The Wedding Garden. Linda Goodnight
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headset attached to his ear like an oversize cockroach, Sloan exited his bedroom with an armload of clothes to toss in the washer.
“Yeah, send Blake and Griffith with the ambassador’s family. Some segments of Manila aren’t excited about his mission. We may encounter problems there. Tell the team to be on their toes.” As head of Worldwide Security Solutions, he contracted with the government and military on a regular basis. This latest assignment in the Philippines had him worried. Muslim extremists had infiltrated the area. “Sure, no problem. How’s the issue in Afghanistan we discussed yesterday?”
Listening intently, he rounded the top of the stairs…and slammed into Annie. The bundle of clothes went flying. Annie stumbled back and started to fall. Instinctively, Sloan reached out, grasped her upper arms and yanked forward. Annie ended up cradled in his arms, against his chest.
His first sensation, besides the adrenaline pumping like pistons through his bloodstream, was the smell of her hair. He’d teased her in high school about washing her hair in apple juice. Apparently, she still did.
The second thought was of how she fit against him, curved in all the right places and softer than silk. She must have been stunned, too, because she didn’t move for several seconds. Several torturous seconds while he flashed back to age nineteen and the wild, desperate love he’d felt for Annie Crawford.
His throat went dry. This was not good, not good at all.
He told his arms to release her. He told his legs to step back one stair step. His well-trained body, capable of taking out an enemy in three-point-six seconds, would not obey.
The voice in his ear said his name. Once. Twice.
“Later,” he muttered, too distracted to remember the business conversation.
While he battled inwardly, both reveling in the touch and dismayed at the yearning, Annie stiffened.
“Excuse me,” she said, voice muffled against his Harley T-shirt. When he didn’t move, she wiggled away, retreating one step so that he was looking down into her upturned face.
She wasn’t happy about the unexpected contact either. Above the blush cresting on her cheekbones, her big green eyes looked even bigger. Her chest rose and fell like an escapee, and her mouth was pinched tight and tilted down. She looked repulsed.
His touch repulsed her.
Grinding his molars, Sloan gave a short nod he hoped passed for an apology and bent to retrieve his laundry. Silently, Annie gathered a shirt and a pair of jeans from the banister. As Sloan reached for the items, she held one end and he the other. Their eyes met and held, as well. A feeling rose between them that he did not want to identify. A feeling more dangerous and disturbing to his peace of mind than the work in Afghanistan.
Finally, he grumbled, “Thanks,” and bounded down the stairs like a man running from his past.
Sloan and Annie tiptoed around each other for another three days before the ice began to thaw. He didn’t know why that mattered except being in the same house all day with a silent frozen woman was pure discomfort.
He was plagued by memories of the way they’d been in high school, made worse by that moment on the stairs.
The day after school dismissed, Annie brought both her kids to the house because of sitter problems.
“Never mind about your work rules,” his aunt had said to Annie. “This is my house and if I want to invite those children, I will. Tell your boss I said so.”
It was not yet seven o’clock when they arrived, and Sloan sat at the kitchen table, draped over a copy of USA TODAY and a fragrant cup of extra-sweet coffee.
“Morning,” he mumbled, determined to be civil. “I made coffee.”
“Thank you.” If she got any stiffer, she’d be cardboard.
Justin slouched in, all arms and legs and loose ends, looking like trouble but saying nothing. The kid had an attitude as bad as Sloan’s.
Sloan studied the kid with interest. After fiddling with the dates until he had brain lock, he had concluded that Justin was not his son. Annie had married the summer after Sloan’s departure—which allowed time for Joey to be Justin’s father. Sloan considered asking Annie straight out, but figured he was wrong anyway, and she already thought he was pond scum. The boy looked nothing like him. Their only similarity was a bad attitude which Sloan was fairly certain was not genetic. No use starting trouble. He had enough of that without trying.
Last night, he’d ridden his motorcycle into town to pick up Lydia’s prescriptions and could feel the stares burning a hole in his back. He’d no more than given the Hawkins name to the pharmacist when a woman approached him. Sloan hack-led. His memories of Roberta Prine were not fond ones.
“Say, you’re Sloan Hawkins, aren’t you? Clayton Hawkins’s son.” She’d snapped her fingers as if trying to remember something. “And his wife—what was her name? Worked over at the diner? Janie?”
Sloan skewered her with a dark glance. If she was trying to get a rise out of him by pretending ignorance, she was succeeding.
“Joni,” he muttered through clenched teeth.
“That’s right. Now I remember.” Right. As if she’d actually forgotten. “She’s the one that run off with a trucker, wasn’t she? Sure was a crazy thing to do, leaving you behind and all. Did you ever hear from her again?”
Never let ’em see you sweat.
With a cocky grin he didn’t feel, Sloan leaned in and imitated her tone. “Say, aren’t you the mom of that mean little creep, Ronnie? And isn’t that your broom parked by the curb outside?”
Roberta jerked back, face flushing bright red. “Well, I never!”
Sloan showed his teeth in a feral smile. “Now you have.”
Taking the white sack from the stunned pharmacist, Sloan spun on his boot heels. A titter of conversation followed him.
“That’s the thanks I get for being neighborly.”
“Never was much good.”
Sloan had clenched his fists and kept moving, exactly as he’d learned to do as a boy.
Well, he wasn’t a boy anymore. He would handle the Redemption gossip for Lydia’s sake. What he wasn’t handling particularly well was the tension between him and Annie.
Lifting his coffee cup, he watched her move around the kitchen to prepare Lydia’s breakfast. If any woman could look good in nurse’s scrubs, Annie did. This morning her hair was on her shoulders, held back from her forehead by a brown clip of some kind. Wispy little curls flirted around her cheekbones.
Ah, those cheekbones. He remembered the feel of her silky skin beneath his thumbs, the salty taste of her tears when he’d butted heads with her father.
Sloan slid his gaze away from Annie and the torrent of reminders. Why couldn’t he get his brain under control?
Justin slouched into the room across from Sloan. His dark blond hair was still damp, as if his mother had forced him to water it down. Sloan had done the same thing when he was a kid. Splash with water, hit it once with a comb and call it done. The teenage years and girls would change Justin’s grooming habits.
“Morning,” Sloan said.
Justin gave him one of those looks that said he’d rather die than be awake this early. Sloan grinned against his coffee cup.
Annie walked by and stroked a hand lovingly over the boy’s messy hair.
That quick, Sloan was tossed back a dozen years. He had been hanging out at the river with a bunch of other kids. Some guy had called him the son of a slut and a jailbird. Naturally, he’d punched the goon in the face. This hadn’t gone over well with the goon’s friends and before he could make an escape, Sloan had six guys kicking his ribs in. Annie had come flying