wanted. Primitive. Beyond logic or personality. And potentially disastrous.
He’d been there before, with Stacey, when he was too young to know any better—going crazy for her body and never stopping to find out who she really was. Finding out had cooled the craziness as time went on, but by then it was too late. Brady wasn’t going to make the same mistake again.
It was vital to keep his head clear here. He had something else to think about. Something much more vital to his emotional well-being than the physical tricks a female body could play. And apparently Ms. McGraw had her eye on the ball much better than he did.
“If people see us and get an inkling as to what’s going on…” she was saying behind him. “I don’t want to have to tell anyone about this yet. Not until we’ve worked out what it means. I—I have an idea it’s going to be, uh, pretty big.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” he agreed, his voice gruff and deep, and went ahead of her into the house, out of reach of the aura that had briefly ensnared him.
As he responded to Scarlett’s wriggling and put her onto her feet, first impressions piled into his mind. Ms. McGraw had a nice house on a street just two blocks south of the Minnesota governor’s mansion. He’d already noted the quiet prosperity of the neighborhood as he drove here. It was similar to the neighborhood he’d bought into in Columbus several years ago, when his construction business really took off.
The interior of the house was immaculate, furnished in florals and pastels, with a thick cream rug covering most of the hardwood floor. Photos and knickknacks were everywhere: decorative plates on the dusky-pink walls, and fresh flowers in vases on the old-fashioned piano as well as on the dining table he glimpsed in the next room. It was a real home, reflecting one caring woman’s taste. It wasn’t a place you’d easily uproot from.
And Lisa-Belle McGraw looked as if she belonged. She was a natural Minnesota blond princess, with hair that reminded him of that fairy tale, “Rumpelstiltskin,” about the goblin with the unique name who had known how to spin straw into gold. He could easily have been practising his talent on this woman’s hair. Silky, straw-colored strands, as straight as a waterfall, mingled with shiny threads that looked like pure gold in the last of the day’s September sunlight slanting through her living-room windows.
She was too pale, even with makeup, and it made both her eyes and her lips stand out. Eyes like a tropical ocean, lips that glistened like candy melting in the heat. She’d dressed up for this meeting, he guessed, as he took in her strappy pumps and the pastel swirl of feminine fabric that clung to her body.
She was as pretty as he’d seen in her photo in Parenting Now. Actually, she was more than pretty. Definitely not something he wanted to be so aware of, he reminded himself. He wasn’t in the market for a new relationship any time soon, and certainly not with this woman. Even if he liked the way she smelled.
He needed to move farther away from the memories of his marriage first.
His heart sank as he considered the possibility of emotional scenes, energy-sapping manipulation, hidden motives and downright dishonesty. In a situation like this, those things might easily happen if he didn’t play everything right. He’d had more than enough of all that with Stacey, and though he’d grieved for her in a complicated, upside-down kind of way, he couldn’t help doubting that they would have stayed the distance, had she lived. By the end, she’d lied to him a few times too often.
“Do you want to come out back, where they can play?”
Ms. McGraw’s question dragged his focus back to where it ought to have been all along. Scarlett was toddling around the living room, eager to explore. Colleen watched her from the safety of her mother’s arms.
“I expect Scarlett would like that,” he said.
“We can sit on the deck and have some coffee while we watch them.” She clasped her hands briefly, then brushed a stray silk ribbon of hair away from her face. “I—this is such a weird situation. I’m sorry, I don’t know where to begin or what to suggest.”
“Coffee sounds good,” he answered gruffly.
Coffee was the tip of the iceberg. It was the next twenty years that occupied both their minds.
“If you want to wash up first…?” she offered, her politeness apparently ingrained and automatic. Once again, her voice was sweet and clear.
“Yeah. Thanks.”
She indicated a little powder room tucked away beneath the stairs, and he barged into it, needing a few moments alone, and hoping that cool water streaming over his hands would cool his whole body down.
The exercise wasn’t a success. For a start, Scarlett got clingy and stood outside the door, crying persistently. He heard that sweet female voice again, inviting her to go out back and try the slide, but Scarlett wasn’t having any of that. No instant, instinctive bonding for her, thank you very much. She was too young to recognize the mirrorlike familiarity of that other little girl, and eighteen months was a clingy age. Brady wanted to hurry back out to her, which made him even clumsier than he’d already felt.
Ms. McGraw had maddening soaps—tiny pastel-toned seashell shapes, nestling in a glass dish. His big hands knocked several of them out onto the pristine vanity unit, and when he’d finally grabbed one, his wet palms sent it spurting out of his fingers. It ricocheted off the door, hit the bud vase on the windowsill and knocked it over. An apricot-hued rose fell to the floor.
Brady had never liked fussy decor, and now he knew why. If Ms. McGraw had heard the soap hitting the door and the vase hitting the sill, she probably wondered what on earth he was doing in here.
And Scarlett was still crying. Louder than ever. He could hear her little hands, batting at the door.
At least nothing was broken. He pressed his hands together, across his nose and mouth, and blew a long breath through his fingers, then studied his image in the mirror. He wasn’t happy about what he saw.
For a start, he should have shaved again at the motel. He looked like a thug. His jaw had felt as rough as a metal rasp just now beneath his tension-knotted hands.
And he was too casually dressed. He should have worn a buttoned-down shirt and a jacket. Like this, with his gut still churning, he felt that he didn’t project enough authority or enough intellect. He might need both those qualities, if he and this woman disagreed, at a fundamental level, about what they needed to do.
In the brains department, he wasn’t a pushover. He had a college degree, and the construction company he owned was tendering for bigger and more important jobs every year and getting them. He’d never doubted himself in that area. But he wasn’t great with words, and emotional scenes tied his tongue in knots.
There were some emotional scenes coming up. There had to be! They had the futures of two little girls weighing in the balance, and they lived in cities that were more than seven hundred miles apart.
What if Lisa-Belle McGraw expected him to make all the sacrifices? What if she had a plan for getting what she wanted, and he didn’t see it coming until it was too late?
Scarlett wailed louder, and he told her, “I’m still here, baby. I’ll be out in two seconds.”
He bent to pick up the fallen rose, stuck it roughly back in the vase and filled the little glass tube with fresh water. It overflowed and saturated his hands, as well as an inch of
