Along Came a Husband Read online

  “Hi.” Missy smiled uncertainly at him. Don’t say anything about Jonas. Please.

  “Hey, Sean.” Sarah stabbed a French fry with her fork and dunked it in some ketchup. “Want to join us?”

  Sean hesitated. “Actually, I needed to talk to Missy for a minute.”

  “Come on,” Sarah said. “Sit down.” She scooted in to make room for Sean.

  Though clearly reluctant, he sat and ordered as if he was in a hurry. The conversation at their table remained light and innocuous, but Sean was clearly preoccupied. The moment Sarah’s and Hannah’s attentions were distracted by a tourist causing a commotion with a complaint on a bill, he handed Missy a sample bottle of medicine.

  “Antibiotic,” he whispered. “I didn’t have enough to leave with you last night.”

  “Thank you.”

  “How is he?”

  “How’s who?” Hannah asked, spinning back to them.

  Sean said nothing, only waited for Missy.

  “Um…my brother,” Missy said.

  The Mirabelle islanders were a nosy lot. Even if Jonas stayed inside, as she’d asked him, one of her neighbors was sure to notice someone in her house while she was working. Lights going on and off or his shadow in a window. Besides, with Ron already happening upon Jonas, it was probably best to get his presence out in the open.

  “What?” Gape-mouthed, Sarah stared at Missy. “A brother? ”

  “You’ve never said anything about a brother,” Hannah added.

  “We’re not very close.” She’d never said anything, period, about a family and who could blame her. She had nothing in common with any of her real siblings.

  Last Missy had heard, from the occasional news report or celebrity profile, her brother, the oldest, was following in their father’s political footsteps. Her sister, only a few years older than Missy, was a force in her own right on Wall Street. And the baby of the family was in rehab for a recurring addiction to painkillers when he wasn’t practicing corporate law.

  “So is that what you were talking about?” Sarah asked. “This whole keeping something from someone business?”

  Not knowing what else to do, Missy nodded.

  “Don’t worry about it.” Sarah waved it off. “Sounds like you weren’t expecting his visit.”

  “No,” Missy said. “He kind of surprised me.”

  “Must be a family trait.” Hannah smiled. “Spontaneity.”

  “You could call it that.”

  “Yeah, but is he cute?” Sarah asked, grinning.

  “Depends how dark you like your men,” Sean quietly offered.

  “The darker the better.”

  “Then you’re in luck.”

  “Oooh.” Sarah fanned her face. “You two must be as different as night and day.”

  Yeah, that pretty much summed it up. “Jonas is adopted,” Missy said, digging her hole even deeper, but no one would ever believe Jonas shared even a teaspoon of Missy’s blood.

  Sean gave a short shake of his head and looked away.

  “What?” Sarah asked, looking back and forth between Missy and Sean. “What’s going on?”

  “Nothing,” Missy said, stabbing some romaine off her plate and quickly stuffing it in her mouth.

  “How did you manage to meet Missy’s brother before us?” Hannah asked.

  “Right place at the right time, I guess,” Sean said.

  “So when do we get to meet him?” Hannah asked, Sean’s sarcasm zooming full speed over her head.

  “Oh, it’s—”

  “I have to work tonight,” Sarah said, her wheels turning. “Why don’t you bring him along to happy hour tomorrow night?”

  “I don’t—”

  “That’s a great idea,” Hannah interjected. “Missy, you can’t keep him all to yourself.”

  As if she’d want to. In fact, she’d been planning on staying away from her house as much as possible until Jonas vacated the premises. There was no way she was bringing him to Duffy’s.

  C AREFULLY , J ONAS EASED the padding off his bullet wound and a jolt of pain seized him. He sat on the edge of the bed and gritted his teeth. Missy’s doctor boyfriend had said the dressing should be changed at least once a day, but the mandate was proving difficult to manage on his own.

  The cat, who had been following Jonas around for the past hour, batted at a piece of string dangling from his bandage. Jonas reached out to pet him and felt the pain in his side dim ever so slightly. “What do you want with me?”

  The front door opened, and he reached for his gun on the bedside table. Keys landed on the counter. Missy. Her gift shop had to have closed up hours ago, so he had no doubt she was trying to avoid him.

  Too bad.

  “Missy?” he called, setting the gun down. “I need your help.”

  “With what?”

  “My bandages.”

  Her slow footsteps sounded down the hall. “Where are you?”

  “Upstairs.” Refusing to sleep in her room again, he’d moved all his things to the guest bedroom.

  She came up the steps. Tentatively, she glanced into the room. Her gaze skittered away from his bare chest to take in the medical supplies he’d set out on the bed. When she saw the cat lying next to him, she said, “I thought you didn’t like cats.”

  “He doesn’t seem to appreciate that fact.” Jonas pushed the damned thing off the bed and then motioned at the bandages. “I can’t do this myself.”

  Sighing, she walked into the bathroom and washed her hands. On her return, she ordered, “Lie down.”

  Without a word, he complied, easing himself onto his back with his wounded side closest to the edge of the bed. Her hands touched his skin and he closed his eyes, waiting for the inevitable. Any minute, she’d no doubt rip off what remained of the tape stuck to his skin. He tensed.

  Instead, to his complete surprise, she gently eased off the bandage. He should’ve known she wouldn’t intentionally hurt him. Not Missy. Missy with the gentle touch. Missy, whose hands had been the first thing that had drawn him in.

  He swallowed, trying to take his mind off the first night he’d met her. “So I’m your brother, huh?”

  “That’s the best I could come up with.”

  “Who’s adopted?” he asked, chuckling. “You or me?”

  “You.” Her hands paused in their work, remained still on his skin. Soft. Warm. The heat of Missy’s hands sank deep below the surface of his skin.

  To this day, Jonas had never felt anything quite like the feeling of her touch on his body. As if they were somehow one with each other, she and she alone had the uncanny ability to calm or arouse him with one touch. With one touch he knew her thoughts, her feelings. Since the very first night they’d met, it’d been that way between them.

  Against his will, the memory came back to him in one sudden rush. She’d been reading trot cards at a hole-in-the-wall bar in Quantico. All of the other agents he was with had wanted to take their turn getting a reading. What they’d really wanted was a chance with her out back, but she was quite clearly not interested in any of them.

  He’d kept his distance, watched and waited. Something about her had made him uneasy. She believed that tarot stuff and had freaked out a couple of the other agents. More than once she’d caught Jonas’s assessing gaze, and more than once she’d held his gaze longer than most people would’ve been comfortable with. Her eyes said one word and one word only to Jonas. Sex .

  When she’d finished readings for the rest of the guys in his group, someone pushed him into the chair. He sat in front of her, drained his beer and waited. Without a word, she looked into his eyes, set the cards aside and took his hands. Pressing her fingers over his, she opened his palms and studied them. The guys laughed and joked about it.

  “You readin’ his love line or his life line?”

  “He gonna win a lottery?”

  “Careful, sweetheart, you don’t know where those hands have been.”

  Jonas didn’t crack a smile. All he could do
was watch her. After being unable to goad either him or her into a reaction, the other agents gradually lost interest and wandered closer to the bar for more beer. Once they’d been left alone, he leaned forward and whispered, “What do you see?”

  As if snapped out of a trance, she’d glanced up. “What did you say?”

  “I asked what do you see?”

  “Ah…nothing.”

  “Liar.” She never did tell him what she’d found so interesting about his hands.

  “You can’t really read palms the way people think,” she whispered, her gaze moving slowly over his face.

  “Then why are you looking?”

  “Yes,” she’d said out of nowhere.

  “What?”

  “I said, yes, let’s go somewhere else.”

  He’d stood, grabbed her hand and, as quietly as possible so as not to draw attention to either of them, pulled her outside. The cool night air had no sooner hit his face than she’d pushed him against the building, jumped into his arms and kissed him.

  With a hard-on growing harder every second, he carried her to his SUV in the far part of the lot, opened the back door and lowered the seats. None of this backseat bullshit. He’d wanted her good and laid out under him, even banged his forehead in his rush to join her inside.

  “Condoms,” she whispered, as he closed them inside the vehicle. “I don’t have any.”

  “You don’t?” Breathing hard, he studied her face. “You’ve never done something like this before, have you?”

  “No.” She shook her head.

  Somehow that had made him want her all the more. He’d kissed her again, hard, and then broke away briefly to fumble in his glove box for the box of condoms. What followed was sweaty, mind-blowing sex. The kind guys only fantasized about. Then they’d moved from his SUV to her apartment a few miles away for more of the same. It was hours before they’d bothered asking each other’s names. The following morning, they’d exchanged numbers amidst promises to see each other again that night and the next and the next.

  One week had turned into two. Two into twelve. Those had been the most perfect nights of his life. Being with Missy, feeling her under him, learning, touching, tasting every inch of her body.

  As her fingers moved again, bringing him back to the present, he tensed with an instantaneous hard-on. She eased what was left of his old bandage off his skin and he opened his eyes. His gaze landed on the tattoos on the underside of her left arm. Those were new. A line of small black Sanskrit symbols not normally visible, but damned sexy. He might’ve enjoyed running his tongue along that soft, tender skin.

  He closed his fingers around her wrist and held out her arm for a better look. “What’s with the tattoos?” he murmured, his voice thick.

  “You wouldn’t understand.”

  “No?”

  She pulled against his grip, and then stilled, her strength no match for his. “Let me go, Jonas.”

  “If you say so.” He held her a moment longer and she closed her eyes. Her breathing escalated. She licked her lips and swallowed as she, too, was remembering. Before thinking better of it, he drew her toward him.

  She came, unresisting as if mesmerized, as if she had no clue what she was doing. When her lips were a hair-breadth from him, her eyes popped open. She jumped back, yanking on his arm. The strain caused a jolt of pain through his side, but he held her tight. “Too bad I’ve got this gunshot wound or we could…revive a memory or two from old times.”

  “Over my dead body.”

  “Scared, Missy?”

  Her eyes darkened, darted down his bare chest and then back to his face.

  “You still want me. You know you do. I know you do. Where’s the problem?”

  “The problem is that you haven’t changed. You’re still the same man, Jonas.” Her breath puffed out of her in little pants. “A man who’d choose taking a call from his boss over time with me. An out of town assignment over time with me. Death over trying to make our marriage work. I never was a priority in your life, and I never could be.”

  He released her arm and looked away.

  Throwing the cotton gauze onto the bed, she stalked out of the room. “From now on change your own damned bandages.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  THE NEXT DAY WAS ONE LONG string of tourists in and out of Whimsy. As dinnertime approached and the crowds thinned, Missy left Gaia in charge and walked down Main toward Duffy’s Pub for her standing happy hour date with friends. Going home to freshen up first was not an option. After what had happened last night when Jonas had asked for help changing his bandages, she wasn’t going to risk being near the man.

  God help her, but he’d been right. After everything he’d put her through, she still wanted him, wanted to feel his mouth pressing against hers, his arms around her, his body over her. Well, she might be stuck with him living in her house for a few weeks, but that didn’t mean she had to go home any more than was absolutely necessary.

  The moment she opened the pub door, the sounds of laughter and classic rock from the jukebox greeted her. Erica Taylor, the police chief’s wife, was working the main bar. Normally, Erica cooked, but occasionally she took a break from the kitchen and bartended. It gave her a chance to visit. Tonight the tables in the restaurant were full. Groups of people either spilled out onto the sidewalk or hung out in the pub waiting to be seated. Missy squeezed past them and took a seat at the less popular end of the bar, saving a few extra spots. “Hey, Erica.”

  “Hey, yourself.”

  “Who’s watching little David tonight?”

  “Garrett’s at home with Jason and the baby,” Erica explained. Erica had gotten custody of her nephew, Jason, when Erica’s sister had been murdered by her abusive husband. Despite the awful circumstances, the boy seemed to be adjusting well to Mirabelle. “He might bring the boys down later tonight.”

  “Oh, good. Haven’t seen them all for a while.”

  Erica frowned as she studied Missy. “You look tired.”

  “It’s been a long couple of days.”

  “Anything I can do to help?”

  “You can get me a big glass of zin and an order of your fantastic bruschetta.”

  “Coming right up.”

  Erica had no sooner set a wineglass filled with dark, rich red wine than Sarah came into the bar and took the seat next to Missy. As the worried expression on Sarah’s face registered, Missy asked, “What’s the matter?”

  “I’ll tell you in a minute,” Sarah said, turning her attention to Erica. “Bartender, bring me a dirty martini. ASAP, please!”

  Erica raised her eyebrows. “Tough day?”

  “One of the worst ever.”

  “Then I’ll make it a double.”

  Missy turned toward Sarah. “What happened?”

  “Remember I was having problems collecting five thousand dollars from the couple who had that no-holds-barred wedding earlier this month?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, the collection agency said the bride and groom have virtually fallen off the face of the earth.”

  “Have you contacted any of the guests?”

  “No one knows for sure where the couple went. They think they left the country to trot around China. I might never see a dime.”

  “That doesn’t seem possible.” Missy could bail Sarah out of this financial mess in a heartbeat with money from her trust fund. Still, she hesitated.

  “I put in weeks planning that deal.” Sarah shook her head. “I still owe the Mirabelle Island Inn for the cost of the banquet room, the meals and the week the couple stayed in the honeymoon suite.”

  Missy opened her mouth and then quickly shut it. This wasn’t the first time she’d had the urge to help out. More than once she’d wanted to figure out some way to anonymously send her friend some money, but in the end she couldn’t figure out anything that wouldn’t arouse Sarah’s suspicions.

  Missy fiddled with the stem of her wineglass. “Marty Rousseau will work out a deal with you,
won’t he?”

  “Yeah, but I can’t ask him to share in the loss. It’s not his fault I got stiffed. I had to ask Ron for a few extra weeks to get my rent to him.”

  “He and Jan will understand.”

  “I still don’t like being in this situation.”

  “You’ll have to put off buying a house, won’t you?”

  “For at least another year.” Sarah nodded. “I was eyeing that little cottage by your house.”

  It wasn’t that Missy felt stingy with her money. Not in the least. But there was a difference between helping out a college student like Gaia by paying for hours worked and giving a friend a handout. Missy had given money to friends in the past. Invariably, the relationship changed. Sarah’s friendship was too important to risk.

  Missy covered Sarah’s hand. “You’ll get there.”

  “I guess there are worse places to live than the apartment above the flower shop, but Brian was really looking forward to having a yard.”

  Erica returned with a very large ice-cold martini filled with several toothpicks of olives. “I want to know what’s going on,” Erica said, setting the drink down. “But the bar’s starting to fill up.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Sarah said. “I’ll no doubt be moaning about this for weeks.” Then she took a deep breath and smiled. “Definitely not for the rest of this night, though.”

  Sarah was taking a big sip of her drink as Hannah came in and took the seat on Missy’s other side. “So, Missy, where’s your brother?” Hannah asked.

  “Oh, yeah, I forgot about that!” Sarah said. “That’ll brighten my day.”

  Missy took a gulp of wine. “Um. He wasn’t feeling well, so he couldn’t come.”

  Hannah’s shoulders slumped. “Well, that sucks.”

  Sarah narrowed her eyes at Missy, but didn’t say a word.

  Hannah ordered a chardonnay, and over the course of the next hour the bar area filled completely with both locals and tourists. Ron and Jan Setterberg as well as Sean had come to join their group.

  The moment Hannah and the others were occupied with a story Jan was telling about something that had happened at the Mirabelle Island Inn that afternoon, Sarah leaned over to Missy and whispered, “So what’s the deal with this brother of yours?”