what’s more, he wouldn’t allow her to touch him. End of discussion.
“I’ll bring in some better clothes for you,” he said as he headed out of the room. Because if he had a look at her walking around in that tight skirt and that sheer blouse for the next three or four days...
He was a strong man. But even he wasn’t sure he was that strong. Not if she was going to look all soft and vulnerable as well as sexy.
“Thank you,” she said again in that delicate voice.
No, he wasn’t going to think of her as vulnerable. Or delicate. It was probably just an act designed to get him to open up to her.
He hurried to his parents’ room and dug out some appropriate clothing—long underwear, jeans, shirts and sweaters and socks. His mom was a little shorter and a lot curvier than Natalie Baker, but her things should fit. Better than anything of his, anyway. She’d swim in one of his sweaters.
He knocked on the guest room door and, when no one replied, he cracked it open. Good. The bathroom door was closed and he heard splashing. She was in the shower, then. Standing nude under the hot water, maybe even running the soap over her body, her bare breasts, her...
He hoped she’d locked that damn door. He laid the clothes out on the bed and almost scooped up her things to take them down to the laundry room to dry. But then he caught sight of the lacy bra and matching panties—pale pink, like a confection that she’d worn on her body—and he drew back his hand as if he’d been burned. Okay, so now he was going to not think about her body wearing those things. And he also had to not think about her not wearing those things.
Oh, God. This was a disaster in the making.
He forced his thoughts away from the woman steaming up the shower. He had practical things that he needed to get done. It was obvious she had no idea how to ride out a blizzard, which meant it was up to him to keep them both from freezing to death.
He made sure that every other door on the second floor was shut, then he hurried downstairs, pausing to snag the family photos off the wall. He shoved those into the coat closet. Luckily, he’d laid a fire in the fireplace before he’d gone to town this morning, so all he had to do was light it. Once it was going, he went to the kitchen. He had a roast in a slow cooker, but he turned on the gas oven anyway, just to build up the heat in the house. Once the power went, the wind would sap any warmth from this room in a matter of minutes. And if he just left it on, he wouldn’t have to worry about lighting it with a match later.
He scrubbed a couple of potatoes and put them in the oven and then, after a moment of internal debate, dug an apple pie out of the freezer and put it in the oven, too.
Every fall, his mom went into a frenzy of cooking and baking. CJ had long ago figured out that it was her way of coping with the guilt of leaving her only son alone during the holidays. He had an entire deep freeze full of casseroles and cobblers and meals in bags that all he had to do was heat up in the oven or the slow cooker. Pretty much the only thing she didn’t leave him was pizza and beer, which was why he’d headed to the store this morning after sending his hired hands home for the storm and cutting his chores short. If he was going to be snowed in for Christmas, he wanted a couple of pizzas to round out the menu.
Then he did another sweep of the downstairs. He pulled more photos from the wall and the mantel over the fireplace. These he carried back to the office—that had a door he could lock. If he could, he’d put the entire house in that room and bolt the door shut.
The parlor was where most of the photo albums were—it had a door, but not a lock. Well, he’d just have to keep her out of it. Much as he didn’t like it, he would have to stick to Natalie Baker like glue.
Finally, with dinner underway and as much of his life hidden as he could hide, he headed back up the stairs. Just as he reached the top, she opened her door and stepped out into the hall.
CJ’s breath caught in his throat. Gone was the too-polished, too-perfect celebrity. And in her place...
She’d pulled her hair into a low tail at the side. Her face was free of makeup, but somehow she looked even prettier. Softer, definitely.
That softness was dangerous. So was any question he was asking himself right now about whether or not she’d put the lacy pink panties back on.
So he did his best to focus on anything but that. “Better?” he asked in a gruff voice, but he didn’t need to ask because he could tell. The color had come back into her cheeks—a natural blush instead of an artfully applied one. Her hair was fair—more blond than it looked on-screen. Without the heavy layer of eye makeup, her eyes seemed wider, more crystal blue.
Bad. This was bad.
“Yes, thank you.” Even her voice sounded different now. True, she was no longer shivering with cold, but when she was on television, talking to the camera and interviewing stars, her voice had a certain cadence to it, low and husky. That was gone now.
CJ realized with a start that he might be looking at the real Natalie Baker. And he couldn’t do that. If he started thinking of her as a real person instead of a talking head, then he might get lost in those blue eyes.
Luckily, the storm saved him from himself. With a pop, all the lights went out. Natalie didn’t scream, but he heard her gasp in alarm.
“It’s all right,” he said, coming the rest of the way to get her. The hall was darker than normal because he’d shut the doors. “It’s okay. I’m right here.” He reached out to touch her—just to give her a reassuring pat on the shoulder. But when he did so, she latched onto his forearm with a tight, fearful grip.
He sucked in air and fought the sudden urge to wrap his arms around her and keep her safe. Dammit, she was getting to him.
“Sorry,” she said, loosening her grip—but not letting him go. “I guess I’m a little jumpy. I’m not normally this poorly prepared.”
CJ didn’t think he could believe she’d gotten stranded by accident. But whether or not her presence here had been planned didn’t change things, at least not for the next few days.
Suddenly, he was aware that they were standing in a mostly dark hallway, touching. He withdrew his hand. “We should grab the pillows and things.”
She jerked her head up in surprise. “What?”
“I’ve got a fire going downstairs in the living room. Once the snow stops, I’ll go outside and get the generator started, but until then we should stay in front of the fire.” He didn’t tell her that he had a fireplace in his room and that there was another one in his parents’ room. This wasn’t his first blizzard.
He wasn’t letting her sleep in his parents’ bed—or his. Absolutely no sharing of beds.
He felt her exhale, the warmth of her breath around him. Almost without being aware of it, he started to lean toward her. “Is that so you can keep an eye on me?”
There wasn’t any point in lying. Besides, lying did not come naturally to him. Perhaps Hardwick Beaumont had been good at it, but Patrick Wesley was honest to a fault. The only thing he had ever lied about was CJ’s mother and CJ. In fact, CJ was sure that Pat had told the lie so many times about marrying Bell on leave and having CJ arrive before he’d been honorably discharged that both his parents believed it, heart and soul.
CJ
