No wonder the enticing scent of Laura’s hair was filling his head with non-brotherly thoughts. Just entertaining the idea of moving his hand to the curve of her rump or nuzzling his lips against the shell of her exposed ear shocked him into taking half a step back and thinking analytically about Laura. She had more curves to hold on to than Lisa ever had. Laura clearly took after her mother’s side of the family, while Lisa favored their father. The crown of Laura’s dark hair had touches of gold in it that Lisa’s sable tresses lacked. The caramel highlights tipping each wave made Laura’s hair color as uniquely unpredictable as the green and gold of her eyes.
“Have I ever danced with you before, Squirt—” said green-gold eyes tilted his way and he caught himself “—Laura?”
“No. It’s not as awkward as I imagined it would be.” A rosy hue warmed her cheeks, and he wondered if he’d ever seen her blush before. “Because of the differences in our heights.”
Wait. Why was she was blushing? “You imagined dancing with me?”
“Ego much, Detective?”
Conor laughed. “My ego’s taken a few hard hits lately. It appreciates even the remnants of a teenage crush.”
She glanced to the side and stiffened in his arms for a moment. Conor was about to ask if he’d offended her, when she hooked her hand behind his neck, moving in close enough for her breasts to brush against him. For a few seconds, as every sensible cell in his body rushed to those points of contact, he didn’t even hear her words. “Lisa’s glaring at us. She knows you’re avoiding her. Are you okay with that? Or are we trying to make her mad?”
After inhaling a steadying breath, Conor eased a little space between them, ostensibly so he could look down into her eyes, but mostly because his body was firing in ways he wasn’t entirely comfortable with around Laura. And he certainly didn’t want her to realize the purely male interest in her that was stirring behind his zipper. “I’m not the retribution type. I’m okay with this marriage. But I don’t have to be a glutton for punishment. I’m afraid getting too close will stir up things I’m not allowed to feel anymore.”
Or shouldn’t feel in the first place—like whatever was happening to him with Laura tonight.
“Lisa loved you, you know.” She shrugged, as if apologizing for what she said next. “I just don’t think she was in love with you.”
Well, wasn’t that a painfully sharp distinction to make? Time to change the subject to anything but him. “Did you ever get a date with that track star?”
“Nope. Decided he wasn’t my type.” Thankfully, Laura shifted the conversation with him. “That was almost a decade ago. I’m not a kid anymore. You just haven’t been around to notice. I’ve earned a college degree. I have a career as an educational travel coordinator. I book and lead student tours. I’ve seen a lot of the country. A lot of the world.”
“And I thought you wanted to grow up and play professional softball. Or be a veterinarian at a zoo—you wanted to save cheetahs or something like that. Or become a US marshal like your favorite neighbor.”
Laura pulled her hand from his shoulder, laughing as she gestured to the generous swells of her breasts. “These got in the way of being an athlete. Allergy to cats precluded the vet job. And I outgrew my teenage crush on all things Conor Wildman long ago.”
Conor covered his heart, laughing with her. “I’m wounded.”
She teasingly punched his arm before grabbing his hand and pulling him back into the rhythm of the music. “All the years I would have traded anything for you to see me as more than your kid sister. Oh, well. You had your chance, big guy. I’ve moved on.”
That particular choice of words sounded a little too familiar. Moving on was exactly what Lisa had done. Years ago, it was what his father had done, too.
Conor needed to save the conversation before he took a trip too far down the path of bitter memories. “I appreciate the flowers and letter you sent for Mom. That was sweet of you to recall some of the fun things we did growing up. Those were good memories. Mom treasured them as much as I did.”
“They were. I’m so sorry about Marie.” Laura stopped in the middle of the dance floor to slide her arms beneath his jacket and hug him around the waist.
Conor braced his feet, absorbing a bump from the couple moving next to them. When that accidental nudge didn’t loosen her hold on him, he wound his arms around her shoulders, protecting her from the people moving around them. And, if he was honest with himself, relaxing into the curves of her body and the heat of her small form clinging to him, accepting the solace of the compassionate gesture. “You okay, Squirt?”
He felt the hum of her groan vibrating through the cotton of his shirt.
“Sorry.” He dropped a kiss to the crown of her hair. “Laura. You okay?”
Her squeeze around him tightened. “I’m sorry I couldn’t get back for the service. But I did go by the cemetery once I was in town. The marker wasn’t up yet, but I left flowers at the site.”
“Thank you.” That reminded him that he needed to go by the cemetery and check the status of the headstone he’d ordered.
They were still hugging as the song ended. The DJ was encouraging the married couples in attendance to make their way to the dance floor for a competition to see who’d been together the longest. “That leaves us out.” Conor finally relented his hold on Laura. She pulled away but latched onto his hand as he walked her back to the tables. “It really is good to see you, Laura.”
“You, too, Conor. I’ve missed you.”
“I appreciate a few minutes of normal amidst all the crazy.” He chucked her lightly beneath the chin and grinned. “I don’t have to pretend to smile with you.”
When he excused himself to leave, she tugged on his tie with one hand and slipped the other around his neck, pulling him down for a kiss. What the heck? Her lips were warm, bowed and moving across his before he could close the startled O of his mouth. When he did press his lips together, they caught the decadent fullness of her lower lip between his. Whoa. Did that qualify as a kiss? Had he just kissed Laura? With a noise that sounded suspiciously like a moan beneath the pulse of the music, she pushed up onto her tiptoes, sealing their mouths together in another kiss that exploded somewhere inside his brain and lit a fuse down to his groin, prompting the instinctive need to snap her to his body and take over the embrace. But before he could even acknowledge the desire zinging through him, she dropped back onto her heels and broke the connection between them.
As he leaned over her like this, with her face tilted to his, the color of her eyes changed like a kaleidoscope, showing him tawny sparkles of glitter amidst the forest, moss and olive in her irises. The woman had beautiful eyes. “You should do that more,” she whispered.
“Kiss?” He’d been too startled to respond the way he’d wanted to, but now he was wondering if he had... He could still feel the pressure of her lips softening against his...
She rubbed her fingertips across his mouth, probably wiping off a stray glob of lipstick. But he felt the tug of that unexpected touch down deep inside him. “Smile. You’ve always been such a good-looking son of a gun when you smile.”
Was she flirting with him? How was he supposed to think brotherly thoughts when every cell of his body was standing at attention, eagerly anticipating the next touch? When every self-respecting male hormone was demanding he take her in his arms and show her that Conor Wildman knew exactly how to respond to a woman’s kiss, and not stand there like a statue.
She smoothed his tie against his chest and stepped back, maybe sensing that he’d change the way that kiss had ended if she didn’t put some space between them. “I’d better go. Try to get a hold of Chloe again.”
Right.