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“So you came back to town ready to make your dreams come true.”
“Something like that. Mrs. Schmidt died a few months before Jeff finished his residency and was ready to open his practice. When we started looking around for houses, her children were just a week or so from putting it on the market. Our real estate agent put us in touch with them and we bought it just like that.”
Jeff hadn’t wanted an old house. He had wanted to build their own place from the very beginning, something modern and airy, but she had convinced him this was the perfect place to raise their children.
Her own ignorance still shamed her. She hadn’t wanted to see how different—and how distant—she and Jeff were becoming over the years.
“Did you gut the whole thing?” Riley asked.
“Close enough. It took about a year of hard work to make it the home we wanted.” And while she had been stripping layer after layer of wallpaper, painting, refinishing old woodwork to create a warm, lovely home for her family, her marriage had been crumbling around her feet without her noticing.
“I can’t imagine how much work you must have had to throw at it.”
“Yes, but just like I tell my kids when they’re complaining about their homework or having to clean up after Chester, we value the things for which we have to work the hardest.”
“True enough.”
She took a small bite of her sandwich, thinking how much better it would have tasted if she could have made her famous five-spice mayonnaise, but she hadn’t been able to reach into the cupboard for the ingredients.
“Do you find the place too much to keep up since the divorce?”
“Ask me that in the fall when I’m trying to harvest the garden—assuming I can even put in a garden this year—and rake the leaves and prep the house for winter.”
“So is that a yes?”
“My mother pushed me to sell after…well, after Jeff moved out, but I couldn’t bear to lose it after we’d worked so hard on the renovations. I didn’t want to lose everything, you know?”
She hadn’t meant to say that. The words just slipped out before it was too late to call them back.
Riley’s gaze narrowed, his features suddenly dark and extremely sexy. “I’m just going to come out and say this. The man was an idiot not to see what he had.”
Goose bumps shivered down her arms at the intense look in his eyes. She stared at him for a long moment, tension coiling between them and a glittery awareness floating in the air like dust motes in a sunbeam.
She set her water glass down, wondering if her face could possibly be as red as it felt, and tried hard for a casual smile. “Thank you, Riley. That’s a very sweet thing to say.”
“Nothing sweet about it, Claire.”
His voice was a low rasp in the kitchen. Before she could stir her brain to function, to speak or move away or something, he reached out a roughened thumb and caressed her jawline. Heat surged through her, wild and fluttery, and she wanted to lean into his skin like her silly dog nudging her hand for more petting.
“Claire,” he said softly, and then his whole hand curved around her chin and he tugged her forward slightly and kissed her.
His mouth was hard, warm and tasted of the outdoors. Beautiful and slightly wild. He didn’t rush the kiss, his mouth just barely moving on hers, and everything inside her seemed to sigh a welcome.
She felt as if she had been frozen solid for years, as if she had been waiting like the mountains for the sun to finally come out after long days of darkness. She closed her eyes, relishing the scent and the taste of him, the strength and heat of his fingers, the brilliant, delicious heat bursting through her.
Don’t stop, she thought. Oh, please, don’t stop.
He made a low sound in his throat and deepened the kiss and she leaned into him as his mouth slid across hers, as his hand tugged a little in her hair….
Through the soft haze wrapping around her, Claire was vaguely cognizant of a jarring sound, a door shutting somewhere in the house and then a voice that didn’t belong in this lovely moment she was having.
“Hey, you,” she heard Alex call out from the entryway. “What’s Ri’s pickup doing outside full of branches?”
She froze for only a second, her eyes flashing open. Her gaze locked with the intense aspen-leaf green of his—now somewhat dazed—then Claire scrambled back and picked up her sandwich, trying not to notice how her hands trembled.
She was just in time. An instant later, Alex walked into the kitchen. “Hey. Here you are.”
“Right. Um. Here we are. Hi.”
Chester, who adored Riley’s sister, jumped to his feet and headed over for a little love, which she freely dispensed, though her gaze wandered from Claire to Riley.
Claire knew her best friend well enough to feel more than a little trepidation when her gaze narrowed. What could she see? Were her lips swollen? Her hair messy? She wanted to check but couldn’t with Alex still studying her with the scrutiny she usually reserved for fresh produce at the farmer’s market to serve at the restaurant.
Claire drew in a shaky breath to quickly divert her, but for some reason, Alex apparently decided to say nothing.
“Hey, little bro. This is a surprise. What are you doing here this lovely May day?”
“Claire had a little tree damage from the wind last night. I was just taking the chain saw to the worst of the downed branches.”
“Well, wasn’t that neighborly of you?”
Riley didn’t seem fazed by the slight sarcastic tone in his sister’s voice. He smiled blandly, although Claire thought his expression still looked a little shell-shocked. “I do my best.”
He had far more experience even than she did deflecting the sometimes-formidable moods of Alexandra McKnight, Claire remembered.
“Would you like a sandwich?” Claire asked quickly.
“Maybe.”
When Claire reached down to maneuver the blasted chair toward the refrigerator, Alex stopped her with a hard glare and a foot in front of one of the wheels.
“If you dare try making me a sandwich, I just might break your other leg,” her dearest friend in the world snapped.
“Oh, come on. I can make a sandwich. I made one for me and Riley.”
“Leave me out of this, please,” he said in an amused voice.
“You should be in bed, not in here babying my little brother.”
Was that what she was doing? She risked a look at Riley and found him watching her, an unreadable expression on his features.
Claire cleared her throat. “I’m not babying anyone. All I did was make a sandwich.”
“Which you don’t need to do for me. If I’m hungry, I’ll make my own damn sandwich.”
“Just for the record, I didn’t ask her for anything,” Riley said. “The deed was done when I came inside.”
“But then, you’re never one to turn down a meal. Or anything else, for that matter.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Riley asked, his expression suddenly dangerous.
Claire didn’t want to deal with their bickering right now, when she was already feeling unsteady and weak.
“You know where everything is,” she said. “Knock yourself out.”
“I will.”
While Alex moved around the kitchen pulling out ingredients—with much more fluid, efficient movements than Claire ever could, even before her injuries—she sat petting Chester and trying to avoid meeting Riley’s eyes.
So they had kissed. What was the big deal? She had every right to kiss anyone she wanted. She could start a queue of eligible men right here in the kitchen, line them out down the sidewalk and into the street if that was her heart’s desire.
Not that she knew that many men she might be interested in kissing. Her divorce had been final for two years and she’d gone on exactly one date, an awkward affair with a widowed insurance adjuster from Tellu-ride she met in line at the grocery store.
The whole thing had been a disaster from the moment he showed up at her house with his three children in the backseat.
“I couldn’t get a sitter,” he’d apologized, so she spent the entire dinner cutting meat into pieces, wiping faces, ignoring snide comments from his bratty prepubescent daughter.
She hadn’t been eager to dip her toes into the dating pool again.
Not that she was thinking about dating Riley. It was just a kiss, for heaven’s sake. Okay, a pretty stunning, toe-curling one, as far as kisses went. But still only a kiss.
She didn’t need to explain herself to Alex, not with Ms. McKnight’s own dealings with the opposite sex. Alex specialized in the short-term relationship, dating only ski bums or guests at the resort who came into her restaurant. She pushed away everyone who wanted anything more meaningful.
“So the kids are still gone with Jeff and the ditz?” Alex asked.
“Until tomorrow. Their tickets for the show are tonight.”
Jeff and Holly were taking the children to a traveling Broadway production of The Lion King. Claire would have loved to take the kids herself, but she’d decided her budget couldn’t quite squeeze out tickets at $150 a pop. That translated into a whole lot of bead sales.
“How are you coping on your own?”
She flashed a look at Riley, who had eased back in his chair, his arm over the back of the one next to him. Claire winced, thinking of her foolish worry over the visit from the Angel of Hope and how she had flashed her porch lights to scare him off.
“I’m fine. Just trying to hang on another few weeks when I can get a walking cast and be able to dump the wheels.”
“That’s great.” Alex finished her sandwich creation, which truly looked like something she would serve at the restaurant, complete with a little carrot peel garnish.
She’d always been that way, even when they were girls. Claire smiled when she thought of all the hours they’d logged in the McKnight kitchen, making brownies or popcorn balls or snickerdoodles.
“Have you checked on Maura today?” Claire asked, aware even as she spoke of Riley’s features going taut.
“I just dropped off a basket of muffins for her.”
“How is she?”
“Hard to say. She’s numb. The way she’s acting, you’d think she was drugged or something, but she refuses to take anything the doctor is trying to give her. She says it will only anesthetize her brain and delay the pain.”
“Is someone with her?” Riley asked. Claire heard the grim note in his voice and saw the way his jaw tightened.
“Sage. Thank the Lord for her.”
Poor Sage. Claire was somewhat ashamed to realize she’d been so busy worrying about Maura that she hadn’t given much thought to her friend’s older daughter, who had lost her only sister. Smart and funny and uncommonly pretty, Sage wanted to be an architect. She was in her second year at the University of Colorado at Boulder, finishing her general education credits. This was bound to hit her hard.
“She has to go back Monday,” Alex said as she finally slid into a chair around the table. “Finals are the week after next.”
“That will be tough on Maura, when she’s alone in the house.” That had been the roughest times at first when the divorce had been finalized, when Jeff would take the kids and she would be alone here in this big house.
Worry furrowed Alex’s fey features. “Sage wanted to just bag school and stay home because she’s already missed two weeks of classes, but Maura won’t hear of it. I have to agree. I mean, she’s this close to the end, it seems foolish to throw away an entire semester. I’m just not sure how Maura will do once Sage returns to school. I think Ma will probably go stay with her for a while, if she’ll let her.”
Claire had doubts about the likelihood of that. Like all the McKnight women, Maura was fiercely independent and liked her space, even in the midst of trouble.
Riley’s features had grown increasingly wooden throughout the conversation. Now he pushed away from the table and took his plate to the sink, in the way of someone who had been trained well in a houseful of women.
“I’m sure the landfill still closes early on Saturday,” he said, his voice gruff. “I’d better head out so I can make it there in time to drop your branches for the wood chipper.”
He extended a hand out to snag his work gloves and protective eyewear from the counter, a movement that stretched his T-shirt over strong back muscles. Claire swallowed hard and quickly looked away.
“Thank you again for—” picking up the storm debris, kissing me senseless, making me feel wanted “—everything.”
He smiled but his green eyes were still troubled. “You’re welcome. Thanks for the chow.”
On his way out the door, he reached out and tugged a lock of Alex’s hair lightly. “See you, brat.”
“Bye, dork.”
He headed out the door and Claire watched him go, then turned back to Alex, only to find her friend aiming that narrow-eyed, probing look at her again.
“Okay, what’s going on?”
Claire willed herself not to flush. “What do you mean?”
“Was Ri bothering you?”
“Bothering me? No, of course not. He was helping me. You saw the truckload of branches. He’s been working in my yard for the last two hours.”
“Was that all he was doing?”
“What are you implying, Alexandra?”
“I don’t know. Call me crazy. I’m just catching a weird vibe.”
“Okay, you’re crazy,” she lied. “No weird vibe here.”
Alex didn’t look convinced and Claire held up the cast on her arm and gestured to her leg with it. “Look at me. I’m not exactly hot babe material here.”
“A little plaster wouldn’t stop Riley if he set his sights on a woman. You know how he is.”
Claire frowned. She’d heard the way his sisters talked about Riley’s reputation with women and it bothered her suddenly. More than that, it made her sad.
