"You make that look so easy," Brenna said, eyeing the shallow water, convinced she was about to take a dunking.
"Piece of cake," he said. He caught her under her knees and across her back, and effortlessly lifted her out of the craft.
"I-"Can walk , she whispered in the deep recesses of her mind. Except, she didn't want to.
Caught against Cole's chest, she was assailed with his warm scent-soap, deodorant and him all blended together in an aroma that made her stomach tighten. So much skin touched her, burned her, drew her irresistibly closer. She looped her arms around his neck, acutely aware of his hand searing her bare leg, his other hand scorching through the cotton of her shirt.
She turned slightly in his arms, enjoying the sensation of being fully pressed against him.
He stopped walking, the water lapping around his legs, his gaze caught with hers. Her breath hitched painfully in her chest, and she looked at his mouth, then back at his eyes. On a groan, he closed them and lowered his head.
The instant his mouth touched Brenna's, she opened hers wide, inviting-demanding-his possession. Heat and thenubby touch of tongue gliding over tongue consumed her. She pressed her hands against his neck, which felt nearly as hot as his mouth.
Sharp need flowed through her and pooled low in her belly. Her focus narrowed to the sensation of their mated mouths. The other night he'd taught her yearning and wanting. Now he taught her combustion, paling all her previous experiences.
The roar of a speedboat and catcalls from a group of teenagers as they sped by shocked Brenna out of the consuming kiss. Cole's gaze roamed over her mouth and face before he looked away. He took a deep breath.
"We left lunch in the boat," he said finally.
She wiggled her toes. "Probably because you had your ... um, hands full."
He grinned, squeezed her, and waded out of the water. He set her down, steadying her as though he knew her legs wouldn't hold her upright. She glanced around the small cove. For the moment no one else was close by, but the shore had about as much real privacy as a department-store window.
"Damn," Cole said on a ragged sigh, his thoughts apparently echoing her own.
"Damn?"
He smiled and tilted her chin back with his finger, then gave her another thorough kiss. "Yeah. Damn. I want you, and I wouldn't have brought you here if I'd known you'd have this kind of effect on me. I would have taken you home to the privacy and comfort of my bed."
Another surge of heat lanced through her. Simple words that painted a vivid picture. He raked his hand through his hair, bent and brushed her nose with his, then kissed the corner of her mouth.
"Be right back." He waded to the sailboat. He wanted to take Brenna in his arms, and hold her until they were so close nothing separated them. Only then would he find relief from the aching need that had consumed him for the past week. Which was fine, he admitted, if a quickie was what he wanted.
It wasn't.
"Cool off," he muttered to himself. "You've got plenty of time." Easier said than done. At least she wasn't so wary of him. And she wasn't running. He glanced around the cove. A fisherman with a couple of kids was a hundred yards in one direction and a family having a picnic on the beach was a bit further away in the other. She didn't have to run. They had chaperons to spare.
Brenna watched the play of muscles on Cole's back and legs as he waded to the boat. For a moment, his profile was to her, and she had no doubt he was as aroused as she. He gripped the edge of the boat, and bowed his head as if in deep thought. A moment later, he reached inside for his T-shirt, which he pulled over his head. Lifting the cooler out of the boat, he headed back toward her.
By the time he returned, the evidence of his arousal was mostly gone. She didn't have that much control, she silently admitted, wanting to be in his arms again.
Her promise to herself slammed into her. End it or tell him the truth before things went too far. She didn't want to end it. And telling him the truth would surely do that. What she wanted, quite simply, was to be the kind of woman he would be interested in. His intellectual equal, someone who would understand him the way he seemed to understand her.
He stopped a scant foot in front of her, squatted, and waved a hand in front of her eyes. Her gaze snapped to his. He smiled, and she smiled back.
"I didn't think you saw me, you were staring into space so hard. Sunstroke?" he asked, then answered himself. "Nope. Not hot enough."
"I'm plenty hot," she murmured.
He laughed and sat down beside her. "You're an unmerciful tease, Brenna James."
"I'm just trying to figure out how to convince you the Italian sub is mine, if you really brought a liverwurst
sandwich."
"Hunger pangs are the problem, then?"
She cast him a dark glance at his double entendre.
"If you can do it, so can I," he said with a wicked grin.
"Trade you mytennies for the sub," she said.
He glanced at her size-six feet. "Tempting offer." He reached past her and pulled out two
white-paper-wrapped sandwiches, handing one to her.
She unwrapped it and inhaled the aroma before taking a bite. The sandwich tasted just as good as it smelled.
"Heaven," she murmured.
Cole sat down next to her and took a bite of his own sandwich. "I could almost live on these."
"You said the same thing about apple pie."
"How does that saying go? If you can't have the food you love, love the food you have."
"Girls, too?"
"Nope," he replied without looking at her. "I'm much more particular than that."
Brenna savored another bite from the sandwich, pleased at his admission. He'd deliberately lightened the mood, and she decided to follow his lead.
"So what made you interested in John Marshall?" she asked. The technique was one she'd learned from her mother. Fill any social situation with small talk, and if you're with a man, get him to talk about himself.
"He was assigned. Literally," Cole said. "I was taking an American history class taught by an old guy who was Ebenezer Scrooge incarnate. He assigned a term paper. We were to research eighteenth- or nineteenth-century people whose influence is still felt today. I couldn't think of anyone, so he assigned me John Marshall."
Cole's eyes lit as he stared across the water, his sandwich temporarily forgotten.
"It was wonderful, Brenna. Here was a person who was just a name from history-not even a well-known name. But his ideas reached across more than a century. He was one of the first to see the constitution as a dynamic instrument that could help government act effectively, in 1820 or now. For a while I thought about going into politics. Then I got interested in law." He glanced at her. "I guess that was the first time I figured out what college was all about."
"How so?" Brenna asked. Her need for small talk was gone. She really wanted to know what made Cole tick.
"I thought I was supposed to be in school to get a skill so I could make a living. That's secondary. Ideas. Thousands of ideas. Things I've never thought about or heard of," he said, "that's the important part. To be able to open up a book and find out what someone else thought about the world, what they did about it." He glanced at her. "You know?"
She swallowed. "I know. I feel the same way when I hear a grandparent pass on a story to a child." She looked away from him. "You're very lucky to have such a clear vision, Cole. To know what you want."
"Is that why you're working at Score?" he asked. "To give yourself time to think about what you want to do next?"
"With my job skills..." Her throat closed. She was used to lying, but she found she couldn't lie to Cole.
"You'll figure it out, Brenna," he said, reaching for her. He pulled her against his side and draped a companionable arm around her shoulder. "God, if I'd been through what you've been through the last year, I'd be working at the most mindless thing I could think of."
His explanation provided an easy out, and she grasped it like a drowning woman reaching for a lifeline.
Chapter 9.
"And so the Bremen Town musicians decided to stay at the house. The robbers ran away and were never seen again," Brenna said to the children gathered around her in the reading corner of the library. She closed the colorful picture-book. "And?" She smiled in response to their expectant grins.
"And they lived happily ever after," chorused several of the children.
"Yeah," Brenna agreed.
"That's a good story, Auntie Brennie," Teddy said.
Another little girl leaned against Brenna's leg the way Teddy often did. "I think story hour should be
longer."
Brenna chuckled. This was the same child who often started yawning the minute she opened the first
page.
"You did great," Nancy said, sitting down next to Brenna on the carpeted cube. "As usual."
"Thanks."
"I sure wished you were here the other day."
"Why?" Brenna asked, watching the last of the children wander away from the reading area.
"We have a new volunteer. She was so nervous I wasn't sure she was going to be able to finish. She
botched things up so much that I was sure she had never read a book in her life."
Nancy's tone painted the woman as an imbecile.
"She was probably just nervous because of the kids," Brenna responded.
"Maybe," Nancy agreed reluctantly. "Except this woman couldn't tell which side of a book was up."
"Sounds like she was scared." Brenna had been there often enough herself to know too well all the
variations of being scared. "In that situation, there's only one thing to do."
"Which is?"
"Fake it," Brenna said with a smile. "No matter what."
Nancy laughed. "Right. Just like you do."
"Exactly." Brenna knew Nancy would never suspect the truth even though she'd just been told.
"Want to go see a movie this weekend?" Nancy asked, changing the subject to one of their shared