CHAPTER THREE
IN MALCOLM’S EXPERIENCE, MOST PEOPLE DIDN’T SIT DOWN TO A meal of honey-glazed ham, roasted potatoes and baby carrots, and delicately grilled asparagus on your typical Tuesday. And they probably didn’t chow down with candlelight, flowers, and wine sparkling in crystal glasses.
Then again, the Brown household wasn’t most people.
He’d have skipped the fancy French wine even without Mrs. Grady’s baleful eye. He’d long ago grown out of the stage where he’d knock them back before climbing on his bike.
He’d had vague plans to go home, sweat off the long day with a workout, grab a shower, slap something between a couple slices of bread, pop a brew, and zone awhile in front of the tube.
He’d’ve been fine with that.
But he had to admit this was better.
Not just the food—though, Jesus, Mrs. Grady could cook— but the place, the whole ball of wax. Pretty women, men he liked, the amazing Mrs. Grady.
And, particularly, the always intriguing Parker Brown.
She had a face for candlelight, he supposed. Elegant but not cold, unless she wanted it to be. Sexy, but subtle, like a hint of lace under a starched shirt.
Then there was that voice—low register, a wisp of smoke, but changeable as the weather from brisk to prim from warm to ice. She got things done with those tones. Knew, he decided, just how to use them.
She’d had to relate the full story of her near miss, and used the casual notes with hints of temper. If he hadn’t seen her himself directly after the incident, he might have bought her pretense that she’d never been in any real danger, and was only annoyed with her own overreaction and the other driver’s carelessness.
Even with the act, the others smothered her with concern, peppered her with more questions, slung outrage at the other driver. And dumped gratitude on him until he felt buried in it.
He figured he and Parker hit about the same level of relief when the topic shifted.
He liked listening to them, all of them. Group—or he supposed more like family—dinner ran long, ran loud, and involved a whole hell of a lot of cross talk.That was fine with Mal. It meant he didn’t have to say much himself, and to his way of thinking you learned more about people when you let them take the wheel.
“What are you going to do with your pool table?” Jack asked Del.
“I haven’t decided.”
It stirred Malcolm enough to ask. “What’s wrong with the pool table?”
“Nothing.”
“Del’s selling his house and moving in here,” Carter told Mal.
“Selling it? When did that happen?”
“A very recent development.” Del arched his eyebrows at Mal as he buttered one of Mrs. Grady’s fancy crescent rolls.“You want to buy it?”
“What the hell would I do with it? It’s big enough for a family of ten and their grandparents from Iowa.” He considered as he cut another bite of ham. “Any way to just buy the game room?”
“Afraid not. But I’ve got a couple ideas on all that.”
“Let me know when you’re ready to sell the pinball machines.”
“Where are you going to put them?” Jack demanded. “You’ve barely got room to turn around in that place over your mother’s garage.”
“For the classics I’ll toss out my bed and sleep on the floor.”
“Boys and their toys.” Laurel rolled her eyes toward Del. “You can’t put yours in our bedroom. Line in the sand, Delaney. Indelible line.”
“I had a different location in mind.” Del glanced at Parker. “We’ll talk about it.”
“All right. I thought you might want to convert one of the attics,” Parker began, “but I took a look myself, and I don’t know that they’d safely hold all that weight. At least not if you wanted to keep the slate pool table.”
“I wasn’t thinking up. I was thinking down.”
“Down?” Parker repeated. “Where . . . Oh God, Del, not one of the basements.”
“How many attics and basements are in this place?” Mal whispered to Emma.
“Three attics, two—no, three basements if you count the scary boiler room where the demons who eat the flesh of young girls live.”
“Cool.”
“Sure, if you’re a young boy like Del was.” Emma narrowed her dark eyes as she glared across the table. “But if you’re a young girl playing Treasure Hunt, you could be scarred for life by a certain mean boy with a flashlight with a red bulb, a shambling walk, and a low, maniacal laugh.”
She picked up her wine, shuddered a little. “I still can’t go down there.”
He tuned back in while Parker and Del batted basements around, Laurel sat smiling into her wine, Jack grabbed another roll, and Mac whispered something in Carter’s ear that made the tip of that ear flush pink.
Interesting.
“Look,” Del said, “you use the west wing basement to store event supplies—extra tables, chairs, whatever.”
“We’re buying more. Investing in our own,” Parker pointed out. “So we snag the rental rather than subbing it out.”
“Which is good business. I’ve been down there too many times to count when I’ve pitched in with events.You have enough space for a showroom.”
“It’s not the space, Del, you can have the space.” Obviously weighing options, Parker frowned at her water glass, then at Del. “We could move the storage to the east side, but even then—”
“No, no!” Emma waved both hands. “It’s too close to the Hellmouth.”
“And he’s still there,” Del said darkly, “waiting for you.”
“I hate you, Delaney. Beat him up, Jack,” Emma demanded.“A whole lot.”
“Okay. Can I finish this roll first?”
“East, west,” Parker interrupted, “it’s still a basement. There’s next to no natural lighting, the ceilings are barely seven feet, concrete floors, parged walls, pipes everywhere.”
“All the better for a Man Cave. Besides, why do you think I keep him around?” he gestured at Jack. “He’s more than a pretty face.”
“Take a cavernous basement and remodel it into a MEA? That’s Manly Entertainment Area, to you civilians,” Jack explained as interest lit in his smoky eyes. “I can do that.”
“The walls are a foot thick,” Del went on,“so the space could be used even during events and nobody’d hear a thing.” He lifted his wineglass, swirled the last half inch of wine while he aimed his gaze at Emma. “Just like nobody hears the pitiful screams of girls being eaten alive by the demon with a single red eye.”
“You bastard.” Emma hunched her shoulders.
“Let’s go take a look.”
Parker stared at Del. “Now?”
“Sure.”
“I’m not going down there,” Emma muttered.
“Aw, baby.” Jack leaned over to wrap an arm around Emma. “I’ll protect you.”
She shook her head at Jack. “You say that now.”
“You guys go ahead.” Mac waved her wineglass. “Carter and I are just going to finish our wine, then we have . . . some things to do at home.”
“There’s peach pie yet,” Mrs. Grady announced.
“Well . . .” Mac smiled. “We have dessert at home, don’t we, Carter?”
His ears blushed again. “Apparently.”
“Come on, Mal,” Del invited. “We’ll give you a tour of the depths, work up an appetite for pie.”
“Sure.” He rose after they did, reached for his plate to clear it.
“Leave that for now.” Mrs. Grady wagged a finger at him.“Go on and explore first.”
“Okay. Best ham I ever ate.”
“I’ll wrap some up for you to take home.”
He bent down as he passed her.“I owe you a dance,” he whispered in her ear and made her laugh.
“What was that about?” Parker asked him.
“Private conversation.”
He tagged along, taking back stairs he imagined had once seen the scurry of servants and wondering why Parker still wore those skinny heels.
As Del hit switches, hard fluorescent lights flickered on to reveal a massive labyrinth.
He noted the low ceilings, unfinished walls, exposed pipes, and, as they turned into an open area, the utilitarian shelving, stacks of tables, chairs, stools.
A basement, no doubt, with just a pleasing edge of creepy and as ruthlessly clean as the kitchen of a five-star restaurant.
“What, do you have basement gnomes that come out and scrub at night?”
“Just because it’s storage and utility doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be clean,” Parker answered. “Del, it’s depressing down here.”
“Now.”
He moved into a passageway, ducked under more pipes with what Mal assumed was the grace of experience, and kept winding.
“Old boiler room.” Del jerked a thumb at a locked wooden door. “Where demons drool and sharpen their fangs on the bones of—”
“I didn’t fall for that when I was eight,” Laurel reminded him.
“It’s a damn shame.” He slung his arm around her shoulders; she wound hers around his waist.
Malcolm adjusted his stride so he walked beside Parker. “It’s a lot of space.”
“It’s had a few incarnations and various uses. Storage and utility, just as now. And my great-grandfather had a workshop down here. He liked to build things, and so it’s told he liked to have a quiet space to retreat when my great-grandmother was on a tear. They stored preserves and root vegetables, whatever else they canned during harvests. My father said his parents outfitted it as an air-raid shelter during the fifties.”
As the space widened again, she stopped, put her hands on her hips. “God, Del, it’s creepy. It’s like a catacomb.”
“I like it.” Jack circled, eyes narrowed.“Take out that wall, widen the opening. Beams, columns.That brings in one more window, a little more light.”
“You call that sliver a window?” Laurel asked.
“Lighting’s a priority, and we have ways.” Jack looked up.“We’d have to reroute some of the pipes, give you more headroom. Space isn’t an issue, so I’d fir out the walls, run the electric, more plumbing. Put a nice john over there, balance that with a closet over here. Me, I’d put in a gas fireplace. Heat and ambiance, maybe do some stone or brick on that wall.Tile the floor, put heat elements under the tile.
“You’ve got your storm cellar doors out there. I want to think about that, take measurements, but it’s doable. Oh yeah, it’s doable.”
Del glanced at Parker, cocked an eyebrow.
“If it’s what you want, of course, I’m fine with it.”
“There’s your green light, Cooke.”
Jack rubbed his hands together. “Yeah, baby.”
“They’re going to start talking about bearing walls and rough plumbing.” Laurel shook her head.“I’m going up. I’ve barely cleared the brain haze from the construction of my auxiliary kitchen. Which is the work of genius,” she added to Jack.
“We do no less.”
“I’ll go with you.” Parker started out with Laurel, stopped. “Jack, can we do heated floors in the storage area?”
“All that, my lovely, and more.”
She smiled. “Maybe we’ll talk.”
By the time Malcolm came back up—and damn if Jack hadn’t made him see a space as slick, maybe even slicker, than the testosterone paradise in Del’s current house—Mrs. Grady, Emma, Laurel, and Parker had made a serious dent in the clearing up.
He took Mrs. Grady’s hand, shaking his head.“Uh-uh.You sit.” He gestured to the bench in the breakfast nook. “The one who cooks doesn’t clean up.That’s the Law of Kavanaugh.”
“I always liked your mother.”
“I’m pretty fond of her myself.Want some more wine?”
“I’ve had my share, but I wouldn’t mind a cup of tea.”
“You got it.”
He walked back to the stove, shook the kettle, then bumped Parker out of the way to fill it from the tap. He answered her stare with one of his own.
“Problem?”
“No.”
“Your hair smells like this white flower that bloomed all over this bush I had under my bedroom window when we were stationed in Florida. It gets its hooks right in me.”
He set the kettle on the burner, turned it on. The other men walked in as he took a stack of dishes from Emma.
“Damn,” Del complained. “We didn’t stay down there long enough.”
“You can grab what’s left on the table,” Laurel told them. “We’re shorthanded as Mac and Carter ducked out to have dessert at home.Which is spelled s-e-x.”
“If they’d waited an hour, they could’ve had pie and sex.” Malcolm found a cup and saucer in a cupboard. “It doesn’t get any better than that.”
And, he discovered in short order, it was damn good pie.
He gauged his timing before he pushed back from the table. Del and Jack huddled over designs Jack sketched on a legal pad someone had dug up, and Laurel talked recipes with Mrs. Grady.
“I’ve got to take off.Thanks, Mrs. Grady.”
“Poker night,” Del said, glancing up. “Bring cash.”
“Sure, since I’ll be leaving with yours.”
“You give my best to your mother. Parker.” Mrs. Grady tapped a finger on the table. “Get Malcolm the leftovers I put aside for him.”
Even better, Malcolm thought, and flashed Mrs. Grady a grin when she winked at him. He trailed Parker into the kitchen.
“Looks like I’ll be eating like a king tomorrow, too.” He tucked the container under his arm.
“Mrs. G has a weakness for strays. I didn’t mean it like that,” she said quickly.
“I didn’t take it like that.”
“I’m really grateful for your help tonight.You saved me a lot of time and aggravation. I’ll walk you out.”
She’d pulled out that formal tone, he noted. The one that clearly ordered a man to take a step back. He moved deliberately closer as they walked through the house.
“Can you give me an estimate on when I can pick up my car?”
All business now, Malcolm mused. “Ma’ll call you about the tires in the morning, and work that out with you. Since I’ve got it in, I can give it a once-over.”
“I was going to schedule a general maintenance next month, but yes, since it’s already there.”
“You been having any problems with it?”
“No. None.”
“That should make it easy.”
She reached for the door. He beat her to it.
“Thanks again. I’ll expect your mother’s call tomorrow.”
Brisk and dry as a handshake, he thought. He set the container down on a table holding a vase of fat orange roses. Sometimes, he thought, you moved fast; sometimes you moved slow.
He moved fast, giving her a quick yank that had her body colliding with his.The way she said excuse me, like a veteran school-teacher to an unruly student made him grin before he took her mouth with his.
It was even better than the pie.
Soft, tasty, ripe, with just a hint of shock to cut the sweet. He felt her fingers dig into his shoulders, and the light tremble might have been outrage, might have been pleasure.
He’d tasted her before. Once when she’d grabbed him and planted one on him to take a slap at Del, and again when he’d followed his own instincts on a visit to their place in the Hamptons.
And every taste made him want more.
A lot more.
He didn’t bother to be gentle. He imagined she’d had plenty of the smooth type, the polite type, and he wasn’t inclined to be either. So he pleased himself, letting his hands run up that truly exceptional body of hers, then down again, enjoying her slow melt against him.
When he heard the low purr in her throat, when he tasted it on his tongue, he let her go. He stepped back, picked up the container of leftovers.
He smiled at her. It was the first time he’d seen her stunned and speechless.
“See you later, Legs.”
He strolled out, strapped the container onto his bike.When he swung on, revved the engine, he glanced back to see her standing in the open doorway.
She made a hell of a picture, he thought, framed there in her power suit, just a little bit mussed, with the big, gorgeous house around her.
He tapped his helmet in salute, then roared away with that picture as clear in his head as the taste of her on his tongue.
Parker stepped back, shut the door, then turned and jumped when she saw Laurel in the hallway.
“Can I just say wow?”
Parker shook her head, wished she had something to do with her hands. “He just . . . grabbed me.”
“I’ll say. And let’s have one more wow.”
“He’s grabby and pushy and—”
“Really, really hot. And I say that as a woman madly in love with your brother. I might also add,” she continued as she walked to Parker, “that as I didn’t politely avert my eyes and go away, I happened to observe you weren’t exactly fighting him off.”
“He caught me by surprise. Besides, I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.”
“Sorry, but he looked pretty satisfied. And Parker?” She gave her friend’s arm a pat. “You look flustered, glowy, and dazzled.”
“I am not glowy.”
Laurel simply turned Parker by the shoulders to the big foyer mirror. “You were saying?”
Maybe color did glow in her cheeks, and maybe her eyes were a little dazzled, but . . . “That’s irritation.”
“I won’t say ‘liar, liar,’ but, Parks, under that skirt, your pants are on fire.”
“All right, fine. Fine. He’s a good kisser, if you like the rough, arrogant style.”
“You seemed good with it.”
“That was only because he ambushed me. And this is a stupid conversation about nothing. I’m going up.”
“Me, too, which is why I got an eyeful of the nothing.”
They started up together, but before they separated Parker stopped on the landing. “I was wearing the Back-Off Cloak.”
“What?”
“I’m not stupid. He made a little move in the kitchen.Actually, he makes little moves every time I run into him, which is disconcerting, but I can handle it. So when I walked him to the door, I thought he might get ideas.”
Laurel’s eyes widened. “You swirled on the Back-Off Cloak? The famed shield that repels men of all ages, creeds, and political affiliations?”
“Yes.”
“Yet he was not repelled. He’s immune.” She gave Parker a slap on the arm. “He may be the only creature of his kind.”
“It’s not funny.”
“Sure it is. Also sexy.”
“I’m not interested in funny and sexy with Malcolm Kavanaugh.”
“Parker, if you weren’t interested, on some level, you’d have flicked him off like lint on a lapel. He . . .” Laurel searched for the right word. “He intrigues you.”
“No, he . . . Maybe.”
“As your friend, let me say it’s nice to see you intrigued by a man, especially since I like the man, and have noted he is also intrigued by you.”
Parker jerked a shoulder. “He just wants to get me in bed.”
“Well, of course he wants to get you in bed. But I’m not at all convinced it’s ‘just.’”
“I’m not going to have sex with him.We have a business relationship.”
“Because he’s your mechanic?”
“He’s Vows’ mechanic now, and he’s Del’s friend.”
“Parks, your excuses are so lame they’re limping, which makes me think you’re worried you want to have sex with him.”
“It’s not about sex. Everything’s not always about sex.”
“You brought it up.”
Caught, Parker admitted.“Now I’m bringing it down. I’ve got too much on my mind to think about this anyway.We’re jammed tomorrow.We’re jammed for the next five days straight.”
“We are. Do you want me to come up, hang out awhile?”
The fact that she did, really did, only confirmed to Parker she was making too much out of nothing.“No, thanks, I’m good.And I’ve got a little work I want to get in before bed. I’ll see you in the morning.”
She walked up alone, and switched on the TV for company. After slipping out of her shoes, she checked them for any dings, scrapes, or scratches. Satisfied, she set them in their proper place on the shoe wall of her closet. She dropped her suit in the dry cleaning bag, replaced her jewelry in the slots designed for them in the thin drawers.
She slipped on a nightshirt, a robe, tucked her phone in the robe pocket. She considered a long, hot bath, but exed it out since long, hot baths encouraged thinking and dreaming. She didn’t care to do either.
Instead, she fixed her mind on the next day’s schedule while she cleansed, toned, moisturized her face.
Glowy, she thought, giving her reflection a cool stare. What a silly word. It wasn’t even a word in the first place, and totally inaccurate.
Laurel had romance fever. Nearly all brides caught it, and due to its side effects they saw everything and everyone through a pretty haze of love.
Nice for them, she admitted as she took the band from her hair. Good business for Vows.
And speaking of business, she’d take an hour now to input all the new data from the evening consult and the initial choices made by the clients.
An estimated 225 on the guest list, she thought as she wandered back into the bedroom with the intention of going to work on her laptop in her sitting room. A bridal party of six, including a flower girl who’d be five by the June wedding.
The bride’s favorite flower was peony, her color choices—for now anyway—pink and green. Soft tones.
Soft, Parker thought again, and changed direction to open her terrace doors and step out. She’d just get a little air first, just take in a little of the night air.
The bride wanted soft and delicate. She’d asked Parker to meet her at the salon to view the gown she’d chosen, which proved she was a bride who understood that the wedding dress created the center of whatever tone or theme or mood the wedding took.
All those lovely, floaty layers, Parker recalled, the subtle gleam of seed pearls and tender touches of lace.
Pastels and peonies, shimmering tulle, and whispered promises.
She could see it. She would see to it. She excelled at seeing to things.
There was no reason, no good reason to feel so restless, so unsettled, so addled.
No reason to stand here looking out at night-drenched gardens remembering the unexpected thrill of a motorcycle ride that had lasted only minutes.
And had been fast and dangerous and foolishly exciting.
Like, very like, the hard, rough kiss of a brash man in her own foyer.
She wasn’t interested in those things.Absolutely not. Intrigued, maybe, but intrigued was a different matter. She found sharks intriguing when they swam their eerily silent way in the tank at an aquarium, but that didn’t mean she had any interest in taking a dip with them.
Which wasn’t a fair comparison, she admitted with a sigh. Not fair at all.
Malcolm might be cocky, he might be brash, but he wasn’t a shark. He’d been so natural with Mrs. G, and even a bit sweet in that area. She had unerring radar for phonies when it came to their behavior with those she loved, and there hadn’t been a phony note in Malcolm’s.
Then there was his friendship with Del. Del might tolerate professional relationships with phonies and sharks, but never a personal one.
So the problem, if there was a problem, was obviously with her. She’d just have to correct it. Correcting, solving, and eliminating problems was her stock-in-trade.
She’d just figure out the solution to this one, implement it, then move on. She needed to ascertain and identify said problem first, but she had a pretty good idea of its root.
At some level of the intrigue—not interest, but intrigue—at some level of that level, she was attracted.
In an elemental, strictly chemical way.
She was human, she was healthy, and Laurel was right. Malcolm was hot. In his primal, rough-edged manner.
Motorcycles and leather, torn denim and cocky grins. Hard hands, a hungry mouth.
Parker pressed a hand to her belly.Yes, definitely an aspect of attraction. Now that she’d admitted it, she could work out the best way to defuse it.
Like a bomb.
Like the bomb that had gone off inside her when he’d yanked her . . . Yanked her, she thought again. She didn’t like being yanked.
Did she?
“Doesn’t matter,” she mumbled.You fixed problems with answers, not more questions.
She wished she didn’t have so many damn questions.
In her pocket, her phone rang. She plucked it out like a woman reaching for a float in a stormy sea.
“Thank God.” She breathed out relief. Crazy Bride would absolutely, no question, give her a problem she could efficiently solve. And keep her mind off her own.
“Hi, Sabina! What can I do for you?”