Heated Rush - Leslie Kelly [60]
No, he didn’t blame her for her tiny white lies. If his presence here could get them to at least address the possibility that Annie might not be moving home, next year, or the following one at the very latest, then he was very glad to do it.
“What was she dressed as?” Randy asked. Annie’s youngest brother was a typical gangly twenty-year-old, all arms, legs and mouth, with a shaggy head full of blond hair. He yucked it up asking, “Lemme guess—Little Orphan Annie? That’s what I used to call her.”
Mrs. Davis was walking by the table to refill a platter of waffles and she paused midstride to thwack her youngest son on the head with the back of her hand. “And what would that make your father and me if your sister was an orphan?” She then made the sign of the cross and mumbled what sounded like a prayer before proceeding to the stove.
Sean made no effort to hide his smile.
“Actually, she looked wonderful,” he told her brother, wondering if Annie recognized the mischief in his tone. “She was a bunny.”
Randy snorted. “Yeah, right, Annie a Playboy bunny?”
Seeing her mother swing around in dismay, and Mr. Davis lower the newspaper and frown, Sean quickly shook his head. “Heavens, no. Annie wore a big, pink, fuzzy thing with floppy ears and painted on whiskers.” He winked at her. “She was quite adorable.”
Her glare promised retribution. Her words delivered it. “Oh, yes, and Sean was dressed up as Fred Flint-stone. He looked very macho as a caveman. Can’t you just see the resemblance?”
Caveman? Heaven forbid. But, fair was fair. He couldn’t really expect her to describe him as a sexy Zorro or wicked pirate when he’d painted such a vivid picture of her bouncing about as the Easter Bunny.
“That does sound macho,” Mrs. Davis said with a grin as she returned to the table, carrying a fresh pot of coffee. “Are you sure you won’t have some, Sean?”
“Sean drinks tea, Mom.”
Good memory.
“But Annie drinks enough coffee for both of us,” he said, laughing and giving her an intimate look. “Takes a lot to get her going in the morning.”
Her eyes widened into twin saucers. He immediately backpedaled.
“If I call her before she’s had her second cup of the day, she sounds as though she’s sleepwalking.”
Good save, she mouthed when her mother turned to reach for the sugar bowl.
When she turned back around, sprinkling a spoonful of sugar into her cup, Mrs. Davis casually murmured, “You know, Annie, I’d been meaning to ask you.” Her barely interested tone didn’t fool Sean one bit. He prepared himself for whatever was coming, already realizing Mrs. Davis was far more intuitive than any of the male members of the family. “I was certain you’d said Sean’s name was something else when you first mentioned him to me on the phone.”
Beside him, Annie stiffened in her chair. Sean reached over and dropped a hand on her bare leg, the intimate touch hidden from view by the dish-laden table. He had this one.
“We have cute nicknames for each other,” he said. “Maybe that’s what you remember.”
Her mother didn’t look convinced.
“What’s Annie’s?” Randy asked.
Her hand dropped to cover the one he had on her leg, squeezing him threateningly. Her sudden glare promised extreme retribution. He sensed that if he told her family he called her Honey Bunny or Flopsy Ears—which, as nauseating as they sounded, made sense given the way they’d supposedly met—she’d crown him with the platter of congealing fried ham.
And if he called her his little cottontail, her father might.
“I call her céadsearc,” he murmured. Wanting to reassure her that everything was fine, he couldn’t resist lifting her hand and brushing his lips across her fingers. “It means sweetheart.”
The father retreated behind the newspaper again. The twenty-year-old snickered with typical youthful disdain of anything the slightest bit mushy.
But the mother? She stared at their joined hands, obviously noted the warm, grateful look in Annie’s eye—and the tender one Sean couldn’t contain, and said, “How lovely.”
And Sean