Dixie Browning - More To Love

Hardly. Not with those familiar raucous cries coming from the living room. Not with that smelly long-haired cat wreathing her ankles. She’d gotten lost more than once before she’d found her way around the village, using the map on the tourist brochure, but not this time. This was definitely the right house.

Cautiously she moved inside and peered into the kitchen. The bag fell from her fingers. Apples rolled across the sloping floor. She stared openmouthed at the tall, tanned and sun-streaked guy with a dish towel tucked into his belt and a dead turkey cradled in his arms.

Rafe, on hearing a car door slam outside, had peered out the window to see a woman jump down from a dark green pickup truck and hurry up the path to the front porch. He waited for Stu to join her, but the truck drove off.

But then, Stu didn’t drive a truck. He drove an expensive toy his father had given him for his twenty-first birthday to make up for a lifetime of neglect.

It also occurred to Rafe that unless the wedding photographer had used a trick lens, this was definitely not the bride.

Rafe was still standing there with the bird all ready for the oven when the woman appeared in the kitchen doorway. Neither of them spoke for a moment. “Surprise, congratulations and happy birthday, kid,” didn’t seem appropriate.

No way was this Stu’s bride. Somebody had a lot of explaining to do. Even wearing wet denim instead of white satin, there was no resemblance. Stu’s bride was a tall, slender beauty. This woman was none of the above.

Housekeeper? Housebreaker? Mother-in-law? Friend of the family? “You want to go first?” he offered.

“I think you’d better go first, starting with what you’re doing in my kitchen.” Her voice was the most striking thing about her. Husky, but with a hint of firmness that was unmistakable.

“Your kitchen?”

“I asked who you are,” she reminded him with a take-no-hostages glint in her whiskey-colored eyes.

“Actually you didn’t, but I’ll tell you anyway. Name’s Rafe Webber. And if this is your kitchen, then you must be—?” He was momentarily distracted by seeing her eyes narrow. Eyes that big and slumberous weren’t equipped to look suspicious, but she managed it anyway.

“Rafe Webber? Is that supposed to ring a bell?”

Well, hell… He wasn’t used to having to explain himself. He’d long since earned the privilege of asking the questions, not having to answer them. “You have the advantage of me, Miss—?” A gentleman to the bitter end, he thought with wry amusement. His headache wasn’t getting any better.

“Until I know what you’re doing here, I don’t have to tell you anything. How did you get in?”

“Front door. It wasn’t locked. I figured Stu would be back any minute.”

“You know Stu?”

He decided to cut her some slack. Had a feeling it might save time and trouble in the long run. “He’s my brother.”

“Stu’s name isn’t Webber. Try again.”

The lady was sharp. In no mood to go into the convoluted relationships in his immediate family, Rafe kept it simple. “We’re half brothers. Same mother, different fathers.”

“Do you have some identification?”

Deep breath. Open oven door, insert turkey, shut door and smile. Turning back, he said, “Dammit, lady, I don’t need any identification, I know who I am. And I know you’re not Stu’s wife, so suppose you produce some identification of your own.”

In clinging wet jeans and a baggy wet jacket it was obvious that she was carrying a few extra pounds. For reasons he didn’t even try to dissect, a few of his defenses crumbled. The place wasn’t big enough for a full-scale war. It was your bottom-line basic seventy-year-old cottage, with slightly newer appliances. He thought about the wedding gift he’d had shipped to Stu’s apartment in Durham, a fancy piece of equipment that did everything from poaching salmon to pouring tea, or so he’d been told by the salesman. With it he’d ordered monthly shipments of salmon and prime beef. God knew where they were now. Rotting in some post office, probably.

The woman stared pointedly at the towel around his waist until he whipped it off and flung it at the counter. It fell to the floor. In the next room, the parrots cut loose with a stream of profanities, which didn’t help matters.

“They’re next, as soon as I get another pan ready.” He nodded to the oven.

Her eyes widened without losing the look of suspicion. She glanced down at the apples on the floor as if wondering how they’d got there. Glanced at him as if wondering the same thing.

Rafe had to admit the kitchen was a mess. When it came to cooking he was used to state-of-the-art equipment and someone to clean up after him. He said, “You’re wet.”

Without breaking eye contact, she said in that firm, husky voice, “It’s raining.”

So what now? he wondered. He scooped her apple bag off the floor and discovered it was half full of shells. Sandy, broken shells. At least one mystery had been cleared up, which left only a dozen or so to go.

She slipped off her wet jacket and hung it on a hook by the back door. Rafe let his eyes do the walking. The term Rubenesque came to mind. As for her face, it was…interesting. At the moment she looked as if a smile would fracture her jaw, but her skin was the kind a woman had to be born with. Cosmetics could never achieve that buttery smooth texture. He’d seen too many women come to regret having spent half their lives sunbathing not to recognize the difference.

“I don’t suppose you know where they are?” He decided on a flank attack. She still hadn’t told him who she was, but that could wait. Once the honeymooners got home, they could do the honors.

“Who, Annamarie and Stu?” The look of suspicion was replaced by a look of puzzlement. Or maybe she was just nearsighted. “They’re supposed to be in Jamestown.”

“Jamestown,” he repeated. And then “Jamestown? As in Virginia? What the hell are they doing there? I’m cooking their supper.”

“Um…studying the diggings. I guess.”

“Studying the diggings. You want to run that by me again?”

“It’s Annamarie’s birthday present.”

He shook his head. “Somebody gave her a trip to Jamestown for a birthday gift?” A change in barometric pressure always did a number on his head. This time it had evidently affected his hearing, as well.

With a majestic sigh, the woman said, “It’s Annamarie’s gift to Stu. He’s the historian, as you should know if you really are who you say you are. While they’re down here working on her thesis, she’s giving him this side trip for a birthday present.”

Rafe pressed his cool fingertips above his eyes and rubbed. With a sigh, he said, “Look, Miss—”

“Dewhurst. And it’s Ms., not Miss. Annamarie is my baby sister.”

“Ms. Dewhurst,” he repeated. Great. He’d come all this way, planning to check out his new half sister-in-law and make up to Stu for all the missed occasions with a belated birthday feast, and now he was stuck here with Ms. Congeniality.

“Actually, it’s Molly,” she said in that quiet, husky voice of hers that kept getting between him and his anger.

Make that frustration. “Well, Molly, whoever you are and whatever you’re doing here, I hope you like turkey. And candied sweet potatoes and spoon bread and whatever green vegetable I can find in Stu’s pantry. It’ll probably be canned peas, but with enough butter and seasoning, they’re not half bad.”

“Balderdash, balderdash, balderda—!”

Moving swiftly, Rafe closed the door between the two rooms, making the kitchen seem smaller than ever. The whole cottage would fit nicely into his suite at his latest acquisition, a small resort hotel on Florida’s Gulf Coast.