Page 10 of When You Are Mine

“Right. Just a little. Where’s the agent? I was late and I still beat him here.”

“Why were you late?” Meredith peered up the road, searching for the agent and rationing only half her attention for Kerris.

“Oh, I um, I had to go by the hospital, remember?”

Meredith’s radar was infallible. She always knew when Kerris was not being completely forthcoming. With a childhood haunted by dark, shadowy corners, there were lots of things Kerris didn’t want to discuss. Meredith had learned when to press and when to back away. Kerris’s expression must have led her to press.

“Something held you up there?” Meredith tilted her head, studying Kerris with telescopic intensity. Kerris always felt like the edges of her soul had been peeled back under that look.

“No, there was just this new little girl from Kenya.” Kerris forced herself to stand still on the bungalow porch. Maybe she could slide past without piquing Meredith’s interest further. “She’s the sweetest thing, but she has a brain tumor. She was in the crafts class, and I spent some extra time with her. Sorry I was late.”

“Kenya?” Meredith bit her bottom lip, a dangerous sign that she was working out a problem in her head. “How’d she end up here from Kenya?”

“Oh, Walsh brought her from the foundation’s orphanage.” Kerris leaned against a post, keeping her tone casual.

“Walsh? As in Walsh Bennett?” Meredith pounced, her dark, exotically tilted eyes lit with speculation. She twirled a lock of the plum-colored hair she had dyed and hacked into a stylish, blunt bob. “You didn’t tell me you were meeting him at the hospital.”

“Well, I didn’t go to meet him—”

“But he was there.”

“Well, yeah.” Kerris felt like a mouse lured into a trap by fake cheese. “He just happened to be there.”

“Hmmm, I’ve never met him in all the years he’s been coming to Rivermont.”

Kerris narrowed her eyes at her friend, unresponsive to her fishing.

“He’s hot, though.” Meredith dropped the words between them, curiosity etched on her pretty face.

“Really?” Kerris stripped her voice of all intonation, feigning interest in the still-empty road. “I hadn’t noticed.”

“Oh, come on. You’d have to be dead from the neck down not to notice him.”

That sounded about right. Dead from the neck down included the heart and all her arouseable girly parts, which had remained stubbornly unresponsive over the years.

“He’s Cam’s best friend. That’s all I need to know.” Kerris peered over Meredith’s shoulder at a car approaching, a Realtor logo on the side. “Hey, I think this is the agent. Ready?”

With one last assessing glance and a glint in her eye warning she wasn’t done digging, Meredith nodded. Her features set into the familiar mask of consummate professional and driven businesswoman that Kerris had come to know and love.

* * *

The smell of vanilla lured Walsh from the warm cocoon of much-needed sleep. That perfectly sweet scent shimmied up his nostrils and brought him around. He rolled over without opening his eyes, surprised to encounter something soft and warm. His eyes popped open, widening at the sight of Kerris, asleep on his blanket.

She’d pulled her knees up to her chest, and her small hands curled under her cheek. He studied the woman, wishing she wasn’t as spectacular as he’d remembered. He knew he should let her sleep. She’d been flagging even in the elevator this morning, leaning up against the wall dozing. But he couldn’t resist.

“Kerris.”

She blinked drowsily a few times before jumping when her eyes set on him, leaning over her.

“Walsh,” she said, eyes still languid. “Hope you don’t mind me plopping down here to wait for everybody to get back. I wasn’t sure where they’d gone, and I was so tired.”

“It’s fine. You were obviously as done as I was. How’d it go?”

“Go?” She blinked, sitting up and taking the elastic bands from the ponytails at her nape. Running her fingers through the heavy fall of hair, she let out a relieved breath. “Sorry. Those were tight. How’d what go?”

Walsh watched the thick hair tumbling over Kerris’s shoulders and down her back, forgetting that she’d asked a question. Her eyes slid away as she licked at that plump, raspberry-colored bottom lip, clearing her throat and squeezing her lips against her teeth. It finally sank in for Walsh that his extended silence was making her uncomfortable.

Idiot!

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