Taylor shrugged and plucked a sweater from the stack. “Well, we could hold it in the parking lot beside the offices, but I think the park has nicer ambiance.”
“There has to be something.” Brynn frowned at the collection of clothes and grabbed an old sweatshirt emblazoned with a Northstar Dairy crest. “Here. Wear this.”
“Not that. It won’t make me think of Ian.”
“Why not? It’s his, it’s got his smell on it—”
“And it’s for the dairy, which is where I work with Carter.”
Oh. Good point.
“Anyway,” Brynn continued, “if you have any legitimate suggestions for another venue, I’m all ears.”
“I’ll think about it, but Brynn, we have the permits already and the flyers and ads are almost ready to print. Changing now would be a pain in the patoot.”
“So? I’m the queen of pain.” She grabbed a navy fleece that sported the word Coach in gold letters. “How about this one?”
Taylor glanced at it, appeared to think, then shook her head.
“Why not?”
“Ian used to coach peewee hockey. But his assistant was—”
“Don’t say it.” Those damned North brothers were freakin’ inseparable. Hank seemed to be the only one who didn’t share their pack mentality.
Brynn ran her finger over the lettering on the fleece and remembered, just for a second, that moment when she caught Hank checking her out. She wasn’t used to quiet men. In her experience, all males were a walking assortment of bad jokes, clumsy—if sweet—gestures and copious amounts of gas, so it had almost been a relief when she caught him staring at her boobs. Nice to know he was capable of the Neanderthalesque qualities she associated with most men. And, if she were being totally honest, it was nice to know that he had been trying to scope out what was beneath her loose jersey.
Not that she planned to act on his apparent interest. She had two jobs here, and neither would be made easier by indulging in anything with a member of the family that was involved in both those endeavors.
Still, she hadn’t quite been able to stop herself from brushing her arm against his shoulder when she passed him the salad, sending the loveliest vibrations running through her....
With a start, she realized that Taylor was talking.
“...Moxie dropping hints about weddings.”
“Oh. Wow.” Hoping to hell she’d given an appropriate response, she plucked blindly from the pile, emerging with a cranberry-colored sweater so soft it begged to be fondled. “How about this one?”
Taylor’s nose wrinkled and she backed away. “Crap! How did that get in there?”
“What?” Brynn rubbed the luxurious softness between her fingers. “Is it poison?”
“Bad memories. Turns out I’m allergic to cashmere.” She shuddered. “A very nice night ended up being a whole lot less pleasant.”
“Damn. The color would be great on you.”
“Yeah, but it would clash horribly with the hives.” Taylor ran a hand over the pile of clothes on the bed, patting them almost wistfully. “Brynn, I don’t know if this is going to work. It’s getting so I can hardly be in the same room as Carter without falling apart, and since I see him all day, you can imagine how well that’s going. I think he knows something is wrong.”
“Of course he does. Your fiancé is away and has been gone for months. That’s all he knows.”
“I don’t know.... Sometimes I get this feeling that he’s watching me. Not in a creepy way, but like...like the way I know I look at him when no one else is around.”
Brynn’s hands froze despite the fleece surrounding them. “You think he might— Oh, Taylor. No. Don’t say you think he feels it, too.”
“I hope to God I’m wrong. But it’s... I don’t know. Maybe I’m reading things into it that are totally wrong. You know, projecting my own secret wishes and all that Psych 101 crap.”
“Look. You have that social marketing conference coming up in spring, remember? He’s not going. That will give you days and days away from him, and when you come back, it will be just a few more weeks until Ian comes home. Once he’s here, you’ll remember how much you love him and everything will be wonderful again.”
Taylor shook her head. “I hope you’re right,” she said softly. Then she looked at the fleece in Brynn’s hands and smiled sadly. “Not that one, either.”
Brynn didn’t dare ask.
“Carter has the same one. Their mom gave them all matching fleeces for Christmas last year.” She ran her hand over the fabric. “It’s what he was wearing when I realized I wanted him instead of Ian.”
* * *
HANK PULLED INTO his parking space at Northstar Dairy, killed the engine on his old pickup and let out a sigh that was equal parts frustration and anticipation.
“Stupid damned meetings.”
The frustration was easy to figure out. Hauling Millie out of bed, having to abandon the wiring job he’d been working on when he realized he was going to be late, driving through February snow... The morning had been a perfect storm of irritation, and it was only a little past ten.
But he would rather focus on his annoyance than on the little jolts running through him at the thought of watching Brynn marshal them through another session. Or, more accurately, the thought of watching her in her business clothes while remembering how she had looked with her jersey dipping and the spaghetti steam making her hair curl around her face. He’d been trying to push the picture from his memory since Friday night. Thus far it had insisted on staying there, which annoyed him all the more.
And now he had to sit through a meeting with his mother doing her best eagle imitation. Son of a—
A muffled bang to his right caught his attention. Carter was climbing out of his Saab. Huh. Carter was never late.
Hank grabbed his gloves and his files, opened his door and winced as a metallic skreeeek cut through the snowy silence. Oops. He had planned to take care of the door last night. And the night before, come to think of it.
Sure enough, the noise was enough to draw Carter’s attention.
“You ever gonna give up that bucket of bolts and drive something that can be seen in public?”
Hank shrugged. “Look who’s talking—a man who drives a compensation-mobile. At least my truck has character.”
Carter snorted. “Sure it does. A character that’s begging for a serial killer to come and put it out of its misery.”
Hank fell into step beside Carter, both of them bending slightly forward against the bitter wind swirling snowflakes around their heads.
“I can’t believe they had school today. Millie was pissed.”
“Can’t say I blame her.”
Saying that Millie had been reluctant to get on the bus that morning was like saying that snow was a little cold. It had been getting progressively more difficult to drag her out of bed each day. Her teacher assured him that all the kids were tired. His mother reminded him that when he was a kid, she had to wake him by firing stuffed animals from the other side of the room, because he woke up smacking at anything he could reach. All of which reassured him until the next time he saw the dread on Millie’s face as she mounted the steps of the big yellow bus, and his gut told him there was more at play here than simple fatigue or loneliness.
Especially