Suddenly in Love (Lake Haven#1) (19 page)

She sat up, pushed both hands through her hair. Brennan was right.
This is how it should always be.

Eighteen

Brennan awoke to the sound of birds chirping. He saw the French doors
were opened onto the balcony, and ominous-looking clouds had rolled in.
He rolled over onto his back and looked around. Mia was sitting in a chair,
her feet tucked up under her, her sketchbook in her lap. She was wearing his shirt but nothing else, her hair a glorious mess of tangles. She smiled.

“What are you doing?” he said, and threw the covers back. “Come back to bed.”

She turned the sketchbook around to show him a pencil drawing of him in bed, one arm over his face, the sheets bunched up around him. She’d even sketched in the French doors and balcony, and the hills beyond. She’d sketched the painting that hung above the bed. But instead of a painting of an Italian villa, Mia had sketched in the mural she’d done at his mother’s house.

He came up on one elbow. “A souvenir?”

“Sort of.” She stood up, walked over to the bed, and flopped down onto her belly with her sketchbook in hand. He caressed her back and her bare hip. Three times they’d made love last night. He felt like a fucking stallion.

He looked at her sketch, laughing at the small details he found in it—a guitar on the couch. An easel on the balcony. She had sketched in a perfect life for the two of them after a perfect night.

They had just ordered breakfast when his phone rang. He looked at the display; it was Phil. “I’m going to take this, if you don’t mind,” he said.

“Sure. I’m going to grab a shower.” She disappeared into the bathroom, stretching her arms high above her.

“Hey, glad I caught you,” Phil said when Brennan answered. “So Kate Resnick took a look at your notes,” he said, jumping right into it. “She wants to meet. She loves the ideas, loves the direction you’re going, but she wants to talk about some storyboarding around it. When can you get to LA?”

Brennan looked at the closed door of the bathroom, then stood up and put his back to it. “I told you—not now.”

“Listen, Everett. This thing is on a fast track. We don’t have weeks to wait for you to get your shit together. Just fly out this week, let’s have a sit down, then you can fly back to wherever you are and contemplate your navel some more, okay?”

“If I fly out to LA, everyone is going to know it, and then it’s game on,” Brennan said. “I need until the end of the month.”

“What if it’s someplace else? What if I can convince her to meet up in someplace like Topeka? Will you come?”

Brennan considered it. This was something he really wanted to do and didn’t want to lose the opportunity because he was enjoying being anonymous for a time. “Yeah,” he said. “If you can get her to meet somewhere no one is going to see me, I’ll make it happen.”

“Great. Fantastic. I’ll be in touch,” Phil said, and clicked off.

So did Brennan. He turned back to the room, but almost jumped with alarm when he saw Mia standing there, wrapped in a towel, drying her hair with another towel. She smiled. “You look guilty.”

“I’m always up to something.”

Mia laughed and turned back to the bathroom.

He was guilty, all right. He hadn’t told her who he was. He’d thought about it—last night, during the night, they’d talked about everything. She’d told him about her longing to be an artist and how painful it was to know that she might never realize her dream. “I always thought it would be easy,” she said. “Just get up and paint, right? But it’s not easy at all.” She’d told him about high school, and how, after years of being teased, she went to the extreme and tried to be as different as she could. “It worked, too. No one liked me by the time I was done.”

He’d laughed with her, sympathized with her. He’d liked listening to her talk, and the stories she told. He hadn’t said much in return, and she didn’t ask probing questions. He guessed that the truth about his father had been enough for her for now.

But not for him. Brennan was increasingly aware that while he hadn’t actually lied to her, he’d left out some significant details. He puzzled over why he was holding back. He’d found a comfort level with Mia that he hadn’t felt with another person in years. He was at ease with her. He loved her sense of humor, and he loved the way she felt in his arms. But he was deathly afraid of how the truth would affect her, how it had the potential to change her somehow.

Even more frightening was how it would change him, make him revert to the way he’d lived the last fifteen years.

He didn’t tell her.

They returned to East Beach like a pair of lovers. Brennan saw Mia every day as the work week started. They’d walk down to the bluff and have lunch, or she’d join him in the kitchen at the end of the workday for a drink.

But in between those moments, he would hear her laughing or talking with Adonis.

In the middle of the week, she invited him to her apartment.

Brennan looked up from the salad he was making. “Tonight?”

“Tonight,” she said.

“You’re going to let me in, right?”

“Maybe, if you play your cards right,” she said, her honey eyes twinkling with mirth. She was wearing the paint-spattered overalls, the bib of which looked as if she’d embroidered it, and high-top sneakers. She’d wrapped her hair in some sort of turban thing, and she was covered with a layer of dust. “But first, I have to know. Are you okay with tiny apartments? And a handle flush on the toilet?”

“Heated seat?” he asked.

She shook her head.

“Lucky for you that I love tiny apartments with cold toilet seats. In fact, that’s the only kind of apartment I will visit.”

She laughed. “I’m going to cook for you, too,” she said.

“Now I’m excited.”

“Don’t be. I’m not a very good cook. But I can bake chicken and toss a salad as well as the next guy.”

“I can’t wait,” he said. He meant it.

“Can’t wait for what?”

Brennan was startled by the appearance of his mother walking into the kitchen, bags of purchases in her hand. “You’re home early,” he said, and tried to convey a warning to his mother in his gaze. “I thought you’d be gone another week.”

“I didn’t find the shopping to my liking,” she said, and smiled at Mia. “Can’t wait for what?” she repeated.

“Mia is going to feed me tonight since my own mother won’t.”

His mother snorted and put down her purchases. “You’re a grown man, Brennan Everett,” she said. “I would hope you could feed yourself by now.” She smiled broadly at Mia. “Is it just my son who is so disabled and unable to feed himself, or did you invite Jesse, too?” she asked as she headed for the wine cooler.

Mia’s face flushed. “No, just . . . just Brennan.”

“Fantastic!” his mother trilled, and opened the cooler.

“I better run,” Mia said quickly, her gaze darting between Brennan and his mother. “I’ll see you tonight,” she said, and grabbed up her messenger bag and bolted from the room.

Brennan waited until he heard the front door close before he turned around to his mother. “Was that necessary?” he asked, gesturing vaguely in Mia’s direction.

“That young man is besotted,” his mother said airily. “You should have seen him when he came to work before I left. He couldn’t take his eyes from her. I would hate to see that ruined because of you.”

“
Thanks
, Mom,” Brennan said.

“You know what I mean. You yourself said she wasn’t your type.”

“I didn’t say that,” he argued.

She clucked her tongue at him. “Have you told her?”

He felt himself flush under the collar, a sure sign of guilt.

“Oh God,” his mother said, reading the answer in his expression. “How long are you going to let her go without knowing who you are?”

“I will tell her when the time is right,” he said.
Maybe tonight.

“The time was right when you first met her,” she said.

“So she can tell all her friends and then have them tweet about it, and then have the press look into it and start nosing around? Is
that
how I’m supposed to recover? What’s wrong with a little anonymity? I haven’t lied to her. I’ve answered every question honestly.”

His mother didn’t look as if she believed him.

“Stay out of it,” he warned her. “I’ll be gone in a few weeks, and then you can resume passing your judgments about me from afar.”

“That’s exactly what I’m afraid of,” she snapped. “That you’ll just up and leave that poor girl.”

“Then why the hell did you insist on putting her in my face?” he asked angrily. “
You
made this happen.
You
wanted her here. Don’t blame me for the consequences.” He stalked off then, unwilling to argue with his mother another moment.

But he couldn’t deny what she said was true.

The problem was that Brennan didn’t know what he wanted. He didn’t know where he wanted this to go. He didn’t know what the hell he was doing right now.

When he arrived at Mia’s some time later, she opened the door wearing a long, backless dress that tied around her neck. The material was soft and looked almost hand painted, and Mia looked sexy as hell in it. “Nice dress,” he said, nodding approvingly.

“Thank you. I made it for Skylar, but she said it looked too much like Grandma’s couch. So I’m going to make her another one.” She stepped back and cast her arm wide. “Welcome to my tiny little piece of quiet.”

Brennan stepped inside and took it all in. The apartment was small, but stylish. He noted the trendy features, like the glass countertops and the raised platform bed, but what he really noticed was the evidence of Mia. She had filled the space of this studio with her essence. There was an easel with the half-finished canvas painting of the lanterns at Eckland’s. There were two dress forms, one with a stunning green dress on it, and the other that looked as if she was working out a pattern. Her sketchbook was open on a small dining table, and stacks of materials—cloth, metal, things he couldn’t identify—took up one entire corner. And tacked along the walls were her attempts at fine art. Small paintings and big drawings, leather and cloth hangings, metal sculptures.

“Wow,” he said, walking inside. “It’s a studio.” His gaze settled on the green dress. “You’re really good with clothes, Mia.”

“Tell that to my brothers. They think I’m weird. Wine?”

She held up a bottle of wine that could be bought in any grocery store and poured two glasses. On the bar that separated the kitchen from the main living area was a plate with crackers and spreads. “This is my date presentation,” she said, teasing him. “Don’t mess it up.”

He accepted the wine from her with one hand, reached for her with the other, and kissed her, his lips lingering on hers. It was strange how he felt the weight of this relationship in his heart after such a short time of knowing her. Like his heart had been nothing more than a whisper until she began to fill it up. There was definitely some substance here between them, and Brennan believed now was the right time to tell her. “Listen, Mia—”

“Please don’t apologize for your mom,” she said, interrupting him. “I had it coming. She saw me and Jesse together a few times before she went out of town, and I’m sure she thinks there is more to us than there is.”

Brennan stilled. He lost his train of thought and put the wine down. “What is between the two of you?”

“Nothing.” She said it so quickly that even she groaned a little. “That sounds suspicious, doesn’t it? Okay, there is some . . . flirtation,” she said, clearly searching for the right word. “We’ve been out on a date . . .” She peeked up at Brennan. “And I sort of said I’d go to a wedding with him.” She waited for his reaction.

Brennan’s belly roiled. He felt a surge of jealousy. Ownership. Things he had no right to feel. “You don’t owe me an explanation. You should see who you want to see.”

“Well,
thank
you, I don’t disagree with that,” she said with a funny little laugh. “But as it turns out, I suck at playing the field. All these years, I thought it would be so cool to, you know, date around,” she said, making invisible quotes in the air. “But it’s not cool. It’s hard.”

Brennan put his hands on her waist. “Am I holding you back?” he asked bluntly.

“No,”
she said with an adamant shake of her head. She peeled his hand from her waist and held it in hers, squeezing it. “I
really
like you, Brennan. I mean, I didn’t think I would
ever
like you, much less, you know,
be
with you. But I do, I really like you.”