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

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.

Chapter Five

“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.

She’d always been way too susceptible to him. Always. It was time to claim her life back. Really. Past time.

Pull it together, girl, Sophie ordered herself. “Even if it is lunchtime, I couldn’t possibly. Too busy.” She heard Bitsy’s muffled gasp of dismay, remembered they had a witness and that was what this was really all about.

It could only mean trouble that Sophie was aware of the growing disappointment that this was all an act, a role she had, very stupidly, encouraged him to play.

“What are you busy doing, Sweet Pea?” he asked, silkily, smooth, his eyes intent on her face, his fingers moving along the countertop, touching hers. He did a funny little thing with his fingertips, dancing them along her knuckles, feather-light, astonishingly intimate.

Instead of being pleased with his performance, Sophie wanted to cry. What had she gotten herself into? What woman wouldn’t want a moment like this to be real?

His fingertips tickled her, drummed an intimate little tattoo across the top of her hand, rested on the bone of her wrist.

Sophie’s belly did that roller-coaster dive.

Unless she was mistaken, Bitsy gasped again, not with dismay but with recognition of something white-hot streaking through the stale air of the historical office—sexy, seductive.

“A box of memorabilia came in,” Sophie stammered, and yanked her hand away. She brushed it across the top of her thigh, to make the tingling stop.

Brand’s attention was on her hand, a faint smug smile of male knowing on a face that was just a little too sure of his ability to tempt, entice, seduce.

Unfortunately echoing what she had seen in Bitsy’s face. Men like him didn’t woo girls like her! Or use words like woo either, or as old-fashioned, as prissy, as archaic as beau.

Sophie had always been out of step. The sweet geek, walking dictionary, history buff, plagued by a certain awkward uncertainty in herself that she had managed to put away for ten minutes once to give a speech, but otherwise had never quite outgrown.

People didn’t get why she had trouble getting over Gregg. No man had really ever noticed her before, and she despaired that one ever would again.

Except Brand.

He’d always noticed her. But in that aggravating, chuck-you-on-the-chin, you’re-cute-and-funny-like-a-chimpanzee-who-can-ride-a-tricycle kind of way.

And Brand Sheridan? She had always noticed him, too, and not in the chimpanzee-on-a-trike kind of way.

He had always been hot. Not just good-looking, because really, good looks, while rare and certainly enticing, were not a measure of character. It wasn’t even the fact that he had carried himself with such confidence, that he had radiated the mysterious male essence that stole breath as surely as bees stole nectar.

No, Brand had had a way of looking at people, and engaging with people that made them feel as if he could show them the secret to being intensely alive. There was something about him that had been bold and breathtaking.

In high school he had gone for the fast girls, Sophie remembered, a little more sadly than she would have liked. There had been a constant parade of them on the backseat of his motorcycle. Girls who were sophisticated and flirty, who knew how to wear makeup and how to dress in ways that men went gaga for.

She remembered she had tried to tell him once he was way too smart for that. That he should find a girl he could talk to.

What she had meant was a girl who was worthy of him. Such as herself.

If she recalled, he had thrown back his head and laughed at her advice, chucked her on the chin, said Why do I need another girl to talk to, when I have you?

Naturally, naive little fool that she had been, that off-the-cuff remark had sent her into infatuation overdrive.

He still thought she was that girl! And she was not doing one thing to set him straight!

It was stopping now. Sophie was not going to give him the satisfaction of being right! Even if he was!

Sophie pulled her hand away from her thigh and folded both her hands primly on the counter in front of her. She realized the gesture was a little too old for her.

It was time for a new Sophie to emerge, a woman who was not intimidated by the likes of him—or who could at least pull off the pretense that she wasn’t!

She leaned forward and purred, “Beloved, as happy as I am to see you, I must go back to work. I’m swamped. Simply swamped.”

Out of all the endearments she could have picked, she kicked herself for choosing that one! Hopelessly dated. And fraught with emotion. Beloved.

To lean toward him and mean it. To let it be the last word on her lips at night and the first in the morning, to let it form in her mind when her eyes rested on him, even from a distance…

“Go away,” she snapped at him, when he didn’t seem to be getting it.

Another gasp from Bitsy. It was like working with her grandmother. Sophie turned and gave her a glare that she hoped would send her scuttling, but Bitsy stood her ground.

Feeling her hand was being forced, she leaned even closer, and tried to take the sting out of the “Go away.”

“I’ll make it up to you later.” She blinked at him in her best version of the type of girl who had graced the back of his motorcycle.

A smile tickled those handsome lips. Unfortunately she couldn’t tell if she’d managed to amuse him or intrigue him just the tiniest bit.

“I can help you with your work,” he suggested, “and then we can go for lunch. Or we can go some place where you can make it up to me, whichever you prefer.”

Done playing, Sophie picked up the sweet peas, opened the gate that separated the inner office from the outer one and let him through. She pointed down the hall and then marched behind him.

“That one,” she said tersely.

He went into her open office, and she slid in behind him and then shut the door. With a snap.

She leaned against it trying to marshal herself.

There was no room for them both in her office, he had turned around to face her and was now leaning his rear up against her desk, arms folded over the solidness of his chest, eyes dancing with mischief and merriment.

At her expense.

His largeness made the room seem small and cramped. His vibrancy made the space—and her whole life—feel dull and dreary.

Her office was never going to feel the same now. Something of his larger-than-life presence was going to linger here and ruin it.

“What are you doing?” Sophie demanded.

He lifted a big shoulder, smiled. “Getting things started.”

“We were supposed to start with a bike ride. To Maynard’s. For ice cream. Tomorrow.”

Every word sounded clipped, a woman in distress, a woman who had had a plan, and that plan included somehow needing a whole day to prepare to be with him.

“Ah, Sophie,” he suggested, “lighten up. Be spontaneous.”

“I don’t like being spontaneous!” Wait! Remember the new Sophie!

“I seem to remember that,” he said sympathetically, “Never too late to learn.”

“I don’t want to learn!” Which was a lie. The new Sophie thought spontaneity could begin with throwing herself at him and tasting his lips again.

That would wipe the smug look off his face!

“That’s sad,” he said.

“I am not sad! I will not have you see me as pathetic!” The urge to kiss him grew, just to prove something.

But it could backfire. It could prove she was even more pathetic than she thought.

“I don’t see you as pathetic, Sophie, just…er…a little too rigid.”

Rigid? This was turning into a nightmare. The world’s most glorious man saw her as uptight and rigid? The new Sophie had to do something!

“Let’s have some fun with this,” he coaxed.

What could she say to that? She didn’t like having fun? Now she felt driven to prove to him that she was not uptight and rigid!

That she could be flexible and fun.

And of course she could be.

Taking a deep breath, Sophie launched herself over the distance that separated them in a fashion that allowed no chickening out. She caught the widening of his eyes, his quick lean backward, but the desk prevented escape. She wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him close.

She took his lips with hers.

There, she thought dreamily. That should show him. Nothing rigid or predictable about her. She could be spontaneous! She could have as much fun as the next person.

For a moment his lips softened under hers, and the word fun dissolved. Fun was a Fourth of July picnic or a new puppy or a good game of Scrabble.

This wasn’t fun. It was intense. And dangerous. As exciting, as challenging as riding the rapids of an uncharted river or jumping from an airplane with a parachute that might or might not open.

This was part of her absolute gift for doing the wrong thing around him! She had set out to prove he didn’t have any power over her anymore.

And proved the exact opposite. Beloved.

Not that he had to know. Ever.

That his lips tasted to her of everything she had longed for when she had said yes to the wrong man and bought a wedding dress and collected pictures. Brand Sheridan’s lips tasted of honey and dreams, of dewdrops and hope.

She had said to Gregg that she needed time to think, that something was missing.

Sophie reeled back from Brand, feeling aquiver with recognition. The rest of the truth she had been trying to hide from herself slammed into her.

The truth was she had nearly married Gregg because she had never wanted to feel love as deeply as she had felt it within her family again. She had wanted to have the security of that place called family, without the emotional investment that could devastate so totally. That could shatter a person’s heart into a million jagged pieces. That could steal any semblance of remaining faith or hope from their soul.

Ultimately, Gregg had been safe. He would have never required her heart or her soul.

This man in front of her?

He would never be safe. And he would never accept less from the person he called beloved than their full heart, their complete soul.

Of course, with her gift for getting everything exactly wrong, here she was falling in love with the man least likely ever to call anyone beloved. The man who had made his work his built-in excuse for not loving anyone.

“There,” she said, hoping she did not sound as shaken as she felt. “Spontaneity requirement met?”

“Not unless we were talking about spontaneous combustion,” he muttered, his eyes as piercing as a pirate’s on her face. Still, Sophie could tell she had managed to shock him.

What she couldn’t tell was if it was in a good way. His eyes were unreadable, the mischief had gone from them.

She suddenly just wanted to hide.

If he had just followed the rules! If he had waited until tomorrow to go for ice cream instead of invading her world, he would have seen her at her most flexible. And fun.

She might have even managed flirty.

She might not have launched herself at him in a full-frontal attack! The sweet geek rides again! Gets it exactly wrong every time!

“Back to work,” she said firmly. What she meant was back to her hidey-hole: words and dusty archives, glimpses into worlds long past that triggered her imagination, that she could immerse herself in when her own life seemed way too dreary, when the disappointment of the gap between what she desired and what she could have were inescapable.

She was not going to cry. “Nice of you to drop by. This box of stuff just came in,” she fluttered a wrist at it, “and I need to go through it. It’s time-consuming. All the letters have to be read—”

“This box?” he said, glancing at her, seeing what she did not want him to see if his faintly worried look was any indication.

Brand Sheridan was probably thinking she was more pathetic than he had ever guessed!

Still, intentionally or not—she suspected it was—he gave her a bit of space to compose herself.

He turned from her, opened the lid of the box, peered in. “I can read the letters for you. World War Two, right? I can sort through anything that pertains to that.”

She could see him watching her quietly, waiting to see if she could accept his invitation to back up a bit, to get things back to normal.

How could it be normal after she had kissed him like that? With his big assured self taking all the air out of her space? Applying all that confidence and curiosity to her stuff and her world?

Get him out of here, the old Sophie ordered her.

The new Sophie asked how could she have a drop of pride left if she let him see how damned rattled she was by the kiss she had instigated?

“Fine,” she said, tightly. “We never turn down volunteer help. I understand you’ve been home in Sugar Maple Grove for nearly forty-eight hours. It’s inevitable that the boredom is setting in. Let me set you up in the conference room.”

She did. There. Now he could find out what boredom really was!

“Just keep out anything that pertains to the Second World War,” she instructed him sweetly. “Bitsy can sort through the rest later.”

And she closed the door firmly on him.

Brand found himself in the conference room, alone, the door shut on him. She’d done that deliberately, kissed him in retribution for his messing with her schedule, just to let him know what was going to happen if he messed with her—that she could be wild and unpredictable, too.

She couldn’t really. She was as transparent as a sheet of glass. His sweet little next-door neighbor trying to be something she was not, trying to erase her image as a bookworm, wallflower, librarian.

She’d be surprised by how much Brand liked that about her. Sophie, with all her awkwardness and intellect, was different in a world where so much was same old, same old—cookie-cutter women who looked the same and talked the same and were the same.

Didn’t Sophie know what a treat it was to unearth an original? He smiled. A long time ago, before she was even old enough to know anything about anything, she’d shown disdain for his taste in women.

Still, for all that he knew she was trying to prove something to him that she couldn’t, that kiss had been startling.

There had been something disturbingly wild and unpredictable in her lips meeting his for the second time.

What had he tasted?

Hunger.

More evidence that agreeing to romance Sophie had been about his worst idea ever.

Still, no wonder she’d fallen for the first guy to pay some attention to her. She wasn’t just lonely for the family she had lost.

Nope, she was hungry, there was a fire in that girl only one thing was going to put out.

And it wasn’t the fire that was roaring to life inside him just thinking about it. He hadn’t come here planning to burn up with her. No, he’d wanted her to loosen up a little, throw out her rigidly uptight rule book, encourage her to be herself, to have a little unexpected fun.

The girl was like a tightly coiled spring of tension. Even her kiss had said that.

Ah, well, he’d sort through her dusty box for her, then take her out for lunch, coax that funny, lively original side of her to the surface.

With absolutely no kissing. He could be the better man. He could resist the temptation of Sophie…for her own good, of course.

He’d put out the fire he was feeling by giving his attention to the kind of stuff she did. If she’d been wrong that he was bored in Sugar Maple Grove—and she had been—the truth was that nobody was more surprised than him. He’d been here nearly two whole days and wasn’t climbing the walls yet?

But the box she’d given him to sort through promised to change that!

Much as Brand appreciated that she had not been lured by the temptations of a glitzy world, he couldn’t help but think, no wonder Sophie was so ready for a little excitement.

The box of so-called memorabilia contained things someone thought were important to the history of Sugar Maple Grove.

He forced himself to focus. He began to scan scraps of paper and old photos.

There were newspaper cuttings of the high-school basketball team making the state finals in 1972, faded color photos of the work team from Holy Trinity Church that had built an orphanage in Honduras in the eighties. There was a whitish-gray plaster mold of a hand that said Happy Mother’s Day on the front, and on the back, in pen, Terry Wilson. Died Vietnam, 1969.

Brand had been dealing with subtle and not so subtle forms of evil for four years. For some reason, it felt as though this box immersed him in good, in the plain living of people with small-town values and humble ambitions.

To leave the world better.

No wonder Sophie had ended up here, at the Historical Society, documenting what made a small town tick.

There were several random items, including recipes and an old garter, possibly from a wedding.

And then, in the very bottom of the box, he found a packet of letters, tied up with a frayed black velvet ribbon.

Was this the gem of Second World War memorabilia he was supposed to be hunting for? Brand untied the ribbon, and plucked the first fragile letter out of the bundle. The envelope was addressed in a careful masculine hand to Miss Sarah Sorlington, General Delivery, Sugar Maple Grove. The return address was Private Sinclair Horsenell, a censor’s heavy black pen blotting out the rest. But the postmark was February of 1942.

Pay dirt, he thought. Was this how Sophie got her thrills? It was kind of thrilling.

He carefully unfolded the letter from the young private. The paper was fragile along the fold marks, and the ink had begun to fade in places. Still, Brand was able to discern that Sinclair Horsenell had just disembarked in Ireland, part of the U.S. Army V Corps, the first Americans to deploy overseas.

“My dearest Sarah,” he read, “what an extraordinary adventure I find myself on!”

The letter was beautifully descriptive of the lushness of Ireland, describing sights and sounds, camaraderie, funny incidents around the camp.

Despite all the new things I am seeing, and the grave sense of purpose I feel, the rightness of my being here, I miss you so deeply. I think of that last afternoon we spent and the picnic you prepared, the blue of your eyes matching the blue of the sky, and I feel both that I want to be with you, and that I want to be part of protecting the simple pleasures we were able to enjoy that afternoon. My darling, I am prepared to give my life for the protection of all that we hold dear.