Forbidden Love

In the past couple of hours, he’d done what would have taken some men twice as long to accomplish just so he could get away from her. It seemed as if every time he’d looked up, he’d caught sight of her as she’d worked by the open kitchen window above the sink. And each time he’d seen her, he’d found himself having to try that much harder to shove her out of his thoughts.

The first time he’d noticed her, she had been reaching to take down the little stained glass birds that had hung along the top of the window. Her waist-length top had ridden up, exposing the strip of flesh between the waistband of her ragged cutoffs and the band of her bra. He hadn’t known which he’d found more tantalizing: the glimpse of ice-blue lace or the smooth expanse of her flat stomach.

He still hadn’t decided, even though the images were burned into his brain.

The last time he’d noticed her, she’d been standing on the counter painting something—solvent, probably—on a cabinet. Mostly what he’d seen then was the sweet curve of her backside and the long length of her legs.

Certain he’d have to be unconscious not to be aware of her, and mindful of his less-than-illustrious history with her family, he told himself the wisest thing to do would be to leave. But he was a pragmatic man. And a logical one. His job there would be infinitely easier if he and Amy could somehow call a truce. Since she was offering the opportunity, it seemed only reasonable to meet her halfway.

Aside from that, he was starving.

“Do you still burn them?” he asked, his tone mild.

“Excuse me?”

“Hamburgers. The last time you made them when I was around, they were charred on both sides and gray in the middle. We wound up having cold cuts.”

She blinked at the unexpected hint of teasing in his eyes. But before she could ask what he was talking about, she remembered, too.

The exact sequence of events was fuzzy, but she remembered him being at her parents’ house with Paige for a family barbecue. Amy had been left in charge of the grill, and she’d knocked over a cruet of salad oil that had been set on its sideboard. The resulting ball of flame had turned the meat into little lumps of coal.

“I can’t believe you remembered that.”

“I remember a lot of things about you,” he replied, his glance holding hers. “And yeah,” he murmured, “a hamburger would be great.”

The carved lines of his face were inscrutable in the moments before he swiped up the empty cement bags and carried them to the truck parked in the drive. He sounded as if remembering her was merely a matter of fact, as unremarkable to him as recalling his own name. She just had no idea why he would recall anything about her beyond the fact that she’d simply been around.

Unless, she thought as she headed into the kitchen to search drawers for matches, it was because he’d been aware of how awkward she’d felt around him, or because he’d been present during some of her more embarrassing moments. At least, they’d been embarrassing to a shy girl of seventeen with a desperate need to please her family.

She’d certainly been embarrassed the day she’d incinerated the family meal. Yet Nick hadn’t let on if he had noticed how badly she’d wished she could twitch her nose and disappear. As gallant as the hero in any young girl’s fantasies, he’d come to her aid, quietly removing the smoldering evidence to the trash while everyone else had come down on her for not paying attention to what she’d been doing. Then he’d told her with a wink that he hadn’t been in the mood for hamburgers anyway, that any one of them could have done the same thing, and whisked Paige off with him to the deli around the corner for packages of turkey and ham.

She had felt pitifully grateful to him for his kindness, and had thought him quite wonderful for defusing her little disaster. But she’d already thought him pretty wonderful, anyway. The problem was that she’d grown to feel more than simple gratitude. She had begun to feel things she had no business feeling toward a man who was going to be her brother-in-law. Things that had made her heart hurt when she’d realized he wouldn’t be part of their family. Things that had actually made her feel relieved when he’d gone, because her feelings toward him had started making her feel uncomfortable with her sister. She and Paige had next to nothing in common and Paige had always done everything so much better than Amy felt she ever could, but Amy had never in her life felt envious or jealous of her until she’d fallen so hard for Nick herself.

No one had known she’d had such a crush on him. And a crush was all it could have been at seventeen. No one but her grandmother. When her confused feelings had driven her to confide in the dear woman, Bea had gently assured her that it wasn’t at all unusual for a young girl to become infatuated with an unattainable older man. It was simply part of growing up.

Amy absently adjusted the flame on the grill. The flash of guilt and attraction she’d experienced earlier as she’d watched Nick from the window was back. Only now, the disturbing feelings were a little harder to tamp down, a little harder to deny.

She pointedly turned to the house, putting her heart into the effort anyway. She had been young and impressionable then, but she was adult enough now to know that it was only memories making her feel those old conflicts. That, and being back in Cedar Lake, back in a place where she would perpetually feel the insecurities of being seventeen.

“Mind if I go inside and wash up? I could use some soap.”

Nick’s deep voice vibrated over her nerves like the roll of distant thunder. Her stomach jumped. Pressing her hand to it, she turned to see him a few feet behind her on the concrete patio.

He’d washed out the wheelbarrow with the hose at the side of the house. Skimming a glance past the water-darkened spots on his jeans, she dropped her hand to her side. “Go ahead,” she murmured, wondering if he’d ever suspected how she’d felt about him. She would have died of mortification if he had. “Take the door to the left inside the kitchen. It’s the first door on your right in the hall.”

He glanced from the gas jets sending flame over the metal coals. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

“I’ll call if there’s a fire.”

She saw the corner of his mouth kick up in what almost passed for a smile, then watched him take the six back stairs two at a time and disappear into the house. Moments later, she followed, making herself concentrate only on the task of feeding him. The man was probably famished. Considering what she’d seen some of the older boys at school pack away, she had the feeling one little hamburger wasn’t going to cut it.

It took her mere minutes to throw the patties on the gas grill, pile sliced tomato, onions and cheese on a plate and gather condiments and buns and set them on the table on the back lawn. She was on her way back in after flipping the meat when she met Nick coming into the kitchen.

He’d washed his face. Splashed water on it, anyway. The neck of his shirt was damp and his thick hair was darkened to almost black from the water he’d used when he combed it. She didn’t know if it was because he’d combed his hair straight back or because it was darker, but his chiseled features seemed more elegant, somehow, the blue of his eyes more intense.

Preferring to ignore the catch in her pulse, she set a small sack of chips on top of a container of deli salad she’d taken from the fridge.

“Go on out,” she said, balancing the salad and chips in one hand as she reached for the napkins, utensils and plates. A bunch of grapes she’d rinsed sat in a bowl by the sink. “It’s just about ready,” she told him, thinking she’d have to make one more trip.

“What do you want me to take?”

“Nothing. I’ve got it,” she insisted, and decided to stack the plates on top of the bowl.

Seeing what she was trying to do, ignoring her disclaimer, he took the bowl himself.

“Is this everything?” he asked.

She hesitated. “I could heat some baked beans if you want. There’s canned goods in the pantry. Or I have some yogurt. Except for cereal, this is all I have. I didn’t buy much at the store.”

Confusion flashed in his eyes. Seconds later, comprehension replaced it. “I’m not talking about what you’re fixing for dinner, Amy. Whatever you have here is fine. I mean to take outside. There’s no reason for you to carry all this by yourself.”

“Oh,” she murmured, aware of the brush of his hand against hers as he took the chips and salad. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” he murmured in return, and moved ahead of her so he could hold the door.

The sun had just dropped below the horizon, the pale light of evening turning the pine trees a dusky shade of blue. The calm water of the lake reflected nothing but shadows, crickets called to each other and from the rocks along the water’s edge the deep croak of frogs filtered through the balmy air.

Amy was acutely aware of the twilight stillness as she took what Nick carried for her and placed it on the old redwood picnic table that sat halfway between the house and the water. It was a time of day she had once found welcoming and restful. Since she’d been in Cedar Lake this time, it had simply seemed lonely.

She attributed the unfamiliar feeling to the isolation of the place, and the fact that she was there by herself. She was accustomed to feeling isolated when it came to her family, but this was different. She’d never been at the lake house alone before, and it felt odd without her grandmother around. As Nick lowered himself to the long bench opposite her seat, she had to admit it felt even more strange to be alone there with him.

Her glance caught his across the table. The way he was watching her, he didn’t look all that certain about being there, either.

Refusing to let her gesture turn uncomfortable for them both, she handed him the relish plate. “Help yourself,” she said, and reached for the salad she really didn’t want.

He immediately took her up on her suggestion, piling tomato slices on his cheeseburger. “I always thought it would seem like one long vacation living in a place like this. On the water, I mean. I used to really envy the kids who could hang around a lake during the summer.”

“You make it sound as if you never had access to one. There are dozens of lakes around here.”

“That doesn’t mean I had the time,” he informed her, adding lettuce. “I spent every summer from the time I was ten years old working construction with my uncle. We’d go out to Blue Springs for a Sunday picnic once in a while,” he said, speaking of one of the public lakes in the area, “but there was never time to spend a whole day just hanging out.” Adding the top bun to the three-inch-high sandwich, he nodded toward the water. “It’s nice here.”

His tone was conversational, his manner less guarded than it had seemed just a short while ago. She figured that had to do with the fact that she was feeding him. It would be rude of him to be sullen.

“You worked construction when you were ten?”

“From then through college,” he confirmed, taking the container of salad she handed him.

“That’s awfully young.” It was also unconscionable, she thought. A ten-year-old was merely a child.

An image of him as a young boy wavered in the back of her mind as she watched him spoon pasta salad onto his plate. She could easily imagine the fresh, eager faces of her male students and all that budding manhood trapped in their energetic little bodies. But there was too much of an edge to the man sitting across from her for her to imagine him that innocent.

He handed the salad back.

“I was hardly an abused child, if that’s what you’re thinking.” From the troubled look on her face, Nick had the distinct feeling that it was. The woman was as transparent as window glass. She always had been. “I had to beg Uncle Mike to take me with him at first. If I remember right, I promised I’d wash his truck for him if he’d let me go.”

“Why?”

“Because I didn’t want to stay with my aunt and cousins while my mom was at work. It’s not that I didn’t like my relatives,” he qualified, in case she got the wrong idea there, too. “It was just that they were all female. There was more appeal to being with the guys and wearing a hard hat than being around a bunch of girls.”

Realizing she was still holding the salad, she set it aside and absently reached for the tomatoes herself. She had no problem imagining a young boy preferring the company of men over girls. She just couldn’t imagine a responsible adult allowing a child to deliberately be where it wasn’t safe. “But wasn’t that dangerous? A child being at a construction site, I mean?”

“It sounds more dangerous than it was.” Nick took a bite of burger, wondering as he did if she realized how much of her guard had slipped. By the time he swallowed, he’d decided she hadn’t simply forgotten to be wary. He actually detected real concern. “Mike had a partner back then,” he explained, wanting her to know there was no way his uncle would have put him in jeopardy. “And the company was bigger. He and Roy, his partner,” he clarified, “supervised the jobs, rather than actually working on them the way Mike does now.”

The way he’s had to do since his partner retired last year, Nick mentally muttered, hating how hard his uncle was working just when he should be slowing down himself. But Mike couldn’t slow down. He’d borrowed to buy out his partner’s interest in the business and he’d also lost money on contracts because it was taking him longer to complete them with less help.

Feeling his stomach knot with the thoughts, Nick glanced across the table and met the quiet interest in Amy’s guileless eyes. Drawn by that interest, distracted by it, he felt the quick surge of frustration fade.

“He would let me watch some of the craftsmen as long as he was nearby,” he told her. “The rest of the time, he stuck me out of the way with a stack of wood and a hammer. Or I’d sit in the truck after he explained what they were working on that day and try to figure out where they were on the blueprints. He didn’t really put me to work until I was a little older.”

“And you really liked it,” she quietly concluded.

“I couldn’t learn enough fast enough. Building something from nothing fascinated me. That’s when I first decided to become an architect,” he admitted, eyeing his hamburger again. “Except I wanted to live in a city and build skyscrapers.”

He offered his last comment casually, as if his ambition were a mere aside in life, and turned his attention to his meal. It didn’t seem to Amy that it bothered him to be working once again for his uncle. If anything, he seemed completely accepting of it. Yet, as curious as she found that, considering the brilliant future her parents and Paige had once thought he had ahead of him, what struck her most was what he’d said about his family.

She knew nothing about them. Though he and Paige had gone out together for nearly a year in college, he had been around the Chapman house only for a few months—mostly on weekends because he’d taken the job in New York by then—before he’d disappeared from their lives. If mention had been made of his family, it had never been around her.

She told herself it was only to keep the silence from growing awkward that she asked about them now.

“I didn’t realize you have so many relatives here.”

“I don’t have anymore. Just Uncle Mike, Aunt Kate and one cousin. The rest have moved away.”

“Your mom, too?”

It occurred to Nick that she had yet to touch her meal, something that struck him as odd, since she’d had him do all the talking. Reaching across the table, he nudged her plate closer to her and told her that his mom had taken a transfer to Florida a few years ago when the insurance company she worked for opened offices there. Because Amy asked if he and his cousins had been close, he then told her that all six of them were like sisters to him. At least, as he imagined sisters would be, since he had no siblings of his own. He and his mom had lived only a couple of blocks from them, and his aunt and uncle’s chaotic house had been like a second home.

He had no idea why he told her that. It wasn’t like him to talk about the things that had mattered to him the most when he’d been growing up. Until he stopped, he hadn’t even realized how easily he’d been talking. But the quiet didn’t feel uncomfortable. At least, it didn’t until Amy casually lit the citron candle on the table to ward off the bugs and the dark now that the sun had set and asked about the one person in his family he hadn’t bothered to mention.

“What about your father?” she asked, her skin glowing golden in the candlelight.

His glance slid from hers. “What about him?”

Amy tipped her head, watching as he distractedly traced the logo on his empty cola can. He looked almost as nonchalant as he sounded. It was the way he’d so quickly looked away that gave her pause. Until that moment, she hadn’t realized how relaxed he’d become with her.

And she with him.

“You haven’t said anything about him.” She offered the observation quietly, thinking it obvious that he had great affection for his extended family. It was just that he and his uncle seemed to have been the only two men in it.

“There’s nothing to say.” The light of the flame glinted like a spark off the silver metal as he nudged the aluminum container aside. “He left when I was nine.”

“So Mike is more like a father to you than an uncle.”

At the quickness of her quiet conclusion, he met her eyes. “You could say that. Yeah,” he admitted, since it didn’t feel right to be vague about the role the man had played in his life. “He is.”

His glance skimmed her face, drifted to her mouth. Realizing how closely he was studying her, he forced his attention away. He didn’t want to wonder why she was interested in any of this. He didn’t want to be curious about her at all. But more than anything else, he didn’t want to sit there with that soft light playing over her delicate features and think about how appealing he found the melodic sound of her voice and how comfortable he felt at her table.

“Speaking of Uncle Mike,” he muttered, wanting to cut off the thoughts that had crept in anyway, “I really have to get going. I need to talk to him before he goes to bed.” He also had another job to tackle tonight. He only hoped that, unlike last night, he wouldn’t fall asleep at his drafting table.

“But before I go,” he said, pulling a pen from his pocket, “I need you to tell me more about the room addition your grandmother wants. Your idea to close in the porch is good, so we’ll start with that.”

Pushing aside their plates, he slid a clean napkin toward her. “Show me what you have in mind.” Half a dozen bold slashes and he’d roughed out the shape of the porch and indicated the entrance to the kitchen. “Mark where you think she’d want windows and doors. And give me an idea of the space she’ll need for a closet.”

He leaned closer, repositioning the candle between them, and handed her the pen.

She took it, aware of the odd flutter of her nerves at his nearness, and tried to concentrate only on doing what her grandmother had asked of her as she explained what she thought the older woman would want. She also tried very hard not to feel flattered by the glints of approval she caught in his eyes when she offered a couple of suggestions her grandma hadn’t mentioned, or to feel pleased when he thanked her for dinner and told her her cooking skills had definitely improved. After all, she was no longer the naive girl she’d once been, and he was no longer the white knight she’d believed him to be.

He was the man who had hurt her sister.

Chapter Four

“I’m in the laundry room, Amy. Come on in.”

“I can’t.” Hearing her sister’s muffled voice, Amy tugged on the latch and squinted up through Paige’s back screen door. “You’ve got the child lock on.”

“I can get it!” came a little voice over the scrape of a chair being dragged across a shining white pine floor. Grinning through the silver haze of wire mesh at her aunt, the dainty little three-year-old with crystal blue eyes and a headful of blond curls gave a final shove and climbed up on the custom-upholstered seat. “Are you gonna take us to Gramma Bea’s house to play in the boat, Aunt Amy?”

“Not today, sweetheart,” she murmured, watching her youngest niece push up the high latch with a wooden spoon. “I have work to do. And it looks like it’s going to rain.”

“Can we come tomorrow?”

“I’ll talk to your mom about it. Be careful, Sarah. I don’t want you to fall.”

“Sarah Marie, what are you doing?”

The latch opened an instant before the little girl whipped around, all angelic innocence and golden curls. “Aunt Amy can’t get in.”

“So much for child locks,” Paige muttered, catching her youngest daughter beneath the arms of her pink coveralls and lifting her to the floor. “Go find your sister. Lunch is ready.

“Amy,” the striking blonde continued, sounding relieved as she pulled the chair out of the way and pushed open the door, “I’m so glad you’re here. I was planning to use my jade runners and an arrangement of iris and stones on the table for the dinner party we’re having next week, but Darren just called and said the Johnstons are in town and that he invited them to come. Now I have to use something else.”

“Why?”

“Because that’s what I used the last time they came to dinner,” she replied, looking seriously troubled at the thought of repeating the same table setting. “I have a sage runner I haven’t used before and I saw some wonderful amethyst lotus bowls in town that would be perfect filled with hydrangeas. I can be in and out of the store in no time if you’ll stay with the girls. I know I have days to get them, but I’ll need three and I’m afraid they might not have them if I wait.”

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