Yours to Keep (4 page)

It was good physical labor that worked up a sweat, but it didn’t make him nearly as hot and bothered as watching Emma work. She didn’t whine. Didn’t worry about breaking a nail. She just worked alongside him, humming country tunes under her breath, and he found out the hard way how attractive a hard-working woman could be.

Ten feet, he thought. Ten feet between his bed and hers. A few steps.

Then she bent over in front of him to adjust a rock and he dropped the one he was holding onto his toes, which made a dozen curses echo through his head, though he managed not to say them out loud.

Thirty days with Emma was shaping up to be one hell of a job.

“It’s not Disney World, Sean. You get in, you get what you need and you get out.” If Emma had known shopping with him was going to be like this, she would have hidden a cattle prod in her purse.

“I’m shopping.”

“No, you’re meandering.”

He stopped the cart—again—to look at something on the shelf and then resumed walking at a snail’s pace. “I might see something I need.”

“I have a list. See?” She held it up. “I know what we need.”

“That’s
your
list. Do you have salt-and-vinegar chips on it?”

“No. I don’t like salt-and-vinegar flavor. Makes my tongue burn.”

“See? If we sprint through the store, just getting what’s on your list, I won’t have any salt-and-vinegar chips.”

“Maybe if you’d written down a few notes about yourself, I would have put them on my list.”

He shook his head. “I don’t come with an owner’s manual. Sorry.”

She pulled on the end of the cart, trying to make him move a little faster. “The store closes in six hours. You might need to pick up the pace.”

He stopped so abruptly the cart jerked her arm. “You need to relax.”

“No, I need to get the shopping done so I can move on to the next thing.” She glared at him, willing him to shut his mouth and move his feet.

“You know, for a long time I’ve had what Uncle Sam saw fit to issue me and what my family could send in a care package,” he said quietly, and her impatience fizzled and died like a match dropped in a puddle. “When I got back stateside, I bought some necessities, but not a lot because I was on the move. I’d like to browse a little bit.”

“I’m sorry.” She let go of the cart and blew out a breath. “Here you are doing me a huge favor and I’m being all…intense.”

“Bitchy,” he muttered, not quite under his breath.

“I prefer intense.”

“Intensely bitchy.”

Between the amusement lurking at the corners of his mouth and the fact he was right, Emma decided to let it go. Not only his less-than-flattering assessment of her mood, but the stress of her grandmother’s impending arrival. What was the worst that could happen if this didn’t work? Gram would be angry and see this little escapade as proof it was all too much for Emma. She’d sell the house and Emma would rent an apartment and life would go on.

And that thought made her want to cry, so she shook it off and tried to be patient as they very, very slowly made their way up and down the aisles.

“What the hell is this?” Sean picked up a box from the shelf and showed it to her. “It looks like a cheese grater for your feet.”

“Women like having smooth heels.”

“Do you have one of these?”

“Hell, no. It looks like a cheese grater.”

They laughed as he put it back and moved on to the next thing that caught his fancy. Between the department store and the grocery store, they managed to almost fill the bed of his truck but, an hour later when it was all put away, it didn’t seem to make much of a difference.

“It still doesn’t look like you’ve lived here for a year.”

Sean shrugged and sat backward on a kitchen chair, folding his arms across the back of it. “She won’t think much of it. Single, former army guys aren’t really known for dragging around domestic clutter.”

“It just seems like you should have more…stuff. Pictures and sports trophies and stuff like that.”

“It’s all in boxes in the attic back home. If she says something, which she won’t, I’ll just tell her I haven’t gotten around to getting them yet.”

She grabbed a couple of sodas out of the fridge and set one in front of him. “Lisa told me a little bit about your family. She said you’re all really close to Leo and Mary, even though you were all in Maine.”

“My mom died when I was nine. It was an aneurism, so we didn’t even see it coming and everything would have gone to shit, including my dad, if not for Aunt Mary and Rosie. Rosie’s the housekeeper at the lodge, but really she’s more than that. She stepped up and raised her own daughter, plus helped my dad raise the five of us. He died nine years ago, but Rosie’s still there, helping Josh run the lodge. But without Aunt Mary backing her up, I don’t know how we would have turned out.”

She loved the way his face softened when he talked about his family. And the way the muscles in his arm flexed as he lifted the soda to his mouth. And the way his throat worked as he swallowed. And…

And nothing, she told herself. She needed to think of him as an employee…kind of. Except for the whole sharing-a-bedroom thing.

“So tomorrow’s the big day,” he said, and she wondered if he was just trying to change the subject away from his family. “Are you ready?”

“As ready as I can be, I guess. I can’t wait to see her, of course. I’ve missed her so much, but a month is a long time.”

“It’ll fly by once we settle in and you two start catching up on lost time.”

She twisted the ring on her finger, watching the stone catch the last rays of the late-day sun. “For something I’ve obsessed about right down to the last detail, I can’t help but think I should have thought it through a little more.”

“You can still change your mind.”

She shook her head. “No, we’re committed.”

“Or we should be,” he said, and they both laughed.

Then he drained the last of his soda and stood. “I’m going to hit the road. Gonna relax and get a good night’s sleep before the big show starts.”

“Okay. If you bring your stuff over by ten, you’ll have time to put it away before I have to leave for the airport.”

“I’ll be here.”

After he was gone, Emma collapsed on the couch in a bundle of raw nerves. Starting tomorrow, she was going to have to start convincing her grandmother she was in love with Sean Kowalski. And tomorrow Sean would be moving into her house. Into her bedroom. Into her life.

A good night’s sleep was out of the question.

After a few hours of hard deliberation, Sean decided to call his oldest brother, Mitch. He was a rolling stone, too, never staying in one place too long or spending too much time in one woman’s bed. He, of all the siblings, was the least likely to think Sean had left his marbles overseas and needed an intervention.

“Hey, little brother,” Mitch said after the third ring. “How’s it going?”

“Good.” Weird, but good. “You gotta minute?”

“Five or six, even. I’m in Chicago, getting ready to drop an old office building, but we’re waiting on paperwork right now.” Mitch’s childhood obsession with wrecking balls had led to his being one of the more respected controlled demolition experts in the country. “What’s up?”

“I’ve got myself into a little situation here and, since I don’t have time to explain it over and over, I thought maybe you could spread the word.”

“In other words, you don’t want to tell Liz.”

“Pretty much.”
Fierce
was a good word to sum up the only girl of the five kids. “I don’t want to be the one to tell Rosie, either.”

“Does it involve bail money?”

Sean laughed. “No.”

“A shotgun wedding?”

“Um…not exactly.”

He told Mitch the story, starting with Emma knocking on his door and leading up to the present—him at Kevin’s apartment to grab his few belongings and make the dreaded phone call.

“Holy shit,” Mitch said when he was done talking. “That definitely qualifies as a
situation.
Is she hot?”

“Very. But she can’t cook worth a damn.”

“That’s what take-out’s for.” His brother was quiet for a few seconds, then chuckled. “So this hot chick’s going to pay you to be her man for a month. Is that legal in New Hampshire now?”

“Screw you, Mitch. She’s paying me to do landscaping. The fiancé thing is…whatever. She’ll be sleeping on the couch in the bedroom. I’ll be in the bed. It’s strictly hands-off.”

“My money’s on a week.”

His brothers would have the betting pool in place by the end of the day, no doubt. “Throw me in for making the whole month. Got no problem taking your money.”

“She’s hot and single. You’re a guy. Sleeping in the same room? You’re as good as half in the sack already.”

Not a chance. “Look, I’ve got to get going. Get my toothbrush in her bathroom before we head to the airport and all that.”

“I think I’ll call Liz first,” Mitch told him. “I might even record the conversation.”

“The important thing is that you get the story straight. If any of you come over for the Fourth of July, you need to have your shit together.”

“Oh, I’ll be there. You can bet your ass on that. And speaking of the Fourth, what do Uncle Leo and Aunt Mary think of all this?”

Sean winced. “I don’t think they know yet. The rest of them do, though, so it’s only a matter of time before Aunt Mary comes after me. I’ve been putting it off.”

“That only makes it worse.”

“I know. But if it’s already a done deal by the time she finds out, maybe she’ll go along.”

That made Mitch laugh out loud again. “Sure, buddy. You keep telling yourself that.”

“I’m hanging up now.”

“Good. I’ve got phone calls to make.”

Sean shoved his phone in his pocket and made one last trip around the apartment. Since everything he owned fit in his duffel and he’d only been there a few days, it didn’t take long to make sure he had everything.

Five minutes later, he was on the road and it wasn’t long before he was turning into the driveway. He glanced at the mailbox and shook his head as he parked in front of his temporary home. The one with daisies on the mailbox and Emma under the same roof.

It was just a month, he reminded himself. One month and then he’d be on his way, with his brothers’ money and a few paychecks in his pocket and no strings trying to hold him back.

Emma knew a few things about Sean Kowalski. She knew he was tall and outrageously handsome and liked salt-and-vinegar potato chips. She knew he had a body designed to trigger female double-takes everywhere he went. She knew he’d served his country, wasn’t afraid of a day’s work, loved his family, played with his cousins’ children and was, no doubt though she hadn’t seen it yet, kind to animals.

What she hadn’t known was how much impact seeing him stretch out on her bed and tuck his hands under his head would have on her. And she certainly hadn’t anticipated the heat that curled through her body and settled in a place she’d been neglecting for a while.

“A little soft,” he said, squirming against the mattress in a way that made her hips want to wiggle along for the ride. “I like it harder.”

Emma coughed to cover the little squeaking sound she made, as if announcing her hormones’ state of libidinous distress. “I like to nestle.”

“It’s a girly bed.”

Not with him sprawled across it, it wasn’t. “I’m a girl.”

“I noticed.” When he turned his head and winked at her, she swallowed hard and glanced at her watch in what she hoped was an obvious gesture. She just wanted him off her bed.

Which wasn’t going to help, of course, because he was going to be sleeping in that bed for the next month. And she’d be about ten feet away, tossing and turning on the couch. Great plan. Inspired, really.

“Time to go?” he asked.

“Yeah.” They’d done everything they could. What little he owned had been moved in. The biography of Ulysses S. Grant he was reading was tossed on the coffee table in the living room. A battered and oversized coffee mug emblazoned with the army logo was upside down next to her favorite mug in the dish rack. She’d found it at the Salvation Army store, along with a few other things that might help give the illusion he’d been living there for a year. It was show time.

“Okay. Gimme a few minutes and I’ll meet you outside.”

“Wait. You’re going, too?”

He snorted and swung his feet to the floor. “Of course I’m going with you to pick up your grandmother at the airport. What kind of jerk did you think you were marrying?”

“This is insane.”

“Pretty sure I already told you that.” His eyes grew serious. “This is your last chance, you know. I can be out of here in a half hour. You can still tell her we broke up and you must not have loved me as much as you thought because you’re not all broken up about it. She’ll be so thankful you came to your senses before marrying me, she won’t even ask too many questions.”

She knew he was right. It was insane. And this
was
her last chance to back out. Once she introduced him to Gram at the airport, they were all in. For a month.

Then she shook her head. “No. We can do this and then Gram’s mind will be at ease and she can finally enjoy her retirement so I can move on with my life.”

Sean walked over to her, so close she wondered if he was going to try to shake some sense into her. “Then there’s just one more thing to do.”

“Oh, crap. What did I forget?” Considering how much time she’d spent going over everything in her mind instead of sleeping, she couldn’t imagine what it would be.

When he rested his hand at her waist for a few seconds before sliding it around to the small of her back, she felt her muscles tense and her cheeks burn.

“You can’t be doing that,” he said in the same low, husky kind of voice a man would use to tell a woman he wanted to take off her clothes.

Her mind was frozen, all of her attention on that warm pressure against her T-shirt, and it took a few seconds to form a coherent sentence. “Doing what?”

“You’re as jumpy as a virgin at a frat party.” He ran his fingers up over her spine until he reached the small bump of her bra strap, and then back down to her waist. “We’ve been dating a year and a half, and living together for a year of it, but you still blush and tense up when I touch you?”

He had a point, but there was no way to fix that before Gram got off her plane. “Maybe you’re just that good.”

It was the wrong thing to say if she was trying to back him off and settle her overheating nerves. The grin he gave her would have been potent enough to get her out of her clothes if the situation was different.

“That’s a story I can get behind,” he said.

“Thought we were trying to keep the lies to a minimum.”

The grin only widened. “Who says it’s a lie?”

She rolled her eyes and tried to step back—really needing to put a little space between them—but he held her close. “We’re going to be late.”