commercial,” he said, attempting levity, probably because her tears were making him uncomfortable. When she had spoken to him on the phone he had sounded like a man who would be uncomfortable with tears—and she’d been close to crying then, too.
“You know the one?” he went on, in that deep, unconsciously seductive, comforting voice. “He’s totally made of tires? Only his eyes look out?”
She sniffled and swallowed, so trapped she could not even wipe her own nose. It was that thought—her helplessness in the face of nasal dribbles, as much as his attempt at lightness—that made her choke back more tears.
“Or maybe the Bisquitboy.” He was definitely trying to calm her, and his voice was intentionally without hard edges, soothing. “You know the one? He giggles when someone sticks a finger in his paunch?”
Of course she knew who the tire man was! And the pudgy little dough man. Trixie had always considered them both quite cute, but that was before she had been compared to them! But being seen as the tire man, or worse, the Doughboy, was humiliating on your first encounter with a devastatingly attractive man, even as his voice and presence strove to reassure.
Daniel Riverton was inspecting her carefully, trying to figure out where to start unraveling her.
One magazine had dubbed him Calgary’s most eligible bachelor.
Not that she should care! The last thing Trixie was in the market for was a man in her life. She was barely finding her feet after the breakup—make that dumping, a little voice in her head insisted—with Miles.
Still, even if you weren’t in the market, you’d have to be unconscious not to feel that little shiver of something in the presence of a man like Daniel Riverton, especially Daniel Riverton, in rescue mode, with no shirt on. Her eyes lingered on his bare chest.
Deep and smooth, golden, as if he had recently been somewhere warm.
The nearly naked Daniel Riverton decided on a starting point by her ear. He tried to rip through the layers of padded white.
“That’s stronger than I would have believed,” he muttered, and began to unwind the binding from around her head.
He was so close to her. She could see the amazing flawlessness of his skin. His scent—clean, masculine, sensual—tickled at her nostrils despite the fact they were still covered in several layers of tissue.
“Get me a pair of scissors,” he snapped at Molly and Pauline. His voice, to them, was brusque, but the quick efficiency with which he was unwrapping Trixie remained gentle.
“Not allowed—”
That would be Molly, always the leader of the shenanigans.
“Now you are allowed,” he said sternly.
Molly wasn’t about to let that go without challenging it. “Are you the boss over me?”
“You’re damned right I am,” he said. It was definitely the voice of a man who led a successful company and commanded dozens of employees, but Molly cocked her head at him, and narrowed her eyes.
But even a four-year-old could not miss the fact he was not a man to be messed with. She gave in with surprising ease. She slid off the sofa, followed by the ever faithful Pauline. Trixie heard them move a chair across the kitchen floor and start to dig in a drawer.
“So,” he said, his voice once again even and threaded with just a hint of amusement, “The mystery begins to unravel. What color of hair is that?”
“Auburn,” Trixie tried to say, hoping he had unraveled enough layers from around her face that he could hear her. It came out mumbo jumbo.
He frowned in concentration. “What?”
She tried again.
“Aw bum? Oh! All brown? With those big blue eyes, I expected you to be blonde. No, wait, I can see your hair now. It’s not all brown. It’s reddish, like whiskey aged in a sherry cask.”
Whiskey aged in a sherry cask? Good grief! This man knew his way around women. As if she hadn’t already guessed that!
He was talking slowly and continuously, as if he could sense the panic in her was still close to the surface, as if he had happened upon someone on the edge of a rooftop, and it was his voice that could talk them away from the edge.
He had to ruin her relishing the whiskey-aged description of her hair, by adding, “Your hair probably doesn’t usually stick out every which way, like this. It looks like you stuck your finger in a socket. Ouch! It is shooting off static, too.”
Trixie had recently had her long hair cut to a shorter length, mistakenly thinking that it would take less work. Instead, if it wasn’t tackled with a straight iron her hair looked very much like a gone-to-seed dandelion, waiting for someone to blow.
Now, her hair crackled under his touch as he unwound the tissue and batting from it.
“Electricity between us,” he said in that same mild, get-away-from-the-ledge tone of voice. Again, the light, teasing tone reminded her that he knew his way around women. So did the playful, faintly villainous wagging of the dark arrows of his brows.
But Trixie also knew he was one hundred per cent joking because there was no undoing a first impression. The tire man. The Doughboy. Someone whose hair looked as if they had stuck their finger in an electrical outlet.
“You have remarkably tiny ears,” he continued his calm narration. “Pierced, but no earrings. I wonder what kind of earrings you would wear? I’m going to guess nothing too flashy. Small diamond studs, perhaps?”
More like cubic zirconia, but if he wanted to picture her in diamonds, she’d take it as a bit of a counterpoint to the finger-in-the-socket remark.
She knew he was keeping up the one-sided conversation for her benefit only, and it did have a calming effect on her.
“Peaches and cream complexion, nose like a little button, no make-up. But if you did wear it? I’d guess a light dusting.”
Again, that sense that he knew way too much about women!
He had unwound enough of the tissue that he could stop unwinding and tear the remainder away from her face.
He regarded her with a surprised half smile tickling his lips. “And no bright red lipstick on those lips. They are quite luscious without it. In fact, I take it back. You look nothing like the tire man. Or the Doughboy.” His eyes moved to her hair, and the half smile deepened to a full one. “The electrical socket we can do nothing about.”
Her arms and hands pulled against the bindings. She was dying to pat her hair into place, but she was still bound fast. And aware, from the effort of trying to move, that something was wrong with her shoulder.
Still, she brushed that aside and gulped in a deep, appreciative breath of air. She wasn’t sure if she should say thanks, but before she had decided, he dropped the chatter and was briskly all business.
“Are you hurt?”
“Mostly my pride.” Her voice was a croak.
“Mostly?”
