Surrender To Sultry (15 page)

While he opened the car door for her, Emma considered his question, sucking her bottom
lip and staring at her rhinestone-studded jeans in deep thought. After he’d installed
her booster and helped fasten the seat belt, she asked, “Will there be other kids
there?”

“Well, no. But that means you get Miss Leah all to yourself.” He’d give anything for
that privilege.

The prospect didn’t seem to float Emma’s boat, but Colt didn’t much care. He shut
the door and jogged around the cruiser’s front end, then smiled, realizing how long
it’d been since he’d managed a run, albeit a slow one. He hated to admit it, but Leah
was right about the chiropractor. If one adjustment had made this much of a difference,
he couldn’t wait to see how he’d feel after a few more.

After only twenty seconds, the inside of the cruiser smelled like peanut butter, Emma’s
signature scent. Colt began to wonder if she dabbed a little Skippy behind her ears
and on the insides of her wrists each morning before she got dressed.

“Can we take your motorcycle instead?” Emma asked, planting her dirty sneakers on
his glove box.

He pointed at her feet in a silent message, and she dropped them to the floor. “Your
mama would string me up by my heels. Besides,” he hitched a thumb toward the back,
“I’m bringing mashed potatoes and rolls. How’re we gonna carry all that on the Harley?”

She tapped her chin and stared out the window at a field of tall brown cornstalks.
“I know!” she declared. “We’ll put ’em in backpacks. I’ve got a Dora one, and it holds
lots of stuff.”

“Okay,” Colt said, playing along. “But there’s still the issue of your mama killing
me when she finds out I put you on my bike.”

Emma shrugged. “That’s easy. We won’t tell her.”

Poor Avery was going to have her hands full with this one. Hell, she had her hands
full now—Colt shuddered to imagine Emma as a teenager. With any luck, she wouldn’t
turn out too much like her uncle. Otherwise, Avery should go ahead and invest in a
distillery, maybe stock up on Valium too.

“No deal,” he told her. “Your mom and I are on the same team, monkey. We don’t keep
secrets from each other.”

Emma switched gears right away, filling the silence with knock-knock jokes that made
no sense but cracked her up regardless. By the time they parked on the driveway behind
Bruiser and made their way to Leah’s front door, Emma was so slap-happy she’d laughed
her own ponytail loose.

He tried gently tugging her hair back in place while Emma punched the doorbell, but
that only made it worse. Her head resembled a windblown haystack when the preacher
answered the door.

“Well, who do we have here?” Pastor Mac said to Emma with a wide grin.

She responded with an enthusiastic, “Uncle Colt said I get Miss Leah all to myself!”

Colt chuckled and lifted his Pyrex dish in Emma’s direction. “Hope you don’t mind.
My sister’s under the weather, so she canceled her trip at the last minute.”

“Course not.” Pastor Mac stepped aside and opened the door for them. “The more the
better. Leah made enough food for half the county.”

Colt led the way into the living room, where the air was thick with the aroma of pecan
pie and roasted bird. Even better, Pastor Mac had turned on the Texas A&M game. No
Thanksgiving felt complete without a little pigskin action. Colt had just started
to check the score when Leah padded in from the kitchen and tore his attention away
from football. National pastime or not, no man in his right mind would prefer watching
a huddle of sweaty athletes instead of Leah.

At the sight of her, his chest went all hot and prickly. She’d pulled her long waves
into a twist with a tiny flower pinned behind one ear, and she wore the same knee-length
black dress as her first day in town, but paired with a long silver necklace and matching
earrings. A dusting of pink blush on the apples of her cheeks accentuated a timid
smile that Colt returned in full force. Lord, she looked lovely. He was glad he’d
taken the time to return home after his shift to change into khakis and his best sweater,
otherwise he’d feel like a fool sitting beside her in his uniform.

“Here,” she said, reaching for the bowl of mashed potatoes. “Let me take that.”

Colt handed off the dish, and once Leah’s arms were occupied, he snuck a lingering
kiss on her jaw, right below her earlobe. He made sure to whisper, “Angel, you look
good enough to eat,” before pulling back and noticing the goose bumps that had puckered
her skin. He wished they were alone so he could spread those chills all over.

She blinked a few times, then noticed Emma. Leah’s eyes widened in surprise, but she
didn’t hesitate to crouch down and greet the crazy-haired-peanut-butter princess.
While the girls gushed over each other’s clothes, Colt reclaimed the potatoes and
took them into the kitchen along with the rolls. Once there, he helped Pastor Mac
arrange all the covered dishes in the center of the oak table and left him to carve
the turkey breast. When Colt returned to the living room, Emma was seated on the floor
in front of the sofa, head tipped back while Leah smoothed her unruly mane with a
wide paddle brush and refastened her ponytail.

Once the up-do was complete, Emma faced her stylist and patted her head with explorative
fingers. “Can you fix it like yours?”

“I will after supper,” Leah said, standing from the sofa. “I worked hard on all that
food, and I don’t want to eat it cold.”

Emma jutted out her bottom lip, but didn’t argue as she dragged her feet into the
kitchen. Everyone settled at the table—Leah and her daddy at opposite ends with Colt
and Emma together on one side. It felt wrong watching the preacher sink into the same
chair where Colt had feasted on the old guy’s daughter, and he wondered how often
Leah thought of that day. If she remembered now, she didn’t show it. She kept her
eyes downcast as she took Colt’s hand for grace.

He grasped her cool fingers and discreetly brushed his thumb along her wrist while
taking Emma’s left hand. With her right, Emma linked fingers with Pastor Mac, who
blessed the meal.

After
amen
, Emma announced, “That’s not how my mamma says it. And she does this when she’s done,”
then crossed herself backward.

“Avery went to Catholic school,” Colt explained while spreading Emma’s napkin in her
lap. “Well, I suppose I did too, but only for a couple of semesters.” He didn’t mention
they’d expelled him after he got busted behind the cafeteria with both hands under
the cheer captain’s skirt.

“There’s no wrong way to thank the Lord for His bounty,” Pastor Mac said to Emma while
he handed the platter of sliced turkey to Colt.

“For paper towels?” Emma asked.

Colt snorted a laugh. “Bounty just means a lot of something.”

“Oh.”

He speared a chunk of breast meat and set it on his niece’s plate. She wrinkled her
nose and objected, “I don’t like turkey. I want chicken nuggets.” Then, turning those
wide brown eyes on him, added, “You promised, Uncle Colt.”

He hesitated and darted a glance at Leah, who studied him silently from above her
glass of iced tea as if waiting to see how he’d handle the situation. “Uh,” he began,
turning back to Emma, “Miss Leah’s a real good cook, hon. Maybe the best in Texas.
You don’t want—”

“I don’t like turkey!”

Colt recognized the edgy whine in Emma’s voice, the one that said she’d stayed up
too late playing her Nintendo DS and woke up with the sun to watch SpongeBob reruns.
Trying to reason with her would only make it worse. If he wanted any peace, he’d have
to trek to the nearest McDonald’s for that pink pony. It was worth the trouble for
an hour or two of silence.

He started to push away from the table when Leah nudged him hard with her foot. He
froze and gave her a questioning glance.

“We have a rule in this house,” Leah said, mostly talking to Emma, “that I only make
one supper, and that’s what we eat.” She swept a hand toward the cluster of covered
dishes. “We’ve got turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, green bean casserole,
baked apples, and rolls. Out of all this, there’s got to be something you like.” When
Emma drew a breath to argue, Leah cut her off. “And if not, I won’t make you eat it.
But this is our supper, and your Uncle Colt deserves to sit down and enjoy it.”

Colt gaped at Leah until she nudged him again and he added, “Uh, yeah. I’m not going
anywhere.”

Emma’s brows formed a V and she went boneless, slouching down in her chair and glaring
across the room. Leah ignored her and asked Colt to pass the turkey. When a few minutes
passed and nobody paid Emma any heed, she began kicking the vacant chair across from
her.

“Emma,” Leah said firmly, holding a forkful of stuffing an inch from her lips. “If
you don’t stop, you’ll have to leave the table. And that’d be a shame, because I really
wanted to talk to you about which Disney princess I’d trade places with if I could.”
She shrugged as if it made no difference to her either way and slid the bite into
her mouth.

And, hot damn, if that didn’t do the trick. Emma didn’t exactly bounce to attention,
but she quit kicking the chair and straightened her spine. Colt filled her plate with
a few bites of everything before doing the same for himself, on a much larger scale,
and passing each dish to the left. After a few minutes, Emma picked at a buttered
roll while sliding sideways glances at Leah.

“Which one would you pick?” Emma asked, then bit off a chunk.

When Leah answered, “Ariel,” it was in a chipper voice, like the battle of wills had
never happened. “I’ve always wanted to be a mermaid. How about you?”

“Jasmine,” she said with a cheek full of bread. “’Cause she’s got her own flying carpet
and a pet tiger. I think it’d be cool to have a pet tiger.”

“She has a monkey too,” Leah added. “Don’t forget Abu.”

“Oh, yeah. That’s double cool.”

As far as Colt knew, they might as well have been speaking Dutch, but he grinned and
tried to follow along while he savored his supper. The turkey was perfect—not dry
like most white meat—and the stuffing was so dadgum delicious he wanted to make love
to it. Leah had skills, that was for damn sure. And not just in the kitchen. She handled
Emma like a pro. She’d make a great mama one day.

When the preacher suggested they go around the table and share what they were grateful
for, it didn’t take Colt half a second to come up with his answer. He faced Leah and
drawled with a teasing smile, “Old friends and Richman’s éclairs.”

He expected her to blush or giggle, maybe offer a witty comeback, but her answering
grin wavered and a shadow seemed to pass behind her pale blue eyes. He’d seen her
with this far-off look a few times since she returned to town, and he wondered for
the thousandth time what made her so sad.

A frightening possibility came to mind. What if she was heartsick over that asshole
doctor? If she loved him enough to accept his proposal, it might take a while to get
over him. Colt only hoped the guy wouldn’t take her back, because while Colt didn’t
deserve Leah, her ex deserved her even less.

Leah had just begun to speak when an obnoxious chiming from the sideboard interrupted
her. Colt glanced over his shoulder and found the source of the noise, a black iPad
with the words
swipe
to
unlock
illuminated on the screen. Figuring Leah had a call, Colt reached for the tablet
so he could hand it to her.

“No!” she shouted, leaping from her seat so fast she knocked over her glass of tea.
Liquid rushed the length of the table while ice cubes plunked to the floor, but she
ignored the mess and bolted to the sideboard to snatch her iPad and silence it.

What the hell was up with that?

She must have sensed his confusion, because she offered a shaky laugh and tucked the
device inside one of the sideboard drawers. “I never take calls at supper. It’s rude.”

Colt’s bullshit detector had never led him astray, and it was blaring a red alert
so loud it distracted him from the tea dripping into his lap. He was no dummy. Leah
didn’t want him to know who’d just called, and that could only mean one thing: it
was the doctor. And if the two were talking again, it probably meant they were toying
with the idea of getting back together.

Absently, he scooted back and helped Leah dab at the mess until they’d soaked up the
tea and resumed their supper. But it wasn’t the same after that. An awkward silence
hung over the table like a pestering cloud of mosquitoes. Emma must have sensed it
too, her prattle a bit less animated than it’d been a few minutes earlier. She didn’t
even ask if she could play Angry Birds on Leah’s iPad, which showed epic restraint
on her part.

After dinner, Colt helped Leah clear the table and hunt down matching lids and plastic
containers for the leftovers while Pastor Mac ushered Emma into the living room for
a game of Chutes and Ladders. While they worked together, Colt tried to lighten the
mood with an occasional joke or a casual brush of fingers along the back of Leah’s
neck. But each step closer somehow pushed him farther from his goal—she’d soften to
him and then go wistful again. Colt’s instincts told him to step up his game or risk
losing what ground he’d won over the past few weeks. He’d been kicking around an idea
recently; maybe it was time to put that plan into action.

“Hey.” He stopped her en route to the fridge and took the green beans. “I’ve got the
day off tomorrow. Let’s do something.”

When she pressed her lips together, he knew she was thinking of an excuse to say no.

“I’ve been working on a surprise,” he went on. “I know you don’t like surprises, but
I promise this is a good one.”

She stared at her tiny bare feet, a lock of blond hair springing free from her twist.
“I don’t know…”

Tucking the strand behind her ear, he set the leftovers on the counter. “Look at me,”
he said softly, then tipped her chin with his thumb. “I just want to spend some time
together. That’s all. No shenanigans, and I’ll take you home whenever you want. You’ve
got nothing to worry about, I swear.”