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From day one, everything about this job had knocked her off balance and confused her. She was tired of feeling out of her league, tired of getting nowhere. Tired of being the partner who didn’t know what she was doing.
She was hurt, too. Somehow, she’d once again ended up caring about a guy who asked for her help and then walked out on her. It was a platonic love this time, but that didn’t take the sting out of Judah’s rejection.
Sean rubbed her back in slow strokes, up and down. “I d-don’t know why Judah’s running,” he said. “But you and I are g-going to find out.”
“We are?”
“We are. I hate unsolved mysteries.”
“Unsolved mysteries the thing or Unsolved Mysteries the show?”
“Both.” He smiled down at her. “I’m not giving up until I have the full sstory. And neither are you, because I need you.”
“You do?” She’d turned into an echo, asking one empty question after another, but only because Sean kept saying things that surprised her.
“I do. Now are you ready to get b-back to work?”
“Almost.” She slid one hand inside his open shirt to flatten over his ribs, lowering her cheek so she could listen to the beating of his heart. There was something poignant and unbearably intimate about the feel of his warm skin under her hand, the bones beneath, the sound of his breath in her ear.
Something so much bigger than a fling.
She swallowed the tightness in her throat and rose to give him a kiss full of gratitude and confusion.
Sean slid his hand over the nape of her neck and kissed her back, deep and reassuring, and before too long it turned into another sort of kiss altogether, and then into a distraction that took her mind off her worries and kept him off his computer for rather a long time.
Chapter Thirty-four
“Henry James Callahan, if you don’t come out from under there, I swear to you that you will never eat another M&M,” Ellen said.
Katie watched the play of emotion over Henry’s open face as he considered whether his mother’s threat had enough merit to bring him out from under the rack of bridal gowns. In the end, it didn’t. Henry had the run of the place, and he knew it. His mother couldn’t get away from the bridal shop owner who was putting a tuck in the bodice of her long, white gown, and Katie was in the same predicament with the teenager who was pinning her own gown.
Luckily, another member of the wedding party sailed through the door at that moment. “Sorry we’re late,” Carly said. Ellen’s brother, Jamie, came in behind her carrying baby Isadora.
“No problem,” Ellen replied. “Can you get Henry out from under those dresses?”
Carly hunkered down. “Hi, Henry. Come on out, okay?” When the boy didn’t move, she tried a different tactic. “Come out, or I’ll tell Caleb later, and he’ll be so disappointed in you.”
Henry emerged immediately. He wouldn’t risk his surrogate father’s disappointment, even for the joys of crawling around on the floor under the skirts of a bunch of dresses.
Jamie dropped the diaper bag on the floor in a corner and carefully set Isadora down beside it. “Play with us, buddy,” he said. He knelt and pulled a toy from the diaper bag. “You can show Dora how these rings stack on the cone.” Henry went to him, pleased to be able to show off for the baby.
“Ow!” Ellen said.
“Sorry!” the shop owner replied. “Is that—That’s Jamie, isn’t it?”
Ellen sighed. “He’s my brother.”
“Oh, I know. I saw you in the paper a while back with that man who—Hey, is that who you’re marrying, that guy with the left hook?”
“Yes.”
“Lucky duck,” the woman said. “He’s a hunk. If he’s half as good in bed as he is good-looking, you’re going to—”
Katie put up a hand. “Stop, please. He’s my brother.”
The woman was briefly nonplussed. Then she clucked her tongue, giving each of them a once-over. “Some families get all the good genes.”
“What’d I miss?” Carly asked, dumping her purse and her coat on the ground.
