Personal Relations

“Travis.”

“The Travis building is one of the properties we manage.”

He gulped more of his drink, making Brooke feel guilty that she’d taken half of it. But this was like smoking the peace pipe after treaty negotiations with the enemy. It would have been rude to refuse the gesture.

“I cannot tell you how relieved I am that we’re on the same page here.” He slid a sideways glance at her. “We are aren’t we?”

“If you’re on the they’d-better-get-their-education-first page, then we are.”

“I am. Just verifying.” He set his glass on the laminated tabletop. “Jeff is living with me until he finishes high school. He’s a senior now and doesn’t know what he wants to do with himself. Which doesn’t particularly matter since I know what he should do.”

To an outsider, that should have sounded unbelievably arrogant, but Brooke not only understood, she felt exactly the same way about Courtney.

“I’ve spent months going through the college admissions drill with him and when he started talking marriage—marriage—I panicked,” Chase admitted with disarming candor.

“So did I.” A soul mate. The man was her soul mate. He was going through the same thing with his stepbrother that she was going through with Courtney. He knew.

“I mean, I pulled some serious strings to get him into Baylor. It’s a good, steady school. Not a party school. Jeff doesn’t need an excuse to party.”

“Oh, I know. I feel the same way about Courtney.” The words babbled out. She hadn’t met anyone else responsible for a sibling—like a parent, but not a parent—and being able to talk with him was such a relief. “The thing is, I’ve been so frustrated because she wouldn’t fill out the applications. I had to do it.”

“I know! What is up with that?”

“Well, Courtney claims she doesn’t want to go to college. She says she wants to be an actress and being in this play at school has only made it worse. It’s not as if I’m telling her she can’t be an actress, I just want her to be able to support herself and for that, she’s got to get an education.”

“Exactly!” His look of approval made her feel better than it should have.

A lot better. A dangerous kind of better. “So…where did this marriage talk come from? I mean, I thought Courtney and I had a good relationship, but this came out of nowhere.”

“Beats me. With a mother like the one Jeff’s got, you’d think he’d never want to get married. She’s bounced around the world leaving a trail of husbands in her wake—including my father. She dragged Jeff with her, but when he was ready to start high school, he wanted to stay in one place. When he asked if he could live with me, I was more than happy to have him. Our family moved a lot when I was growing up. I didn’t have any brothers and sisters and it was hell trying to fit in all the time.” He smiled slightly. “Jeff was the only brother I ever had and he’s basically a good kid. He just needs some grounding.” He looked at her. “Nothing against your sister, but he doesn’t need marriage right now.”

“Neither does Courtney. And it doesn’t make sense for her to want to get married unless…”

“Jeff said she wasn’t pregnant.”

“No, not that.” And Courtney had been mad when Brooke had asked. “But maybe she knows that Jeff has money and figures he’ll support her while she’s trying to break into acting.” Except that Jeff seemed more like the supportee than the supporter. In deference to her new alliance with Chase, Brooke decided not to point that out.

“Don’t worry. I’ll set them both straight on that. What do your parents have to say about all this?”

“They don’t know and I’d rather not tell them if I can avoid it. They’re living in El Bahar where my dad is working, so Courtney and I are living in the house while she finishes high school. Technically, I’m her guardian—or I was until she turned eighteen. And by the way, whoever made the stupid law about eighteen-year-olds being legal adults has obviously never been responsible for a teenager.”

“I hear you.” Chase laughed. “But I’ve got to tell you, you don’t look much older than high school age, yourself.”

“I’m twenty-five.”

He swept his gaze over her, the sort of gaze that made a woman hold in her stomach. He probably wasn’t even aware that he’d done so, but Brooke was. Extremely aware.

And she’d sucked in her stomach.

“Wasn’t that kind of a drag to have your sister dumped on you?”

Brooke was shaking her head even before he finished. “No, in fact I was glad.” She looked at him, at the face that was considerably friendlier than when she’d first entered the office, at the one person who understood exactly what her responsibilities had been the past several years.

And found herself telling him everything—everything about the day that had changed her life. “When I was her age, I really screwed up. This is a chance to redeem myself.”

“What happened?”

“Oh…poor choices and peer pressure. It was spring break my senior year and a bunch of us had gone to the beach at Galveston. I was driving my parents’ van. You know that cars are banned from the beach, and there was nowhere to park. Anywhere. The place was packed.”

Chase nodded. “I’ve done spring break in Galveston.”

“So you know how it is. Anyway, we finally went out to the tip of the island by some beach houses and just drove on past them onto the beach. We figured if anybody said anything to us, we could tell them we’d rented one of the houses. We had a great time, but a police cruiser caught us sneaking back onto the road that night. I was going to pull over but this guy I liked was with us and he kept telling me to keep driving.”

“You tried to outrun a police car?”

“It wasn’t like it was a high-speed chase or anything. We were dodging them between the houses. Everybody said I should kill the lights and just pull into one of the driveways until the police car left. So, I turned off the lights and…”

She could still hear Jason’s voice laughing and saying, “Way to go, Brooke!” and flinging his arm around her. She still remembered the tight curl of awareness that took over her insides and made her want to do anything to keep it there.

The rest of her friends started chanting, “Go, Brooke! Go, Brooke!”

She’d had a reputation as a goody-two-shoes, which was why her parents had let her drive in the first place. All her life she’d followed the rules and this one time when she hadn’t…

“I skidded in the sand, missed the driveway and hit the support beam of a beach house.”

“Were you all right?” Chase asked immediately.

“Oh, yeah. The airbags went off. The kids in the back weren’t wearing seat belts and got thrown forward. Still, we were all lucky—just bruised mostly.” She sighed. “The van was totaled, the beach house might as well have been. I think the repairs cost more than building it from scratch would have. Oh, and did I mention that the house was owned by a lawyer?”

“Ouch.” He gave her a sympathetic look.

“Yeah. I was completely at fault, we were sued, and there went my college fund, my parents’ savings, retirement, the whole bit.”

“And you’ve been beating yourself up about it ever since, right? You look the type.”

Brooke gave him a wry smile. Just a little while ago, her type had been compared to a madam in a brothel. “I made a mistake…a really stupid mistake. And I paid for it. I’m still paying for it, I suppose, but Courtney shouldn’t have to. My father took the job overseas because of the money he could make and because I told my parents I’d look after Courtney. They trusted me when they didn’t have to and I will do anything not to let them down again. So, Courtney is not getting married before she graduates from high school, and she is not blowing off college, either. That’s all there is to it.”

“Hey.” He reached out and covered the hand she’d fisted in her lap.

She watched as his fingers closed around hers in slow motion. She could feel every line in his palm. Warmth enveloped her hand and her wrist. It was well on the way to her elbow before he squeezed gently and released her hand.

“You aren’t in this alone anymore,” he said quietly, but with an underlying strength that made Brooke want to melt against him and let him carry all the problems on his substantial shoulders.

As she gazed into his dark eyes, Brooke realized that the melting part was still a distinct possibility.

How had she missed the fact that Jeff’s ex-relative was a total babe? Of course, his babeness had been hidden when he was in jerk mode and was now brilliantly illuminated by relief and the effects of sugar and caffeine.

She sighed, and the corner of his mouth rose.