"And friends. I need to find other children for her to enjoy these toys with. They're not half as much fun if she plays with them alone."
"Of course." He ate a quarter of his sandwich in one bite and chewed while he peeled, then placed a sticker on the bike's handlebars. Long fingers so adept at flying and healing applied stickers as if they were of mammoth importance.
To Magda they would be, and his care touched Lori—too much.
"I just don't want her to have to wait, you know? She's lost so much already. She can take all this with her when she leaves."
"Sure she can. If you rent a trailer." Gray tore off another quarter of his sandwich, applied the last sticker and crumpled the backing paper. "Done."
With a fluid toss, he pitched it into the empty box and leaned against a chair to finish his sandwich. One muscular leg stretched out in front of him, his injured leg crooked at the knee. Long, lean, and so sexy her eyes ached.
Lori set aside her plate and reached for the basket of dollhouse furniture. Slowly she arranged the kitchen table and chairs. "I have to confess, this was a purely selfish purchase."
"How so?"
Gray crunched a chip and chased it with a swallow of tea—so at ease, when she felt like an overwound kid's toy. Lori gulped her tea.
"It would have been more practical for me to buy Magda smaller toys, things easily packed and transported. But I always wanted one of these, a huge dollhouse that wouldn't fit in the trunk with the luggage."
"You moved around that much? I thought your parents just traveled frequently but that you grew up in Charleston."
How could he not have known? Had they really spoken so little to each other they didn't know even basic family history? What a sad testimony to their short but intense time together.
"Charleston was our home base, sure, a place to rest when we stopped in to recoup and repack. If the mood struck, they hung out for a month or two to paint." She arranged a tiny sofa and chair around the miniature television, then sifted through the basket for yard furniture. "We usually spent about nine months out of the year traveling. There were gallery showings, guest lecturer stints, artists in residence for a semester at this college or that one. We were on the road a lot."
"What about school?"
He put aside his glass and focused on her, wrist propped on his crooked knee. His complete focus was heady stuff.
She wondered why she wanted to tell him now, needed to share a part of herself when she should be feeling more defensive than ever. Funny how a day of shopping and Gray's undivided attention could mellow a woman.
"Sometimes we relocated long enough for me to enroll for at least part of the year, other times the nanny home schooled me. I didn't lag behind." She placed the lawn furniture around a pool and little swing set. "Don't get me wrong. I'm not complaining. They loved me and made sure I had what I needed. They could have dumped me off on a relative, but they never did. It couldn't have been easy carting a kid and a nanny along. And it really was an educational way to grow up. I saw more, experienced more, lived more by ten than most folks do in a lifetime."
"But?"
"There were times…" Feeling like an ungrateful brat, she paused, running her fingers along the empty basket before setting it aside. "On my eighth birthday I wanted a backyard party with lots of friends and a really big dollhouse." Lori placed Barbie and Ken on the lawn furniture and put Skipper on the swing. "I got a pocket travel dollhouse and a picnic in front of the Eiffel Tower. Not a bad trade, all things considered, huh?"
Gray smiled but didn't answer. Instead he tapped the dollhouse, then the bike. "Guess that explains why you were hell-bent today on picking the biggest and heaviest toys on the shelf."
She studied him through narrowed eyes, impressed anew. "You're a perceptive man."
A dimple dented his right cheek. "Nah, just one who got quite a workout lugging that loot up the stairs."
Rocking back on her heels, she surveyed the fully furnished Barbie house. Perfect. Maybe it was silly or even selfish giving Magda the things she'd wanted as a child, huge toys, a large airy room … unconditional love. All the same, she couldn't stop the twitter of excitement over bringing Magda home. Home. That said it all.
Lori shifted to Gray and cupped his face in one hand. "Thank you."
He cleared his throat. "For what?"
"For coming with me. For pretending to be interested in Capri pants and clogs. For being my friend." She leaned over the bowl of chips and pressed a kiss to his mouth. Just a simple kiss between friends, she told herself. Nothing wrong with that.
A one-second lip brush was all she intended. She meant to pull away. But she didn't move. Neither did he.
Chapter 8
He should pull away, and he would, in a minute. Or two. If only he could find one ounce of willpower to resist the temptation of Lori's full lips beneath his after so many months of starving for a taste of her.
A soft moan floated between them. From her? Or him? Her small fist fell to rest on his chest—and unfurled.