One Day in Apple Grove (9 page)

Jack looked as if he was listening, really interested. The men she’d dated had been good-looking like Jack, but so far no one measured up in other areas, criteria she hadn’t even realized she’d instinctively been using as a scale to rate her dates. Odd that she only just reasoned out that her biggest yardstick was her father, the first man in her life.

“Would you like more wine?”

“Um…no thank you. I still need to drive home. I had no idea that it was already after nine.”

The teasing light in his eyes belied the seriousness of his tone when he asked, “Do you have a curfew?”

“See if I let you have dessert,” she teased, clearing his place first and then her own.

“Just leave the dishes,” he said when she started to rinse them off. “You cook. I clean.”

“I could get used to that.”

“Now,” he said, moving to stand beside her, “what’s this about dessert?”

She opened the fridge and pointed to a bowl of raspberries and a cellophane-covered pie dish.

His attention wavered from the delectable woman in his sights to the pie in his fridge. “What kind of pie?”

She giggled and reached for the dish. “It’s Peggy’s buttermilk pie.”

“How did you wrangle one out of her? People usually wait in line for one of those pies. I remember more than one fistfight in the parking lot over the years whenever an order got misplaced.”

Cait smiled at him and his heart stuttered before picking up the beat again. “She’s my best friend.”

“And?” Jack figured there’d be more to the story.

“I’ll fix the hole in their barn roof come Saturday…for free.”

“I don’t know that I’m worth the price of your labor.” Her scent clouded his brain.
Lilacs
. Cait smelled of lilacs.

“Anyone who’d risk breaking his neck at dusk chasing a stray puppy through the woods to make sure that he’s not injured…and then opening his home to that puppy…deserves the whole pie.”

While he’d been studying her delicate bone structure and the curve of her cheek, she’d grabbed another bowl from his fridge. “Whipped cream?” he asked.

“The real kind,” she told him, “not the kind from a can.”

“I will owe you for this but plan to take advantage of the offer and have one piece now, one piece before bed, then breakfast…”

His gaze swept up from the bowl of whipped cream in her hands to her startled, green eyes as the gut-wrenching thought of what he’d like to do with that cream short-circuited his brain.

She cleared her throat and asked, “Still hungry?”

“Mmm.”
For
more
than
food.
Did he dare tell her that? While the silent debate was raging inside of him, she sliced, scooped, and dropped pie, cream, and berries.

“There you are.” When he didn’t move, she said, “Dig in.”

Jamie chose that moment to bump into Jack and plaster himself to Jack’s leg. He groaned watching that first forkful of flaky confection fall off his fork and get snapped up between little black lips. “Why, you little devil!”

“No more for you, Jameson,” Caitlin’s voice was stern. “Too much sugar will give you worms.”

“Actually—” Jack began only to stop when Cait glared at him.

“Meg said that’s what mom always used to say.”

“But if Grace is allergic to dogs, why would your mom say that?”

Cait rolled her eyes. “Because my parents grew up with dogs.”

And
that
, thought Jack,
is
that.
He’d seen that look before on Caitlin’s face and knew when to drop the subject. “Think I’ll make some coffee.” But while he was making coffee, the image of Caitlin wrapped in his arms kept interrupting his thought process, making it hard to think straight.

“Need any help?”

He shook his head and filled two mugs with coffee, handing one to Cait and setting the other on the table. “Dessert looks great…dinner was amazing.”

“Simple,” she corrected him. “Sometimes, simple is best when you’ve had a long day and it’s late. Besides, I can’t eat a big meal after eight o’clock.”

“But what about the pie?”

She looked down at her pie, topped with berries and whipped cream, and slowly smiled. “There’s always room for pie.”

He pulled out her chair and couldn’t resist testing her reaction by brushing his fingers along the nape of her neck. The shudder she tried to suppress confirmed what he’d been wondering. Caitlin Mulcahy could not help but react to his touch. It was a good feeling to realize he was not the only one affected. Besides, it was all her fault, talking about hands and having his mind wander to what else his hands could do besides heal.

Struggling to redirect his thoughts, he focused on dessert. Sampling a few bites, he had to ask, “Why don’t they serve their pie like this at the diner?”

Caitlin grinned. “It’s the way my great-great-grandma always served it. Molly Mulcahy was a canny woman, who knew the way to my great-great-grandpa’s heart was through his stomach.”

“Not all men can be bought with food.”

She sipped her coffee and let her gaze linger on him. A zing of electricity ricocheted off his heart and sent sparks of awareness to every single nerve ending in his body. Digging deep, he fought for control. He didn’t think she had any idea that she’d tied him up into a reef knot—one of the strongest knots a sailor could use—the more tension on it, the tighter the knot became. He wasn’t about to mention it—yet.

“Can you?”

For a moment he couldn’t remember what she’d just said, but then his brain took pity on him and he remembered. There was a time when he’d have given his right arm for a home-cooked meal, but he’d survived eating MREs—and he’d survived his second tour overseas. Maybe the way to his heart was through his stomach. “I’m in danger of saying yes…this pie tastes amazing with the toppings.”

“I wish I’d have had the chance to get to know my great-great-grandmother…other than through some of the recipes handed down to my dad along with some of her sage advice.”

“But that’s how you do get to know her.” Jack watched the way Caitlin slipped a bite of pie off the fork between full, soft lips and had to look away.
Do
not
think
about
those
lips.

“There’s a picture of her and my great-great-grandfather on the mantelpiece in the living room.”

“Family ties run strong in the Gannon family too.”

“Do you miss your folks much?”

He stopped to think about it. “I do and I don’t.”

“Can’t you decide?”

“I spent all of my life surrounded by their love and guidance, and then spent a chunk of my adult years in the navy—after I was injured, I used the college credits I’d earned during the navy and went to med school…I guess I got used to being on my own.”

“I’ve never been away from home,” Caitlin confessed to her plate.

He wondered why she sounded so sad. “Didn’t you go away to school?”

Caitlin shrugged. “That was community college, and I was only away while I was attending classes.”

“Not the same as living in a dorm.”

She frowned into her coffee cup. “No. It’s not. Gracie was the only one of us who went away to school. And she’s forever griping about Apple Grove. Her list of reasons to leave gets longer by the day.”

“So she’s planning on leaving town?”

Sadness filled Cait to overflowing. “Yeah.” The reality of Mulcahys being run by someone other than herself and her two sisters was inconceivable, but fast becoming a reality. “She’s waiting to hear back from a recruiter in Columbus.” She hesitated before adding, “I can’t decide whether to root for her, fingers crossed that she gets the job…or pray they hire someone else.”

Intentionally pitching his voice low, he asked, “Then wouldn’t her dreams of making a life for herself in the big city be squashed?”

Cait didn’t answer for the longest time. When she raised her gaze to meet his, he was sorry to see the moisture gathering in her grass-green eyes. “It’s not that so much as thinking that I might lose her too. I’ve already lost Meg.”

“Have you?” he asked, rising from his seat and rounding the table to stand beside her.

She looked so alone in that one moment and then she closed her eyes and sighed. “It feels that way. It’s so hard, what with Pop and Mary getting serious, Meg married and going to be a mother of three by summertime. If Grace leaves, where will I be?”

“Ah,” he said, taking her hand and tugging her to her feet. “Walk with me, Cait, and tell me what dream you set aside so that you wouldn’t leave your family with another hole in it.”

She jerked free of his hold. “I didn’t say—”

“You didn’t have to,” he said, slipping his arm through hers and tugging her toward the back door. “Come on, Jamie boy.”

With the dog at their side, Jack opened the door and let the soft spring night weave its magic around the woman he’d come to care for in such a short time. He didn’t dare think about just how much he cared…not yet. There was time to mull that over later tonight after she’d gone.

“The moon’s waxing.” When she didn’t respond, he added, “Did you ever go for a sail on a moonlit night? Just ghosting along with the evening breeze?”

This time when their eyes met, hers were dry. “No. But Peggy and I borrowed her dad’s rowboat one night and lost the oars in the middle of the pond and had to jump in and drag the boat back to shore.”

He fought against the need to laugh. “I’m sure Mr. McCormack wasn’t too happy about that.”

“He never found out.”

“He liked to go fishing in that boat. Did you have enough money saved up between the two of you to buy him a new set of oars?”

She shook her head. “I made them.”

“Oars?” She’d certainly surprised him. “That must have taken weeks.”

“Actually only one. I learned from the best how to use my grandfather’s woodworking tools. Once Peggy and I confessed to her mom what happened, she helped keep Mr. McCormack busy so that he didn’t have time to go fishing until I’d finished the oars.”

“And he never knew?”

“Well…we were a lot younger then and were so worried about getting caught that when he never said anything, we figured we’d dodged getting in trouble big time. I never really thought about it until a few years ago.”

Her smile had him asking, “What happened?”

“Her dad stopped by our house one night and asked if I’d be willing to make another set of oars for his cousin—like the one’s I’d replaced his with!”

“He wasn’t mad?”

“No.” Her eyes sparkled with life and laughter as she told him, “Apparently, the grips on his old oars weren’t as smooth and didn’t fit his hands as well as the ones I’d made.” She shrugged. “Who knew?”

“Apparently everyone but you and Peggy.” When she fell silent, he slipped his arm free so he could wrap it around her waist and lead her toward the woods. “How long have you wanted to be a carpenter?”

“Half my life,” she said, then pulled to a stop. “You weren’t supposed to ask me that.”

“Because?”

“I don’t want my dad to worry that I’ll stop working for the family business the way Grace plans to.”

“But you’ve thought about it.”

She sighed and began walking again. “Yeah. Does that make me disloyal?”

“To want to be able to do something other than work in the family business?” He tightened his hold on her and answered, “No.” Seeing the worry on her face, he reassured her, “I don’t gossip like your friends down at the diner. Your secret’s safe with me.”

“Did you ever think about doing something besides following in your father’s footsteps?”

He looked up at the stars and smiled. “Yeah…but I got to do it.”

“Oh?” she asked. “What was that?”

“Do you see that star over there?”

She turned to look in the direction he pointed. “Yes…isn’t that Polaris?”

“Brightest star in the northern sky. You can navigate by it.”

“You really wanted to enlist in the navy?”

“I wanted to sail the seven seas, learn to navigate the way ancient mariners did.”

“I thought you were just following along with the Gannon tradition of seafaring navy men.”

“There was that,” he admitted. “But even as a kid, I’d sneak outside with my sleeping bag and sleep out under the stars, wondering what it’d be like to use them to find my way out on the sea.”

“And did you?”

“Yes, and it was everything I’d imagined and more than I’d bargained for.” Before she could ask him to explain, he turned her into his embrace. Her gentle curves pressed against the hard planes of his body, setting off sparks that threatened to ignite. He didn’t have the will to step back or let her go.

“Will you kiss me in the moonlight, Cait?”

Every fiber of his being urged her to say yes. He didn’t know if he’d survive the night because in his imagination, he’d already sampled the honeyed sweetness of her lips.

Just when he thought she’d refuse, the stiffness left her limbs as she melted against him. “Yes.”

He lowered his mouth to hers. The tentative tasting led to a deep desire for more. When she sighed, he took advantage of the moment and traced the rim of her mouth with the tip of his tongue. When her tongue tangled with his, heat shot straight to his gut, and he angled her head back to drink from her lips. Pure and potent as wild honey, Caitlin went to his head like two fingers of Irish whiskey.

Coming up for air, he tucked her head beneath his chin and worked to steady his breathing. “You pack a lethal punch,” he confessed, pressing a kiss to the top of her head.

Her arms tightened around him. “I’ve been kissed before,” she said, “but not like that.”

He eased back until he could look into the depths of her emerald eyes when he asked, “And how’s that?”

“Like you’d die if you didn’t kiss me.”

“That about sums it up.” Reeling her back in, he undid her braid and speared his fingers into the mass of waves, reveling in the fact that she was warm, willing, and eager to kiss him back.

He had a gut-deep need to taste more…touch more…but it was too soon and he didn’t want to scare her off. “Caitlin—” He gave in and brushed his lips over hers.