right, that was exactly what he expected. So sue him.
It didn’t help the nascent case of jealousy swirling in his gut that the woman who yanked the door open hardly looked as if getting down and dirty were outside the realm of possibility. Gone was the sheath-and-pearls-attired socialite. In her place stood a familiar barefoot woman clad in a threadbare pair of cutoffs and an oversize white shirt, the tails of which had been knotted at her waist over a lipstick-red sports bra. The shirt looked as if it might have belonged to her father, so long were its tails and so bulky its rolled-back cuffs that ended just below her elbows. And her hair was a wild, sun-streaked, flyaway nimbus floating out from beneath the little red triangular bandana she’d tied behind her head. But it was the ragged threads straggling against her firm, freckled thighs that riveted his attention.
“Can I do something for you, Miglionni, or did you just come up here to stare at my legs?”
He tore his gaze away from the long, smooth, bare expanse. “You gotta admit, they’re ogle-worthy,” he said, meeting her eyes. “Believe it or not, though, I actually did have something to tell you—those beauties just drove whatever it was clean out of my head.” He didn’t plan the grin he flashed her; as with damn near every other time he’d ever been in her company, she drew a reaction from him that was purely spontaneous. “Man, Tori. I’d forgotten how pretty your legs are. You oughtta wear short shorts more often.” He couldn’t stop himself from giving them a final once-over before he made a conscious effort to look elsewhere. No sense giving her any more opportunities to accuse him of sexual harassment.
He glanced past her into the depths of the big open room. A huge worktable, littered with mechanical pencils and blueprints, wood scraps and piles of fabric, stood down near the end of the room. In the midst of the chaos stood two little houses about three feet tall. One was made of balsa wood and was fairly plain, but the other looked very elaborate. Deep shelves behind the table held several other balsa models and one stone one, each in a different style. “Whoa. Are those yours?”
“Yes.”
She relinquished her position blocking the door when he stepped forward and he strode past her, crossing to the table. He saw that the models on the table had an open back and, bending down, he checked out the interior of the ornate one before glancing up at her. “What is this, a dollhouse?”
“Yes.”
He indicated the other. “And this one?”
“It’s the prototype.”
“And you made both of them?” He tipped his chin to include the other prototypes on the shelves. “You made all of these?”
“Yes.”
“Wow.” He gave the one still in progress a more thorough inspection. “I can’t believe the attention to detail. It’s perfect.” It had gingerbread shingles on the roof, a wraparound porch with spindle railings, two balconies and a bay window. Each room was fully realized, from window seats and the tiny oak paneling forming the wainscoting in the parlor, to the old-fashioned wallpaper and white porcelain pedestal sink in the upstairs bathroom. He flipped a switch on a little metal box he saw sitting on the table next to the dollhouse, and minuscule lights within the model came on. Laughter rolled out of his chest. “This is so cool.”
Victoria blinked as she watched Rocket circle the table to investigate the other models on the shelves. He possessed such bedrock masculinity that she would have thought he’d find her dollhouses too sissy for his consideration—or at least dismiss them with no more than a cursory glance. Instead he seemed fascinated. When he came to the stone castle and glanced over his shoulder at her, his dark eyes all but shot sparks of pure, engaged interest.
“This one’s different. It’s more like a guy’s dollhouse.”
A laugh escaped her. “Good call. I made it for a boy with an extensive collection of metal toy soldiers, most of which are knights, kings, horses and other assorted medieval warriors. It was my first experience with masonry and I’m pretty proud of the way it turned out.” Coming around the worktable to stand next to him, she hauled the castle off the shelf and placed it on the table. “Look.” She reached across his arm and past the turrets into the castle’s open top. “It has a working drawbridge and portcullis and if you move this stone just so—” she demonstrated with a fingertip “—and then the one next to it like this—shazam!” The interior wall swivelled to expose a secret room that had walls bristling with sketches of medieval weaponry.
John laughed. “Excellent! I would have beefed up the back wall here for a better defense, but it looks as if you’ve got the firepower and that’s half the battle. A couple vats of boiling oil, enough supplies to hold off a siege and you’ve got yourself a good chance of holding the fort.” He turned his head to look at her. “Do you make these for a living?”
“Yes.” Finding his face suddenly much too close, his enthusiastic curiosity much too compelling, Victoria eased back a step, trying to ignore the smooth, hot-skinned drag of his inner forearm against her own. “I sort of fell into it by default. I made one for Es and a couple of her friends fell in love with it and wanted one for themselves. Their respective parents commissioned me to make them and from there word of mouth just started to build. It was confined mostly to the Mayfair area of London until last year, when I set up a Web page on the net. Now I’ve got all the work I can handle. More, really. I’ve had to turn commissions away.”
“Have you ever considered mass producing?”
“For about five minutes.” She met his gaze. “But then I rejected the idea. Not only would mass production put me right back in the very situation I was trying to avoid when I left Kimball and Jones—devoting more time to my business than to Esme—it would strip all the individuality out of the process…and probably most of the fun, as well. I need to keep it small. That way I can build each house to suit the little girl—or in the castle’s case, boy—for whom it’s meant. Each child gets a quality, almost-one-of-a-kind dollhouse and I get a creative outlet…not to mention steady employment that’s fairly lucrative for being so selective.” Much too aware of his shoulder bumping up against hers as he leaned down to test the castle’s various working parts, she moved away, going to the shelves and finding make-work straightening the remaining models. “Which reminds me, I should get back to it. You said you had a reason for coming up here?”
When she turned back, she found him checking out her legs once again, but he immediately pulled his gaze up to meet hers. “Yeah. The probability that Jared left town just got a lot stronger. I tracked down the cab driver who picked him up the night your father was murdered.”
“Oh, God.” Feeling her legs go weak, Victoria reached for the stool she used when working at the table and pulled it beneath her hips. “What did he say? Where did he take him?”
“He said the kid was extremely quiet and seemed stunned. Maybe in shock. That when he asked if he was all right, Jared laughed hysterically, but calmed down enough to insist on being taken to the bus station.”
“Did you find out where he went from there?”
“No. I couldn’t find anyone at the station who remembers selling him a ticket. But most teens on the run head for a city and since Denver’s the nearest one to Colorado Springs, odds are better than even that’s where your brother went.”
She pushed to her feet. “I can be ready to leave in ten minutes.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, there. Slow down.” He grabbed hold of her shoulders and leveled a
