Willowleaf Lane Read online

  “I had news. I thought you might want to hear it.”

  “You could have waited until tomorrow.”

  “Yeah. You’re right. But what’s the fun in that? By then it will be old news.”

  “Not to me,” she pointed out.

  “True. But I was excited and I didn’t really have anybody else to tell. Peyton is probably in bed and the housekeeper barely knows me.”

  She studied him for a long moment and he wondered what she was thinking.

  “I’m assuming this has to do with Harry and your dinner.”

  “Yes. And A Warrior’s Hope. Since you’ve been in on the planning from the beginning, you deserve to be the first to hear.”

  Finally she held the door open. “Come on in to the kitchen. I was just cutting up some fruit.”

  This struck him as odd but he wasn’t about to question fate when she led the way through her house. He could smell the sweet-tart scent of pineapple when he walked into the cozy little kitchen.

  He eased onto one of the high chairs around her breakfast bar. “If you’re making piña coladas, I’ll have a virgin.”

  She looked down at the cutting board and he had to wonder what had turned her cheeks pink. “No piña coladas here, I’m afraid, but I can maybe find you a beer or something.”

  “Water is fine. So what’s with the pineapple?”

  “I like fresh fruit in the morning for breakfast, either alone or in a quick yogurt smoothie. If I don’t prep as much as I can the night before, I’m usually too rushed on my way to the candy store and end up grabbing something full of carbs and sugar deliciousness.”

  “Makes sense. Need a hand?”

  “No. I’ve got it.” She went back to wielding a knife expertly. In a few slices, she finished with the pineapple and pulled out a cantaloupe from the refrigerator.

  He enjoyed watching her and felt more of his tension seep away. Who would have guessed he could find fruit slicing so relaxing?

  It wasn’t the fruit, he knew. It was Charlotte. She just had this calming way about her, and he discovered he was beginning to crave it worse than any little pill.

  “How did your date go?”

  Her hands paused their slicing briefly and she raised an eyebrow. “Do you want a play-by-play? I’m afraid I didn’t do a very good job of keeping track.”

  He waved a hand. “Just the highlights are fine.”

  “He was...nice. He served in the Army Rangers with Sam Delgado, who is dating Alex McKnight.”

  “I’ve met Sam. He seems like a good guy.”

  “I think so.”

  Again her color seemed rosy and he wondered why.

  “Anyway, Garrett is in town for a few months, helping Sam with his construction company. Alex has been trying to set us up for a couple weeks. Our schedules finally meshed tonight.”

  He didn’t want to think of any meshing going on. Could he take a trained Army Ranger? He figured he could, if he had to.

  “So what happened with Harry?” she asked.

  Oh, right. The reason he had stopped at her house after eleven. “Good news. Great news, actually. He’s agreed to donate a cool million to A Warrior’s Hope, for starters.”

  She stared at him. “Dollars?”

  He laughed. “No. Toothpicks. What did you think?”

  She set down her knife. “Let me get this straight. Over dinner, Harry Lange—the most notorious tightwad in the county—agreed to give that kind of gift to an organization that hasn’t even really taken off yet?”

  “Yes. In addition to the land we wanted for the cabins. I’m thinking we can break ground within the month.”

  “That’s fantastic!”

  “It’s a good cause. He had to see that. I told him I feel like we can really make a difference here. There’s something almost healing about Hope’s Crossing. Harry agreed with me that it’s past time to bring that healing to others.”

  “You said all that?”

  He shifted his weight on the chair, uncomfortable with the soft note in her voice, for reasons he couldn’t have explained. “I don’t know what I said, if you want the truth. I had a nice spiel prepared but ended up just talking about your brother and how much he had sacrificed. We owe Dylan and others like him more than just empty platitudes and Veterans Day programs at the elementary school.”

  She resumed slicing the cantaloupe, but he was almost certain she looked at him with a different light in her eyes, something almost like...approval.

  “It sounds stupid, I know.”

  She shook her head. “Not stupid.” Her smile was sweet, and her watery eyes glistened. “Perfect.”

  “Well, whatever I said must have worked. Harry pulled out his checkbook on the spot.”

  He didn’t mention Harry’s condition was a matching grant from his own foundation. She didn’t need to know that part.

  “You know,” she said, “I may just have to reconsider my general philosophy that Mary Ella has gone a little crazy this past year while she’s been dating Harry Lange.”

  Spence had to smile. He had wanted to share his news with someone and now he realized Charlotte was exactly the person he had needed to tell. Her reaction was just as he hoped. He wanted to bask in it, just sit here in her kitchen amid the glow of knowing he had finally done something right.

  Now that he had told her the news, however, he realized he had no real excuse for sticking around, other than the simple fact that he couldn’t imagine another place he would rather find himself right at this moment.

  “Are you sure there’s not something I can do to help you here?” he asked, before she thought to throw him out.

  Her mouth twisted into a little smile. “You mean you don’t have some philanthropist to meet for drinks somewhere? Surely you could use another million in seed money.”

  “No. And besides, I don’t drink anymore.”

  Curiosity danced across her features but she said nothing, only reached into a drawer and emerged with a melon baller she held out to him.

  He washed his hands and then joined her at the work island. She pulled out a watermelon and handed it to him, and for a few moments they worked in silence, shoulder to shoulder. Her sweet scent teased his senses along with the intoxicating scents of the fruit and every once in a while her shoulder brushed his.

  This was nice. Soothing.

  He hadn’t spent much time in a kitchen as an adult. He always figured he had done his time washing dishes and busing tables at the café but maybe he had missed out on something peaceful.

  “You really don’t drink at all?” she asked after a moment, the question not unexpected.

  “I quit everything. Rehab, remember?”

  She sent him a glance under her eyelids then turned back to the fruit. “I thought celebrities generally only went through the motions to keep the tabloids off their backs.”

  “Not this one. I’ve been clean since I walked through the doors of the rehab facility.”

  “But you still had no problem supplying the little happy pills to others.”

  The enjoyment of the moment dissipated on a breath and something hard and cold lodged under his breastbone. He didn’t want to talk about this. What he really wanted to do was kiss her, distract her from this topic he abhorred, but he had told her that morning it was a mistake. Nothing had changed.

  He remained silent and didn’t look at her, though he could feel the weight of her stare for several long moments. Finally, he heard the clatter of a metal knife on the wooden cutting board.

  “You didn’t do it.”

  He jerked his gaze to hers. “Didn’t do what?”

  “Didn’t supply drugs or steroids to your teammates.”

  Something surged inside him, something bright and heady, but he couldn’t take
time to examine it right now.

  “The charges were dropped,” he pointed out, feeling oddly breathless.

  She made a dismissive gesture. “Yes, after six months and a grand jury indictment. But the grand jury was wrong, weren’t they? You were innocent.”

  A tangle of emotions threatened to choke him. She believed him. Sweet Charlotte, who had been his friend long ago, whose father had been so very kind to him.

  He wanted to grab her right there in her kitchen and kiss her fiercely for looking at him out of those shining eyes, for daring to believe he wasn’t everything awful and ugly the world had said he was for nearly two years.

  “Why would you say that?” he asked hoarsely, a bid for time as he honestly didn’t know what to say.

  “Gut instinct,” she answered, her voice pitched low. “I’ve known you for a long time. That was the part that always bothered me about the case against you. You saw firsthand how substance abuse destroyed your mother. I always had a tough time understanding how you could supply illegal drugs to others, after surviving your childhood and seeing the devastation personally.”

  “I was addicted to painkillers, Charlotte. I never denied that. After my shoulder injury, I tried to play through the pain but discovered it was so much easier to throw a ball ninety-five miles an hour again and again with a little Percocet on board. And then a little more and a little more—and before I knew it, I was taking five or six at a time and couldn’t play without them. Yeah, I went through rehab but since I was an addict myself, why is it such a leap to think I would have a problem supplying steroids and painkillers to others?”

  “I don’t believe it. Pop never believed it either, for what it’s worth.”

  It was worth more than he could ever tell her, but he couldn’t seem to get the words out past the sudden lump in his throat.

  “So the question of the hour. How did that very large supply of drugs end up in the trunk of your car in the Pioneers parking lot? And why didn’t you defend yourself to the grand jury? Your pleading the fifth was as good as a confession in the minds of many people.”

  He wanted to confide in her, to spill every ugly detail he had pieced together in the year since Jade’s death but long habit held his tongue.

  “You’re not going to tell me, are you?” she finally said when he remained silent.

  “Nothing I could say, then or now, would have made a difference. I had no proof of anything and...several innocent people would have suffered if I had voiced my suspicions.”

  She leaned against her kitchen counter, and he again felt breathless at the warmth in her eyes, a look he never dreamed of seeing there. He felt as if he had been walking alone in the high desert for months, thirsty, starving, slowly freezing to death, and she had just held her arms wide to welcome him to wander inside by her fire.

  “You were protecting someone else. Of course. I should have known. Oh, Spencer. Has anybody ever mentioned you have a very bad white knight complex?”

  “You’re crazy,” he murmured, but somehow the husky words came out more like an endearment.

  “I’m beginning to agree,” she said, her voice thready.

  He had no choice in the matter. Not really. He had to kiss her. In the space of a breath, he moved to her and lowered his head. With a sigh, she kissed him and her arms around his neck felt like a benediction.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  A BREEZE SCENTED with pines and some kind of night-blooming flower fluttered the curtains at her window but he was barely aware of it, lost only in the wonder of her kiss.

  Was it only that morning that he had kissed her last? It felt like eons ago, another lifetime. How had he forgotten the taste of her, honeyed and luscious, how perfectly she fit against him, the funny little way she had of splaying her hands across his back as if she didn’t quite know what to do with them?

  He wanted to shove aside the rinds and bowls, knives and cutting boards, to lift her up onto the work island and bury himself inside the succulent wonder that was Charlotte Caine.

  “You are just about the sweetest thing I’ve ever tasted,” he growled.

  “It’s the fruit,” she murmured, her voice low and her skin a luminous, delectable pink. “I like to, um, sneak a taste here and there while I’m prepping.”

  “It’s not the fruit. It’s all you.”

  He kissed her again and she tightened her arms around him, kissing him back with an enthusiasm that humbled him. What had he possibly done in his life that made him worthy of being the recipient of this kind of heated response?

  He kissed her until both of them were trembling, until his body was a hard, heavy ache, desperate for completion.

  With an oath, he wrenched his mouth away from her and rested his forehead on hers. “I need to go, before I won’t have the strength to leave.”

  She stared into his eyes, and he saw a tangled jumble of emotions there. Foremost among them was a fierce, naked yearning. He wasn’t sure anybody had ever looked at him that way. He already wanted her frantically. Seeing that answering hunger just about sent him tumbling over the edge.

  “You don’t have to. Go, I mean,” she whispered.

  The implication of her words rocketed straight to his gut, and his mind went blank for just a moment. When she kissed him, her mouth soft and sweet and warm, he gave in to what felt like perfect, beautiful inevitability.

  He still meant everything he had said that morning, every reason not to do this. But she trusted him. She believed in him. He couldn’t hold back the tide of emotion and need pouring through him because of it.

  He deepened the kiss, pressing her back against the counter, devouring her.

  “Bedroom?” he growled, long moments later.

  She pointed vaguely through a doorway, and he refused to think about the wisdom in what he was doing, he let all the hunger inside him take control. Mouth locked with hers, he swept her up in his arms. He opened the first door he came to and luck smiled on him when he found an airy, feminine room dominated by a queen canopy bed.

  He was vaguely aware of lowering her to the bed and following behind, and then all he could think was the sweetness of her mouth, the sexy little noises she made, the heat of her arms around him and her curvy, mouthwatering body beneath him.

  * * *

  THIS COULDN’T BE happening.

  Was she really here, in her frilly, flowery little bedroom, with Spence Gregory? The moment seemed hazy, unreal. Yes. It was him. That was definitely his tongue tangling with hers, his hard thigh nudging between hers, his hand...oh.

  They shouldn’t be doing this. Some tiny corner of her mind kept whispering that, telling her that this was a huge mistake, but she ignored it. She was on fire. Every touch, every caress, sent sensuous flames licking through her, and all she could think about was more.

  She arched against his thigh through the layers of skirt and slacks and sparks exploded, a shiver coursing through her as he began to work free the buttons of her blouse. Oh, mercy. Why hadn’t anybody told her how very incredible it felt to have his hand against the bare skin of her abdomen? The caress that morning had been so fleeting she hadn’t really had time to appreciate it but now his fingers trailed slowly across her body and she wanted him everywhere.

  She didn’t want to think, to analyze why he was here, after he had pushed her away that morning. For now, she only wanted to feel.

  Her bra unclasped in the front, and he seemed to have the necessary skill to work it free. And then she lay exposed to him and she shivered, suddenly fearful. Though she had dropped five bra sizes and two cup sizes, she was still big. A memory pushed into her subconscious that had to do with him and her breasts, something ugly and dark.

  He didn’t seem to mind. He made a low growl in his throat she took for approval, and she shoved the half-formed memory aside. And then he moved
his thigh between her legs and more of those delicious sparks shot out. She pushed against the delicious pressure a little and then a little more. Okay, now she was beginning to see what all the fuss was about.

  It was all too much suddenly. His mouth on hers, his tongue stroking her, the hard muscles surrounding her. She was close to something she couldn’t have explained, pressure building and building, and then his thumb brushed her nipple, his tongue slid along hers, and she exploded, wave after wave of delicious pressure carrying her under....

  When she finally caught her breath, she found Spence staring at her, his eyes glittery and dark.

  “That was...wow,” she managed to say, her voice ragged.

  “Funny. That’s exactly the word that came to my mind.”

  “Um, what is a girl supposed to say after that? Thanks hardly seems...adequate.”

  He continued staring at her, his hand sliding away from her. What had she done wrong?

  “Doesn’t that...usually happen?” she asked, feeling extremely stupid.

  He cleared his throat. “A guy certainly hopes so. Any decent guy will make sure of it. Several times, if he can.” He edged back a little, hazel eyes locked on hers. “You’ve done this before though, right?”

  She couldn’t answer. The words just wouldn’t come. So to speak.

  At her silence, he continued to stare at her. She might as well have told him she liked to drop-kick puppies in her spare time. The abject shock in his expression made her want to yank the quilt over her head.

  “I’m a freak. I know.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You don’t have to say it. I can guess what you’re thinking.”

  She sat up, hooked her bra closed and began working the buttons of her blouse.

  He seemed almost openmouthed with surprise. “How can you be—”

  “The opportunity never came up, okay?”

  She didn’t know when she had ever felt this humiliated—and that was saying something, all things considered.