His Brother's Baby

“Do you miss it?” Lucy asked, and it took him a startled moment to realize she must be asking about his practice.

“Yeah, it’ll be good to get back.” His partners had already covered for him longer than he had any right to expect, but they’d agreed to another six weeks of leave. And by the time he returned with The Bryan Foundation up and running, Conner knew, he’d be able to live with himself again. Next year, he could face the holiday season with his soul intact. “But I have to get the foundation started.”

She wrinkled her forehead, as if calculating feasible workloads, which reminded him once again that this vividly emotional woman was a lot smarter than he’d expected. “Couldn’t you start your foundation and do your lawyer stuff at the same time?”

Even if he’d been willing to face another Christmas in Philadelphia, that would have required more time than he possessed. At least he’d learned that much from the therapist his partners had insisted on, after discovering he’d spent eighty-two consecutive hours at his desk.

“No,” Con answered, letting her precede him out the community gate and trying not to let his eyes linger on the naturally sensual way she walked. “Only so many hours in a day.”

“And some of them,” Lucy announced with a nod at the grassy park across the street, where clusters of people were enjoying the afternoon sunshine, “you have to spend enjoying.”

He knew that, Conner reminded himself, with a twinge of envy at how easily she moved from business to pleasure and back again. He tended to forget the importance of taking time to play catch, feed the ducks, all those things the people across the street were doing. All the things he could do once the foundation was complete. “Yeah, you’re right.”

“I don’t want to sound like I’m bossing you around,” she said as they waited for a break in traffic. “But working as much as you do…I don’t think it’s very good for you. I think you need to take more breaks.”

When was the last time, Con wondered, anyone outside the firm had worried about him like that? All this time he’d been keeping his distance from Lucy, she must have been noticing far more of his habits than he realized. And it was endearing that she cared enough to try and straighten him out.

That she saw him as…well, as a friend.

“You’re right,” he said again, letting his mind explore the concept of friendship and realizing that it could work out fine. Just because she loved his brother was no reason they couldn’t be friends. “Once the foundation’s up and running, I’ll make more time for fun.”

Lucy shifted Emma to her other shoulder as a distant group of golfers strolled toward the adjacent course. “I bet you’d enjoy playing golf if you ever got back into it,” she offered, evidently guessing how quickly he’d always neglected his periodic vows to relax more often. “Kenny said you guys used to play together.”

Back in college, yeah, when he was still trying to get his brother through high school. “Well, it was a way to keep an eye on him.”

“Really?” She slowed her steps, regarding him with what looked like fascination. “Did you kind of take over, after your dad died?”

He’d taken over even before that, in a way, but it wasn’t until the death of his father that his mom had completed her escape into the haze of prescription drugs. “Yeah, pretty much,” Conner replied. He had learned early on that the agency who replaced the Tarkingtons’ constantly quitting housekeepers never challenged a new request, and that no one ever questioned his scribbled initials on whatever papers his mother let pile up on the desk.

But that wasn’t a story which needed sharing, and Lucy seemed more concerned with crossing the street than his response. Until they reached the opposite sidewalk and she glanced at him with open curiosity. “I’ll bet having you around made things easier on Kenny, didn’t it?”

Things had always been easier on Kenny, though. Con had recognized even as a child that everyone—including himself—enjoyed his brother’s carefree attitude, the happy-go-lucky charm which proved their family was as normal as anyone else. While Conner had been silently acknowledged as the one who kept things running, Kenny seemed to have a gift for attracting fun and friendship and love.

He was just that kind of person.

And you’re not.

“I don’t know,” Conner muttered, “I probably wasn’t anyone’s dream of an older brother. I was always throwing my weight around—do your homework, don’t stay out too late—that kind of thing.”

“That sounds more like a dad or a mom,” Lucy observed, surprising him with the accuracy of her perception. It wasn’t like any big secret, of course—there was no reason not to explain the Tarkingtons’ sordid family dynamics—but the habit of making his life sound normal must be more deeply ingrained than he’d realized, because he automatically chose an evasive response.

“My mom was pretty easy on us,” he said lightly, and Lucy gave him a teasing smile. As if she sensed the growing companionship between them.

“So she didn’t mind if you spent all day playing golf, huh?”

“No, not really.” When she’d completed her recovery a few years ago, Grace Conner Tarkington had apologized for being so uninvolved with her sons, as if their inability to love might somehow be her fault. But he couldn’t remember whether she’d mentioned their frequent escapes to the golf course. “Anyway, that was only on weekends.”

Lucy glanced around the park, evidently seeking a spot near children whose voices might attract a baby’s interest, then started toward a group playing Frisbee in a nearby clearing. “So what kind of things did you do during the week?”

Good, they were finished with the family history. And she still sounded genuinely interested, Conner realized. Not in whatever trauma he might have suffered, the way the shrinks had been, but simply in his everyday life. “You mean, besides school?”

She spread her baby blanket on the grass and set Emma down on it, then brushed her hands against her jean-clad hips and cocked her head at him. “School, or whatever. I’m just trying to picture you, when you were little.”

It was a little unnerving how flattered he felt by her forthright interest. By the way she kept her eyes focused on his, waiting for an answer he didn’t even know how to give. “Well…”

“You know,” Lucy explained, “what you did for fun.” As if spotting an example, she gestured at the teenager attempting to throw a bright orange Frisbee with an elaborate, under-the-knee move. “Did you go around collecting golf balls?”

Golf— She was asking about Kenny, he realized with a sudden jolt of embarrassment. Of course she wanted to know about the childhood he’d shared with his brother.

Because Lucy loved his brother.

Before he could stammer a response, the orange Frisbee came sailing right toward them, and he instinctively grabbed for it. Caught it on the downward arc, then steadied his balance. Glanced around for the kid who’d thrown it, took aim and flung it back.

“Good one!” the teenager’s buddy called, and sent another shot his way.

He could deal with a Frisbee a lot easier than anything else, Conner thought, and already Lucy was moving Emma toward a nearby olive tree as if acknowledging the newly expanded playing area. So he caught the second throw as well, returned it with the same lofty spin as the first, and in no time was part of a three-way circle that soon expanded by a couple more teenagers and a dad with some kids.

This was mindless activity, nothing but working his body, watching the angles, running and catching and throwing whatever came his way, but it offered the same distraction as his computer. A refuge from thinking, a refuge from feeling, and that was all he could ask for right now.

“Feelings are our—”

No, forget it.

The game began moving faster, tighter, and he found himself making higher catches, more demanding throws than he would have attempted at the start. But by now he was in the rhythm of motion, the simple exhilaration of calling on his muscles and feeling them respond. And when the kid beside him missed a Frisbee that skittered to the ground near Lucy, his first reaction to seeing her fling it back was an instinctive admiration—damn, she was good! Even as he watched, one of the teenage girls moved over to where she sat with Emma and gestured an invitation to switch places, and in another minute Lucy was part of the circle as well.

She was good, Conner realized, sending her a tougher throw than he’d aimed at the previous girl, and feeling a surge of pleasure as she caught it deftly and, without ever moving too far from Emma, sent it skimming across the circle. The way she moved, the way she threw herself into the game, laughing, so alive, so…

God, I want her.

The raw heat of recognition startled him, even as he realized that it was nothing new. He’d been wanting her for days, but had never let himself feel it so intensely, so acutely—until now, with the vigor of the game pulsing through his veins, with the pleasure of her company still heightening his senses, with her sparkling energy almost radiating across the circle to him.

Lucy had a gift for enjoying the moment, he realized, watching as she applauded a successful catch by the kid beside her and beamed at Emma’s sitter, who was entertaining the baby with a bright red balloon. A gift for reaching out to friends, as well, but right now she was so happy, so vibrant, so gut-wrenchingly beautiful that he found himself staring at her without a single conscious thought in his head. With nothing but the raw, pulsing desire for—

Don’t go there.

But he’d already shot way past friendship, Con knew as the orange Frisbee came his way again—there, up, another step, grab it—and he almost missed the catch before flinging himself sideways for a perfect, last-minute save. Lucy grinned at him, a smile that might have been simple congratulations but which he suddenly suspected, with a flash of heat that left him reeling, meant that they’d shared the same primal awareness.

The same ache of need.

Now wasn’t the time for reasoning, not when the other Frisbee was coming right toward him—easy, up a little, there, coming, got it, go! But when he fired it back across the circle and saw Lucy still smiling at him, still watching him with that curious new light in her eyes, he knew that reason didn’t matter. Nothing mattered right now except moving, straight toward her, forget the game, forget the park.

And to his exultation, she seemed to feel exactly the same way. As soon as he approached her she backed out of the circle…then welcomed him with a hug that could have been sporting, could have been the same congratulations she’d offer any teammate, but…

But there was more than congratulations going on, more than celebration. More than sharing the fun of a game, more than simple enjoyment.

Because when he kissed her, she kissed him back.

As eagerly, as joyously as if she’d been waiting all day, all her life for this fierce embrace. He had never imagined such a flash of heat could rise so intensely, sweep in so fast, but it was happening now with staggering power, with astonishing force. He ran his fingers down her spine and heard her gasp, drew her hips closer and felt himself shudder as she deepened the kiss, buried his hands in her hair and abandoned all thought, all reason, knowing they were soaring together into something that could sear their very souls—and just as the thought took shape in his mind, Lucy pulled away.