Molly O'Keefe - Unexpected Family

“I shouldn’t have let him go.”

Lucy glanced around the house, waiting for his sister to come out, wrapped in a robe, to give them all hell for being too loud. “Where’s Annie?”

Jeremiah cleared his throat, bending down to pick up the laundry he shoved off the couch. His T-shirt slid up his back, revealing pale skin dotted with freckles over hard muscle. Just at the edge of his shirt she saw the snaky tail end of red scar tissue—a healed wound she didn’t want to think about. The faded denim of his jeans clung to that man like a faithful lover, and she had to wonder if the hallelujah chorus didn’t ring out every time he bent over.

“She died. Last spring.”

“What?” She tore her eyes away from his body, feeling like a degenerate. “Oh, my God, Jeremiah…what happened?”

He stood up with a stack of small blue jeans in his hands.

“Cancer.” He threw the jeans in the overflowing laundry basket. “It was fast.”

“I’m so sorry, Jeremiah. I didn’t know—”

“It’s all right, Lucy. I don’t expect the world to keep up with all the Stones’ tragedies.”

“Where are your nephews?” she asked.

“Sleeping,” he said with a wry smile. “It’s ten o’clock at night.”

“Are you…” It was just so weird to think of Jeremiah Stone as the guardian of three small boys. Jeremiah Stone was a cowboy sex symbol. He got interviewed on ESPN, and that footage of him getting trampled by a bull had been a YouTube sensation. He dated beautiful country music stars, and did not, definitely did not, fold superhero underwear.

He sighed and smiled as if he couldn’t believe it, either. “…in charge of the boys? Yep.”

Jeremiah ran a hand through those ebony curls and then set it on his hip, looking around the room as if it were the sight of a national disaster and he just didn’t know what to do next.

“I’m so sorry for your loss,” Lucy murmured, not sure what else to say.

“Yeah. Me, too.”

The silence pulsed for a moment and she opened her mouth to make her exit just as Beyoncé started singing in her bag.

“Is that your phone?” Jeremiah asked.

“It’s really more of an anthem,” she said, avoiding the question and the phone call.

He laughed and the somber mood was broken.

“You want a drink?” he asked, cutting through the melancholy like a knife. He was smiling again and a smiling Jeremiah Stone was a difficult temptation to resist. Like saying no to chocolate-covered potato chips, or a clearance sale at Macy’s. And it’s not like she had better things to do.

“I’d love a beer.”

“Great.” He took a big step over the laundry. “Let’s hope Reese didn’t drink them all.”

She followed him into the kitchen, which was in about the same shape as the living room. Not dirty, really, just very cluttered. Plates filled a drying rack and cups littered the sink. A round table on the far end of the room was covered in backpacks and schoolbooks. A plate with half a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich sat on a chair.

Jeremiah was a daddy. The sexiest daddy on the planet, which she still couldn’t get her head around.

“Here you go,” Jeremiah said, handing her a beer. “Let’s have—” He turned to look at the table and winced. “It’s nice out, let’s sit on the porch.”

“Sounds good,” she said.

He slid open the sliding glass door and she tried not to notice the casual nature of his strength, the way the worn T-shirt flowed like water over muscles that bunched and released every time he moved.

“Lucy?” Her eyes jerked to his and she caught him laughing. At her. What the hell, she thought, grinning back at him, the man had to be used to being stared at. Men who looked like him got stared at. It was a rule. “You coming?”

“Right behind you.”

The porch was a wide patio filled with more sporting equipment. Jeremiah sat down at the table and she sat next to him. The air was cool and found her skin under the thin jersey, but sitting close to Jeremiah was like sitting next to sun-warmed rock.

“So, Lucy Alatore, what brings you back to the Rocky M?”

“A girl can’t long for the scent of cattle poop in the morning?”

“Not girls like you.”

She felt him eyeing her feathered earrings, the bangles on her arms, her leggings and high-heeled boots. Around here she was exotic. Freaky almost. Not that it bothered her.

“That is true, Jeremiah. That is true.”

“How long are you staying?”

She shrugged. “We’re not in any rush.” No rush at all to get back to the mess she’d made.

“We?”

“Mom and me. She moved to Los Angeles with me when I went.”

“Your sister says your jewelry business is doing great. You’re the toast of SoCal.” Jeremiah smiled at her.

My sister has no idea what she’s talking about, she thought, but what Lucy said to Jeremiah was, “She’s proud,” and left it at that.

“I bought a girlfriend one of your necklaces,” he said, and she nearly spat out her beer.

“Really?”

“Those pretty little horseshoe ones? I liked ’em.”

Those pretty little horseshoe necklaces had been her Waterloo. Her Achilles’ heel. The snake hidden in tall grass. “Well, I should have gotten you to endorse me.”

“You didn’t need me. Those necklaces were all over Hollywood.”

There was no way she was going to ruin this moonlight by talking about those necklaces. She looked at him sideways and changed the subject. “I have a hard time imagining you in Hollywood.”

“That’s where the pretty girls are.” He waggled his eyebrows but then stared at his boots. “I was only there for a while. The relationship didn’t last much past that necklace I gave her.”

“You didn’t like it?”

“No, I really liked your necklace—”

She laughed. “Los Angeles.”

“Good God, no.” He shuddered. “Not my scene at all.”

“That city must have loved you, though.” With that hair and those eyes, the way he moved, part cowboy, part cat, but all man. Casting agents must have fallen over themselves to get to him. To say nothing of the women.

“What about you?” he asked.

“That city does not love me.” If there was one thing she could be sure of it was that Los Angeles barely knew she’d been there, which was such a bitter disappointment when she’d gone intending to light the streets on fire. And she’d been close. So damn close.

She spun the bottle between her hands. Her chest ached as if there was someone standing on her rib cage. I guess that’s what failure feels like.

“Hey.” His shoulder nudged hers, his heat a wave through her body that shook her out of her musings. “This is the closest I’ve been to a date in months so please don’t cry. If you do, I’ll probably start, and I’ve sworn off crying on dates.”

Charmed, despite her crap mood, she smiled at him. “Does that get you laid?” she asked. “Crying on dates?”

“No, actually. It’s a very effective birth control.”

He was watching her, a strange smile on his face. It was as if he’d turned around and found a treasure sitting on this porch next to him and for a long moment she got lost in the blue of his eyes.

I’m going to kiss him, she thought, delighted by the idea. Drunk on the notion. Before leaving his house tonight, she was going to taste this man.

She was a serial monogamist—hadn’t had a one-night stand in fifteen years. For her, it was one long-term relationship after the other. She didn’t just date, she contemplated marriage over dessert. But she did like to kiss.

Her life hadn’t been very easy the past few months. Stress and worry and regret and fear had worn her down to the bone and she’d grown so used to the sensation that sitting here, contemplating kissing a gorgeous cowboy in the moonlight, seemed like the sweetest relief.