Jackie Braun - He's the One - Winning a Groom in 10 Dates / Molly Cooper's Dream Date / Mr Right There All Along

“To start the rumor?” his father said hopefully.

“No, for the groceries. How come you don’t have any food?”

“Why? You writing a report for your sister?”

“She’s worried about you, Dad. You don’t have to see her as the enemy. That fire rattled her.”

“Rattled her! What do you think it did to me? Oh well, I didn’t like cooking here anyway. Or eating here,” Dr. Sheridan said, proud, reluctant. “It makes me miss your mother.”

“I miss her, too, Dad. I come in this kitchen and think of strawberry lemonade and cookies warm from the oven, the chocolate chips dripping.”

Something in his father’s face softened, and, briefly, it almost felt that they might have a moment, share some fond memories. But his father rattled the paper and dove behind it.

Brand headed for the shower.

Later he went out to the bike shed, and found his mother’s bike, complete with the basket which he filled with sweet peas until it overflowed. Then he rode right down Main Street, enjoying the pretense of being a small-town guy who had never, for the good of his country, done things that ate at his soul.

The thing that astonished him was how easy it was to slip from who he knew himself to be—a hardened warrior, heart of ice—into this role of a young man going to woo his girl.

Had he gotten that adept at playing roles?

At least this one had no grim, dark overtones. It just felt fun. It would be entertaining, fill up some of his time here, to play this game with Sophie. To break her rules, too.

Maybe, if nothing else, before he left here, he could teach Sophie to be spontaneous, though he doubted if he had enough time to tackle that particular challenge.

He parked the bicycle in front of the old two-story redbrick Edwardian building that housed the Historical Society, gathered the sweet peas in his arms, took the steps two at a time and stopped in front of the stern-faced woman at the reception desk in the outer office.

“I’m looking for my sweet pea,” he announced, “Miss Sophie.”

That would show Sophie Holtzheim just how sick and tired he was of other people making the rules that governed his life. He was on leave from his military duties. He wasn’t taking orders from a little scrap of a girl!

Not unless they were the delicious kind. The librarian pulling her glasses off, chewing thoughtfully on the arm, watching him with heat in her eyes.

Brand Sheridan, he berated himself, there is a special place in hell for guys like you.

On second thought, he was already there.

The idea that this was going to be some kind of fun fled from him. He couldn’t be sworn to help and protect Sophie and have these kinds of thoughts at the same time.

He needed to be a better man.

The courtship of Sophie was probably going to be the hardest assignment of his life.

“YOU have a gentleman caller,” Bitsy Martin whispered in the door of Sophie’s office. “With flowers.”

Sophie felt a blush rise up her cheeks. Of course, given how recently she had drawn up her rules of courtship engagement, her gentleman caller could be only one person!

And of all the words she had ever used to describe Brand, and there had been many of them, most recently pirate, the word gentleman had never been on the list.

She didn’t know which was more annoying: the fact that Brand had dispensed with her schedule, or the fact that Bitsy looked so amazed that a man would show up with flowers for her.

She didn’t feel ready to deal with him. She still felt the stunning truth Brand Sheridan had so casually unearthed this morning.

She had been going to marry Gregg Hamilton because she missed her parents, had missed being part of that unit called a family.

Thank God he had not uncovered the whole truth. She was only just working toward that herself, and it was painful.

“I thought he was in the wrong place. He’s what we would have called a rake back in the day,” Bitsy confided. “Devilishly charming.”

Again, there was something mildly insulting about Bitsy’s disbelief that such a man would show up looking for her.

Sophie took a deep breath, got up and went down the hall. She tried to steel herself, but, of course, it was impossible.

The sweet-pea bouquet, abandoned on the counter, had already filled the entire office with its delicate fragrance. Brand had his back to her, restless, pacing, pretending to be interested in the old photos of Sugar Maple Grove that graced the walls.

Sophie fought the desire just to stop and drink in the sweeping masculine lines of that broad back, especially since Bitsy was watching.

Wait. That’s the whole idea. To convince people we’re actually interested in each other. Sophie could study the enticing lines of his back as long as she wanted. It was a heady freedom, as intoxicating as champagne, so she only allowed herself the tiniest sip before she cleared her throat.

“Brand,” she said, her brightness forced, “An unexpected pleasure. What brings you here?”

She realized Bitsy was hovering with avid interest, and that for a girl who was supposed to be being romanced she sounded ridiculously formal. Her eyes skittered to the sweet peas. “My darling,” she added as an afterthought. It sounded as if she had read a line from a script, badly.

He turned from the pictures on the wall and gazed at her, long and slow. He was going to be good at this! Way too good. Despite the fact that he said he had no girlfriends, she now suspected something else—dozens, hundreds of women wooed by the man with the perfect excuse to never commit!

He came back to the counter, leaned across it and planted a rather noisy—and distinctly demonstrative—kiss on her cheek.

“Ma chérie,” he greeted her, his voice as liquid and sweet as warmed wild honey. It was as if he’d poured that honey over her naked body when he said something else in French, that she didn’t understand but that was undoubtedly wicked.

“You don’t speak French,” she protested weakly to him.

“Actually, I do.”

“I didn’t know that.” A French-speaking pirate. Whatever forces she had called down upon herself to test her sworn-off-love vow by burning pictures at midnight were extraordinarily powerful ones!

“There is quite a bit about me you don’t know.” How could he do that? That phrase was not dirty.

That was true. The boy next door had always been safe. Even in the darkest throes of her crush on him, there had never been the remotest chance of her love being requited. That had made it so safe somehow. Now, everything seemed different.

Especially him, something the same and something different meeting somewhere where she could not clearly see the lines, could not clearly discern the dangers.

“What did you say in French?”

“Just that I saw these flowers and they reminded me of you.”

“Oh.” Her cheek could not possibly be tingling! Sophie had to resist an impulse to reach up and touch her cheek where his lips had been.

“You want to go for lunch?”

“No!” Her voice sounded strangled.

He raised a wicked eyebrow at her, enjoying her discomfort, a pirate enjoying the game, enjoying his pretense of being a perfect gentleman.

“Of course you want to come for lunch with me,” he coached her in a whisper, “you can’t get enough of me.”

Unfortunately, true.

“It’s not lunchtime.”

“That would not stop two people who were falling in love.”

His eyes twinkled, a little grin tickled the sensuous curve of lips that had just touched her cheek. That she had tasted yesterday. That she wanted to taste again, with the desperate hunger of a woman who was falling hard and fast.