Harlequin Special Edition November 2014 - Box Set 1 of 2: A Weaver Christmas Gift\The Soldier's Holiday Homecoming\Santa's Playbook (38 page)

Followed by a silence thick enough to slice.

“Hey, Dad,” Juliette said, standing, then twisting her baby sister around in front of her like a shield. “Look who I ran into at the estate sale! And she gave me a ride home. So I invited her to breakfast. I didn't think you'd mind.”

Oh, dear. Was that adolescent defiance rearing its pretty little head? Only, before Claire could process that little tidbit, a certain steely blue gaze rammed into hers—speaking of pissed—and a thousand ancient insecurities tried to rear
their
heads, and she thought
no.

Or, more exactly,
Hell,
no.

Hey, she'd survived an ever-changing cast of roommates in more New York apartments than she cared to count, not to mention pointless cattle call auditions and insane directors and leering weirdos on the subway, capped off by caring for her dying mother back here in Maple River for nearly a year. A weenie, she was not. Not now, anyway. So no way was a pair of hot blue eyes slinging her back to that hellacious era when she hated her hair/body/clothes and a cute boy's smile would render her a blithering, klutzy idiot.

Not that she'd actually ever seen Ethan smile. Although he was cute. In a brooding, Brontë-dude sort of way. Even if she hadn't known he was ex-military, his posture and close-cropped hair—a dirty blond, maybe?—would have given him away. He was maybe a hair over six feet tall, but his bearing was...fierce. She imagined he was hell in football practice. Even though she'd never heard any of his players bad-mouth him. Ever.

“Your home is...” Claire glanced around, taking in the clutter of toys and sports equipment smothering what had probably at one time been nice furniture in mostly tans and reds and dark greens...the charred-brick fireplace...the mantel choked with family photos. From some unidentifiable part of the house, an obviously ticked-off male child bellowed, immediately followed by an even louder bellow in response. Claire turned back, smiling. “Lovely. Thank you for having me.”

“You're welcome,” Ethan mumbled, then yelled up the stairs. “Guys! Come pick up your crap! We've got company!”

“Aw, Dad...”

“Jeez, Dad!” Juliette chirped.

Ethan stabbed a dark look in her direction before turning again, shouting,
“Now!”

Sneakered feet thundered down the wooden treads, attached to a pair of gangly, shaggy-haired tweens—one blond, one red-haired—who threw Claire a mildly curious glance before attacking the mess. And she had to admit she felt a pang of sympathy for Ethan, raising four kids by himself. There had only been one of her, and both of her parents, and as a kid she'd been way too much of a scaredy-pants to rock the boat. But this—the boys vroomed around the room like a multilimbed dust devil, snatching up equipment and tossing it more
at
than
in
what Claire assumed was a mudroom off the kitchen—was Crazyville.
You hear that, ovaries—?

Ah. The glare was once more aimed in her direction. Over, she realized, Bella's head, who'd somewhere along the way ended up in her daddy's arms. Strong, muscled arms underneath a gray fleece pullover that emphasized the equally muscled, broad shoulders carrying the weight, if not of the entire world, at least the world that was his.

Realizing Juliette had disappeared—to the kitchen, Claire presumed—she said in a low voice, “I don't mean to intrude—”

“It's okay,” he muttered through a jaw that redefined
tight.
“Jules likes to cook, but it's mostly lost on her brothers and sister.” His eyes dropped to the little girl clinging to him like a baby monkey, his expression softening. Sort of. “Can't get this one to eat eggs for anything.”

“Because eggs are
gross,
” Bella said, making a face exactly like her father's, and it was everything Claire could do not to laugh. Then the little one leaned back, frowning into her father's eyes. “And could you
please
tell Harry an' Finn to stop calling me a
baby.
It hurts my feelings.”

Ethan frowned back. “Then you have to promise to stay out of their room. You know it bugs them when you go in there.”

“But I want to see Spot!”

“You can see Spot when he's out in his ball.”

“But they never take him out anymore!”

“Okay. I'll talk to them, see if we can arrange visitation. Deal?”

After a second, the little girl pushed out a long sigh. “Deal.”

“Good.” Ethan set her down, cupping her head for a moment before she took off to another part of the house, sparkly sneakers flashing as she ran. He watched her for a moment, then turned back to Claire, muttering, “I'll take eighty hormone-crazed teenage boys over one six-year-old girl, any day.”

Wait. Were her ears deceiving her, or was that Ethan Noble making a funny? Well, hell.

“So who's Spot?” she asked when she found her voice again.

“A hamster. The boys named him. So...you ran into Jules?”

“At that estate sale, yeah. I bought a lamp. She bought...a lot more.”

One side of his mouth lifted. More chagrin than grin, though. “Sounds about right.”

“She's really good at the eBay thing?”

“She really is.” He paused, the faint glow in his blue eyes dimming. “Exactly like her mother. I gave Jules fifty bucks seed money. I've lost count of how many times she's multiplied it since them. Kid has a real head for business.” Pride glowed through his words, if not on his face, and Claire felt a slight...ping. Of what, she wasn't sure.

“Then she has choices about what to do with her life,” Claire said, and Ethan's brow furrowed. “If she's serious about an acting career—”

“Not happening,” he said, effectively ending the discussion. But although something in Claire prickled at the dismissal, this was not her battle to fight. Especially since Juliette could easily change her mind a dozen times between now and graduation.

So she smiled and changed the subject. “Mmm...breakfast smells great, doesn't it—?”

“Just so you know,” Ethan said, his eyes locked on her face, “my daughter's on a mission.”

Now Claire frowned. “What kind of mission?”

“To get herself a stepmother.”

An idea with which, judging from his expression, Ethan was not even remotely on board.

Which was fine with Claire, since that was one role she wasn't even inclined to audition for.

* * *

Ethan's brows dipped when Claire clamped a hand over her mouth to, apparently, stifle a laugh.

“And you seriously think,” she whispered after she lowered her hand, “that's why she invited me to breakfast?”

“Odds are,” Ethan said, not sharing Claire's merriment. “You'd be the—let's see—third woman in the past six months she's tried to throw in my path.”

This time, a piece of that laugh broke loose to float in his direction, and Ethan felt his shoulders tense. That laugh... It'd been his introduction to the woman before he'd even seen her, during prep week back in late August. A sound far too low and gutsy to come out of someone so small, he remembered thinking when they'd finally met, and her smile had arrowed into him hard enough to make him flinch, her handshake as firm as any man's. Now he literally stepped aside in a lame attempt to dodge that laugh. Not to mention the grin. Although there wasn't a damn thing he could do to avoid the deep brown eyes. Except look away, he supposed. But that would be rude.

“I'm sorry, I know it's not funny for you,” she said, but not as if she really meant it. Then she shook her head, making all those curls quiver.

Those curls drove him nuts. Shiny. Soft. Bouncy—

No.

She grinned. “And here I thought we were bonding over a mutual love of the theater.”

Ethan bristled. Yeah. That. Or rather, that,
too.
Then again, knowing Jules, the stagestruck phase would in all likelihood go the way of the photography phase and the piano phase and a dozen other phases he didn't even half remember anymore. This matchmaking thing, though, was something else again. He resisted the temptation to massage his knee, acting up despite his telling it not to. He loved Jersey, Jersey was home, but the damp weather sucked.

“Afraid not.”

Something like sympathy shone in her eyes, and he bristled again. After three years, you'd think the pity wouldn't bother him anymore. “Then why'd you invite me to stay for breakfast?”

“I didn't. Jules did.”

“But...”

“I didn't want to come across like some hard-ass, okay?”

Her mouth curved. No lipstick. Or any other makeup that Ethan could tell. Not that she needed it, with her dark brows and lashes—

Yeah, it bugged him, bugged him like hell, this dumb physical attraction to the woman. Because he had no business being attracted to anybody right now, especially some cute little bouncy-haired drama teacher who was obviously feeding his way-too-impressionable daughter a load of bull. Man, Juliette's constant yammering about the woman was about to drive him up the wall. Even though he knew this was only a crush—although considering how many of the teachers at Hoover were barely younger than the school's namesake, he could hardly blame her.

Any more than he could blame himself, he supposed, for the not-so-little pings and dings and buzzings when Claire was around. He thought he'd buried his libido with his wife. Clearly not.

And this despite her dressing crazier than the kids. Take today, for instance—a sweater that came practically to her knees, the ugliest, puffiest vest on God's green earth, boots that looked like Chewbacca's feet. Three pairs of earrings. Granted, all tiny, but...

“Honestly, I had no idea the kid had an ulterior motive,” Claire was saying. “Nor would I have gone along with her nefarious plan if I had—” Something crashed overhead, shaking the house. She looked up. “Because that would drive me nuts.”

“You don't like kids?”

Her gaze snapped to his, and Ethan's face heated. A knee-jerk reaction, totally uncalled for and way out of proportion to the situation. Especially considering how often his progeny drove him nuts, too.

Claire tilted her head, a little grin tugging at her mouth. “Kids are great. Noise, not so much. Which is why I love teaching—I can get my fill of the little darlings, then they go home. To someone else's house. And I go home to mine.” Harry yelled at Finn about...something. “Where it's, you know, peaceful.”

Not for the first time, he found her presence...unnerving, he supposed it was. Aside from the attraction thing, that was. Because it was like she was always “on,” practically crackling with energy. Made sense, he supposed, given her being a drama teacher. But the idea of being around that all the time—especially considering the little life-suckers his kids were—made Ethan very tired. Merri... She'd been the epitome of calm. Not dull, no, but steady. Soothing.

Grief twinged, just enough to prod awake the loneliness, usually smothered under blankets of busyness and obligation. Willing it go back to sleep, Ethan walked over to the fireplace, figuring he might as well stack wood for this evening's fire as the house filled with the scents of bacon and cinnamon rolls. Jules was going all out. Great.

“I wouldn't know peaceful if it bit me in the butt,” Ethan finally said, to fill the void as much as anything. Crouching, he grabbed a couple of logs from the metal bucket next to the hearth. “There were always a lot of kids around when I was growing up. I was one of five, four of us being adopted.”

“Five? Wow.”

“And my parents fostered probably two dozen more over the years.”

“No kidding? That's awesome.”

His back to Claire, Ethan smiled as he arranged the logs in the firebox. “Yeah,” he said, getting to his feet and dusting off his hands. “They were something else.”

Wearing an easy smile, Claire leaned against the arm of the sofa, her arms crossed, looking less...crackly. “Were?”

“Well, Pop still is, although he's more than content being a grandpa these days. Mom passed away some years back. But being raised with all those kids... It only seemed natural that I'd have a batch of my own someday. Would've had more, but that wasn't in the cards—”

And why the hell was he blathering on to this woman he barely knew? But while he could stanch the blathering, he couldn't do a blamed thing about the memories—of the other babies he and Merri had lost...of what he'd lost, period. Of the what-might-have-beens he rarely indulged, for everyone's sake. And yet—stronger, even, than the scents coming from the kitchen—they practically choked him this morning. It was strange how even after more than three years they could pounce out of nowhere, throw him for a loop.

Releasing a breath, he met Claire's disconcertingly gentle gaze again and switched the subject. “You got brothers and sisters?”

“Nope,” she said, shaking her head before plopping cross-legged on the floor to rub Barney's belly. “There were a few distant cousins, but I rarely saw them.” She grinned when the dog licked her hand. “I like people. It's
living
with them I have issues with. I have a cat, though. Does that count?”

“I'm gonna have to say no to that,” Ethan said, and Claire snorted another little laugh as the dog crawled into her lap.

“What is he?”

“A schnoodle.” Claire's eyes lifted to his. “Schnauzer/poodle. We got him...” He cleared his throat. “Three years ago.”

Still petting the dog, Claire quietly said, “Juliette really keeps trying to fix you up?”

“Yeah,” he breathed out.

“I assume you've asked her to back off?”

“Repeatedly. Only to get this look like I'm speaking Klingon—”

“Breakfast's ready!” Jules called, and Claire shoved to her feet again.

“I could talk to her, if you want—”