between them.
“Would you care to have dinner with me?” he asked, perhaps a bit too forcefully, nettled that she could draw his anger from him. Only his daughter and his mother were allowed to see beneath the rigid control he had inherited from his father.
“What do I owe you for it?” she asked, watching him. Her tone was too cautious, as if some terrible game had been played on her, and she wasn’t paying that penalty again.
The innuendo that he would expect payment for a meal he had prepared for her slapped him. When he was a child, his father had hammered into him that a man’s honor and pride were everything. Stefan would not humble himself before Rose, telling her how his heart leaped when he saw her, how much he needed her warmth—how much he needed to give her warmth…and safety. Those wary blue eyes told him she had been badly hurt, and every step would be carefully weighed. That she did not trust him—a man who tried his best to be right and good—hurt. “Forget it,” he said, stood and walked off before he said too much.
An hour later, Stefan gripped the farmhouse board and tugged it free, the extra force supplied by his temper. His mother had left a note that Maury had taken her for a private tour of the store, so that she could select her bathroom wallpaper undisturbed. Estelle was still out with her girlfriend. Left alone with his hunger for Rose—to hear her voice, to dream of her—Stefan concentrated on taking down the wall between the kitchen and the back porch. At least that wall was solid and could be dealt with, whereas Rose’s walls were intangible but just as effective.
Stefan shook his head and tore away an old board, discarding it to the growing pile. In business, he knew how to act. But personal relationships had never come easily to him. His lack of experience with flirtation clearly was a disadvantage now.
Headlights lasered through the windows on the back porch and at a glance, Stefan recognized Rose’s pickup. He had been wounded enough for one night, his attempt at friendship with her slapped in his face. He did not like the simmering anger, that of the man placing his honest intentions in front of the woman who enchanted and rejected him. He glanced at the woman coming up the stone walkway to the house, and with a shake of his head, opened the door.
She held up the picnic basket, her face pale in the light shafting from his home. “You forgot this.”
He felt too vulnerable, an emotion denied the young son of steely Guy Donatien and firmly embedded in the man. He reached to take the handle of the basket. “Yes, of course. Thank you.”
“You’re lonely, aren’t you?” she asked quietly above the chirp of the crickets. She did not release the basket to him.
Was he to be denied his pride? Did he have to explain the emptiness he felt in the odd hours when work did not fill his life and his family was not near? Who did this woman think she was, to pry so deeply into his life? “Are you?” The question was a reflex, a defense.
She shook her head and that fabulous mane of reddish-brown hair seemed to catch fire in the light. “You could get a carpenter team to help you with the house,” she said, changing the subject.
Stefan did not want to admit how much he was looking forward to his new role away from business and the kitchen. He, too, wanted to enjoy average American rural life, a vacation away from stress and the city. “I do not need them.”
“Larry could help. He and his brother and a few others—”
Stefan breathed deeply. Did she think he was incapable of simple tasks? He had helped remodelers and his father and knew basic carpentry. Did she think him incapable of everything? “I do not wish your ex-fiancé to be of assistance to me.”
“You don’t have to be so rigid about someone helping you. It’s a neighborly thing to do. I’ve got time. We got off to a bad start, but I’ll help you tonight and we’ll be friends. I’ll introduce you to Waterville’s single women looking for a man. Just remember to keep it light, because you’re only here for the summer, and some of them might want to get serious. I don’t want to be held responsible for anyone’s heartache.”
Stefan clamped his lips closed. He refused to debate his choice of women, or to have her select them for him. He tugged the basket from her and turned, walking up the steps into the back porch. He placed the basket on a table, flipped open the top, gripped the Beaujolais wine he had selected especially to go with the poulet en cocote. He poured the wine into a glass, swirled it and downed it quickly. He eyed Rose, who was studying the stack of old boards and broken plasterboard. “You are a frustrating woman. Do you think me incapable of the smallest task? The smallest sense of responsibility? Do you think I ask every woman I see to have dinner with me?”
“Yes,” she answered truthfully. “You’re probably pretty available…I mean, a man who looks like you, who is very smooth and who is obviously wealthy.”
She hadn’t spared him, and Stefan reluctantly admitted that certain women did want him. So far none of them had appealed. “‘Very smooth,”’ he repeated darkly.
“I’ve never trusted men who know how to look sexy and appealing, and how to touch a woman. And you’re one of them.”
Her words were both a compliment and a put-down. “Thank you for your honesty. So, I am not to be trusted.”
“It’s like the major leagues and minor leagues. You probably play in the majors, while I just don’t want to get in the ball game at all.”
He had finally found a woman who aroused and satisfied him intellectually and visually, and she did not want him. Stefan ripped open the zippered thermal pouch containing the chicken and vegetables, then tugged off a drumstick. He ate it without prowling through its taste as he usually did. Rose sniffed delicately, coming to peer down into the basket. “Eat,” Stefan ordered, unconcerned with manners or presentation of the meal at the moment.
Rose studied his expression, then reached to pat his cheek. He gripped her wrist and eased it away from him. He could not bear to have her sympathy. “Don’t.”
She watched him carve the chicken and ladle the vegetables onto the plates, handing one to her. “Do you have to bristle?” she asked as she probed an artichoke heart with her fingertip.
When she reached for the wine, pouring it into a glass, her breast brushed Stefan’s bare arm, electrifying his senses. He tensed and held his breath until the initial sensual jolt passed. “That’s why I ‘bristle,”’ he said coarsely as she suddenly stepped back, a blush rising up her cheeks.
He took the finger she had used to test the food and brought it to his mouth, sucking it. Then his teeth closed around the tip, nipping gently. “I want you.”
Rose stiffened and jerked her hand away. “I don’t know anything about you, except you just may have an evil temper. Your eyes flash and I hear thunder in your voice. I’m not intimidated, of course, but nothing happens this fast. Not in Waterville, Missouri, U.S.A. Life sort of meanders into the right course, without pushing it before its time. You’re a person who likes to arrange things on your schedule.”
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