LITMIR.BIZ

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she admitted. “My body did.” She took a deep breath and finally met his gaze. “But my brain didn’t. This—whatever it is between us.” She waved her hands in exasperation. “It’s useless. I tried to tell you before.”

      Brick plowed his fingers through his hair. “It didn’t feel useless to me. Making love with you has always been more than—”

      “That isn’t what I meant.” Her eyes darkened. “It was exciting. It’s always exciting, but after it’s over…” Lisa sighed and her explanation faded out.

      “After it’s over, what happens?” he asked, feeling a sting of remorse. Had he been so inconsiderate that he’d foregone her pleasure for his? Lord knew, when he made love to Lisa, he had the sensation of a five-alarm fire that had to be put out, but her pleasure had always been important to him.

      “After it’s over,” she began, and hesitated again. “You’re still you, and I’m still me. You still want no strings, and I still want a family. You usually go home, and the next morning I feel…” She shrugged. “Empty.”

      Brick was the first to admit that the feminine psyche was a complete mystery to him. “Is this about me staying overnight? Because if it is—”

      “It’s about you staying every night.”

      Brick felt a muscle spasm in his jaw. Uneasiness grabbed and clutched at his gut. He shoved his clenched hand into his pocket. Hell, he simply was not ready to cut Lisa loose. He didn’t want to give her up yet. When he’d seen that little book of hers with his name crossed out, he’d felt undiluted panic. “We could live together.”

      Her eyes rounded in surprise. Uncertainty flashed across her face, but only for a second. Lisa looked away. “I don’t think so,” she said quietly.

      “Lisa, maybe this is just a stage,” he said, voicing what he’d been hoping because he couldn’t accept not being with her anymore. “Look at how wrapped up in your job you’ve been. Now, all of a sudden, you want marriage and a baby. Maybe this will all blow over in a couple of weeks or a month.”

      “It’s not all of a sudden,” she wailed. “And I don’t expect you to understand because I don’t think you really know me that well.”

      Affronted, Brick stared at her in disbelief. “What the hell—”

      Lisa held up a hand. “You know me sexually, but not in other ways. The other ways a woman wants to be known by a man.”

      With a sinking sensation, Brick sensed her resolve. It was something new, and he hadn’t come to grips with it. Before, she’d always been flexible, almost malleable, and he’d hoped he’d be able to talk her around this latest glitch the way he’d always done before. But she looked as if she’d faced something inside herself and come out stronger because of it.

      Even though he topped her by five inches and outweighed her by a hundred pounds, Brick, who was known for his power, found himself envying her strength.

      Lisa had made a decision grounded in what she thought was best. What she’d decided, he realized, was that she didn’t want him.

      Brick pulled off the handkerchief he’d tied around his head to keep the sweat from his eyes and accepted the chair and cold beer his sister, Carly, offered. “Thanks.”

      His brother-in-law, Russ Bradford, took another chair and saluted Brick with his own beer. “Appreciate your help. When you said you were coming down for the weekend, I swear I wasn’t planning to work you to death.”

      “I’m a long way from dying,” Brick said, though he felt miserable inside. He knew Russ needed help, and Brick needed something to quell the restlessness within him. So far, he hadn’t found it. “Since I’ve been here so often lately, I thought I’d better earn my keep.”

      “It’s no problem and you know it,” Carly said. “Are you sure you don’t want to come along for the dinner cruise on Matilda’s Dream? I could make space for you.” She grinned. “After all, you used to be part owner.”

      “One of eight owners,” he said wryly. Brick’s six brothers, he and Carly had inherited the riverboat from an aunt. Russ had bought out the brothers’ shares and Carly had taken it over and made it into a successful business.

      Brick wasn’t in the mood to socialize. If he were honest with himself, he wasn’t in the mood for much of anything. “Thanks for the offer, but I think I’ll stay here tonight.”

      Carly frowned in concern. “Business okay?”

      “Booming,” Brick said.

      She exchanged a sidelong glance with Russ. “Anything else bothering you?”

      Brick shrugged. “Nothing that a few more beers and a shower won’t cure.”

      “What’s her name?” Russ asked.

      Brick stopped midmotion in lifting the can to his lips, then set it down on the table. He didn’t look at Carly or Russ. He knew what he would see. Russ would be wearing that probing, no-nonsense, give-me-some-answers expression, and Carly would look worried. And Brick had thought he’d fooled them all. “It’s no big deal. It’s all over, anyway.”

      “If it’s no big deal, then why have you been here five of the last six weekends?”

      That stung. Brick tried to shake it off and forced a grin. “Hey, if I’ve been imposing, you should let me know. I’m sleeping all the way over on the opposite side of the house, so I’ve only heard you scream once or twice.”

      His younger sister didn’t blush. She rolled her eyes. “I knew we wouldn’t get a straight answer from you. The CIA could take lessons from you on how to keep from disclosing secrets. You must not have been too serious about her, or you would have brought her down here for us to meet.”

      Brick rubbed his finger in the condensation on the can. “Why would I do that?”

      She looked at him with ill-concealed impatience. “Because that’s the normal thing to do. When you really care about a woman, you want her to meet your adorable younger sister and all six of your brothers. You don’t just want her to meet them. You want her to like them.”

      “Yeah, well, maybe she didn’t want to meet my family.”

      Silence hung heavy in the room, and Brick looked up to meet his sister’s gaze. “And maybe I waited until it was too late.”

      The next day Brick returned to Chattanooga with Russ’s words ringing in his ears: “Too late is when she’s got somebody else’s wedding band on her finger.”

      He hadn’t ever spent much time thinking about why he didn’t want to get married, because it was one of those things that he had decided when he was twelve years old. His mother had died, and his father might as well have. For the sake of the kids he’d remarried a sour woman who’d grown more sour because his father couldn’t love her.

      Carly had spent a year stuttering, his oldest brother, Daniel, had become an old man before his time. His stepmother had nearly ruined Garth. Brick had watched his family flounder, and in the middle of it all, he had felt lost.

      His mother had been the silken thread of joy that had bound them all together. He’d been angry that she’d left them. His anger had turned to fear when he watched what her death did to his father. All this, Brick realized, because his father had loved his mother too much. It was a knowledge that seemed to spring from his very soul.

      At the idea of marriage, Brick experienced a physical and visceral response. His skin grew clammy, his mouth went dry and he felt as if he were going to throw up. Even now, as he drove into Chattanooga, he felt it, the powerful edginess that went beyond simple aversion. In the past he’d always put it down to exceptional male survival instincts.

      Since two of his brothers and his sister, Carly, had taken the plunge and gotten married, though, he was forced to reevaluate.

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