She’d been lighting the last of the candles when he stopped on the threshold. They looked at each other, utter silence in the room. What incredibly magnetic eyes he had. They held her own. His gaze was so compelling, she could scarcely look away…with an exclamation of pain, Caroline blew out the match that had singed her fingers. It stung. She glanced down at the angry red spot on her index finger.
In a second, he was by her side, a deep frown between his eyebrows. He picked up her hand and examined it carefully.
“It’s nothing,” she said, tugging at her hand to free it. It didn’t work. He was holding her in a perfectly painless yet unbreakable grip. How stupid, to burn her finger on a match staring at a man. You’d think she’d never seen a man before, the way she’d been staring at him.
A flush of embarrassment rose from deep inside her. She was cursed with the skin of a redhead, and she knew that her cheeks would be flushed and that the flush would extend down to her breasts.
He was standing very close, close enough for her to smell him. He’d used the soap she left for all the guests, but his smell—the one that had been imprinted on her brain, on her very nerve endings in the car—overrode the attar of roses. Maybe it was the combination of such female and masculine scents blended together that made her slightly dizzy.
For a moment she felt light-headed and would have swayed if he hadn’t been holding on to her hand so tightly.
“You’ve got delicate skin. You wouldn’t want that to blister.” He reached past her and picked up an ice cube from a water glass. “Here. Hold that against the burn for a few minutes.” He held the cube against her finger and curled his hand around hers.
He didn’t step back, as she would have expected, but watched her in silence, his hand around hers. Caroline was aware of her heart beating, slow and hard, and of the incredible warmth of his hand. She didn’t know what to do. Of course, she should withdraw her hand from his, but somehow her muscles wouldn’t obey, so she simply stood quietly, watching him. His irises were a dark, deep brown, almost indistinguishable from the pupils.
A drop of melted water fell through her closed fist to plop onto the marble floor, sounding loud in the hush. It was as if that small splash awoke her from a deep slumber. She took in a deep breath and flexed her fingers under his.
He opened his hand immediately, and she looked down. The ice had done the trick. The redness was almost all gone.
“Thanks,” she murmured, stepping back. Stepping away from him was harder than it should have been, as if that big body exerted a gravity of its own, a small planet made of heat and bone and muscle.
“You’re welcome. Here.” He dug into his jeans pocket and came away with a plain white envelope. “We should get this over with right away.”
She held it, looking up at him. Though he wasn’t in any way handsome or even good-looking, he had an oddly…elegant face, long and lean, with a strong bone structure no longer blurred by the stubble. Deep grooves bracketed his mouth.
The paper crackled under her fingers. “What is this?”
“The five hundred dollars for the first month of rent, plus a five-hundred-dollar deposit. If you’ll have me, I plan on staying a while. I’ll pay on the twenty-fourth of each month if that’s okay by you.”
Wow. That was wonderful by her. The thousand dollars was going straight into the bank on Monday morning. Caroline pulled out a drawer of the secretaire where she kept her bank statements, dropped the envelope in, and nudged it closed with her hip.
She’d been incredibly low all day, alone in the bookshop, with only an empty house to come home to and a long, long lonely Christmas weekend to look forward to. But now it appeared things were looking up.
She smiled as she walked to the kitchen. She’d outdone herself with dinner, maybe to celebrate no longer being quite so alone. Jack Prescott was a boarder, it was true, but he was turning into a good one. Who knew? Maybe he even had conversation in him. Maybe—
“Caroline?” His deep voice was low, a questioning note in it. She turned. In the kitchen a bell pinged. The roast was ready. “Yes?”
He pointed a long finger at the secretaire. “Aren’t you going to count that?”
She stared at him. “Count what?”
“The money. I want you to count it.”
Caroline looked at him, then at the drawer. She gave a half laugh. “But—but I trust you.”
He inclined his head gravely. “That’s reassuring to hear. And to know. But you should count it, just the same.”
“But the roast—”
“Won’t burn in the minute it will take you to check to see that the money is all there. Humor me. Please.” That harsh face didn’t seem to have pleading in its repertory. The word had been said softly enough, but something in his face said it wasn’t a word he used often. And it definitely wasn’t a face you would say no to.
Well, someone as big and strong as he was, an ex-soldier to boot, probably didn’t need to say pretty please very often. He probably just took what he wanted.
It was, after all, the way of the world.
Caroline had butted her head time and time again against those more powerful than she was, and she’d lost, every single time. Power in her world was usually money and connections, not physical strength, but since she didn’t have any of them—money or connections or physical power—she always came out the worse for wear.
He didn’t move, and he didn’t say anything else, so on a sigh, she turned back and pulled open the drawer. The envelope wasn’t sealed—the flap was tucked into the envelope like a Christmas card.
Inside were ten very new, very crisp hundred-dollar bills. She counted them, one by one, laying each bill on the surface of the table with a little slap, then when she’d done counting, tucked them back into the envelope and placed the envelope back in the drawer.
It had been a charade, but maybe he’d been right to force her to check. The crisp feel of the notes was so reassuring. The month of January was going to be okay, money-wise. The boiler hadn’t conked out yet. She had an attractive man over for dinner.
Man, she was on a roll.
Caroline turned back to him. He hadn’t budged an inch, it seemed. She’d never met anyone, man or woman, who could keep so still. “Now, unless that money is counterfeit, and if it is, I’ll know it on Monday morning when I deposit it in the bank, I suggest you sit down and pour us a glass of wine. I’ll be right back.”
When she walked back into the dining room, he was already seated and had poured them both half a glass of wine. He stood immediately as soon as she crossed the threshold.
Caroline put down the roast beef and sat, noting that he didn’t sit down until she did. That rule had gone out with the dinosaurs, though apparently Jack Prescott hadn’t heard about it.
Jack’s dark gaze took in the table, then shifted to her. “This looks absolutely wonderful. Thank you. I didn’t dream when I landed that I’d be having such an elegant meal tonight. I thought I’d check into a hotel and try to find a diner somewhere.”
Caroline smiled, pleased, as she served him. Yes, she had set a good table. And tonight she’d outdone herself with the cooking. It was an old trick. When depressed—slap on more makeup, slip on your prettiest blouse, put on some great music. Just as long as it didn’t cost money she didn’t have, Caroline knew all the tricks.
The dining room was beautiful in its own right. When her parents had been alive, it had been painted a light canary yellow that went wonderfully well with the warm cherrywood Art Deco dining set. A year after the accident, on one of the few occasions he’d actually managed to stand upright, Toby had slipped and banged his head against the sharp corner of the buffet, then against the wall, leaving a bright red track of blood.
Caroline had been so appalled and heartbroken at seeing her brother’s blood on the wall, the next weekend she’d painted the walls an uninspiring, flat mint green that was just one shade off hospital khaki. It had been the only color on sale the day she’d stopped by the local hardware store.