Turning away from the view, he spun toward the shop’s interior, thinking he had to get out of the place, that he had to get away from what he’d just learned. But his gaze caught on Cassandra—and he was caught up by the sight of her.
A woman he didn’t recognize was sitting on one of the couches and Cassandra was leaning over its back to inspect a piece of knitting. She held her spill of hair behind her shoulders, which gave him an eyeful of her bountiful breasts—the same ones that he’d spied wet this morning. He forced his attention from the soft, sexy sight, only to have his gaze catch hers.
The line that had hooked his libido snapped tight. And then something was reeling him forward. Without a second thought, he walked toward her with single-minded purpose.
Want. Have. Touch. Taste.
The woman on the couch was still talking to Cassandra, her focus on the scrap of pink knitted yarn in her hands. “It was an ‘ooops,’ plain and simple. We have a nine-month-old! Scott said, ‘How could this possibly have happened?’ Only a man would ask such a dumb question.”
Some concern tickled the back of Gabe’s mind, a worry that scented the air almost like smoke, but he ignored it as he drew closer to Cassandra. She straightened, stepping away from the couch that held the oops lady, but held her ground as he came to a stop a foot from her.
Her tongue made a nervous pass across her bottom lip, yanking him another inch closer. “Gabe . . . Gabe, what do you want?”
But she already knew, didn’t she? She’d known for months, and last night he’d finally acted upon the desire.
And if Cassandra hadn’t desired in return, he wouldn’t have ended up among her pillows. She wasn’t
that
nice.
And not really like a nun either, apparently.
He reached out and touched her hot cheek with the tip of his forefinger. He felt hot, too. They both were burning—no wonder he could smell that smoke again. Stronger.
Bells rang out. More customers for Cassandra, damn it, but he kept her attention on him by running his thumb along her bottom lip.
Then a sharp voice cried out. “People! Parking lot. Flames.”
The mention of fire acted like an overturned bucket of ice water. Cassandra spun, Gabe leaped, they both ran for the front door with Nikki and Jay right behind them. Outside, a few feet from the shop’s solid side door, the one that led directly to the smaller of the building’s storerooms, they found a petite, dark-haired young woman stomping on some charred cardboard.
From behind Gabe, Nikki spoke first. “Marlys? What the hell are you doing?”
“A public service,” the woman spit out. She shot them all an angry look. “I was just . . . just walking around and saw some kids playing Matchbook Bonfire. They ran off when I yelled.”
Gabe pulled Marlys away from the ashes so that he could make sure the fire was extinguished himself. It was out, and the dark, papery remains were already lifting into a cinder tornado stirred up by the ocean breeze.
“Kids?” Nikki questioned, her voice sharp. “I don’t see any kids.”
“Nik . . .” Cassandra warned.
Color shot up Marlys’s face. “They ran off. I told you.”
“But—”
“I’m no arsonist!”
“Yeah?” Nikki sneered. “Maybe not, though we know for certain you’re a bitchy snitch.”
Jay made a sound that could have been a choked-off laugh. “Cookie, let’s go. We’re late to . . . something. Everything okay, Gabe?”
He nodded. “I’ll call the sheriff, though. And keep an eye out. You do the same, Froot Loop.”
Cassandra nodded, too, though her gaze was trained on the brunette. A frown turned down her pretty, full mouth. “Are you all right, Marlys?”
“I’m fine.” Without another word, she stomped off.
Nikki muttered something under her breath, but soon she and Jay were on their way as well.
Gabe trailed Cassandra back into Malibu & Ewe, less concerned about some delinquent kids with matches than he was about why Marlys Weston was hanging around Malibu. The daughter of Juliet’s late husband, she’d stirred up trouble by seeding the tabloids with ugly rumors about Juliet. When she’d found out that the three donor sibling sisters were fathered by the same famous Hollywood plastic surgeon, she hadn’t hesitated to pass that info along as well. Bitchy snitch pretty much summed it up.
Inside the yarn shop, the oops lady hovered by the door. “Was there a problem?” Her hand covered her belly, and he recognized the protective gesture. His wife, Lynn, had caressed Maddie’s growing body just that way when she was in the womb.
Then it all came together for him. The pink piece of knitting, the mention of the nine-month-old, the “plain and simple” oops. The lady was pregnant. Apparently she and her husband hadn’t used any—
Gabe froze.
—protection.
Protection!
Had he and Cassandra used any last night? He didn’t carry condoms. She’d claimed to be celibate.
Oh, hell.
Hell.
If Cassandra Riley was pregnant with his child, he was already smack-dab in the middle of the underworld’s flames.
Four
Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city.
“ ‘Bitchy snitch,’ ” Marlys muttered, glancing over at her dog, Blackie, who was grinning out the passenger window of her Miata. “I don’t know why you think that’s funny. If you ask me, I’m a hero.”
Her conscience gave her a pinch, but she ignored it and raised her voice. “I’m serious, Blackie. Those little surf rats could have caused a major problem. Think of all the wool and stuff in the shop that might burn. My evil stepmother’s sisters should have thanked me.”
Okay, maybe looking for gratitude was too high an expectation. Marlys might be unabashedly selfish, but she was a realist, too. Nobody liked their secrets revealed, and it was true that she’d spoon-fed information to a tabloid stringer of her acquaintance a few times. When her father’s wife, the too-good Juliet, had been at a spa during her husband’s final hours on earth, Marlys had made sure the info got out.
Yeah, it was true that Juliet couldn’t have known Marlys’s terminally ill father would die that day. And it had come to light that General Wayne Weston himself had arranged it so that neither Juliet nor Marlys took on deathbed watch. But still!
“I admit it, Blackie,” she told her dog. “I have a few issues. I’m not exactly rational when it comes to men leaving me.”
The dog looked over at her.
She met his big brown eyes. You couldn’t lie to a dog. “When it comes to men. Period.”
On automatic pilot, she took a right-hand turn, beginning the climb into the hills that separated the Malibu beaches from the rest of Los Angeles. Still stewing over the suspicion she’d encountered at the yarn shop, it wasn’t until she’d driven past a familiar driveway and spotted a familiar vehicle parked in it that she became aware of where she’d driven.
It was a harsh wake-up. Her stomach leaped, slamming into her plunging heart. Somewhere in her torso the two met with the pounding power of elk antlers. Truly. It felt like a moment you’d see documented on a TV network—one that was a weird hybrid of Animal Planet and Discovery Health. No wonder her foot stomped on the brake pedal as she jerked to the curb outside Juliet and Noah’s house.
The couple was on their honeymoon! There was no good explanation for why there was a motorcycle parked in the driveway.
A cold sweat rolled over her skin even as her flesh flushed hot. Especially
that
motorcycle. The one that belonged to Dean Long.
He’d left months ago.
He was a soldier, on tour in Afghanistan.
He was the man she’d thought she’d loved.
Blackie looked over at her again.
“All right, yes,” she admitted to her pet. Dean was also the man she’d betrayed. And it was thoughts of him that kept sending her back to wander Malibu where they’d met.
No way was he here though, she thought, even if he was on leave from the army. After what she’d done to him, surely he’d crossed the entire state of California off his mental world map.
Blackie whined. Thanks to the man who’d had a motorcycle very much like the one in the driveway—really, it just
couldn’t
be the same one in that driveway—the dog had once experienced a drastic behavior change. Her canine terror had turned into a tame pussycat.
Blackie whined again. “Sorry for the metaphor, dude,” she said. “But facts are facts.” The dog had gone back to his old, look-out-for-number-one ways the minute Dean had left town. And Dean was still gone . . . wasn’t he?
When her pet emitted another high-pitched noise, she finally figured out what he wanted. Obviously Blackie had some pressing doggie business that would be best addressed at the empty lot across the street. But Marlys had learned a thing or two since she’d last been in this vicinity. Reaching behind her, she snagged Blackie’s leash and clipped it to the ring on his collar.
She cracked open the driver’s-side door, and undisciplined Blackie, intent on his me-first agenda, pawed across her lap and then leaped onto the street. Marlys’s fingers snatched for the fluttering end of the leash, but things hadn’t gone her way since she was twelve years old.
Her animal dashed away, apparently intent on relieving himself on Juliet and Noah’s flowering front shrubs instead of on the weeds across the street. Bad dog.
She followed him, not letting her gaze linger on the motorcycle.
Blackie didn’t linger at the flowering bushes.
Instead, he raced for the side gate and nosed it open, just like those working dogs they’d seen on that
National Geographic
special Friday night. “We’ve been watching too much television, Blackie,” she called out, hurrying after him. Oxygen wasn’t making it into her lungs, but that was because she was jogging after the dog, she told herself. Anxiety, anticipation, plain old fear, none of those had anything to do with that tight feeling in her chest.
Because surely Dean wasn’t in Malibu.
Because surely Dean wasn’t staying in the guesthouse on the other side of Juliet and Noah’s pool.
Because surely that couldn’t be him standing in the doorway of the aforementioned guesthouse, staring down at her dog in bemusement. Then, the-person-who-couldn’t-be-Dean looked up. Marlys tripped. She stumbled forward, almost pitching herself into the pool.
“Are you all right?” the-man-who-wasn’t-Dean asked.
At the voice—
his
voice—she stumbled again. Her right foot missed the cement deck, found air, found water, then landed on the first plaster pool step. She gasped.
And there he was—
Dean
—reaching for her. “Ma’am . . .”
Ma’am
? Her head jerked up even as she yanked her foot from the pool to jolt away from his big hand. “Don’t touch me!”
His long arm dropped. Marlys backed up another step, her drenched shoe squelching, the very sound she figured her leaking heart was making inside her chest with each hard beat. Her gaze couldn’t leave his face, and she noted that his chiseled features looked leaner, his tan shades lighter than it had been in November. His silver eyes were the same, so piercing she was certain they were boring inside her and finding her every weakness.
Her only weakness.
Him.
“What . . .” She had to swallow, her mouth as dry as her Adidas running shoe was wet. “What are you doing here?”
“Noah said I could use the guesthouse while he’s on his honeymoon.”
Marlys retreated another foot as Blackie pranced between them. Could it . . . Could it really be Dean?
The big man looked down at the dancing dog. “Sit,” he ordered.
Blackie did.
That clinched it. “It’s really you,” she said.
His head tilted. A lock of his straight black hair fell away from his forehead, revealing an ugly, half-healed wound at his hairline. She couldn’t breathe again.
“What happened?” It came out as a whisper so she gestured at the scar. “How were you hurt?”
He gave a little shrug. “Soldier stuff.”
Soldier stuff. He’d always been a man of few words, damn him. But it was the potential for “soldier stuff” like that injury that had made her push him away last autumn. Her hand stole up to her chest and she pressed her palm against the silver tear pendant containing her father’s ashes that she’d worn every day since Dean had left. With her notion of hell being the long—and maybe unending—wait for a man to come back from war, she’d tried to save herself the pain of it by driving Dean away.
But now he was back. And she couldn’t read from his cool expression why.
Or how he felt about her.
“Are you going to be okay?” she asked, eyeing the scar again.
He shrugged again. “I am okay.”
Pretty hard to disagree with that. He was six two to Marlys’s five one. The scales would give him a hundred pounds on her, all of that muscle. No one was saying he wasn’t a beautiful man and if anyone besides him knew what she’d done to kick him out of her life, they’d say she was nuts.
Right now she felt a little crazy. Staring down at her wet shoe, she tried to pull her whirling thoughts into some semblance of order. What now? What should she do? Why was he just standing there, when by rights he should be giving her the cold shoulder or turning his back or—
“I’m completely okay,” he said, “with the exception of a little memory loss.”
Her gaze jumped to his. “Memory loss?” she repeated, her voice squeaking.
“Yeah. The explosion in Afghanistan’s a blank page. And before that . . .”
“You don’t remember . . .”
“Other stuff. I lost a chunk of time. Nobody knows whether it’s for good or not.”
Marlys swallowed. “And Malibu?”
“Well, I remember being on my way here. To visit my friend Noah.”