and a day.
Or, more accurately, not since that hot summer’s night when she was five, and she and her parents had fled Madrid on the midnight train. Just the three of them: they’d left behind Tess’s beloved nanny, Ysabel, without Tess even having the chance to say goodbye to her.
That long-ago heartbreak, so laced with betrayal, had cured Tess, once and for all, of letting anyone close to her.
The last person she should allow to bend that rule was Cade Lorimer. Yet for some reason Tess found herself gazing at his hands, wrapped around the leather-coated steering wheel. Strong hands with a dusting of dark hair, and long, lean fingers that made her ache somewhere deep inside.
She dragged her eyes away, staring out the window. The brief ferry trip was soon over, the forty-mile drive passing in a blur of black spruce, dark rocks and the glitter of the moon on the sea. Although Cade showed no inclination to talk and she had nothing to say, the silence was far from restful. It was a relief when he pulled into the parking lot of an imposing brick building, and she could get out of the car and stretch her legs. “Hospital’s state of the art,” he said without a trace of emotion, striding toward the entrance. “Del endowed it after my mother died two years ago.”
“Oh…I’m sorry she’s dead.”
“Del’s lost without her,” Cade said tersely, pushing open the door.
And you, she wondered, did you love your mother just as you so obviously love Del?
Then, to her dismay, Cade took her by the hand. His palm was warm, his fingers clasping hers with automatic strength. With shocking speed, heat raced through her body, fiery and inescapable. Her steps faltered, every nerve on high alert. The ache in her belly intensified, and she could no more deny it than she could shut out the long corridor with its antiseptic smell and polished tile floor. Desire, she thought helplessly. I’ve never felt it in my life, yet recognize it as though I’ve always known it. How can that be?
It was more than she could do to pull her hand away. Because Cade needed her, or because she was a total fool?
Desire wasn’t on the list, any more than sex.
They’d arrived at the elevator. As they rose to the second floor, Tess stared at the controls, her body a tumult of longing that both terrified and bewildered her. She forced her features to immobility. She couldn’t bear for Cade to guess her feelings, for then she would truly be naked in front of him.
As they left the elevator, the nurse on duty smiled at Cade. “Room 204,” she said. “He’s resting well.”
“Thanks,” Cade said briefly. Outside the room, he hesitated, inwardly steeling himself for whatever he might find.
Tess tried to tug her hand free. But his fingers tightened, and—short of causing a scene—she had no choice but to follow him into the room. Standing at his side, tension singing along her nerves, Tess looked down at the man in the bed.
Del Lorimer was asleep, his mane of silver hair spread on the pillow, his strongly corded arms bare to the elbow. Automatically she recorded a beak of a nose, an obstinate chin and the facial wrinkles of a man who’s lived his life at full tilt.
She felt not the slightest flicker of recognition. Not even remotely did he remind her of Cory.
Swiftly Tess switched her gaze to Cade; and with dismay saw a man closed against any emotion. His features were tight, his jaw clenched, while his eyes were like dark pits, unreadable and unreachable.
In unconscious antipathy she moved away from him so that their shoulders were no longer touching. She’d been wrong: Cade didn’t love his adoptive father. By the look of him, love wasn’t a word he’d even recognize.
In a way, she was glad to see his true colors so clearly; it made it easier to dismiss him as a ruthless interloper who was interfering in her life with results she could neither anticipate nor desire.
Desire. That word again.
Desire someone incapable of loving the father who—on Cade’s own admission—had given him security and love as a boy? She’d have to be crazy to do that.
To her relief, a white-jacketed doctor came to the door. Cade joined him there, holding a low-voiced conversation, then came back into the room. “We might as well go,” he said impersonally. “Del will sleep the night through, there’s no point in staying.”
For a split second Tess looked down at the man lying so still in the bed, a man who, other than common human concern, meant nothing to her. Then she preceded Cade out of the room, walking fast down the hushed, immaculate corridor.
Sixteen minutes after they left the hospital, Cade slowed at two impressive stone pillars and turned down a driveway that wound between stiff Scotch pines and a forest of rhododendrons. Del’s stone mansion boasted grandiose white pillars, a formal array of windows and huge chimneys, and equally formal gardens, raked, clipped and weeded to a neatness nature never intended.
Tess disliked it on sight.
For the first time, she broke the silence since they’d left the hospital. “You’ll take me home tomorrow,” she said.
Cade rubbed his neck, trying to get the tension out. “You can sleep in the west wing,” he said. “You’ll hear the sea through the windows.”
“Tomorrow,” she repeated inflexibly.
He shifted in his seat so that he was gazing into her vivid green eyes. Against his will, an image of Del flashed across his mind: a shrunken old man lying too still in a hospital bed, the bars raised on either side. “Give it a rest, Tess,” he said sharply. “Haven’t we argued enough for one day?”
“Then perhaps you should try listening to me.”
Whatever her background, she’d learned to fight for herself, he thought, watching the night shadows slant across her face. Her skin gleamed pale, infinitely desirable, the pulse throbbing gently at the base of her throat. Flooding him as irresistibly as a storm surge, he longed to rest his face there, close his eyes and let the warmth of her skin seep through his pores.
Not since he’d started dating had he ever been pulled so strongly to a woman. It wasn’t the way he operated. Easy come, easy go, everything pleasant and on the surface, that was him. He sure as hell wasn’t going to break that pattern with Tess Ritchie. Might as well step into a minefield.
Anyway, judging by the look on her face, she’d rather clobber him than hold him close.
“Let’s go in,” he said, and climbed out of the car.
When he unlocked the massive oak door, four large dogs came scrabbling across the marble floor, barking in excitement, white teeth gleaming. With a gasp of pure horror, Tess grabbed Cade, thrusting him between her and the dogs. The alley, the dog snarling…crack of a gunshot.
“Down!” Cade said, and all four subsided, jaws agape, tongues lolling. Swiftly he turned. “You’re afraid of dogs, Tess?”
Wrong word, he thought. For terror, once again, was etched into every line of her body, her eyes saturated with emotions he couldn’t begin to name, let alone understand.
“I—yes,
