it was more personal than that. Maybe Alan Francisco didn’t want her as a friend. He’d certainly implied as much last night.
Mia looked back at her car, still sitting in the middle of the parking lot. “Well,” she said, feeling strangely awkward. She had no problem holding her own with this man when he came on too strong or acted rudely. But when he simply stared at her like this, with no expression besides the faintest glimmer of his ever-present anger on his face, she felt off balance and ill at ease, like a schoolgirl with an unrequited crush. “I’m glad we found—you found Natasha…” She glanced back at her car again, more to escape his scrutiny than to reassure herself it was still there. “Can I give you a lift back to the condo?”
Frisco shook his head. “No, thanks.”
“I could adjust the seat, see if I could make it more comfortable for you to—”
“No, we’ve got some shopping to do.”
“But Natasha’s all wet.”
“She’ll dry. Besides, I could use the exercise.”
Exercise? Was he kidding? “What you could use is a week or two off your feet, in bed.”
Just like that, he seemed to come alive, his mouth twisting into a sardonic half smile. His eyes sparked with heat and he lowered his voice, leaning forward to speak directly into her ear. “Are you volunteering to keep me there? I knew sooner or later you’d change your mind.”
He knew nothing of the sort. He’d only said that to rattle and irritate her. Mia refused to let him see just how irritated his comment had made her. Instead, she stepped even closer, looking up at him, letting her gaze linger on his mouth before meeting his eyes, meaning to make him wonder, and to make him squirm before she launched her attack.
But she launched nothing as she looked into his eyes. His knowing smile had faded, leaving behind only heat. It magnified, doubling again and again, increasing logarithmically as their gazes locked, burning her down to her very soul. She knew that he could see more than just a mere reflection of his desire in her eyes, and she knew without a doubt that she’d given too much away. This fire that burned between them was not his alone.
The sun was beating down on them and her mouth felt parched. She tried to swallow, tried to moisten her dry lips, tried to walk away. But she couldn’t move.
He reached out slowly. She could see it coming—he was going to touch her, pull her close against the hard muscles of his chest and cover her mouth with his own in a heated, heart-stopping, nuclear meltdown of a kiss.
But he touched her only lightly, tracing the path of a bead of sweat that had trailed down past her ear, down her neck and across her collarbone before it disappeared beneath the collar of her T-shirt. He touched her gently, only with one finger, but in many ways it was far more sensual, far more intimate than even a kiss.
The world seemed to spin and Mia almost reached for him. But sanity kicked in, thank God, and instead she backed away.
“When I change my mind,” she said, her voice barely louder than a whisper, “it’ll be a cold day in July.”
She turned on legs that were actually trembling—trembling—and headed toward her car. He made no move to follow, but as she got inside and drove away, she could see him in the rearview mirror, still watching her.
Had she convinced him? She doubted it. She wasn’t sure she’d even managed to convince herself.
CHAPTER FIVE
“OKAY, TASH,” FRISCO called down from the second-floor landing where he’d finally finished lashing the framework to the railing. “Ready for a test run?”
She nodded, and he let out the crank and lowered the rope down to her.
The realization had come to him while they were grocery shopping. He wasn’t going to be able to carry the bags of food he bought up the stairs to his second-floor condominium. And Tasha, as helpful as she tried to be when she wasn’t wandering off, couldn’t possibly haul all the food they needed up a steep flight of stairs. She could maybe handle one or two lightweight bags, but certainly no more than that.
But Frisco had been an expert in unconventional warfare for the past ten years. He could come up with alternative, creative solutions to damn near any situation—including this one. Of course, this wasn’t war, which made it that much easier. Whatever he came up with, he wasn’t going to have to pull it off while underneath a rain of enemy bullets.
It hadn’t taken him long to come up with a solution. He and Tasha had stopped at the local home building supply store and bought themselves the fixings for a rope-and-pulley system. Frisco could’ve easily handled just a rope to pull things up to the second-floor landing, but with a crank and some pulleys, Natasha would be able to use it, too.
The plastic bags filled with the groceries they’d bought were on the ground, directly underneath the rope to which he’d attached a hook.
“Hook the rope to one of the bags,” Frisco commanded his niece, leaning over the railing. “Right through the handles—that’s right.”
Mia Summerton was watching him.
He’d been hyperaware of her from the moment he and Tash had climbed out of the taxi with all of their groceries. She’d been back in her garden again, doing God knows what and watching him out of the corner of her eye.
She’d watched as he’d transferred the frozen food and perishables into a backpack he’d bought and carried them inside. She’d watched as he’d done the same with the building supplies and set them out on the second-floor landing. She’d watched as he awkwardly lowered himself down to sit on the stairs with his tool kit and began to work.
She’d watched, but she’d been careful never to let him catch her watching.
Just the same, he felt her eyes following him. And he could damn near smell her awareness.
Man, whatever it was that they’d experienced back on the beach… He shook his head in disbelief. Whatever it was, he wanted some more. A whole lot of more. She’d looked at him, and he’d been caught in an amazing vortex of animal magnetism. He hadn’t been able to resist touching her, hadn’t been able to stop thinking about exactly where that droplet of perspiration had gone after it had disappeared from view beneath her shirt. It hadn’t taken much imagination to picture it traveling slowly between her breasts, all the way down to her softly indented belly button.
He’d wanted to dive in after it.
It had been damn near enough to make him wonder if he’d seriously underrated smiley-face-endowed notes.
But he’d seen the shock in Mia’s eyes. She hadn’t expected the attraction that had surged between them. She didn’t want it, didn’t want him. Certainly not for a single, mind-blowing sexual encounter, and definitely not for anything longer term. That was no big surprise.
“I can’t get it,” Natasha called up to him, her face scrunched with worry.
Mia had kept to herself ever since they’d arrived home. Her offers to help had been noticeably absent. But now she stood up, apparently unable to ignore the note of anxiety in Tasha’s voice.
“May
