“I’m glad about the ex part, Sophie. I didn’t care for him much.”
Her grandmother snickered with approval and Sophie shot her a quelling look.
“You only saw him for thirty seconds!”
“Like I said,” he lifted a shoulder elaborately, “I have a gift for reading people.”
“He looked like a good kisser,” her grandmother insisted in German.
“Stop it!” Sophie said in English.
“Stop what?” Brand asked innocently.
She looked him straight in the face. “Stop rescuing me, Brand. I’m not fifteen anymore. I don’t need your help with my personal affairs.”
She blushed when she said affairs in just about the way she had when she’d said dork all those years ago, as if she was fifteen and had just used a risqué word. It was very sweet. She was very sweet. The kind of girl he knew nothing about.
She was right. He needed to stop rescuing her.
“It was just an impulse,” he said. “It won’t happen again.”
She struggled to look composed. Instead she looked crushed.
“Unless you want it to,” he couldn’t resist tossing out silkily.
“I want it to,” Hilde said, all in English. She reached across the table, touched Brand’s hand. The mischief was gone from her eyes. “The whole town is whispering about my Sophie and him. I’d much rather they whispered about my Sophie and you.”
SOPHIE was still stuck on the unless you want it to part. Good God, she thought, she might be super-nerd of national-speech-contest fame, but of course she wanted it to. Happen again.
Sophie’s lips were tingling from being kissed. She felt exactly like a princess who had been sleeping, the touch of those lips bringing her fully to life. She was aware some part of her had waited, longed for, wanted what had just happened since she was a scrawny flat-chested teen in braces and glasses.
His lips had tasted of passion and promises and of worlds she had never been to. Had not even known existed. Places she wanted desperately, suddenly, now that she did know of their existence, to visit.
Who wouldn’t want more of that?
But, unless she was mistaken, Brand was enjoying her discomfort as much as he had just accused Gregg of doing.
Men!
Not that any man could hold a candle to her grandmother, who apparently felt driven to share with Brand Sophie’s closely guarded secret, that she was somehow becoming pathetic.
Sophie struggled through her embarrassment to remember her mission last night. To be free of all her romantic notions and nonsense.
She wasn’t letting Mr. Brand Sheridan think she was still the starry-eyed fifteen-year-old she had once been.
She wasn’t letting him know that one tiny ultra-casual brushing of lips had her ready to pack her bags and travel to unknown territory.
No! Sophie Holtzheim was taking back control and she was doing it right now. If Brand thought she was weak and pathetic and in need of his big, strong, arrogant self to rescue her, he’d better think again!
But Brand was looking at her grandmother, and suddenly he didn’t look as if he was enjoying her discomfort over that kiss.
“It’s a bad thing to lose face in a small town,” he said quietly.
“Yes!” her grandmother crowed, delighted that he had understood her so completely.
“It would be good for Sophie to have a romance so heated it would make the whole town forget she ever knew him,” Brand said thoughtfully
“Yes!” Her grandmother was beaming at his astuteness.
“Okay, I’ll do it,” Brand said, casually, as if he had agreed to his good deed for the day.
“Do what?” Sophie demanded.
“Romance you.”
“You will not!”
“It will convince Gregg and the whole town that you’re over him,” Brand said with aggravating confidence, as if it was already decided.
“It’s deceptive,” Sophie said, and then realized that wasn’t the out-and-out no that such an outlandish suggestion deserved.
“It could be fun,” Brand said.
“I doubt that.”
He raised an eyebrow at her in clear challenge. And then said, softly, “What are you afraid of?”
Now the only way she was going to show him she wasn’t the least bit afraid of what had just happened between them was if she said yes. If she protested this idea too strenuously, he might know the truth: she was terrified of him and his ability to tear her safe little world so far apart she might never succeed in putting it back together.
But she had to admit there was something wonderfully seductive about saving face. It really was horrible to be branded as pathetic in a small town.
“Well, Brand,” she said slowly, thoughtfully, “maybe we could have a little fake fling, under carefully orchestrated circumstances, of course.”
“And let me guess,” he said wryly, “you will be in charge of orchestrating the circumstances?”
If she was going to do this, and she had a sinking feeling that she was, she had to maintain absolute control over the situation.
He watched her, some challenge lighting the sapphire depths of his eyes until they sparkled like falling stars in a night sky. It was a look that could take away a woman’s courage. It could intimidate. It could shake her belief that she could be in control of everything. Or anything.
If she allowed it to, that was, if she hadn’t just vowed in front of her own burning dreams she was going to be a different kind of woman from now on.
The take-charge kind.
“How long are you going to be here, Brand?” she asked, keeping her voice all business.
“Maybe a month. I’ve got a lot of leave built up.”
“A month?” his father sputtered, and then sent Hilde an aggrieved look that Sophie easily interpreted as his son’s presence in his life cramping his romantic ambitions.
Brand’s eyes narrowed on his father for a moment, then he glanced at Hilde.
Hilde, naturally, looked unabashedly delighted at Brand’s announcement of a longterm stay in Sugar Maple Grove. It was written all over her face that she was already planning Brand and Sophie’s wedding.
And an adorable little house filled with babies. She hoped Hilde wouldn’t say it, not even in German. Because her grandmother was known to say anything, commenting on Brand’s kissing abilities being a case in point. What kind of grandmother did that?
Sophie slid Brand a look. The full force of his attention was back on her. Well, there was no denying he was a good kisser and would produce perfect babies. But if she wanted to stay in control of the perilous situation she was moving herself toward, she’d better not go there!
“What are you going to do here for a month?” Dr. Sheridan asked sulkily. “You’ll be bored in three days. Ha. Maybe in three hours.”
Once, Sophie knew, Brand would have risen to the bait, argued whether what his father said was true or not, and it probably was. He had been hotheaded, impulsive, impatient.
Now, there was something new