The Lemon Sisters Read online

  Cole: Yes to anything. I’m a desperate man.

  Brooke: I want to go back out there, I want to be a principal photographer again.

  Cole: Okay, yes to anything but that. That’s a definite no. I’m not putting you out there where you could get hurt again.

  Brooke: That’s not a decision you get to make for me.

  Cole: So come home and fight it out with me.

  Brooke: I will. Soon. I’m not quite done here.

  Tommy: It’s about a guy, right? Why else would you be stalling? And don’t forget to freak out when he wants more than a good time.

  Brooke: That’s ridiculous. I don’t freak.

  Tommy: No? Why do you think you’re not wearing an engagement ring from Cole right now?

  Brooke: Wait—Cole thinks about marrying me??????

  Cole: USED TO. Note the past tense. Because falling for you is the equivalent of jumping without a parachute. No offense.

  Tommy: He’s not the right one for you anyway, sweetness. Just don’t run from the one who is. Don’t shut it down because you get scared.

  Cole: You’re reading Cosmo again, aren’t you.

  Tommy: So I like to be in touch with my feminine side, bite me.

  Brooke: This convo is over. Good night.

  She turned off her phone, even knowing Tommy was right. She shut things down when they got too personal. It usually happened somewhere around date three, at the inevitable “I’d like a family someday” dinner talk. That’s when she made the decision for them both that it wouldn’t work out. She knew this was because deep, deep down, she knew she didn’t want to face talking about the option she’d lost in the helicopter accident, the option she hadn’t even known she’d wanted.

  Exhausted, she closed her eyes.

  The thump, thump, thump of the helicopter rotors spinning startled her, as did the sound of the pilot speaking with intense steadiness into his radio about making an emergency landing.

  Then she was in free fall.

  She jerked awake with a silent scream on her lips, cold and clammy and utterly terrified. She was on her feet and out the door, her body taking control. She grabbed her keys with the intention of getting the hell out of Dodge, but she didn’t go out front to her car.

  It wasn’t until she ran into Garrett’s dark bedroom a minute later that she realized what she’d done.

  Garrett sat straight up in bed. “What the—”

  She dropped her keys and, without even counting her steps, launched herself at him. For a guy who’d clearly been dead to the world a second ago, he thankfully woke up fast, wrapping his arms around her, pulling her into his warm, hard body with a low, worried murmur, holding her tight. “Brooke, what is it?”

  Unable to answer, she burrowed in closer.

  GARRETT SHOOK OFF the last dregs of sleep and ran his hands over Brooke’s body. No injuries that he could tell, at least no new ones. But she was alarmingly chilled—icy, even—and trembling like a leaf. “Bad dream?”

  She nodded.

  “It’s okay now.” He pressed his jaw to the top of her head. “You’re okay, you’re safe.”

  She didn’t loosen her death grip on him, so he leaned back with her in his arms, pulling the covers up over them both. Again he stroked his hands over her to soothe and warm, until she slowly began to stop quivering and her body began to unclench.

  He thought maybe she’d actually fallen asleep on him when she finally took a slow, deep breath and lifted her head, her eyes luminous in the dark as they met his. “I knew better than to fall asleep without going through my nighttime routine. I knew something bad would happen.”

  “What happened?”

  She squeezed her eyes shut. “Nothing. I’m sorry.”

  “For what? Bee, help me out here.”

  She choked out a laugh. “Everything. I’m sorry for everything.”

  “That covers a lot of ground.”

  She shrugged and bit her lower lip, and he gently pushed the hair back from her face, worried about the way she was breathing and the look in her eyes, worried because the last time she’d looked like this, she’d bailed for seven long years. “Talk to me, Bee.”

  She hesitated. “You’ve spent your life making good, smart choices. And I’ve spent mine doing the opposite of that.”

  “I’d never judge you on the decisions you’ve made.”

  “Except for the one where I walked away from Wildstone and my family. And you,” she said.

  Well, she had him there, and he winced.

  “I really do regret how much I hurt you—”

  “Don’t,” he said, closing his eyes. “You apologized and I heard you, and we’ve moved on.”

  “Not all the way,” she said.

  Their gazes met.

  “You’re still mad,” she whispered.

  “No. No,” he said again, when she looked at him with doubt. “Not mad.”

  “Mistrusting, then.”

  There, she was right on. And he hated that it was true. Hated, too, that she could clearly read it in his expression, because she slid out of his bed. “I closed you out,” she said, “and now you’re returning the favor. And I understand. I do. I honestly had no idea how much it would suck, and I’m sorry for that, more than you’ll ever know. And something else I now understand? This”—she gestured between them and then at the bed—“you knew this would be a bad idea, and you were right, because I’m having trouble separating the sex and the emotions that come with it.” She gave him a small smile. “I should go. Night,” she whispered, and walked out.

  He leapt out of the bed to go after her and realized he wasn’t wearing any clothes. The front door slammed while he was pulling on a pair of jeans. Forgoing anything else, he ran outside in time to see her running toward the Lemon property.

  “Shit,” he said, and started after her, but a scraping sound from behind him made him turn back.

  His dad waved from the porch chair, Snoop at his side. He wore a T-shirt and boxers and nothing else.

  “Yeah,” his dad said with a sigh. “I came, I saw, and I forgot what I was doing. But mostly, it turns out that once you get in this chair, you’re kinda stuck until someone a few decades younger who still has abdominals can pull you out.”

  Garrett strode over there and pulled him up. “Why didn’t you say something? And where are your pants?”

  “That’s another funny story. Sort of.” He grimaced. “I forgot ’em. I also forgot why I was coming outside in the first place, so don’t bother asking me.”

  “Sorry to intrude.”

  They both turned at the sound of Brooke’s voice. She was back, standing at the bottom of the porch steps, barefoot, hair wild around her face, eyes solemn, face pale. In her tiny jean shorts and tank top, she looked like jailbait.

  “Brooke.” With huge relief, Garrett took a step toward her, but she shook her head.

  “Just forgot my keys.” She moved past him and into the house, coming out not a minute later, keys in hand. Carefully not looking at Garrett, she turned to his dad. “We didn’t get to formally meet. I’m Brooke Lemon.”

  His dad smiled at her. “And I’m Gary Montgomery, Garrett’s dad, though not a particularly good one. As you can see, I forgot my pants. Sorry about that.”

  Brooke returned his smile. “I’m not a big fan of pants myself. And it’s never too late to learn to be good at something, right?”

  She was being effortlessly kind, handling his dad with more care and affection than Garrett had ever managed.

  “Are you the one seeing my son?” his dad asked.

  Garrett let out a breath. “Ignore him,” he said, and took her hand. “We’re not finished talking.”

  She raised a brow at his tone, which, okay, had definitely made that come out sounding like a demand, but it was more desperation than anything else.

  “He don’t seem to know much about women,” his dad said to Brooke with a shake of his head. “But that might be my fault. I wasn’t around to teac