Sing Me Back Home (5 page)

“D
o you want
to come in?” Maya asked Jack when he walked her to the door.

He glanced at his watch. “Sure, but I can’t stay long. I told Gina I wouldn’t be late.”

“Carmen is staying with my sister tonight.”

Idle conversation, he wondered, shooting her a speculative glance. Or something else?

“I didn’t mean that the way it sounded,” she said, flustered.

He couldn’t resist teasing her. “How did it sound?”

Now she looked annoyed. “You know very well what it sounded like. Like I was dropping the biggest, most obvious hint possible. I said the first thing that came into my head. I wasn’t inviting you to jump into bed with me.”

Jack laughed. “I didn’t think you were. Which is too bad.” Really too bad, he thought. Maya was without doubt one of the most beautiful women he’d ever known. Long, dark hair, classic features, a perfect complexion. Gray eyes, rimmed with a darker gray, unusual and compelling. An angel she wasn’t, though. More like a siren. “You blew me away when I first saw you tonight.”

Her lips curved. “Good. I meant to.”

“You always did have a wicked streak.” As a teenager, Maya had been pretty, but now she was downright dangerous.

“What would you have done if I had been dropping a hint? If I invited you to stay?”

He didn’t have to think about that. “I’d have taken your hand and walked with you to your bedroom and—” he put his hands on her waist and gently pulled her closer—“I’d have done this.” He kissed her. Slowly. Reacquainted himself with that luscious mouth. Her beautiful mouth he’d been thinking about since he saw her up close for the first time in years.

Maya moved closer. Instant heat flared between them. He took the kiss deeper, until he drowned in her taste, her scent, the feel of her arms around his neck and her soft curves pressing against his chest.

Jack broke the kiss, but he couldn’t make himself move away. Maya wasn’t unaffected either. Her breathing was fast and her lips were parted, wet from his kiss. As he stared at her, she ran her tongue delicately around her lips, making them, if possible, even more inviting.

“Damn.” He kissed her again, harder, more briefly, and resolutely set her away from him. “I have to go home.”

“Yes. You do.”

“I want to kiss you again.”

“I know. I want to kiss you again too.”

He was tempted. Oh, man, was he tempted. Instead, he turned around and walked to her door. Once there, he turned back and looked at Maya, standing where he’d left her. “I’ll call you. Soon.”

“Good.” Her smile could have seduced a dead man, and Jack was far from dead.

He left before he said to hell with it and devoured her.

*

Though Maya tried
not to work on the weekends, she couldn’t always swing it. Saturday morning found her tying up loose ends. She had just finished a video chat with a client when Amy brought Carmen back from her house. Carmen ran off immediately.

“Hi to you too,” Maya muttered, watching her daughter go. “What’s up with that?” she asked, turning to her sister.

Amy and Maya looked nothing alike. Whereas Maya was tall and nicely curved, with long dark brown hair, gray eyes and a creamy complexion, Amy was short and voluptuous with short, light brown hair, blue eyes, and to her disgust, freckles. She always complained that she shouldn’t be saddled with lack of height, overly generous curves and freckles to boot, especially since freckles were out of place with her body.

Amy had been a concert pianist with the Philadelphia Philharmonic Orchestra for several years shortly after graduating college. Everyone, including Maya, was surprised when Amy abruptly left the orchestra, returned to Marietta and began teaching piano lessons out of her home. Amy rarely spoke of her time with the orchestra, although once after several margaritas she’d admitted to Maya that she’d left because of a failed love affair. But that was all Maya had gotten out of her.

Amy snorted. “Men. Or, in this case, boys. We saw Carmen’s heartthrob at the movies. He pretended he didn’t know her. Needless to say, she’s heartbroken and furious and the hours she spent talking to me and on the phone and texting last night to her friends were not nearly enough to thoroughly dissect the issue. I imagine she’s going to call one of her friends. Again.”

“Poor baby.” Nothing was worse than being humiliated by a boy you liked. “He’s the one she was talking to when she went into anaphylactic shock at the potluck. He used some pretty fancy moves to get away as fast as he could. Turkey,” she added.

“I heard that.” Amy smiled ruefully. “About forty-seven times. I wouldn’t be a teenager again for anything.”

“Me neither,” Maya said. “Want some coffee? I just made a fresh pot.”

“Sure.” Amy followed her into the kitchen, accepted a cup of coffee, added milk and a couple of packets of artificial sweetener, and sat at the table. “So, Maya, spill. Inquiring minds want to know.”

“You mean about my date?”

“No, about the dry cleaners. Yes, the date. What else?”

“There’s nothing to spill. I had a date with Jack last night. We had a nice time. No big deal.”

“Your nose is growing,” Amy observed dryly. “Come on, Maya. Out with it. Was the old zing still there?”

Maya laughed. She had never been able to hide anything from her sister, even though they were ten years apart in age. “Yes.” She patted her heart. “And then some.”

“I knew it! Did you sleep with him?”

“Amy!”

“What? Carmen isn’t anywhere near. It’s a reasonable question. Did you?”

“No.” Remembering the kiss, she flushed. “We hadn’t seen each other in twenty years. At least, we haven’t been close enough to speak before the potluck and then later at the hospital.”

“If nothing happened, then why are you blushing?”

Maya eyed her sister, then sighed. “I didn’t say nothing happened. I said I didn’t sleep with him.” But she’d sure been tempted. “We kissed,” she added.

“All that blushing for a kiss?”

“It was a hell of a kiss.” Before Amy could probe further, Maya’s cell rang. She had a feeling it was Jack, even though his name didn’t come up on the screen. “Hello.”

“Maya, it’s Jack.”

“Hi,” she said, aware her voice sounded as goofily happy as she felt.

“Do you have plans tonight?” he asked.

“Other than taking Carmen to a party, no.”

“Gina’s going to a party too. I imagine it’s the same one. Do you want to have some dinner?”

“I’d love to. I’m taking Carmen and her friend Mattie to the party, so it will have to be after that.”

“Sounds good. I’ll pick you up around eight.”

Maya put her phone in her pocket and found Amy staring at her. “Oh, sister, you’ve got it bad.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. It’s just a date.”

“The second one in as many nights.”

Maya felt almost giddy. Maybe she and Jack were both reliving their teenage years. Except, she didn’t feel anything at all like she had as a teenager. No, they were all grown up now. “Why don’t you do something useful and help me find something to wear?”

“If you insist. Dressy? Casual?”

“He didn’t say.”

“So, something to make his eyes fall out of his head?” Amy asked, eyes twinkling.

“Absolutely,” she said, and led the way to her bedroom.

*

Jack drove to
his office Saturday afternoon wondering what his brother Dylan’s latest injury was. He didn’t ordinarily work on weekends other than making rounds. But he was always willing to open when family or close friends called. Since Dylan wouldn’t have called him for something minor, he hoped it wasn’t too bad.

“Thanks for meeting me,” Dylan said when he arrived a few minutes after Jack. “It’s just a scratch, but that damn Wyatt’s as bad as a woman.” Still griping, he sat on the exam table. “Wouldn’t shut his mouth until I called you.”

Scratch my ass, Jack thought, glancing at the torn bloody white undershirt covering the wound. “Good for Wyatt. I’m glad at least one of my brothers has some sense. How did you do it?” he asked, unwrapping the shirt from around Dylan’s arm.

“Fixing the fence. Damned barb wire.”

Just as he’d thought, Dylan’s idea of a scratch wasn’t the same as Jack’s. “Hate to tell you, but Wyatt was right. You need stitches. And a tetanus booster.”

“Oh, man,” Dylan complained. “You know I don’t like needles.”

“It won’t heal well, and knowing you, will undoubtedly get infected, especially if I don’t stitch you up. Buck up, cowboy.”

They talked while Jack set up the instruments and injected the wound area with a local anesthetic before beginning to stitch him up.

“Hear you’re going out with the Heartbreaker again,” Dylan said, as he started stitching. “She’s a looker, I’ll give you that.”

The Heartbreaker was the name his brothers had given Maya when she left Marietta—and Jack—behind. They’d been young, but old enough to give Maya a name that had stuck, at least within the family and he suspected elsewhere too. “You’re not going around town calling her that, are you?” That would be great for Maya to hear.

“Would I do that?” Dylan asked, sounding hurt.

“Yes, but you’d better not.”

“Relax. She won’t hear it from me.” He raised an eyebrow. “At least three different sources in Marietta told me you two were an item again. You work fast.” Dylan winced as Jack continued stitching, pulling each thread carefully through the skin. “Damn, that hurts.”

“Thought you were a tough guy?”

“Tougher than you, Whipper,” Dylan retorted with his favorite nickname for Jack. Wyatt, a little older than Dylan, had nicknamed Jack ‘Ripper’ for Jack the Ripper. At the time, Dylan couldn’t pronounce his R’s, so Ripper became Whipper.

“In your dreams,” Jack told him. “Maya and I aren’t an item.” Yet. He could hope, though, couldn’t he? “We’ve only had one date.”

“Yeah? You gonna leave it at that?”

Thinking about being with Maya again, Jack smiled and shook his head. “Hell, no. We’re going out again tonight.”

“You dog,” Dylan said. “Watch out you don’t get burned again.”

Good advice. But it was already far too late to be careful.

*

“No, that’s not
it,” Amy said, lounging on Maya’s bed. “It’s cute, but not sexy.”

“Who says it has to be sexy?”

“You did when you said you wanted to make his eyes fall out of his head.”

Okay, she had a point. “What about these boots? They’re new.” She held up a pair of black suede ankle boots with a low, stacked heel.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many boots. How can you wear them all?”

“I work in fashion,” Maya defended herself. “I have to dress the part.”

“Maya, you work from home most of the time now.”

“I didn’t always. Besides, I video chat. I’m not a model any longer, but I still have to look good.” Sighing, she rubbed her hand over the suede. “Besides, I love shoes. Especially boots.”

“For real? I hadn’t noticed,” Amy said dryly, waving a hand at the closet. “But I guess the fact that you have a separate closet for shoes should have clued me in.”

Maya ignored her sister, concentrating instead on the clothes in her other bedroom closet. Most of her dressier clothes were in closet in the spare bedroom, but the master closet held a mix. She was considering adding a large, walk-in closet to the master bedroom, but she knew it would cost more than she could afford right now. Moving had taken a big chunk of her disposable income.