he got out and went around to the back, Natalie was there ahead of him, pulling two bags of the groceries he’d bought into her capable arms. He hauled out a couple of suitcases and followed her up the walk, pausing to call a reminder to Toby that he wasn’t to wander off anywhere. Toby turned and looked at him, which Rick knew meant the boy had heard and understood.
Inside, Rick found that Natalie had already made the study over into a bedroom. He set Toby’s suitcases down and admired the changes while Natalie went on out to the kitchen to drop off the grocery bags. Rick was still surveying the room where his son would sleep when she appeared in the doorway.
“I had a couple of my father’s men come across the lake to help me out,” she explained. “We switched the furniture in here with the stuff from the room at the top of the stairs.”
Rick was standing on the far side of the bed. He touched the bedspread, which was quilted and stenciled with airplanes. “I don’t remember seeing this upstairs.”
Her cheeks flushed an adorable shade of pink. “All right. I confess. I bought the bedspread just for Toby.” She moved into the room, across the bed from him, and touched the wooden propeller of the airplane lamp that sat on the nightstand. “And I bought this lamp.” She pointed at the airplane mobile in the center of the room. “And that, too. I thought Toby would like them.”
They looked at each other across the airplane quilt. Rick spoke around the sudden lump in his throat. “It was kind of you. To go to the trouble to fix up the room for him.”
“No trouble. Really.”
“You’ll let me reimburse you.”
“No, I won’t.”
He started to protest.
She put a finger to her lips. “Shh. Not another word about it.” She turned for the door. “Now, come on. We haven’t finished unloading the car yet.” And she was gone, leaving him no choice but to follow. Which he did, after a moment spent grinning like a idiot at the airplane mobile rotating slowly in the slight breeze created by the air-conditioning vents.
Within half an hour, Rick had all of his and Toby’s things put away and his car parked next to Natalie’s in the big garage on the south side of the house.
Natalie was showing him where to put his groceries when he told her he wanted to take the Lady Kate out onto the lake for a picnic lunch.
“That okay?” he asked.
“Of course. Sounds like fun.”
Rick picked up the last bag, which was full of packaged goods, and headed for the laundry room and the small pantry closet there.
Natalie watched him go, reminding herself, as she’d been doing ever since the man and the boy arrived, that Rick was the tenant and she was the landlady. And that was all.
The problem was, Rick seemed even more attractive now than he had two weeks ago. His eyes seemed bluer, his shoulders broader. And every time he smiled at her, her stomach did the strangest things.
Her thoughts on Rick and not much else, Natalie went to the refrigerator and took out a package of deli-sliced ham, some spicy mustard and a big jar of kosher-style dills.
“What are you doing?” Rick asked. He was standing in the short hall from the laundry room.
She froze and looked down at the food in her hands.
And it came to her: She’d been about to make him some sandwiches. She was the landlady and he was the tenant and nothing in the rental agreement said a thing about meals. And yet he’d mentioned the word lunch and she’d automatically started making it.
She was just a hopeless case—that was all there was to it. Get her near an available man, and the first thing she did was start fixing his food for him. It had been that way with Joel. She’d loaned him money when he was short—some of which he never had paid back. She’d graded his papers and cleaned his little cottage in town. She’d bought his groceries when she bought her own—and then been waiting for him every night when he showed up at her door with his dirty laundry under his arm and “What’s for dinner?” on his lips.
Rick clearly had no clue of the direction of her thoughts. He was grinning. “Lunch is already made. I stopped at a deli before I left Minneapolis.”
“Oh, really?”
“Yeah. They even put it in a nice big picnic basket. It’s got everything—including paper plates and plastic forks. I left the basket on the front porch. Maybe you didn’t see it.”
She sincerely prayed that her face wasn’t as red as it felt. “Um. No, I guess I didn’t.” Very carefully, she set the sliced ham back in the meat drawer and the mustard and pickles on a shelf and closed the refrigerator door. “Listen. I’ve got a few things to do. I should probably just get busy on them.”
He folded his arms and leaned against the little section of counter that projected off the wall to the laundry room. “Damn. I was hoping you’d come with us.”
Her heart lifted. It was ridiculous. She had to get a grip on herself here. “You were?”
“Yeah.” He was wearing a dark blue knit shirt and khakis. The shirt clung to the hard contours of his shoulders. And with his arms folded like that, the muscles of his biceps were starkly defined. And his dark hair was so shiny, it even curled a little. It was the kind of hair any woman would want to run her fingers through. And he had the nicest mouth. It was firm, but there was fullness to it. Natalie thought that it would probably be a wonderful mouth for kissing—a mouth that could command and beguile at the same time.
“Natalie.”
“Um. Yes?”
“Come with us.”
“Oh, I really shouldn’t. You know how it is, when you have so many things to—”
“Please?”
And her own mouth just opened and she heard herself say, “Okay.”
He stopped leaning on the counter. “Great.” He looked so cool and collected.
And she realized that she felt sticky and grungy in her old cutoffs and sweaty T-shirt. “Listen. Could you give me a few minutes? To clean up a little.”
“Take all the time you need.” He started walking toward her.
She backed away, all nerves and confusion. She shouldn’t be going with him. She shouldn’t have said yes. He was renting her house for a couple of months, she reminded herself for what had to be the hundredth time. And that was all that was supposed to be going on here. “A few minutes. Really. I won’t be long.”
He stopped in the middle of the kitchen. “I’ll go out and hunt down Toby and the dog.”
“Yes. Do that. Good idea.” She backed around the central island that contained the stove, and then just kept walking backward toward the main hall. Rick watched her go.
As soon as she lost sight of him, she realized how silly she must look, walking backward through the hall. So she turned around, squared her shoulders
