“It’s just very different from the cottage.”
“My aunt had a hand in decorating the cottage. It’s where I normally live when I come here. The house is rented out most of the year. The people who were going to rent it this month backed out because of the earthquake.”
“Your aunt didn’t help decorate the main house.”
It was a statement. Not a question. There was no way the same person had had a hand in this house, although a skilled interior decorator could probably pull off two such divergent spaces.
“No.” He swept a hand around the foyer. “This was all my parents’ doing.”
He said it as if it was not the way he would have done things.
“Are you going to redo it?”
“No.”
The single word answer didn’t invite discussion. Instead she studied the textured paint on the walls and the pricey rugs on the floor and changed the topic to something a little more neutral.
“Your guests must love staying here.”
His eyes closed for a split second. In gratitude? She had no idea.
He tossed a set of keys and the remote he’d had at the cottage onto a nearby console table. “They seem to like it.”
“Is there another remote for the alarm at the cottage?” She allowed a glimmer of a smile to play across her face. “In case I decide to cook again at some point?” The scent of something warm and inviting curled around her nostrils. “Although if that heavenly aroma is what I think it is I may have to hire your aunt to cook all my meals for me.”
“I’m sure she would be happy to.”
Lea had a feeling he might be happy if she did that as well.
“Seriously, do you want the cottage stove to be off-limits? Just say the word. I don’t want you to worry about me setting the place on fire every time I’m in the kitchen.”
“I’m not.”
He wasn’t what? Worried? Because the stiff set of his posture as he walked in the direction of the living room said something different.
“I’ll give you a quick tour while dinner finishes heating.”
They went through the archway, and her eyes tracked from thing to thing.
“This space is pretty obvious...”
The blue pillows she’d noticed earlier were set in precise rows along the back of the couch. It reminded her of suture lines. She did her best to hide the shiver that went through her. It was only her imagination. Or maybe just a reaction to the whole smoke alarm encounter.
She almost hadn’t noticed that he’d shaved the stubble off his face sometime this evening. His hair was still on the longish side, but it was thick and glossy now, and her fingers suddenly itched to touch one of the dark wavy locks as he came to a stop. The man looked like a Greek god out of a legend.
She dragged her gaze back to the room when he turned to face her, and tried to shut the door on the shot of pure hormones that jetted through her.
Dust. Look for dust. A cobweb. Anything!
The perfectly square coffee table in front of her held a stack of magazines about boats, a white plaster lighthouse and a tray that held three blue candles. Not a speck of dust.
“Does your aunt clean the place after guests leave?”
“No, I hire a service to come in once a week. My aunt must have asked them to come in for my arrival.”
So he’d known exactly when he was coming home? Why had no one warned her before he arrived? “Does Theo know you’re here?”
“Not yet. I didn’t give him my exact itinerary. I figured I’d stop in at the clinic and then come straight home if it wasn’t overrun with patients. I hoped to catch him there, but obviously not if he’s taking a personal day. I’ll call him in the morning.”
“Patients seem to come in spurts. Some days we can hardly keep up. Other days we’re twiddling our thumbs—like this afternoon.”
“How are you getting to and from the clinic?”
She shifted her weight to the other foot. “Well, there’s a...um...a bicycle stored behind the cottage. I hope you don’t mind I’ve been borrowing it?”
“Why don’t you take the car? It’s there for guests—surely Cecilia told you about it?”
“She did, but I was worried about aftershocks right after I vacated my hotel. I figured I could navigate a bicycle off the road in case of a car accident or a traffic jam. And then, once that danger had passed, I’d just got used to riding in. It helps me enjoy the beauty of the island.”
“It’s not quite as beautiful as it once was.”
“You should have seen it right after the quake hit. It was awful.”
The memory of the ground shuddering beneath her feet, of plaster cracking and sheeting off the walls in her hotel room, stopped any lingering feeling of attraction in its tracks. She’d crawled under the bed, hoping the roof wasn’t going to cave in on top of her. It had seemed like forever before the ground tremors had subsided, when in reality it had probably only lasted a few minutes.
“I’m sorry you had to go through that.”
Her brows went up. “I’m sorry anyone had to go through it. It was terrible.”
“I’m sure it was.” He dragged a hand through his hair. “There was no way I could have come any sooner—my contract was unbreakable. I saw the reports on the news when I was sitting in a bar in Africa. Theo called as I was watching, and once I got off the phone with him I called everyone I could think of to see if they were okay.”
They walked through the door to the dining room—another opulent space, where a huge glass-topped table crouched beneath a low chandelier. The surface, like the coffee table in the living room, was devoid of dust or even a single smudged fingerprint.
It bothered her, somehow. This didn’t look like a place where a family might recount the minutiae of their day. Or where a child might spill a glass of milk and not live in fear of messing up something. Instead it reeked of formal place settings and expensive crystal. A place where business negotiations were hammered out.
Had Deakin eaten here as a child? God, she hoped not. She could just picture him eating a bowl of breakfast cereal all by himself. But maybe it hadn’t been that way at all. Maybe he was from a big family who laughed their way through life.
“Do you have more family on the island?”
“You mean siblings?” He shook his head. “Nope. I’m an only child.”
So no under the table kicking of a little sister or brother. No food fights or handing non-tasty morsels to the family dog. There was no sign that a pet of any kind had ever lived
