”
“You’re right about that,” Thad said. Even if he didn’t quite like the way he had just been used to make a point, one Hart sibling to another.
Janey wiped imaginary specks of dirt from what Thad guessed were her gardening clothes—a pair of old cutoff jeans with frayed edges, and a T-shirt that was a little too snug across the breasts for his comfort. Dylan, on the other hand, was clad in a sharp suit and tie befitting an up-and-coming TV sportscaster. “Your limo is waiting,” Thad told Dylan, recalling why he had come around the side of the house in the first place. “Hannah Reid said to get a move on or you’re going to miss your flight.”
“We shouldn’t have dragged you into the situation with Chris,” Dylan stated with frank apology.
“You didn’t. Chris did. And I don’t mind,” Thad said quietly, in the same man-to-man tone. He liked helping the boy. Liked feeling needed. “What I do mind—” Thad clapped his hand on Dylan’s shoulder, the same way he did when he was coaching one of his players in a tense situation “—is you interfering in my romantic life or lack thereof.” Thad looked him straight in the eye, making sure he had Dylan’s full attention before he continued. “Got it?”
Dylan’s jaw tightened. The look in his eyes was mutinous.
“It was unfortunate your brother Mac walked in on what he did last night, out at Lake Pine. It doesn’t make it any of his business. Or yours. Janey and I are adults. We will figure this out without any help from either of our families.” And that included his mother, Thad thought. Well-meaning or not, she was going to have to stay out of this.
Embarrassment staining his handsome face, Dylan nodded his understanding reluctantly. Then he looked Thad straight in the eye. “Joe’s boss or not—you do anything to hurt her and you’ll have the whole Hart posse coming after you.”
Thad dropped his hand from Dylan’s shoulder. Winning Janey’s heart would first require running the gauntlet of Hart men. Thad knew he was more than up to the task. “I’d expect nothing less,” he said. In fact, it was reassuring to him, knowing Janey’s family loved her that much.
With a careless nod in both their directions, Dylan took off.
Flushing more than Dylan had been, Janey propped the backs of her gloved hands on her waist. Shaking her head, as if unable to believe his penchant for arriving at the most inopportune times, she stepped away from Thad. “Sorry about that. Again,” she said heatedly.
Thad grinned, loving the way she looked, all disheveled and flushed and perspiring. Which was probably the way she would one day look in his bed, in the throes of passion.
“I’m not,” Thad said, moving closer.
Janey shook her head in silent self-admonition and refused to meet his gaze. “I probably shouldn’t have kissed you,” she murmured in a low, throaty tone.
“Probably not, if it was for all the wrong reasons. Then again, if it’s for all the right reasons, like this…” he wrapped his arms around her and kissed her sweetly, tenderly, until she trembled in his arms once again, “I don’t mind at all.”
A guilty flush stained her cheeks. She lowered her glance. Refusing to acknowledge their latest kiss, or her potent reaction to it, she splayed her hands across his chest and murmured, “What I was trying to say Thad, is that there seems to be no shortage of embarrassing family moments on my behalf for you to witness.”
Trying not to feel disappointed she had used their mutual attraction to make a point with her family, Thad shrugged. And because it was what she seemed to want, he let her go. “They just don’t want to see you hurt. I can understand that. As I said, I am equally as protective about my sister. Which, by the way, is why I’m here. Molly has eloped.”
Janey blinked, her full attention on him once again. “With Johnny Byrne?”
“Yesterday, apparently.”
“Why?”
“That’s just it. Nobody knows. They’re still in Gatlinburg. Due back tomorrow. Anyway, my mother and stepfather want to put together a reception for the two of them. Friday is the only evening this week The Wedding Inn is open. My mother is hoping you’re not too busy to make the cake.”
She shot him an unexpectedly flirtatious glance. “Ah. And you’re here to persuade me.” She seemed to like the idea.
An answering warmth sizzled through him. “I volunteered.”
As she tilted her head to the side, the silky chestnut strands that had escaped her hair clip gently brushed the slender nape of her neck. “Well, I do owe you a favor.” Her eyes twinkled merrily.
“Which is the polite way of saying you’re already booked.”
Janey stepped closer and stood, gloved hands on her hips, legs braced apart, her sneaker-clad feet planted firmly in the grass that edged her vegetable garden. “I can fit it in.” She paused to wet her lips. “I’m going to have to know what kind of cake they want, though.”
“I’ll have Molly and Johnny come over to your shop tomorrow, as soon as they arrive,” Thad promised, thinking he might stop by, too. After all, he was on his own schedule, this time of year. It wouldn’t be that way two months from now. Which meant whatever courting had to be done to make her his, would have to be done now. And he did want to make her his. “So what are you doing here?” He nodded at the garden.