He's the One: Winning a Groom in 10 Dates / Molly Cooper's Dream Date / Mr Right There All Along. Jackie Braun
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shuffled papers. The second sheet, also neatly typed and double-spaced, had the boldface title, Courtship Guidelines. As he scanned it, he realized it really meant Sophie’s rules, starting with no public demonstrations of affection and ending with the request that he not call her Sweet Pea.
“Oh, lady,” he said, crumpling up the rules, needing to regain his equilibrium, “you have so much to learn.”
Or maybe he did. Maybe he was being given a chance to experience a choice not made a long time ago. Maybe it would be kind of fun to pretend to have the life he had walked away from.
Whistling, aware he felt inordinately happy despite the fact he was dancing with danger of a new kind—ah, well, danger had always held an irresistible pull for him—Brand worked a bit longer in the roses and then took the rose clippers to where the sweet peas were running riot along his father’s back fence.
Though his mother had loved roses, Brand had always considered the sweet pea the loveliest flower she grew, in all its abundant and delicate pastel shades, the fragrance coming off those cheery blossoms like a little piece of heaven.
An overlooked flower, he thought, scorned by the serious gardeners who babied their roses and clipped their rhododendron bushes and pulled their dahlias in the fall.
Just like Sophie Holtzheim.
An overlooked flower.
When he’d clipped more sweet peas than he could hold in his arms, he went and filled the kitchen sink with water and dropped them in.
“What are you doing with my flowers?” his father asked grumpily, glancing up from his paper. His father apparently hadn’t noticed there was nothing for breakfast in the house.
“I’m going to start a rumor,” Brand said pleasantly. “And then I’m going to get some groceries. You want to come?”
“To start the rumor?” his father said hopefully.
“No, for the groceries. How come you don’t have any food?”
“Why? You writing a report for your sister?”
“She’s worried about you, Dad. You don’t have to see her as the enemy. That fire rattled her.”
“Rattled her! What do you think it did to me? Oh well, I didn’t like cooking here anyway. Or eating here,” Dr. Sheridan said, proud, reluctant. “It makes me miss your mother.”
“I miss her, too, Dad. I come in this kitchen and think of strawberry lemonade and cookies warm from the oven, the chocolate chips dripping.”
Something in his father’s face softened, and, briefly, it almost felt that they might have a moment, share some fond memories. But his father rattled the paper and dove behind it.
Brand headed for the shower.
Later he went out to the bike shed, and found his mother’s bike, complete with the basket which he filled with sweet peas until it overflowed. Then he rode right down Main Street, enjoying the pretense of being a small-town guy who had never, for the good of his country, done things that ate at his soul.
The thing that astonished him was how easy it was to slip from who he knew himself to be—a hardened warrior, heart of ice—into this role of a young man going to woo his girl.
Had he gotten that adept at playing roles?
At least this one had no grim, dark overtones. It just felt fun. It would be entertaining, fill up some of his time here, to play this game with Sophie. To break her rules, too.
Maybe, if nothing else, before he left here, he could teach Sophie to be spontaneous, though he doubted if he had enough time to tackle that particular challenge.
He parked the bicycle in front of the old two-story redbrick Edwardian building that housed the Historical Society, gathered the sweet peas in his arms, took the steps two at a time and stopped in front of the stern-faced woman at the reception desk in the outer office.
“I’m looking for my sweet pea,” he announced, “Miss Sophie.”
That would show Sophie Holtzheim just how sick and tired he was of other people making the rules that governed his life. He was on leave from his military duties. He wasn’t taking orders from a little scrap of a girl!
Not unless they were the delicious kind. The librarian pulling her glasses off, chewing thoughtfully on the arm, watching him with heat in her eyes.
Brand Sheridan, he berated himself, there is a special place in hell for guys like you.
On second thought, he was already there.
The idea that this was going to be some kind of fun fled from him. He couldn’t be sworn to help and protect Sophie and have these kinds of thoughts at the same time.
He needed to be a better man.
The courtship of Sophie was probably going to be the hardest assignment of his life.
“YOU have a gentleman caller,” Bitsy Martin whispered in the door of Sophie’s office. “With flowers.”
Sophie felt a blush rise up her cheeks. Of course, given how recently she had drawn up her rules of courtship engagement, her gentleman caller could be only one person!
And of all the words she had ever used to describe Brand, and there had been many of them, most recently pirate, the word gentleman had never been on the list.
She didn’t know which was more annoying: the fact that Brand had dispensed with her schedule, or the fact that Bitsy looked so amazed that a man would show up with flowers for her.
She didn’t feel ready to deal with him. She still felt the stunning truth Brand Sheridan had so casually unearthed this morning.
She had been going to marry Gregg Hamilton because she missed her parents, had missed being part of that unit called a family.
Thank God he had not uncovered the whole truth. She was only just working toward that herself, and it was painful.
“I thought he was in the wrong place. He’s what we would have called a rake back in the day,” Bitsy confided. “Devilishly charming.”
Again, there was something mildly insulting about Bitsy’s disbelief that such a man would show up looking for her.
Sophie took a deep breath, got up and went down the hall. She tried to steel herself, but, of course, it was impossible.
The sweet-pea bouquet, abandoned on the counter, had already filled the entire office with its delicate fragrance. Brand had his back to her, restless, pacing, pretending to be interested in the old photos of Sugar Maple Grove that graced the walls.
Sophie fought the desire just to stop and drink in the sweeping masculine lines of that broad back, especially since Bitsy was watching.
Wait. That’s the whole idea. To convince people we’re actually interested in each other. Sophie could study the enticing lines of his back as long as she wanted. It was a heady freedom, as intoxicating as champagne, so she only allowed herself the tiniest sip before she cleared her throat.
“Brand,” she said, her brightness forced, “An unexpected pleasure. What brings you here?”
She realized Bitsy was hovering with avid interest, and that for a girl who was supposed to be being romanced she sounded ridiculously formal. Her eyes skittered to the sweet peas. “My darling,” she added as an afterthought. It sounded as if she had read a line from a script, badly.
He turned from the pictures on the wall and gazed at her, long and slow. He was going to be good at this! Way too good. Despite the fact that he said he had no girlfriends, she now suspected something else—dozens,