Terms of Surrender (10 page)

Gage nodded. “Yeah, I agree.”

“And he called me Hannah today.” Harley stood back from the doll and examined the pose. “Ever since Hannah died, he’s been ignoring me. And when he does have to speak to me, he won’t look at my face. This morning, he was different. He looked straight at me, his eyes kind of wild.”

Adam’s attention drifted toward the blowup doll, then shifted back to Harley. “You do look exactly like Hannah.”

She made a face. “Something I never minded till now.”

“How long has it been?” Adam asked.

“Barely two months.” Silence followed Harley’s comment and when she glanced his way, Gage saw the sadness in her eyes. “I thought Mike would be strong, for the sake of the girls. Instead, he’s getting worse.”

“He probably needs to blow off some steam. It can’t be easy raising those twins by himself.” He ought to know. After a day with Harley in his house, Gage was ready to erupt, too. Time to change the subject before they all became depressed. He turned to Adam and grinned. “I’m surprised Robyn let you out of the house. And with a bunch of single guys to boot.”

Adam flipped open his cell phone and headed toward the kitchen. “I should call her again. She was having Braxton Hicks contractions. I wouldn’t want to miss the birth of my firstborn son.”

Bemused, Gage stared after him. “He just left her fifteen minutes ago.”

Harley bent to rearrange the doll’s position again. “It’s called love.”

The t-shirt rode up to the point where Gage could see the under-curve of her buttocks. Distracted, he asked, “And what do you know about love?”

“Unlike you, I’ve been in love a time or two.”

“Unlike me?” He watched her uncross the inflated legs, pull off the doll’s shoes, and set the feet on a footstool, annoyed because it was clear she thought he was incapable of the emotion. “I’ve been in love, too.”

She stood back and eyed the doll, a critical look on her face. “Yeah, with who?”

He backed up a step and thrust his hands into the front pockets of his jeans. “None of your business.”

Bending over the footstool, she crossed one of the doll’s ankles over the other. “There, that’s better.”

His attention was diverted from the soft material of his t-shirt caressing her backside by the sound of an engine outside and the arrival of Mike’s truck. Before it even stopped, the girls spilled out.

Harley moved to stand in front of the screen door, her back straight, tense. “Do you think they’ll be okay? The girls have to come before everything else.”

Gage moved to stand behind her. The sweet womanly scent of her filled his lungs and head, and made him wish he could press into her back, maybe spend the night nibbling on her delectable body. Because, yeah, no matter how hard he tried to deny it, whenever she was around, sex was the number one thing on his mind.

He forced himself to pay attention to his brother.

Mike trudged up the sidewalk, two miniature backpacks slung over one arm, a big box clutched in the other. Behind him, his daughters dragged their sneakers against the cement, their heads bowed, their bottom lips formed into the pout their mother had always worn whenever she’d failed to get her way.

It broke his heart.

Gage set his hands on Harley’s shoulders. “Mike needs a mother for those girls.”

She turned her face up to his and concern clouded the dark mocha depths. “Don’t you think it’s too soon?”

He didn’t want to scare her, but she needed to face facts. “He’s falling apart, Harl. I’ve seen it before. If we don’t do something to help him out, there’s a high probability he’ll detonate.”

“What do you have in mind?”

He pushed the words past the lump in his throat. “You could take Hannah’s place.”

Annoyance furrowed her brow. She elbowed him back so he was no longer touching her, and faced the front door again. “He can’t even look at me.”

“Maybe in time—”

She elbowed him again. “Hush.”

The girls had pushed past their father, and were racing toward the house and up the front steps. As Harley held open the door for them, they dashed inside and stopped a foot away from Gage, their hands tucked behind their backs, their heads tilted way back so they could look up at him, innocence beaming from their faces.

He stifled a laugh, and figured maybe it was time to pay attention to them so he could tell them apart. He pointed a finger at one. “Who are you?”

She shouldered her sister aside. “Lisa.”

He pointed his finger at the other one. “Then you must be Laura.”

The seemingly calmer of the twins nodded her head, happiness taking possession of her childish features. “Can we sleep with you tonight, Unca Gage?”

Lisa, who practically vibrated with energy, shoved her sister into the wall and started to jump up and down. “Only me, Unca Gage, only me. Laura wets the bed.”

As Laura lunged for her sister, Harley reached out and grabbed both girls around the waist to keep them apart. “You’re both sleeping with me tonight.”

She lifted the giggling, squirming girls and carried them into the living room where she set them back on their feet.

Mike stepped into the house, shoved a box into Gage’s arms, and brushed past him to head into the kitchen. “This is for
her
. The girls insisted.”

The one called Lisa pointed to the blow-up doll. “What’s ’zat?”

Laura folded her hands beneath her chin and peered up at her aunt. “How come she’s dressed like you?”

Harley set one hand on her hip and grinned at Gage, for the first time today appearing totally relaxed. “Ask your uncle, sweetie. It’s his doll.”

With three pairs of identical mocha eyes fixed on him, Gage felt a blush work up his neck and into his face. Maybe the truth would switch their attention elsewhere. “Because your Aunt Harley couldn’t keep her hands off me and she kissed me.”

As the twins covered their mouths with their hands and giggled, Lisa kicked the doll’s foot and imitated her aunt’s hand-on-the-hip stance. “I don’t like her. She’s ugly.”

Laura inched toward the recliner. “Daddy says only sissy boys play with dolls. Is Unca Gage a sissy?”

With a laugh, he carried the box into the living room, set it down at Harley’s feet, and when he straightened, met her gaze. There was something soft in her eyes, something that warmed him from the inside out. Gruffly, he asked, “You have my cell number?”

She nodded, a smile tugging at the edges of her very kissable mouth. “We’ll be fine. Sara should be along soon. We’re having us a girls-only party.”

“Then I guess we’ll take off.”

Gage grabbed a jacket from the front closet and headed toward the kitchen. Before he disappeared around the corner, he paused and looked back.

Harley had already sat down on the floor, the t-shirt riding high and revealing the soft inner skin of her creamy white thigh.

His body responded in a burst of pure lust.

He watched her place her elbows on the top of the box.

“So what do we have in here, girls?”

The lust morphed into an emotion best hidden from the rest of the world.

Hidden from himself.

One twin scooted under her arm and settled on her lap. “Mommy’s clothes.”

Not to be left out, the other twin wiggled onto Harley’s lap. “Daddy said you’re zactly the same size as Mommy cause you’re twins.”

“Like Lisa and me.” The first twin—who was obviously Laura—inched her hand toward the box and pulled open an edge. “Can we look inside now?”

The second twin—who, if he looked close enough, had a decidedly devilish glint in her dark brown eyes—ripped open the other side. As the tightly packed contents spilled out, she clapped her hands together. “It’s like Christmas for Aunt Harley.”

Harley lifted her sorrow filled gaze toward him and Gage felt a painful squeeze in his chest.

Christmas. The first one Mike and the twins would have without Hannah.

Ensuring the twins were healthy and happy should be his number one priority, which meant he had to convince his brother that he needed Harley in his life and his house.

No matter how much Gage wanted to keep her for himself.

CHAPTER NINE

Hours later, with the girls fast asleep in the spare bedroom, Harley tossed and turned on the couch.

Gage was right.

Mike needed her.

And as much as the thought of pushing past the wall he’d erected between them concerned her, Harley knew that Hannah would want her to make sure they were all taken care of.

It broke Harley’s heart.

Every time she saw the twins, she missed Hannah so much, she thought she’d weep inside forever. But then something little happened, like Gage touching her and wakening her body, and it would remind her that life went on. Her sister may be gone, but Harley was still very much alive and it seemed such a shame to waste whatever time she had on this earth.

The slam of a truck door brought her off the couch. As the back door crashed open, she recalled how easily Henry had broken into her house. All it had taken was a kick of his booted foot and the door had given way.

This time, she had the girls to think of.

Fear tightened her gut and she tried to steady the uneven beat of her heart. Grabbing a vase off the bookshelf, she crept from the living room into the dark kitchen. When she saw Mike stumble into the entranceway, relief swept through her and she set the vase aside.

Her brother-in-law slammed his shoulder into the wall, and subsequently toppled sideways. Gage followed close behind, managing to grab his brother by the elbow to steady him.

Gage looked wonderful—tousled like he’d just gotten out of bed, edible like a scarce morsel of food to a starving woman. Long ago, he’d spoiled her for other men, yet it was obvious the feelings weren’t reciprocated.

Mike lurched up the steps, stopped in front of her, blocking her view of Gage. Her breath caught in her throat as she recognized the raw agony in her brother-in-law’s eyes, the pain and loneliness etched into the furrows of his brow, the sorrow in the downward curve of his once smiling mouth.

And as she gazed helplessly into Mike’s sorrow ravaged face, she realized that she had failed him.

Failed her sister, too.

After Hannah’s funeral, when he had needed her the most, she’d been unable to face him.

Survival guilt, and she had a boatload of it.

Mike’s fingers bit into her shoulders, his head lowered slightly so he could stare her in the eye, and Harley forced her feet to stay put, forced herself not to cringe away from him.

“You’re drunk,” she accused softly, feeling like a mother about to scold her favorite child.

The fingers of one of his hands tunneled through her hair. His other arm wound around her waist and pulled her against the length of his body. Surprised, Harley set the palms of her hands against his chest and blinked up at him.

“Obviously not drunk enough,” he growled, tugging gently on her hair so her face lifted to his. His grief-stricken gaze dropped to her mouth, his whisky scented breath warming the curve of her cheek. “Do you know that I
hurt
whenever I look at you, that I
ache
every time I watch you move, smile, soothe one of the girls.”

“Mike, let me go,” she whispered as the grip on her hair tightened and pulled at the delicate roots.

His voice dropped to a low, intense snarl. “You even smell like her,
damn you
. And every time I see you, I remember what it was like to touch her, hold her, kiss her.”

His mouth slanted across hers and Harley, wracked with her own pain at the loss of her dearly loved sister, could only remain passive in his arms and accept the hatred and fury and pain in his kiss.

CHAPTER TEN

Gage pinched the bridge of his nose, closed his eyes, and exhaled with hopes of alleviating the pain in his chest.

Mike was wrong.

Hannah had always smelled like baby formula and lemon polish and hot just-out-of-the-oven chocolate chip cookies.

But Harley…even in the dark, Gage could pick her out by the sweet scent of her body, the softness of her skin, the way she kissed him back.

Like she never wanted to stop.

And even though Mike was drunk and dying of loneliness for his wife, the urge to scale the porch steps and break them apart was overwhelming. He wanted Harley to be his, and right this very moment, he wanted to rip Mike’s hands off her and kill the drunken bastard.

He opened his eyes, glared at his brother’s back, and damned women in general for their ability to bring a strong man to his knees and bring out his every weakness.

Why didn’t she stop him?

Because she was in love with Mike.

The thought whispered through his brain, followed by an image of his brother escorting the two giggling sisters to some school dance. In those days, Harley and Hannah had been all googley-eyed over Mike who had enjoyed every moment of their attention.

Until somewhere along the line, he’d tossed one sister aside and chosen the other.

Gage scaled the steps from the porch into the kitchen at the same time that Harley pushed Mike back. Drunk and unsteady, the younger man fell back against him, nearly toppling them both to the floor.

Mike wrenched away to stand on his own and, swaying back and forth, said, “Hell, lady, if he doesn’t want you, marry me.”

The soft explosion of words fueled Harley’s anger and her mouth turning down in a wry grimace. “Mike, you’re drunk.”

“Not so drunk that I don’t know what I’m saying. You want a husband and children. I need a wife and mother. You’re so much like Hannah, I know we’d suit.”

“That’s the point, Mike,” she cried, her frustration clear in the tone of her voice. “You don’t love me like you loved Hannah. It would never be enough, not for either of us.”

Mike moved closer, the tips of his fingers fluttering across the curve of her cheek. “I loved your sister with every fiber of my being,” he breathed raggedly. “I wish I’d died with her.”

He touched his lips to her forehead, then released her and slipped down the hallway like a silent ghost. A man with his heart torn from his chest, his very soul lost in the hereafter along with his dearly departed wife.