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  No, Annie. Don’t think that way. He’s fine.

  Her imagination is already up and running, though, far ahead of the still-groggy rest of her. Terrible scenarios race through her mind: carjackings, accidents, heart attacks . . .

  But if something had happened to him on the road, the police wouldn’t come to your door, anyway. You’re not Thom Brannock’s next of kin. You’re nothing to him.

  Still . . .

  She can’t bear the thought of losing him.

  Losing him? You don’t even have him, Annie.

  She has no right to worry about him the way a wife would worry about a late husband, but . . .

  But she can’t help it.

  She backtracks mentally as she fumbles with the lock on the heavy inner door. Thom called from the road at nine to say that he was stuck in traffic. Annie gave her famished children microwaved pasta and put on a video to quell the questions about when Thom was going to get there.

  Secretly as disappointed as the kids, if not more so, Annie waited for Thom to call back and say he wasn’t coming after all, but he never did.

  Or maybe he did, and she was so sound asleep she didn’t hear the phone ring.

  In any case, she opens the door and there he is, standing in the glow of the porch light.

  “I’m so sorry, Annie,” is the first thing he says.

  She just nods, swallowing hard over an unexpected tide of emotion. Her instinct is to hug him.

  “The traffic was a nightmare all the way out,” he goes on, reaching for the screen door handle as she slips the hook from its latch. “And my cell phone battery died so I couldn’t even call you back to tell you where I was. I left my charger in Manhattan.”

  He opens the screen door.

  The loud squeaking sound stops Annie cold.

  WD-40. Andre.

  The tide of emotion that had been sweeping through her stops short at the wall that has gone up in a flash, protecting her from . . .

  Him.

  From him, and the risk of loss that goes hand in hand with loving somebody.

  “I thought it would be a good idea to just come straight out instead of stopping at home to call you.”

  “Oh.” The word gives way to the steady chirping of crickets and the distant crashing of waves.

  He hesitates in the doorway, waiting for her to invite him to cross the threshold.

  But she won’t let herself. She can’t. She can’t do that. She can’t do . . . any of this. Not again.

  “Annie . . .” He bends down to look into her eyes, lifting her chin with his hand.

  “What?” she asks guardedly.

  “Are you okay?”

  She nods, her heart pounding at the thrilling sensation of his fingertips on her face.

  Why did he have to touch her?

  She was doing fine until he touched her. Now the wall is crumbling and she’s powerless to stop it.

  “Can I come in?” Thom asks softly.

  What is there to say, other than, “Sure?”

  All right, there’s a lot to say. Stuff like, “No” and “Get lost.”

  But Annie is too weary—and all right, too attracted to the man—to resist him.

  She takes a step back and gestures for him to come in . . . only to watch him spin on his heel and head down the steps.

  “Where are you going?” she asks, dismayed, wondering if she’s so out of it that instead of “Sure,” she accidentally said, “Get lost.”

  “I have some stuff in the car,” he calls over his shoulder, disappearing into the darkness beyond the porch steps.

  Annie watches the moth ballet around the bulb in the porch ceiling and does her best to ignore the fluttering of wings in her stomach.

  There’s something about a man in a suit . . .

  Well, there is now, anyway. Annie, who was never drawn to corporate types and never once saw her own husband wear a tie, not even on their wedding day, suddenly finds herself fantasizing about the power Thom Brannock must yield in the boardroom . . . and the bedroom.

  Stop it! Nothing is going to happen between us, she tells herself firmly.

  After all, it’s not as though she’s alone with him. The kids are right here, and . . .

  And even if they weren’t, nothing is going to happen. Period. She’ll erect a steely core of willpower around the most vulnerable part of her soul. She’ll be totally prepared to resist him if he tries to kiss her again.

  Thom reappears with two big paper bags balanced on either hip. He must have left his suit jacket in the car, and the sleeves of his white dress shirt are rolled up as though he’s about to get to work.

  Doing what? Annie wonders, and she asks him what’s in the bags.

  “Food. I promised you dinner.”

  “Yes, but at a restaurant.” She holds the door open for him, wincing when it squeaks.

  He steps past her, into the house, saying, “Well, the restaurants are still open, but I figured it was too late for the kids.”

  She watches him start striding toward the kitchen, then stop short when he spots Milo and Trixie sleeping on the rug.

  “I’m sorry, Annie.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “I promised them chicken nuggets.”

  “I fed them. And really, it’s okay. You couldn’t help it.”

  “I know, but . . .” He shakes his head. “Do you want me to carry them up to their beds?”

  No. She doesn’t want him to carry them up to their beds.

  For one thing, that would leave her alone with Thom.

  For another, that’s something only a daddy should do, and Thom isn’t their daddy. He never will be. Not their daddy, and not their . . .

  Stepfather.

  Okay, there. Annie admitted to herself that somewhere in the back of her frighteningly creative mind, she may have entertained a fantasy about marrying Thom Brannock and living happily ever after.

  So? She’s also fantasized about winning Powerball and becoming a famous sculptor and finding Andre’s lost treasure of Copper Beach.

  She doesn’t expect any of those things to actually happen. It’s just harmless fun to dream about them.

  But it isn’t harmless fun to dream about marrying Thom Brannock. It’s . . . stupid. That’s what it is.

  Stupid to think that a man like him can come along and make all her problems disappear.

  Stupid to get her children’s hopes up about dinner out in a restaurant, then shatter their expectations with canned pasta.

  It wasn’t just the restaurant dinner they were anticipating so eagerly, Annie reminds herself. It was seeing Thom again.

  Trixie insisted on wearing a purple sundress just for him, and Milo, so hungry for a masculine role model, wore his sneakers with laces in case Thom had time for another tying lesson after dinner.

  “Just let me put these bags in the kitchen, and I’ll carry them up,” Thom says softly.

  “No!”

  Halfway out of the room, he looks back, startled by Annie’s sharp tone. “Why not?”

  “They can sleep there.”

  “On the floor?” He looks as incredulous as she feels.

  What kind of mother leaves her children sleeping on the hard floor?

  “I’ll get them upstairs myself,” she says before he can reproach her.

  “You can’t carry them. They’re too heavy.”

  Annie, whose back still aches from lugging trays and chairs all afternoon, shakes her head. “No, they aren’t. I do it all the time.”

  They’re my children, she wants to tell him. My children, and my responsibility. I don’t need your help. Or your groceries. Or your sympathy.

  All he has to do is utter the slightest protest, or reach toward one of the children, and she’ll let him have it. All that and more.

  But he doesn’t.

  To his credit—and Annie’s dismay—he simply shrugs and proceeds to the kitchen, where she can hear him rattling bags and opening and closing the refrigerator.

&
nbsp; Stifling a grunt of pain, she tosses the blanket aside and begins lugging her slumbering children up to their beds. Only when they’re safely tucked in for the night and she’s descending the stairs does Annie realize that she is now, quite disconcertingly, alone with Thom Brannock.

  Chapter 9

  What? You didn’t think I was going to subject you to my cooking again, did you?” Thom asks with a laugh, spotting Annie’s relieved expression as she stands in the kitchen doorway.

  “I . . . I guess I wasn’t sure what you were doing down here,” she admits, taking in the table set for two and the array of plastic supermarket containers filled with cold salads and sliced roast chicken.

  “Well, I wasn’t cooking, that’s for sure. I think we both discovered the other night that I’m probably not going to be getting my own program on the Food Network anytime in the near future.”

  “I thought the kids did all the cooking.”

  “Oh, that’s right. I can blame it on them.”

  Annie cracks a smile at last, and Thom admires the faint network of lines around her eyes. No Botox for her.

  Is that why you’re here? he asks himself, as he slices a loaf of sourdough bread at the cluttered countertop. Because she’s the opposite of Joyce?

  Not to mention . . . Mother.

  There are times when he’s certain that it is, and times when he’s certain that it’s more than that. Much more.

  Like right now, glancing up out of the corner of his eyes to see her sneaking a Greek olive from its container on the table. She pops it into her mouth and reaches promptly for another.

  Okay, so she probably isn’t the type to scold him for ordering baked Alaska. So she has a healthy appetite . . .

  For olives, he reminds himself sternly, furtively watching her lick a drop of oil from her fingertip.

  Just because a woman likes . . . olives . . . doesn’t mean she has a healthy appetite for . . . other things.

  “Sorry,” she says a little sheepishly, catching him looking at her. “I couldn’t resist. I’m starved.”

  For dinner, Thom. She’s starved for dinner.

  “Well then, let’s eat.” He plunks the bread, still on its cutting board, unceremoniously in the middle of the table, thankful he resisted the urge to hunt down candles and light them while she was upstairs.

  There’s nothing, he tells himself as he pulls out her chair for her, the least bit romantic about a midnight supper at a rickety kitchen table.

  Except that there is.

  As they eat, an air of intimacy settles over the room.

  Dinner for two is dinner for two, no matter how you look at it. There may not be champagne or candlelight, but there’s a good bottle of chilled pinot grigio Annie pulls from the back of the fridge, and the overhead lighting is dim thanks to a couple of burned out bulbs.

  And . . . she’s wearing makeup. That’s why her large green eyes seem larger and greener than usual. Makeup, and a dress, and jewelry.

  Not designer silk or sequins with dazzling diamonds at her ears and wrists and throat.

  No, Annie has on a flirty reddish-orange sundress that bares her sun-coppered shoulders and legs. Her earrings are big gold hoops and she has a stack of slender gold bangles on one arm. Add to that her sleep-tousled glossy spirals, and she could be a free-spirited gypsy.

  “I forgot to tell you how nice you look tonight,” Thom says, and watches her blush beyond the rim of her wineglass.

  “Thank you.”

  “All dressed up with no place to go. I’ll make it up to you. How about if we go out to dinner tomorrow night?”

  She shakes her head promptly. “You’re making it up to me right now.”

  “But the kids are missing out.”

  “They’ll be okay.”

  “I know, but I had my heart set on treating them to chicken nuggets.”

  She laughs. “You did not. You probably don’t even know what a chicken nugget is.”

  “Sure, I do. It’s a small . . . nugget . . . of chicken.”

  She laughs again, shaking her head, and Thom notes that the faint lines around her eyes are surely as much a result of grief as they are of laughter. This woman has endured a brutal loss. No wonder she’s skittish when it comes to . . . well, just about everything he says and does.

  Or maybe she just isn’t interested, he silently informs his ego as he pokes his fork halfheartedly into a heap of pasta salad.

  But she certainly seemed interested when he kissed her the other night. Granted, she did eventually pull away—but not before she kissed him back. Not before he was able to sense that her pent-up passion was on par with his own.

  “Aren’t you hungry?” Annie’s innocent question cuts into his libidinous thoughts, and he finds himself tempted to tell her just how hungry he is.

  But he doesn’t dare.

  “Maybe it’s just too late to eat very much,” he says benignly, noting that she’s polished off everything on her plate, and had seconds.

  “It’s never too late to eat . . . at least, not for me. Do you want some coffee?”

  “Decaf?” he can’t help asking.

  She frowns. “I don’t even keep decaf in the house.”

  “It’s okay. I don’t drink it, either. I’ll have regular.”

  “Do you want dessert, too? I made cookies this morning.”

  He laughs. He can’t help it. If she were consciously trying to be the anti-Joyce, she couldn’t accomplish it more effectively.

  “What’s so funny?” Annie asks.

  Ignoring the question, he tells her that he would love to sample her . . . cookies.

  Keep your mind on cookies, Thom. What could be more wholesome than homemade cookies?

  “They’re molasses,” she’s saying. “Milo’s favorite, so I try to make them every week, even though it’s hard to heat up the kitchen at this time of year.”

  Somehow, Thom manages not to suggest that he and Annie heat up the kitchen together.

  He clears the dishes while she rummages through the cupboards and starts the coffeemaker. She chatters about her children while he pretends that he isn’t imagining what it would be like to sweep her into his arms and carry her up the stairs to her bedroom.

  The next thing he knows, they’re back in the living room, waiting for the coffee to finish brewing, and he’s devouring the most sinfully delicious molasses cookie he’s ever tasted.

  “I can’t believe this is homemade,” he tells Annie, wishing she wouldn’t sit on the opposite end of the couch as though she’s afraid he’s going to sink his teeth into her neck.

  “Is there any other kind?” she asks with a smile. “It’s my mom’s old recipe.”

  “Does she live nearby?”

  “My mom?” Her expression clouds over. “No, she died not long after I got out of college.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s been a long time, so . . .” She looks down at her hands in her lap.

  “What about your dad?” he feels compelled to ask. “Is he . . . around?”

  To his relief, she looks up and nods. “He’s living in Florida with my stepmother. They’ll probably be up to visit in August.”

  “That’s nice.”

  “Yeah. I don’t really see them as much as . . . well, it would be nice to see more of my dad, especially now that . . .”

  “I know. Do you have any other family?” Thom asks, needing her to tell him that there’s at least somebody in her life that she can lean on, so that he can . . .

  Well, so that he can’t wish he could be that person.

  “I’ve got two older brothers, both married, both in Manhattan. But I don’t really see them, either.”

  “Why not?”

  “They’re just really busy. One is a CEO and the other is an account executive. They travel all the time, and my oldest brother has a couple of kids. Both my nephews are in college, so . . .”

  “So basically, your family isn’t around much.”

  “Not unless
you count Merlin.”

  “The caterer?”

  “Yes. He’s like family. And so is my friend Erika. She’s always there for me. What about you?”

  “What about me?”

  “Your family?”

  “Oh! I thought you meant . . .”

  “What?”

  That I’m always there for you, like Erika is. Or that you want me to be.

  “Never mind,” he mutters, embarrassed. What is wrong with him? He’s managed to mentally insinuate himself into the life of a virtual stranger. Except that Annie doesn’t feel like a stranger. She feels like . . .

  Well, never mind that.

  He steers his mind back to her question. His family. Hardly his favorite subject.

  “My mother and sister were at the party last Saturday, actually. Maybe you met them.”

  “Not formally,” she says with a wry smile. “But I might have passed them a canapé or two.”

  He can’t help laughing. “What did you think?”

  “Of your mother and sister? I don’t know which ones they were.”

  The ones who didn’t give you the time of day.

  But that pretty much describes the entire guest list, he thinks ruefully.

  “No, I meant what did you think of the party?”

  “Well, it was definitely A-list,” she says. “I think I saw a Trump in the crowd. And I thought all the flowers were beautiful.”

  He isn’t going to let her off. “What else did you think?”

  “It was just a nice party,” Annie says, in such a stiff, fake tone that he raises an eyebrow at her.

  “Come on, Annie.”

  “What? Didn’t you have a good time?”

  “I’ve been to wakes where the dead guy had more fun than I did at that party.”

  Okay, why did he have to go and bring up wakes and dead guys to a woman who just lost her husband? Mortified, he shoves a molasses cookie into his mouth whole—mainly, so that there won’t be room for his foot.

  To his surprise, though, she grins and says, “Well, next time, you should tell Merlin to serve something with a little more pizzazz.”

  “Like?”

  “I don’t know . . . frozen margaritas.”

  “Unfortunately,” he says, swallowing the rest of his cookie, “the only frozen thing allowed at A-list parties are the women’s facial muscles.”