Yours to Keep (5 page)

“No, we’re not. But don’t you think we should at least have a practice kiss first?”

Almost against her will, her gaze focused on his mouth. Yes. Yes, they should. “If Gram asked I was going to tell her you have a thing about public displays of affection.”

“This isn’t public. This is your—
our
—home.”

“Public as in with an audience.” She needed to look away from his mouth, especially since it was getting closer, but she couldn’t.

When his face got close enough so she registered his intent, she raised her gaze to his, but it was too late. Before she could react, his lips met hers, his hand still on her back to hold her close, and she closed her eyes.

Practice. That’s all it was. And if her body started tingling and her fingers itched to run through his hair, and her body wanted to melt against his…well, that just boded well for a month of pretending they were into each other, didn’t it?

The jolt of heat that ran like an electrical shock through her body could be an unwelcome complication, but she’d worry about that later. Like maybe when she wasn’t too busy thinking about pushing him back onto that soft, girly bed he’d complained about and proving women liked it a little harder, too.

It took every ounce of self-control she could muster not to whimper in protest when his lips left hers. She wanted to take his head in her hands and drag his mouth in for another kiss. Maybe slip her hands under the back of his T-shirt so she could glide them over the warm flesh of his back and feel his muscles twitch under her fingertips.

“Not bad for a practice kiss,” he said in a casual voice that pissed her off. No way could he have felt nothing while her senses sizzled like a drop of water on a hot, oiled skillet.

“And the Oscar goes to,” she muttered when he winked and walked out of the room.

She was about to swear and take a kick at the coffee table leg when she spotted him in the full-length mirror on the closet door standing ajar. He’d stopped just outside in the hall and she watched his reverse image as he pulled at the fly of his jeans, no doubt adjusting for the evidence he wasn’t as unaffected as he wanted her to think he was. Then he rolled his shoulders and kept walking.

Despite the fact both of them being affected would be an even greater complication, Emma was smiling when she met up with him again in the front hall.

“We can take my truck,” he told her in a terse voice that made her have to smother a bigger and much more smug smile.

“No, we can’t. I have the extended cab and it might rain. We can’t throw Gram’s luggage in the bed to get wet.”

“I’m driving.”

She paused halfway out the front door. “Excuse me?”

“You drive like a girl.” He held out his hand, presumably for her keys.

“You’re an ass.”

“We can stand here and argue about it. I’m sure your grandmother will understand.”

“A sexist ass, no less.”

He grinned and snatched her keys out of her hand before she could react. “Next time, you might want to actually meet the man you’re going to marry before you tell your family about him. Get in the truck.
Honey.
”

Catherine Shaw, who preferred to be called Cat, stepped off the plane in Manchester and quickly retrieved her luggage. It was good to be back, if only temporarily. There was a time she might have thought it was good to be
home,
but she considered herself a Floridian now.

It had cost her a little extra to fly into New Hampshire, rather than to Logan Airport, but Emma was picking her up and she didn’t want her granddaughter bothered with Boston, even if her fiancé was driving.

They’d arranged to meet by the small food court and she spotted Emma immediately, standing next to a tall, good-looking man who was scanning the airport, watching people. A year and a half of civilian life hadn’t taken much of the edge off the soldier.

Emma hadn’t seen her yet and she took a few minutes to give her granddaughter a good looking over.

She was thinner, which wasn’t surprising since the girl couldn’t cook worth a darn. Her work was so physical she was burning through her steady diet of take-out and microwave meals. She’d have to put some meat on the girl’s bones while she was there.

Emma looked so much like her mother at first glance, but it was mostly the hair. In the lines of her nose and mouth and the dark brown of her eyes, Cat could see glimpses of the son and husband she’d lost. As always, she felt the pang of grief like a constant and unwelcome companion, but it was overshadowed by her gratitude for the blessing that was her granddaughter.

Then Sean’s eyes met hers and he obviously recognized her—no doubt from the photos she sometimes remembered to email from Florida. He touched Emma’s arm and Cat didn’t miss the way she jumped, her cheeks flushing pink.

Then Emma was running across the lobby and Cat opened her arms for a fierce hug. “Gram!”

She squeezed Emma, rocking a little, until she caught sight of her future grandson-in-law through the corner of her eye. He looked anxious, shifting his weight from foot to foot while he watched their reunion.

Cat let go of Emma and turned to him, extending her hand. “You must be Sean.”

He had a decent grip. She didn’t trust men with weak handshakes. “It’s nice to meet you, Mrs. Shaw.”

Lovely manners, too. “Please, call me Cat. Being called Mrs. Shaw makes me feel old.”

He grinned, a naughty grin that probably weakened her granddaughter’s knees. “Anybody can see you’re anything but that…Cat.”

“I think you and I will get along just fine.”

“How was your flight?” Emma asked as Sean relieved Cat of her luggage and began herding them toward the exit.

“Uneventful, which is never a bad thing.”

When they made their way through the parking lot, the first light drops of rain were falling, so Sean put her luggage in the backseat of the truck and Emma climbed in after it. Cat was impressed when he took her elbow to help her into the passenger seat before closing her door and going around to his own side. He was a nice boy.

“So you have family around here, Sean?” she asked when they were on the highway, heading north.

“Yes, ma’am, I do. My aunt and uncle live about fifteen minutes from…home, and I’ve got four cousins and their families nearby.”

“Oh good. I can’t wait to meet them all.”

He turned his head and gave her a quick glance before looking back to the road, and she wondered why it would come as a surprise his fiancée’s grandmother would want to meet his family.

“They’re always pretty busy,” he said, “what with all the kids and everything, but I’ll see what I can do. Maybe a barbeque or something soon.”

It was a little over an hour’s ride, giving Cat plenty of time to not only listen to Emma’s constant chatter about the house and work, but to feel the anxiety in the truck. Her granddaughter’s voice was a little too chipper. Sean’s fingers kept tightening on the steering wheel, then he’d flex them and relax, but they’d tighten again. She’d almost think they’d had a fight before her arrival, but there wasn’t any anger simmering between them. Just nervousness.

Cat stopped worrying about them when Sean turned onto the driveway and drove up to the beautiful old house she’d called home since she was a young bride of nineteen. She and John had borrowed down-payment money from his father to buy it when she got pregnant, expecting to fill it with a large and noisy, but loving, family.

They had no way of knowing at the time Johnny would be their only child or that the two of them would end up spending several years rattling around the place alone until tragedy gave them Emma. The girl had not only brought joy back into their lives, but had breathed life back into the house.

It was the joy Cat chose to remember as Sean hopped out of the truck and jogged around to open her door. She smiled when he offered his hand to help her down. And she watched as he did the same for Emma.

Her granddaughter hesitated for only a second, but Cat didn’t miss it. Then she put her hand in Sean’s, clearly flustered, and hopped out of the truck. Her feet had barely hit the ground before she pulled her hand away and turned to grab the luggage.

It was going to be an interesting month. Cat wasn’t sure exactly what was going on, but she knew one thing for sure—whatever they were up to, Emma and Sean hadn’t been sharing a bed and a bathroom for the last year.

Sean didn’t think it was going too badly…until Emma set a steaming glass dish on a trivet in the middle of the table. It was a casserole. One with tufts of little green trees sticking up out of some kind of sauce.

Broccoli. He hated broccoli. Loathed it.

“Chicken divan,” Emma said, and only an idiot could have missed the note of pride in her voice as she put her hands on her hips, oven mitts and all. “It’s my best dish—okay, my only real baked dish—so I made it as a welcome-home meal.”

Cat smiled and Sean forced his lips to move into what he hoped was a similar expression. A woman who was sleeping with and living with and planning a future with a man would know he didn’t like broccoli. And it was his own damn fault for laughing off her suggestion he write an owner’s manual of his own.

She served him first, maybe because he was the fake man of the house, plopping in front of him a steaming pile of perfectly good chicken and cheese ruined by the green vegetable. He smiled at her—or maybe grimaced—and took a sip of iced tea.

He could do this. He’d survived boot camp. He’d survived combat and the harsh weather of Afghanistan. He could survive broccoli. Probably.

“It looks wonderful,” Cat practically cooed, and Sean’s stomach rumbled. Whether in hunger or protest he couldn’t say.

Emma, of course, flushed with pleasure at the compliment. With a few wisps of hair framing her pink cheeks and her eyes sparkling, she was beautiful. Not beautiful enough to merit eating broccoli, but beautiful enough so he watched her for a minute as she served herself and sat down across from him.

Then he made himself look back to his own plate. He’d given his word he’d make this charade work and Cat wanting to know why Emma fed her fiancé his least favorite food wasn’t a good way to start.

He put it off as long as he could—picking out mouthfuls of cheesy chicken that weren’t too bad—but he couldn’t leave behind a pile of uneaten broccoli.

Suck it up, soldier.
The broccoli’s tree trunk or stalk or whatever people called it squeaked between his teeth, a little undercooked. Or maybe it was supposed to feel like that. Either way, he didn’t like it, so he chewed and swallowed as fast as he could. Then he dug up another forkful and did it again.

He’d gotten through basic training by putting one reluctant foot in front of the other, and that’s how he got through Emma’s chicken divan. One squeaky, nauseating bite after another.

“Sean, you said your aunt and uncle live near here,” Cat said in between a bite, “but Emma told me you have two older brothers and a younger brother and sister in Maine?”

Silently thankful for any excuse to put down his fork, Sean gulped down some iced tea and wiped his mouth. “That’s where we’re from, but only Josh still lives in Whitford. He runs the lodge for the family.”

“A lodge for snowmobilers, I think Emma said?”

“Any winter activities, actually, but primarily sledders.” He was trying to get used to it, but it was bizarre how much these two women knew about him. “My great-grandfather started the Northern Star Lodge as an exclusive hunting club but, by the time my dad took it over, nobody was doing that much anymore and the clientele changed. It’s right on the sled trails, so it does okay.”

“What do the rest of them do?”

He might have resented the twenty questions game if not for the fact it gave him an excuse to ignore the green tree trunks left on his plate. “The oldest, Mitch, runs a controlled demolition company. It’s based out of New York, but he hotel-hops mostly. Then there’s Ryan, who builds custom homes in the Boston area. I’m in the middle and then there’s Liz, who lives out in New Mexico, of all places. Josh is the youngest.”

“Do you see them often?”

It was pretty benign, as questions went, but Sean took another sip of his drink to buy himself a few seconds. He’d seen them all but Liz a few days ago, when they’d gathered at Ryan’s place in Mass for a welcome-home party. With the lodge a five-hour drive from Boston’s Logan Airport on top of the flights and busy schedules, it had made more sense to gather at Ryan’s. And since he wasn’t quite ready to settle down and commit to anything, Sean had decided to spend some time in New Hampshire before heading home.

But, as far as Cat knew, he’d been out of the army for two years, not less than two weeks.

“I see them often enough to not miss them too badly,” he said, “but not so much we get on each other’s nerves.”

Emma cleared her throat. “Do you want some more chicken divan, Sean? There’s plenty.”

Hell, no. “No thanks. It was good, though.”

Her smile brightened, causing him a pang of guilt for the lie. Or maybe the pang was the broccoli. “I have an apple pie for dessert. Store-bought, of course, since I wanted it to actually taste good.”

Cat laughed. “I did everything I could to teach her how to cook. Lost cause, I guess. She’d rather play in the dirt. Do you cook, Sean?”

“I grill. We grill a lot.” He didn’t miss the way Emma’s eyes widened.

“At least you won’t starve. I’ve taken to grilling a lot in Florida because it’s better than heating up the house. More often than not we end up gathering at one person’s grill and throwing something on it, like a potluck. Maybe tomorrow I can make you my famous honey-ginger grilled salmon.”

Emma gave him a quick shake of her head, panic in her eyes. Shit. She didn’t own a barbeque grill? “It’s…uh. We had to scrap it.”

Cat’s eyebrows rose. “Scrap it?”

“I blew it up,” Emma said in a rush. “And we haven’t bought a new one yet. I mean, not a big explosion, of course, but I did something wrong with the propane tank and…I broke it.”

“And you wonder why I worry about you.”

Sean smothered a chuckle with his napkin. Way to convince somebody you can be left unattended, he thought.

“Of course, I worry a lot less now that you have Sean.”

The look she gave him—all sweet and trusting and gooey with gratitude—made him feel like a heel. No. Wrong body part. He felt like an ass and he had to grit his teeth to keep from spilling everything.

Then he looked at Emma and the urge receded. She was watching her grandmother and it seemed like some of the tension eased out of her body. Her expression was full of love and relief, reminding him of why they were in this position—to ease Cat’s mind so she could enjoy her retirement. At least it seemed to be working.

The store-bought apple pie went a long way toward making him more comfortable but, at the first opportunity, he excused himself. “I need to make a few phone calls, so I’ll leave you ladies to catch up.”

It was a lie but, hell, what was one more? On his way out, he ducked into Emma’s office and grabbed one of the umpteen pads of sticky notes she had scattered on the desk and rummaged around until he found a Sharpie marker.

Once upstairs, he went straight into their shared bathroom. He peeled the top sticky note off the pad and stuck it to the mirror, and then pulled the cap off the Sharpie.

Emma stared at the notes stuck to the mirror, her fingers curled over the edge of the sink. Her face was washed. Hair and teeth brushed. It was time to go out and curl up on the couch and try to sleep.

I hate broccoli. And peas.

Great. So he wasn’t a fan of green vegetables. Where was the information she really needed to know—namely, whether or not he wore pajamas? It hadn’t occurred to her to worry about it before but, holy hell, she was worrying about it now.

She was wearing pajamas, of course. Or what passed for them in her world. A well-worn and oversized University of New Hampshire T-shirt over soft, flannel boxers. She’d considered buying something prettier and a little more feminine, but she didn’t want to send mixed messages to the man who’d be sleeping in her bed.

All she could do was hope Sean had put the same consideration into his sleeping attire. He probably didn’t sleep in the buff, despite the deliciously vivid visual of that her imagination had no trouble conjuring. He’d been in the army for twelve years—a good chunk of that deployed overseas—and surely they weren’t in the habit of sleeping nude.

Flannel would be nice. And not battered shorts, like hers. Long pants and a long-sleeved shirt buttoned up to his throat would be nice, like something Ward Cleaver would have worn to bed in his 1950s’ sitcom.

When she finally dropped the curtain on the mental drama and left the bathroom, she was a little disappointed he was already asleep. Clearly he wasn’t struggling to hold back the reins of runaway sexual attraction like she was. He’d dimmed the overhead light, but she could hear him softly snoring and make out the sheet pulled halfway up his stomach. His naked stomach, which led her gaze to his naked chest and then to his naked shoulders, the muscles nicely highlighted by the way he slept with his arms raised over his head.

Was the rest of him naked, too?

“When you stare at somebody who’s sleeping,” he mumbled without moving or opening his eyes, “they usually wake up.”