Jackie Braun - He's the One

Great. She was going to have to do that while never letting Brand know how that kiss had rattled her world. How him sitting beside her on a sleepy Sunday morning made her feel aware and alive.

But, she reminded herself, this was exactly what she needed. To prove to herself she wasn’t fifteen anymore, the mere whiff of him enough to make her waste her life dreaming of happily-ever-afters. No, she was all grown up now and immune to his charm, considerable as that was.

Once she did that, longing for things that didn’t exist wouldn’t have the power to ruin her life anymore.

She could be a realist, dismiss that longing for something. It wouldn’t be there, like a villain waiting in the wings, ready to rain disaster on her well-planned future and life.

But she knew she was playing with fire. Because that something was exactly what she had tasted on his lips.

Walk into it, girl, she ordered herself. If you want to play with fire, walk straight into the flame. There would be nothing like a dose of reality to kill her fantasies forever.

“Well, Brand,” she said, taking that mental leap off Blue Rock, “since you’re going to be here, you might as well help me out. It’s true, this whole town thinks I’m pining away for my ex-fiancé, Gregg, who is about to become officially engaged to someone else.”

“Are you?” he asked softly.

“Of course not!” But she could feel a blush rising up her neck as she said it, and she could see she had not convinced him.

She took a deep breath, walked straight into the fire. “So, I’ll accept your offer. Yes, you can pretend to be my beau.”

It was like falling straight off a cliff. And no one hated heights more than she did!

“Beau?” he said, and then laughed. “Who uses a word like that in this day and age? I think you’ve been spending just a little too much time at the Historical Society, Sweet Pea.”

“You are every bit as annoying as I remember!” she said, exasperated. It was hard enough for her to keep her dignity while accepting his offer.

“You never thought I was annoying,” he said with the silky and aggravating confidence of a man who, unfortunately, women did not find annoying. Ever.

“Remember the time you said you were going to the library and I gave you my books to return and you didn’t?”

“I wasn’t really going to the library,” he said.

“Whatever. Annoying. Six dollars in fines.”

“Your only brush with the law?”

She ignored him. “And how about the time you showed up at my door with a kitten two minutes before I was supposed to be leaving for band camp?”

“You loved that kitten,” he said, with a grin.

She had. The gift had melted her.

“That’s not the point. The point is that I was late for band camp, and so I didn’t get the instrument I wanted, and I had to play the tuba for a whole week and it was your fault.”

“Band camp is for nerds.”

“My point exactly,” she said, triumphantly. “You are annoying! Supremely! You will have to try and keep that in check as we conduct our—” She couldn’t bring herself to say romance. “—arrangement.”

“Do you still play the tuba?” he asked sweetly. “Didn’t you send me a recording? When I was in basic?”

Sophie could feel her face getting very hot. “I didn’t!”

“Uh-huh. A tuba solo. A love song.”

“It wasn’t a tuba,” she said petulantly. “Clarinet. My instrument of choice.”

He raised a wicked, wicked eyebrow at her.

How could he do this? Instrument was not a dirty word!

“Never mind,” Sophie said. “I just realized how rash it was to agree to this. I’m not sure I’m desperate enough to have you for my beau, even temporarily.”

“Aw, shucks,” he said. “Just when I was starting to think it might be fun. Like porcu-pine-wrestling in my birthday suit.”

He had inserted that reference deliberately to see if he could make her blush again.

And damn him, he could.

“Are you backing out?” she demanded.

“No, I think you are.”

“I’m not!”

“Ha,” Dr. Sheridan muttered, “I’d be interested to see if the all-important Brand Sheridan, secret agent, would do anything as selfless as help an old neighbor so she could hold her head up high again. Trust me, Sophie, it’s not in my son’s nature to do the decent thing.”

Sophie felt shocked at the doctor’s bitter tone, and she saw Brand flinch as if he’d been struck.

She had found the bantering back and forth between her and Brand edgy, but playful, dan-gerously invigorating.

Now the tension that leapt in the air between him and his father was painful and tangible.

But again, the young man who would have risen to the bait, defended himself or argued, was not part of who Brand was now. Instead he replied, disciplined patience in his voice, “I’m just a soldier. I do what I’m told, when I’m told. I was on an undercover assignment. I was told I wouldn’t be granted leave. Period.”

“Whatever,” his father said.

“If I could have been here, I would have.”

“Whatever,” his father said again.

“And if Sophie agrees, we’ll do this thing.”

She felt the flutter of her heart. It wasn’t a good idea. To play a charade for the whole town was a stupid, impulsive idea that fell solidly into the category of really dumb things that she always did around him.

But could she walk away from giving Brand a perfect opportunity to redeem himself a tiny bit in his father’s eyes while he was here?

It would help her, it would help him.

Even now, he and his father were eyeing each other balefully.

And she felt compelled to insert herself between them, to ease the tension.

“I’ll do it,” she announced decisively.

“Oh, goody,” her grandmother said.

“Oh, brother,” his father said.

“Oh,” Brand said, then, “great.” Spoken with the macho bravado of a man who had been chosen from many to diffuse a bomb.

“Let’s talk romance,” Sophie suggested brightly. “I’ll come up with a plan. A few highly visible activities: ice cream at Maynard’s, maybe a bike ride or two, an appearance at Blue Rock and then—ta-da—you and I at the engagement party.”

Brand watched her talk, ruefully aware she was trying to ease the tension between him and his father. She’d been like that as a kid, too. Always wanting everything to look like a Norman Rockwell painting.

Sugar Maple Grove lent itself to that.

But now Sophie was not a kid. Not if those lips had spoken the truth about her, and he was pretty sure they had.

He was also ruefully aware that, despite her engagement and the promise of those lips, Sophie still seemed to be a sweet geek in the romance department. A plan? What kind of romance had a plan?

A fake one, he reminded himself sternly.

Brand was struck by a tingling awareness along the back of his neck. It was his sharply honed instinct. It always warned him when danger was near.

He had done many, many dangerous things.

But he doubted any of them were going to hold a candle to pretending to be Miss Sophie Holtzheim’s beau.

Why had he agreed to this?

Partly because he couldn’t resist protecting Sophie. It seemed that’s what he had been born to do, protect.

It was going to be a long, hot month in Sugar Maple Grove, and a man couldn’t be faulted for finding a way to entertain himself.

His father, with one last look at him, not friendly, shoved back his chair. “I’m going to be late for church.”

“Oh, that time already?” Hilde said in English, and in German, “We’ll leave you two alone, Sophie. Do something romantic, for God’s sake.”