A Marriage Made in Texas (The Brothers Kincaid) (5 page)

“You’ve got a funny look in your eyes.”

“Do I?” He blinked, thinking she probably wouldn’t appreciate knowing he’d been imagining those subtle curves without benefit of clothes.

She waved a fry at him. “I don’t have an eating disorder, in case you’re worried. I just have a fast metabolism. I always have.”

He couldn’t help grinning. “Believe me, Gail, an eating disorder was the last thing on my mind.”

A
COUPLE OF DAYS LATER
,
Gail walked in from work just as her phone rang.
Probably Barry with an excuse for why he can’t take the girls this weekend,
she thought, and dumped her bag of groceries on the counter. Ordinarily she didn’t mind when Barry canceled out, but the girls did. However, her boss was throwing a big party Friday night. A party she’d yet to find a date for.

“Hello?” she said, a little breathlessly.

“Hey, can you come over?”

“Jay? Why, what is it?” He sounded pleased, which made her curious.

“Come over. You’ll see when you get here.”

“I just walked in the door. What’s going on?”

“Where’s your sense of adventure?”

She started putting away groceries. “I have children. They killed it.”

“Speaking of kids, bring the girls, too. See you in a minute.”

A dial tone. Baffled, she stared at the receiver. He’d hung up on her. She finished putting up the refrigerated items, then changed out of her work clothes into
shorts and a T-shirt. Then she called the girls and explained they were going over to Jay’s.

Mel, naturally, wanted to ride her pink Barbie bike that she’d gotten for her birthday. Roxy and Gail followed behind her. “Why are we going to Uncle Jay’s?” Roxy asked.

“I’m not sure. He called and asked us to come. Maybe he wants us to see his new house.”

Roxy skipped a step and glanced at her mother. “How come you didn’t make him any cookies, like Aunt Cat said you should? She said you’re supposed to give him a house hunting present, on account of his new house.”

Gail laughed. “I think you mean housewarming.” She tugged a blond curl, then slid her arm around her daughter’s shoulders. “Cooking is your aunt’s thing, not mine.” She could have made him slice-and-bake cookies, but that was about the extent of her culinary capabilities. Unless he liked macaroni and cheese, the girls’ current favorite.

Jay opened the door before she could ring the bell. He wore khaki shorts, a green knit shirt the color of his eyes, and his feet were bare. Gail thought he looked too damned appealing for her own good.

“Must be my lucky day. Three beautiful blue-eyed blondes are on my doorstep.”

Both girls giggled. “Do you have any cookies?” Mel asked. “I haven’t had my snack yet.”

“Mel, it isn’t polite to go to someone’s house and ask for food,” Gail said.

She turned a puzzled face to her mother. “But it’s
Uncle Jay. And I’m hungry. I do it all the time at Aunt Cat’s,” she said, with unassailable logic.

He held the door open and motioned them inside. “I do have cookies, if it’s okay with your mom. Chocolate chip.” Smiling at Gail, he added, “Several people dropped by with food. I can’t tell if they’re just being nice or if Cat told them to because she’s afraid I’ll starve to death.”

“Don’t you know how to cook?” Roxy asked as they followed him into the kitchen, concern creasing her round face.

“Not according to your Aunt Cat,” Jay said, and grinned.

“Mommy does. She’s a good cook. You can eat with us tonight. Mommy’s making macaroni and cheese.”

Gail laughed. “Thanks, honey, but, not everyone likes macaroni and cheese.”

“It’s one of my favorites,” Jay said solemnly, handing a plate of cookies to the girls. He caught Gail’s eye, his own gleaming with humor. “Unless you don’t have enough.”

“I’ll make two boxes,” she said, thinking it served him right. “So, why are we here?”

“Let’s wait until the girls finish their cookies and I’ll show you.”

A few minutes later, he opened the back door and whistled. Nothing happened. Looking around, he whistled again. Still nothing happened. “Just got them this afternoon,” he said. “They don’t mind very well yet.”

From around the corner, two brown-and-white balls of fur appeared, tumbling over their feet and yapping excitedly. One carried a plant in its mouth, the roots dangling.

“Puppies!” Roxy and Mel said in unison, falling over themselves to get to them. Laughing delightedly, they sat in the grass and instantly the puppies climbed all over them.

“Oh, man,” Jay said, leaning down to take the plant from one brown and white fuzzball and scold it gently. “That’s the third plant that’s bitten the dust since I brought them home. They’ve only been here a couple of hours.”

Gail laughed, sinking into the grass beside the girls and reaching over to rub soft puppy fur. “I’m afraid your yard is toast. Or the flowers are, at least.” Scratching one of their tummies, she said, “They’re so cute and pudgy. What breed are they?”

“Mostly Springer Spaniel, with a little Labrador Retriever mixed in. Or at least, that’s what the Humane Society thinks.” He squatted down beside Roxy and picked up a puppy’s paw. “I have a feeling they’re going to be bigger than I’d planned, but I couldn’t resist them.”

Gail thought he looked pretty irresistible himself, with a round bundle of fur on either side of him. Smiling, she met his eyes. “So, how’s the proud father?”

“Stumped. He can’t think of what to name them, so he thought he’d ask the experts for advice.” He
turned to her daughters. “How about it, girls? Can you help me name them? They’re both girls.”

He got to his feet, his mouth twitching while a vigorous discussion took place between Roxy and Mel. “What about you, Gail? You have any ideas?”

“I don’t— Ouch!” One of the puppies had sunk its little teeth into her palm. Gently, she pried it off. “That smarts. I’d forgotten puppy teeth were so sharp.”

“Are you bleeding? Here, let me see,” Jay said, kneeling beside her and turning her palm over. “Yeah, she broke the skin all right. Sorry. Let’s go inside and see about it.”

“It’s no big deal, Jay,” she said, even as he got to his feet, tugging her up along with him. “Just a tiny bite.”

“I can see that, but it needs to be taken care of.” He spoke to the girls, still arguing over names. “Your mom and I are going in for a minute. Be careful, one of them just bit your mother. Give them one of these rawhide sticks to chew on.” He pulled a couple from his pocket and handed them to the girls before dragging Gail inside.

“I can’t believe you’re making such a big deal out of a puppy bite,” Gail protested.

“I’m not. Wash,” he commanded, pointing at the kitchen sink. “I’ll find a bandage.”

He returned a few minutes later just as she turned off the water. Apparently considering her incapable of doing it herself, he dried her hands with a clean towel, then placed the bandage over the wound. Turn
ing her hand over, he touched his lips to her knuckles. “All better,” he said, his eyes sparkling as he released her hand.

Such a simple, silly thing, and it had her heart beating like a drum. “Do you do that for all your patients?”

He shook his head, smiling. “No. You’re not my patient.” His finger pushed up her chin. “And your hand isn’t really what I want to kiss.”

“Oh.” Keep it light, she told herself. Her heart fluttered.
Yeah, right.
When in doubt, change the subject.

“You must do this sort of thing at work. Minor injuries, I mean. Don’t you find it boring after working in the emergency room?”

The look he gave her very clearly said, “Chicken” but he answered her. “You sound like Mark. The emergency room is full of minor injuries, colds, flu. A lot of boring, tedious things go on. It’s not like the TV shows, where something exciting is always happening.”

“Still, the emergency room must be more exciting than the clinic.”

He shrugged, put his hands in his pockets. “Depends on your definition of excitement. After a few years of the Saturday night knife and gun club, that kind of action gets old.”

“The Saturday night—”

“Knife and gun club,” he finished for her. His eyes closed and he rubbed the back of his neck. “Yeah.” When he looked at her, his smile was weary. “Sat
urdays were especially fun. Gang members, teenagers looking for trouble, husbands and wives drinking and fighting—and every damn one of them has access to a knife or a gun. I worked in one of the biggest trauma centers in L.A. We saw more gunshot wounds, more knife wounds, more vehicular trauma, more domestic violence in a year, than you could see in a lifetime in a place like Aransas City. After a while, the futility of it wears on you.”

He paced a few steps, stood with his back to her. “Some of the gang members were repeats. They’d come through, we’d patch them up, then they’d be back again. Next week, next month,” he turned around, spread his hands. “Maybe even two or three months. But it didn’t matter. We knew that sooner or later, they’d have a wound we couldn’t fix. Or they’d come in DOA.” He glanced at Gail, his gaze solemn. “Do I miss that? No, I can’t say I do.”

“I’m sorry. I had no idea.”

“You wouldn’t unless you worked in an emergency room. Some people really thrive on it. Some of us burn out.”

She wanted to comfort, but didn’t know how. Tentatively, she touched his arm. “You’re not burned out on medicine. If you were, you wouldn’t have come here.”

“True.” His lips curved. “No, I like medicine, and I like working at the clinic.”

“What do you do when something happens you can’t handle at the clinic?” she asked curiously, re
lieved that his melancholy mood seemed to have passed. “Like a test you need to run or something?”

“Tim and I have hospital privileges at Varner Memorial,” he said, naming the hospital nearest Aransas City.

“That’s a nice hospital. My OB works out of there, so that’s where my kids were born.” She glanced out the window. “Speaking of kids, I should take the girls home, but I’m not sure they’ll go for it.”

“Let them play with the puppies a while longer. It’s not late.”

She didn’t have much choice, unless she wanted to drag them away kicking and screaming. “Don’t feel like you have to eat with us. I mean, macaroni and cheese from the box doesn’t exactly compare,” she said, waving a hand at the massive amounts of food on his counter. If she knew the single women in town, and she should after all these years, there was an equal amount in his refrigerator and freezer.

He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “Would you rather I didn’t eat with you?”

“No, that’s not what I meant. I just—”

His fingers stroked her cheek lightly and his lips twitched. “Are you trying to avoid me, Gail?”

Her pulse kicked up. She swallowed, hard. “Not…exactly.”

“What are you afraid of? That we’ll enjoy being with each other?”

She met his eyes. “Yes.”

He smiled. “Do you know what I think about every time I see you?”

The intensity in his eyes was making her feel faint. She put her hands behind her and gripped the counter. “What?”

He moved even closer, but he didn’t touch her. “Your mouth,” he said, his voice deep and quiet. “And how much I want to kiss you.”

The back door burst open. Roxy and Mel trooped in, each holding a ball of fur in their arms. “We did it!” Roxy said.

“We named them, Uncle Jay,” Mel confirmed. “This is Fudge, and Roxy’s holding Fluffy.”

“Fluffy and Fudge. Perfect,” he said, still gazing at Gail.

Just in time,
she thought, unsure whether to be frustrated or relieved. “Okay, now put the puppies back outside. We need to start dinner. It’s a school night, remember,” Gail said. “Give us half an hour, Jay, and then come over.”

She let the girls go ahead of her. “Jay.” She waited until his eyes met hers. “I think about it, too.”

J
AY AND
G
AIL WASHED
the dishes together after dinner, while her daughters got ready for bed. He enjoyed the meal and the conversation, which hadn’t subsided for a moment. In what was obviously a nightly custom, each of the girls, then Gail, had talked about their day. If something bad had happened, Gail encouraged them to think of something good to offset it.

To his surprise, after they finished, they ganged up on him and made him talk about his day. So he told
them the story about the elderly lady, the wife of a farmer, who came in for the third time, insisting on being given a flu shot. No amount of talking could convince her that the vaccine wasn’t available yet. Worse, she brought her pig with her every time, planning on using him as payment. They couldn’t convince her they didn’t take farm animals as barter, either.

Gail served strawberries with powdered sugar for dessert. Thinking about it now nearly made him groan as he remembered what her pretty red mouth had looked like closing around the succulent fruit.

“What are you smiling about?” Gail asked him.

“You eating strawberries.”

She handed him the clean, wet pan to dry. “Why, do I eat them weird or something?”

“Not weird.” He raised an eyebrow at her and grinned. “Sexy.”

She laughed. “Oh, right.”

“No, really.” He glanced at her to find her staring at him. “With you, it’s an art form. You can tell you’re really enjoying them. Every bite.”

“You’re very strange,” she said, and gave him the lid.

He dried it, placed it on top of the pot. “Nah, I’m just a guy.”

“So you’re saying all guys have a strawberry fetish? Or is it only you?” Finished with the dishes, she turned around with her back against the counter.

Her baby-fine blond hair feathered around her face in a simple, casual style that looked at the moment
as if she’d just crawled out of bed. Some women might have called it messy. Jay thought it looked sexy and tousled. He already knew how silky her hair felt, and he wanted to run his fingers through it—preferably while he kissed her.

“You’re staring at me,” she said, her voice a bit husky.

Nodding, he traced a finger over her lips. Her lips parted, her tongue touched her lips nervously. “I’m thinking about doing a lot more than just staring.” He slipped his hands in her hair, on either side of her face.

Her eyes widened. “The girls,” she said, hitching in a breath. “I have to tuck them in.”

He bent his head until their lips were close, but not touching. “I’ll wait for you.”

A few minutes later, she returned, closing the swinging door behind her. For an instant, they stared silently at each other. Then they met in the middle of the room, her arms in a stranglehold around his neck, his wrapped around her, pressing her to him. He couldn’t do subtle, and she didn’t seem to want it either. He kissed her, plunged into the ripe taste of her, his tongue meeting hers as she demanded as good as she gave.