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

I know you wanted to marry before I left, but that is not what I wanted for you. You deserve so much more than a rushed ceremony. I live to see you in a white dress, floating down the aisle toward me, a bouquet of forget-me-nots to match your eyes.

Wait for me, sweet Sarah. Wait.

Yours forever,

Sinclair

The letters had been carefully saved in their chronological order and Brand soon saw that Sinclair wrote faithfully, sometimes just a line or two, sometimes long letters. As the time passed, Brand noticed the excitement waning, giving way to the tedium of military life. Now the letters held occasional complaints about the lack of action, the officers, the terrible food.

The letter made Brand think, sadly, that things didn’t change. Young men went away to war, and left sweethearts behind them.

“Did you find something?”

Things didn’t change, but people did.

Sophie stood in the doorway, watching him, and he put away the letter he was reading.

Why did he feel reluctant to let her know what he had found? Because those letters were making him feel something. Uneasy.

“Just some old letters. They might have value. I haven’t finished reading them yet. Bitsy is probably better qualified than me to decide what has historical value, but I’m willing to go out on a limb and guess these two items don’t.”

He handed her the recipe for Corn Flakes casserole and the garter.

She laughed, and it was a good sound. Not a girlish giggle, but genuine. He was unaware how he had longed for genuine things until he heard it. It pulled him toward her like a beacon guiding a fisherman lost in a fog.

“Are you ready for lunch?” she asked.

There was something shy in that, his old Sophie, not the girl she had tried to convince him she was when she had kissed him. This Sophie’s laughter was so genuine it made him ache.

Brand glanced at his watch, amazed at how much time had gone by. Somehow the genuineness in her, coupled with the genuineness of the emotion in Sinclair’s letters made him feel bad about playing with Sophie’s world.

He didn’t want to have lunch with her and look at her lips and be the kind of guy who plotted another taste of them.

“You know what?” he said. “You were probably right. Let’s follow your schedule. I’ll see you tomorrow night after supper. We’ll ride our bikes down Main Street, go for ice cream. It will be a highly visible activity that the whole town can see.”

She stared at him. Disappointed? Annoyed?

That was good, he tried to tell himself. If they were going to carry off this courtship thing with no one getting hurt, it would be for the best if she found him disappointing and annoying.

“I’ll take these with me,” he said, gathering up the letters. “And get them back to you when I’m finished going through them.”

Why did he feel that he had to protect her from the letters? They were just sweet letters a young, heartsick man had written home.

For some reason, Brand wanted to make sure they had a happy ending.

As though he needed to protect her if they didn’t.

He had a feeling this desire to protect Sophie was going to do nothing but get him in trouble. Especially since it was now evident this was a more complicated mission than he had first perceived.

He had to protect her from himself and his reaction to her hunger.

“See you tomorrow,” he said breezily. “Are you still a purely vanilla girl?”

“You think I’m really boring,” she said.

Her lips had already told him there was a secret side to her that was anything but boring, but he was determined he wasn’t going there.

He thought of the world he had lived in for four years, where God forbid anybody should ever be bored, and so they had become adept at manufacturing all the excitement money could buy. And become so addicted to it, they were prepared to do anything to keep a lifestyle they had not legitimately earned, were not legitimately entitled to.

He thought of the letters in his hand, letters from a young man who was probably beginning to yearn for all those things he had once called boring.

“Don’t,” he told Sophie sternly, moving by her, the letters in his hand, “say boring as if it’s a bad thing.”

Chapter Six

SOPHIE could not resist going to the window and watching Brand get on an old bicycle and peddle away. It was a woman’s bike, and ancient. Probably it had belonged to his mother.

And yet, the way he rode it, he could have been a knight and the bike a war horse. With his colossal confidence he could probably stride down Main Street in a pair of canvas pirate’s pants, and nothing else without flinching.

Not that she wanted to be thinking about him like that! Why would he flinch? She had seen his considerable assets, seen him without his shirt, the perfection of skin stretched taut over hard muscle marred only by recent thorn scratches. He knew what he had, the devil, and probably knew exactly the effect it had on women!

The man was maddening! He’d tempted her to kiss him! He had made her feel driven to show him that just because she was a small-town girl, naive and heartbroken, his big strong self was not going to march into her world and take control of everything!

Ha! She was going to show him. That kiss had just been a start!

Though when she thought of that it occurred to her she wasn’t quite ready to mess with a force that had the potential for so much power.

Even thinking about that, her hand moved to her lips, to the puffiness where his lips had touched her lips—collided really—and she felt a shiver, of longing, of awareness, of aliveness.

No, she had better stick to surprising him with small things.

“Vanilla ice cream, indeed. Tiger passion fruit,” she told herself. “Or banana fudge chunk.”

That’s it, girl, she added silently, live dan-gerously.

But she already knew that once you had played with the danger of lips like his, the chances of erasing the thrill of that memory were probably slight to nil.

Sophie willed herself to be only annoyed with Brand for messing with her plans, for tilting her tidy world so off-kilter, for making her want so badly to be seen in ways she had never been seen before.

And probably never will be, she thought with a resigned sigh.

He was a force to be reckoned with, fast and furious, like a hurricane sweeping through. Only a fool thought they could play with a hurricane, or tame it or force it onto a path other than the one it had chosen.

But the scent of the sweet peas filled her office, a poignancy in the fragrance that made it hard to be annoyed, and harder still to build her defenses against his particular kind of storm. It reminded her everything was more complicated than that.

He wasn’t just a hurricane.

Sometimes, like when he’d leaned across that counter this morning and played with her fingertips, he was so much what she had remembered him being a devil-may-care boy, full of himself and mischief, his charm abundant, his confidence reckless.

But when she had walked into that conference room and he had looked up at her, and refused to go for the lunch he’d invited her on, it had not been that boy.

Or a hurricane, either.

It had not even been the man she had stolen a daring kiss from.

That new veil had been down in Brand’s eyes, something remote and untouchable, the fierce discipline of a warrior surrounding him like impenetrable armor.

That had never been in him before. Something hard and cold, a formidable mountain that defied being climbed. It was something lonelier than the wind howling down an empty mountain valley on a stormy winter day.

She shivered thinking about it, and thinking about the kind of bravery it would take to tackle what she had seen in his eyes, to ignore the No Trespassing signs, to try and rescue him from a place he had been and could not leave.

Sophie, she scoffed at herself, you don’t know that.

But the problem was that she did. And now that she knew it, how could she walk away and leave him there?

Even if that’s what he thought he wanted?

The next evening Sophie dressed carefully for their outing to the ice-cream parlor. Her war with herself was evident in her choices: her shorts rolled a touch higher up her thigh than they would normally have been, the V in her newly purchased halter top a touch lower.

Just in case that kiss had not done the trick, she was not going to be dismissed as the little sweet geek from next door! She wanted the days of Brand Sheridan feeling like her brotherly protector to be over!

And at the same time, she didn’t want him to get the idea she was trying to be sexy for him, because she thought probably every girl in the world had tried way too hard around him for way too long.

So she wore no makeup and pulled her hair back into a no-nonsense ponytail.

Her grandmother approved of the outfit, but not ice cream or bike-riding as romantic choices.

“He loves ice cream, Grandma, he always has.”

“Ach. Do you have to ride your bike to get it? You’ll be all sweaty. And your hair!” She was still squawking away in German when she went to answer the door.

In German: “The hair! It makes you look like a woman I used to buy fish from.” In English, “Hello, Brand,” in German, “She died lonely.”

“It could have been the fish smell,” Sophie said, in English, because it was too complicated to figure out how to say it in German. Did her hair look that bad? Not just the careless do of a woman confident in herself?

Brand stepped in, and Sophie was anxious about who had come: the carefree boy from next door, or the new Brand, the weary warrior.

It was the warrior, something in him untouchable. The smile that graced his lips did not even begin to reach his eyes.

Just like that, it wasn’t about her. It was not, she thought, pulling the band from her hair, a good thing to die lonely.

“Everything okay?” she asked him quietly, as she gathered her bag and slipped out the door he held open for her. She glanced at his face.

He looked startled, as if he had expected the smile to fool her. “Yeah, fine.”

She looked at him, again, longer. It wasn’t. So, she would work from the present, backwards until she found out what had put that look on his face.

And then what? she asked herself, and when no answer came she hoped she would just know when the time came.

“How are things with your dad?” she asked, casually, as they went down the steps. She thought something had happened in the conference room, but the rejection of his father couldn’t be helping.

“Why don’t you tell me? How are things with my dad? Is he okay in that house by himself?”

She was aware he was trying to divert her, as if he had sensed she was going to try and go places angels feared to tread.

“Your dad is one of the most capable men I know.”

“That answers your question then, doesn’t it? Things with my dad are fine.”

He got astride the old girl’s bike, waited for her…she didn’t miss the fact that he looked long and hard at her legs and then took a deep breath and looked away.

“Except for the little matter of him catching his house on fire,” he muttered, as they began to pedal down the quiet street, side by side. “Why don’t you tell me what you know about that?”

Somehow he had turned it around! He was being the inquisitor. And she’d bet he was darn good at it, too, when he put that cold, hard cop look on his face.

“I’m not spying on your dad for you!”

“You know what happened,” he said, watching her face way too closely.

Well, yes, she did. But Dr. Sheridan had specifically asked her not to tell Brand that he and her grandmother had been caught in a fairly compromising position as the house burned around them. He had also asked her, last night, just before he had taken Hilde for dinner, not to mention that he and her grandmother were having a real romance.

“But don’t you think he’ll notice?” Sophie had asked, uncomfortable to be put in yet another position of deception.

“I’m counting on you to be a distraction,” the doctor had said pleasantly.

“But why don’t you just tell him?”

“He’ll see it as a betrayal of his mother. Brand is a man who likes being lonely.”

Now, looking at the coolly removed expression on Brand’s face, Sophie could see there was some truth in the doctor’s assessment of his son. Brand had developed a gift for distance.

Who was this man? Once he would have tried to argue it out of her, tease it out of her, coax it out of her.

Now he just cast her a look that was coolly assessing, said nothing more about the fire and quickened his pace so that his bike shot ahead of hers.

And, as aggravating as she had found his appearance in her office yesterday, as much as she had felt vulnerable to him, Sophie decided to try another tack to coax that chilly look off his face and bring the boy she had always known back to the surface.

Sophie put on a bit of steam herself, pulled out beside him and then passed him. She took the lead, then turned around, placed her thumb on her nose and waggled her fingers at him.

“Ha, ha,” she said, “you have a girl’s bike!”

So much for the new Sophie, all slick sophistication and suave polish.

Brand had always been competitive, and he read it as the challenge she had intended. Just as she had known, he could not resist. She could hear the whir of his bike spokes, the rubber tires hissing on the pavement. She pedaled harder. She was on an eighteen-speed, he on a three. He was going to have to work very hard to keep up with her.

Apparently he was up to the task. When she heard him coming up on her right-hand side, she swerved in front of him, heard his yelp of surprise as she cut him off and kept the lead.

“Hey,” he called, “you’re playing dirty!”

Her laugh of fiendish enjoyment was entirely genuine. She rose off the seat, leaned forward, stood up on those pedals and went hard.

Mr. Machalay crept out on the road in front of her, one arm full of groceries, the other clamped down on the leash of his ancient dog, Max. She rang her bell frantically and swerved around them. She glanced over her shoulder. Brand swerved the other way around Mr. Machalay and Max, both of whom now stood frozen to the spot. Mr. Machalay dropped the leash and waved his fist at them.

“Sorry,” she called. Still, she was pleased with her lead. It didn’t last long.

“You’re going to cause an accident,” he panted, way too close to her ear.

“Oh, well,” she called back, breathless. “Better than dying of boredom.”

“I thought I told you that wasn’t a bad thing!”

“Coming from the great adventurer, Brand Sheridan, I found that a little hard to buy.”

“Watch your tone,” he instructed her, exasperated. “You’re supposed to adore me!”

She laughed recklessly.

“You needn’t make that sound as if it’s impossible,” he called, and then he pulled his bike up right beside her.

Sophie thought she’d been pedaling with everything she had, but a sudden whoosh of adrenaline filled her and she dug deep and found something extra.

They were racing full-out, and she loved the breathless feeling, loved the wind in her hair, her heart pumping, her muscles straining. She loved knowing he was beside her. She felt as if she had been asleep and suddenly she was gloriously, wonderfully alive.

He reached out over the tiny distance between them, and touched her, a gentle slap on her shoulder, as if they were playing tag, and then he surged ahead, effortlessly, as if he had only been playing with her all along.

Though his bike was older and less sound, his legs were longer and stronger. But it was his heart, the fierce, competitive heart of a warrior, that made this race impossible for her to win.

She cast him a look as he shot by and smiled to herself. She might not win this race, but she had won in another way.

It was there. A light shone in his face, laughter sparked in his eyes, the line of his mouth, though determined, had softened with fun. It took her back over the years and made her think maybe she did not have to go as far as she thought to find him where he was lost.

Now he was way out in front, weaving fearlessly in and out of the growing traffic as they got closer to Main Street and downtown.

He turned, put his thumb to his nose, waggled his fingers at her as she had done to him. “I might have a girl’s bike, but I’m no girl!”

“Don’t say that as if there’s something wrong with being a girl!”

And then they were both laughing, and he deliberately slowed up and let her catch him.

“Nothing at all wrong with being a girl,” he told her, sweetly, solemnly.

By the time they arrived at Maynard’s they were together, the couple that they hoped to convince everyone they were.

He threw down his bike, and lay on the grassy boulevard, taking deep breaths, looking up through the canopy of leaves to the sky.

She threw down her own bike, and saw he was choking on laughter. It was a good sight and a good sound. She had broken down the barrier around him, and she was satisfied with that.

She lay down on the grass beside him. Who cared who saw them? Wasn’t that the point? Thanks to Grandma she kept her arms glued to her sides in case she was sweaty.

“You nearly killed me,” he accused her.

“That would be a cruel irony, wouldn’t it? With all the things you’ve seen and done, to die racing your bicycle down the Main Street of Sugar Maple Grove?”

The laughter was gone.

“Yeah,” he said, “that would be a cruel irony.”

“What have you seen and done?” she whispered, seeing his defenses down, moving in. Tell me.

But he got up and held out his hand to her, pulled her to her feet. She hoped any sweat had dried, but if there was any, he didn’t notice or didn’t care.

He stood staring at her for a long time, debating something.

She held her breath, knowing somehow he needed this.

And yet not at all surprised when he was able to deny his own need.

Instead, he kidded, “What have I seen and done? Ice-cream flavors you wouldn’t believe.”

“Such as?”

“On the tame side, Philippine mango. On the wild side, ox tongue in Japan.”

“Ox-tongue ice cream?” she said skeptically.

“Or oyster, garlic, or whale. Seriously.”

“Did you try those?”

“Of course. Who could resist trying them?”

At the risk of confirming she was boring, she stated, “Me!”

“You only live once. Rose petal is a favorite in the Middle East. You might like that.”

“You’ve eaten rose-petal ice cream?”

“Yeah.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

And the moment when he had almost told her something, revealed a hidden part of himself was gone, but this was something, too, to have him relaxed at her side, remembering exotic flavors of ice cream, and unless she was mistaken, enjoying this little slice of small-town life.

“Surprise me,” he told her. “Order something other than vanilla.”

And then Sophie was duty-bound to order vanilla, since he had suggested something else!

“Not unless they have rose petal,” she decided. “Or if they have ox tongue I might try that.”

And he laughed, because they both knew she never would, not even if she was starving to death and ox-tongue ice cream was the only food left on the face of the earth.

After they had gotten their ice cream in chocolate-dipped waffle cones, they left their bikes lying on the grassy boulevard, unlocked, and strolled down Main Street. The evening was not cooling, and even as light leached from the sky it was so hot that the ice cream was melting faster than they could eat it.

There was something about this experience: walking down Main Street with him, licking ice cream while the sun went down on a day that had been scorching hot, that was both simple and profound. She didn’t know what it said about her life that this felt like one of the best moments ever.

And it didn’t hurt that other women were looking at her with unabashed envy, either! Or that he seemed oblivious to the fuss he caused, to the sidelong looks, to the inviting smiles, as if being with her was all that mattered.

Was he really that good an actor? No, he’d always had that gift. No matter who he had been with, it had always felt as if, when he focused on her, she was all that mattered to him.

He stopped in front of an art gallery, closed for the day.

“Like any of them?” he asked her of the paintings in the window. He crunched down the last of his cone, and licked some stray ice cream off the inside of his wrist.

It was so sexy she nearly fainted.

She studied the paintings with more intensity. “I like that one,” she decided, finally. It was safe to glance at him. No more ice-cream licking. “The one with the old red boat tied at the end of the dock.”

“What do you like about it?”

It took my mind off what you could do with that tongue if you set your mind to it. And she bet he had set his mind to it. Lots.

“The promise,” she stammered. “Long summer days that just unfold without a plan.”

Moments caught in time, she thought, moments like this one that somehow became profound without even trying.

“Somehow I have trouble imaging you without a plan,” he said.

“I’m not uptight!” Though a woman whose mind went in twisted directions over a lick of ice cream was probably, at the very least, repressed.

“Of course you aren’t,” he said soothingly, smiling at her in an annoying way, as if he was going to pat her on the head. Then he studied the painting.

“It’s been a long time since I spent a day like that,” he said, and something slipped by his guard. Wistfulness?

“You were never the type of guy who did things like that,” she reminded him. “A day fishing? Too quiet for you.”

“I know, I was the guy roaring down Main Street on my secondhand motorcycle with no muffler. Leaping from the cliff above Blue Rock, that outcrop that we called the Widow Maker. Jumping my bicycle over dirt-pile ramps at high speeds.”

“Which you have just proven you still are!”

He smiled, but the wistfulness was there. “After I wrecked my third bicycle my dad wouldn’t buy me another one. Everything seemed simple back then,” he said. With a certain longing?

Could she help him back to that? And also prove she could be spontaneous, not uptight? A girl who could surrender her plan?

“Want to try it?” she asked. “I could find a boat. Your dad has fishing rods. We could dig some worms.”

The new Sophie was appalled, of course, and her grandmother would be, too. What kind of romance plan was that? Digging worms? But the truth was she was suddenly way more anxious to see him enjoy himself, truly and deeply, than she was to manipulate his impressions of her.

Except for the impression that she had to have a plan.

“It’s not on the courtship list,” he teased her.

“I can adjust the list.”

He shrugged, amused. “You can?” he asked, with faked incredulousness. “It’s your courtship, Sophie. If you want to dig worms and go fishing, I’ll go along.”

Good. He’d be so much more amenable if he thought this was about her and not him.

“We can go tomorrow after work,” she decided. “I’ll track down a boat. Can you look after the worms?”

“Sorry, I’m not depriving you of the pure romance of digging worms with me.”

And then he was laughing at the look on her face, and that laughter was worth any price. Even digging worms!

Sophie was less certain when she stood beside him the next evening in his mother’s rose garden.