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Her own brother, Pig First Class.

Crap.

* * * * *

“I’ve never felt this way before,” Kim said.

“How do you feel?” Damon asked. They were in the kitchen of
the house Damon shared with his boyfriend Trent. Damon was in the middle of
making dinner so it’d be ready when Trent came home from his workout. He wore
an apron over a fitted dress shirt and designer jeans and seemed completely
content. Kim sat at the marble-topped café table and watched, anything but.

“Queasy. Pissed. Like I’ve been sucker-punched. I mean, I’m
thinking how right it feels to be with her, how she makes me feel so…so…” He
shook his fists in frustration, both at trying to find the right words and
because he didn’t understand.

Damon closed the refrigerator door, a pint of plain yogurt
in his hand. “And she says, ‘Thanks for the sex, I’ll call you later?’”

“More or less.”

Damon grinned. “Gotta love the irony.”

“It’s a rib-tickler, all right.”

“Damn, you’ve got it bad.” Damon put down the yogurt and
slid into the dainty, wire-backed chair opposite Kim’s. “If I didn’t know
better, I’d say—nah, it’s not possible.”

“I’m glad this amuses you. I knew you’d be a friend.” He
started to stand. Damon caught his wrist.

“Sit down, slick. I’m sorry. It’s just so weird, seeing you
like this.”

He sat. “Not as weird as it is being like this. What am I
supposed to do?” At Damon’s pained look, he said, “Uh oh. What?”

“Are you considering a long-distance relationship?”

That stopped him. “Long—shit. What am I doing?”

“It’s a good question. What do you want to do?”

“I want her to believe me about Jules, really believe me. To
want to be with me. Dating. Talking. Hanging out.” For how long? Was it
possible they’d still be together when he was ready to move? It would be
another new record.

“I got bad news for you,” Damon said. “You want things you
can’t control. You’re going to have to decide whether you’re okay being with
her on her terms.

“She is a lioness, Damon. You should have heard her yell.”

Damon raised an eyebrow.

“Not sex,” Kim chided, but he was reluctant to discuss the
break-in, even to better explain. “She completely lost it, and it was amazing.
She’s fearless.”

“That’s a good thing, I take it?”

“She takes my breath away.”

“Ah.”

Kim’s chest hurt. He put his head in his hands and scrubbed
his fingers through his hair. He smelled Isabelle’s bath gel, a scent now on
her sheets and pillows. He inhaled the far more intimate scent still clinging
to his fingers. No doubt he didn’t deserve her. He certainly sucked at telling
her anything important. And yet, how could he possibly let her go?

Damon got up from the table and shoved Kim’s shoulder. “Tell
me about your birthday plans. You get things settled with Kerry?”

He had to hand it to Damon as the master of changing Kim’s
mood. From heartache to heartburn in oh-point-three seconds. His hands fell to
the table with a thud and he wasn’t surprised to see they were fists.

“C’mon, slick. He’s your brother.”

“Half. Only half.”

“It wouldn’t kill you to give the man a chance once in a
while.”

Kim worked at relaxing his hands. “He’s had you conned from
the minute you met, and you came cheap.”

“I am many things, but I am not cheap.” Damon posed in mock
indignation, hands on his hips.

“All Kerry had to do was admire that diamond stud you got
from your ex, and you were eating out of his hand.”

“Naturally, I was pleased when it appraised at twice what
what’s-his-name paid for it, but that’s not the point.” He picked up the yogurt
container and started spooning the contents over green lasagna noodles in a
casserole dish. It wasn’t plain yogurt. He’d premixed something with herbs and
a tomato-y something-or-other. He’d actually planned this meal. As poorly as he
planned his business, it amazed Kim to seem him so organized domestically.

“Had a point, did you?” Kim asked.

“You’re quite unpleasant tonight, you know. I don’t blame
your thang for deciding no use but for juice.”

“Her name is Isabelle.”

“Isabelle. I apologize.” He put down the spoon. “See how
easy that was? Two little words, slick. You should try them some time.”

It was true. He hadn’t exactly been the picture of gratitude
for crashing in here unannounced to spill his guts. “Sorry, Day Man.”

“I meant to Kerry. You have no idea what that man has gone
through for you.”

“Actually, I do. And if I were ever unclear about it, Mr.
I-Want-To-Control-Your-Life would be happy to remind me.” The fists were back.
His jaw had clenched too. Dandy.

Damon shoved the lasagna pan in the kitchen’s enormous,
top-of-the-line oven. It hit the metal rack with a clang. “You miss this
birthday and you’ll not only break his heart, you’ll have wasted Jules’ time.”

“Jules?”

“You’ve been wanting her to teach, so when Kerry asked my
help planning for—I’ve said too much,” Damon said.

“What are you talking about? You saying Jules is teaching
Kerry?”

Damon’s eyes swiveled skyward and he gave a dramatic sigh.
“All of them. You’re going climbing with the whole family, assuming you can
pull your head out of your plumber’s crack and talk to your brother. There.
I’ve spoiled the surprise. Call him, slick.” He wiped his undoubtedly clean
hands down the front of his apron with an exaggerated huff and started running
water in the sink, which was Damon-speak for “Don’t talk to me”.

Climbing with Kerry’s family. Son of a bitch couldn’t let
Kim enjoy his own sport without horning in on it. He even had to mess with
Kim’s friends behind his back, get them to set it all up for him. Kerry loved
that shit. Asking Kim’s college girlfriend to pressure him to study harder. And
during Kim’s apprenticeship, calling the master plumber to ask about safety
precautions. On and on.

Damon didn’t want to talk about it? Fine with him. Kim had
nothing to say. He got up to leave.

“Hey,” Damon said, shutting off the water, his tone saying
he was over it, that they were friends again. Kim wasn’t, but leaving meant
going home to an empty loft and a long night of wishing he were still at
Isabelle’s house, lost in her laugh, finding new ways to unleash her throaty
purr. Truth was, he needed a friend, even one who fell for Kerry’s great-guy shtick.
He certainly didn’t need to be a prick about it.

“Let it go, Damon. It’s family business.”

“I apologize.”

Funny he should choose those exact words. Kim could call him
on it if he wanted a fight. He didn’t. He nodded his acceptance, suddenly
tired.

Damon nodded back. “So how ‘bout filling me in on the quest
for your own little piece of climbing paradise. What’s going on with Austin?”

Austin. The move.

Kim gratefully shifted gears, telling Damon about the offer
on his condo and his plan to go to Austin in the morning to look at “cute
houses”.

“Maybe I shouldn’t go,” Kim said, uneasy all over again.

“Isabelle might call?”

Kim nodded.

Damon threw a kitchen sponge at him, damp and soapy.

“You’re right,” Kim said, “I’m an idiot.”

“Yeah, but at least this time, you’re an idiot in love.”

Isabelle didn’t want to move. She didn’t want to do
anything, let alone try to figure out how she was going to handle Mrs. Avery’s
closet installation by herself, which was the closest thing to motivation she
had for getting out of bed this morning.

She might have had Charlie’s help if she could stand to even
look at him. She’d almost thrown him out of the house—let him find a fellow
frat rat bastard to help him out—but rat bastard or no, he was her brother.
She’d said he could stay and that’s all there was to it. Didn’t mean she wanted
to spend the morning with him. Besides, he was off to more job interviews.

She also couldn’t call Kim, though her reasons why were
almost more complicated than she could stand. To make it worse, none of her
very good reasons stopped her from wanting to call him, and not just because
she wanted him in her bed. Rather, she wanted him for the way he told her
stupid jokes and understood why she’d screamed about her violated house. And
for his kisses.

And because she wanted him in her bed.

Isabelle punched her pillow and headed for the shower. Even
the bathroom was no refuge, not anymore, not with Kim’s toolbox still sitting
there on the floor between the toilet and the tub to remind her of what she’d
done. Kim might have “fling” written all over him, but she didn’t. It hadn’t
taken much more than a meal and Charlie’s disgusting revelation to crash her
mood. Then there was her own disgusting revelation, one she hadn’t shared with anyone.
She’d used Kim. She hadn’t intended to, hadn’t realized that’s what she was
doing, but it didn’t change the facts. She’d been mad about the braless gym
babe and the blonde and, hell, the waitress from the other night. Now she was
mad that being mad hadn’t made her stop wanting him, and that she’d used him.

Worse yet, she had a feeling he knew it. He’d tried to slow
her down the first time she jumped him in the bathroom. And after the second
time—after the lovemaking that had surely ruined her chances of being satisfied
with any other man—even then, he’d tried to do the right thing, tried to
explain away the gym.

Tried to make it a relationship.

Maybe he wasn’t fling material at that.

She didn’t dare call him. Either he’d be interested in
sleeping with her or he wouldn’t. If he was, she’d have been right about him
all along and so wouldn’t want him. If he wasn’t, she’d have been wrong and
he’d be hurt by the whole thing, and he was too nice a guy—

Crap.

And here was his toolbox, evidence of how he’d come to her
rescue in spite of the way she’d treated him. Sooner or later, he was going to
want the toolbox back. She should take it through the house to the mudroom, out
of her way, where she at least wouldn’t have to look at it. It was too heavy to
carry. Kim had acted as if it weighed nothing. He sure packed a lot of power in
his slight build.

She set the toolbox on a bath towel and dragged it to the
mudroom, realizing Kim had never said whether he’d successfully vacuumed the
ring—not that she’d given him the chance. She popped open the latches on the
toolbox to see if he might have put the ring in there. His coveralls were the
first thing she found. She lifted them out and set them aside. A ripstop nylon
bag seemed to have his heavy-duty gloves inside and she elected not to open it,
prompting second thoughts about touching much of anything else. She got on
hands and knees instead, looking inside the toolbox from every angle and hoping
to catch a glimmer of gemstone or at least something ring-like in shape. Nada.
She gingerly lifted the glove bag and put it back in the toolbox. With the
coveralls in hand, though, she hesitated. Offering to pay Kim for his plumbing
services seemed to offend him and after last night, it might be even more
insulting. She could at least wash his coveralls. She stuffed them into the
washer, hit them with a shot of detergent and started the machine.

While that was going, she made herself call the number he’d
given her and was relieved to get his voice mail right away.

She said hi. She asked if he’d found the ring. She said she
needed to get it appraised before Steven could come looking for it again. She
asked him to call her as soon as he could.

Should she have been warmer? More personal? She didn’t know.
She wasn’t even sure she’d told him about Steven looking for the ring. She
didn’t think she had.

She showered, turning her attention to business, which was
not as great a balm as it should have been. All the materials for Ms. Avery’s
closet were cut to fit and ready to go, and Isabelle knew her tools well
enough, but some aspects of an installation really required two people. She’d
expected to have Charlie for this job and now it was too late to call anyone
else. She’d just do the best she could and if she had to return later for finishing
touches, so be it. It was arguably better than rescheduling a second time. She
could at least dress as if she belonged in Mrs. Avery’s chic closet. She chose
a Hepburnesque pants suit. Its tailored lines would keep her looking good
without getting in her way during the installation. She paired it with a straw
hat at least thirty years younger than the suit. Something about the ribs of
patent leather circling its wide band gave the hat a tailored feel, and the
whimsy of the tiny, upside-down patent bow at the back made her laugh,
something she definitely needed this morning.

Charlie had left enough hot coffee to fill her favorite cup,
which meant he maybe wasn’t a rat bastard beyond redemption, though that was up
to Gina to decide.

It all complicated her Thursday, for sure. She usually
issued her invites for the next Monday-night dinner party, usually made a list
of things she’d need, usually went to the grocery store.

Dammit, she was predictable.

Except for last night. Well, except for pretty much any time
she spent with Kim. He seemed to draw out her sense of adventure—appeal to her
more reckless impulses. Make her a lioness. That might be a nice change for
her, in moderation. But there was nothing moderate about grabbing a man out of
the shower and throwing him on the bed, at least not when it was a man she
barely knew, a man she didn’t entirely trust, a man who probably categorized
her in the ceiling-fan-swinger compartment of his brain. It hadn’t seemed a bad
thing at the time, but she didn’t want to be in that compartment in any man’s
brain, much less Kim Martin’s.

Kim, who wanted to clean up for her. Kim, who wanted to take
his time.

Crap.

She could stand here second-guessing herself all day, but
Mrs. Avery had been waiting long enough for her pastel-tinted shoe bins. It was
time for Space Craft to get rolling.

* * * * *

Kim elected not to drive to Austin. Too much time to think.
He flew. The realtor, Crystal, met him at the airport to show him around in her
brand-new, top-of-the-line minivan. She was pushing forty or maybe past it,
bottle-blonde and she wore her fingernails long and loud. She belonged in
suburban Dallas, not Austin, especially when, three times in the first hour,
she’d managed to work her recent divorce into the conversation.

He’d liked her a lot better on the phone.

Still, he had to say she knew her way around the city. Kim
tended to head straight for his favorite climbing haunts. He was in her hands,
here. She took him to a slick downtown loft first, which told him she had
talked to his Dallas realtor about his current address. When he reminded her
he’d asked for something quite different, they wasted the rest of the morning
on a tract house with a swimming pool that consumed the entire microscopic
backyard. Yes, it was homier, but it had no personality, no interesting
woodwork, no roots.

Roots. A new concept for him, one that stirred up images of
vintage clothing and porches built for goodnight kisses.

Maybe he should just take an apartment until he’d gotten the
lioness out of his system.

Oblivious, Crystal whisked him off for lunch, and on the
way, she chattered on about how sublime the restaurant was, how she knew all
the best spots in Austin and did he like music, because, of course, Austin had
the best scene. Her run-on sentences became a kind of white noise in his head.
She switched over to pets. She loved golden labs, did Kim like dogs, because of
course, they were great to go running with and Kim seemed an outdoorsy sort.
Had he ever been out to Enchanted Rock?

The white noise became more of an insect drone as they
walked through the lobby of the grand old Driskill Hotel and into the cherry
wood surroundings of its 1886 Café and Bakery, where the subject became
antiques. She knew the most wonderful places in Gruene, she said, a teensy bit
of a drive, but so worth it.

Crystal pushed him to try the meatloaf. He ordered the
turkey BLT.

All he could think through the woman’s chatter—maybe Round
Rock wasn’t for him, maybe he’d like to see something in funky South
Austin?—was that Isabelle would have loved the place. Etched glass, gorgeous
hexagonal tile floor, star-shaped light fixtures that except for their size
would not have been out of place in a certain Dallas bungalow.

“Do you have kids?”

Kim blinked. He was already four bites into his sandwich,
oozing chipotle mayo and avocado making it a messy affair. They’d been through
his requirements on the phone. She knew he didn’t have kids. Any second she’d
mention the divorce again.

“I have two—Casey and Karen,” she said.

Kim suddenly knew why he’d liked her on the phone and why
her flirting made him so uncomfortable. He was lunching with his mother, twenty
years younger.

He needed to slip away and call Damon. One quick call, and
Damon could call him back with some tremendous emergency, some dire reason he
needed to get out of Austin and get back to Dallas. He glanced at his phone,
clipped to his jeans, and realized he’d forgotten to turn it back on after his
flight.

He left it that way. If he let go, he’d prove himself the
quitter Kerry had always thought he was. He could take Crystal in hand instead
and get what he needed without hearing all this shrill desperation in her
voice. Hell, he could flirt right back at her and maybe get the negotiator of a
lifetime on his side.

Well, maybe once they left the restaurant he could. In here,
in this sophisticated slice of history, flirting with Crystal even for purely
businesslike reasons felt like cheating on Isabelle. Which was ridiculous.

Unless Damon was right about him. Unless this was love. Fear
tickled the inside of his forehead and squeezed his eyeballs.

* * * * *

“So is it love or merely
finding-a-man-gorgeous-enough-to-make-you-forget-whatshisname lust?”

“Stacey!” Isabelle owed her friend big-time for helping her
with Mrs. Avery’s installation, but no way was she discussing her personal life
while doing a job in a client’s home.

Luckily, they were almost done.

“Oooh,” said Stacey, laughing. “You owe me lunch and
details.”

Stacey had called looking for a lunch date just as Isabelle
was getting ready to leave her house for the installation. It was easy enough
to persuade Stacey to help her hang closet rods in Highland Park first. Her
friend had gone above and beyond, helping her assemble shoe shelves and
lingerie dividers as well, not to mention providing cheery distraction from
everything on her mind. It was good to have friends, even if she wasn’t a big
fan of Stacey’s latest.

She dropped front-panel inserts of translucent lilac, mint
and daffodil into Mrs. Avery’s new accessory boxes and placed them on their
shelves. She hadn’t been sure about her client’s choice to combine plastic
tints with wood, but it worked. The maple had a slight blush tint that made her
pastel choices seem to glow.

“I’m so excited,” Mrs. Avery said, gasping and applauding like
a game show contestant when she saw it. “I can’t wait to put my things away.”
She dashed first to the island and opened all the drawers, inhaling deeply over
those with cedar lining. She tipped open the hamper door. She pulled out the
telescoping closet rod and pushed it back in. Isabelle felt warmth deep in her
gut. Nothing was as satisfying as witnessing a client who clearly loved Space
Craft’s work.

It was starting to rain as Isabelle and Stacey picked up all
the cartons and packing materials and hauled them to the van. Mrs. Avery
grabbed a designer umbrella and followed them out.

“Girls, you do beautiful work,” she said. “I’m going to tell
all my friends about Space Craft.” Isabelle thanked her and made sure she had
plenty of business cards to pass along.

“Now that,” Stacey declared as they pulled away, “was fun!”
She all but bounced in the van’s passenger seat, eyes alight. “That woman had
so much stuff that you’d think she’d need a second house just to hold it all.
But Space Craft comes in and—bing-bang-boom—it comes together for a perfect
fit. I’m telling you, it’s like a puzzle. I love solving puzzles.”

“You make it sound like I was doing you a favor!”

“Made my day off a lot more fun than cleaning the house,
that’s for sure.”

“I’m glad you enjoyed it. You sure bailed me out. Where
would you like to have lun—”

“Sammy’s.”

“You got it.” Dust turned to dirty water on the windshield
as the rain settled in. Isabelle turned up the speed of her windshield wipers
from intermittent to slow and steady. “One good thing about running so late is
we’re sure to have missed the business lunch crowd.”

“No competition for the jukebox,” Stacey said. “Hope you’re
flush—I’m really hungry. But I guess you’re always flush, now you’ve got a
plumber on call.”

Isabelle dutifully groaned at the pun, but Kim wasn’t on
call at all. He sure hadn’t called back about the ring’s whereabouts. Maybe
he’d gotten insulted again at her asking about the outcome of his plumbing
services. Maybe he’d gotten insulted that she was calling about the ring
instead of about him. Or them. Or maybe…