rethinking it,” he said, regarding her so intently she could feel heat burning up her cheeks. “A wet cat who stuck its paw in a socket?”
“Oh! Is it that bad?”
“I’m just teasing you. Sorry.”
She was being teased by the Daniel Riverton? Life certainly had some unexpected twists and turns in it. She contemplated this one. She contemplated that she seemed to like being teased.
Her relationship with Miles could not have been called playful. And she hadn’t been aware, until this very moment, that that was a lack.
He brushed a hand over his eyes and apologized again. “You aren’t the only one who is exhausted.” He cast a look of unveiled annoyance at her nieces. “So why are you getting mail addressed to the Cat in the Hat?”
“It’s a long story.” For a delirious moment she pictured herself pouring it out to him. Who better to share it with? A successful businessman—
“Perhaps another time, then,” he said with utter insincerity, reminding her of the arrogance right under the surface of all the charm...and teasing. “I think we’ve got you free, Miss Cat-in-the-Hat.”
And that would be his cue to leave, and never glance back. Certainly, he would not want to hear about all her production woes with a company that would be so teeny next to his it would be like a mouse standing beside an elephant.
No, closer to a flea.
“You are surprisingly tiny under all that,” he said, letting an enormous ball of tissue drop from his hands as he inspected her. “At least I think you are.”
Despite the fact her freedom meant she would probably never see her neighbor again, Trixie was relieved beyond belief to be loose, and even more relieved that she had on a perfectly respectable, if somewhat bulky, housecoat that she had made herself.
The housecoat might have left her tininess in question, and made her want to call out her weight to him as further proof she was not in any way related to the Doughboy. But this situation could have been even more horrible if she hadn’t had it on. What if she’d been sitting here in her pajamas, a pair of boy-style shorty-shorts and a camisole?
That would take the embarrassment of this already horrendously embarrassing situation to a brand new level.
She shook each limb experimentally, hoping to be able to dismiss him. But she couldn’t help but wince when she shook her right arm.
“That hurts?” he said, watching her way too closely. “It’s the one you fell on when you toppled the chair, isn’t it? You’ve got a mark on your temple, too. Right here.”
He touched her on the bruised flesh of her temple. His touch was exquisite. Tempered, almost tender, despite the powerful energy in it.
Imagine a mere fingertip making her feel like that! Miles’s touch never had.
It made the years of spinsterhood and devotion to her company, which she had recently sworn to, seem like they could use some second thought. It looked as if they might be unbearably lonely. Not to mention boring.
Not to mention, she might be missing something she had never experienced. She had a certain breathless awareness of Daniel—tickling along her every sense—after just a few moments with him, that she had never experienced before.
What if Miles had been right? What if there was something more? What if he’d done them both a favor?
After months of nursing her resentment against her former boyfriend, the thoughts felt like a betrayal—of herself! Daniel was looking at her way too closely, as if her sudden confusion and self-questioning were an open book to him. His finger still rested with exquisite tenderness on the bruised flesh of her temple. “Are you going to be all right on your own?”
CHAPTER THREE
FURIOUS WITH HERSELF, Trixie moved her temple away from his fingertip.
How unfair was that? That Daniel Riverton had stumbled upon the very question she had been secretly asking herself while outwardly declaring her contentment in her new life of independence?
But suddenly, the questions all seemed different. It wasn’t just could she manage her own business and look after herself and her apartment and her nieces? It was, could she live without feeling the way his touch on her temple had made her feel?
He was talking about right now, Trixie reminded herself sternly.
Was she all right? The truth was Trixie was not all right. The unexpected twist her life had taken had made her feel rattled right down to her pale pink-painted toenails.
“I’m fine.” This was said as much to herself, and her life plan, as it was to him.
Stubbornly, anxious to get her night and her life back under control, Trixie tried to get up from the chair, but pushed with that right arm. A startled gasp of pain left her lips. She sat back down, feeling horribly like she might faint.
He was on his knees beside her in an instant, his hand on her arm.
She closed her eyes against two kinds of pain. One, the pain swimming in her arm like a snacking shark, the other the pain of being so close to such a devastatingly attractive, nearly naked man in such horrible circumstances.
He prodded and tugged gently. “I think your arm might be broken,” he said. “Or dislocated? Maybe at the shoulder.”
“But my arm can’t be broken! Or dislocated. I’m barely managing the twins now!” she wailed. The admission was out before she could stop it. Fresh tears pooled in her eyes, and he frowned at her, troubled.
“Where’s your phone? Your arm is in bad shape, and you’ve had quite a knock on your head. I’m calling an ambulance.”
“No.”
“No?” His eyebrow shot upward in shocked surprise, as if no one had ever uttered that word to him. Which seemed like a distinct possibility.
“I mean you can’t,” she stammered, and then stronger. “I mean, I can’t.”
“Well, I can, and you are, so live with it. The phone, please?”
It penetrated the fog of her pain and her relief over being rescued that Daniel Riverton was a man just a little too accustomed to getting his own way. And as tempting as it was to have someone taking charge in a situation like this, she couldn’t just give in. She had responsibilities!
“What about my nieces?”
His gaze shifted to Molly and Pauline. The next time she was thinking how attractive he was, she would remember that look. What kind of person looked at innocent children with such undisguised dislike?
Though, much as she hated to admit it, her own view of their innocence was slightly tempered now that they had tied her to a chair with near catastrophic results!
“I can’t go in an ambulance,” Trixie announced firmly. “What would happen to them?”
“Can’t
