Right Brother (14 page)

“Afraid of my outcast cooties, huh?” he asked cheerfully.

Her mouth twisted. “More like I was afraid that being around you might reveal my own case of them. At some level I'd recognized you were the equivalent in your family to me in my family. Not consciously. I wasn't that deliberate about it. But I'd developed skills, including never calling attention to my status. Pointing you out to your father might have made him or Eric see me as I really was. Unworthy. Or worthy only by association with Eric.”

For the first time, she shifted her gaze from the sky, aiming it full at him. The sight was even more stunning than at the fireworks. The entire sky seemed to be reflected in her eyes. Roiling clouds of trouble, flashes of sharp lightning, rumbles of pained thunder and even glimpses of clear blue.

“I'm sorry, Trent. I'm sorry I let you run home in the rain without making any effort. I'm sorry I shunned you.”

He shook his head, but not enough to dislodge the connection between their gazes.

“You have nothing to apologize for, Jennifer. Nothing.”

In that long look he felt something fundamental shifting. Like the earth he stood on. A subtle earthquake, if such a thing were possible. As if the earth's crust had developed a fine trembling that communicated itself to his feet, into his legs, pausing to rattle his knees, before continuing on to his chest, where it lodged.

“It was never that big a deal to me, Jennifer. I suppose I'm a loner. And I never have cared about most people's opinions. It never got to me.”

“You're lucky— No,” she corrected herself. “Not lucky. You're strong. It's a shame you had to be so strong. But it's a good thing you were.”

He shrugged. “I figured out a long time ago that some parents get their mind set on a certain sort of kid. If the DNA
dice come up with a different kind, they don't know how to react, how to understand that kid or connect.”

“That's awful.”

He acted as if he hadn't heard her. Sometimes sympathy from a particular person could open a wound so long healed that the scar seemed to have always been there. Sometimes those wounds were better left scarred over.

“I've seen what happens when the parents try to make a kid over, and I know I was real lucky to be left on my own.”

He looked into her wide eyes, still clouded with the storm of concern.

“I
was
lucky, Jen. I'm still lucky. It took some hard knocks, but I learned important lessons being on my own—on my own in a lot of ways even before I left home. I've got a good life. And no regrets.”

In that moment, he knew that's what he wanted for her. A good life and no regrets. And that was damned crazy.

Him, wanting things for Jennifer Truesdale. Especially those kind of soul-deep things. Wanting to make sure she and his niece had the necessities? That made sense. But this?

A single large drop struck him on the cheek and slid down. Five more hit hard and fast, like a flourish on a drum.

She gave a small gasp that morphed into a laugh.

It was the laugh that did it.

He took her hand, long and slim, and sprinted with her across the pavement toward the showroom door, all the while knowing he should be letting her go and running the opposite direction.

 

After two long weeks, the heat broke. This night was one of those midsummer coolings-off where everything smelled like crisp, line-dried sheets.

As they walked to their cars, the last two to leave the dealership as usual, Jennifer told Trent about a program through
the dealers' association that would let them have contact with other dealers of about the same size.

“Not dealers from our area, because they're competitors, and who wants to give away their secrets? But from other areas. Think about it, people facing the same issues we do, exchanging ideas, telling each other what works and what doesn't.”

“Uh-huh.”

She stopped. After another stride, he stopped, too, and looked back.

“What's wrong?”

“That's what I want to know. What's wrong?”

“Nothing's wrong. What makes you think—”

“You don't want to be doing this, Trent. I know you don't.”

“Talking about the dealers' association? It's not my favorite—”

“This—you don't want to be doing this.” Her wide-flung arm took in all of Stenner Autos. “Any of this.”

“I…” He'd started to lie, she could see it. Then he shook his head, muttered a curse, and looked her in the eyes. “I never had any interest in the dealership growing up. I thought it was because it was so important to my father. Turns out, I just don't have much interest in selling cars.”

“I see.”

“No, you don't. You think I'm going to turn tail and run. I don't do that, Jennifer. C'mon. Let's sit.”

She didn't resist as he took her arm and led her to his car. With her in the passenger seat, he went around and got in the driver's side.

“Want to go somewhere?”

She shook her head. She wanted to get this out. “It's not even opened yet and you hate the dealership.”

“Hate's strong. I—” he rubbed his neck and along his shoulder “—I don't get excited about the details. I don't come
in with ideas like you do. When I'm away from here I don't think about it.”

“You work so hard… But it's driving you nuts, isn't it?”

He made a sound between a snort and a laugh. “Yeah, it is.”

“Why haven't you told me how you feel?” Although she had seen how he felt, she realized now. When she would let herself.

“What could you do? I'm not going anywhere, Jennifer. I don't want you to worry about your job or Ashley's fund. I'll stick with it. And I'll keep working hard to make it a success. Hell, if it gets to be big enough we can hire a general manager, like I planned—or make you general manager—then I can do something I like. So that's good incentive.”

She didn't return his grin.
Something he liked…
“What would you do if you could do anything?”

“Coach,” he said immediately.

“Then why aren't you coaching? Couldn't you get a job with your old team after you retired?”

His mouth quirked. “I'm not sure I'd really accepted that I'd retired until you put me to work here. Besides, I'd rather stick with the real kids.”

“Why am I not surprised?” she said dryly.

“What?” He grinned wryly at her. “You see me fitting in with kids?”

“Absolutely. I've seen you out throwing that football every opportunity you get with Barry. Or Bobby or anyone else who comes by.”

“Barry's afraid of the mean, big boss lady, so don't tell her.”

“Right. She can be vicious.”

“Well, she is driven, and unfortunately she drives other people half as much as she drives herself, so everyone else is exhausted.”

“Very funny.”

“Very true. But back to Barry. He's a good kid. He's trying to get on the team and I'm helping him out a little.”

She made a decision in that moment. She didn't think it through or examine it. She just knew it was right. She couldn't see him miserable.

“You should help him all the time. You should coach.”

Trent's eyes narrowed. “This damned town. I don't know how the gossip got back to you, but they forgot one thing, I turned him down.”

“Turned who down, Trent?”

He stared at her in the minimal light here under the trees. “You didn't know? I thought you must have heard. Damn.”

“Well, now you have to tell me,” she said calmly.

He swore again, more vociferously. Then heaved a sigh.

“Josh asked if I'd consider assisting Coach Brookenheimer with the team. He's getting older, and it takes a lot out of him. He doesn't have any assistants who can take on the responsibilities. Or who can ride the kids' butts. A few think pretty damn well of themselves and Coach doesn't have the energy to knock their heads together like they need. Josh thought I… But I told him no. Told him my first responsibility is here.”

Her mind was going a hundred miles an hour. So fast that only one word came out. But it was an emphatic command.

“Coach.”

“What? But—”

“Coach, Trent. It's what you want to do. You can help those boys, and Coach Brookenheimer. You'll be good at it.” And he'd be happy.

“But—”

“We can handle it here without you.
I
can handle it. You said yourself, I could be general manager eventually. Why not now? Because I do like it. And I'm good at it,” she said with pride.

“You're damned good at it. Seeing how good at it you are has helped me see I'm not cut out for it. But how could it work?”

“Just the way it has been working,” she said with a wicked grin. “When there's a problem I set out the options, we discuss
which one's best, and I implement it. You'd still have to work—might need to be here every day, but you can't coach until after classes end anyway, so—”

“Well, there's planning and preparation and—”

“Don't push your luck, Stenner.”

“Okay, okay. So, I'd be here daily to go over things, pick up the slack. But you'd be in charge day-to-day.”

“Right. And you'd be here for the big things. If you're not here for the Grand Reopening weekend, I will personally slash every football in town.”

He laughed, still sounding stunned. “I swear. I'll be here for the entire weekend. Practice doesn't start until the following week.”

“Okay. Say, we try this a month. Or two. Then we reassess.”

“You're serious?”

He looked at her with such light in his eyes that she couldn't help but smile. “I'm absolutely serious.”

“Hot damn!”

He took her face between his hands and kissed her.

It wasn't much in the way of a kiss.

It reminded her of films of soldiers and sailors celebrating the end of war by grabbing the closest available female and planting one on them. More a celebration of the moment than anything to do with the individuals.

He lifted his mouth, still holding her face. He was so close that his grin was almost out of focus.

Then it was gone. She looked up, right into those dangerous eyes. Hot and intent.

So hot that they seared the air she drew in with a quick breath.

His gaze dropped to her mouth, and the heat she'd drawn in as oxygen became a lit fuse racing through her body.

“Jen.”

And then he kissed her again.

T
rent would drown in this trouble, and be happy to go to the bottom.

Drowning in Jen. The scent and sensations of her. The touch and taste of her.

Her mouth welcomed his tongue. Her hair enveloped his fingers in sliding silk. Her hands brushed and stroked his neck, his jaw, his head.

The heat rose as if kindling, gasoline and wind all hit it at once. A blast of heat so fast and hot it burned right through something in him that had held hard and solid as long as he could remember.

Her skin—revealed to his touch in greedy swaths as he opened her blouse, then her bra—started cool, but in not even a second burned with the same heat. A heat that could only be consumed by the fire that had given birth to it.

She'd opened his shirt, trailed the burn down his chest
with her hands and her lips, lower to where his stomach muscles contracted and jumped. Then she came up, back to his mouth. Kissing, and kissing. Each a blaze in itself.

He stroked her breasts, deserted her mouth only to explore her nipples.

Abruptly, Jennifer slid down his body. He felt the graze of her breasts against his chest like charges that set off larger explosions throughout his body and instantly primed the main fuse.

Those reactions were so strong that it took a couple extra beats to realize several things.

She wasn't headed where his libido had hoped she was heading. Instead, she was curling into him while trying to refasten her bra.

Also, a bobbing light grew brighter and larger as it approached.

As much as he'd been lauded for quick thinking on the football field, it still took him a second to put it all together.

If he'd been turned on like this on the football field, he would have been crushed to smithereens. Then again, he didn't remember being quite this turned on
off
the football field, either.

“What's going on here?” came Darcie's in-charge cop voice.

Trent grabbed the sides of his open shirt and held them to shield Jennifer as best he could from light pouring in through her open window.

“Uh, Darcie—Officer Barrett. It's okay. It's me, Trent.”

“Trent? What are you—?” Darcie swallowed the last word.

Clearly she knew what he was doing. The question was whether she realized who he was doing it with.

“This is not a good spot for this, Trent.” Her voice was strained.

“Sorry, I wasn't thinking.”

“I don't suppose you were.” And now he could tell the strain came from efforts not to laugh. “I'd tell you to get a room, but I happen to know you have one over in Pepton. That wouldn't do, though, huh?”

“Not really. And this was rather spur of the moment.”

He thought he heard a groan from Jennifer, who still had her head down, so that hot, faintly damp puffs of her breath played across his chest. That was not helping to get his brain back in charge of this production.

“I can't encourage this sort of thing in public under any circumstances, but I do hear there's a spot overlooking that S-bend in the river where people aren't likely to get disturbed.”

“Uh, thanks, Darcie.”

“You're welcome.” That came out a little garbled because she was working so hard at not laughing. “But you cannot do this here. Another officer might have thought you were burglars or something. And if they called for backup…”

He got the picture. Lights, sirens, a whole lot of excitement. Not good.

“I understand, Darcie. Thank you.”

“No problem.” She backed up a few steps and clicked off the light. “I'll be back in, say, a half hour. I expect everything to be peaceful by then.”

“It will be. Thanks again.”

She said good night and he heard her retreating steps, then a car door open and close.

Only when the car was gone did Jennifer straighten away from him. She kept her head down, still fumbling with the clasp of her bra.

“Want me to do that?”

“No!”

Her horror at the idea of him putting on a piece of clothing she hadn't complained about him taking off—not to mention
his extremely pleasurable exploration of the flesh that piece of clothing had covered—struck him as illogical. But he knew enough about women not to mention that.

“Okay. You want some light?”

“No! No light.” She sucked in a breath that hitched in the middle. She started buttoning her blouse, apparently having given up on the bra. “I just want to get out of here. And forget this ever—”

“No you don't.”

He clamped his hand around her wrist, halting her from buttoning the shirt to her throat. “You're not going to run off and pretend—”

“I'm not pretending. This was a mistake, Trent. A crazy, stupid mistake. I can't believe I…we…I just can't believe it.”

“Tell me why it was a mistake.”

“Why?” In three letters, her voice skidded up the register about an octave. If the word had been any longer, she would have had dogs responding by the end of it. “Because we work together. Because you're younger than I am. Because we have nothing in common except this dealership. Because we're just being thrown together by circumstances, not because we're a…a real couple. Because you're Trent
Stenner
—my ex's
brother!
Because the town would go nuts. Because your parents would go nuts. Because the last thing I want to teach Ashley by example is to forget everything else I've taught her the first time some guy kisses her.”

And then she delivered the knockout punch.

“Because I don't trust you.”

 

Tell me why it was a mistake.

Was he nuts? He hadn't really said that, had he? He must have still been lost in the hot haze of passion, because he sure hadn't been thinking. But now, sitting in the motel room
alone, sleepless hours later, he knew she was right. Absolutely right. It had been a mistake.

For all the reasons she'd listed. And for about another dozen she hadn't gotten to.

He paced to the window. Even without any lamps on, the glow of the muted TV and the night-light in the bathroom reflected the empty room back at him rather than letting him see into the dark outside.

Because we're just being thrown together by circumstances, not because we're a…a real couple.

Liz had said something similar when she broke it off last summer. That circumstances had made them convenient for each other, that they weren't a real couple, that she wasn't even sure they liked each other.

She also had said that she was sure they didn't want the same things.

She wanted a family. And he didn't.

He yanked the cord that closed the drapes, masking the window.

Too bad it didn't shut up the voices.

Linc's voice, followed by his own.

Plenty enough people who don't find what they want in the family they were born into build a good family themselves.

Not me. It's the last thing I want.

And yet there he'd been, kissing Jennifer, wanting a whole lot more.

Jennifer Truesdale. A woman who put her daughter ahead of everything else. A woman who would tie him up in family in ways he couldn't even begin to sort out.

Because the last thing I want to teach Ashley by example is to forget everything else I've taught her the first time some guy kisses her.

Damn right it was a mistake.

Because now he had her taste on his lips. He had the feel of her skin. He had the scent of her hair.

What he didn't have was her.

Because I don't trust you.

 

Jennifer accepted Darcie's invitation to have a glass of wine and view her house renovations.

Ashley was at the movies with her friends, and after last night's sleeplessness and her difficulty concentrating at the dealership today—even after she'd prevented Trent's efforts to open the subject—the last thing Jennifer wanted was to be alone.

Darcie hadn't said a word about last night, so she must not have known who was with Trent. Jennifer relaxed as they toured the house.

In late spring, Zeke had bought the Barrett family home secretly in order to surprise Darcie and her mother, thinking Martha Barrett had moved out because of money problems. He'd gotten a surprise right back when he discovered she'd moved out so she could move in with the chief of police.

Once Darcie accepted his marriage proposal, they'd decided to renovate the house for themselves. In the meantime, the two of them were living in Darcie's old apartment over the garage whenever Zeke's duties as founder and CEO of Zeke-Tech didn't pull him back to northern Virginia.

First, Darcie gave her a tour, spinning vivid pictures of what the house would look like when it was finished.

Then they sat on the couch in the apartment with a tray on the cushion between them holding wine, their glasses and munchies.

“So, tell me about the wedding plans,” Jennifer urged.

If Darcie kept talking, maybe Jennifer would stop thinking about Trent. About what a mistake she had made. What a horrible mistake.

At some level, she'd known she was attracted to him. But she'd succeeded in keeping it under her conscious radar. Now…now, the dragon was out of its cave. The dragon that had spent the night flaming her with memories of his mouth on hers, of the sensation of his short, prickly, yet soft hair against her palm…oh, lord, against her breast. And then his mouth on—

“We're still negotiating the place,” Darcie said. “But it's definitely the first weekend in October, because we refuse to wait any longer. Mom and Mrs. Z are in a dither, saying there's not enough time. But all I have to do is suggest that Zeke and I take over the arrangements and they back off. I think they have visions of us in Vegas, married by an Elvis impersonator.”

Jennifer laughed. This was what she needed. A good dose of Darcie to take her mind off her troubles. To forget her mistakes.

“So, how's Trent?”

Jennifer started in heated guilt, then masked it with a detailed listing of all the things she'd done and what needed doing at the dealership.

“I didn't ask about Stenner Autos, I asked about Trent Stenner.”

She met her friend's curious gaze with her best effort at blandness. “What about him?”

“Is he as hot as he looks?”

Oh, God.
Jennifer had awakened so many times during the night in hot, aching want that she'd given up and taken a cold shower around four, then sat on the balcony waiting for dawn. “I don't know what you—”

“Oh, yes, you do, Jennifer. I've seen you two together. I thought at the fireworks…and now I know I'm right.”

“No, you're not right.” She made the words as stern as she could. Was there also a thread of sadness there?

“Don't tell me you're letting the age thing stop you.”

Because you're younger than I am.
The memory pricked Jennifer.

“Or the specter of Eric,” Darcie continued.

Because you're Trent Stenner—my ex's brother! Because your parents would go nuts.

“You've got to admit that would be horribly awkward—talk about in-law problems!” Jennifer defended herself, producing a laugh. Then she hurriedly added, “If this were anything other than your imagination, I mean.”

Darcie sailed on. “Lots of people have in-law problems. You can't let it stop you because it might get complicated. Really complicated,” she amended. “If you and Trent get together—”

“Darcie.”

“Wait a minute, don't say anything. Let me figure this out. You and Trent getting together would make him both Ashley's stepfather and uncle.”

“Not going to happen, Darcie,” Jennifer said.

“So when she has kids they could be… Got it! They could be their own mother's cousins.”

“Oh, God. That would be worthy of being on
Oprah
.”

“Or
Jerry Springer
.”

Jennifer felt the blood draining from her face, at the same time she caught the contagiously wicked glint in Darcie's eyes. “Don't you laugh, Darcie Barrett, don't you dare.”

But she did.

Worse, far worse, she lured Jennifer into joining.

When they were both exhausted, Jennifer flopped back against the cushion, one hand on her aching ribs.

Darcie pushed an item across the tray. “This is for you.”

“What is it?”

“The key to the house's back door. You'll need a flashlight, because you can't count on electricity downstairs. But we've kept the electricity to the guest room I showed you, and the
bathroom next to it, so Quince can use them when he's in town. He's a great guest. Even changes the sheets before he leaves so it's ready for other guests.”

“What?”

“Quince—remember him? The one I wanted to fix you up with? But, oh, no, you had to go for the family plan.”

“Not who, Darcie. What's this for?” She pointed at the glinting object. “And why—why would you—?”

“Oh, c'mon, Jennifer. It doesn't take a world-class detective to solve this one. I do have eyes. And I know your clothes. Even if I hadn't caught you guys making out in the dealership's lot—”

Jennifer's effort to protest came out as a choking sound.

“I do know a little something about chemistry, thanks to Zeke.”

Darcie's face got that glow she'd had the past few months, and her voice softened, so Jennifer didn't have the heart to interrupt her.

“Add to all that, that I know you,” Darcie said. “For starters, I know you would never take Trent back to your apartment with Ashley there. And you wouldn't go to his motel room, because word would be all over Drago before you closed the door. But if you're discreet, like bring one car, put it in the garage and close the door, then there's no reason anybody has to know. Lights are on variable timers to go off and on all over the house. Who's to say that's not the explanation if there are lights at weird hours.”