In German: “The hair! It makes you look like a woman I used to buy fish from.” In English, “Hello, Brand,” in German, “She died lonely.”
“It could have been the fish smell,” Sophie said, in English, because it was too complicated to figure out how to say it in German. Did her hair look that bad? Not just the careless do of a woman confident in herself?
Brand stepped in, and Sophie was anxious about who had come: the carefree boy from next door, or the new Brand, the weary warrior.
It was the warrior, something in him untouchable. The smile that graced his lips did not even begin to reach his eyes.
Just like that, it wasn’t about her. It was not, she thought, pulling the band from her hair, a good thing to die lonely.
“Everything okay?” she asked him quietly, as she gathered her bag and slipped out the door he held open for her. She glanced at his face.
He looked startled, as if he had expected the smile to fool her. “Yeah, fine.”
She looked at him, again, longer. It wasn’t. So, she would work from the present, backwards until she found out what had put that look on his face.
And then what? she asked herself, and when no answer came she hoped she would just know when the time came.
“How are things with your dad?” she asked, casually, as they went down the steps. She thought something had happened in the conference room, but the rejection of his father couldn’t be helping.
“Why don’t you tell me? How are things with my dad? Is he okay in that house by himself?”
She was aware he was trying to divert her, as if he had sensed she was going to try and go places angels feared to tread.
“Your dad is one of the most capable men I know.”
“That answers your question then, doesn’t it? Things with my dad are fine.”
He got astride the old girl’s bike, waited for her…she didn’t miss the fact that he looked long and hard at her legs and then took a deep breath and looked away.
“Except for the little matter of him catching his house on fire,” he muttered, as they began to pedal down the quiet street, side by side. “Why don’t you tell me what you know about that?”
Somehow he had turned it around! He was being the inquisitor. And she’d bet he was darn good at it, too, when he put that cold, hard cop look on his face.
“I’m not spying on your dad for you!”
“You know what happened,” he said, watching her face way too closely.
Well, yes, she did. But Dr. Sheridan had specifically asked her not to tell Brand that he and her grandmother had been caught in a fairly compromising position as the house burned around them. He had also asked her, last night, just before he had taken Hilde for dinner, not to mention that he and her grandmother were having a real romance.
“But don’t you think he’ll notice?” Sophie had asked, uncomfortable to be put in yet another position of deception.
“I’m counting on you to be a distraction,” the doctor had said pleasantly.
“But why don’t you just tell him?”
“He’ll see it as a betrayal of his mother. Brand is a man who likes being lonely.”
Now, looking at the coolly removed expression on Brand’s face, Sophie could see there was some truth in the doctor’s assessment of his son. Brand had developed a gift for distance.
Who was this man? Once he would have tried to argue it out of her, tease it out of her, coax it out of her.
Now he just cast her a look that was coolly assessing, said nothing more about the fire and quickened his pace so that his bike shot ahead of hers.
And, as aggravating as she had found his appearance in her office yesterday, as much as she had felt vulnerable to him, Sophie decided to try another tack to coax that chilly look off his face and bring the boy she had always known back to the surface.
Sophie put on a bit of steam herself, pulled out beside him and then passed him. She took the lead, then turned around, placed her thumb on her nose and waggled her fingers at him.
“Ha, ha,” she said, “you have a girl’s bike!”
So much for the new Sophie, all slick sophistication and suave polish.
Brand had always been competitive, and he read it as the challenge she had intended. Just as she had known, he could not resist. She could hear the whir of his bike spokes, the rubber tires hissing on the pavement. She pedaled harder. She was on an eighteen-speed, he on a three. He was going to have to work very hard to keep up with her.
Apparently he was up to the task. When she heard him coming up on her right-hand side, she swerved in front of him, heard his yelp of surprise as she cut him off and kept the lead.
“Hey,” he called, “you’re playing dirty!”
Her laugh of fiendish enjoyment was entirely genuine. She rose off the seat, leaned forward, stood up on those pedals and went hard.
Mr. Machalay crept out on the road in front of her, one arm full of groceries, the other clamped down on the leash of his ancient dog, Max. She rang her bell frantically and swerved around them. She glanced over her shoulder. Brand swerved the other way around Mr. Machalay and Max, both of whom now stood frozen to the spot. Mr. Machalay dropped the leash and waved his fist at them.
“Sorry,” she called. Still, she was pleased with her lead. It didn’t last long.
“You’re going to cause an accident,” he panted, way too close to her ear.
“Oh, well,” she called back, breathless. “Better than dying of boredom.”
“I thought I told you that wasn’t a bad thing!”
“Coming from the great adventurer, Brand Sheridan, I found that a little hard to buy.”
“Watch your tone,” he instructed her, exasperated. “You’re supposed to adore me!”
She laughed recklessly.
“You needn’t make that sound as if it’s impossible,” he called, and then he pulled his bike up right beside her.
Sophie thought she’d been pedaling with everything she had, but a sudden whoosh of adrenaline filled her and she dug deep and found something extra.
They were racing full-out, and she loved the breathless feeling, loved the wind in her hair, her heart pumping, her muscles straining. She loved knowing he was beside her. She felt as if she had been asleep and suddenly she was gloriously, wonderfully alive.
He reached out over the tiny distance between them, and touched her, a gentle slap on her shoulder, as if they were playing tag, and then he surged ahead, effortlessly, as if he had only been playing with her all along.
Though his bike was older and less sound, his legs were longer and stronger. But it was his heart, the fierce, competitive heart of a warrior, that made this race impossible for her to win.
She cast him a look as he shot by and smiled to herself. She might not win this race, but she had won in another way.
It was there. A light shone in his face, laughter sparked in his eyes, the line of his mouth, though determined, had softened with fun. It took her back over the years and made her think maybe she did not have to go as far as she thought to find him where he was lost.
Now he was way out in front, weaving fearlessly in and out of the growing traffic as they got closer to Main Street and downtown.
He turned, put his thumb to his nose, waggled his