Unexpected Family. Molly O'Keefe

the shadows, the silvery moonlight highlighted his black curls, the icy blue of his eyes.

      Jeremiah Stone hasn’t changed a bit, she thought, her body still humming from controlling that car. Or maybe it was Jeremiah. He was the sort of man to make a girl’s body hum.

      The devil was in that man’s smile and she found herself smiling back. Honestly, Jeremiah could seduce a saint with that mouth of his. And remembering his reputation, he’d probably already given it a shot.

      “Thanks for bringing him back,” Jeremiah said, opening the passenger door. Reese spilled out like all that whiskey he’d been drinking at the bar and Jeremiah grabbed him easily. He half marched, half dragged him toward the house. Reese’s hat tipped over into the dust and Jeremiah paused for a second, as if trying to figure out how he could pick it up.

      “I got it,” she said, and grabbed the hat, following the men into the house.

      She’d been in the house a couple of times growing up. The last time was when the husband of Jeremiah’s sister, Annie, died about five years ago. But the big open living room didn’t look anything like she remembered. It looked more like a Laundromat and sporting equipment store had a baby right there on the couch.

      Jeremiah kicked a stack of laundry down to the floor and dropped Reese onto the long denim couch.

      “That’s Lucy.” Reese pointed at her. “She showed me her boobs.”

      Jeremiah’s dark eyebrows hit his hairline.

      “Fifteen years ago. And it was for luck.”

      As if that made it reasonable, she thought.

      For lack of a better place, she hung the cowboy hat over a hockey stick that was jammed into the cushion of a chair.

      “It was the state football game,” she added.

      “It must have worked. He won that game, didn’t he?”

      “Apparently my breasts have powers even I don’t understand.”

      Huge points to Jeremiah, who didn’t glance down at her breasts, didn’t in any way ogle her or joke. In fact, he didn’t even look at her. He jerked a faded red, white and blue quilt off the back of the couch and draped it over his drunken houseguest, whose face was resting on a clean pair of little-boy superhero underwear.

      “Thanks for bringing him back,” Jeremiah said.

      “I couldn’t let him drive.”

      “I shouldn’t have let him go.”

      Lucy glanced around the house, waiting for his sister to come out, wrapped in a robe, to give them all hell for being too loud. “Where’s Annie?”

      Jeremiah cleared his throat, bending down to pick up the laundry he shoved off the couch. His T-shirt slid up his back, revealing pale skin dotted with freckles over hard muscle. Just at the edge of his shirt she saw the snaky tail end of red scar tissue—a healed wound she didn’t want to think about. The faded denim of his jeans clung to that man like a faithful lover, and she had to wonder if the hallelujah chorus didn’t ring out every time he bent over.

      “She died. Last spring.”

      “What?” She tore her eyes away from his body, feeling like a degenerate. “Oh, my God, Jeremiah…what happened?”

      He stood up with a stack of small blue jeans in his hands.

      “Cancer.” He threw the jeans in the overflowing laundry basket. “It was fast.”

      “I’m so sorry, Jeremiah. I didn’t know—”

      “It’s all right, Lucy. I don’t expect the world to keep up with all the Stones’ tragedies.”

      “Where are your nephews?” she asked.

      “Sleeping,” he said with a wry smile. “It’s ten o’clock at night.”

      “Are you…” It was just so weird to think of Jeremiah Stone as the guardian of three small boys. Jeremiah Stone was a cowboy sex symbol. He got interviewed on ESPN, and that footage of him getting trampled by a bull had been a YouTube sensation. He dated beautiful country music stars, and did not, definitely did not, fold superhero underwear.

      He sighed and smiled as if he couldn’t believe it, either. “…in charge of the boys? Yep.”

      Jeremiah ran a hand through those ebony curls and then set it on his hip, looking around the room as if it were the sight of a national disaster and he just didn’t know what to do next.

      “I’m so sorry for your loss,” Lucy murmured, not sure what else to say.

      “Yeah. Me, too.”

      The silence pulsed for a moment and she opened her mouth to make her exit just as Beyoncé started singing in her bag.

      “Is that your phone?” Jeremiah asked.

      “It’s really more of an anthem,” she said, avoiding the question and the phone call.

      He laughed and the somber mood was broken.

      “You want a drink?” he asked, cutting through the melancholy like a knife. He was smiling again and a smiling Jeremiah Stone was a difficult temptation to resist. Like saying no to chocolate-covered potato chips, or a clearance sale at Macy’s. And it’s not like she had better things to do.

      “I’d love a beer.”

      “Great.” He took a big step over the laundry. “Let’s hope Reese didn’t drink them all.”

      She followed him into the kitchen, which was in about the same shape as the living room. Not dirty, really, just very cluttered. Plates filled a drying rack and cups littered the sink. A round table on the far end of the room was covered in backpacks and schoolbooks. A plate with half a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich sat on a chair.

      Jeremiah was a daddy. The sexiest daddy on the planet, which she still couldn’t get her head around.

      “Here you go,” Jeremiah said, handing her a beer. “Let’s have—” He turned to look at the table and winced. “It’s nice out, let’s sit on the porch.”

      “Sounds good,” she said.

      He slid open the sliding glass door and she tried not to notice the casual nature of his strength, the way the worn T-shirt flowed like water over muscles that bunched and released every time he moved.

      “Lucy?” Her eyes jerked to his and she caught him laughing. At her. What the hell, she thought, grinning back at him, the man had to be used to being stared at. Men who looked like him got stared at. It was a rule. “You coming?”

      “Right behind you.”

      The porch was a wide patio filled with more sporting equipment. Jeremiah sat down at the table and she sat next to him. The air was cool and found her skin under the thin jersey, but sitting close to Jeremiah was like sitting next to sun-warmed rock.

      “So, Lucy Alatore, what brings you back to the Rocky M?”

      “A girl can’t long for the scent of cattle poop in the morning?”

      “Not girls like you.”

      She felt him eyeing her feathered earrings, the bangles on her arms, her leggings and high-heeled boots. Around here she was exotic. Freaky almost. Not that it bothered her.

      “That is true, Jeremiah. That is true.”

      “How long are you staying?”

      She shrugged. “We’re not in any rush.” No rush at all to get back to the mess she’d made.

      “We?”

      “Mom and me. She moved to Los Angeles with me when I went.”

      “Your sister says your jewelry business is doing great. You’re the toast of SoCal.” Jeremiah smiled