She nodded. She couldn’t speak. The memory was a torment.
“What you can’t fix, you live with,” he replied. His eyes were sad and dark blue. “It takes time.”
She nodded again. “I couldn’t have stopped it. It was over so quickly...”
“I know.” He heard steps. “See?” he said, putting the figurine into her hands as he raised his voice. “She looks more like John and Mom than she looks like me,” he chuckled.
“She’s beautiful,” she said, and meant it.
“I’ve always thought so,” Tanner agreed. He turned his head as John came into the room. Luckily, he’d always had ears like a lynx. “Don’t you?” he asked his brother with a smile.
“I guess so. You look like Dad,” John replied. He sighed. “I guess one of us had to.” And he grinned.
“Do you have siblings?” Tanner asked Josie.
She shook her head. “I had a baby brother. He died,” she said softly, and the expression on her face stopped both men from asking a single question.
“Mom made pumpkin pie, and there’s more coffee,” John said as his brother took the small statuette of Odalie and put it gently back into the case. “The Brannts are coming over later with the baby. And Stasia is looking seedy.”
Tanner lifted an eyebrow. “She’s pregnant,” he emphasized. “You’d look seedy, too, in that condition. Morning sickness isn’t limited to mornings.”
“I guess you’d know,” John said on a sigh, and with a smile.
Tanner clapped him on the shoulder affectionately. “I would. Coffee and pie. I’m starving again,” he teased, and walked out.
John stepped in front of Josie when she started to follow him. “What were you talking about in whispers?” he asked curtly.
She gaped at him.
“My brother isn’t the only one with auditory sensitivity,” he replied. “I can even hear the television whine when it’s on. Answer me. What secrets are you and my brother sharing?”
“I just met your brother,” she said, aghast and trying to conceal it. “I don’t know what you’re insinuating, but he was just telling me about the statuette.”
“Yes?”
“Yes.”
“Who made it?” he asked suspiciously.
“Someone named Maddie Brannt,” she replied. “And he mentioned that it looked just like your sister. I agreed that it did. Why are you asking me about it?” she asked, throwing the suspicion right back at him.
“It was a long conversation.”
“Really?” she asked. She smiled snarkily. “Still crazy about your brother’s wife, are you?” she whispered. “What a shame...!”
While she was getting the last word out, his hard mouth came down on hers, and he wrapped her up against him in a bearish embrace.
It was meant to intimidate but it backfired. She felt his strength and warmth and the expert touch of his mouth and just melted. For the first time in her life, reason was submerged in pure physical pleasure.
She gave in because she couldn’t help it. Ever since their first meeting, even through his suspicion of her, his sarcasm, there had been this growing attraction, a burgeoning of sensation thatshe’d tried to deny all her life. Sickened by her father’s constant affairs, her mother’s tolerance of it, she’d removed herself from any possibility of being trapped in physical addiction. And it had worked. Until right now...
She moaned under the crush of his mouth, but it wasn’t in pain or protest. It was a feeling so poignant that her body couldn’t contain it; pleasure so deep that it was almost pain.
He forgot that he’d meant to insult her. He forgot her taunt about Stasia. She was warm and soft and pliant, and he loved the way she seemed to fit him, despite the disparity in their heights, despite the difference in their backgrounds. She fit into his arms as if she’d been made, crafted, exactly for him. Her mouth was warm and soft and... green as March apples. Green as new grass. She was alarmingly innocent for a woman her age. And John was experienced enough to know it.
He lifted his head. She looked shocked. He felt shocked. This had been the worst idea he’d had in ages. He was sorry. He wasn’t sorry. His forefinger came up and touched her swollen lips tentatively. He scowled.
She pulled away from him belatedly and tried to look sophisticated, failing miserably and totally unaware of it.
