Yours to Keep (3 page)

A first date with his fiancée, Sean mused. Life after the army wasn’t turning out to be quite as boring as he’d feared it may be. “Sounds good. I like anything on my pizza that’s not classified as a vegetable. What time?”

“About six? I’ll be knee-deep in fertilizer tomorrow, so I’ll need to shower first.”

Since that was a visual he didn’t need any more detail on, Sean nodded, then turned toward the door. “I’ll see you at six, then.”

He was almost free when she called his name. “You won’t change your mind, will you?”

“Like I said, if I think you’re scamming her for anything but her emotional welfare, I’m gone. Otherwise, I gave you my word and I’ll see it through.”

He could almost see the tension easing from her body. “Thank you.”

“Before I go, you need any help putting this furniture back?”

“No, but thanks. I’m not done scrubbing the baseboard trim yet.”

He lifted a hand in farewell and let himself out. They had three days to become intimately enough acquainted to pass themselves off as a cohabitating engaged couple.

Mentally, he backspaced out the word
intimately.
There wouldn’t be anything intimate about their relationship, despite the close quarters. They’d be playing a role, with stage kisses and fake affection. Once the curtain dropped—or the bedroom door closed, as the case may be—so would the act.

“You’re going to
what?
”

It wasn’t anything Sean hadn’t asked himself every five minutes or so since getting sucked into Emma’s plan, but it sounded different when his cousin said it. Or maybe it was Kevin’s subsequent pointing and laughing his ass off that changed the tone.

“It’s only a month,” Sean shot back, maybe a little defensively. The shorter, dark-haired waitress—Darcy, he thought her name was—put a beer in front of him and he took a long pull. He’d been looking forward to it all day.

“A month of living with a total stranger, pretending you’re so madly in love with her you’re going to marry her? For real?”

“No, not for real, moron. For pretend. That’s the point.”

His cousin laughed some more, then pulled out his cell phone and started texting. Sean craned his neck, but couldn’t see the screen.

“What the hell are you doing?”

Kevin chuckled. “Telling my wife.”

“You could have waited until I went upstairs.”

“No, I really couldn’t.”

Kevin shut his phone, but it was only a few seconds before it chimed. He looked at the screen, chuckled, then was texting again.

Sean pulled out his phone and opened a new message to Kevin.
I’m still here, asshole.
Send.

A couple minutes later, Kevin grinned and slid his phone back into his pocket. “Beth wants to know the sleeping arrangements since there’s no way even a grandmother will buy a separate bedrooms story.”

“Beth wants to know, huh?”

“Trust me, by now the whole family wants to know.”

Sean was tempted to bang his head against the bar, but he wouldn’t be able to knock himself out so he didn’t waste the effort. “There’s a sofa in the bedroom. She’ll sleep on it and I get the bed.”

“Chivalrous.”

“I’m too tall for a sofa.”

“I don’t know Emma well, but I seem to recall she’s not exactly short.” Kevin gave him a knowing look. “Not exactly hard on the eyes, either.”

That she wasn’t. But the last thing Sean wanted to do was get tangled up with a woman. Tangled up in the sheets? Usually okay but that, along with playing house, could give Emma the wrong idea. Permanence wasn’t in his current vocabulary. Not that it was necessarily in hers, either, but no sense in taking any chances.

“When does your future grandmother-in-law arrive?” Kevin asked when he finally caught the hint Sean wasn’t going to discuss his fake fiancée’s easiness on the eyes.

“Saturday. We’re supposed to have dinner together tonight and get to know each other, I guess.”

“You think you’re going to get to know each other well enough over a meal to fake out her grandmother?”

“She thinks we can do it.”

“What do you think?”

Sean shrugged. “I told her I’d do it, so I’ll do my best to make sure we pull it off.”

“Does Ma know about this yet?”

“Not yet,” he said, grimacing. He wasn’t looking forward to telling her, either. Assuming Beth wasn’t on the phone with her already, giving her the big news.

Sean stood and picked up his beer, intending to take it upstairs with him. He could return the empty mug later. “I know as soon as I walk away you’re going to call Joe and Mike, so I’ll just leave it to you to spread the word.”

Kevin laughed. “Don’t forget Mitch. And Ryan and Josh and Liz.”

Sean froze, beer halfway to his mouth. Shit. He hadn’t even thought about his brothers and sister and what they might think. Thinking he’d lost his mind was a given, but if one of them got to thinking he needed saving from himself and made the drive over, it would blow everything all to shit.

“Do me a favor,” he said, “and let me give them the heads-up. And try to keep your half of the family in check.”

“I’ll try, but don’t put off calling them too long. Once Ma hears about it…”

Yeah, that’s what he was afraid of. He’d have to talk to Aunt Mary soon and, as much as he didn’t want to, he’d have to have that discussion in person. Hopefully her wooden spoon wouldn’t be close at hand. That sucker hurt.

He went up to the apartment that was supposed to be a temporary home, but was now going to be nothing more than a motel stop, and sank onto the couch. He hadn’t unpacked much yet—not that he had a lot to unpack—so the physical act of moving into Emma’s house wouldn’t be difficult.

And he didn’t think he’d have too hard a time pretending to be attracted to her. Batshit crazy or not, she was tall—which he liked in a woman—and hot, which he
really
liked. And that hair… She had the kind of hair a man could bury his face in or plunge his hands into, capturing the thick, dark cloud in his fingers.

Sean shifted on the couch, muttering some choice words under his breath. It had been a long time since he’d buried his face in any woman’s hair and now he’d be stuck sleeping in the same room with a woman it would be a bad idea to touch. He’d be close enough to smell her shampoo. To hear the whisper of breath and skin as she sighed and shifted in her sleep. But too far away to run his hand down the long, warm curve of her back and turn that sigh into his name on her lips.

Groaning, he hit the TV power button on the remote control next to his leg, looking for some distraction. A movie. An old fight rerun. Hell, a Three Stooges marathon would do. Anything to get his mind off sex. He couldn’t be thinking those kinds of thoughts.

He was an engaged man now.

Emma changed her mind about Sean Kowalski at least a dozen times over the course of her work day, but she never got as far as calling Lisa to ask for his cell-phone number—which she’d stupidly forgotten to get—before she remembered what was at stake.

Peace of mind for Gram. Freedom from worrying about losing her home for her. Pretty much everything, as far as she was concerned.

So at six o’clock, she opened the door to Sean with her hair still damp from the shower and a smile on her face. “I wasn’t sure you’d come.”

He shrugged and held up a six-pack of bottled Budweiser. “I told you I would. I wasn’t sure what kind of wine you’d like, or even if you like it at all, so I brought beer.”

“Sounds good. Come on in. The pizza’s in the kitchen. I’m starving, so I got a Meat Lover’s.”

“Beer was probably a better choice than wine, then. Not sure if you serve red or white with pepperoni, ham, sausage, hamburger and bacon.”

She laughed and led him into the kitchen, but the amusement died in her throat when he reached for the fridge door, presumably to keep the beer cold, then stopped. He frowned and leaned closer. Peered at the photograph held in place by a brown-eyed Susan magnet. This one showed Emma at a Red Sox game with Sean’s arm draped around her shoulder and the green field of Fenway Park behind them.

He was still frowning. “This creeps me out a little. Isn’t that supposed to be Lisa? I’m pretty sure I was at that game with Mikey and his wife.”

“It was Lisa who did the Photoshopping, not me, if it makes it any less creepy.”

“Not really. Just how many of these fake pictures do you have?”

“A couple dozen, I guess, that Lisa’s done for me over time. We’re not really photograph-happy, which helps, but I’ve got enough so it looks like we’re a couple, at least. And I needed some to take with me when I flew down to visit her.”

“Where was I when you went to Florida?”

“You couldn’t get away.”

“From what?”

She shrugged. “You happened to have a family wedding going on during the only weekend I could spare from work. You’re a busy guy, really.”

He looked like he was going to say something else, but then he shook his head and stuck the six-pack in the fridge, pulling out two bottles before closing the door. After twisting off the caps, he set one down by each plate.

“Anything I can help you with?”

She shook her head. “Everything’s on the table. Go ahead and dig in.”

It didn’t escape her notice that he placed a slice on her plate before serving himself and it gave her hopefulness a little boost. Obviously he’d been raised with good manners, which would not only help him win Gram over, but make him more apt to stick to his word.

Before she sat, she grabbed the spiral-bound journal she’d been jotting notes in since she first joked about her plan to Lisa and set it on the table. “I wrote down a few things. You know, about myself? If you skim through it, it’ll help you pretend you’ve known me longer than two days.”

Instead of waiting until they were done, he set down his slice, picked up the notebook and opened it to a random page. “You’re not afraid of spiders, but you hate slugs? That’s relevant?”

“It’s something you would know about me.”

“You graduated from UNH. Your feet aren’t ticklish.” He chuckled and shook his head. “You actually come with an owner’s manual?”

“You could call it that. And if you could write something up for me to look over, that would be great.”

He shrugged and flipped through a few more pages of the journal. “I’m a guy. I like guy stuff. Steak. Football. Beer. Women.”

“One woman, singular. At least for the next month, and then you can go back to your wild pluralizing ways.” She took a sip of her beer. “You think that’s all I need to know about you?”

“That’s the important stuff. I could write it on a sticky note, if you want, along with my favorite sexual position. Which isn’t missionary, by the way.”

It was right there on the tip of her tongue—
then what is your favorite sexual position?
—but she bit it back. The last thing she needed to know about a man she was going to share a bedroom with for a month was how he liked his sex. “I hardly think that’ll come up in conversation.”

“It’s more relevant than slugs.”

“Since you’ll be doing more gardening than having sex, not really.”

“Wait a minute.” He stabbed a finger at one of the notes in the journal. “You can’t cook?”

“Not well. Microwave directions help.”

“I’d never marry a woman who can’t cook.”

“I’d never marry the kind of man who’d never marry a woman who can’t cook, so it’s a good thing we’re just pretending.”

He closed the journal and set it aside to return to his pizza. But before he bit into it, he looked across the table at her. “You told her we met while I was home on leave, but did you tell her
how
we met?”

“It’s on page one of the journal.”

“Paraphrase it for me.”

She really didn’t want to. Somehow the idea of him reading her lies seemed less directly humiliating than her reciting them out loud. But he cocked an eyebrow at her as he chewed, clearly waiting for her to tell the story. “We met at Jasper’s Bar & Grille.”

“Kevin’s bar?”

“You were home on leave and he hadn’t owned the place long, so you stopped in to check it out. Lisa and I had been shopping in the city and stopped in for a Jasper burger.” She felt her face flush and stared down at her plate. “It was love at first sight.”

She heard him chuckle and wanted to glare at him, but she had a feeling that would only turn his chuckle into a full-fledged laugh. “So you wrote to me and I wrote back and then I left the army and here we are.”

“In a nutshell.” She let him swallow his mouthful of pizza, then asked, “You have plans for tomorrow?”

He shook his head. “Not really.”

“Want to start work? Just a half day, over on the big lake. And then we could do some shopping. Stock up on food and get some stuff so it looks like you actually live here.”

“Sounds good. What time?”

“I usually leave here at seven-thirty. I can probably meet you somewhere so you don’t have to get up even earlier to drive over here.”

“I’ll be here. I never sleep past six anyway.”

“Never?” She was up at six on weekdays, but on the weekends she liked to sleep in a bit.

“Never. And I like a big breakfast, so I hope you’re a morning person.”

He kept a straight face, but Emma could see the amusement in his eyes. “You can get two doughnuts at the coffee shop drive-through, then.”

When the amusement spread to his mouth, Emma took a long swig of her beer and looked anywhere but at the curve of his lips. He had nice mouth. A
really
nice mouth that looked like it knew its way around a kiss and since the thought of kissing Sean gave her a need to squirm in her chair, she looked at the clock over the stove. And at the grocery list stuck to the fridge.

But, dammit, right next to the grocery list was the picture of her and Sean and the grin didn’t lose its potency in two dimensions. Thank goodness he had those good manners and wasn’t the kind of guy to plant one on her in front of her grandmother.

The discussion turned to first-date small talk while they ate. They both liked cheesy action movies and preferred home-style diners to fancy restaurants. Emma read romance and Sean read horror and biographies. They both preferred half-hour sitcoms to hour-long dramas or reality shows, and they both hated shopping for clothes.

It was a start, she told herself as she walked him to the door. Hopefully he’d look through the notes she’d written for him, and she knew a lot about him already, thanks to Lisa. It would have to be enough.

As soon as she opened the door at twenty after seven, Sean could see Emma had spent as much time tossing and turning the night before as he had. She looked tired and her mouth was set in a way that made her look a little cranky.

“I’m running a few minutes behind,” she said. “You want a coffee?”

“Sure.” He followed her into the kitchen and when she waved in the direction of the coffeemaker before sitting at the table, he assumed he was on his own.

Maybe it was a test, he thought as he opened the cabinet over the coffeemaker in search of a mug. Luckily, she organized her kitchen in a way that made sense to him, so he didn’t have to rummage through drawers looking for a spoon. He could almost pass for somebody who lived there.

Once he’d put the half-and-half back in the fridge, he pulled up a chair across from her. She ignored him, sipping her coffee while she flipped through an enormous leather-bound organizer. Then she pulled out her phone and hit a button.

“Hey, it’s Emma,” she said after a pause. “The Duncans decided they don’t like the black mulch, after all. Or Mrs. Duncan did, rather. She thought it would be artsy but it—and I quote—‘swallows up the accent lighting.’”

Another long pause while she rubbed her forehead. “I can use most of it to touch up for my other clients with the black, but I’ll need three yards of the gold cedar for the Duncans. And yes, she knows how much it will cost.”

Sean tuned her out, then picked up his coffee mug and wandered out of the kitchen. It seemed a little rude to go roaming around her house, but her grandmother might suspect something was up if Sean had to ask her for directions to the bathroom.

He found another picture of himself and Emma in the living room. It took him a few minutes to figure out it was Stephanie who’d been replaced that time, and only because a balloon was barely visible along one edge. He’d been home on a short leave and took the time to drive over from Maine for Stephanie’s birthday because her long, funny letters meant the world to him during deployment.

Besides a half bath and a boring formal dining room, he found her office on the ground floor. It wasn’t a big room, but bookshelves full of romance novels lined the walls. In one corner, a fat easy chair begged to be relaxed in and a gas parlor stove stood across the room. A desk sat under the window, holding a fairly new computer and piles of paper threatening to slide off in every direction. He wondered if the filing cabinet next to the desk was full or if she just ignored it.

He could still her voice coming from the kitchen, so he set his coffee down on an end table and made his way up the stairs. All of the doors stood open, so he peeked his head in each room as he walked down the hall.

The first room he looked in had to be her grandmother’s, judging by the photos and the décor. A lot of crocheted things, too. Not the room he was looking for, so he kept going.

He found what looked like a combination guest room and storage closet, so he guessed she didn’t have a lot of overnight company. The bathroom was big and had been updated in the last decade or so. Hiding behind a set of louvered doors, he found a state-of-the-art washer and dryer set, which wasn’t surprising considering what Emma did for a living.

Finally, at the end of the hall on the right, he found what had to be Emma’s bedroom. His bedroom.

Judging by the long arch meant to disguise a weight-bearing beam, it had started life as two smaller bedrooms, but at some point the wall had been removed to make a master suite. Besides a bed that looked queen-sized and the usual bedroom furnishings, there was a sitting area. End table with a lamp surrounded by more books. A small flat-screen TV mounted to the wall. And the couch she’d be sleeping on for the next month.

Even with the room’s expansion, he figured there were only about ten feet between the bed and the couch. Despite the fact he’d learned over the years to sleep through any conditions, this arrangement was going to be a little awkward. Intimate.

There was a door to the left of the sitting area and he poked his head through to find a three-quarter bath—toilet, sink and a shower. It’d do.

Aware of how many minutes he’d burned exploring, Sean went back down to the kitchen, grabbing his coffee along the way. He could see by tension in her shoulders she didn’t really care for him being so free with her home, but she’d probably come to the same conclusion he had.

“I just want to finish this coffee,” she said. “Rough night.”

He splashed the little bit of hot coffee left in the pot into his mug and leaned against the counter, watching her make a few more notes in her organizer.

“So…landscaping, huh?” He’d pushed a few mowers in his time. “Don’t you think having Emma in the business name’s a bad idea, though?”

She set down her pen and narrowed her eyes at him. “What? Girls can’t be landscapers? You’ve heard we’re allowed to vote now, right?”

“I just think if I want my lawn mowed or my weeds whacked, I’m more likely to call Bob or Fred.”

“And that’s fine. If you want somebody to mow your lawn or whack your weeds, call Bob or Fred. But if you want an artist to design the beautiful, virtually maintenance-free landscaping for your summer cottage or lake house, you call Emma.”

Her defensive tone made him want to chuckle and poke at her some more, but he stifled it. “So you specialize in design, then?”

“Yes, but I do the labor, too.” She smiled. “Except for the next month, of course. I’ll have you to do the heavy lifting.”

“Not afraid of a little hard work.” He was looking forward to it, actually. His body was accustomed to a little more physical activity than it was currently getting. If he got too soft, his cousins would wipe the grass with him during the annual Fourth of July family football game.

Emma looked at her watch and then stood to rinse her coffee mug. “Time to hit the road.”

It wasn’t until she’d climbed behind the wheel of her truck and was watching him expectantly that Sean realized he couldn’t remember a time he’d ever ridden shotgun to a female driver. Call him old-fashioned, but he liked to be the one in control.

But she’d be signing his paychecks for the next few weeks, so she was the boss. He slid in on the passenger side and closed the door, only to find himself white-knuckled by the time they reached the highway. She didn’t drive any better than she claimed she cooked.

They spent the morning at a three-million-dollar summer home on the shores of Lake Winnipesaukee, where he had the joy of turning a pile of rocks dumped next to the house into stone walls outlining what would be the perennial beds, whatever the hell that meant.