too bad a mood for a woman trapped in a school gymnasium. Maybe it was sleep deprivation, but nothing—not even painful memories of kisses or intense looks from the woman whom she’d always thought would be her mother-in-law someday—could dim the satisfaction of a job being done well. Even with the added stress of Brody and his family in the group, she’d received several compliments on how smoothly the shelter was running.
She even smiled at Brody as he approached her, fighting the urge to turn and run. Or at least hide behind something so everybody wasn’t watching for her reaction to him. “What’s up?”
He gave her the smile she knew was meant to charm her into doing his bidding. “Any chance we can go poking around the classrooms for a jar of buttons or something?”
“Why would there be jars of buttons in the classrooms?”
“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “Or... Oh, paperclips! Some boxes of paperclips would do.”
“The classrooms are locked.”
“You have the keys. At least you did when we got the bleach.”
Busted. “We’re not stealing office supplies from the school, Brody.”
“Borrowing. We’d be borrowing office supplies for the children.”
She sighed and rubbed the back of her neck, realizing he wasn’t going to leave her be until he got whatever he was after. “Why do the children need boxes of paperclips?”
“Because we have no poker chips.”
“Why do the children need poker chips? Just who is we?”
“The older kids. Some adults, too. Pop and I are going to teach them how to play poker. Everybody’s bored and my parents are starting to bicker. Most of them know how to play already, though, so we’ll have tournaments once the ones who don’t grasp the basics.”
He looked excited about it, so she refrained from laughing at him. “Don’t you think Go Fish would be more appropriate? Maybe Rummy? And we have about five hundred jigsaw puzzles.”
“Mrs. Palmer has laid claim to most of the puzzles and she gets really nasty if you don’t do all the outside pieces first.”
“It’s easier that way.”
“She slapped Mr. Bergen’s hand. He’s gotta be almost seventy. A kid could have nightmares for life.”
This time she did laugh, until he laughed with her and the warm sound tied her stomach in knots. “You’re trying to distract me from your plan to corrupt our kids by teaching them to gamble.”
His green eyes sparkled with amusement, so she focused on his mouth. That was a mistake. “As corruption goes, it’s fairly mild.”
“But why poker?”
“Because I’m good at it.”
Delaney sighed. She knew he was good at it. During downtime on the boats, the guys played poker and they learned young. He’d tried to teach her how to play a few times but she was so bad at it, even the incentive of winning her clothing piece by piece couldn’t overcome his impatience with her.
“Do you know how I made my money?” he asked, his tone serious now.
“When Sandy and Mike were buying their house, she said you answered a lot of questions for her because you flip real estate.”
“But I bought my very first flip property with money I won on the poker circuit. That’s how I got out of here and how I got my start.”
She hadn’t known that, but it concerned her even more than the possibility of gambling for paperclips raising some judgmental eyebrows. “Brody, don’t fill these kids’ heads with big dreams of gambling their way out of here.”
“What’s wrong with big dreams?” He crossed his arms over his chest.
“Nothing. But a lot of these kids will grow up and fish or work for little more than minimum wage and be just fine. The ones who dream big will either fight for their dreams or they won’t. Just because you got lucky doesn’t mean there are shortcuts.”
“Delaney, I’m not going to lure the adolescent population of Tucker’s Point away with me like some kind of poker-playing Pied Piper. It’s just something fun to do for the in-between crowd and the older folks who don’t want to play—and I quote, ‘baby games’—or risk getting their hands slapped by Mrs. Palmer.”
“I’ll make a deal with you. I’ll help you scrounge up fake poker chips, but you have to get permission from parents for the younger kids.”
“Deal.”
“One of the first grade teachers is a good friend of mine. We’ll forage in her classroom.”
She knew even as she led Brody through the doors into the main hallway that tongues would start wagging the second they closed behind them, but it couldn’t be helped. Sending another volunteer to accompany him wasn’t really an option because she wasn’t totally comfortable rummaging around the classrooms and she was personally responsible for the big ring of keys. Only the fact Patti Worth was a personal friend made it okay.
The squeak of their shoes on the waxed floor was the only sound as she led him down a maze of hallways to the door marked by a sign reading Miss Worth in colorful, hand-drawn letters. Delaney felt slightly naughty as she unlocked it and slipped inside, but she wasn’t sure if it was being in the classroom, or being alone with Brody.
And they were very, very alone.
“It’s so quiet here,” Brody said, kicking the door closed behind him. “Makes me want to grab a pillow and blanket and hide under the desk until the storm’s over.”
“I wish we could use the rooms, especially for Sandy and Noah, but there are rules and most of them boil down to insurance and liability.”
“You wouldn’t even sneak down here for a power nap?”
She gave him a stern look, and then glanced around the room to find the most likely hiding spot for boxes of paper clips. “It’s against the rules.”
“You always were a good girl.”
The way he said the words—the warm timbre of his voice—had flashbacks rolling through her mind. Stolen kisses. His hand sliding up under her sweater for the first time. Making love in a borrowed boat under an endless sky. “Not always.”
“No. Not always.” He was closer and, when she turned, she found himself close enough to touch.
This time he kissed her swiftly, with no time for deliberations. His mouth was demanding and she surrendered to him, tired of fighting her feelings. The kiss went on and on, until her knees were weak and it seemed as though his hands on her back were all that were keeping her from falling.
When he broke it off, he kept his face close to hers, his arms wrapped around her. She liked being in his arms. She felt safe there, and treasured. The world had always seemed right when she was in Brody’s arms.
His breath was warm against
