Hero by Nature (Reed Sisters: Holding out for a Hero 3)

“Well, no, but—”

“So they will think I’m someone special to you.”

“Autumn.” He took her hands in his, staring patiently down at her. “My parents know all about you. They know that I’m crazy in love with you and have been since I met you in October. They know that I hope to spend the rest of my life with you. They also know that there is no formal engagement between us, so you needn’t worry about that.”

“You mean you told them—”

“I’m very close to my parents,” Jeff interrupted firmly. “I don’t keep important events in my life secret from them. I’d hardly keep quiet about you.”

“Oh, Jeff, what am I going to do with you?” She sighed in resignation.

“I could answer that in detail,” he answered slowly, his warm smile lighting his eyes, “or I could take it as rhetorical and go on to the next subject.”

“You’d better take it as rhetorical.”

“Consider it done. Will you go to Sarasota with me next weekend?”

“Yes, I’ll go.” She swallowed and tried to hide her attack of nerves behind bluff bravado. “But if you introduce me even once as ‘the little woman’…” She let her voice trail off meaningfully.

He grinned. “How about ‘my better half’?”

“You’d die.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” He pulled her into his arms. “I’ll just call you the beautiful, fascinating, stubborn, capable, intriguing and oh-so-elusive woman that I love. How does that sound?”

She wrapped her arms around his neck. “Better just call me Autumn.”

“Autumn,” he murmured and kissed her. “Autumn.” He kissed her again, longer this time. “Autumn…Autumn…Autumn.”

“Jeff,” she whispered after the last lingering kiss, and pulled his head back down to hers.

11

KATHLEEN BRADFORD WAS an attractive, fifty-eight-year-old woman who was still deeply in love with her handsome, sixty-year-old husband of thirty-five years. She also absolutely adored her only child, seeming to be unaware that her “child” was a thirty-three-year-old doctor. “Jeff, dear, are you sure I can’t get you anything else to eat? You’re not still hungry?”

“Thanks, Mom, but I can’t eat another bite. Believe me, four eggs, six slices of bacon, half a cantaloupe and three slices of toast is a perfectly adequate breakfast.” Jeff rolled his eyes comically at Autumn as he spoke fondly to the woman hovering over his chair.

His mother refilled his coffee cup for the third time, then dropped a kiss on his cheek. “Just let me know if you need anything else, you hear? What about you, Autumn? More bacon? Toast?”

“No, thank you, Mrs. Bradford, I’m fine.” Autumn smiled a bit weakly at the woman with Jeff’s blue eyes peering anxiously at her from beneath impeccably styled salt-and-pepper hair.

“Now, Autumn, I’ve told you to call me Kathleen. Mrs. Bradford is much too formal for family.”

Autumn’s smile grew weaker. “All right. Kathleen.”

“Got any more of that fresh-squeezed orange juice, hon?” Charles Bradford asked, setting aside the morning newspaper he’d been scanning during breakfast, though it hadn’t kept him from contributing occasionally to the lively conversation that had gone on between his wife and son. Autumn had been rather quiet during the meal, watching the interplay between the Bradfords, while she’d made every effort to be polite. She and Jeff had left Tampa early that morning to join his parents for breakfast on their anniversary morning, and they planned to stay through lunch the next day.

Kathleen bit her lip in obvious dismay at her husband’s request. “No, we drank every drop. But I’ll go make some more,” she added hastily, hurrying toward the kitchen.

“That’s okay, Kathleen. You don’t have to—”

But she was already gone, her activities conveyed to them by a flurry of sound from the kitchen. Charles turned an amusingly wry smile at his son, who returned the look with a low laugh. “You’ve set her off again,” Jeff accused his father.

“Guess so.” Charles looked across the table at Autumn, clearly feeling it necessary to entertain his guest, though he seemed to be a somewhat shy man to whom casual conversation did not come easily. The successful businessman was lean and fit, darkly tanned, and Autumn could easily tell where Jeff had gotten his movie-screen handsome looks. Only the blue eyes had come from Kathleen; other than that, Jeff was the image of his hazel-eyed father. “How long have you been an electrician, Autumn?”

Autumn glanced quickly at Jeff, remembering the moment he’d asked her the same question. His smile told her that he, too, remembered. “Five years,” she answered his father’s question.

“You really like it?” Charles looked doubtful.