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“Do you miss it?” Lucy asked, and it took him a startled moment to realize she must be asking about his practice.
“Yeah, it’ll be good to get back.” His partners had already covered for him longer than he had any right to expect, but they’d agreed to another six weeks of leave. And by the time he returned with The Bryan Foundation up and running, Conner knew, he’d be able to live with himself again. Next year, he could face the holiday season with his soul intact. “But I have to get the foundation started.”
She wrinkled her forehead, as if calculating feasible workloads, which reminded him once again that this vividly emotional woman was a lot smarter than he’d expected. “Couldn’t you start your foundation and do your lawyer stuff at the same time?”
Even if he’d been willing to face another Christmas in Philadelphia, that would have required more time than he possessed. At least he’d learned that much from the therapist his partners had insisted on, after discovering he’d spent eighty-two consecutive hours at his desk.
“No,” Con answered, letting her precede him out the community gate and trying not to let his eyes linger on the naturally sensual way she walked. “Only so many hours in a day.”
“And some of them,” Lucy announced with a nod at the grassy park across the street, where clusters of people were enjoying the afternoon sunshine, “you have to spend enjoying.”
He knew that, Conner reminded himself, with a twinge of envy at how easily she moved from business to pleasure and back again. He tended to forget the importance of taking time to play catch, feed the ducks, all those things the people across the street were doing. All the things he could do once the foundation was complete. “Yeah, you’re right.”
“I don’t want to sound like I’m bossing you around,” she said as they waited for a break in traffic. “But working as much as you do…I don’t think it’s very good for you. I think you need to take more breaks.”
When was the last time, Con wondered, anyone outside the firm had worried about him like that? All this time he’d been keeping his distance from Lucy, she must have been noticing far more of his habits than he realized. And it was endearing that she cared enough to try and straighten him out.
That she saw him as…well, as a friend.
“You’re right,” he said again, letting his mind explore the concept of friendship and realizing that it could work out fine. Just because she loved his brother was no reason they couldn’t be friends. “Once the foundation’s up and running, I’ll make more time for fun.”
Lucy shifted Emma to her other shoulder as a distant group of golfers strolled toward the adjacent course. “I bet you’d enjoy playing golf if you ever got back into it,” she offered, evidently guessing how quickly he’d always neglected his periodic vows to relax more often. “Kenny said you guys used to play together.”
Back in college, yeah, when he was still trying to get his brother through high school. “Well, it was a way to keep an eye on him.”
“Really?” She slowed her steps, regarding him with what looked like fascination. “Did you kind of take over, after your dad died?”
He’d taken over even before that, in a way, but it wasn’t until the death of his father that his mom had completed her escape into the haze of prescription drugs. “Yeah, pretty much,” Conner replied. He had learned early on that the agency who replaced the Tarkingtons’ constantly quitting housekeepers never challenged a new request, and that no one ever questioned his scribbled initials on whatever papers his mother let pile up on the desk.
But that wasn’t a story which needed sharing, and Lucy seemed more concerned with crossing the street than his response. Until they reached the opposite sidewalk and she glanced at him with open curiosity. “I’ll bet having you around made things easier on Kenny, didn’t it?”
Things had always been easier on Kenny, though. Con had recognized even as a child that everyone—including himself—enjoyed his brother’s carefree attitude, the happy-go-lucky charm which proved their family was as normal as anyone else. While Conner had been silently acknowledged as the one who kept things running, Kenny seemed to have a gift for attracting fun and friendship and love.
He was just that kind of person.
And you’re not.
“I don’t know,” Conner muttered, “I probably wasn’t anyone’s dream of an older brother. I was always throwing my weight around—do your homework, don’t stay out too late—that kind of thing.”
“That sounds more like a dad or a mom,” Lucy observed, surprising him with the accuracy of her perception. It wasn’t like any big secret, of course—there was no reason not to explain the Tarkingtons’ sordid family dynamics—but the habit of making his life sound normal must be more deeply ingrained than he’d realized, because he automatically chose an evasive response.
“My mom was pretty easy on us,” he said lightly, and Lucy gave him a teasing smile. As if she sensed the growing companionship between them.
“So she didn’t mind if you spent all day playing golf, huh?”
“No, not really.” When she’d completed her recovery a few years ago, Grace Conner Tarkington had apologized for being so uninvolved with her sons, as if their inability to love might somehow be her fault. But he couldn’t remember whether she’d mentioned their frequent escapes to the golf course. “Anyway, that was only on weekends.”
Lucy glanced around the park, evidently seeking a spot near children whose voices might attract a baby’s interest, then started toward a group playing Frisbee in a nearby clearing. “So what kind of things did you do during the week?”
Good, they were finished with the family history. And she still sounded genuinely interested, Conner realized. Not in whatever trauma he might have suffered, the way the shrinks had been, but simply in his everyday life. “You mean, besides school?”
She spread her baby blanket on the grass and set Emma down on it, then brushed her hands against her jean-clad hips and cocked her head at him. “School, or whatever. I’m just trying to picture you, when you were little.”
It was a little unnerving how flattered he felt by her forthright interest. By the way she kept her eyes focused on his, waiting for an answer he didn’t even know how to give. “Well…”
“You know,” Lucy explained, “what you did for fun.” As if spotting an example, she gestured at the teenager attempting to throw a bright orange Frisbee with an elaborate, under-the-knee move. “Did you go around collecting golf balls?”
Golf— She was asking about Kenny, he realized with a sudden jolt of embarrassment. Of course she wanted to know about the childhood he’d shared with his brother.
Because Lucy loved his brother.
Before he could stammer a response, the orange Frisbee came sailing right toward them, and he instinctively grabbed for it. Caught it on the downward arc, then steadied his balance. Glanced around for the kid who’d thrown it, took aim and flung it back.
“Good one!” the teenager’s buddy called, and sent another shot his way.
He could deal with a Frisbee a lot easier than anything else, Conner thought, and already Lucy was moving Emma toward a nearby olive tree as if acknowledging the newly expanded playing area. So he caught the second throw as well, returned it with the same lofty spin as the first, and in no time was part of a three-way circle that soon expanded by a couple more teenagers and a dad with some kids.
This was mindless activity, nothing but working his body, watching the angles, running and catching and throwing whatever came his way, but it offered the same distraction as his computer. A refuge from thinking, a refuge from feeling, and that was all he could ask for right now.
“Feelings are our—”
No, forget it.
The game began moving faster, tighter, and he found himself making higher catches, more demanding throws than he would have attempted at the start. But by now he was in the rhythm of motion, the simple exhilaration of calling on his muscles and feeling them respond. And when the kid beside him missed a Frisbee that skittered to the ground near Lucy, his first reaction to seeing her fling it back was an instinctive admiration—damn, she was good! Even as he watched, one of the teenage girls moved over to where she sat with Emma and gestured an invitation to switch places, and in another minute Lucy was part of the circle as well.
She was good, Conner realized, sending her a tougher throw than he’d aimed at the previous girl, and feeling a surge of pleasure as she caught it deftly and, without ever moving too far from Emma, sent it skimming across the circle. The way she moved, the way she threw herself into the game, laughing, so alive, so…
God, I want her.
The raw heat of recognition startled him, even as he realized that it was nothing new. He’d been wanting her for days, but had never let himself feel it so intensely, so acutely—until now, with the vigor of the game pulsing through his veins, with the pleasure of her company still heightening his senses, with her sparkling energy almost radiating across the circle to him.
Lucy had a gift for enjoying the moment, he realized, watching as she applauded a successful catch by the kid beside her and beamed at Emma’s sitter, who was entertaining the baby with a bright red balloon. A gift for reaching out to friends, as well, but right now she was so happy, so vibrant, so gut-wrenchingly beautiful that he found himself staring at her without a single conscious thought in his head. With nothing but the raw, pulsing desire for—
Don’t go there.
But he’d already shot way past friendship, Con knew as the orange Frisbee came his way again—there, up, another step, grab it—and he almost missed the catch before flinging himself sideways for a perfect, last-minute save. Lucy grinned at him, a smile that might have been simple congratulations but which he suddenly suspected, with a flash of heat that left him reeling, meant that they’d shared the same primal awareness.
The same ache of need.
Now wasn’t the time for reasoning, not when the other Frisbee was coming right toward him—easy, up a little, there, coming, got it, go! But when he fired it back across the circle and saw Lucy still smiling at him, still watching him with that curious new light in her eyes, he knew that reason didn’t matter. Nothing mattered right now except moving, straight toward her, forget the game, forget the park.
And to his exultation, she seemed to feel exactly the same way. As soon as he approached her she backed out of the circle…then welcomed him with a hug that could have been sporting, could have been the same congratulations she’d offer any teammate, but…
But there was more than congratulations going on, more than celebration. More than sharing the fun of a game, more than simple enjoyment.
Because when he kissed her, she kissed him back.
As eagerly, as joyously as if she’d been waiting all day, all her life for this fierce embrace. He had never imagined such a flash of heat could rise so intensely, sweep in so fast, but it was happening now with staggering power, with astonishing force. He ran his fingers down her spine and heard her gasp, drew her hips closer and felt himself shudder as she deepened the kiss, buried his hands in her hair and abandoned all thought, all reason, knowing they were soaring together into something that could sear their very souls—and just as the thought took shape in his mind, Lucy pulled away.
“Conner,” she gasped, “we have to stop.”
They had to stop, Lucy reminded herself as she struggled against the wave of dizziness that had all too swiftly replaced the pressure of his body against hers. She couldn’t let this happen, no matter how much she might have wondered what Conner would feel like, whether his body was as hard as his gaze, how his lips might taste if she—
She couldn’t do this.
But when she heard the growl of “Why?” it took her a moment to realize that the question hadn’t come from her.
“Why?” Conner repeated, gazing down at her with such unabashed desire that she felt herself starting to sway toward him again. Even though she couldn’t. Hugging a teammate was one thing, but this… She couldn’t.
“You’re my boss,” Lucy whispered, although that was the least important reason. But she couldn’t think well enough right now to explain why falling for another Tarkington would mean the end of her battered self-respect, why she couldn’t let herself lose control again.
“Lucy,” he began, and then suddenly the pleading in his eyes gave way to a harder, darker expression. “I know,” he said abruptly, squaring his shoulders and taking a step back from her. “We can’t do this.”
The swiftness of his acknowledgment hurt, even though it was what she’d wanted, and she found herself staring at him with the hope she might witness another, equally sudden change of heart.
But that wasn’t happening, she realized. Instead, she saw on his face the same uneasiness she’d seen the first night they met. When he’d found her in his family’s home and made it clear—without so much as a word of discourtesy—that he knew Lucy Velardi was a gold digger.
“Because of what happened with Kenny,” she guessed with a sinking sensation in her heart, and his gaze turned even darker.
“Right.”
“But I—” Lucy faltered, then forced herself to remember what mattered most. Emma deserved to know there had been something between her parents, regardless of how quickly it had faded. And that meant she could never deny that, for a few giddy weeks, she had loved her child’s father. “I’d never loved anyone,” she pleaded, “the way I—”
“I know. You said that.” Conner shoved his hands in his pockets, casting a quick glance behind him as one of the Frisbee players shouted in exultation, and then seemed to recognize a source of inspiration. “This was just,” he said slowly, as if seeking some reason for an otherwise inexplicable kiss, “just…the game, that’s all. People get carried away when they’re winning.”
It wasn’t like anyone could win a game of Frisbee, but Lucy seized the flimsy explanation with relief. “That’s it, exactly,” she agreed, noticing that her daughter was still engrossed in the teenage sitter’s balloon. At least, during that passionate lapse of responsibility, she hadn’t fallen down as a mother. She had remembered that Emma mattered most. “That’s all it was.”
“Right.” Conner sounded equally relieved, which bothered her. But after all, she reminded herself, it wasn’t like she wanted him to blame anything beyond the excitement of the game. It wasn’t like she wanted to throw away her carefully salvaged independence. “So we ought to head back to work.”
Work. Right.
“Sure,” Lucy agreed, although she hadn’t planned on working today. “I mean, if you need me for any—” Anything wasn’t the right word, she realized, because that could imply more than office duties. “I mean, do you—” Then she broke off, recognizing how difficult it would be to phrase the question correctly. And for the first time since he’d let her go, she felt a tremor of dread.
That kiss was going to be hard to forget.
Maybe Con knew that, too, because he was already shaking his head at the idea of spending time in the office together. “It can wait until Monday,” he said gruffly. “Nothing urgent.”
“Okay, then.” She had faced other awkward situations before, but never had she come up against one like this. How on earth could she survive five more weeks in the same office, the same house with this man? “Let me just get Emma.”
Emma’s sitter offered to let them keep the balloon, which Conner tied onto her ankle, and the baby’s rapturous interest in her new treasure provided sufficient material for conversation on the way home. But by the time they arrived at the front door, Lucy could tell they were both feeling the strain of keeping up a casual dialogue. Conner immediately headed for his computer, then hesitated a moment, and she saw his shoulder muscles tighten before he turned to face her with a troubled expression.
“Lucy,” he said, “I just want to make sure you know…I mean, back at the park…” He looked more uneasy than she’d ever seen him before, but drew a deep breath and finished in a rush. “I was out of line. That’s not going to happen again.”
She already knew that, had known it ever since he backed away from her with such disconcerting swiftness. But she had to give him credit for such flawless courtesy, pretending that a blue-blood lawyer would even consider repeating such a mistake.
“Right,” she murmured. Normally they might shake hands to seal the agreement, but touching Conner now was out of the question. “It was just the game.”
“Yeah, that’s it.” He looked over his shoulder at the computer still waiting on his desk, then gave her what was probably supposed to be a comforting smile. “So, everything’s all right.”
But it wasn’t all right, Lucy knew. She spent the rest of the day avoiding any glance at the office, and took a sandwich to her room before their usual dinnertime, but she knew this self-imposed distance wasn’t working. She was getting too close to Conner Tarkington. She was remembering too often how the crackling barrier had shattered for that dazzling moment in the park. And if she couldn’t control herself any better than she had at the instant when he’d kissed her, well, she needed to get out of here.
Plain and simple. She had to get out.
Getting out the next morning was easy, because Shawna had invited her to string popcorn for the community Christmas tree at her grandmother’s senior center. It was a tradition Lucy appreciated all the more this year, since she desperately needed a few hours away from Con’s resolutely impersonal gaze.
She arrived early, relieved that the church shuttle driver hadn’t minded picking up passengers for the trip back to Mesa, and grateful that she and Emma had made it through breakfast with Conner while maintaining a conversation that would have sounded normal to anyone else. She could get through five more weeks under his roof if she had to, Lucy told herself, and she would have to unless Shawna could come up with an idea.
“I guess you could move out,” her friend suggested when Lucy finished the story, then wrinkled her forehead as she dropped another popcorn chain into the collection bag. “But I can’t really see why you want to. Couldn’t you just…enjoy him?”
“Oh, right, go from one brother to the next,” Lucy protested, relieved that Shawna’s grandmother had taken the baby for a walk outside. Emma didn’t need to hear any of this. “Shawna, what kind of person would that make me?!”
“Not your mother,” came the swift reassurance. “Because you loved Kenny—at the beginning, anyway. I was there when you met him, remember? It was instant, for both of you.”
That was true. They’d met in one of the Phoenix Open party tents, where she’d been working the afternoon-drinks shift, and had hit it off within the first thirty seconds of laying eyes on one another. “He was…” Lucy let the memory resonate, wishing it would rouse more than a faint sense of nostalgia. “Well, he was fun.”
Shawna twisted her thread into a knot and bit the end off, shaking her red-beaded braids back behind her shoulder. “So you loved Kenny, and you like this guy. Why can’t you just enjoy each other while he’s here?”
Because she knew better than to make the same mistake twice. “I like him too much,” Lucy explained, remembering how carefully they’d maneuvered around the coffeemaker this morning and how quickly he’d cut off her attempt to explain about Kenny. “Anyway, he already said it was a mistake. He doesn’t want to get involved with a gold digger.”
“He couldn’t call you that!” Shawna sounded fiercely certain. “Lucy, you’re not asking him for anything.”
No, of course not. But that hadn’t stopped him from offering to make her life easier. “He already wants to take care of me,” she muttered, remembering his repeated mentions of child support. “I mean, like a family honor thing. But I don’t need any help…especially from someone like him.”
Her friend glanced up from knotting the thread with a small frown. “He’s paying you, isn’t he?”
“Well, minimum wage.” Which she could justify accepting, because he’d have to pay anyone else the same amount. “And free rent.” Which was harder to justify, except… “I could make more money somewhere else, because weekday-lunch people don’t tip much. But I’d still have to find a sitter for Emma.”
“You know Gram would love to take care of her,” Shawna offered, nodding at the patio where her grandmother was showing the baby a bright ribboned wreath. “She’s said that all along.”
That was true, and it was a relief to know Emma would be in good hands once she started waitressing full-time again. “I know,” Lucy agreed, glancing out the window at her daughter and Gram, “and I’ll plan on that in five more weeks.”
Five weeks is too long!
The thought startled her with its desperate intensity, but she recognized the raw truth of it. She couldn’t spend another five weeks working in the same house, living in the same house, with Conner Tarkington.
Who had delighted her yesterday with that first glimmer of an easy camaraderie between them. Whose powerful hands and searing mouth had invaded her dreams last night. Who had promised she’d never need to worry about him touching her again.
“I have to get out of there,” she blurted, and saw from Shawna’s startled glance that there must have been a note of panic in her voice.
“Well, then,” her friend advised, reaching for the bowl of popcorn, “just tell him you’re moving out. You’ve almost got enough saved up, right?”
Not enough for the trailer park where she could feel safe letting Emma play outside. Even with what Conner was paying her, the electricity and security deposits there would take another month. But the sooner she moved out, Lucy knew, the sooner she could put the memory of that kiss behind her.
And while it would be wretchedly irresponsible to abandon free rent until she had at least another three hundred dollars saved, she needed to earn the money fast.
“I need an extra job,” she announced, feeling a rush of relief at hearing the words aloud. Even making such a declaration was already a step toward independence, toward regaining control of her life. “Maybe something on weekends.”
“I know we’re looking for more catering people at Joseph’s,” Shawna offered, sliding a piece of popcorn onto her chain. “All those holiday parties up in Carefree and Paradise Valley, and you don’t have to drive there yourself. You just get to Joseph’s, and the van takes everybody.”
