Break On Through (4 page)

“Hi,” Cleo said, aware their gazes were assessing as hers had been. She tightened her hold on the mail so she wouldn’t fidget with her clothes—a simple pair of jeans, a gauzy white shirt with crocheted short sleeves, a pair of rubber flip flops that had, inexplicably, a bite taken out of the sole. She glanced down at them now, asking herself why she hadn’t thrown the cheap sandals out and when had one of the boys tried to make a meal out of them?

“We’re here to return your pans,” Alexa said. Her hair was long and wavy and Cleo not only admired it but felt envious for the free time it likely took to tame such a mass. Her own locks were near-platinum, but while she had some length on top, they were cut short at the back and sides so she could get out of the shower, rub some gel on her palms, then run her hands through her hair for a thirty-second style.

“Reed sent us,” Cilla added.

That nugget wasn’t a surprise. But hearing his name said aloud jerked Cleo’s attention from her self-consciousness and returned it to the man who she’d been trying to forget since that afternoon at his house. The man who had the elegant bone structure, the boxer’s body, the absolute, near-violent effect on her hormones.

Even now, just thinking about it, made heat crawl up her neck. She swallowed. “Well.” Tucking the mail, both junk and not, under one arm, she reached for the pans. “There was really no need to give them back. They’re disposable.”

“That’s what we told him,” Cilla said, and a new smile lighting her face seemed to rival the sunshine. “But he thought you might want them returned.”

“Or maybe he wants you to fill them up again.” The brunette helped her balance the mail on top of the pans.

“Oh. Hmm.” Imagining her face might be bright red, Cleo fumbled for some response. She still continued soothing her insomnia through early-a.m. baking, but after meeting him she’d resisted any more deliveries to his mailbox. Since he’d gone absent from his office during those morning hours, she’d figured he was no longer interested in anything she had to share—whether it be casual conversation or shortbread cookies. “I don’t know about that.”

Alexa’s gaze was now trained over Cleo’s shoulder. She glanced back. Yes, the boys were still playing bike NASCAR. She’d drawn a “track” for them with sidewalk chalk.

“Cute little guys,” the other woman said. “Yours?”

“My sons, Eli and Obie.”

“You don’t look old enough to have kids who can walk, let alone ride bikes.”

Anxious to fill her lonely heart after her parents’ accidental deaths, she’d married and become a mother of two by twenty-one. She shrugged.

“Your husband?” Cilla asked.

The third degree, over some baked goods! But Cleo didn’t even blink. “We’re divorced.”

“And this big house—”

Alexa interrupted by putting her hand on her friend’s arm. “I’m sorry. Cilla’s very nosy.”

“Hey!” the blonde protested, without heat.

“And I’m Italian,” Alexa said, grinning. “We love to talk. So before we grill you any more, we should give up a little about ourselves.”

“I don’t know why. Reed and I… Reed and I…” Cleo stopped, helpless. “There’s no Reed and I.”

Alexa acted as if she hadn’t said a thing. “It’s kind of complicated, though. Do you know the band, the Velvet Lemons?”

“Of course.” Like she knew the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Eagles, and a handful of other classic rock bands. The Lemons were notorious in the L.A. area for their raucous, wild lifestyle. If she remembered correctly, they were currently on tour in Europe—something she’d gleaned from the city paper which had an extensive section on entertainment news, this being the hotbed of TV, movies, and music production.

“Reed’s one of the sons of the band’s drummer, Hop Hopkins.” Alexa wiggled her thumb in Cilla’s direction. “She’s Mad Dog Maddox’s daughter. I’m engaged to her brother, Bing.”

“Let me explain,” Cilla said, taking up the conversational thread. “There’s nine of us…each of the band members has three kids and we were raised in Laurel Canyon, in a big compound with three separate houses.”

Laurel Canyon. It held mythic undertones, even for Cleo who was new to Los Angeles. Though it wasn’t far from the citified Sunset and Hollywood Boulevards, the canyon was known for its rural atmosphere and for the counterculture types who had settled there in the 1960s. All sorts of celebrities continued to claim it as home, if the Maps to the Stars hawked on every corner in Hollywood could be believed.

Cleo wasn’t sure what this had to do with her, except to underscore how the man on the other side of the fence was an enigma to her.

“So Mad Dog, my father, had my twin brothers Bing and Brody and me. Hop’s children—now grown men, of course—are Beck, Walsh, and Reed. The third member of the band is String Bean Colson and he fathered Payne, Cami, and my fiancé—” here her smile went wide again, “—Ren.”

“There’s lots of get-togethers now,” Alexa said.

“With all of them?” Cleo asked.

“All but Beck,” Cilla said, frowning a little. “He’s a journalist on assignment and has been out of touch. But the rest gather now.”

Alexa nodded. “It’s a tribe.”

“And I like to think I’m in charge of all of them,” Cilla added.

Her friend rolled her eyes. “Obviously. She’s the youngest but also the mother hen.”

The meaning of the visit was now completely clear. The mother hen suspected there was something more than casual kindness to her delivering baked goods to the man said mother hen considered a brother of sorts. The women were here to give Cleo a once-over.

“Look,” she said. “I hope you don’t have the wrong idea…”

“Isn’t he breathtaking?” Alexa asked. “Reed, I mean. He’s got that whole broody, moody vibe going on.”

Cilla stared. “Hello? You’re in love with my brother!”

“It doesn’t mean I don’t have eyes in my head. And didn’t you once try to fix me up with Reed?”

“That was only to tweak Bing. And it worked, didn’t it?” Cilla asked, sounding smug.

Alexa’s expression looked just as self-satisfied. “Boy-howdy, yes it did.”

Cleo swallowed her sigh, feeling envious all over again for their obvious comradery. She missed that kind of woman-to-woman friendship. When she’d moved here a few months ago, she’d been forced to leave her small circle behind.

Cilla looked back at Cleo. “Not that I want you to think I’m visiting with any matchmaking in mind.”

“Okay.” That was good. So why was she here?

“It’s just that Reed asked us over to help him furnish his house.”

“It’s pretty empty,” Cleo said.

“I know. He gets too lost in his head to notice much of anything most of the time.”

Cleo thought of his serious gaze on her, as if he was cataloging every feature, absorbing every atom that differentiated them.
Got the gams you mentioned too. However, you inflated the top half a tad.
Even now, his dry tone made her smile.

“And then when he mentioned he had a baking friend…well, we were curious.”

“He called me a friend?” Cleo couldn’t buy that.

The two women exchanged glances. “What did he say?” Alexa asked Cilla.

She waved a hand, dismissing the question. “
Any
how…” She lifted her gaze to study the Spanish-styled house a lush expanse of lawn away and that was surrounded by Queen palms, Sago palms, and Bird of Paradise plants. “You live here?”

“Way out of my league,” Cleo said. “The owners are in Europe while some extensive reno is being done inside and to the pool. I’m living in the guest house and watching out for the place while they’re gone.”

“How long will you be in the neighborhood?”

Alexa rolled her eyes again. “Geez, Cilla. Interrogate much? I thought we agreed to be subtle.”

Cleo might have taken offense at the continued questioning, but now she was enjoying the by-play between the two friends.

“I’ve lost my subtle,” Cilla defended herself, “while trying to keep tabs on our tribe. The majority of them are male, and the male animal needs an elephant gun to get the point, not a subtle little wasp sting.”

Laughing, Cleo found herself agreeing. “I have two boys. They might not yet be grown, but already I can tell they operate on a very literal level.”

“At least we should give Cleo the opportunity to query in return,” Alexa said. “Go ahead, ask us anything you want to know about Reed.”

“I…” She felt her face going red again. How embarrassing. Of course she should say she wasn’t the least bit interested in the man, because she wasn’t! But there was that swarm of heat and sparks that had been ignited by a single touch.

Glancing back at her boys, who now had abandoned their bikes to inspect something interesting, probably a bug or a lizard, she reminded herself she was a single mom, with no room in her life for the persistent daydreams she’d been having about blue eyes, sexy hair, the flex of a man’s muscled forearm as he’d poured a glass of tea.

The way his gaze had felt as it roamed her skin. Hot. Appreciative.

Maybe these two women would tell her something that would banish him from her thoughts. From her dreams.

She licked her lips. “He’s probably involved with someone.”

“Would we be here if that was so?” Cilla scoffed. “I can’t claim to know everything about his love life—he’s possibly the most close-mouthed of our clan—but I’m certain he’s currently not sharing his nights with someone.”

Only me
, Cleo thought. At least, up until a few days ago. She missed those moments of connection, sometimes the only adult conversation she would have in a day. It had been fun…and curiously intimate…to talk to him in the darkness, without knowing what he looked like. She’d babbled about her baking and about her TV shows…and never about her children.

Perhaps because she’d wanted to keep them private—or perhaps because, just for a few moments each night, she’d enjoyed being nothing more than a person. A woman.

“What is it that he does?” When the two women glanced at each other again, Cleo tried clarifying. “You know, for a job?”

When they were silent, a nervous laugh escaped her mouth. “I, uh, was imagining he constructed mail bombs or something. Crazy, huh?”

“Crazy,” Alexa agreed firmly, then caught Cilla’s eye and held it. “It’s nothing
dangerous
.”

“Only, um, maybe…offbeat.” The blonde smiled again. “He’s actually a writer.”

A writer? That wasn’t so strange. “Oh, well—”

“Of horror novels,” Alexa slipped in, then took a breath. “For
children
.”

Chapter Three

Some people went for a walk on the beach to clear their heads or calm their minds. Other people went hiking in the mountains to find their mental oasis. Still others took to the city streets for a punishing run.

Reed had been known to do all of the above on occasion, but his go-to place for a brain break was the public library—which was where he went this afternoon.

There was an excellent one in his neighborhood, two stories with lots of natural light and comfortable seating. A whole section was devoted to computers available for public use. He avoided that area—keyboards were not his friend at the moment—and instead wandered the stacks of both fiction and non-fiction.

Invariably, interesting volumes caught his eye. Today, he read the opening pages of a spy novel set at the beginning of the Cold War. A few aisles away, he perused a how-to book on masonry. As always, he immersed immediately into the world of words, taken away by the descriptions of a damp and dark London and by the intricacies of a herring-bone walkway design.

It was at Oceanview Army-Navy that he’d found the quiet library and the escape it provided from cadet life. There, he could forget for short periods at a time the pervading sense of oppression the school fostered. It had been a terrible adjustment for a kid raised in the free-wheeling, anything-goes atmosphere of the Laurel Canyon compound. He’d been unhappy as hell, but at least he’d been big enough and mean enough not to suffer as some others had.

Thinking of that, Reed yanked another book at random from the shelves and strode to a pillowy armchair, determined to lose himself in its paragraphs. Too late, he realized the volume was none other than a biography of an Egyptian ruler…Cleopatra.

Cleo.

Reed rested his head against the back of the chair and closed his eyes. The woman had been plaguing him for far too long. Even though he’d changed his work hours and returned her baking pans, she continued to haunt his life. He remembered the gilt brightness of her short blond hair, the pink lips of her kissable mouth, the inches of smooth skin from her thighs to her ankles. Cilla and Alexa hadn’t helped matters when they came home with a full report from their visit. Even as he pretended not to listen, he absorbed every word.

She was unattached, except, of course, for her two sons.

And she’d asked if he was involved with someone.

Cilla said she didn’t get an exact departure date, but that Cleo and those boys of hers would only be around until the owners of the property behind his returned home.

Which meant he had a short period of time that he needed to banish her from his head—after that, her physical absence would certainly do the work for him.

“Reed?”

He started at the sound of his name. Opening his eyes, he saw one of the librarians, Tammy Earle, standing in front of him. He pushed back the ball cap he’d pulled over his head so he could meet her gaze. “Hey.”

Tammy was in her late twenties and nailed the sexy librarian thing…which, forgive him, was exactly why he’d nailed her. What man could resist a woman in pencil skirt, sensible heels, pearl-buttoned blouse, and tortoise-shell glasses? She wore a version of that get-up today, her dress crisp, the belt around the waist buckled precisely. As was her habit, a pen was tucked behind her small ear.

A
Sharpie
pen. Always a Sharpie, with its permanent ink. Reed wondered now, if that wasn’t part of the reason their liaison had been so short-lived. The bedlam that had been life at the Laurel Canyon compound hadn’t prepared him to trust in permanence.

Smiling, her gaze roamed over him. “Looking good, Reed.”

No, he wasn’t. He’d pulled jeans and a T-shirt out of the dryer and his hair hadn’t been cut in months. The ball cap he wore was his attempt at a disguise…not that he was so often recognized, but in these environs it could happen.