They all tiptoed past Gracie and then past a still-sleeping Cora on the couch. The TV was tuned to The Bachelor in the middle of a rose ceremony, where a group of women was having anxiety over whether or not they were going to get a rose. Everyone had their problems, Lanie supposed. She didn’t want a rose. She wanted to go to bed.
Alone.
The house was huge. The girls led her upstairs, where there were three separate wings.
“We share a bedroom,” Samantha said, walking into a pretty purple-and-white bedroom. “We’ve got two beds, but we like mine best.”
And with that, they both hopped onto one of the two fluffy beds and dove under the covers.
“Sleep tight,” Lanie said. “And stay in bed.”
“Don’t forget!” came Sam’s voice. “Tomorrow we get pretty sparkly purple toes!”
Lanie laughed and turned from the room, gently shutting the door as she went, and . . . plowed into a tall, leanly muscled shadow, who grabbed her and kept her from falling on her ass.
Mark.
Lanie, heart pounding in her ears, took an automatic step back, crossing her arms over herself. “You scared me.”
He didn’t say anything. The hallway was lit only from the glow of the TV on the floor below. He seemed bigger than she remembered. And in the dark hall, incredibly intimidating.
Uncomfortably aware of the fact that she was inside the family home, uninvited, she said, “I was in bed when the girls knocked on my door. I didn’t want to send them out into the night alone, so I walked them back here.”
Whatever he thought of that, he kept to himself. Leaning past her, he opened the bedroom door. There’d been bed-rustling sounds, but now the room went instantly silent.
Mark strode into the room. “If you think I can’t recognize pretend sleeping, you can both think again.”
If he’d spoken to Lanie in that scary baritone when she’d been the girls’ age, she’d have peed her pants. But his girls squealed and tossed back their covers, and then two bundles flew at him with the now-familiar “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!” coming from Sam.
Lanie held her breath, but he caught them both with ease, snuggled them in close, kissed each of them, and then . . . tossed them back onto the bed.
More squeals and peals of laughter, and Mark covered them both with the blanket.
“Daddy, Sierra has an owie!” Sam said. “She was playing a game in bed and the iPad fell and hit her in the head.”
Mark took in the half-inch scratch on Sierra’s forehead. “I can fix that.”
“You can?” Sam asked while Sierra’s eyes went hopeful.
Mark walked to the whiteboard on one wall, grabbed a pink marker, and came back to Sierra. He turned the scratch into a lightning bolt.
Sam shrieked in delight. “Now you’re Harry Potter!” she told Sierra, who jumped up to look in the mirror on the closet door.
Beaming, happy, they both crawled back into bed.
Mark sat on the edge of the bed. “Do I even want to know why you left this house alone at night, when the both of you know better?”
“Daddy, she’s got lip gloss and pretty purple nail polish that sparkles and everything!”
“She?”
“The new lady. Lanie.”
Mark craned his neck toward the door.
Lanie leapt back out of sight, feeling her face heat. Why was she even still standing there? Horrified and embarrassed, she hurried down the stairs, her chest tight, her pulse in her ears. She’d gotten all the way to the kitchen when Gracie barked.
“Seriously?” Lanie whispered. “You’re going to be a guard dog now?”
Gracie jumped up, put her paws on Lanie’s shoulders, and licked her chin.
“Okay, okay,” Lanie whispered. “We’re friends now, right? Good.” And with that she slid outside. She’d just shut the back door when it opened again.
She didn’t look. Instead, she picked up her pace but for the second time that night she nearly leapt out of her own skin when a hand settled on her arm and pulled her around.
Mark.
“Sorry,” she said, maybe gasped, because she was out of breath from holding her breath. “I wasn’t eavesdropping.” Much.
“Actually,” he said. “The sorry is on me. They’re insatiably curious.”
“It’s okay. I like them. No one else has asked me who my third favorite superhero is. They’re . . . cute.” And she was surprised to find that was actually true.
“They’re something, all right.” Mark gestured her toward the trail, a hand at the small of her back. Not a flirtatious gesture. More like an impatient one.
“You don’t have to walk me,” she said.
“You got the two people who mean more to me than anything else on this planet home safe and sound,” he said. “I’m going to return the favor.”
“I can handle myself.”
“Of that, I have no doubt,” he said. “But I’m still going to walk you home.”
“But—”
“Look,” he said, exasperated. “I’m exhausted. How about we just get this over with.” And then without waiting for an answer, he once again nudged her in the right direction. “Let’s move.”
“I don’t take orders very well,” she warned. “In fact, I barely take suggestions.”
She got an almost smile at that and they walked through the night. In silence. At her door, he waited until she opened it to speak.
“Again,” he said. “Thanks.”
She met his gaze. “Is it really ‘again’ if it’s the first time you said it?”
He let out a low laugh and scrubbed a hand over his stubbled jaw. “I’m not very good at this. So you’re . . . okay?”
It was an odd question. She couldn’t remember the last time someone, anyone, had asked her such a thing. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
This got her an actual smile. “Are you always so prickly? Or is it something you save for just me?”
“It might be just you,” she admitted.
Small smile still on his lips, he nodded. “Good to know. I’ve got to get back. I promised they could tell me a bedtime story.”
“Isn’t it supposed to be the other way around?”
“We take turns.” He shook his head. “You know what takes longer than a kid telling a story?”
She had no idea, so she shook her head.
“Nothing,” he said and startled a quick laugh out of her. And then before she could recover, he was gone, vanished into the night.
Fine by her. She crawled back into her bed and this time fell right asleep, although she maybe had a few crazy dreams involving a tall, dark stranger with a bad ’tude and a really great laugh and incredible hands. She had no idea if the incredible hands part was true, but in her dream it definitely was.
Chapter 3
Me: What can possibly go wrong, though . . . ?
Anxiety: I’m glad you asked . . .
The end of her first week found Lanie at her desk, working on her new designs. Ostensibly. Because what she was really doing was staring out the window at Mark and Holden.
Their shirts were off, and they were headfirst inside the engine compartment of a tractor, working on . . . something. It didn’t matter what. What mattered was that they were a little hot and sweaty, jeans pulled taut across two incredibly nice asses, and it was an even better view than the lush countryside behind them.