* *
Phoebe had never once seen Teddy’s advent into her life as anything but a blessing. Until today. Collecting herself as best she could, she walked down the hall and scooped him out of his crib. “Well, that was a short nap,” she said with a laugh that bordered on hysteria. Teddy, happy now that she had rescued him, chortled as he clutched her braid. His not-so-nice baby smell warned her that he had a messy diaper, probably the reason he had awakened so soon.
She changed him and then put him on a blanket on the floor while she tidied his room. Even as she automatically carried out the oft-repeated chores, her mind was attuned to Leo’s absence. He had left without a coat. Fortunately, he was wearing a thick sweater, and thankfully, the temperature had moderated today, climbing already into the low fifties.
She was appalled and remorseful about what had happened, all of it her fault. Leo, ever the gentleman, had done his best to be levelheaded about confronting their attraction amidst the present situation. But Phoebe, like a lonely, deprived spinster, had practically attacked him. It was no wonder things had escalated.
Men, unless they were spoken for—and sometimes not even then—were not physically wired to refuse women who threw out such blatant invitations. And that’s what Phoebe had done. She had made it abysmally clear that she was his for the taking.
Leo had reacted. Of course. What red-blooded, straight, unattached male wouldn’t? Oh, God. How was she going to face him? And how did they deal with this intense but ill-timed attraction?
A half hour later she held Teddy on her hip as she put away the abundance of food Leo’s chef friend had sent. She decided to have the chimichangas for lunch. They were already prepared. All she had to do was thaw them according to the directions and then whip up some rice and salad to go alongside.
An hour passed, then two. She only looked out the window a hundred times or so. What if he was lost? Or hurt? Or sick? Her stomach cramped, thinking of the possibilities.
* * *
Leo strode through the forest until his legs ached and his lungs gasped for air. It felt good to stretch his physical limits, to push himself and know that he was okay. Nothing he did, however, erased his hunger for Phoebe. At first he had been suspicious of his immediate fascination. His life had recently weathered a rough patch, and feminine companionship hadn’t even been on his radar. That was how he rationalized his response to Phoebe, even on the day they’d met.
But he knew it was more than that. She was a virus in his blood, an immediate, powerful affliction that was in its own way as dangerous as his heart attack. Phoebe had the power to make his stay here either heaven or hell. And if it were the latter, he might as well cut and run right now.
But even as he thought it, his ego and his libido shouted a vehement hell, no. Phoebe might be calling the shots as his landlady, but when it came to sex, the decision was already made. He and Phoebe were going to be lovers. The only question was when and where.
His head cleared as he walked, and the physical exertion gradually drained him to the point that he felt able to go back. He had followed the creek upstream for the most part, not wanting to get lost. In some places the rhododendron thickets were so dense he was forced to climb up and around. When he finally halted, he was partway up the mountainside. To his surprise, he could see a tiny section of Phoebe’s chimney sticking up out of the woods.
Perhaps Luc had been right. Here, in an environment so antithetical to Leo’s own, he saw himself in a new light. His world was neither bad nor good in comparison to Phoebe’s. But it was different.
Was that why Phoebe had come here? To get perspective? And if so, had she succeeded? Would she ever go back to her earlier life?
He sat for a moment on a large granite boulder, feeling the steady pumping of his heart. Its quiet, regular beats filled him with gratitude for everything he had almost lost. Perhaps it was the nature of humans to take life for granted. But now, like the sole survivor of a plane crash, he felt obliged to take stock, to search for meaning, to tear apart the status quo and see if it was really worthy of his devotion.
Amidst those noble aspirations, he shamefully acknowledged if only to himself that he yearned to be back at his desk. He ran a billion-dollar company, and ran it well. He was Leo Cavallo, CFO of a textile conglomerate that spanned the globe. Like a recovering addict, his hands itched for a fix...for the pulse-pumping, mentally stimulating, nonstop schedule that he understood so intimately.
He knew people used workaholic as a pejorative term, often with a side order of pitying glances and shakes of the head. But, honest to God, he didn’t see anything wrong with having passion for a job and doing it well. It irritated the hell out of him to imagine all the balls that were being dropped in his absence. Not that Luc and the rest of the team weren’t as smart as he was...it wasn’t that.
Leo, however, gave Cavallo his everything.
In December, the prep work began for year-end reports. Who was paying attention to those sorts of things while Leo was AWOL? It often became necessary to buy or sell some smaller arms of the business for the appropriate tax benefit. The longer he thought about it, the more agitated he became. He could feel his blood pressure escalating.
As every muscle in his body tensed, he had to force himself to take deep breaths, to back away from an invisible cliff. In the midst of his agitation, an inquisitive squirrel paused not six inches from Leo’s boot to scrabble in the dirt for an acorn. Chattering his displeasure with the human who had invaded his territory, the small animal worked furiously, found the nut and scampered away.
Leo smiled. And in doing so, felt the burden he carried shift and ease. He inhaled sharply, filling his lungs with clean air. As a rule, he thrived on the sounds of traffic and the ceaseless hum of life in a big city. Yet even so, he found himself noticing the stillness of the woods. The almost imperceptible presence of creatures who went about their business doing whatever they were created to do.
They were lucky, Leo mused wryly. No great soul-searching for them. Merely point A to point B. And again. And again.
He envied them their singularity of purpose, though he had no desire to be a hamster on a wheel. As a boy, his teachers had identified him as gifted. His parents had enrolled him in special programs and sent him to summer camps in astrophysics and geology and other erudite endeavors.
All of it interested and engaged him, but he never quite fit in anywhere. His size and athletic prowess made him a target of suspicion in the realm of the nerds, and his academic successes and love for school excluded him from the jock circle.
His brother became, and still was, his best friend. They squabbled and competed as siblings did, but their bond ran deep. Which was why Leo was stuck here, like a storybook character, lost in the woods. Because Luc had insisted it was important. And Leo owed his brother. If Luc believed Leo needed this time to recover, then it was probably so.
Rising to his feet and stretching, he shivered hard. After his strenuous exercise, he had sat too long, and now he was chilled and stiff. Suddenly, he wanted nothing more than to see Phoebe. He couldn’t share his soul-searching and his minor epiphanies with her, because he hadn’t yet come clean about his health. But he wanted to be with her. In any way and for any amount of time fate granted him.
Though it was not his way, he made an inward vow to avoid the calendar and to concentrate on the moment. Perhaps there was more to Leo Cavallo than met the eye. If so, he had two months to figure it out.
* * *
Phoebe
