Kiss Me Hello (Sweetest Kisses) (36 page)

“Renovations are like a medical diagnosis. A simple bellyache turns into six weeks in the hospital, the end of your life savings, and possibly the end of your job.”

His rhythmic petting of the dog slowed. “You speak from experience?”

“Not direct experience. I take it winter’s coming on, and your contractor hasn’t given you a firm completion date?”

Sadie knew all about firm completion dates. Several of them had eluded her in the past year. That was another motivation for moving to Damson Valley—without distractions, she’d make faster progress toward her project goals.

“I also have rather a penchant for clean laundry and properly prepared food,” Gideon replied. “Hard to come by those without proper wiring. Now I wonder if I should have found some obliging farmer to foster Baby over the winter. She needs her exercise.”

“Get a doggie treadmill,” Sadie suggested.

A small silence erupted, because Sadie had
done
it
again
, had solved a problem nobody had asked her solve. Jay-Jay had an entire lecture on Overfunctioning Is a Coping Skill.

Jay-Jay, whom Sadie should call.

“Hadn’t thought of a doggie treadmill. Suppose it could work. I’d hate to part with my best girl for even a few months.”

The shameless beast lifted her head from Gideon’s thigh and licked his hand.

“I can see why,” Sadie said, finishing her lemonade. Hollister would have liked Baby, until she had her first accident or splashed a single drop of her drinking water onto his Italian loafers.

“I noticed you bought salad ingredients,” Gideon said, rising in one lithe movement. “I’m firing up the grill tomorrow night for the guys helping me move in. A salad would make the meal healthier, and a lady’s presence would ensure Trenton Knightley’s daughter had some company besides Baby.”

Damson Valley had the reputation for being small-town affordable, rural-pretty, and bedroom-community convenient. In short, an ideal solution to a lot of Sadie’s problems.

One of which had been an increasing sense of isolation in DC.

“How old is this daughter?”

“Merle’s so high,” Gideon said, holding his hand at about his waist. “The Knightley brothers will help me move. Trent is her dad. Mac and James are her uncles. Good fellows; hard workers too, but I get the sense a little girl is sometimes lost in the male shuffle amongst them.”

Why was Gideon extending this invitation? If he was trying to pick Sadie up, he wouldn’t ask her to join a testosterone party. Maybe he wanted a babysitter for the kid and the dog? If he was trying to be friendly…

Sadie would not recognize such an overture, no matter how sincere. That’s what the last five years of living in the professional penguin rookery of DC had done to her.

“What time?” she asked.

“About five. I’m in 209, around the corner and down a level. Shall I leave you my cell number?”

Gideon had extended his hand to her. Sadie took the space of an awkward moment to realize he was offering to assist her to her feet. As if…

Not
as if she were incapable of standing. As if—novel, bewildering concept—he were a gentleman, and she were a lady.

She put her hand in his and rose. “Salad, then, and maybe brownies if I can make enough headway with my unpacking.”

Because this Merle kid sounded like she was about Sam’s age, because grilled veggies were a treat not to be missed, because everybody could use a muscular neighbor from time to time.

Gideon squeezed her hand gently. “Thanks. See you then.”

“Right. Apartment 209. Don’t forget your pooch.”

Baby had risen to sitting and had become an insistent, gentle pressure against Sadie’s right leg. The dog’s head just happened to be at ideally pet-able height, so Sadie obliged. Baby’s coat was surprisingly soft, plush, and pleasurable to touch.

“She’s a leaner,” Gideon said. “She’s also a lady of particulars. She must like you.”

He winked, picked up the nearly empty water pot, and disappeared inside, his dog trailing after him. A moment later, Sadie heard the door close and followed her first guest into the apartment.

As she rinsed out glasses, Sadie was assailed by an emotion she didn’t at first recognize. Her middle was not quite settled, her thoughts were hopping around, and yet she felt an inclination to smile.

She’d met a neighbor and through him would soon meet a few more locals, possibly even a friend for Sam.

She’d made small talk as she’d sat sipping lemonade on her porch—when had that
ever
happened before?

Her studio was set up, but she wasn’t, for once, holed up with her computers, oblivious to everything except urgent bodily functions.

And Sadie had petted Baby as the dog had leaned against her leg, panting gently. Without even thinking, without worrying, Sadie had petted the biggest dog she could recall meeting.

Surely, surely that was an omen, and relocating to Damson Valley had been a smart move after all, for the emotion crowding against Sadie’s ribs and burbling through her veins was none other than…
hope
.

* * *

“I hope you’re grilling half a cow, Granville,” MacKenzie Knightley said as he put down his end of the sofa. “I spent the morning shoeing fractious equines, and this afternoon wrangling your furniture. I’m as hungry as a bear in springtime.”

At nearly six foot four, Mac was entitled to his appetites, and Gideon had passed peckish an hour ago.

“Whine, whine, whine,” James Knightley singsonged, following them in with a captain’s chair rocker and nudging the door closed with his foot. He was the youngest of the three brothers, the only blond, and the family Don Juan. “Here’s your rocking chair, old man. To heck with the cow. I could use a few cold ones.”

“Somebody sent you flowers, Granville,” Trenton Knightley said, peering out the dining-room window. He was the dad of the bunch, and as such, had an assistant in the task of wiring up Gideon’s entertainment center.

“They’re pretty,” Merle, his daughter, added. She hopped off the desk and ran a zigzag pattern amid Gideon’s furniture and boxes to the door. She opened the door before the bell had rung. “Are those for Gideon?”

Baby, not a creature who enjoyed upheaval, took to barking, but didn’t leave Gideon’s side.

“Stay,” he commanded softly, for behind the colorful bouquet of zinnias, daisies, and asters stood a small red-haired woman in jeans, sandals, and a lime green T-shirt.

“I’ll get these,” Gideon said, taking the flowers and setting them on a speaker. “Please do come in, and perhaps Baby will cease rousing the watch.”

“I’m Merle,” Trent’s daughter said. “Did you bring brownies?”

Baby disobeyed Starfleet orders and ambled over to sniff Sadie’s knee, while Gideon put an arm around Sadie’s shoulders. Cheeky of him, but his neighbor looked leery of joining the pandemonium that was Gideon’s moving day.

“My friends, please welcome to the madhouse Miss Sadie Delacourt, late of 319 one floor up.”

“I did bring brownies,” she said, “also salad, vegetable shish kebabs, and some lemonade.”

Sadie had a reusable green shopping bag looped over her wrist. James relieved her of it, though to Gideon, the point of the exercise was for James to nearly hold hands with Sadie in the process.

“I’m James Knightley. Pleased to meet you.”

“My dad is putting together the stuff so I can watch my videos,” Merle offered. “Do you like princess videos?”

“I do,” Sadie said. “If they aren’t violent.”

“I’m Trenton Knightley.” Unlike his scamp of a younger brother, Trent offered a proper handshake. “Always a pleasure to meet a woman packing brownies.”

“Our older brother is MacKenzie Knightley,” James said, waving a hand at Mac. “He’s shy. I’m friendly.”

“I’m hungry,” Mac said, “and wondering what the lady will think of you, James, if you’re hitting on her within thirty seconds of learning her name.”

Quite the older brother, was Mac, though James merely grinned at the rebuke.

“I like lemonade,” Merle chirped, “and flowers.”

The bouquet was an interesting gesture, also visually out of place in an apartment done in Tidy-Bachelor neutral tones. That bouquet would draw the eye away from the brown leather sofa, the cream rug on the beige carpet, and the cream-and-brown drapes.

“The flowers should have another inch or two of water,” Sadie said, “and I’ll bet your kitchen isn’t set up yet.”

“Nothing is set up,” Merle volunteered. “Uncle James said bad words when he tried to put the bed together.”

“I apologized for the bad words,” James chimed in, “but you’re right. I didn’t finish getting the frame up.”

“I’ll show you how it’s done, Baby Brother.” Mac took James by the arm. “I’m sure Merle is perfectly capable of guarding the brownies without your help, and Trent was grilling steak before you learned how to drive.”

As Mac dragged his youngest brother down the hall toward the bedrooms, James aimed a smile in Sadie’s direction. She was rummaging in her shopping bag, oblivious to James’s flirting—or purposely ignoring it.

“You have something else in that bag?” Gideon asked.

“A sketch pad,” she said, straightening with a small spiral-bound notebook in her hand. “Merle, you can draw pictures until your dad’s done wiring up the equipment. Baby might like her portrait done.”

Sadie passed over the sketch pad, a pencil, and an eraser. Merle took them, her expression suggesting she’d been entrusted with the scepter and orb of some princessly realm right in Gideon’s very living room.

“Brilliant notion,” Gideon observed as Merle took up a cross-legged seat before Baby’s bed. “The dog’s worn out from policing all the coming and going today, and Trent will make faster progress for having fewer interruptions.”

“Where’s Baby’s water bowl?” Sadie asked.

In a sea of boxes, rolled up rugs, stray electronics, and camera equipment, Gideon saw no shiny silver bowl. Baby would drink from a clean potty if she were desperate, which wasn’t much of an excuse for Gideon’s oversight.

“Good question. Likely in a kitchen box.”

As Sadie put his kitchen to rights—“Yes, you need shelf paper, Gideon, and, no, the bread can’t sit out on the counter”—Gideon took a moment to lean on the doorjamb and enjoy a cold glass of lemonade.

“What’s that look about?” Sadie asked as she snitched a lettuce leaf from the salad bowl. “Are you missing your farmhouse?”

Down the hall, Mac and James were engaged in an argument that, in the language of brothers, was a form of play. From the porch came the scent of good steak on the grill, and in the living room, both dog and child were content in each other’s company.

“My first plan for today was to ask Dunstan Cromarty to help me move. He’s another lawyer, a Scot with a work ethic that won’t quit. We trade that type of chore, but his back has been bothering him.”

“He’s a friend?” Sadie asked, passing Gideon an inch-square serving of gooey, dark-chocolate confection.

“Of a sort. We both have funny accents, though his is much harder to understand than mine.”

A standing joke between them. Cromarty was one of the most competent and ferocious litigators in Damson County, though Gideon wondered if he weren’t also one of the loneliest.

“A comrade, then. You have things in common, but don’t pry uninvited. If anybody sees you with that brownie, Granville, you’ll never hear the end of it.” Sadie took the brownie from his hand and held it up to his mouth.

The scent alone was decadent, particularly on an empty stomach. Gideon nibbled, then took the whole brownie into his mouth. Soft, warm, sweet, rich
heaven
greeted his palate.

“Good,” he managed. “Very good. You’re not to give the recipe to anybody but me.”

Sadie stood before him, petite and considering, and his words took on a significance he hadn’t intended—consciously.

She stepped back and resumed tossing the salad. “So the Knightley brothers are your B team?”

“My C team. When I struck out with Dunstan, I asked my partner, Finn, but he’s hot on a case that involves weekend work. I was at the law library, on the phone to a moving company, when MacKenzie overheard me. The Knightleys offered.”

“That surprised you,” Sadie said, helping herself to a whole black olive from the salad. “Would you have helped them?”

“I have. We work together a fair amount, professionally, but I’ve also done the occasional weekend project with each of them. For all he impersonates a tramp, James knows everything about renovating old houses, and his brothers are handy too.”

A tea towel bearing a damp, wrinkled list of Scottish dialect terms was draped over Sadie’s left shoulder. She looked good in Gideon’s little kitchen—comfortable, competent, and at home.

“One of your parents drank?” she asked.

The sense of her question took a moment to sink in. “I beg your pardon?”

“You’re not at ease with garden-variety friendship. You’re self-sufficient to a fault, and yet everybody likes you. You have excellent people-radar but are at sea in relationships. You’re observant, even hypervigilant, and yet your own emotional landscape is terra incognito to you. Adult Child of an Alcoholic, or ACOA.”

Gideon had wanted to like Sadie Delacourt, which realization came as something of a surprise. Yes, he also wanted to shag her, in a stray dog, passing sense—his sex life drifted in a permanent state of benign neglect—but mostly, he’d wanted to like her.

He did not like being reduced to an acronym and a Google search.

“Sorry,” she said, tossing the salad as if it had committed a mortal sin. “Didn’t mean to armchair-analyze a near stranger. I do best if I stick with my games and graphics. I’ll write down the brownie recipe before I leave, and Merle can keep the sketch pad. I don’t get out much—though my sister can tolerate my company—and this whole small town, bucolic…I guess I’m more tired than I knew.”

The part of Gideon that could skip trace a deadbeat dad through thin air, locate missing heirs two continents away, and catch straying spouses with their pants literally around their ankles tried to keep him pinned to the doorjamb.

The part of him that was homesick for his half-destroyed farmhouse, that had adopted a too-big stray dog, and had been surprised to have help moving, crossed the kitchen and snagged a bite of radicchio.