That Old Feeling. Cara Colter

down noisily and began its descent into his backyard.

      A moving van?

      Had he misread the situation that badly? Not only was Brandy not leaving, but she was settling in more permanently?

      “God give me strength,” Clint muttered, taking his coffee cup and going out the back screen door to meet the truck.

      It had pulled to a halt in the parking area, which was not designed for trucks.

      A redheaded kid with a pack of cigarettes stuck in the arm of his T-shirt rolled down the window and grinned at him.

      “Wow,” he said. “That’s a hell of a trip for a tramp.”

      A tramp? Clint felt relief wash over him. He wasn’t quite sure what the kid meant by a tramp, but obviously he was at the wrong address, an easy enough mistake to make along the lake roads.

      “You have the wrong place,” he said.

      “Brandy King’s house, right?”

      Fury, red-hot, boiled up in Clint. Okay, she was reckless and a brat and annoying as all get out, but nobody was calling her a tramp in his presence. He wasn’t the least bit happy that his first impulse was to open that door, yank the kid out, and plow a fist into his face. He’d always known that part of himself, the fighter, was only buried, not banished.

      But before he got to step one, he heard a cheery hello called out and turned to see Brandy coming around the corner of the house. She looked like she had just tumbled from bed, her hair springing around her head, uncombed, her clothing rumpled, her feet bare.

      Unless Clint was mistaken, which was possible given his record of the last few days, she was wearing her pajamas, a pair of bright yellow low-slung pants with a drawstring waist and a skimpy narrow-strapped top that didn’t quite cover her belly button.

      Which was pierced.

      The morning air was chill, and her nipples were hard against the thin fabric of the top.

      “God in heaven have mercy,” Clint muttered.

      The young deliveryman said, “You’re not kidding.”

      Clint’s hands formed fists at his sides and the fury deepened within him, especially when he turned back to the driver and saw the look of lascivious male interest on his face as Brandy sashayed toward them.

      The younger man’s eyes met his, and apparently the street fighter Clint had once been was riding pretty close to the surface because suddenly the truck driver was examining his bill of lading instead of Brandy.

      “Another gorgeous morning,” she said, arriving at the truck, completely unaware of the explosive tension in the air.

      “Maybe you should go get a sweater,” Clint said tersely.

      She looked momentarily puzzled, then caught on. She flashed him a careless grin and then folded her arms over her chest.

      He cursed under his breath, took the bill of lading that the truck driver handed him and signed it without looking.

      This is exactly what he’d always disliked about Brandy. He knew control was essential to life, to survival, and yet around her, he never quite knew what was going to happen next, or worse, how he was going to react to it.

      “Please tell me you aren’t moving here,” he said, and he saw the hurt look before she carefully masked it.

      “Sober-sides! You mean you aren’t enjoying my company?”

      “If he isn’t, I will,” the young driver said hopefully, and then ducked his head at the killing look Clint gave him.

      “Aren’t you the sweetest thing?” Brandy gushed, making Clint unsure which of them he wanted to kill first.

      She thought the kid was sweet, the kid thought she was a tramp. Hadn’t she learned anything about the real world from all the years she had spent gallivanting around it?

      That was the problem. He was a man who had learned to fight as naturally as he had learned to breathe. And that part of him had never been completely laid to rest, though it was buried under layers of refinement, education, wealth.

      But Brandy brought his primal, rough instinct so quickly to the surface it was as if it had never been tamed at all.

      He slid her a look. It would be impossible to call her beautiful and yet she was an undeniable presence. Electricity and pure energy seemed to crackle in the air around her. The young driver was acting like a fly caught in her web.

      “Have you got something to unload?” Clint snapped.

      “Oh, yeah. The tramp.”

      “Maybe you better explain to me what you mean by that,” Clint ordered edgily, sliding Brandy a look to make sure her bosom was still covered.

      “The trampoline. I’m to deliver it and put it together. Where did you want it?”

      “A trampoline,” Clint repeated, stunned. All that fury and protectiveness wasted on a misinterpretation? He didn’t misinterpret things. He really was losing his touch, and it was her fault. He turned to Brandy. “A trampoline?” he demanded, as if the driver had said he was unloading an order of M-16s instead of a child’s toy.

      “I got one for Becky,” Brandy told him, inordinately pleased with herself.

      “Could I see you for a minute?”

      He took her elbow and took her out of earshot of the young man who was a little too avidly interested in her.

      “Do you think maybe you could have asked me before you went to all this trouble?” he asked.

      “Oh! It hasn’t been any trouble. I mean it has been, because you should see what you have to go through to get a trampoline to the way-back-beyond, but it was kind of fun and I didn’t have anything better to do.”

      “I don’t want Becky to have a trampoline,” he said, with all the firmness he could muster, given that the scent of her was wrapping itself around him, as sweet as sunshine on lavender, and nearly as drugging.

      “You don’t want her to have one?” she exclaimed, as if he were an ogre who lived under a bridge. “You can’t mean that!”

      “They are extremely dangerous toys. Do you know how many serious injuries are caused by trampolines every year?”

      “No,” she said, tossing her hair defiantly, “but why am I not surprised you would have those statistics at your fingertips?”

      “She’s barely pulling herself to standing. She does not need a trampoline!”

      “Oh, Clint, let her have it, for God’s sake. We’ll be careful. I promise. You can make all kinds of rules around it. She’ll never be on it by herself, ever. I won’t do anything dangerous. I promise. No flips, or anything like that.”

      “You aren’t happy with just trying to break your own neck all the time? You have to try and break my daughter’s?”

      “Clint! The poor child should be walking, shouldn’t she? It will help her strengthen her legs. Besides, she hardly ever laughs. You guys need my help around here.”

      She was hitting him in his sensitive spots now.

      Should Becky be walking? He didn’t know these things, and the family doctor told him not to worry, but he worried. Should she be laughing more? Was she missing everything it was to be a child because she was stuck here with a man who knew so little about children? Once, he had thought fierce love should be enough. Now, he wasn’t so sure. Maybe his daughter did need a trampoline.