That Marriageable Man!

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“I’m saying that I’m moving in next door, come what may.” Holly’s voice jolted him from his reverie. “And I’m also willing to brave going inside your place for a cold drink—if you ever get around to inviting me in for one.”

Rafe shrugged. “Well, you can’t say you weren’t warned. Let’s go in.”

He almost reached for her hand; it seemed the natural thing to do. But he caught himself just in time. Natural? He really was losing it. He’d just met this woman and he was not the handholding type.

He never had been. One of the frequent complaints lodged against him by his girlfriends—back in the days when he’d had the time and energy for girlfriends—had been his reserve. He never indulged in demonstrative little signs of affection like holding hands... But he had almost taken Holly’s hand to bring her inside his home.

Instead, he walked briskly ahead of her. She followed at her own pace, making no attempt to match his stride.

Once inside the air-conditioned living room, Holly sat on the sofa and sipped a ginger ale while Rafe opted for his massive blue recliner and a root beer.

“I used to have the genuine stuff.” Rafe set his can of root beer in the drink holder built into the arm of his chair. “You know, real ale and beer. But Camryn and Kaylin and their delinquent posse drank every drop in the house one evening when I went to a movie. I never made that mistake again.”

“Which mistake?” teased Holly. “Going to the movies? Or leaving alcohol with unsupervised teenagers?”

“Both, actually. Now I wait for movies to come out on video and I only buy soft drinks. What a way to live, huh? My brother thinks I’m nuts.” He cast her a droll glance. “Oops, am I allowed to use that word around you?”

“I’m a firm believer in free speech. Say whatever you want.”

“I figure we’ve already offended you enough, Doc. No use adding more trouble to the tab. There’ll be plenty of time for that later,” he added under his breath.

“I heard that. And I’m not anticipating any trouble.”

“Well, you should be. From the time the kids moved in here, not a day went by without a complaint from Craig and Donna Lambert. They’re the couple who owned your half of the duplex, the people who couldn’t wait to escape from it—and from us.”

“Did it ever occur to you that maybe the Lamberts were pathological fault-finders?” Holly leaned forward, her brown eyes earnest. “That they were using their complaints against the kids as a bond between them because their marriage was falling apart and they needed something to unite them? But instead of facing their problems and their growing estrangement, they seized the easy way out. They found a convenient scapegoat to blame for everything—the kids next door. In some marriages, parents will choose one of their own children to fulfill the scapegoat role and—”

“Did it ever occur to you that not everything needs to be analyzed, Holly?” Rafe interrupted. “The Lamberts complained every day because they had reason to. Trent and Tony practiced Morse code on the walls in preparation for their career as Navy Seals. They played all kinds of sports right here inside in preparation for whatever pro career they were considering at the moment. That includes yelling, jumping, throwing, and knocking things over. You get the picture.”

“I guess there are practical reasons why sports are played outdoors and not inside a duplex,” Holly conceded. “Still, as the old saying goes, ‘boys will be boys.’ Craig Lambert used to be one himself and Donna Lambert was once a teenage girl who should’ve understood the—”

“As a teenager, Donna Lambert was nothing like Camryn and Kaylin. There’s no way she could understand them. Donna showed me her roomful of high school awards and trophies back when we used to be friends in the prekids days. She was a joiner, a high achiever, practically a different species from Camryn and Kaylin.”

“Am I to understand that Donna Lambert kept a shrine to her high school career?” Holly frowned thoughtfully.

“Well, I hadn’t thought of it as a shrine, but the stuff was impressively displayed. But before you pronounce her an insufferable egotist—”

“Ah! So she was one.”

“No! No, she—”

“You just said so, indirectly. Your choice of words was very telling.”

“Didn’t you promise not to go around analyzing everything you hear? Well, you’re doing it, Holly.”

“I apologize. But the more I hear about this Lambert couple, the more my sympathies tend to lie with the children. I think they’ve been unfairly maligned.”

“It should be interesting to get your opinion this time next week—after you’ve walked the figurative mile in the Lamberts’ shoes and literally lived in their ex-condo. And I almost forgot to mention Hot Dog, the hound from hell. The girls brought him with them from Nevada, and he barks and howls whenever the spirit moves him. That can be in the middle of the night, and often is.”

He stood up and began to restlessly pace the room. “I try to keep a lid on things when I’m here but I’m not always around. I can’t be. I have to go to the office, I have to go out of town on business. If the Lamberts were pathological fault-finders, ultimately, we drove them to it.”

Holly took a long drink of her ginger ale. He had painted a rather daunting picture of life in the House of Paradise—as well as life in the place connected to it. But she wasn’t about to let him unnerve her, she was no whiny wimp to be driven away. She promised herself then and there that she would not be like the Lamberts who protested every noise. Kids made noise, it was just a fact of life. And she’d always loved dogs.

Her eyes focused on the pair of school pictures in cardboard frames sitting atop the large-screen television set. Two little boys. She recognized one, blond, blue-eyed Trent.

“You never did get around to telling me why your Little Brother is living with you,” Holly reminded him. “And his little brother, too.” She continued to stare quizzically at the pictures.

“Go ahead and ask me if that is Trent’s little brother Tony in the picture beside his.” Rafe’s eyes gleamed. “You know you’re dying to.”

“Well, I was wondering if the African-American child in the picture is Tony,” Holly admitted.

“Yes. Tony and Trent are half brothers, and please spare me any lecture or analysis on my use of the word ‘half.’ It’s a biological fact of life. The boys have the same mother, Tracey Krider, but different fathers. Unfortunately, neither father is in the picture—or even in the state—and Tracey has hooked up with a jerk who doesn’t like having other men’s kids around.”

“So the boys are here with you,” Holly said softly.

Rafe sat down on the other end of the sofa. Holly was two cushions away from him. Close enough for him to smell the alluring scent of her spicy perfume mixed with the heady aroma of her skin and sweat—yet too far away for even an accidental touch. A recipe for frustration. He leaned his head against the back of the sofa and closed his eyes. Best not to look at her, best to recite the facts as dispassionately as possible.

“I’ve been Trent’s Big Brother since he was seven. I sort of unofficially inherited Tony a couple years ago when they couldn’t place him with a Big Brother of his own. There is such a long waiting list of kids and a shortage of volunteers—”

Rafe shrugged. “But that’s another story. The boys often spent weekends and part of their summer vacation with me but when Tracey took up with her current loser boyfriend, Trent and Tony ended up moving in here full-time. Tracey signed over legal guardianship to me. That also coincided with Camryn and Kaylin’s arrival.”

Holly gazed at Rafe who had taken in those rejected sons of other men. Who had taken in his orphaned kid sisters. True, he seemed somewhat overwhelmed by his four charges but he hadn’t backed away from them, he had willingly accepted responsibility. He was a good man in the true, old-fashioned sense of the term.

A giddy rush of emotion surged through her. She wanted to tell him how much she admired him. He had taken four children into his home when so many men she knew wouldn’t commit to even tending a houseplant.

But how to say so? Holly felt strangely shy and couldn’t seem to find the words, a most unusual situation because communicating was one of her strengths.

Instead, she resorted to more questions. She was very adept at asking questions. “Do the two groups of kids get along together?”

“Yeah. Oh, there are the usual spats, but on the whole, they all hit it off pretty well. In fact, there are times when it’s the Gang of Four versus me.”

“And their alliance surprises you?” Holly quipped.

It was one question too many. Or maybe it was the way she’d phrased it. Holly watched Rafe’s lips curve into a sardonic smirk. He turned his head and opened his eyes to lazily survey her.

“Yeah, Doc, their alliance surprises me. Are you going to explain why the kids are allies? And why I’m surprised? Since you’ve already evaluated the Lamberts, let’s hear your psychological take on the kids and me.”

“Sorry.” Holly looked sheepish. “A hazard of my profession, I guess.”

“Which one? The interviewing or the analyzing? Maybe I should be lying down on the couch while we’re talking, huh, Doc?”

Instantly, Rafe felt heat flash through him. He’d been trying to be glib but it had backfired. There was nothing funny about the image of himself lying on the couch—and Holly Casale anywhere within his reach. The suggestion conjured up erotic images that made his dark eyes smolder.

He tensed as a critical part of him grew stiff as a warrior’s lance. And there was nothing he could do about it. The more he looked at Holly, the more he wanted to stretch out on the sofa and pull her down on top of him. Or maybe lay her beneath him. Both scenarios were torturously arousing. But he shouldn’t, couldn’t, wouldn’t attempt to enact either one.

Rafe abruptly crossed the room to snatch his can of root beer and chug it down, wishing it were something a lot stronger. Something to render him senseless, to blot out desire and need. His whole body throbbed with it.

Oddly enough, the whole house seemed to be throbbing, too. It took a moment or two for Rafe’s deductive reasoning skills to kick back in. No, the walls weren’t shaking, but the pulsating drumbeats blasting from the stereo speakers upstairs in the girls’ bedroom gave that illusion. Accompanying the boom was the sound of caterwauling that ranked right up there with Hot Dog baying to ambulance sirens. Camryn and Kaylin called it singing, by their favorite rock bands.

Rafe was actually glad for the return trip to reality. At least this was something he could act upon! He strode from the room to stand at the foot of the stairway.

“If I have to tell you two to turn down that noise again, I’m going to confiscate every single compact disc you own and donate them all to the state prison!” he roared up the stairs.

Camryn and Kaylin responded with complaints and some doorslamming but the blaring volume of the music was lowered.

Rafe returned to the living room.

“The state prison?” Holly laughed. “What kind of a threat is that?”

“Probably an unfair one. After all, the prisoners are serving their sentences, it’s illegal to inflict additional punishment on them. In fact, the Constitution specifically prohibits it.”

“You think having to listen to the girls’ CDs constitutes cruel and unusual punishment?” Holly was amused.

“I guess you think I’m a tyrant, huh, Doc?” Rafe eyed his huge blue recliner across the room but stayed where he was, standing beside the sofa. Holly looked up at him, as if trying to gauge his mood.