Read Brown Siblings - 01 Laid Bare for Free Online Page B

thirty-four years old, Erin. That’s not exactly an old-timer.”
    “But you’re thirty-seven. Tell me you can go on two hours’ sleep like you could at twenty-seven, huh?”
    He laughed. “No shit. What’s for lunch today?”
    “Pasta salad, three-bean soup, tuna or veggie panini sandwiches. It’s Thursday.”
    “Tomorrow is clam chowder day, my favorite.” He grinned as he sipped his latte.
    “You’re lucky you got the good genes from Mom, because all that cream would kill you otherwise.”
    She heard the chimes over the door sound and finished her greeting to a customer at the counter before looking up.
    And into the sleepy brown eyes belonging to Todd Keenan. She froze a moment at the unexpected emotions welling within her, but they wisped away. That Erin had been another person, in what had been an entire lifetime ago.
    Still, she took a quick look to the left, where a large mirror hung. Not bad. Thank goodness she’d put on earrings and some makeup before she’d left the house!
    She realized, as he moved toward her in what felt like slow motion, that he hadn’t recognized her yet, and a horrifying thought that he wouldn’t remember her assaulted her gut with a cramp.
    His eyes slid down her body and back up again. The way his expression went half-lidded and sexy made something low tug and spark after being dead a long time.
    Her nipples beaded against the thin shirt she wore, and he stopped there for several moments of appreciation before meeting her eyes again. He hesitated a moment and then smiled.
    It was then that recognition hit his gaze. “Erin?”
    She hadn’t known how she planned to greet him, but the beautiful, open smile he gave her and the way he stepped around the counter brought her into his hug and against his body.
    Her arms moved to hug him back, every cell in her body reacting to being touched again. Not as a sister, not in grief or mourning, but as a woman.
    The unexpected beauty of it, the bittersweet sensation of sexual attraction after being dead inside for years, made her want to grab a pen and start writing. Crying could wait.
    For that moment she reveled in it, in feeling something so lovely.
    Finally, after a hug long enough to let her know he enjoyed the attraction between them still, Todd kissed the top of her head and let go enough to lean back and look into her face.
    “It’s so good to see you. You look damned good. I like the pink hair.” She laughed and only barely managed to catch herself from playing with it. “Thank you. You look great too. Are you visiting?” Oh yeah, he was married, wasn’t he?
    “No. I just moved back to the area. I’m starting a security consulting business, or rather, buying into part of it with some friends of mine.”
    She noticed people waiting and stepped back. “Hang on. Let me get these orders filled. Do you have the time to visit a bit?”
    “I do, and I’d like a bite too.”
    Todd watched her move with the same effortless sensuality she’d had ten years before. Noted how she worked quickly and efficiently, ladling out soup and sliding sandwiches onto plates.

    The soup he’d ordered was rich and spicy, and the veggie sandwich served on dark bread satisfied his hunger quite nicely.
    What the heck was she doing running a tiny café in Ballard? He knew she and her younger brother had gone down to LA roughly about the time Todd had gotten married. They’d made it big sometime after. Not his kind of music, so he’d only seen her in passing on MTV, on his way to CMT.
    She’d disappeared from the limelight—some sort of legal trouble, he thought he recalled. But he’d been so busy with his own life and career, he hadn’t followed the entertainment news at all, outside the country music he liked.
    Drugs, perhaps? Although he doubted it. Erin had been a very strong and self-possessed woman.
    Plus, she and her brothers were very close, so they’d have been a good support system. Still, there was a hesitancy in her she hadn’t