On the Ropes (8 page)

“Damn, that’s right,” he muttered. Toby always took the middle room because it was next to the second-floor master. Had he woken Janette?

Motion in his periphery pulled his attention away from the door to the chair near the window. Janette straightened up and rubbed sleep from her eyes. What was she doing there?

Hell, he didn’t care. She was a nice sight to wake up to.

“What time is it?” she asked.

“Don’t know. Has to be afternoon if they’re here already.” He walked to the door, opened it a crack, and found his flame-haired nephew pacing in front of the other room’s door. “Hey, Toby.”

“I can’t get in.” Toby pointed to the door in question.

“I know. It’s locked.”

“Why?”

“Because…uh…” He closed the door a bit and turned back to Janette.

She nodded and hurried through the bathroom into the other room. She quickly returned with her suitcase, which she hadn’t bothered to properly fasten.

He opened the door again. “There was a big bug in there last night. I closed it up in there.”

Toby made a face. “Did you kill it?”

“Might not have to. I left the window open, so maybe it flew out.”

“Check.”

“There are some words missing from that sentence.”

Meg tried hard, but unfortunately, Toby had absorbed far too many of his father’s habits. He was getting incrementally more polite, thanks to Seth’s patient correction, but he had a long row to hoe.

Toby sighed. “Could you please check?”

“I will in a moment. Where are your parents?”

“Getting stuff out of the car, I guess.”

“Do you know what time it is?”

“Nope.” Toby bounded down the stairs, and Stephen shut the door and re-locked it.

“It’s eight-thirty,” Janette said, and she held out her phone display for him to see.

“For fuck’s sake, why are they here so early?”

Her eyes widened.

“Of course you don’t know the answer to that. Shit, I need to go run off all the new kinks I collected last night, but that can wait a little while. I feel like garbage. You have to, too. You slept upright.” He didn’t bother asking why she hadn’t just crawled onto the bed. He was starting to believe she wouldn’t do anything without permission.

“Aren’t we a pair?” She put her hand to the back of her neck and rubbed.

“Got a knot?”

She nodded, and cringed at the motion.

He made a spinning motion with his finger, and she turned her back to him.

Pressing his palms to the dips between her neck and shoulders, he took up a slow, gentle massage.

She moaned softly as his thumbs worked the muscles surrounding her spine. “Right there.”

“Got it.” He backtracked over the bit of back he’d just finished rubbing and kneaded it in small circles. “You know, it gets windy here at night. Sand gets tossed against the windows, and sometimes it sounds like fingers drumming against the glass.”

“I’m glad I didn’t hear any of that. I was anxious enough as it was.”

“Didn’t trust my search of the house?”

“No, it wasn’t that.”

He moved his hands back up to her neck and nudged her collar aside. When she didn’t pull away or startle, he worked her skin-to-skin.

She was so soft, and so warm. His impulse was to lean in and put his lips there against the crook of her neck, but if he did, he wouldn’t want to stop there. He’d want to reach around, pop free those four buttons, and relieve her breasts of their cover.

He’d have her wrists bound behind her back so her chest jutted out for his inspection. And he’d look, study her, until she begged him to touch her. He could make her beg.

Squashing a groan, he let the collar snap back in place and took a step back.

She turned and rolled her shoulders. “Thank you.”

“Better?”

“Much. Where’d you learn to do that?”

“My old boxing coach. He knew all my knotty spots. I learned a thing or two from him.”

She snapped her fingers. “Speaking of that, did you get your nose broken?”

He chuckled and walked through the bathroom to unlock Toby’s door. “Well, that’s random.”

“No, you reminded me of it because you brought up boxing. When I tossed that blanket over you last night, I was close enough to notice the jut in your nose.”

That meant she’d been pretty damn close. His own mother said she hardly noticed it anymore. He’d healed well, fortunately.

“Yes, I did have my nose broken. Twice, actually.” He returned to the room and unzipped the larger of his suitcases. He didn’t know what their plans for the day were, but he suspected they wouldn’t involve pressed slacks.

“Did you quit after the second time?”

“No. I just learned to dodge punches better.” He wriggled his eyebrows at her, and she rolled her eyes. He didn’t miss that little grin, though.

“Listen. I apologize for invading your space last night. I just…” She let her words trail off. He quietly pawed through his suitcase waiting for her to pick them back up, but, she didn’t.

Maybe he should get used to that.

He grabbed a pair of shorts and a shirt. “You don’t need to apologize. It’s a big house. I know what it’s like. Sometimes you need to be around people, and sometimes you want to be away from them. You can do either here.” After grabbing some underwear from the mesh flap, he stood.

She wrung her hands and seemed to be looking past him instead of at him. Back when he’d been interning—in family law—he’d learned that was a tell for people who couldn’t order their thoughts or who didn’t know how much they should say.

He wanted her to tell him
everything
, but also knew he hadn’t earned that.

He was stooping to grab his toiletry bag’s strap when she said, “So, you don’t mind if I stay with you?”

“Sweetheart, if I didn’t want you to stay with me, I wouldn’t have invited you. Think about that.”

She gave a slow, acknowledging nod, and he retreated to the bathroom. Before closing the door, he said, “We should probably move downstairs, though. You don’t really want to share a bathroom with Toby. I may not be perfect in a lot of ways, but at least I have good aim.”

On a delay, she groaned and moved away from the door.

* * * *

After Stephen had showered and dressed, he found Janette waiting on the bed with her toothbrush, toothpaste, and a tube of face cleanser in hand. She’d put on an orange sundress that played up the russet tones of her skin and had combed the wildest of her short curls down. He was actually starting to prefer them a bit wild. They made her seem more…
human
. Not all zipped up and impersonal.

She’d probably never really let loose unless he helped her.

He had some ideas on how to do it.

“Orange suits you phenomenally well, Jan,” he said, and tossed his dirty clothes into his open suitcase.

She stood and walked into the bathroom. “My mother used to tell me that. I guess it must have stood out in my mind, because when I’m not at work, I’m almost always wearing a bit of orange.” She didn’t close the door all the way—enough to dampen the sound of bristles against teeth, but not enough to dampen conversation.

Progress.

“Meg will probably hate you for it. She claims she can’t wear orange because of the red hair.”

“You don’t agree?”

“No, I don’t. But maybe I don’t have the right eye for it. I tend to buy whatever I like regardless of my hair color. I bought Toby a pink shirt a few months ago just to piss her off. That’s another color she won’t wear.”

“Stephen, that was a shitty thing to do.”

“I know. It totally was. She let him wear it, though.”

He had all his luggage closed back up and pushed toward the door by the time Janette emerged from the bathroom. “Just give me a minute to put some make-up on and I’ll go downstairs with you.”

“Come on, you don’t need the make-up.”

She opened her mouth as if to rebut, but before she could get the words out, he added, “And I’m not being impatient or overly flattering. You don’t need the make-up.”

She looked sweet without it. Maybe that’s what she was trying to avoid.

“You don’t think my eyes look comically large without the smoky eyeliner?”

“Comically large?” He chuckled. “Fuck, I’ve heard a lot of feminine insecurities in thirty-seven years, but I think that’s the first time I’ve heard that one.”

“That’s not funny. You’d understand it if there was anything about you that wasn’t perfect.”

“You’ve already pointed out that my nose isn’t perfect.” He flicked his finger over the bump.

She swatted a dismissive hand at him and rolled her eyes. “That just adds to your sex appeal. You got your nose broken doing some very masculine thing and it doesn’t even look
bad
.”

“Sex appeal, huh?”

“You know you’re sexy. You don’t have to fish for compliments.”

“Well, I’d like to think that I have a certain allure, but I ask because if I have it, you do a damned good job of not showing it.”

Her cheeks turned burgundy.

He grinned.

“In my experience, if you tell a man he’s attractive, he won’t stop badgering you to prove it.”

“Sounds like you’re in the acquaintance of numerous assholes.”

The corners of her lips twitched and she eyed him from head to toe. “What’s that say about
you
, then?”

“Touché. Just for bruising my pride, you get no make-up. Let’s go. If I have to be up this early, I’d like for there to be bacon in front of me, or sausage at the very least.”

“I’d rather have the make-up than the pork.”

“You need to straighten out your priorities, because you should never say no to
pork
.”

Her lips parted, gaze trailed past his waist to his groin, then her mouth closed before she could spit out a retort.

He got between her and the suitcase she was edging toward. “You giving me the cold shoulder for a year is starting to make more and more sense. It’s a serious personality flaw, you not liking pork.”

“I-I like pork just fine.” She darted past him with her hand extended to her make-up bag, but before she could grab it, he got her arms around her body and held her still. He didn’t even have to squeeze. She just stopped.

Her tense body relaxed slowly in degrees, but her breaths came out in uneven pants.

Grabbing her had simply been instinct.
Not
touching her seemed unnatural to him, but he’d already decided this was her rodeo. She needed to know what she wanted and clearly project that to him.

He dropped his arms.

She turned slowly and looked up at him. She swallowed. “I suppose I shouldn’t test the reflexes of a boxer.”

“If my reflexes were as good as they used to be, I wouldn’t have let you past me in the first place.”

“I don’t like being manhandled.”

“And I don’t
intend
to manhandle you.”

She groaned softly, closed her eyes, and shook her head. “I didn’t mean to insinuate that you did. I meant that you didn’t. So, thank you. I guess I’m a bit fragile.”

He’d guessed that, but hearing it coming from her lips ignited an ache in his heart. He wanted to pull her against his chest, hold her, and tell her to go ahead and cry whatever it was out, but he knew better. If all Meg had needed was a good cry, she would have been on the road to happiness far sooner than she’d managed. She’d needed tools to heal. Stephen wanted to help Jan find hers.

“Hey,” he said, “I bet you Meg’s not wearing any make-up, either. Does that make you feel better?”

Jan opened her eyes. “It does. Let’s go see if it’s true.”

He gestured toward the door. “After you.”

She didn’t move immediately. She looked toward the door and wrung her hands just like she had last night.

“What’s wrong?”

“I guess I feel a bit like the odd woman out. This is your family. I don’t even fit in with mine.”

That little revelation pulled a knot into his gut, but he didn’t address it. He suspected she’d take it back if she could. He’d promised himself he’d practice a hands-off courtship, but how could he when the woman in front of him was so obviously starved for affection?

He slung his arm around her waist and guided her through the door. “I’d bet you good money Seth has bags under his eyes the size of your suitcase. No way was getting here this early his idea.”

She chuckled and they descended the stairs. “Maybe they’re just ready to get out on the beach.”

“Toby maybe. Meg’s a sun-avoiding vampire. Seth could take it or leave it.”

No sooner had they rounded the corner did Seth, in the kitchen, hold up two bottles of whiskey from the tote bag and say, “Top shelf.”

“Yeah,” Stephen said, and he had to give Jan an entreating little tug to move her along. She seemed to have frozen there at the sofa. “I think Dad feels like he has to bribe you to take care of Meg.”

“I heard that,” came her sharp voice from the parking pad stairwell.

“She has ears like a hawk,” Seth said.

“Jesus.” Stephen rubbed his chin and pondered that one out. Seth sucked with idioms. He’d been in the U.S. long enough to have absorbed some peculiar turns of phrase, but sometimes he misheard them or they got jumbled up in his head and came out a mess. “The phrase is
eyes
like a hawk.”

Seth shrugged and set down the bottles. “Probably has those, too.”

Stephen gave quiet Jan a little squeeze at the waist. “See. Big fucking bags.”

Seth’s eyes widened. “What? The luggage? I know. I told Megan she didn’t need to pack the entire dresser.”

“No, bro. The dark circles under your eyes. What time did you get up this morning?”

Seth made some sound between a snort and a guffaw, which out of his broad chest sounded a bit like a foghorn coughing. “Three. We would have been here sooner but I insisted on driving the speed limit.”

Meg appeared in the stairway, huffing and puffing at the top step, with Toby on her heels. She had a cup carrier in her hands that Seth hurried over to take from her.

“I think that’s everything out of the car. We can go to the superstore now. Hello, Janette. I didn’t know what you wanted in your coffee, so I ordered it black. There are donuts around here somewhere.”