Kiss Me Hello (Sweetest Kisses) (35 page)

“Tony was blacking out?” Luis sounded pathetically hopeful. He straightened and stroked a hand down Buttercup’s shoulder.

“The meds he was on did screwy things to his blood pressure, and he wasn’t always careful about what he took when.” Sid slid an arm around Luis’s shoulders. “The beer would have been nonalcoholic, Luis. He and Thor had agreed to that much. Mac is right. As much as the insurance company was trying to prove Tony killed himself, they would have leaped on any trace of alcohol in his veins.”

Luis folded away from the horse to wrap his arms around Sid. He dropped his head to her shoulder and cried openly, bringing tears to Mac’s eyes as well.

“You had nothing to do with Tony’s death,” Sid said. “Tony was sick. Very sick, and not going to get better. In all the times he hinted about suicide, he never once said he’d drive himself to death. It wasn’t your fault, Luis. It was not your fault.”

* * *

“So he’s willing to be adopted?” Trent sat beside Sid on the porch swing, pushing them in a lazy summer rhythm with one foot.

“He is, thank God.”

“Then congratulations are in order. If it’s all right with you, Hannah would like to handle the pleadings.”

Hannah? Fitting somehow, because each of the brothers had taken on an adoption for a sibling already, though adopting Vera’s daughter would take James some time.

“I would be very pleased to have Hannah do this for us,” Sid said.

They fell silent, but Trent’s quiet wasn’t as restful to Sid as Mac’s, or as easy to translate. He brought the swing to a halt and rose.

“Is Mac around somewhere?” he asked.

“Out in the barn. It’s like he can’t take his eyes off Luis for fear the kid will disappear before we can get through the legalities.”

“Maybe. Maybe he wants Luis to know his parents won’t disappear.” Trent scratched an itch between his shoulder blades on one of the porch posts, the same way Daisy and Buttercup scratched themselves on obliging tree trunks. “James said he talked to you about the day our father died.”

Sid kept her seat, not familiar enough yet with her brother-in-law to read his expression. “He did, and so has Mac. I cannot imagine a harder day for your family.”

“Or for me.”

“Why do you say that?”

He turned his back to her. Across the barnyard, Bojangles pounced on something in the weeds near the fence.

“I was supposed to put the damned roll bars back on that tractor. I wanted to paint them the same red as the tractor, though. They were sitting in the carriage house, still a rusty white when Dad died.”

This
again?
“Your dad, who’d farmed his entire life, couldn’t have bolted those roll bars on the tractor himself, had no other tractors on the property, and didn’t know better than to plow rocky ground on a vintage tractor without its roll bars?”

Trent studied her for a few minutes but said nothing, so Sid got up and stood beside him.

“Blaming ourselves is a way to stay connected to someone who’s gone. I know that now. It’s a way to get into that nice, cozy coffin with the deceased and shut out the world. I had to figure this out before I could marry your brother. I ranted about Mac’s reticence regarding his profession, I fretted over Luis’s situation, but part of what nailed my emotional feet to the floor was simply a lack of courage. Shoving grief aside takes as much courage as enduring it does.”

Before she could say more, James’s black SUV came bumping up the lane.

Twyla, Vera’s daughter, hopped out, barreling across the yard, followed by Vera and James.

“I asked James to come by and join Mac and me on a walk,” Trent said. “I’m not sure why he brought reinforcements.”

“They come bearing brownies,” Sid said. “Don’t complain. Hullo, Twy.”

“Hi, Aunt Sid. We made brownies!” As if making brownies didn’t happen at James and Vera’s as often as doing a load of whites. “Dad wants to take a walk with the uncs.”

School had been out for more than a week, and Sid kept all three nieces for most of each weekday. She still lit up inside every time she laid eyes on her nieces, and Luis’s resumption of the role of big brother had been wonderful to watch.

Wonderful and sad.

“Let’s find some milk to wash down our brownies,” Sid said. “James, greetings. Vera, the party is in the kitchen today.”

“We had lunch in the tree house last week,” Twyla reported, taking Sid and Vera each by a hand. “There were bugs, though. Uncle Mac said next time we should wait until it snows to have lunch outside.”

“That’s because Uncle Mac had to figure out how to get the cooler up the tree,” Sid said. “Trent and James, Mac is in the barn. Enjoy your walk.”

She let Vera and Twy take the brownies inside, but waited on the porch until she saw all three brothers walking slowly, side by side, in the direction of the north pasture.

When Sid joined the ladies in the kitchen, Twyla turned a curious gaze on her. “Mom wants to know when you’re going to tell Uncle Mac about the baby.”

* * *

“Did you enjoy your walk?” Sid positively cuddled against Mac, in a way she hadn’t before they’d married.

“Enjoy isn’t quite the right word. I appreciated it. I appreciate my brothers.” Mac propped his chin on her crown. “That walk was overdue.”

Overdue. He’d used the word advisedly, hoping his new wife would confide in him. He understood completely why she wouldn’t: she was afraid to hope, just as she’d been afraid to trust. But not, by God, afraid to love.

“Sidonie?” He kissed the side of her neck, which had her snuggling yet closer in the broad light of day right in the middle of the kitchen, such were the blessings of holy matrimony. “I can count to twenty-eight.”

“Hmm?” She lipped his ear lobe as her hands slipped down around his backside.

“I said, I can count to twenty-eight, my love. Married men develop the knack. Isn’t there something you want to tell me, but haven’t, because you’re trying to protect me from being disappointed if you can’t carry to term?”

She went from twining herself around him like a randy vine of ivy to clutching at him in shock.

“How did you know?” Sid planted her forehead on Mac’s chest, which meant he could not see her eyes. But then, he didn’t need to.

“I caught you crying yesterday when the mares played tag with Luis. Then too, Trent and James have been nudging each other each time they see you.”

“Hold me.”

He held her, he waited, and he thanked God for the miracles that had recently deluged his life. “You scared, honey?”

She nodded.

“You’ll make a wonderful mother, and the baby will be fine.”

She relaxed. “This wasn’t supposed to be possible.”

“Maybe one or both of us healed what was ailing us.” The phone rang, cutting off his litany of comfort. He reached for it over Sid’s shoulder.

“Knightleys’.”

The call was from Social Services—perfect timing, as usual—but Mac listened in silence and had to revise his opinion.

“I think you want to speak with my wife.” He handed her the phone and stepped away. They could celebrate in private at length—they had
so
much
to celebrate—later. Mac fished out his car keys, mentally mapping a shopping route.

He would love having a pregnant wife, except Sid was shaking her head as she held the phone to her ear. By degrees, her expression clouded, which wasn’t at all what Mac had expected.

“I’ll have to ask you to hold. I need a minute.”

She covered the mouthpiece with her hand. “This is awful. This is just—do you know why they’re calling?”

“I got the gist of it, yes.”

“You left it to me to tell them we can’t take Luis’s sisters? I can’t—this is just—those poor girls. Luis will never forgive us if we tell the Department no. To think, their foster parents are divorcing when the girls were expecting adoption. And then to toss a pair of perfectly adorable little girls back into the system as if they were—I cannot deal with this.”

Mac threw his keys into the air and caught them. “Can too. When you’re done with your phone call, we have places to go.”

Sid’s eyes filled with tears—she would be a weepy sort of pregnant wife, apparently. Mac mentally added tissues to their shopping list.

“I am very disappointed in you, MacKenzie. They aren’t puppies, they’re children, and if you think it’s easy for me to turn my back on them just because we might have a child—”

He plucked the phone from Sid’s hand. “You will have to excuse us now. My wife and I are going shopping. We’ll be picking up twin beds, a doll house, at least two ponies, possibly a dog, tissues, an aquarium, an entire library of horse books, a sturdy piano, probably a bunny or two before my brothers try to pull that maneuver, an entire nursery set for a child of either gender, and a hammock for parents only. We’ll figure out the rest when you get those girls where they should have been all along.”

He hung up the phone, soundly kissed the mother of his children, and bellowed for Luis over Sid’s squeals of happiness. And later—not too much later—they did, indeed, celebrate their good fortune at great and glorious length.

Order Grace Burrowes's first book
in the Sweetest Kisses series

A Single Kiss

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Order Grace Burrowes's second book
in the Sweetest Kisses series

The First Kiss

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Order Grace Burrowes's first book
in the Sweetest Kisses series

A Single Kiss

On sale now

Order Grace Burrowes's second book
in the Sweetest Kisses series

The First Kiss

On sale now

Size is not important.

Sadie Delacourt knew better than to put stock in breed prejudices, though the canine panting at her from across the breezeway was a mastiff/rottweiler cross, as homely as it was substantial.

“Know any Baskervilles?” she asked the dog, shifting a bag of groceries to dig for her keys. “I bet you get that a lot.”

The dog was jet-black, had a fine set of teeth, and was not smiling that Sadie could tell.

“I see you have a collar and tags,” Sadie went on in her best nice-poochie tones. “That suggests you also have an irresponsible owner, who’s probably worried sick that his little friend has gone for a romp to devour helpless single women too stupid to find their keys.”

The dog cocked its head, a disarmingly human gesture.

“Move to Damson Valley, they said,” Sadie muttered as she groped around in the bottom of her purse. “Everybody’s friendly in Damson Valley. Great schools, not much crime. You probably eat anybody dumb enough to be on the streets after sundown, don’t you?”

The sharp edge of an apartment key greeted Sadie’s index finger.

The dog rose from its haunches, and fear dripped acid into Sadie’s veins as she extracted her keys from amid wallet, hairbrush, unpaid bills, mints, pens, toothbrush, water bottle, vegan granola bar (she could resist those most easily), and notebooks.

“Too late to ignore you,” Sadie said, because that was the safety protocol with a stray dog. Look away, stay cool, drop what you’re holding in case the dog is attracted to it.

“You’re not attracted to high-quality toilet paper, are you? Orange and spice tea? Organic whole milk?”

The key did not want to go into the lock, and the dog’s toenails clicking on the concrete told Sadie the Baskerville’s missing pup was the curious sort.

Screaming might alarm the dog, and Sadie doubted she could have mustered a scream in any case. Just as a cold, whiskery, nose-kiss hit the back of Sadie’s knee, the key slipped into the tumblers. She wedged purse and groceries aside, twisted the lock, and was about to push open the door to her new apartment when a male voice stopped her.

“Baby, what the devil do you think you’re doing? Stop right there, or you’ll be sorry.”

* * *

Moving was second only to death of a loved one in terms of creating stress, apparently for dogs as well as humans.

“You come here right now, young lady,” Gideon went on, using his stern-papa impersonation. “You know better, and I’m ashamed of you.”

The petite redhead with the groceries froze, probably terrified out of her wits by a two-hundred-pound canine Welcome Wagon.

“You’re addressing your dog?” she asked, hiking her groceries onto her hip.

“My naughty dog,” Gideon said, keeping his tone disapproving, because Baby knew how to work those big brown eyes. She’d gone butt-down onto the concrete, aiming her doggie version of the “please don’t let him take my squeaky toy” look at the woman.

“Could you possibly ask your naughty dog to sit somewhere else?”

The lady’s voice shook, suggesting Baby was about to get her owner sued.

“Baby, come.”

Up she did get, across the breezeway she did amble, head down, as if reluctant to part from her new friend. Damned beast should have been in pictures.

“Park it, dog.”

Baby sat with an air of martyred resignation and turned her gaze on the woman, whose arms had to be tired by now from lugging those groceries.

“May I help you with those?” Gideon offered. “I’m Gideon Granville, and I’ll be moving in here at the end of the week. Baby has never hurt a soul, unless you count the affronts to dignity suffered by my partner’s cat. The cat gets even, though.”

The lady passed over a heavy bag of groceries and slumped against the brick wall beside her door.

“Once, when I was kid,” she said, “I was playing at the park, and I went to the water fountain, same as I had a hundred times before. A golden retriever didn’t like me getting a drink before him. I ended up with thirty-seven stitches and a phobia about big dogs.”

She had bright red hair—none of that titian, auburn, strawberry-blond equivocation—so her version of pale made the freckles across the bridge of her nose stand out. She was five-two or five-three, fine boned, and no match for a big, territorial dog. Her shoulder bag was an artful rendering of an English saddle, and she gripped the strap as if it held her sanity together.

“I’m so sorry,” Gideon said. “You’re absolutely safe, I promise you, but you look a tad rattled. Should we get you out of this heat?” For western Maryland was enjoying a late, ferocious St. Martin’s summer.

The woman shot a glance at Baby, who was panting across the breezeway and could probably do with a bowl of water.

Though the dog had been known to drink good English ale too.

“I’m Sadie Delacourt,” the lady said, passing Gideon her keys. “And when I’m scared, I shake. If you’d do the honors?”

The private investigator in Gideon wanted to scold her for allowing a strange bloke into her apartment, particularly when she was off-kilter and maybe about to faint.

The guy who’d spent half his life in Damson Valley unlocked her door and waited for her to precede him into the cool space within. That same guy—thirty-two years old, single, and in excellent health—noted that Miss Sadie Delacourt’s figure did sweet things for her Hawaiian-print board shorts and raspberry scrub top.

“You can’t leave Baby out here,” Miss Delacourt said. “I doubt property management wants her tied to the stair rails.”

“Property management is how she got loose,” Gideon said, following Miss Delacourt inside. “I stopped by to pick up a key, and the building manager didn’t close the door all the way. Baby, come.”

The dog sprang to her feet, two hundred pounds of hairy, panting, tongue-lolling good cheer.

“She’s well trained,” Miss Delacourt observed as Baby joined them inside.

“I can only take credit for some of that,” Gideon said, carrying the groceries into the galley kitchen. “She was found running loose at the truck stop, wearing a spike collar with the name Baby on it. People don’t adopt big dogs, old dogs, or black dogs—it’s called Black Dog Syndrome—so when I decided to get a dog, I went for the biggest, blackest, mature canine at the pound.”

“I don’t think I could do that,” Miss Delacourt said, opening the fridge. “I couldn’t leave all the other dogs behind. Would you like something to drink? I have cold water, lemonade, or iced mint tea.”

Miss Delacourt had manners, also a lot of unpacking to do. Her apartment was a mirror image of the space Gideon had rented, a beige-carpeted rectangle chopped into a combined living room and dining room, galley kitchen, bathroom, a small bedroom, and a human-sized bedroom with attached second bathroom.

Both the living room and the larger bedroom would have tree-shaded balconies, and the complex backed up to the farmland bordering the town of Damson Valley. The last cutting of hay had come off in recent weeks, but some of the late corn remained, giving the valley a bucolic checkerboard beauty that reminded Gideon of Surrey.

“Lemonade would be delightful,” Gideon said. “May I offer Baby some water?”

“If I can find something large enough for her to drink out of. I set up my studio first, and the rest of the place…”

Taped, labeled boxes sat on the floor, sofa, and on the dining-room table; ferns occupied the odd level surface—all of them healthy—and a mobile of stained-glass hummingbirds hung crookedly from a curtain rod, two of the birds entangled.

“The rest of the place will be there when you get to it,” Gideon said. “Are you an artist?”

One box read “acrylics” and another “pastels,” suggesting she was, but a competent private investigator should be as good at small talk as he was at observation and recall.

Miss Delacourt handed him a serving of lemonade in a mason jar and went back to stuffing salad fixings into her refrigerator.

“I test and design video games,” she said, “but I also dabble in the studio arts. What about you?”

“I have a law degree,” Gideon replied, which was true. Maybe because his dog had scared Miss Delacourt, but more likely because Gideon despised misrepresentation of any kind, he gave her the rest of the truth. “I abhor the whole suit-and-tie drill though. Did it for three years. ‘Yes, Your Honor. No, Your Honor. May it please the court…’ Courtroom attire, bar lunches…that’s not what I do best. I’m litigation support now, fact-checking, investigating, document analysis. Longer hours, but my own hours.”

More interesting hours too, and every bit as lucrative.

Miss Delacourt wrinkled a nose nobody would call cute, though Gideon liked the character in that nose. He liked her green eyes too, liked the hint of caution in them, and the shadows that said despite her cordial manners, she valued her privacy.

“So much education only begins when the schooling is over.” She produced a saucepan from inside her oven. “Baby can drink out of this.”

While Miss Delacourt poured herself lemonade, Gideon filled the pan from the tap.

“Probably best if Baby drinks out on the porch. She’s not the tidiest pup.”

Baby rotated her floppy, silky ears at his mention of her name. She’d taken up residence directly under an AC vent, her expression relaxed and alert.

“Shall we join her?” Miss Delacourt asked. “I’ve been running around all day, and I chose this place in part for the big trees. Might as well enjoy them while the weather holds.”

Making conversation with complete strangers was part of Gideon’s job, and he was good at it. That he could enjoy a glass of lemonade on a pleasant fall afternoon with a pretty neighbor was a treat though, one he wouldn’t have encountered were he staining floor boards in his summer kitchen.

So he settled with his lemonade on the concrete a few judicious feet away from the slurping dog, while Miss Delacourt took a seat on a bentwood rocker that had seen better days. The breeze in the nearby oaks had that dry, leaf-snatching autumnal quality, while the afternoon sun spread a benevolent warmth, and a wind chime tinkled on the next floor down.

Miss Delacourt took a sip of her lemonade, apparently inclined to enjoy a moment of quiet. Her toenails were painted in a Hawaiian palette—lime green, magenta, cyan.

Inside Gideon’s back pocket, his phone buzzed. He should dump messages, review his email, and check in with Finn, because his partner was the fretful sort.

Instead, he took a sip of sweet, tart, cold lemonade, and for the first time in a long time, prepared to spend time with a woman for the sheer pleasure of her company.

* * *

Gideon Granville’s speaking voice was as saturated with beauty as Sadie’s shorts were saturated with color. And yet, like an element of a sketch deliberately off center, that Oxford purr made her look at him twice.

Faded blue jeans, a black T-shirt molded to a trim torso, and scuffed running shoes struck her as a failed attempt at camouflage. Gideon was a couple of inches over six feet—tall enough to catch a woman’s eye across a crowded bar, not too tall to kiss.

What
the
hell, Delacourt. Too much country air?

“Are you from Maryland?” he asked, patting the concrete beside him.

“I’m most recently from Washington, DC,” Sadie replied, because Damson Valley was a friendly place, and the question was reasonable from a prospective neighbor. “I’ll have to commute into Adams Morgan from time to time, but my job can be done pretty much wherever I have my computers. What about you?”

The dog left off parting the Red Sea in the bottom of Sadie’s double boiler and padded over to her owner. She flopped onto the concrete and put her damp chin on Gideon’s thigh with an air of weary surrender.

“I was born in Surrey,” he said, “which is very pretty, much like here. Green and kind to trees. My mum came over with my stepdad when I was sixteen, and this has been my home since.”

Too bad for Surrey. Gideon was a handsome addition to the scenery, despite his nondescript clothing. Tousled dark hair; blue, blue eyes; and enough breadth of shoulder to suggest he worked out conscientiously.

And could move boxes.

“You didn’t like the lawyer shtick?” Sadie’s feeling about lawyers were mixed. Jay-Jay’s lawyers she had liked, despite their exorbitant wages. Hollister’s lawyers should have been disbarred and feathered.

“I liked lawyering fine when everything went according to plan, and the obvious scoundrel went to jail while the blameless victim was compensated for his troubles. That happened about once a year.”

He pet his great hound with a slow, stroking caress to her shoulder, and while the dog’s gusty sigh suggested she enjoyed it, Gideon seemed soothed by the contact too.

“And those few cases that followed the TV script took an entire year,” Sadie added. “The wheels of justice grind slowly and often with a lot of squeaking.”

“You’re divorced, then?”

A reasonable conclusion, also a tad nosy, though if Gideon had checked out her left hand, Sadie hadn’t caught him at it. He, however,
had
mentioned a partner.

“Never one time,” Sadie said. “You?”

Still he stroked the dog’s shoulder, much like Sam twitched at his favorite blankie as he fell asleep.

“Never found the lady who’d have me for the long term. This is very good lemonade.”

Oh, right. If he’d zipped his jeans when Sadie walked into the men’s bathroom by mistake, his evasion could not have been less subtle.

Which was fine with Sadie. A friendly neighbor she could use, a distraction,
not
.

“Squeezed the lemons this morning,” she said, “before I went on my whirlwind tour of Damson Valley’s lone grocery establishment. I didn’t find the liquor store, though.”

“Next to the post. Vineyard Street, opposite the college.”

Which was on the northwest side of town, maybe. “Handy for the students. So what brings you to Damson Valley Apartments?”

“Renovations,” Gideon said, sloshing the ice in his glass. “My farmhouse is at least 150 years old, and that takes a toll on a building. When I discovered some of the wiring was still wrapped in paper, I decided there’s no time like the present to come up to code. That was in May.”