Always Mine (4 page)

“It will be more embarrassing—at least for me—if you get up right now, honey.” He stroked a hand over her hip and she felt her face heat up again as she realized her body was covering up what had happened to his.

“But I'm too heavy.”

He half groaned, half laughed. “Believe me, that's not what I'm complaining about right now.”

Bryce bounded into the bedroom, grinning and appearing not the least put out by finding his brother and Izzy snuggled up on a single chair. “What's up?”

Owen slanted her a glance, one eyebrow winging high. “Want to answer that one?”

Bad. Bad boy.
She sent the message with a quelling glance—they taught a course on it in librarian school—then tried to appear casual and not at all a little uncomfortable in her current position. “We just had a visit from your parents.”

“And now you,” Owen said. “Bryce, it's at least an hour to here from your office. Why the hell have you come?”

“Is that any way to greet your loving little brother?”

“Well, yeah, considering I have a life and that you should get one outside of your assistant, your fi
nancial reports and your refereeing between Granddad and Dad. If you're taking off early it should be to visit a woman.”

“Who says I'm not?” Bryce smiled again, one hundred bright watts of masculine appeal that he shot straight at Izzy. “How's my beautiful fairy today?”

Her heart rocked a little under all the male allure, but probably because his ultrasexy big brother had already set the thing tumbling with that string of surprise kisses. “I'm—”

“Completely immune to your dubious charms,” Owen finished for her. Then he frowned as Bryce picked up his beer bottle and drained the half-filled bottle dry. “Hey! That's mine.”

“You know I always want whatever you have,” he said, sliding his teasing glance toward Izzy's face again. “If I can't play with your wife—”

“Which you can't.”

“—then sheesh, don't begrudge me some of your beverage.”

Owen was shaking his head, and though Izzy suspected he was amused by his brother's antics, he had his casted arm secured against her middle. With his other hand, he adjusted her a little so that her head fit under his chin. She felt him press his lips on the top of her hair.

Bryce was beaming at them both. “I do like to see you so happy, bro.”

She would have craned her neck to look at Owen,
but he had her clamped too closely to him. Did he appear happy? She wondered, because over the past few days, more than once she'd caught him looking very much less than that. Moody and brooding described it better, as if there were a dark cloud hanging over his head that was poised to drench him in a downpour.

She was pretty sure he wasn't sleeping well. But when she'd asked him about it, he'd made clear that his nighttime habits were off-limits.

“Happy?” Owen stiffened, then patted her hip in a dismissive gesture. “Yeah, well. Could you move, Iz? My legs are going numb.”

Of course Izzy did as directed, and it gave her an opportunity to check out that “happy” herself—and realize it wasn't the way she'd characterize his expression. Not at all. A minute ago he'd been exchanging passionate kisses with her, but now he looked as if he'd much rather be alone. His gaze was remote, his eyes focused on something she couldn't see.

She found herself dropping to the arm of his chair like before, then flicking a glance in Bryce's direction.

He looked worried now, too. “Did I say something wrong?”

“I don't know what you're talking about,” Owen replied, his gaze still on that faraway place.

“It just seemed to get a little, I don't know, chilly in here.” Bryce frowned, studying his brother.

“Stoke the fire, then.”

With a shrug, Bryce ambled over to the brass log carrier set on the hearth. There was some newspaper wedged behind the stacked logs, and he pulled it out. “Wait a second. You don't mean to burn today's copy of the
Paxton Record
here, do you? It doesn't look as if you've read it.”

Owen made a dismissive gesture. “I don't want to.”

“Mr. News Junkie turning down info? I know it's just the local rag, but you're as addicted to that as your daily dose of those big-city papers you read online.”

Bryce was holding it out, but it was Izzy who took the sheets from him. She remembered bringing it in this morning, but she'd just tucked it on Owen's breakfast tray and not given it a second thought.

Now that she saw the odd stiffness in his body, though, she looked down at the paper with suspicion. Above the fold, a photo of a fireman in full gear.
Jerry Palmer,
the caption read. The top story was coverage of his funeral, which had taken place the day before.

Her stomach folded in on itself. Oh, no. “Owen. I wish someone had let us know about the service…”

His face gave nothing away. “I knew about it. The captain called.”

“We could have found a way to go—”

“It's okay.” He was shaking his head. “Everyone understands.”

She
didn't understand. Why hadn't he mentioned it? Was it because he didn't want to be seen by his
friends and colleagues beat up and battered, or was there something else turning in this man's head?

Bryce didn't seem to be any more enlightened than Izzy. Though he'd finished building up the fire, he still stood by the hearth, gazing on his brother's face, a line between his eyebrows. “Bro…”

Owen curled a hand around Izzy's waist and pulled her into his lap again. Then he bent his head to place a hot kiss against the side of her neck. She shivered, half because it felt so good and half because she knew he was using the move as a way to dodge Bryce's scrutiny.

“Be a bro back and get out of here, will you?” Owen asked.

Bryce didn't appear ready to be dismissed, though. He crossed to the couch and dropped onto the cushions, stretching out his long legs. “Like you said, it took me over an hour to get here from the office. You're not going to kick me out after less than fifteen minutes, are you?”

Owen took Izzy's face in his good hand and turned her lips to his. The kiss he gave her was chaste compared to some they'd shared, but she felt her tight stomach start to unfurl again, even knowing he had something else on his mind besides a renewed acquaintance with her mouth.

Owen's lips lifted. “You don't mind being a third wheel, Bryce?”

“I mind being BS'd,” his brother replied. “Is something bothering you, Owen?”

“Yeah, I can't kiss my woman without you looking on.”

“Really, Owen,” Bryce answered, his eyes narrowing. “Is something biting your butt about what happened that night?”

“What night? Last night?” He laid another soft kiss on Izzy's bottom lip. “Last night when I was alone with my wife?” He caressed her shoulder with his hand.

The same hand that he'd used last night to morosely flip the channels on the TV remote, rarely responding to her in anything other than grunts. She might as well have been a doorknob for all the attention he'd paid to her. The day hadn't been so bad, but as the night descended, as it was doing now, his mood seemed to go down with it.

“I'm talking about the night of your…accident,” Bryce clarified. Then his voice quieted, all his earlier humor gone. “Are the memories of it bothering you?”

Owen appeared to swallow his impatience. “Look. I'm good. The fact is, I don't even remember much, okay? I remember studying for a class Will and I are taking on haz mats, I remember the alarm, but after that it's all sorta smoky.” He put on a grin that Izzy would swear was forced and shifted his gaze her way. “Hey, librarian, I punned.”

“You did.” She shot a look at Bryce, then turned back to Owen, not knowing what to think.

“I get a prize, don't I?” And he swooped in to take
it, laying a dramatic kiss on her mouth. Another show, but she went along with it anyway. Fine. It was hard to turn down a kiss that potent.

“Okay, okay,” Bryce said as they came up for air. “I get the hint. You two lovebirds want to be alone.”

“Thanks for coming.” Owen settled back into the cushions of his chair. “Next time, call first.”

“Yeah, yeah,” the younger man grumbled, waving a hand over his shoulder.

Then he was gone, leaving Owen and Izzy alone. She looked at him, but he was looking at the flames now roaring in the fireplace. A log popped, and Owen jolted, as if a ghost had jumped out and yelled “Boo!”

“You're faking,” she heard herself say. God, he
was
faking.

His gaze jumped to hers. “What?” he demanded.

She focused on his face, taking in that bleak expression once more in his eyes. “You're faking. You faked to your family that our marriage is real. You faked to your parents that we're having ourselves a ‘honeymoon.' And now you're faking that you're feeling any kind of ‘good' about what had happened the night of that fire.”

His eyes had narrowed to slits. His uncasted hand was curled into a tense fist. “It's none of your damn business, Izzy.”

“Owen—”

“Why don't you just move to a hotel? From there
you can figure out what we need to do about this marriage, then we'll sign the damn papers.”

“Your signing hand is in a cast,” she pointed out.

And it wasn't just his body that was damaged. She knew now that something deeper was hurt, as well. And Izzy Cavaletti owed this man her help until he healed—all the way. “So I'm sticking,” she told him.

Of course, he didn't look very happy about it.

She raised her brows. “Think about it, my friend. Do you want your parents and Bryce here hovering? Or just me?”

She had him there. She knew it.

Except he was looking angry again, instead of grateful, and there was no sign of the man who had kissed her silly just a few minutes before. “Fine,” he finally ground out. “Stay. But if you're not in my bed, Isabella Cavaletti, then you stay the hell out of my head!”

Since sharing his bed was about the worst idea she could think of, Izzy welcomed the distinctive ring of her cell phone—“Bohemian Rhapsody”—and hurried away to answer it. Her retreat gave Owen the last word, but that seemed the safest course.

C
ollege football played on Owen's big-screen TV. He was lying on his bed, pretending to be immersed in each play, when all he saw were figures of blue and red scrambling on a green field. He made himself blink every once in a while to keep the colors in focus, but he let the rest of his consciousness drift, thinking about nothing, willing himself into a comfortable catatonic state.

Izzy moved into the periphery of his vision and he drew his eyebrows together, as if the success of the defensive line was tantamount to victory for the free world—or at least as if he had some cash riding
on the game. Anything to get Izzy to go away and leave him alone.

“Look who's here,” she called out brightly, waving a hand. “And they brought lunch.”

Owen slid his gaze in her direction. Damn, there was a “who” all right, two of them, and they were beaming smiles and bearing bags. He felt obliged to smile at them, because at least they'd serve as a temporary buffer between Owen and all the things he didn't want to think about. “Will,” he said, greeting his best friend and colleague at the Paxton F.D. “And Emily. It's nice to see you again.”

The last time he'd seen the smiling woman had been in Vegas, as matron of honor to Izzy, his bride.

Will gripped his right hand, giving it a strong squeeze. “You said you were doing well on the phone, but Emily said she had to see you in person.”

Emily frowned and shoved her husband aside to kiss Owen on the cheek. “It was all his idea,” she whispered. “Not that I didn't want to see you myself, but apparently he feels it necessary to hide behind me in order to preserve his macho image.”

Owen could certainly understand that. Right now he was all about preserving his macho image, which wasn't easy when a man was laid up, with a lousy memory and a temporary wife he was forced to depend on for his every mouthful. Except this time Will and Emily had brought a meal. “What's in the bags?” he asked, glancing at Will.

His friend was finishing rearranging the furniture in the living area of the master bedroom suite so that Owen could remain propped on the bed yet still be part of the group when they settled onto the sofa and chairs. “Subs from Louie's,” he said, and grabbed up the remote on the bedside table to thumb off the TV.

“Hey!” Owen said. “I'm into the game.”

Will blinked at him. “You never watch college football.”

“It's a new habit.” A new habit that was better than watching his wife and
much
better than talking to her. No, it wasn't that he didn't want to talk to Izzy. At the moment, he didn't much want to talk to anyone. He took a big bite of the salami-and-cheese sandwich Emily handed to him on a paper plate. “Put it back on, Will.”

With a shrug, his friend complied, but he muted the sound. Owen frowned, but what could he do? He supposed he could take fifteen or so minutes of innocuous conversation.

“So are you all moved into Will's?” Izzy asked Emily.

She nodded and started chattering about painting a bathroom. Owen tuned out, then realized that his best friend was staring at him again. “What now?” He grabbed up a napkin and wiped his chin. “Mustard?”

“I'm just waiting for the ‘I told you so.'” Will glanced over at the two women, who were immersed in their own conversation.

“Huh?”

Will chewed a bite of his own sandwich. “The last time we really talked was on the night of the fire.”

The night that was only that smoky memory to Owen, and hadn't he established that he liked it that way? “Busy time,” he mumbled.

“We were studying for the haz-mat course we're enrolled in. I was bemoaning my married state and wondered aloud how two such smart guys as ourselves could have gotten hitched in Vegas. You know, that big mistake of ours.”

“Huh,” Owen grunted. He remembered also vowing that he was going to track down Izzy after that very shift ended. Goes to show he should have been more careful about what he wished for. He should have been specific that tracking her down didn't include taking her into his home.

Okay, fine, he'd agreed to letting her stay here. But he hadn't realized how pretty she would look in the morning, and how sexy she'd look at noon and how good she'd smell at night, straight from the shower. And he hadn't considered how talkative she would be, too. She was a librarian, for God's sake! He expected more of her nose in a book and less of her nose in his life.

She'd casually asked him a couple of questions about the fire. The name Jerry Palmer had passed her lips a time or two.

He didn't want to talk about the fire or Jerry.

“You asked me,” Will said, breaking into his thoughts, “if I was so sure that what we'd done in Vegas was a mistake.”

“Of course it was a mistake,” Owen blurted out. Then he realized the women had gone quiet and that both of them were looking at him. Great. He'd just insulted his best friend and his best friend's wife. Not to mention the woman he'd married, too.

“I mean…I mean…” He shoved his plate off his lap. Hell. “No offense meant, okay?”

Will calmly took another bite of his sandwich. “Best damn mistake of my whole life.” Reaching over, he ruffled the ends of Emily's hair. She beamed back sexy sunshine that softened her husband's face.

Izzy was the one sending him a dirty look. Her usually warm brown eyes were cooling, and that plump bottom lip of hers was pushed out in disapproval. “I'm sure the newlyweds appreciate your best wishes.”

He swallowed his groan. “Look—”

Emily hopped up, interrupting his apology. “I brought chocolate chip cookies, too. C'mon, Iz, help me get them.” She dragged her friend up by the elbow.

As the women left the room, taking the remains of the sandwiches and plates, Will grinned at Owen. “That's right. She said chocolate chip cookies. My wife bakes.”

Wife.
“But…but…” Regardless of what he'd expressed on the night of the fire, could this really be
his best friend's happy ending? “Are you absolutely sure you want to be a married man?”

That, after all, had been the opposite of what Will wanted for himself as they'd headed for Vegas going on six weeks ago. Finally freed of the responsibilities of raising five younger siblings, Will had professed to be ready to take up the reins of a wild bachelorhood.

Will propped his feet on the nearby ottoman. “I
want
to be married to Emily.”

And she was already living with Will, just as Izzy was living with Owen. Didn't Will find all the female companionship distracting? The soft patter of their footsteps, the heady smell of their perfume, the way they looked in jeans, or a robe or even a towel turban? But then, Will got to work out his distraction between the sheets, while Owen had to ignore his by watching college football on TV or pretending to take another dozenth nap.

“You okay, Owen?”

“Huh,” he grunted again, and grabbed up the remote to thumb up the sound on his set. More little insects scrambled across the green screen. Go…whichever team was losing. He was identifying with the underdog these days, big time.

“How're things with you and Izzy?”

“I don't want to talk about it.” Remember, he didn't want to talk about anything! Why else did Will think he had the volume up loud enough to hear the
announcers drone on about their glory days throwing the pigskin around? Good God, was there no one more self-involved than a sports announcer with a pretty face and a half-dozen seasons in the NFL?

“What about the night of the fire? The night that Jerry died and we were hurt?” Will asked.

We were hurt.
Oh, crap. Yeah, there was someone more self-involved than those bull-necked bobble-heads on TV. And that would be him. Will had been injured that night, too—he'd gone through his own harrowing experience. “Are
you
okay?”

“Twisted ankle, already all healed up. Nothing close to what you're dealing with.” He looked at his feet, propped on the ottoman, then he looked back over at Owen. “The worst part was when I was trapped under that metal awning. I had a few bad moments wondering if I was going to be crushed under the metal or cooked like stew over a camp stove. Put a few things in perspective for me. My brothers and sisters. Emily.”

“Yeah,” Owen replied. He had bad moments, too, recalling that hazy night. What had he done wrong? How had he let Jerry down? Surely there was something…

“Tell me, Will,” he said gruffly. He couldn't retreat to the land of silence any longer. There was no way he could duck the thoughts in his head. “Tell me about that night.”

Will frowned. “You remember.”

“I can't…” Owen rubbed a hand over his hair, wishing he could still put off the truth forever. “I don't have the details straight. But I must have made an error in judgment.”

 

“No.” Will's adamant voice came clearly through the bedroom doorway, halting Izzy in her trip back to the bedroom with Emily and the cookies. “It wasn't you, Owen. You didn't do anything wrong. That damn fire was responsible for Jerry's death.”

Izzy's heart flopped in her chest. Oh, no. Oh, God. This is what she'd been worrying about. She shifted closer to hear better, then felt her friend yank her back by the arm. “Downstairs and to the kitchen for us,” she whispered.

“But…” But then she let her words subside. Owen would have clammed up if she and Emily returned, and it was important that he get out whatever he was bottling up inside him. His emotions definitely needed a release.

And she could use the respite from her own. A little chat with her best friend should be the soothing balm she needed.

The two women retreated to the kitchen, and Izzy set down the tray on the counter. “Shall I make some tea?” she asked her friend.

Emily smiled. “Really? You? Tea? Quite the domestic goddess you've turned out to be.”

“You should see what I can do with those little
coffeemakers that come in hotel rooms. Three-course meals—though all with the distinctive seasoning of Sanka.”

“Ew.” Emily leaned against the countertop as Izzy bustled around the kitchen. “So, what's new besides your new stint as ‘Isabella Cavaletti, Home Nurse?'”

Izzy gave a little shrug. “Not much. I heard that my
Zia
Sophia passed away.”

“Oh, Iz…”

She shrugged again. “She was ninety-seven when she died. I lived with her in third grade—so, twenty years ago? Funny lady. She made a mean ziti and never rose before noon.”

Emily frowned. “Never rose before noon? Who got you up for school? Made your breakfast?”

“The saintly three of me, myself and I.” She caught the look of sympathy in Emily's gaze. “Girlfriend, it wasn't Dickens. There were clean, folded clothes in the drawers and Pop-Tarts in the kitchen cupboard.”

“Still…”

“A mean ziti can overcome many nutritional challenges.” The kettle was starting to whistle, so Izzy hurried to the stovetop.

“Do you need some time away from Owen to attend the funeral? I'm sure Owen's brother would help out, since his parents and sister are on that cruise. If not, Will or I—”

“Oh, no.” Izzy waved off the offer. “
Zia
was laid to rest about four months ago. I only heard because
I made a call to one of my cousins last week. I was concerned because my mother's number hasn't been working.”

“Izzy.”
Emily took a breath, seeming to get a hold of herself. “All right, the homicidal urge over the way your family forgets about you is passing. Wait—did you say your mother's number wasn't working? Is
she
all right?”

“Yes. She's on a trip, packing for a trip, unpacking for a trip, planning her next trip. One of those.” Her parents had led tours throughout Europe for the past thirty years. “She got a new phone and a new number for reasons not quite clear to me in the fifteen seconds we had to talk before her flight was called.”

“And your father?”

“He was reading a newspaper, but apparently gave a pinkie-wave when he heard it was me on the phone.”

Emily heaved a sigh. “They're not—”

“Anything different than they've ever been. It's when you start expecting more that you get disappointed by people.”

“Some people
won't
disappoint you, Iz. Some people will be there always and—”

Izzy shut her up with a brief, hard hug. “Sure. Like Will is there for you, Emily.”

Emily's eyes narrowed. “Is there some other family thing you should be telling me about?”

“No! You already know all about my family ‘things.'” And the last thing that would relax her
was a rehash of her relatives. “So, spill all about marital bliss.”