“We need to talk. We’re not – don’t do this, Jack.”

“Seems to me that you’re doing it, too, sweetheart.”

“I’m trying not to. I don’t want to,” she said while he stroked his hands down her back and kept up a constant rain of those sweet, hungry kisses.

“Why?”

“Because this isn’t enough,” she said. “This doesn’t make up – it can’t make up – for the places that are all wrong.”

“It can. We have to work on it, not let it go. When it’s this strong, Carmen, you just have to take it on faith and –”

“No. No. Stop.” Shakily, she pushed him away and walked out of the house towards his car, parked in the street.

“You still want to eat?” He followed her, sounding angry and at sea.

“I’m hungry,” she snapped at him, because it was either I’m hungry or I’m pregnant, and she didn’t want to give him her news that way.

LILIAN DARCY

has written more than seventy-five books. Happily married, with four active children and two very rambunctious kittens, she enjoys keeping busy and could probably fill several more lifetimes with the things she likes to do – including cooking, gardening, quilting, drawing and travelling. She currently lives in Australia but travels to the United States as often as possible to visit family. Lilian loves to hear from readers. You can write to her at: PO Box 532 Jamison PO, Macquarie ACT 2614, Australia, or e-mail her at: lilian@liliandarcy.com.

Dear Reader,

I’m a cat person, so you won’t be surprised to find that there’s a very cute kitten in this book. I’d actually written this scene without any recent experience of choosing kittens, but just a few weeks after I wrote it, our much loved ten-year-old black-and-white cat, Gus, died, and my children decided that what we most needed to cheer us up was a new black-and-white kitten… or even better, two.

Sometimes, life does imitate fiction! We went off to the animal shelter and there were the most gorgeous black-and-white boy kittens – twin brothers, seven weeks old, with snowy white tuxedo fronts, glossy black backs. We claimed them instantly.

That night, we all sat around trying to think of the right names, and somehow, without my influence and without the kids’ even knowing the names of the characters in this book, our twin kittens ended up with the names Jack and Davey, just like my hero. Although we will never forget our beloved Gus, I cannot tell you how much fun we are having with these two.

I hope you enjoy the story of Carmen, Jack, Ryan…and a kitten named Tux.

Lilian Darcy

A Mother in the Making

LILIAN DARCY

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Chapter One

Jack heard his cell phone start up when he was partway through the slow, careful process of getting dressed. It was sitting downstairs on the coffee table where he’d left it the night before. Shirtless, barefoot and cursing, he took the stairs too fast, swung around the banister post on the landing halfway down and bumped his shoulder into the opposite wall, which meant that the half-healed wound in his left side was screaming at him by the time he picked up the phone.

T-shirt balled in his free hand and lopsided with pain, he heard Terri’s voice. He’d been expecting her call. Had thought about it when he’d lain awake in the night, unable to get back to sleep.

“Sorry, did I get you out of bed?” she cooed at him, and he caught the veiled put-down like a pro baseball player catching a kid’s practice throw.

Yeah, Terri, okay, I get it, you think I’m lazy. It was seven-thirty on a New Jersey Monday morning. Terri’s new husband, Jay, arose at six every day, went to the gym for an hour, ate a power breakfast and still managed to make a couple of billion dollars by lunch.

“Out of the shower,” he told her, after a silence that lasted a fraction too long. His side was still burning and he couldn’t be bothered attempting to change what his ex-wife thought of him.

What she thought of him had become pretty clear during the process of their divorce.

The only thing that mattered in their relationship anymore was Ryan, and he mattered down to the marrow of Jack’s bones. Ryan came first.

He took some cautious breaths and paced up and down the splintered old hardwood floor, willing the pain to ebb. What had he done in there? Ripped open his stitches? Did the agony show in his voice?

Terri knew that he’d just come out of the hospital, but he’d played the whole thing down when he’d told her what had happened. She no longer considered straight-talking cops to be heroes. Wall Street pirates with fat bank accounts and a polished line in doublespeak were the real he-men, as far as she was concerned.

She hadn’t been like this when they were first married at age twenty, fourteen years ago. He’d never seen this side of her back then, when they were so young. Deciding that she didn’t love him anymore seemed to have given her the license to fight as dirty as she could, and it set his teeth on edge.

“Did you and Jay have your meeting?” he asked.

“Family council,” Terri corrected quickly, as if the distinction was important.

Jack thought it was typical of Jay Kruger that he ran his new family the same way he ran his corporate takeovers, complete with meetings and agendas and power plays, but Terri didn’t want to see things this way.

He waited. He wasn’t going to dutifully echo the words family council just to ease her conscience. Nor was he going to let on how emotional he felt about the possible outcome.

“Yes, we had it…” she said, letting her sentence trail off enticingly.

Jack clenched his jaw. He knew this routine. She wanted him to wait and beg. It was like those pointless thirty-second pauses on reality TV shows before they announced the winner or loser’s name. Did his ex really think he didn’t see the emotional manipulation?

“Cut to the chase, Terri,” he growled at her.

“The chase? I’m not sure that I like what you’re implying, Jack. This is not a game.”

“I know it’s not.”

“These are incredibly serious issues.”

“I know they’re serious issues. Tell me what you and Jay decided.”

“See, and I hate to hear you sounding so aggressive. It makes me wonder if I’ve made the right decision after all…”

His heart leaped. The right decision. Did she mean…? “Please tell me straight, and don’t keep me dangling.” There. She had him begging, the way she wanted. “What decision have you made?”

“I’m getting to that.” Her voice pointedly soothed his impatience. “But you need to know the process we went through first. This was not decided lightly, Jack.” She gave him several minutes on the nonlightness of the process, her feelings, her priorities, and yet another rehash of how she’d never wanted to hurt him, then finished, “And we feel that the most important issue in all of this, Jack, in all of this,” she repeated, in case he thought she meant only forty-three percent of it, “has to be Ryan’s well-being.”

She spoke as if generously sharing a profound new insight. In reality, Jack himself had been making the same point to her for almost three years, as clear and direct as he could, and was never heard. He’d dealt with stalling and manipulation and outright lies. Only six months ago had he resorted to the threat of going to court. “We feel it’s not in his best interests to drag him through a court proceeding,” she went on.

Noooo, he thought sourly. Really? Not in Ryan’s best interests? How perceptive and profound! He never would have thought to consider the issue of Ryan’s well-being!

From somewhere nearby there came the sound of a car door slamming, followed by metallic clunkings, and Jack struggled to hear his ex’s voice. “…and Jay also wants to pay tribute to your desire to remain involved in Ryan’s life.”

Pay tribute to his desire to remain involved? Was she reading from a script?

“Okay…” Jack said cautiously. The pain in his left side still throbbed, although it had begun to ease. He waited for the other shoe to drop.

“So we’ve decided to give you what you want,” Terri said, and despite that little teaser from her about “the right decision” a couple of minutes ago, he almost didn’t believe what he was hearing.

Give him what he wanted?

Just like that?

There had to be a catch!

“Ryan can spend every second weekend with you,” she announced. “Friday afternoon through Sunday evening, and three midweek nights, Monday through Wednesday, of every second week.”

Okay, so there was a catch. Five nights out of fourteen, split into two separate packages, when Jack had wanted seven nights in a row. Ryan didn’t need an extra session of packing pajamas and homework and going back and forth.

Still it was so much better than he’d expected.

So much better—enough that he wouldn’t push for the seven consecutive nights.

Real, genuine day-to-day time with his nine-year-old son, and no battles to fight along the way. They could start the new arrangement immediately. He had seriously thought that Terri would hold firm on the current grudging one weekend in four unless he took her to court, and he’d been so torn about what was best for Ryan. He’d tried so hard not to let things get too ugly between himself and Terri, for their son’s sake.

Ah, hell…hell…

This was really, really good.

On top of the pain in his side and last night’s sleeplessness and bad dreams, the news had him battling his emotions, desperately trying to keep them at bay. He felt his throat tighten, felt the physical wash of relief that made his legs go weak. His eyes began to sting.

He was not going to give in to this! The police counselor kept telling him he was bottling things up, that something would have to give, and that it wouldn’t be pretty. She was probably right, but he was not going to pop the cork on that bottle now, in front of his ex on the phone.

With the effort of keeping himself in check, he tightened his stomach muscles, and the pain gave another sharp rip at his guts.

“That’s good, Terri, that’s great,” he managed, heading for the kitchen.

Water.

He just needed a glass of water, to loosen up this lump in his throat.

In that direction, he heard a door open, and a clatter.

“But we’ll need to work out the exact details…” His ex-wife’s tone gave out a warning, like a parent saying, You have to do your homework first.

“Of course.” The emotion pushed harder into his chest, and the pain knifed his side. What had he done to himself, coming down those stairs? The doctor had said he was very happy with the way the injury had been healing since the surgery.

“I’ll pick him up from school Thursdays because he has violin,” Terri was saying.

“I can take him to violin,” Jack managed to answer.

“Well, no, because I need to take notes from his teacher on his practice schedule,” she explained, as if such a task was quite beyond Jack’s abilities.

“Let’s talk later, okay?” he said, through teeth clenched from the pain in his side.

“I guess you need to get dressed…”

“Something like that.” He disconnected the call and rounded the corner into the kitchen, intending to lean over the sink and just pant and gasp and swear and groan for a while…maybe let the cork out of that bottle…as soon as he’d safely put down the phone. But there was a strange woman standing there with a dilapidated toolbox open on his equally dilapidated kitchen table, and the sight of each other brought both of them up short.

She dropped something back in the toolbox with a metallic clatter, gave a loud, startled squeak and clamped a fist over her heart. “Oh. Didn’t hear you!”

Jack gulped back the jagged rock in his throat, dropped the phone onto the kitchen bench and said, “Uh, hi.”

Why was there a woman in his kitchen? She had goose bumps on her bare arms and an aura of energy in every limb, and he was confused.

This should be Cormack O’Brien, here to begin work on the kitchen and bathroom remodeling, not this curvy little thing, underdressed for early April in a red cotton T-shirt and blue denim shorts. She had dangling red earrings that swung back and forth when she moved her head, dark curly hair, brown eyes and tanned skin. She also had an alarmed look getting stronger on her face, and he did not want her here to witness…to witness…

With a heroic effort, he tightened every muscle in his body, shook out his T-shirt ready to put it on, and managed to look…just…as if he was okay.

“You’re Jack,” Carmen said, taking a large step backward, for safety’s sake, her heart beating a little too fast as she looked at the new arrival in the kitchen.

She really, really hoped this man was Jack, shirtless owner of the house, because she wasn’t convinced she could tackle him to the ground and put a knee in his back if he was an unwanted intruder. He was tall and strong, and with that bare chest, knotted arm muscles and a crumpled garment dangling from a tight fist, he looked wound up and ready to snap.

“I’m Carmen O’Brien, Cormack’s sister,” she continued quickly. “The other C in C & C Renovations. Cormack is sick and can’t work today.”

Although she was the one making explanations, Jack Davey looked like the one who thought he didn’t belong. “Right,” he said. “Right.”

“And you’re Jack.” She managed to avoid making it a question.

“Yes, that’s right.” He lowered the T-shirt or rag or whatever it was. He was only half-dressed. His feet were bare, and the snap on his ancient jeans was undone. His dark hair was rumpled and he hadn’t shaved in a couple of days. He had cool gray eyes with little crinkles at the corners that she wanted to trust. The crinkles had to say something good about his smile. But he looked so far from smiling right at this moment, he scared her.

Ah. Okay.

With the T-shirt out of the way, she saw the red slash of a barely healed wound slicing across his tanned rib cage, which maybe explained the scary vibes. She wondered what on earth he’d done to himself. Heart surgery? Was that why he looked so serious and struggling and grim?

“I’m sorry about this,” he said through a tight jaw. She saw his throat work and his body spasmed. “Side’s hurting a bit.”

“Oh, of course, it looks nasty.”

“I’m sorry,” he said again.

“No, no, it’s fine. I’m not who you were expecting. I mean, I guess we startled each other.” She hadn’t been expecting a half-naked, freshly scarred, well-built, thirtysomething man who looked like a bomb about to go off, here to greet her this morning.

“You need to get to work. I’ll, uh…”

“No rush. Although it would help me to warm up a bit.” She tried a grin as she rubbed the goose bumps on her arms. “I’m dressed for working hard in the middle of the day, not standing around doing nothing early in the morning.”

He nodded vaguely, and looked past her, toward the sink. What was wrong with him?

“Um, are you okay?” she tried.

“Fine. I’m fine.”

It was such a lie, he could barely get the words out, poor guy. His face was so tight, and his gray eyes were like slits, he’d narrowed them so much. She gentled her voice and told him, “No, you’re not.”

And then it happened. His stomach began to heave. He pressed the shirt to his face. His shoulders shook. Sounds broke from his mouth.

He was crying.

Crying, with great, deep, scratchy, painful and achingly poignant sounds, and fifteen years of family grief and struggle had taught Carmen an instinctive response that came without her even thinking about it. She stepped close to him, took a hold of his big, warm body and let him sob his heart out in her arms.

Chapter Two

Carmen didn’t know how long they stood this way.

She had to stretch onto her toes to reach Jack Davey properly, even though he was already bent and crooked. The awkward posture must come from protecting that wound on his side. She was careful not to hold him too close because she could tell he was in pain. He laid his head on her shoulder and she cradled it the way she used to do when the sobbing body in her arms belonged to her dad, her sister Melanie or her brother Joe.

Just last night she’d held her other sister like this—eighteen-year-old Kate, after Kate had stumbled in at midnight, and Carmen had yelled at her because she was drunk, and Kate had yelled back, then burst into maudlin tears.

Carmen had run her hands across Kate’s wildly streaked hair and soothed her with little sounds and finally told her, “You have to get a grip, honey, you can’t let yourself get this messed up. What’s wrong?”

Kate had had no answers, and the tears had given way to petulant teen anger. “You have no clue, Carmen! You treat me like a child! How come you can’t just leave me alone?” Then she’d half stormed, half lurched off to the bathroom to hang over the sink and lose whatever cocktail of fast food and alcohol was sloshing around in her stomach.

Was there anything else in the cocktail besides alcohol?

Anything stronger?

Carmen was incredibly worried about her and had no idea what to do.

And now she had a stranger crying on her shoulder, and didn’t know what to do about that, either. Especially when she discovered that thinking about Kate had made her run her hands across Jack Davey’s hair in just the same soothing, helpless way, while she whispered, “It’s okay, it’s okay, just let it all out.”

Oh, Lord, had he noticed what she was doing?

She stilled the movement cautiously, not wanting just to rip her hand away. Resting on his dark head, her fingers found clean springiness and released the damp scent of his musky, nutty shampoo into the air. His body’s shaking began to ebb. She lifted her hand and patted his back in a rhythm of rough, awkward beats, finding pads of solid, well-worked muscle. He had the hardest, strongest body she’d ever felt. How could such a body possibly feel so vulnerable in her arms? What was wrong?

“I’m sorry.” His voice was like gravel. Or metal, rusted by his tears. “I am so…” he took a shuddery breath “…sorry about this.”

“It’s fine.” She pulled away. “I—I didn’t know if—”

“It’s okay.” He balled the shirt in front of his chest, a defensive maneuver that successfully put some space between them.

Carmen felt a little dizzy for a moment, and the air around her body was too cool again now that his body heat had gone. So strange. Every cell in her body seemed aware of how strong he’d been, and yet she was the one giving comfort. As she’d known for a long time, there was more than one kind of strength in a human being.

While she watched, still helpless as to what she should say or do next, he brought the garment to his face and wiped, as if it was a towel. He pulled it over his head, pushed his arms through the sleeves, looked down at the wet patch on the fabric made by his tears, and pulled it off again. “I’ll have to change,” he muttered.

“Do you want to…talk, or something?” she offered. “You shouldn’t just—”

“I’m okay.”

“You’re not.”

“Well, I’m embarrassed. But I know what this is about.”

“Maybe you should tell me. Please don’t be embarrassed.”

“Yeah, right!” he drawled. “This isn’t remotely embarrassing, sobbing on my kitchen contractor’s shoulder.”

“Well… But no, I mean, you’re a human being. We all—”

“Yeah, okay. I mean, the counselor said it would happen. That something like this would happen at some point. I’m sorry you were the one who got hit with it.” He massaged the heel of his big hand against his ribs, parallel to the fresh surgical scar. “I just got shot a couple of weeks ago, that’s all.”

“Shot?” she echoed on a gasp, shocked not just at the fact of it, but the way he said it, almost apologetically.

“Line of duty.” He’d seen her reaction. “I’m a cop.”

“What, so you’re…used to it or something?” She was still shocked, line of duty or not.

“I meant, don’t go thinking I’m in the middle of a gang war, or I’ve just come back from a war zone. It’s just…it’s a risk, in my profession. It was bad luck. And it hurts. They’ve given me some time off, and I’m taking a backlog of vacation days, too.”

“I should think so!”

“But it all got pretty messed up in there—the bullet through my ribs, I mean—so I had surgeons poking around, fixing it up, stitching everything. I strained it, or something, coming down the stairs too fast a minute ago…to catch the phone. It’s feeling a little better now.”

“That’s something. Still, though…”

“But then I got the phone call from—” He stopped. “Yeah. She—the counselor—said I was bottling things up. My emotions. And it might come spilling out for no reason. She said I’d have some really strange reactions, maybe for weeks or even months.” He rubbed his side again.

“Is it still hurting bad?” Carmen asked. “Looks to me like it is. Don’t you need a doctor?” It seemed easier for both of them to focus on the physical damage, not the emotional, after what had just happened. “You’re still not standing straight.” He had one big, muscular shoulder lifted forward, and bent over from the waist.

“I’m fine. It looks worse than it is. Or that’s what they keep telling me.” He gave a sudden grin that dropped from his eyes and mouth far too soon. Carmen wanted it back. It changed his whole face. The man should grin all the time. But he was frowning when he repeated, “I’m fine.” Once more he wiped the hem of his shirt across his face.

She nodded. “Mmm. Really?” He didn’t look fine. He looked embarrassed, distressed and in serious pain. “Can I get you…?” She waved vaguely, at a loss.

“Glass of water would be good.” He nodded toward the faucet and the sink, both of which would be completely gone from here by the end of the day, with the help of C & C’s trainee, Rob, and some good tools. Jack looked down at the shirt. “I’d better, uh…”

Without finishing the sentence, he disappeared back the way he’d come. Carmen poured his water, feeling that it was nowhere near enough as a gesture of comfort and support.

Oh, glory!

Jack sank onto the edge of his bed and wiped his hands down his face. If he just could have drunk the water and been on his own for a minute, he would have been fine, but to be faced by a pair of concerned brown eyes, hands that visibly itched to give a comforting caress and a soothing feminine voice asking that classic, caring question, “Are you okay?”

That was what had broken him. That little question. And then when she’d pushed, after he’d said he was fine. “No, you’re not…” Her voice was a honey trap, sweet and clear and straightforward.

He’d never felt so awkward and embarrassed in his life. Sobbing on her shoulder like a kid who’d grazed his knees. He could still feel the way her body had pressed against him. Carefully, because of his wound. Softly, because she had too many curves to be anything but soft—two full breasts and a slightly rounded stomach that she probably thought was too fat. Generously, because it was incredibly generous of her to give him that comfort when they’d only just met and she had no clue what was wrong.

If he hadn’t been in floods of tears, he would probably have been aroused. Oh, yeah, he could still smell her on his skin! He lifted a forearm to his nose. Yes. A wholesome, intriguingly different sort of smell, like oatmeal and fresh wood shavings and peach.

“Get a grip, Officer Davey!” he muttered out loud.

He stood up and began to pace and breathe, then wondered if she’d be able to hear him going back and forth like a caged beast. She already thought he was a little scary, with his raw wound and hair-trigger emotions. He couldn’t stay here like this when he’d only come up to change his shirt. She deserved some further explanation as to why he was so messed up, even if a heart-to-heart was the last thing he felt like.

He rummaged in a drawer for another old T-shirt suitable for painting in, but his damned eyes were still stinging and what the hell were all his old shirts doing way in the back of the drawer, anyhow, when usually they were the only ones he could find when he looked for a new one?

He let out a string of curse words—which never helped as much as he expected, he’d noticed—dived into the shirt and braced himself for going back down the stairs.

Carmen heard Jack’s footsteps overhead, making the old floorboards creak. He returned after a couple of minutes, wearing a fresh T-shirt.

Old, but fresh.

Very old, smelling of lemon detergent.

She could see the contours of his muscles clearly through the thin cotton fabric. Around his thick biceps, the edges of the shirt were frayed. Despite his wounded chest, he was dressed for hard work, and she had an instinct that he needed it. He was the kind of man who hammered out his pain far more often than he cried over it.

She handed him the water. He still looked emotional, like he was struggling, and she blurted out, “I’m sorry, if you’ve had bad news, or if you need more time, or an appointment with the police counselor you mentioned. If this isn’t a good day to start, I can wait until Cormack is better. He just has the flu.”

“I had a phone call. Would have been okay without that.”

“You mean you would have bottled up your emotions a little longer?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s a strategy, I guess,” she murmured, and waited.

She didn’t want to push him on this, but maybe it would be better if he spilled a little more. Better for both of them. She hated the idea of everything hanging in the air, since it was obvious he planned to work on the house today, also.

They would be alone together for hours.

“It wasn’t bad news, it was good news, when my ex called just now.” He dropped into a kitchen chair and rubbed his wounded side again, then said abruptly, “Might as well tell you so you know, because he’ll probably be around when you’re here. I’m getting part-time custody of my son, Ryan, without having to go to court over it, after six months of battles. I wasn’t expecting it. I’m really happy.”

“Yeah, really happy, and that’s why you were crying,” Carmen drawled, before giving herself a chance to rethink the words. Some people considered her too blunt, but she had no time—literally no time, on a busy day—for playing games.

“You can cry when you’re happy, you know,” he retorted with a little spirit, “even when you’re a guy.” He paused for a moment and took several gulps of water, before more words came spilling out. “See, this whole shooting thing… It was a woman, only in her twenties. She shot me. She was crazy on ice—crystal meth—completely off her face. Don’t ever touch that stuff, it’s a terrible drug.”

“I wouldn’t,” Carmen said, but she was thinking of Kate.

Kate wouldn’t be that stupid, would she? As usual, she felt like a parent instead of an older sister, angry and worried and helpless about what to do with a rebellious teen.

“Then my partner shot her and she died,” Jack Davey said.

“Oh, no…”

“He had no choice. There was no other way to get her under control and stop her shooting more. He wasn’t aiming to kill, but the light was bad, and she was moving crazy all over the place. It was… People think it’s all in a day’s work for a cop, shooting and killing, but it’s not.”

“I’m sure it isn’t!” She couldn’t begin to imagine.

“No matter what the situation and how much you had no choice, it’s still something you live with for the rest of your life. The woman had a kid.”

“Oh, no…”

“Maybe it’s a blessing. The kid’s with her aunt and uncle now, and I was told they’re decent people, so maybe she’ll have a better life now that her mother is gone. But still.”

“When did it happen?”

“Ten days ago.”

“Ten days!” No wonder he was raw, physically and emotionally.

“Sheesh, listen to me!” he said. “I’m sorry. You signed on for my kitchen not my therapy.”

“It’s okay.”

“Like the counselor said. We’ve both been told we’ll have some strange responses to things for a while, my partner and I.” He paused for a big, slow breath. “Including babbling to strangers.” The corner of his mouth twitched wryly.

Carmen could only nod. “It sounds—”

Like a nightmare.

He cut her off. “Yeah. It was.”

She got his don’t-want-to-talk-about-it-anymore message loud and clear. “Seriously, I can start tomorrow.”

He thought about it for a moment, then said slowly, “No, please stay and get started now. I’d like the company, to be honest. The house is spooking me, on my own.”

“I like a guy who can admit he’s scared of ghosts,” she said, and scored a laugh, which brought his whole face to life. He had the most natural, joyous laugh she’d heard from a man in a while, complete with the blink-and-you-miss-it grin he’d given a couple of minutes ago.

“You got that right!” he said frankly. “Never have been scared of ’em before. I’ve been in this place three months, but it’s only since the shooting that I’ve felt—” He broke off and swore under his breath. “Don’t know why I have to keep talking about it.”

“We won’t, then. It’s a nice house,” she said quickly.

“You mean it was, about eighty years ago.”

“It will be again, with some work. You’re having more done than just the kitchen and the half bath, right?” She wanted to draw him out and distract him.

“Hoping to do a lot of it myself. The floors and the painting.” As he talked about the renovation, he began to sound as if he was treading easier ground. He didn’t look so tightly locked in embarrassment and stress. “It was my uncle’s place, but he didn’t live here, kept it as a rental. He left it to me when he died last year. How about some coffee, and we’ll take a tour, if you’d like to see the whole place?”

Carmen saw that he sincerely wanted the distraction, the change of pace and the caffeine and said, “Yes and yes, to coffee and the tour. I’d love to see the whole house. But I’m sorry about your uncle.”

“I know. He was a good guy. But he was eighty, and he’d been ill awhile.” Again he seemed uncomfortable about sharing this with a stranger. She’d really got him on a bad day. The ongoing impulse to comfort him with her touch came as an irritation.

Been there, done that today. Had the embarrassment thick in the air to prove it.

And anyhow, haven’t you done enough of that kind of thing in your life, Carmen O’Brien, with Dad and Melanie and Joe and Kate, and even Cormack on a bad day? All that family, needing hugs and needing you. Why go looking for more of it, just at a time where, if only Kate would settle down and find herself, you might be free?

Definitely, she wasn’t going to act as Jack Davey’s shoulder to cry on again today. Or, hopefully, ever.

“Want me to make the coffee?” she offered heading through the open doorway in the direction of the fridge. “Through here?”

“No, I know where I’ve put everything in this mess,” he answered, and followed her.

Most of the kitchen equipment had been moved into this adjoining sunroom and piled at random. The room looked as if it had once been an open porch but had been enclosed a long time ago. Even though it was a mess now, it would be a beautiful room if it had some work. Pull up the ugly indoor-outdoor carpeting, polish the floorboards…

Were there hardwood boards under here?

Carmen discreetly slid the toe of her running shoe beneath a curled-up edge of orangey-brown carpet to take a look. She loved the whole process of renovating an old house, even though she and Cormack did mostly kitchens and bathrooms. She could just imagine this room with fresh paint, comfortable furnishings, syrup-colored floorboards….

“Yeah, I took a look and it seems to be in great condition,” Jack Davey said, following her downward gaze to the floor.

She hadn’t been discreet enough, apparently. Felt a little shamefaced as she admitted, “I love checking out the possibilities. Cormack says I act as if every house we work on is the one I’m going to raise my kids in.”

“Yeah? How many do you have?” He found the coffee jar and filters, went back into the kitchen to fill the glass pot.

“Oh, kids? None. Theoretical kids, he means.” She wasn’t convinced she wanted kids of her own, actually, after she and Cormack had pretty much raised the younger three O’Brien siblings these past ten years and more. Not that her client needed to know any of that.

But maybe he’d caught something in her tone. He gave her a sideways glance and said, “Right,” and the subject was closed.

He made the coffee and they drank it and munched on a Danish pastry each as they toured the sprawling house. It definitely needed work. The basement was cluttered with junk, and the dust lay thick. The washing machine down there looked like a model from the sixties. They both poked around, finding traces of damp along the north wall.

“I might have to get some new drainage in place outside.” Jack bent and ran his fingers across the puckered, powdery whitewash down near floor level.

Carmen took a closer look, also, and for a moment they stood shoulder to shoulder, propping their hands on their knees as they examined the problem. “The place might just need airing out. Or you might be right and it could need more major treatment.”

She was enjoying this. It reminded her of the way she and Cormack worked together, very practical and relaxed with each other. A heck of a lot easier than standing in Jack Davey’s kitchen feeling him sob in her arms.

Hmm. Too relaxed, maybe.

Suddenly she felt a little self-conscious, as if she’d been standing too close. He smelled good, and that wasn’t the kind of thing you should notice about a client a half hour after you first met him.

“But look at the windows,” Jack said, moving away. He’d stopped favoring his injured left side now that it was hurting less, and he walked with more athletic grace than she would have expected from a lawman. He was springy on his feet, and energetic, which Carmen liked because she was energetic, too. “They’re a good size. When they’re clean they’ll let in a lot of light, and I’ll clear out the junk, paint the floor.”

They went back up the rickety basement stairs. The fireplace in the living room had been closed off and replaced with an ugly gas heater, the floors needed sanding and varnishing, and you could spend three months painting the place inside and out and not have it done, but the ceilings were high and there was some great original detail. Marble and Flemish tile around the fireplace, real plaster cornices and moldings, stained and beveled glass panels beside the front door, hand carving on the hardwood newel post at the foot of the stairs.

“Want to see outside before we go upstairs?” Jack said.

“Is there much land?”

“About three-fourths of an acre. Like the house, it’s a mess.”

They went through a side door and around into the rear yard, where dew still lay on the untidy grass. Walking next to Jack, Carmen couldn’t help taking sideways looks a couple of times. To see if he was still okay. To see what that strong, hard body really looked like, because having a man fall into her arms two minutes after she met him meant that so far she had a more vivid impression about the way he felt and smelled and sounded than about the way he looked.

Both times she found him looking back at her. A little wary, a little curious at the same time. As if he needed to check out what she really looked like, too, because he only knew about how she felt and smelled. The first time this happened, they both looked away fast. The second time, out beyond the shadow of the house, the looks held for half a second too long.

He cleared his throat. “So this is the yard.” It came out a little too breezy and cheerful.

“Oh, right, great,” she answered, as if she hadn’t recognized that this was a yard until he said it.

When she looked closer, she saw that it was more than a yard, it was a garden. An overgrown and half-forgotten garden, but a garden all the same. She saw rosebushes that had gone unpruned for years and a stand of fruit trees that was almost an orchard. Winter-deadened weeds, creepers and sumac camouflaged an area of stone paving with a hand-chiseled birdbath at the center of it.

“It’ll take work,” Jack said, as if warning her.

“Yeah, I noticed,” she drawled. “Are you a gardener?”

“Never have been, but when I look at this and think about the possibilities, I want to learn.”

The property backed onto what was almost a cliff. Facing south, it rose forty or fifty feet, made of chunky, solid rock that was covered in a tangle of growth. In the April sun, the fresh lime-green of new leaves had begun to appear.

“This is natural, this rock face?” Carmen asked.

“That’s right.”

“And is that a train track up on top?”

“It’s not used anymore. I climbed all the way up here one day. There are pockets of good soil in lots of places.”

He paced in front of the rock face, his keenness for the project translating into energetic movement and an animated face. His eyes weren’t red-rimmed anymore, and he’d begun to forget their awkward start with each other. So had Carmen. Her relief was like the April sun. Getting stronger. Warming her.

“It wouldn’t be too hard to clear out this jungle and turn it into a rock garden, with creepers and flowers,” he went on. “The main yard is through that hedge, to the side of the house. There are a couple of real nice trees you can see. That huge pine and the sycamore. The property goes through to this other road, here.” He pointed.

A side road led to a development of new houses on a hillside, big pseudomansions made of cheap materials with no style. In Carmen’s mind, even in its current dilapidated state, there was no contest between Jack’s old place and those new ones. She’d take the old house every time.

“It’s great,” she said. “I love it. One of those times I wish C & C Renovations did the whole package, not just kitchens and bathrooms.” She leaned a hand on the cool rock, closed her eyes and turned her face to the early-spring sun to absorb its rising warmth, but then she sensed how closely Jack Davey was watching her and opened her eyes to return the look.

Different from their last looks at each other. Curious, this time.

“Can I ask the obvious question now?” he said. He leaned against the rock and she thought the patch of sun would probably do his aching body some good, as well as his traumatized soul.

“Which question is that?” she asked.

“The one I’m having trouble putting into words without sounding…oh, crass, I guess.”

Okay. She knew.

“You mean what’s a nice girl like me doing in a renovation business like this?”

“That’s the one. Sorry.”

“Yeah. Don’t go all macho and chauvinistic on me, okay?” she blurted out.

“I’m trying not to. But it is a little unusual. Does everyone hit you with it?”

“Or they hit my brother with it. They wonder if I’m going to pull my weight. But then we point out that we work on a contract basis, not by the hour, so if my dainty hand is too feeble to lift a hammer, it costs us, not the client.”

“Which doesn’t tell me why you went into it in the first place.”

“Family reasons, mostly.” He wouldn’t want the details. She found herself giving too many of them, anyhow. For some reason, he seemed easy to talk to. “We needed a business where Cormack could use his building skills and I could train with him while we worked. We didn’t have a lot of capital to invest. There was no money for more education. We had to be able to get off the ground fast. It was tough at first. We had small jobs, with a lot of gaps between them. But then we started getting good references from the work we’d done, and now we sometimes have to turn clients away.”

Although she’d summarized extensively, she wished she’d been briefer. He wasn’t the only one spilling too much information and too much emotion this morning.

“And you like hammering?” He seemed to be mentally contrasting this unlikely personality trait with the traits in other women he’d known, and he wasn’t getting a match.

Curvy girl bits. Hammering. Dangly earrings. Toolbox with pry bar.

She liked hammering?

Shouldn’t she prefer to be shoe shopping at the mall?

“I like knowing how to do it right,” she said, deciding to trust him with the truth. “There’s a satisfaction in getting the rhythm and hitting the sweet spot, feeling the nail go in like a knife through butter. And I like creating a kitchen or a bathroom that works, as well as looking good. If you want, you can call that the feminine touch. For some clients, it’s one of C & C’s selling points. That I have a woman’s eye for where to put the utensil drawer and the hooks for the pot holders.”

He laughed. “I didn’t even know the second half of C & C was female when I talked to your brother.”

“Yeah, that can work pretty well for us, too,” she drawled deliberately.

They looked away from each other again.

“Want to go back in and see upstairs?”

“Maybe you’ll want C & C to tackle the upstairs bathroom next, so I should take a look.” At this stage, they were only contracted to do the kitchen and half-bath downstairs.

He led the way back inside and up to the master bedroom, where his T-shirt drawer hung open with a mess of fabric spilling out. The sight reminded them both of how he’d greeted her an hour ago and what had happened next. He went to shut it, but an awkwardness had come back into the atmosphere now, and the rest of his tour was sketchy and brief.

“We should both probably do some work if we’re going to get much done this morning,” he said.

“Yes, or I’ll have to answer to Cormack as soon as he’s better. I’m not expecting you to help, though, seriously.”

“That’s okay. Got a project of my own.”

Turned out he was preparing to paint the sunroom today, keeping the horrible carpet in place to protect the floor. They arrived back in the kitchen, and with misgivings, she watched him climb a stepladder and start scraping the ceiling. “Are you fit enough for that, Jack? Your chest, I mean.”

“I’ll stop if it starts hurting. You’re right, though, I couldn’t help you pull out those old cabinets, judging from how much it seemed to tear me up, coming too fast down the stairs.”

Carmen had begun working on the cabinets with a pry bar. They weren’t original to the house and weren’t worth saving. The green laminated particle board had swollen out of shape in numerous places, and it was ugly and cheap to begin with.

“Rob should be here sometime this morning to help with the heavy work,” she said. Several nails screeched as the pry bar pulled a strip of wood loose. She added without thinking, “But I’m not as much of a girl as I look.”

From his position on the stepladder, Jack Davey twisted around and looked at her, long and slow. “What’s wrong with being a girl?” he said, his gray eyes teasing and thoughtful and steady at the same time, and that was the moment Carmen first began to understand that she could be in real trouble, that Jack Davey knew it, and that he could be in trouble, too.

The twisting motion on the stepladder had not been a good idea, Jack soon realized. The surgically repaired mess under his left rib cage burned again. Carmen saw him wince and heard the hitch in his breathing.

“Don’t say it,” he warned. “You’re right. I’m going to call the doctor, see if he can squeeze me into his appointment hours to check this out. It keeps happening, and it probably shouldn’t.”

“Are you supposed to be driving yet?”

“No. Wanna call me a cab?”

“I was going to offer to be the cab.”

“That works, too, if you don’t mind doing it.”

“I’m getting the impression today’s going to be slow for C & C Renovations.”

“Add the extra time into your invoice.” He looked down at his chest. “I’d better change my shirt. Again.”

The receptionist at Dr. Seeger’s put him through to the doctor himself, who sounded concerned. “You’re right. I should take a look. You’re not doing anything stupid, are you?”

“Maybe I’d better not answer that. What would you say, just hypothetically, if I told you I was doing paint preparation in my sunroom?”

The doctor sighed down the phone. “Didn’t we go over this in the hospital?”

“You said nothing strenuous. I’m right-handed, and the shot went in on the left. When the pain first tweaked this morning, all I was doing was coming down the stairs a little too fast.”

“I’ll fit you in as soon as you get here.”

They took the C & C pickup truck. Jack liked the way Carmen drove. She was a little sassy at the wheel, delivering sarcastic one-liners to any idiots on the road, but with a thread of humor in the mix that toned it down. She had the windows shut, too, so no one would hear.

“I hope your eyebrows get painted on crooked, lady!” she yelled at a woman who was applying her makeup at the traffic lights and who clearly found the process far more interesting than checking the color of the lights. “Green means go, honey, green means go, say it after me,” she chanted, until the vehicle in front finally moved. Then she turned to Jack. “Tell me to shut up if you hate this,” she said. “Cormack often does. Even though he knows it helps my sanity.”

“You need help with your sanity?”

She shrugged and grinned, and her red earrings swung against her tanned neck. “Life gets complicated. I’m the go-to girl in the O’Brien family and my baby sister is being a pain in the butt right now—she’s just turned eighteen. Helps to yell at idiots in traffic instead of yelling at her.”

“I can relate to that,” he said, thinking of Terri and her new husband, and the ice junkie with the crazy gun. “Sometimes you need to off-load stuff onto someone safe.”

“Yeah,” she said quietly, as if she’d understood his thoughts. “Um, are you going to ask the doctor about that, too? I mean, about…”

“Crying on your shoulder?” He raked his teeth over his lower lip, a little scared that even just saying the words might bring those hair-trigger emotions bubbling back up.

“Yep. That.” She glanced across at him, must have seen the way his face had gone tight. She added lightly, “Not that your tears have ruined my gorgeous silk blouse or anything.” She fingered her plain cotton T-shirt.

The humor helped. “I’ll buy you a new one in gold satin,” he promised. “You want C & C Renovations embroidered on the pocket, like on that one?”

“Seriously, though…”

“How about if we’re not?” he said quickly. “Serious, I mean. I’ll ask the doctor. He knows I’m seeing the counselor and taking time off.”

“Okay. Just wanted to check.”

“Well, thanks, but I think I have a handle on this.”

She made a tricky lane change in silence, then asked, “And your partner, how’s he doing?”

“He took a vacation with his wife to Bermuda. She’s great. Down to earth. Says she’s planning to come home pregnant. Her dad’s a cop, too. Russ’ll be okay.”

“He didn’t get shot.”

“The getting shot is the least of it. It’s the shooting someone else that breaks you up.”

“I can imagine.”

“Here’s the doctor’s building coming up on the right, after the next light. There’s parking out front. You can wait in the pickup, if you want. Hopefully this won’t take long.”

“Hmm, wait in the pickup… Does this doctor have good magazines? Or just ones with fish and cars on the covers?”

“What’s wrong with fish and cars?”

“Despite the toolbox, I am actually a girl, Jack,” she drawled. “I believe we’ve already covered that? I gotta catch up on my celebrity gossip or I grow forests of unwanted body hair overnight.”

He laughed. “No forests. He has good magazines.”

“Then I’ll come in and read.”

They waited five minutes before Dr. Seeger called him in, and he left Carmen with her pile of glitzy reading.

“Okay,” the doctor said, sounding way too eager. “Let’s see if I can cause some pain.”

Bottom line, he could.

Other than that, the news was good.

“I don’t think you’ve caused any further damage,” Dr. Seeger said. “Your blood pressure is normal and your temperature, your heart. There’s no sign of infection or swelling. It wasn’t hurting until I poked at it just now?”

“No, but if I twist…”

“Don’t twist. You’re, what, ten days out of surgery? You’re still healing. Go easy on this.”

“Do I have to lie down?”

“Not unless you want to. Have you been taking your pain medication?”

“I stopped it. Made my head too fuzzy and I hated it.”

The doctor fixed him with a thoughtful look. “It’s probably good that you’ve stopped, although I wouldn’t recommend that strategy to every patient. You’re the type who thinks he’s cured if he can’t feel actual pain. The hero type. If you pop painkillers, who knows what you’ll do to yourself and never realize.”

They negotiated Jack’s exact level of permitted activity for a couple more minutes, and Jack wondered if maybe this “hero-type” thing had some truth to it. Dr. Seeger certainly seemed able to predict a few of his recent behavior patterns with a high degree of accuracy. There was also the lingering suggestion that the “hero” label wasn’t one hundred percent complimentary.

He left the doctor’s office with mixed feelings.

“He says I can keep painting,” Jack reported when he got back to Carmen in the waiting room. He looked pleased and a little thoughtful.

“Is that good?”

“Hell, yeah!”

“What else did he say?” She put down her magazines and stood up, sensing he was eager to get out of there. The car keys in his hand provided a tiny clue. He was jiggling them impatiently, even though they belonged to his own car, not the C & C pickup that they’d arrived in, and he wasn’t even driving.

“What else?” he echoed. “Good blood pressure, no infection or swelling. And he says I should go easy on the painkillers because I’m the—” He stopped.

“The what?” she prompted.

“Nah. Nothing.”

“Go on. Worst patient he’s ever had? Rarest blood group on the planet?”

He shrugged, tucked in the corner of his mouth and spread his hands. “The hero type. For what it’s worth.”

What was it worth?

Carmen didn’t know.

She didn’t have a lot of experience with heroes.

Chapter Three

Four days of solid work later—a lot of splintered wood, a lot of paint fumes, a lot of dirt and mess, the occasional presence of Rob to help with the heavy work, not much conversation—Carmen flipped her cell phone shut and announced to Jack, “That was Cormack. He and Rob should be here with the new kitchen cabinets in about a half hour. They’ve hit a delay at the warehouse, but they’re sorting it out.”

“No problem,” Jack answered easily.

He had seemed more relaxed as each day passed. His side looked to be hurting him less, and he’d told her that Ryan was coming tonight, for the first of his more-frequent weekends here. Carmen could see Jack was happy about it, but a little wound up at the same time. He’d looked at his watch several times over the past hour.

“At least, it’s no problem for me,” he added. “Do you have somewhere you need to be?”

“No, I’ll wait. We won’t get any of the cabinets put in tonight, but they’ll take a while to unload from the truck, and we’ll want to check them for any damage or anything that’s wrong. Will it be a problem if we’re still here when Ryan arrives, though?”

He looked at his watch again. “Shouldn’t be.”

But he frowned. Carmen already had the impression that his ex’s reactions could be unpredictable.

It was late Friday afternoon and almost dark out. Chilly, too, with so many windows open to air out the smell of fresh paint. Jack had almost finished the sunroom. He’d been working with a roller at the far end, rapidly filling in the last sections with long, smooth strokes.

Carmen watched him as he returned to the work. He leaned down to the roller tray, still favoring his injured side a little. He put the roller against the wall and pushed up and down, and the muscle in his upper right arm went a little harder and rounder, below the loose band of that frayed old T-shirt, which was now splattered with paint. The color went onto the wall with a hissy, splishy kind of sound, and Jack hummed a couple of bars of a classic rock riff under his breath, sounding a little on edge after the mention of Ryan’s arrival. “Dunh, dunh, da, dunh, dunh, dunh-da.”

She recognized what he was humming. Deep Purple. “Smoke on the Water.”

He’d done a good job, her professional eye told her. Most amateur painters skimped on the prep work. They didn’t spend enough time sanding or filling in holes, didn’t tape the windows, and ended up with sloppy edges and rough spots. Jack hadn’t even opened his paint cans until yesterday evening, after she and Rob had gone for the day. He must have worked for hours last night on the ceiling, and today he’d done the main wall color, a buttery cream. There was a contrasting trim to go on later, in a pale Wedgwood-blue.

“I like it,” she told him. Then she fought a yawn, which Jack fortunately missed.

If he’d spent half last night painting, she’d spent at least as much time worrying about Kate being out late again, and listening for the sound of her coming through the front door. She’d heard her sister’s key in the lock at almost two, and then unsteady footsteps stumbling up the stairs.

“Yeah? You do?” He turned. “I wanted to prep it well enough so it didn’t need a second coat. Really wanted it done today, before—” He stopped. “Well, just done today. What do you think?”

“You’ll have to wait for brighter light, but I can’t see any patchy spots. You may have some touching up, that’s all.”

“And it’s not too yellow?”

“Not at all,” she reassured him.

“And not too, you know, girly?”

“Not to my eye.”

“Good.”

He wanted the new paint job to be finished enough to show off to Ryan, she realized, and he wanted Ryan to like it. This was no bachelor pad he was creating for himself, here. He wanted it to be a home.

“A sunroom has to be sunny,” she said. “You can tone down the cheeriness with some darker furnishings. It’s not girly.” His concern for Ryan’s opinion reminded her of her own concern over Kate, and that she should call and let her know she’d be late home for dinner, because of Cormack’s delay. “And of course when the trim and floor are done it’ll look so different, and so much better,” she told him. “Really impressive. Great room for a kid’s computer and study desk.”

“You think so?” He looked happy at the idea.

“Definitely, when it’s all finished.”

He grinned. “I’m going to enjoy throwing this carpet into a Dumpster.”

“I’ll bet!”

She made the call to Kate but was asked to “Please leave a message” on both the land line at home and Kate’s cell. “Hi, Kate, it’s me,” she told the cell phone. “Wanna cook something, if you get in? There’s pasta and salad fixings, deli pasta sauce in the refrigerator. I’ll be there for it, but late. Cormack won’t be. Anyhow, call me when you get this, okay? Let me know what’s happening.”

She’s eighteen, she’s college age, she’s not a child, ran the familiar mantra in her head, after she put down the phone. The mantra didn’t help. Nothing helped. Kate was a mess. She’d broken up with her boyfriend a month ago, and even though Mitchell had been a jerk and bad news and not nearly good enough for Kate, she still had a wounded heart. Carmen was scared. Their talks achieved nothing.

Cormack had no solutions to offer, either. He tended to opt out by spending his evenings elsewhere, leaving Carmen to fret and yell and try a new strategy with Kate every week. Sometimes she got angry with her older brother and business partner, but he was probably right when he said that there was nothing they could do. Kate had to ride out her own problems, deal with her own heartaches and learn from her own mistakes.

Restless and concerned, Carmen wandered into the sunroom to watch Jack fill in the last unpainted rectangle of wall. “Want some help cleaning your gear?” she asked him, unhappy about the circular motion of her thoughts about her sister. “There’s nothing more I can do until Cormack and Rob get here.”

“You don’t have to help. You look pretty wiped.”

“I hate sitting around.”

Because then I’m just going to either A, worry about Kate or B, spend too much time watching the way Jack’s butt looks in those old jeans when he moves.

Yeah, definitely she was in trouble.

And though a part of her sang out a warning that she should run a mile, because she had no time for a man, especially a man with a nine-year-old son, when she had Kate to worry about and Melanie and Joe only just grown and gone, another part of her insisted, Isn’t it time I had something for me?

Jack Davey would most definitely be something for her.

Which part of herself did she listen to? The sensible, nurturing part, or the part that wanted to take a leaf out of Kate’s book and throw caution to the four winds, right along with her tender heart?

“If you’re serious, start on the trim brushes,” Jack said, pulling them from the plastic bag he’d stored them in to stop them from drying out. “I’m done with them. Use that old sink in the basement.”

“Sure.” She reached out and he gave them to her, the two handles inevitably sticky with paint drips that had run down them. She was accustomed to messy hands. His were stained and sticky, also, and when their fingers touched as she took the brushes, the stickiness glued them together for a moment. She didn’t try too hard to pull away.

“How fast does this stuff dry?” she murmured, and he favored her with his blink-and-you-miss-it grin.

“Fast,” he said. “Better go wash it off.” He dropped his voice. “Your hands are too pretty to have paint all over ’em.”

Yep. Serious trouble. What kind of signal had she sent just then?

Down in the basement she ran water over the brushes and squeezed the thick bristles, knowing she’d probably still have paint traces on her hands a couple of days from now, despite the industrial-strength soap she and Cormack kept at home.

The water was beginning to flow clearer when Jack came down with the roller. She heard his footsteps on the old wooden stairs and her heart began to beat faster. It was pretty shadowy down here. Atmospheric. A little more dangerous, in all sorts of ways, than being alone with him in the kitchen and sunroom while they worked.

She stepped sideways to give him room, and he used her almost-clean waste water to rinse away the thickest of the paint on the roller. “Those are about done, aren’t they?” he said, after a while.

She looked at her brushes. They were. For a good minute she’d just been standing here wondering why it felt so nice to have Jack Davey this close, and what one of them might do about it. She knew he felt this chemistry, too…

“Here’s a rag for drying them.” He reached up to a nail sticking out from the wooden floor beam above their heads and pulled down what had to be another one of his old T-shirts. Their arms bumped. He shut off the faucet.

When she took the rag from him, he didn’t let it go. She pulled. He tugged gently back. She looked up at him. “Thanks for saying the right things about the paint,” he said.

“That’s okay. It does look good.” She added, “But I know why it’s important. You want Ryan to like it.”

“Oh, I’m that transparent?”

“Maybe because I’m that way with my baby sister, sometimes. Thinking—oh, too much, probably—about what I can do to make her happy. I recognized what you felt. Ryan comes first.”

“That’s right. I say that to myself all the time. In exactly those words.”

He still hadn’t let go of the rag. Carmen stopped pulling. They both just stood and looked at each other, while he dried their wet hands on the soft, stretchy fabric. Finally, he dropped the rag into the sink and looked at what he’d done. Two sets of clean, dry, pink hands, the big, strong pair cradling the smaller, work-hardened pair.

“Much prettier,” he said softly.

“They’re not,” she stammered. “They’re not proper girl hands at all. They have cuts on them, sometimes, and scars. I use creams and stuff, but—”

He cut her off. “They’re sexy as hell.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Because they’re real. Sexiest girl hands I’ve ever seen.”

As if to prove it, he lifted them and kissed them, then took his lips away, laced his fingers through hers and kissed her mouth. It was the second time in three days that she’d found herself in Jack Davey’s arms, only this time no one was crying.

He kept his fingers threaded in hers, dropping their arms to their sides. His lips brushed her mouth, taking it slow. “Is this okay?” he muttered.

“Yes,” she whispered back. Because it was most definitely okay, so why pretend differently?

The single word was all it took. He deepened the kiss at once, pulling her hard against him, parting her lips with his, tasting her, turning her mouth delectably numb and tingling. He kissed like a dream, kissed from the heart, kissed as if the world might end tonight, and that was just the way she wanted it. Good, and unashamed.

Instinctively she lifted one hand into his hair and caressed the clean, silky strands. She’d done this four days ago. Different reason. Just as good. They knew each other better now. How did that happen to two people? It was strange. Making coffee for each other while they worked. A few casual lines about measurements and cabinets and paint colors.

But somehow, thanks to tears and embarrassment and coffee and paint colors, she knew him and he felt right. Right beneath the touch of her fingers, right to her sense of taste and smell, the right heat radiating from his strong body, the right words whispered in her ear.

“On Monday morning…” he said. Kisses and words. She could barely tell the difference. “Even when I was…” his breath touched her lips. His mouth was like poetry “…sobbing like a baby on your shoulder, I loved how you felt. I hit you with all of that emotion…”

“It was okay. I could see how it just washed over you.”

“You were great. The fact that you didn’t run screaming…”

“I’ve had some practice.”

“Yeah?”

“Family.”

“Why are we talking about this?”

“We’re not.”

“Good…” he said, and the word drowned itself against her mouth.

He kissed her hard, ran his hands down her back and over her rear end, shaping her curves, coming up to lift her hair from her neck and make sensual touch patterns against her nape and behind her ears. She felt the press of her breasts against him, and the growing ridge of his arousal against her stomach. They were the wrong size for each other but it didn’t matter a bit. They still fit, somehow. He bent and she stretched. It was just…right.

And then it was interrupted.

Carmen heard the pop of car tires on the tarred driveway at the side of the house, right next to the windows above the old sink.

Cormack and Rob, with the cabinets.

Jack muttered something under his breath, and if it was a curse word, then Carmen fully agreed.

She didn’t want this to stop. How could she stop?

But the sound of the arrival had cut jaggedly into their kiss like a knife cutting tough steak, and she felt Jack start to let go. His hands showed his reluctance. So did his mouth. She felt his hot touch, first against her back then dropping to her hips. His kiss trailed across her jaw and down her neck, warm and giving and alive, promising more, promising later.

It was only the promise of later that allowed her to let go now. How crazy was that?

“This must be Cormack,” she said, breathless.

And maybe his timing was fortunate because the implications of kissing Jack were looming larger by the second. That other part of her was talking louder, the part she hadn’t listened to before, the part that said nothing about how this could possibly work, when Ryan came first in his life, and Kate’s current problems came first in hers, and what Carmen wanted most in the world right now was to be free of such a heavy weight of respon sibility.

“I guess,” he said, about Cormack.

“Finish cleaning the roller?” she prompted him. “We’ll be a while, unloading.”

He grabbed her hand and squeezed it and they looked at each other helplessly for a moment.

“Jack, maybe we should…”

“Go,” he said. “We can’t talk now.”

“No. I know.” Her body throbbed and burned as she hurried up the stairs. She smoothed her hair and her shirt, knowing Cormack would have questions about her flushed face and bright eyes. He’d probably think Difficult client, not Kissing by the basement sink, because difficult clients were far, far more common than clients who even looked as if they might touch a woman the way Jack Davey did.

Would her brother ask her about it?

Cool down, she coached herself. Don’t let him see that something happened.

She went directly to the side entrance, where Cormack and Rob should just about be standing by now. There was no one there, so she went to the front of the house, yanked the big, ill-fitting door open and found a petite, blue-eyed blonde standing on the porch with her mouth already pursed in impatience at how long she’d had to stand waiting.

Oh. Right.

“You must be Terri,” Carmen said, sounding a little too abrupt.

Jack’s ex.

She saw a boy with Jack’s dark hair and a slight but wiry build coming up the saggy old steps with a backpack slung on one shoulder. Ryan—number-one priority in Jack Davey’s life. To both mother and son she said, “Come in.”

The purse on Terri’s lips gathered tighter, as she looked Carmen up and down. “Jack didn’t say he’d have someone here.”

She said someone as if it meant call girl, or at the very best, sleazy new squeeze, but Carmen understood how a mother might have concerns about a possible unknown new girlfriend in her son’s father’s life. She explained quickly, “I’m not someone. I’m completely not anybody at all. I’m just remodeling his kitchen.” And if my cheeks are on fire, then they’re lying! “I actually thought you were going to be the rest of the team, bringing the new cabinets.”

Terri didn’t seem interested in the new cabinets, let alone Carmen herself, now that she’d turned out to be the hired help. “But he’s home?” She didn’t wait for an answer, just marched into the house. “Jack?” she called sweetly. “This is a little inappropriate, isn’t it?”

Inappropriate. Such a falsely sanitary word. It came out of Terri’s mouth with vinegar flavoring, and Carmen already understood quite a lot about why Terri and Jack were divorced.

She focused on Ryan, instead. He looked so much like Jack, down to the same expression on his face—a mix of anticipation and wariness. It melted her heart. This was a fresh start for him, too, in his relationship with his dad, and he was a little wary. “Hi,” she said brightly. She knew about fresh starts in families. “I’m Carmen. Want to put your backpack by the stairs or something? It looks heavy.”

Terri turned back to her. “Didn’t you say you were from the construction crew?”

“Yes, that’s right,” Carmen confirmed helpfully, since apparently she hadn’t been clear enough before.

“Hmm.” Terri’s look said that a kitchen remodeler making suggestions to a nine-year-old about where he could put his backpack was almost as “inappropriate” as the remodeler answering the door in the first place.

Jack had appeared. “We thought you were the cabinets,” he said to Terri.

“Didn’t I say we’d be here by six?”

He looked at his watch. “And it’s a quarter after. Which was about when we were expecting Cormack and Rob with the cabinets.”

Carmen heard another vehicle engine outside. “This is Cormack and Rob,” she said quickly. “No problem.” She went out to the porch and found that Terri’s car was blocking the truck’s continuation down the driveway. For convenience and speed, they needed to unload directly through the side door. She added apologetically, “Um, Terri, unless you’re leaving right away, I’ll have to ask you to move your car.”

With exaggerated patience, Terri held the keys out to Carmen at arm’s length. “Have you ever driven a BMW?” Her face said she doubted it, and she turned away without waiting for a reply.

Carmen held the keys, thinking sarcastically, Oh yeah, I run around in them all the time, stick shift and automatic, all makes and models, every color of the rainbow.

It was official.

She didn’t like Jack’s ex.

She was tempted to say out loud, I’m pretty good in a Mercedes or a Lamborghini, too. But she heroically managed to keep the lines purely in her thoughts.

Terri must be a mind-reader, however, because she almost looked as if she was about to snatch back the keys. On the way out the door to move the vehicle, Carmen heard her say, “I really don’t think this is appropriate for Ryan, Jack, for you to have a work crew in the house while he’s here.”

“It’s six-fifteen on a Friday. They won’t be here long.”

In the driveway, Carmen signaled to Cormack and Rob that she was moving the car, reversed out toward the mailbox, then angled the vehicle onto the unkempt stretch of grass in front of the house. They drove the truck farther in and began to unload the cabinets, keeping the protective packaging in place and setting everything down in the dining room. Cormack was still taking cold and flu medication, but he was a lot better than he’d been earlier in the week.

In the living room Terri and Jack were still talking.

“Go on upstairs, Ryan, honey,” Carmen heard Terri say, and, as soon as his footsteps sounded overhead, in quite a different tone, “This arrangement can be changed if it doesn’t work out, Jack, you know that, don’t you?”

“Of course I know that. And it cuts both ways.”

“What could you possibly mean by that?”

“Never mind, it’s nothing.”

“No, Jack. I want an explanation.”

“Well, let’s just say if you open a nude-mud-wrestling venue in your pool cabana, I might have a case for full-time custody.”

“That’s ridiculous! And totally inappropriate!”

“No, it’s a joke, because I’m trying to keep this light. Terri, I really don’t think that having a couple of people here unloading kitchen cabinets on a Friday evening is going to traumatize our son.”

“No, but it’s going to rob him of your attention.”

“Which you’ve been doing ever since we first separated three years ago, by not letting me have more time with him, so please don’t try that argument.”

Carmen went back out to the truck to bring in the new stainless steel sink, but her cell phone rang in her back pocket on the way.

Kate.

She came around to the front of the house and sat on the porch steps for some privacy and tried to sound as upbeat as possible. “Hi, Katie-girl!”

“I’m home and there’s no dinner, so I’m—”

“But did you get my message? I’ll be home in a bit. And there’s fresh pasta and deli sauce, one of those creamy ones you like.”

“I’m not going to wait. I’m going out. Courtney’s picking me up. Well, her boyfriend.”

“Courtney’s boyfriend is picking you up. Where are you going?”

“Just out.”

“Is there a plan?”

“Just out, Carmen!”

“Wait, okay? I’ll be there in ten minutes.” Well, twenty, at least, but if she said twenty she knew Kate wouldn’t even consider waiting. On the other hand, if she didn’t keep to her golden rule of honesty with her baby sister, then what was left? “Actually, not ten, I guess. Longer. But I’d like to eat with you.”

This was honest.

And I don’t want you out drinking again, especially not on an empty stomach. You’re under the legal drinking age for another two years and ten months!

Which was even more honest, but blatantly counterproductive, so she kept it to herself.

“I hate cooking,” Kate whined, her voice rising in volume and pitch. “I mean, you’re not here, Carmen, the house is cold and dark, and now I have to cook, too? I’ve been serving burgers all day.” Kate had dropped out of college a few months ago, and was working at a local fast-food place almost full-time. Her pay was the pits. “I stink of them. If I don’t hit the shower in thirty seconds, I’m going to throw up. And I’m not staying to eat with you. I’m going out. You only want me at home because you don’t like Courtney’s boyfriend and you don’t want him picking me up.”

“That’s not true!”

Carmen heard footsteps behind her, and Terri’s voice. “If you could excuse me?” She shifted her backside from the center of the steps to the side, and Terri passed.

“Kate, why do you make this complicated when it’s simple? Let’s just eat together before you go out, okay? I love you.”

Terri turned in the driveway with another of her disapproving looks. Apparently this phone conversation was inappropriate, also. Was it because of the emotional tone? Because Carmen was sitting on the steps? Was she holding the cell phone to an inappropriate ear?

“Listen,” she said to her sister, as the BMW left the driveway. “I am leaving here in three minutes. I will cook the pasta. I will make my Ten-Minute Tiramisu recipe for dessert.” She closed her eyes, ashamed of herself. What did parenting books say about using bribery on kids? And they were usually talking about two-year-olds. “If you are not there when I get home, I love you anyway.”

Kate disconnected the call.

Chapter Four

Carmen O’Brien had beautiful eyes, twinkling and chocolate brown and alive.

When she came back into the house, they were clouded with worry, and Jack wanted to ask her what was wrong.

He wanted to ask her a whole lot of things, actually.

Was Terri being a witch to you?

Did you love that kiss as much as I did?

When can I see you again? Can we dress up a little and go out somewhere, and could it have nothing to do with hammers and paint?

But Cormack had questions about the cabinets, and Ryan needed settling in. He would be hungry any minute, if he wasn’t already. There was no time for Jack to follow through on what had happened with the two of them just now in the basement. Carmen went to slip past him in the direction of the kitchen and he stopped her with a quick touch on her arm. “You okay?”

“I’m fine.” She looked up at him, earrings long and delicate against her neck, eyes very dark. “My baby sister’s being a pain in the butt, that’s all.”

She leaned a little closer than she really needed to. It was more like a sway than a lean, as if she didn’t know it was happening and wasn’t fully in control. His breath caught in his throat for a moment, frozen by the strength of the pull between them. He could almost see it shimmering in the air. He could feel it on his skin, in the beat of his heart and in the weight of his groin.

“I have a couple of those,” he told her, struggling to focus. “Pain-in-the-butt baby sisters, I mean. They live in Florida, not far from my mom and dad. Both married with kids.” For some reason he wanted the two of them to pour out their life stories to each other, this minute.

“I wish my sister lived in Florida.” She looked up at him, half smiling but not really seeing him anymore, Jack thought. Her sister held the prime position in her thoughts, and he wondered about their relationship. “Florida. Alaska. Greenland. The moon. But she’s only eighteen so I can’t get rid of her just yet.”

She sounded grim about it, but then she sighed and he picked up on the care that lay beneath her words. The care and the aura of responsibility. Why was that? Didn’t the O’Briens have parents?

Suddenly he had a whole lot more questions for her.

“Dad?” Speaking of parents… “Are we gonna eat soon?” Ryan asked. “I’m hungry. Like, starving hungry.”

With the kitchen out of action, Jack hadn’t been able to stock up on good kid food. He’d been holding his breath, waiting for Terri’s criticism on the issue, and he’d marshaled his defense ahead of time. He had set up a camp stove in the living room, and they were having home-cooked chicken burgers tonight, with non-negotiable lettuce and grated carrot in the filling.

He hated feeling that he had so much to prove. He’d spent the past ten years, almost, being the best father he could. Why did Terri always assume that he was going to feed their son nothing but junk? Why did she always act as if she was the only one who cared about his well-being?

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