for him … well, what on earth was that all about, anyway? She shook her head.
“How could you get so many things wrong at one time?” she asked, still amazed at what they’d just experienced.
He gave her a crooked grin that didn’t seem to reach his eyes. “Pretty amazing, isn’t it? I don’t know. I just seem to have a talent for failure lately.”
“I doubt that.” She rejected his explanation out of hand. No, he had the look and feel of a man who did just about everything right. Only—today things had spun out of control for a bit. Interesting.
They were standing in the backyard and neither of them seemed to have any interest in going back into the kitchen. She shuddered when she thought of it.
“Seriously,” he said. “I’ve spent most of my time living in hotel rooms or tents over the last few years. I’ve lost the knack of civilization.”
She wanted to laugh but he wasn’t even smiling. “Surely you didn’t grow up in a cave,” she said.
“No.” He raised his bright blue eyes to meet hers. “It was more of a hut. And after my mother died, we didn’t live much like modern people do. My father caught game and fished and we lived off that. People called us the Wild Ones in my town. I resented it at the time, but looking back, I guess we deserved it.”
She couldn’t look away from his brilliant blue gaze. He had her mesmerized. She could see him living rough, like a twentieth century native. All he needed was a horse and a blanket and off he would go.
But the twentieth century was over and the modern world wasn’t very open to living like a wild one. Very deliberately, she took a step backward, as if she could somehow make a move out of his sphere of suggestive influence by putting more space between them. It didn’t work, and she found herself smoothing back her sleek blond hair like a woman primping for an encounter.
Ouch!
She wasn’t going to do that. She was so far from being in the market for a flirtation, she hardly remembered what that would be like. She finally pulled her gaze away and shook her head.
“You’ve got a lot of cleaning up to do in there,” she noted.
“Not me,” he said decisively.
She frowned at him. “You can’t just leave it. You’re going to have to clean it sometime.”
“Are you kidding?” His sudden grin was a revelation. “I’m not going back in there.”
She gasped. “But …”
“I’ll just go and rent a new place and start over, armed with all I’ve learned from you.”
It took a moment to realize he was kidding. She shook her head, not sure what to make of him.
He was tall and hard and strong with a body that could have been chiseled from Carrara marble. That’s what he reminded her of—the gang at the Parthenon. A Greek god for heaven’s sake—with a face to match. His features were crisp and even—handsome in a hard, rough way. His eyes with their long, dark lashes had a sleepy, languorous expression. Very appealing.
But was there any warmth there? If there was, she couldn’t find it. Was he as cold as marble, too? All in all, he was gorgeous, but he was also a little bit scary.
He watched her with one dark eyebrow raised.
“Tell you what, let’s go down to the corner café. I’ll buy you a cup of coffee.”
That startled her. She’d sworn off men a long time ago. The aggravation wasn’t worth the reward. She had other things in her life, things she valued. Besides, he might be a short-term renter in the house next to hers, but that didn’t mean they were destined to be bosom buddies. Not at all. She took his offer as a cue to begin to back away.
“Oh, I don’t know, I’ve got to …”
“Come on.” He touched her. It was just a gesture, just a quick, passing touch. He probably didn’t even notice when his fingertips softly slipped along her arm. But she did. It gave her a start and her breath was suddenly catching in her throat.
“Come on. I owe you one. You just did me a very big favor.”
“Well …” She was weakening. A part of her stood aside and watched this with exasperation. What on earth was she doing? But she snuck a look at her watch and realized she actually had plenty of time. She knew her baby would still be napping at her sister’s house for another half hour, at least. So … why not?
She glanced at him sideways. “Just for a few minutes,” she conceded.
“Good,” he said, sticking his hand out. “I’m Jake Martin. And I would guess that your name is Jill.”
“Oh, no.” She shook her head, wondering how he’d come up with her sister’s name, then she realized she was wearing Jill’s uniform shirt for doing the Sunshine Fund collecting. “Jill” was embroidered in big red letters right over the pocket. She laughed. “No, actually …”
“Come on, Jill,” he said, taking her hand. “Let’s go.”
Her heart seemed to roll over inside her. She glanced at his muscular chest and knew she was turning bright red.
“You’re going to need a shirt, aren’t you?” she noted breathlessly.
“Oh.” He stopped short and looked down at his lack of attire. “Hey, sorry. I hadn’t realized I was being so informal. I’ll grab something out of my car.”
He turned to do just that and she gasped softly as she noticed the purple scarring on his back, a picture of past pain and agony she hadn’t noticed before in all the commotion. She turned away and pretended not to watch as he pulled a dark blue T-shirt over that beautiful body.
“Listen, I left my papers and my purse in your house. I’m going to have to go in to get them.”
He groaned. “Okay. But I don’t want to see it. I’ll meet you out front.”
She made her way quickly through the mess, glad it wasn’t going to be her job to clean it up, grabbed her things and came out the front door to meet him. He smiled and took hold of her hand again and they were marching toward the coffee shop.
“I really like it here,” he told her, looking out at the gray-blue ocean that surrounded the Washington State island just across from Seattle where they lived—for the moment at least.
She liked it, too. In fact she planned to spend a long, long time here. That was why she was renovating her house to make room for raising Savannah, her nine-month-old baby.
A group of seagulls flew overhead, screaming in their usual argument. She looked down toward the other end of town. The ferry was coming in, bringing commuters home from their jobs in Seattle. Yes, this was where she wanted to be.
“Too bad I can’t stay,” Jake said, looking like he really did regret it.
“Where are you going instead?” she asked,
