him. And then she blushed as if she had said or done something really bad, and surprisingly, he had blushed, too.
Now, sitting here beside her, he tried to think if he had blushed like that since then. Or at all. He doubted it.
But she still blushed.
Suddenly, Brand was aware she had flexed the muscles in her legs, just enough to push back slightly from the table, and he just knew she was going to bolt.
And that for some reason he couldn’t let her. It was a variation of holding her head up high. He laid a hand on her arm, not holding her down, just resting his fingers lightly on her skin, his own hand completely still, willing his own stillness into her.
He felt her eyes on his face, but he didn’t look at her, didn’t take his eyes off the man who had made her shrink as if she was still the town brainiac carrying her books down Main Street, a target for every smart aleck with an opinion.
Brand was aware, even as he made himself go still, even as he let her see and feel only his stillness, that something in him coiled, ready, ready to protect her with his life if need be.
He didn’t know exactly what was going on. But Brand knew whatever it was she couldn’t run from this. Whoever Slick was coming up her front walk, Sophie shouldn’t let him know he had that much power over her.
Why did he?
Slick came up the steps, sockless in designer sandals, and flashed them a smile made astoundingly white by perfect porcelain veneers.
“Dr. Sheridan. The misses Holtzheim.”
He seemed unaware that no one looked happy to see him, that he would have to search long and hard to find a more unwelcoming group in Sugar Maple Grove.
He raised spa-shaped eyebrows at Brand, and put out his hand.
Brand half rose, took it, felt the softness, and squeezed just a little harder than might be considered strictly polite.
He did not return the smile, intensely aware of how stiff Sophie had become, her face rigid with pride, even as her hands gripped the tablecloth just out of view, white-knuckled.
“Brand Sheridan,” he introduced himself.
“Oh, our war vet! What an honor, the hero returning to Sugar Maple Grove.” His tone was aw, shucks, but Brand did not miss something faintly condescending in it. “I’m Gregg Hamilton.”
Ah, the Hamiltons. Strictly white-collar. Old money. That explained the underlying disdain for the public servant.
“I think you might have gone to school with my brother, Clarence.”
I think I might have taken a round out of him behind the school for having exactly the same snotty look on his face that you do.
Somewhere along the line the military had managed to channel all that aggression he’d visited on others. His father might not be willing to admit what a good thing that was, but Brand knew he was a better man for it.
Brand shrugged, letting nothing of his own growing disdain show in his face. This was what he was good at, after all, never letting on what he was really feeling.
“Sophie, Mama told me she dropped by yesterday. I just wanted to echo her invitation to come to Toni’s and my engagement party. It would be so good if you came. I think you’ll adore Antoinette. I’m hoping you’ll be friends.”
Hilde Holtzheim muttered something in German that was the equivalent of go screw yourself, worm face.
Suddenly Brand put together Sophie sitting in front of that fire last night in her wedding dress, burning all manner of wedding paraphernalia with her tension at the unexpected arrival of Slick Hamilton.
Surely, Sophie hadn’t been going to marry this guy? Worm face?
But a quick glance at Sophie, trying so hard to retain her pride, a plastic smile glued across her face, confirmed it.
Not only had she been going to, it looked like she regretted the fact she wasn’t! The little ceremony he’d interrupted at the fire pit last night was all beginning to make an ugly kind of sense now.
Well, that’s what happened when you left a lovely hometown girl, innocent to the ways of the world, to her own devices for too many years. She had all kinds of room to screw up.
“Um,” Sophie stalled, “I haven’t checked the calendar yet. What day was it?”
Brand hated seeing her squirm, and he hated it that she was so transparent. The little worm could see just how badly he’d managed to hurt her—which was exactly the kind of thing that made little worms like him feel gleeful with power.
Gregg actually looked as if he was enjoying himself enough to pull up a chair and have a croissant with them!
Brand slid Sophie a look. Slick Hamilton wasn’t the kind of threat you had to keep a hand free to get at your hidden holster for.
The look on her face reminded him of another time when he’d found her on this porch, alone, on the swing over there, listening to music drifting up from the high school. It had probably been sometime in that year before he left.
He’d been rushing somewhere, though it was funny how that somewhere had seemed so important at the time, but he couldn’t remember it now.
But he could remember the look on her face as clearly as if it had happened yesterday.
“What’s up?” he’d asked her.
“Nothing.”
“Come on. You can’t lie to me, Sweet Pea. How come you aren’t at the school dance?”
“It’s the Sweetheart Prom,” she said and then her face had crumpled even as her chin had tilted proudly. “Nobody asked me to go.”
At nineteen what did a guy know about tears except that he didn’t want to be anywhere around them? A better person than nineteen-year-old him had been might have dropped his other plans, changed clothes, taken her to the prom.
But he hadn’t. He had chucked her on the chin, told her proms rated pretty high on the stupid scale and gotten on with his own life.
Brand thought suddenly of all those cute letters she had sent him when he’d joined up, when he’d been posted overseas. His one-gal fan club. The envelopes always decorated with stickers and different colored inks, the contents unintentionally hilarious enough that he had read every word.
Never answered any, though. Not even once.
Had her younger self waited by the mailbox, hoping?
So, maybe it was because he regretted doing the right thing by her only when it was convenient for him back then that he made a decision now. He owed her something. A smidgen of decency, compassion in a hard world.
Being undercover had taught him to read situations, and this one was obviously going as badly for her as it was going well for Gregg.
It
