The Real Father (Twins) (Harlequin Superromance No. 927) by Kathleen O`Brien Page B

time you spend actually doing the work you love?”
    â€œExtremely,” he agreed, rolling her small plastic gardening cart closer so that he could make a seat out of it. “Being an architect is no different. I seemto have become a professional luncher. I’m in charge of sweet-talking the clients over white wine while my staff gets to design the buildings. I might as well have become a snake oil salesman.”
    Molly laughed. “Since when have you been willing to sweet-talk anyone? Aren’t you the guy who once told me that all silver tongues were forked?”
    â€œDid I say that?” He grimaced. “God, teenagers can be obnoxious, can’t they? I must have been caught in a particularly vicious bout of Beau-envy that day.”
    She didn’t really believe that, though the twins had been as different in their social manners as any two people could possibly be. Beau could charm the blue out of the sky if he put his mind to it, while Jackson was usually blunt to the point of discomfort.
    Long ago Molly might have believed it was envy—that Jackson had developed his trademark vinegary candor merely because his brother had cornered the market on honey. By their teenage years, though, she had begun to realize that it was something else—a reaction, perhaps. Or an antidote, the way you might add lemon to an oversweetened tea.
    â€œWell, Beau could flatter a girl until her head spun,” she admitted, remembering how she had longed for, lived for Beau’s pretty compliments and thrilling declarations of undying love—even when she had often feared that he might be fibbing. Not lying, exactly. Just exaggerating. Just a little.
    She reached out and touched Jackson’s arm, hoping he wouldn’t mind her black crescent-moon fingernails. “But it was awfully reassuring to knowthat, if I really needed to hear the truth, I could always come to you.”
    He didn’t look at her. He seemed to be mesmerized by her fingers, staring down at them as if he didn’t want to meet her eyes until he had decided how to respond. Could he think she was flirting with him? Discomfort wriggled in her stomach, and she eased her hand away as smoothly as possible.
    She wasn’t flirting. She wouldn’t dream of flirting with Jackson. But even as she reassured herself, she admitted that something was different between them today. Some new, slightly edgy tone had crept into their easy intimacy, and their casual good-buddy relationship suddenly felt just a little more complicated.
    This was her fault. If only she hadn’t been so foolish the other night, letting his resemblance to Beau knock her into an emotional tailspin…. But the truth was it had felt strangely exciting to be with him. He was such a dynamic, gorgeous man. A real man, whose arms were real, warm, masculine. And ten years of nothing but memories…
    Now she was the one looking down, incapable of straightforward candor. She had left tiny beads of soil on his arm. “Oops. Sorry,” she said, whisking them away efficiently with her fingertips. “I’d better finish up here, I guess. I’m a menace to any clean person who gets near me.”
    â€œNeed any help?” He looked around appraisingly. “Wow. Things sure look different without that oak tree.”
    She nodded as she stood up and, still holding themuddy spade she’d been working with, brushed the dirt from her knees with her free hand. It had been painful to observe the workers dismantling the two-hundred-year-old tree, their cruel machines buzzing through the limbs section by section. When they had begun to drive their jagged, whirling blades deep into the stump, grinding the roots to sawdust, she had turned away, unable to watch.
    â€œThe garden looks positively lost without it, doesn’t it?” She scanned the perimeter, thinking out loud. “Whenever you have something that dominant, you tend to make it the