“Homecomings,” she told him stiffly. She realized that she wasn’t exactly making sense. She was losing the thread of what she was saying herself. “At least about this being one.”
“But this was your home,” he pointed out, “and you’ve come back.”
“Just to help out.”
He gave another careless shrug. “You’ve come back. The details don’t matter.”
Now there she had him. It was her turn to smile confidentially. “Oh, but they do,” she corrected with a liberal dose of passion. “Details always matter. They’re what makes one thing different from another.”
His grin merely served to irk her. “You like to argue, don’t you?”
Her chin went up defensively again, and again, he found it tempting. Jimmy seriously toyed with the idea of stealing a kiss, but knew it would just get him slapped royally. He could wait.
“No, I don’t like to argue,” she contradicted. “I like things to be perfectly clear and up front. No lies, no deceptions, no illusions.”
Her words struck a chord. He regarded her thoughtfully for a long moment. “Sounds like someone did a number on your optimism.”
She didn’t like being analyzed, especially not by a stranger who had no idea what he was talking about. “My optimism is just fine, thank you.”
“Good.” He placed his mug next to hers on the table. The glass came precariously close to falling before Jimmy steadied it. “Then you won’t mind dancing with me.”
Maybe she hadn’t heard right. “What does one thing have to do with another?”
He wrapped his fingers around her hand. “Your optimism will make you optimistic about my dancing ability.”
The next thing she knew, as the protest formed on her lips, she found herself enfolded in his arms. If she strained her ears, she could just about make out that there was a song playing on the classic jukebox that Ike had painstakingly restored. But what that song was, or even the tempo that was presumably playing, was anyone’s guess.
Alison’s brother, April noticed, took it to be a slow song. With his hand lightly pressed against her spine, he brought her body closer to his. Closer than she felt comfortable about.
“You’re in my space,” she hissed against his ear.
He could feel her stiffening. He did his best to lighten the moment and smiled down into her face. “I’m afraid there is no space here, but as soon as there is, I’ll be sure to let you have it.” The smile widened just a little. “I find this rather cozy myself.”
His smile was infiltrating her space even more acutely than his body. She looked around for someone to cut in, but apparently no one else was paying attention to the music. “I’m sure you do.”
Curving her hand beneath his, he rested it against his chest. “So what do you do when you’re not sorting envelopes?”
She could feel his heart beating beneath her fingertips. Why that made her warm, she couldn’t say. Probably had to do with the growing lack of air. “You mean here?”
His eyes held hers. She had hypnotically beautiful eyes, he thought. “Anywhere.”
It was definitely too warm in here, she thought. “I’m a photojournalist.”
Something independent. He should have realized that. She needed something where she could make her own terms, her own hours. “I’m impressed.”
The sway of his hips against hers was far too distracting for her to concentrate on the conversation. “I didn’t say it to impress you.”
“I know.” He liked the way she felt in his arms when she relaxed. Soft, delicate. In direct contradiction to the look in her eyes. “You don’t like to impress anyone, do you?”
She tried to shrug and wound up brushing her shoulder against someone’s back. “There’s no need, as long as I’m happy.”
Jimmy was careful to not move their dancing out of the realm of tantalizing and into arousing. He had a feeling she would break away if he did. But having her here, swaying against him this way, was certainly doing a number on him. “Are you?”
“Am I what?”
“Happy.”
She could feel her heart constricting slightly and her nerve endings stretching taut. “This conversation’s getting way too personal.”
He felt her try to pull back, but he held her fast. “How else am I going to get to know you?”
April’s eyes narrowed. “Why should you get to know me?”
“Why not?”
Games, he was playing word games. Well, he’d met his match, she thought. She knew how to give as good as she got. “Because in two weeks you’ll be gone and with any luck, so will I.”
That fit right into his plan. He certainly wasn’t looking for anything permanent. If you looked for something permanent, you wound up being disappointed in the end when it broke apart. And in one way or another, it always broke apart. “Yes, but until then, there’s all this time just hanging around. We might as well pass it pleasurably.”
And she knew just what he meant by that. “Maybe we have a different definition of pleasure.”
The dimple in his cheek deepened. “We can explore that, too.”
She didn’t know whether to be amused or annoyed. What she was, was incredibly warm, bordering on hot. If she didn’t get some air soon, she was going to pass out. “You don’t give up, do you?”
“Haven’t the foggiest how to do that,” he admitted readily. “Besides, my brother taught me that anything worth having is worth working for.” And that included time with a beautiful lady, he added silently. “If it comes too easily, you might just let it slip through your fingers without realizing it.”
The scales began to tip toward amusement. “And your brother’s a philosopher.”
Kevin would have gotten a charge out of that, Jimmy thought. “A cabdriver. Actually, he owns a fleet of cabs. A small fleet, but the company’s his nonetheless.” His mouth curved fondly as he managed to turn her around in the tiny space. He liked her surprised expression when she faced him again. “I wouldn’t want him knowing I said it, but Kevin’s the smartest man I know. The kindest, too.” Jimmy glanced over toward where he’d last seen Alison. She was still there, talking to several people from the looks of it. She was standing next to Luc, her arm tucked through his. She looked happy, he thought. It was about time. “He misses Alison.” He looked back at April. “Kevin raised her after our parents died. You might say he raised all of us.”
“All?” How many of them were there? And were they all glib, like him? Alison didn’t seem to be, but it was too soon to tell. She’d only exchanged a few sentences with her.
“My two sisters and me. I never realized how much he gave up to do that.” Jimmy grew serious for a moment, looking back. “Kevin could have had a regular life of his own, dated, gotten married, the usual. Instead he stayed home, put all of us through school, made sure we toed the line and became decent people.”
April caught her bottom lip between her teeth. “So how disappointed in you is he?”
It took him a second before he realized she was joking. There’d been a kernel of truth in that. “Not anymore. My wild days are behind me.”
Wild, that wasn’t quite the word she would have used to refer to him, but it was close enough. “That’s not the way Alison made it sound.”
Enjoying the company of an ever changing parade of women was harmless compared