Wild Iris Ridge (Hope's Crossing) (16 page)

She opened the door to a room dominated by a massive four-poster bed that was entirely too large for the space. It wasn’t completely blocking the closet, just limiting access, so the door wouldn’t open all the way.

“Wow. That’s a big bed.”

“I love it and want to use it in here once we have a room of the proper proportions. If you can help me move it three or four inches to the left, that should be enough to open the door.”

He figured it wouldn’t be that tough, but on his first try, the thing wouldn’t budge.

“Wow! What’s it made of? Lead? Don’t be surprised one day if it falls through all three floors below while you’re entertaining guests in the parlor.”

“Don’t even joke about that!” she exclaimed with an expression of horror at the very idea. “With my luck, it would probably fall just as my father walked in and sat down.”

“I guess you and your dad don’t have the greatest of relationships,” he said, pausing the muscle-straining work of moving the bed to take advantage of the opening she had just handed him.

“That’s a mild way of putting it, yes.”

“So you came to live with Annabelle when you were in high school. Where did your mom fit into the picture?”

She looked startled by the question, as if she hadn’t expected it, but she slumped against the bed and seemed to choose her words carefully. “She...wasn’t well through much of my childhood. Looking back, I think she was clinically depressed and self-medicated with alcohol and drugs and anything else that made her forget her pain a little. That’s a little easier to see when you’re thirty-one than it is when you’re twelve.”

“I’m sorry.”

She shrugged. “Everybody’s got stuff, don’t they? My dad got tired of it and left us when I was about thirteen and moved in with Pam—that’s Crystal’s mom—about five minutes later. She was twenty-one, not all that much older than I was. I lived with my mom but the situation there got worse and worse. She took one too many valiums a couple years later, and they couldn’t get her stomach pumped in time, so I moved in with my dad and Pam.”

He knew some of this. Jessie had told him Lucy had had a rough break in the parent department—but he had also had the impression Jess wasn’t completely sympathetic to her cousin.

Lucy still had her father, a wealthy and successful attorney, while Jess’s dad had left her and her mother destitute when he died unexpectedly, which is why she and her mother had come to Iris House to live with Annabelle.

“So you rebelled.”

“In just about every conceivable way,” she said, gazing up at the old-fashioned brass chandelier in the room. “The last thing Pam wanted to deal with was a moody, unpredictable, troublemaker of a stepdaughter, so one day my dad brought me here to Annabelle. She gave me a home and a stable center.”

“Just like you are giving Crystal.”

She made a face. “Except Annabelle knew what she was doing while I’m completely floundering.”

He wasn’t sure how she could be so confident about some things but so self-deprecating about others. He supposed it was part of what made her such a fascinating puzzle.

“From my perspective, you’re doing okay. Your sister seemed happy enough tonight. Very different, in fact, from that day at the grocery store, when she looked like the chip on her shoulder was going to fall off and crush half of downtown. You’re doing fine,” he said. “Better than fine. Give yourself a break, for once, why don’t you?”

She raised an eyebrow. “You know, I do believe that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

Yeah, probably. He hadn’t been exactly warm to her over the years when he knew how much she disliked him.

“Don’t let it freak you out. I’m sure I’ll go back to being an ass as soon as we leave the room.”

“I don’t think you’re an ass,” she said, her voice low.

“No?”

She shook her head slightly, that tantalizing brush of color on her cheekbones again. She looked at him, eyes huge and impossibly green, and he saw that mysterious
something
in her expression again, there and then gone again.

It wasn’t quite an invitation, more like a simple acknowledgment of the currents simmering between them. They were alone with that awareness of each other in a small room dominated by a huge bed. The realization sent heat surging through him and a deep aching hunger.

She swallowed and that color rose higher. He saw a wild little pulse flare in her throat suddenly, and with a sense of inevitability, he reached a thumb out to cover it and lowered his mouth to hers.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

L
UCY
CAUGHT
HER BREATH,
frozen in place as his mouth brushed against hers once then twice, ever so gently.

Oh. Oh, yes.

Some part of her had been waiting in glittery anticipation for exactly this since the instant she had looked up from her spot on the grass with Crystal to see Brendan riding past with the children earlier.

All evening long, her mind had been whirling, replaying their last heady kiss over and over until she couldn’t seem to think about anything else.

It seemed inevitable, somehow, as if both of them had only been preparing for this moment.

Those first soft kisses were only a teasing prelude. He came back for more, his mouth firm and insistent this time, and she sighed as he deepened the kiss, tugging her against him.

She curled her fingers against his chest, soaking in the impact of all those hard muscles.

He smelled delicious—some kind of outdoorsy soap with notes of sage and leather and some other indefinable masculine scent she guessed was simply him. She wanted to bury her face in the crook of his neck and just inhale.

That would mean sliding her mouth away from his, however, and why in the world would she do that, when his kiss tasted even better than he smelled?

He slid his tongue along hers and everything inside her shivered with delight.

She wrapped her arms around his neck to pull him closer, and he took that as an invitation to lower her onto the bed as he continued those fierce kisses that consumed all reason.

She didn’t want this moment to ever end. Why couldn’t they just lock the door and stay right here, while the old house settled around them and dust motes floated in the air?

They couldn’t. Some tiny bit of common sense tried to push itself to the forefront of her mind, but she was a little busy at the moment and didn’t pay it much mind.

“Lucy,” he murmured, his voice ragged and sexy as his hand teased her skin just above her hip bone.

How could she have ever thought him taciturn, distant, cold? He was all fire and flame, heat and hunger. She kissed him, her tongue tangling with his as a slow, steady ache burned through her.

That little corner of her mind picked up a distant sound, the slam of a door somewhere several floors below them, but it seemed to echo through her head.

They couldn’t do this. Not here. Not now.

Crystal was down there with two children and two puppies and any moment now, any one of them might decide to come up here to see what was taking them so long to, um, move a bed.

It was the hardest thing she had ever done, but she finally wrenched her mouth away. “Brendan. You have to stop.”

He stared at her, and the hazy arousal in his gaze sent little sparks shooting through her. “What?”

“The kids,” she murmured. “Crystal. They’re going to come looking for us in a minute.”

As she watched, the arousal on his expression slowly gave way to reality. After a moment, he eased away from her and sat on the edge of the bed, his shoulders tense and his expression twisted into one of stunned disbelief.

“What is
wrong
with me?” he growled. “I touch you and I completely lose control.”

She sat up, as well, rearranging clothing and trying hard to return her breathing to something that didn’t sound as if she’d just finished a half marathon into the mountains.

“Losing control means something’s wrong with you?”

His jaw flexed. “With you? Yes. Isn’t this a little weird to you? The way we ignite when we’re together?”

“Weird?”

“Yeah. You were Jess’s cousin. Her best friend. You loved her.”

Of all the things she might have expected him to say, that hadn’t been on the list. He was upset because of her relationship with Jessica? If she hadn’t been Jess’s friend, would he be more enthusiastic about this heat between them?

“Both of us loved her,” she said, choosing her words carefully. “Nothing will ever change that. She’s inside each of us. Why does that necessarily mean it’s weird if we are, er, attracted to each other? Especially considering we had a little history together before you ever met Jess?”

* * *

H
E
STARED
AT
her and for one terrible instant, she wondered if he had forgotten. In all the years since, they had never referred to it. She had never seen the point in telling Jessie about it and she had to wonder if Brendan ever had.

How humiliating would it be if he didn’t know what on earth she was talking about?

But after a moment, he shrugged. “We shared one night. One kiss.”

Did she tell him that for her, that one kiss had always been simmering between them? “A pretty intense kiss,” she finally said. “After which you completely brushed me off and started dating my best friend.”

“Is that why you despised me? Why you told Jess she could do better than a washed-up jock with more muscles than brains?”

She gaped at him and then felt color soak her cheeks as she remembered that heated conversation with Jess on the eve of their wedding, when she had tried one last time to convince her not to marry a man Lucy worried would just break Jessie’s heart. Like he had broken her own.

“She told you that?”

“Why shouldn’t she? You said it, didn’t you?”

“Ye-es,” she said slowly, wishing she could sneak into that closet and just slam the door closed behind her so she didn’t have to face him right now.

Wasn’t it bad enough that she couldn’t seem to control herself around the man? Now he had to dredge up some of her most embarrassing moments and toss them out into the middle of the room between them.

“Okay, I admit, I was a...a jerk after you and Jess started dating. My feelings were hurt, okay? I liked you. A lot. I know we only spent the one evening together, but I’d never really dated anybody seriously, especially not...somebody like you.”

“Somebody like me? You mean a big dumb jock?”

She felt uncomfortably exposed, all her insecurities laid bare in front of him.

“You were never that. You were...gorgeous and fun and sweet. Or at least I thought so. This is corny, but it felt like you saw me in a way that no one else ever had. I don’t know how else to describe it, I just know I liked you a lot and I wanted to see where things between us might go.”

She shrugged, inordinately fascinated with the chevron pattern of the parquet floor. “But you never called me and the next thing I know, Jess starts bubbling over about the great guy she was seeing. Imagine how I felt when the great guy turns out to be you. It stung my pride more than a little. My best friend and the first guy I ever really liked seriously. It didn’t bring out the best in me. I wanted to think you were just a jerk who went around breaking as many hearts as you could.”

“That wasn’t who I was. You know that, right? You were an...anomaly.”

“An anomaly.”

“And I was the jerk,” he muttered with a pained expression. “I should have called you to explain, especially after I found out you were Jessie’s friend.”

“What would you have explained?” she asked, suddenly desperate to know he hadn’t set out to break her heart just as a joke or something.

He sighed. “This is really awkward, Lucy.”

“You’re telling me,” she muttered.

“Okay. Here it is. I’ve always had this idea of what I wanted out of life. What my parents had. After my mom died, I guess I idealized my childhood probably more than I should have. What I had as a kid seemed...perfect to me. After I left the NFL, all I could think about was having the same thing. Living in Hope’s Crossing, settling down, raising a couple of kids here.”

“White picket fence and all.”

“Something like that.” He made a face. “I liked you, too, for what it’s worth. I wasn’t just messing around. But that night, as I listened to you talk about your goals and your dreams and all the hills you wanted to conquer, I couldn’t quite make those two pictures gel in my mind. I figured it wasn’t worth wasting either of our time when we wanted different things and we’d only shared a few kisses.”

“And then you met Jess,” she said quietly. “And she
did
want that white picket fence and everything that came with it.”

“Or at least she said she did,” he said darkly.

“Why would you say that?”

He eased away and went to sit on the window ledge. “Do you remember when she was pregnant with Faith and came up to Seattle for a week?”

She smiled at the memory, even as her heart ached a little. “We had a great time. We went to every single baby clothing boutique in three counties, bought way too much, ate even more, stayed up all night and laughed.”

His jaw tightened. “After she came home, she cried herself to sleep for the first three nights she was back, and she could barely look at me.”

Lucy stared. “You think she was unhappy being married to you?”

“I think some part of her saw you in your element, this exciting world filled with travel to exotic places, a challenging career, interesting friends, while she was now pregnant and facing a lifetime stuck in the same small town. All she talked about was the shopping, the fantastic restaurants, the parties you went to.”

That was so far removed from the long, hard corporate days that made up her usual life in Seattle that she almost laughed.

“The truth is,” she said, with stark, uncomfortable honesty, “maybe I went a little over-the-top on the trip trying to prove to her what a perfect life I had created for myself. Maybe I wanted her to be envious of
me,
for a change.”

She wanted to recall the revealing words as soon as she spoke them, especially after he gave her a searching look that made her flush.

“I’m pretty sure it worked. She was envious of you and your success. She didn’t begrudge it. I think she just contrasted it to her world of facing dirty diapers and the terrible twos and oatmeal ground into the carpet. Even after that, whenever she talked to you, she would be in a difficult mood for at least a day or two before she snapped out of it.”

No wonder he resented her, if he blamed her for causing Jessie even a moment’s discontent.

She meant what she said to him,
she
had always been the one envying her cousin her great marriage, adorable children, a community that cherished her.

“She loved you, Brendan, with her whole heart. She loved you, she loved the kids, she loved your life together here in Hope’s Crossing.”

“I know she did,” he said, his voice low. “That doesn’t mean she didn’t have regrets.”

The ache in his voice arrowed straight to her heart. She couldn’t imagine how difficult it would be to love someone so deeply and then lose her. Second-guessing his wife’s happiness and commitment to the life they had created together was a futile, heartbreaking exercise, and she couldn’t bear knowing she might have contributed to some of his uncertainty out of some stupid effort to protect her ego.

“Regret and curiosity are not at all the same thing, Brendan. Here’s the thing about women. Sometimes even when we have everything we ever dreamed, we wonder about the road we didn’t take, the choice we didn’t make. We wonder who we might have become, even when we absolutely, positively would still make the same choices again, a hundred times over. If Jess ever seemed unhappy, I’m sure it was only for a moment and only because she was curious about the person she might have been if her life had gone in a different direction. It wasn’t because she ever regretted loving you.”

He gazed at her and she wondered what he was thinking. Why did the man have to be so blasted inscrutable?

“And just so you know,” she was compelled to add, “I believe Jess made the best possible choice with her life. I’m the one who always envied her.”

Okay, that was enough true confession for this evening’s program. She jumped off the bed. “We’d better go check on the kids. Thanks for helping me move the bed and for...everything.”

She hurried from the room before he could answer.

* * *

“I’
M
GOING
TO
have to take a break pretty soon or my arm is going to fall off,” Crystal declared.

A week later, the two of them were painting one of the bedrooms on the second floor. This one was a lovely soft lavender that would look magnificent with the deep oak moldings and the pale marble fireplace mantel.

“Let’s see if we can finish this wall and then we’ll wrap things up for the day. Maybe we can take a walk or something. It looks like a gorgeous evening out there.”

Between the puppy, Crystal’s schoolwork and the fast-progressing work on Iris House, they had been insanely busy the past week, but everything was moving along nicely.

“We should have another barbecue,” Crystal said. “That was fun last week, and Max has only played with Daisy one time, when we met the kids and their babysitter at the park.”

Lucy forced a smile, even though her insides felt a little hollow every time she thought about Brendan and the last time she had seen him. That fierce, intense kiss haunted her every time she walked into that bedroom—okay, let’s face it, every time she closed her eyes—and the conversation afterward had been even more troubling.

She had basically told him that she’d been crushing on him for years, that she had been cold to him all this time because her feelings had been hurt that he’d picked her best friend over her.

She was such an idiot.

She hadn’t seen him in a week, so he obviously had been too embarrassed to face her after that humiliating revelation.

The playdate with the kids and their kindly babysitter had been a coincidental thing that had only come about after Crystal happened to be walking past their house with Max and had bumped into Faith and Carter, out walking Daisy.

“There. That’s it for me,” she said as she set down the cutting brush Genevieve had taught her to use to get a clean, crisp line between colors.

“I’ll be done with the rolling in a minute, then I’m
so
ready to be done.”

She was just cleaning off her brush in the adjacent bathroom when she heard the chime of the doorbell.