Нора Робертс - Happy Ever After

More, he understood her pretty damn well with that scratch of the surface of his. That was . . . frightening and gratifying at the same time.

Nobody, she admitted as she started upstairs, nobody she didn’t consider family knew her all the way through.

She wasn’t at all sure how she felt about Malcolm getting all the way through, and wasn’t at all sure she’d be able to stop him.

Mostly, she thought, she didn’t know what the hell to do about him.

ALTHOUGH IT HAD BECOME TRADITION, PARKER WOULD HAVE PREFERRED to skip the sexy breakfast story. But motorcycles had a distinct sound, one Mac had heard clearly while she and Carter had been enjoying some time on their new patio when Parker had ridden off on Malcolm’s bike.

Mac may have dragged herself into the home gym when Parker was nearly finished and Laurel well on her way, but she had more than her biceps on her mind.

And she’d dragged Emma along with her.

“I asked Mrs. G for pancakes,” Mac announced. “I especially like pancakes with a sexy breakfast story.”

“Who’s got one?” Laurel demanded.

“Parker.”

“Wait a minute.” Laurel whipped around to where Parker stayed a bit longer than necessary in forward fold position. “You have a SBS, and didn’t tell me?”

“It’s nothing. Plus we’re jammed for the next several days.”

“If it’s nothing, where did you and Malcolm go on his bike last night for almost three hours? No, don’t tell us now.” Mac only smiled, gave an exaggerated wave when Parker straightened. “We need the pancakes.”

“I don’t monitor your comings and goings, Mackensie.”

“Oh, don’t pull Mackensie on me.” Mac waved that off, too, and started biceps curls with the Bowflex. “Carter and I heard Mal drive in, and I saw you leave because I was outside. So yeah, I kept an ear out for you after.You’d have done exactly the same.”

“Did you have a fight with him?” Emma asked. “Are you upset?”

“No, I’m not upset.”After dabbing her damp face with a towel, Parker walked over to drop it in the hamper. “I just don’t have time for pancakes and gossip.”

“Unless it’s one of us in the spotlight?” Laurel cocked her head. “We share, Parker. It’s what we do. If you’re pulling back from that about this, it tells me you’ve got concerns about where it’s heading.”

“It’s not that at all.” Yes, it was, she admitted.Yes, it was exactly that.“Fine. Fine.We’ll have the pancakes and the rest, but I have a lot of work—we all do—so we’ll keep it short.”

When she walked out of the room, annoyance in every stride, Emma looked at the others. “Should I go talk to her?”

“You know she has to stew.” Laurel grabbed a towel, swiped her face, her throat. “She’s a little pissed, but she’ll get over it.”

“You’re right about her being unsettled over this thing with Mal.” Mac moved from biceps curls to triceps kickbacks.“If it was no big, she’d have told us, or laughed it off when I brought it up. When’s the last time Parker was unsettled over a guy?”

“That would be over nobody back in never,” Laurel stated.

“That would be the who and when. Good thing or bad?”

“Good, I think.” Since she was there, Emma ordered herself onto the elliptical. “He’s nothing like her usual, which would be part of the unsettled, and there’s nothing that would have gotten her to go out with him if she didn’t want to on some level. Plus, Mac said she was wearing jeans and that really cute chocolate brown leather jacket. So she changed her clothes to go with him.”

“I wasn’t spying,” Mac said quickly. “I just saw. I mostly just saw.”

“Who’s saying otherwise?” Laurel flicked it away. “If I’d heard her go off with him, I’d have done the same. Jesus, it’s a good thing Del doesn’t know. And let’s just keep it that way until we get a better sense of this. I don’t want him getting worked up over Mal and Parker the way he did Emma and Jack. Now I’ve got to go shower, and praise Jesus, he had an early breakfast meeting. See you downstairs.”

“I thought she’d get a kick out of it,” Mac told Emma when they were alone. “I didn’t want to upset her.”

“It’s not your fault. Laurel’s right, it’s what we do.”

IT’S WHAT THEY DID, PARKER REMINDED HERSELF. BY THE TIME she’d showered and dressed for the day, annoyance had tipped over into guilt for snapping back at her friends.

She’d made too much of it all.And she’d internalized the entire business, something she admitted she tended to do too easily and too often.

So they’d have their tradition, just as they should. They’d have a few laughs, and that would be that.

When she walked into the kitchen, Mrs. Grady stood at the counter mixing the batter.

“Good morning, my girl Parker.”

“’Morning, Mrs. G. I hear we’re having pancakes.”

“Mmm-hmm.” Mrs. Grady waited until Parker poured a cup of coffee. “So, will you be getting a tattoo next?”

“What?”

“Seems like the next step after riding the roads on a Harley.”

Parker didn’t have to see Mrs. Grady’s tongue to know it was firmly in her cheek. “I thought, given what I do, maybe a small heart in a discreet location. Maybe with HEA inside it, for Happy Ever After.”

“Very pretty, and appropriate.” She set the batter aside while she prepared a bowl of berries.“We may bump heads over the boy, as he’s brought me flowers and asked me out to go dancing.”

“You’re enjoying this.”

“Of course. He reminds me of someone.”

“Oh?” Parker leaned on the counter. “Who?”

“I knew a boy with some rough edges, altogether cocksure of himself, and a gilded tongue when he wanted to use it. Handsome as sin and twice as sexy. When he set his eye and his intentions toward a woman, by God, she knew it. I was lucky. I married him.”

“Oh, Mrs. G, he’s not . . . Is he really like your Charlie?”

“He’s of the type, which isn’t a type at all. Pulled himself out of hard times, dealt with the scars from it, pushed himself to make a mark. A little bit of the wild side there, always.With my Charlie, I told myself, oh no, I won’t get tangled up with this one. And I said it again, even when I was already tangled up.”

The smile warmed her face and went deep into her eyes. “It’s hard to resist a bad boy who’s a good man.They’ll knock the legs right out from under you. I’m grateful every day, however short our time together was, that I didn’t resist very long.”

“It’s not like that with me and Mal. It’s just . . .” And that, Parker admitted, was part of the problem. She didn’t know what it was.

“Whatever it is, you deserve the attention, and to enjoy yourself more than you do. Aside from this.” Mrs. Grady laid her hands on Parker’s cheeks, patted them. “Which I know you enjoy every minute of. But aside from this.”

“I don’t want to enjoy myself into making a mistake.”

“Oh, I wish you would.” On that, she drew Parker closer and kissed her forehead. “I really wish you would. Go on, sit down and drink your coffee. What you need is a good breakfast and your friends.”

Maybe she did, Parker admitted. But after she sat, she took a call from one of the weekend’s nervous brides. Since it was second nature to handle someone else’s worries or problems, dealing with it settled her.

“Emma and Mac’ll be right down,” Laurel announced as she came in. “Need any help, Mrs. G?”

“Under control.”

“Hey, nice flowers.”

“My boyfriend sent them to me.” She added a wink.“The one Parker’s trying to steal away from me.”

“That slut.” Amused, Laurel got her coffee and walked to the breakfast nook to sit. “After our initial business, we can shift to event mode. We could have the meeting here, as I know damn well you have everything to do with tonight’s event on your BlackBerry. It’ll save the time you’re worried about.”

“All right. I shouldn’t have slapped at Mac.”

“Knee jerk. I probably would’ve done the same, only more so.”

“But we expect bitchiness from you.”

“Nice hit.” Laughing, she pointed at Parker.“I’m not going to say anything to Del for the moment, but—”

“There’s nothing to tell. As you’ll soon see once everyone’s here.”

“And here they come. Prepare to illuminate.”

“I’m sorry,” Parker said even as Mac sat down.

“Water. Bridge. Bygones.”

“Eat some fruit,” Mrs. Grady insisted, and set the bowl on the table.

“I made too big a deal about it.” Obediently Parker spooned berries into the small clear dish at her plate. “With all of you, and with myself. It’s just all so strange, and that’s why. And still, pretty straightforward.”

“Why don’t you tell us, and we’ll decide the strange,” Laurel suggested. “Because by stalling, you’re making that big deal.”

“All right, all right. He came by to bring Mrs. G flowers.”

“Awww” was Emma’s instant reaction.

“Since she wasn’t here, it seemed awkward not to ask him in while I arranged them, and he could leave her a note. Anyway, I wanted to make it clear I wasn’t interested.”

“You asked him in to tell him you didn’t want to see him?” Mac put in.

“Yes. He’s got this habit of . . . moving on me, and I wanted to make it clear—and all right again, I didn’t end the move the other night when—”

“The hot kiss,” Emma put in.

“It wasn’t—” Yes, it was, Parker admitted.“After he had dinner here, and I walked him out, he caught me off guard, and I responded. That’s all there is. I’m human. But, particularly since he’s a good friend of Del’s, I felt I had to make it clear I wasn’t interested.”

“Did he buy that? Mmm, thanks, Mrs. G.” Mac dove for the platter of pancakes Mrs. Grady put on the table.“Because if he did, my opinion of his basic intelligence drops several levels.”

“Apparently he didn’t, because he proposed this deal. I’d go out for a ride, a casual dinner, and if I didn’t enjoy myself, he’d back off.”

“And you agreed?” Laurel grabbed the syrup. “You didn’t squash him like a bug or level him with the Parker Brown freeze ray?”

Parker lifted her coffee, took a slow sip. “Do you want me to tell this or not?”

“Proceed,” Laurel said with a wave of her hand.

“I agreed because it seemed simple, and yes, because I was a little curious. He’s Del’s friend, and there’s no point in having bad feelings. I’d go, then he’d back off. No hard feelings either way. Then when we got outside, he told me about the bet.”

“What bet?” Emma demanded.

Parker filled them in.

“Carter bet?” Mac threw back her head and laughed. “And on Mal? I love it.”

“I love it that he told you before you got on the bike.” Emma shook her fork.“He had to know it gave you an excuse to flip him off.”

“And I give him that. And he’ll give me, at my insistence, half his winnings. Fair’s fair.”

“Where’d you go?” Emma wondered.

“Into Old Greenwich, some little pizza joint. Nice, actually. And I won’t deny it’s fun to ride the bike—it’s great fun—or claim it was a painful experience to split a pizza with him. He’s an interesting man.”

“How many calls did you take while you were out?” Laurel asked her.

“Four.”

“And how did he take that?”

“Like business is business and go ahead. And yes, points for him. But the thing is we had a perfectly pleasant evening, then the minute we’re back and at the door, he . . .”

Emma wiggled in her seat. “Here comes the really sexy part.”

“He just takes over. He has this way of cornering me, and my brain shuts off. He’s good at it, and my brain just closes down. It’s reflex,” she claimed. “Or reaction.”

“Is he all hot and fast, or slow and easy?” Mac asked.

“I’m unaware if he has a slow speed.”

“Told you.” Mac elbowed Emma.

“After my brain started working again, I told him I wasn’t having it, that he couldn’t just grab and go whenever he wanted. And he just looked amused. Pretty much like the three of you—and you, too, Mrs. G, because I see you over there—are looking now.”

“Kissed him back, didn’t you?” Mrs. Grady pointed out.

“Yes, but—”

“So even if he hadn’t knocked your legs out from under you, you wouldn’t have one to stand on.”

She wanted to sulk, badly. So she shrugged instead. “It’s just a physical reaction.”

“I don’t know about that,” Laurel began, “but if it is, I have to say, so what?”

“I’m not going to get tangled . . .” She remembered Mrs. Grady’s phrase, cut her eyes in that direction and saw the housekeeper raise her eyebrows.“I’m not going to get involved this way with someone when I feel it could be a mistake. Especially when he’s a friend of Del’s, of Jack’s, of Carter’s. Especially when I really don’t know him well, or know that much about him.”