what am I supposed to do?”
He lifted a shoulder, but seemed preoccupied with something he was looking at outside. “Vacate, I guess.”
She didn’t like this one bit: that in the blink of an eye she had gone from the one throwing him out, to the one being thrown! He was the kind of man who was like that: life-altering storms practically brewed in the air around him.
Vacate? Her own home? “You expect me to leave to accommodate you?” Her tone was properly indignant. And she hoped imperious.
He turned back to her. She got the impression that her indignation barely registered with him and that her leaving was exactly his expectation.
“I don’t have anywhere to go,” she sputtered. She sounded defensive. And faintly pathetic. Who didn’t have anywhere to go? Plus, worst of all, she sounded as if she had already given up, as if she would defer to him and his stupid contract.
She had been so right not to trust that perfect moment of just minutes ago. Why did calamity lay in wait for her?
He lifted a shoulder and glanced back at her. “I don’t, either. It’s been a long day, and I’m not about to start searching for alternate accommodations now.”
She could see, suddenly, that all that handsomeness had hidden a truth from her. His face was lined with weariness. And something else was in those devil-dark suede eyes…hurt? Loneliness?
Allie, she scolded herself, you are in the middle of a crisis here. She did not need to be exploring the damage to the dark stranger who had appeared on her doorstep.
And he did not want her to know, either, what painful secrets he held, because the window that weariness had opened briefly in his eyes slammed shut.
His voice had an edge of hardness to it when he spoke. “I couldn’t find anything on such short notice, regardless.”
That was true. It was the beginning of July. Sugar Cone Beach was one of the most sought-after holiday locations in California. People booked, particularly the July the Fourth holiday, well in advance. Sometimes, years in advance. People who had yearly arrangements—like him apparently—clung to them. She had heard of rental agreements being passed down, generation to generation, and that might be the case with him. He’d said his parents had it before him.
Still, it was even more reason she was not abandoning her house to him. She would not be able to find anything else, either. Though the contract thing was a little worrisome. The last thing she needed was a legal battle. The truth was, after the shock of the tax bill, she was barely squeaking by.
Allie cast Sam a glance. He looked like he had a lot more money than her if it came to that.
Still, she couldn’t act intimidated, and she couldn’t take it on. It was his problem, not her problem.
“Who doesn’t at least make a phone call before heading out on their holiday?” she asked, her tone querulous. “It’s not as if my grandmother was young. Did it not occur to you things can change?”
He looked her over with narrowed eyes. His voice was cold when he spoke. “I happen to be one of the people most aware of how things can change, without warning, how an entire life can be thrown off course in a single second.”
She was suddenly dangerously aware they were not talking about a rental agreement gone wrong. He looked stunned that he had revealed that much of himself, and covered his tracks quickly.
“We’re going to have to reach an agreement,” he said.
His tone was reasonable, but Allie could feel herself bristling. Despite that lapse where he said a life could be thrown off course without warning—his life presumably—he was the kind of man who wouldn’t like that. Who wouldn’t like that one little bit. Who would move heaven and earth to make sure it didn’t happen to him again. He practically oozed the kind of irritating confidence bordering on arrogance of a man who expected everything to go his way. Who would make everything go his way.
He was in for a surprise this time. He was going to have to go, and that was that. She was in creative mode—or trying desperately to be in creative mode—and she knew how easily the muse could be derailed. She had a deadline to meet. She had to stand as strong as him. This cottage was hers, and she was not leaving it!
“I doubt an agreement that is satisfactory to both of us is possible,” she said.
“Thus the invention of contracts.”
With his contracts and his annoying confidence, Allie decided she didn’t like him at all. And that was a good thing. So much easier to make him go.
Wasn’t possession nine-tenths of the law?
She opened her mouth to tell him—Allie, show no weakness, particularly to a man like this—but before she could say a single word, he was back out the door. The screen slapped shut behind him, and she went to see what had caught his attention so suddenly.
His keys still hung there. Maybe she could pull them out, slam the door and lock him out? She could imagine, with some satisfaction, the astonished look of disbelief that would bring to his unfairly handsome features.
Childish, she told herself, but in the face of his arrogance, his absolute certainty that he was right and she was wrong, she could not help but feel a certain glee at the prospect.
But when she moved to the front door fully intending to remove his keys, she saw what had pulled him out of her house with such urgency.
Allie’s mouth fell open, her resolve evaporated and her heart dropped. Now what?
Just as Allie had first suspected, when she had seen Sam glance back out that door and hold it open, Allie’s home invader had not arrived alone. No wonder, even as he spoke to her, he had been keeping a sharp eye on the front yard.
He was now crouched beside a small boy, who was trying to unstick a red wagon that had gone off the concrete pathway, and had its two side wheels imbedded in the soft dirt of the somewhat neglected flower bed that ran beside it.
The child was adorable: he looked to be maybe three, with a head full of tangled blond curls and the sturdy build of a tiny wrestler. Dimpled legs poked out of denim overall shorts. The chubby legs ended in tiny hiking boots. He had on a red T-shirt, and a faded superhero cape, one hem drooping, was draped over his shoulders and tied under his chin.
The wagon contained a small suitcase and a stuffed toy of some sort. The child was determined to free it himself.
He furiously waved off Sam, who could have freed the wagon in less than a second. Sam stood back, hands up, in the universal sign of surrender.
Allie realized it might be just a wee bit petty to take delight in seeing the self-assured Mr. Walker taking his orders from a child.
The little boy grunted and pulled, but the wagon did not move. But the stuffy did. It lifted its head, gazed with a combination of adoration and long-suffering at the child—an expression nearly identical to the man’s, actually—then sighed, and put its head back down. Not a stuffy, then, but a dog. It looked like a cross between a cocker spaniel and a red feather duster.
