scribbled on it. “Paul’s just the man for you.”
Wrong, she wanted to say. Most definitely. No one who appeared that cold, who radiated suppressed violence from every pore, was the man for her. Good heavens, he was the walking incarnation of her worst nightmare.
What had he been in for? she wondered. Terrifying innocent victims into early graves?
Her hand flew to her chest as she realized that, for the second time in several hours, she was scared to death. First her night intruder, now this behemoth who could have been cast as the Really Bad Dude in a biker movie. If she stayed in his presence any longer she was in danger of having a panic attack.
“Can’t you do it?” she asked Hank, aware that her voice held more than a tinge of desperation.
“Sorry. I’m real busy with the Gillespie place. Whole roof is rotted from last year’s ice storms. Got to finish that job before winter comes again.”
“Come on, Hank,” the other man growled, his voice low pitched and irritated as he turned away. “I’m making the lady uncomfortable.”
“No, wait.” Hank scurried out the door again and grabbed the large man’s arm to keep him from leaving. Then he turned to Kayla. “Miz Thorne,” he pleaded. “Give him a chance. He got a real raw deal. He wasn’t even guilty.”
“Isn’t that what they all say?” It was out of her mouth before she could stop it, and she was rewarded with a look of cold contempt from Fitzgerald.
“No,” Hank replied, pushing at the larger, extremely reluctant man, urging him closer to Kayla. “I mean, he really wasn’t guilty. He was framed. Paul here should never have gone to jail. He was innocent.”
These words, coupled with the sincerity on Hank’s face, made Kayla pause. She took in a deep breath then exhaled it, giving her time to regain her composure. Then she made herself return her gaze to the huge man one more time, trying for objectivity.
He stood just back from the doorway now, less than a foot from her, and, once again, the sheer size of him overwhelmed her. She was five eight, but she had to crane her neck upward to see his face. It remained unsmiling—his eyes were an unusual silver-gray, she noted—and his expression remained hard. It was obvious he was not trying to curry favor or to win her over in the least.
Which, for some odd reason, impressed her. Kayla knew what it was like to be categorized, unfairly judged and then disdained. Surely she owed it to herself, if not to him, to give the man a chance to be seen as an individual.
Besides, her reaction to the stranger wasn’t really about him at all, and she knew it. It was her custom to be rigorously honest with herself, and what she was dealing with here was old stuff, an automatic fear response to a highly testosterone-fueled member of the male sex, a subgroup she could live the rest of her life without, thank you very much, and be quite content.
“Well…” She clung to the doorknob, still vacillating between reason and the instinct to flee.
Just then, Fitzgerald glanced down at her feet—at her bunny slippers, for heaven’s sake, which she had forgotten she was wearing. When he looked up again, she glimpsed a brief flicker of something close to amusement in his eyes. In the next second it was gone, but she’d seen it, and it made her reconsider. She would keep an open mind, give the man a chance.
“Well, um,” she said again, “I think it’s time I washed my face and changed into actual clothes. Help yourself to coffee. Both of you.” She indicated the automatic coffeemaker she’d set last night before going to bed. “I’ll be right down.”
When the woman turned and hurried quickly out of the kitchen, Paul’s gaze followed her movements. Mouth suddenly dry, he licked his lips. He felt like a long-starving man in a room that contained a three-course meal, one he wasn’t allowed to eat, but dammit, no one could stop him from looking. Even in a long robe, her womanly shape was apparent. Slim and tall, with an indented waist and gently rounded hips, she moved gracefully, despite those ludicrous slippers
When he’d first seen her standing in the kitchen doorway, the front view had been just as arresting as the rear was now. Shoulder-length, straight, pale blond hair, sky-blue eyes in a broad, high-cheekboned face that wasn’t beautiful but not plain, either. Character, his father would have said. The woman had character.
She also had breasts—full, rounded ones. He could tell from the way the robe was tied and from the way they bounced gently as she moved.
Real breasts. Real hips. Real blue eyes. Not pictures. A real, live, graceful, damned attractive woman.
Who wasn’t too nuts about him.
Not that he blamed her. He was hard and he was angry. He had nothing left in him of politeness or manners. In the past four years, civilized behavior had been slowly leached out of him by his brutal surroundings, until he’d learned just to survive. However he could.
As Hank poured them two generous cups of coffee, Paul walked over the threshold into the kitchen, musing that he’d accomplished the first part of his purpose, gaining access to Kayla Thorne. But he’d been knocked for a loop by the woman who’d greeted them. She was so different than he’d expected her to be. In the pen they’d watched a lot of TV, and Kayla Thorne was all over the tube. She was famous. Infamous, really.
It was a great story. She’d been a special-duty nurse to millionaire Walter Thorne’s ailing wife. Then six months after the wife croaked, she’d married Thorne, who, at age seventy, was forty-five years her senior. There had been three years of marriage, but the age difference and polar-opposite economic status had given the tabloids and gossipmongers a field day. Thorne had died last year, and she’d been left a wealthy woman, sharing an estate of several million dollars with Thorne’s grown sons.
In all that time, Mrs. Thorne never gave an interview, never talked about herself, never defended herself. During the marriage and since. So the media had invented a personality for her, a cross between a wet-dream fantasy and money-grubbing schemer. Before the wife croaked, was there kinky stuff going on between the old man and the sexy nurse? they’d asked. Had the two of them murdered the first Mrs. Thorne? they’d implied. And finally, had she cold-bloodedly knocked off the old man?
She’d been officially cleared of any complicity in either death, both of which were from natural causes, but suspicion remained, even in Paul’s mind. Money could buy you all kinds of ways to cover up a crime. Besides, once he’d heard her maiden name, Vinovich, he’d associated her with lowlifes and liars. He had a lot of evidence and personal experience to back that up.
Judging from this first meeting, however, unless she was one hell of an actress, it appeared as though both his and the media’s assumptions had been off base. Kayla Thorne was softer than her pictures. More of a real person than a viper. The blond hair was natural, not bottle-created. She was polite, too, no diva, not one of those la-di-da, newly wealthy, lady-of-the-manor types.
The house was a surprise, too, from the outside for sure. Old, shabby even. Needed a third of the slats replaced, a new paint job. No servants that he could see. The kitchen was like the “before” of a before-and-after remodeling ad. Except for the shiny, new-looking coffeemaker and microwave oven, nothing in here had been updated in years. Old, bent pots and pans hung from hooks above the stove. The tile was chipped, the linoleum water-stained and ancient. One large, deep sink, probably installed in the 1930s. All that money and the whole place was ready for the wrecker’s ball. Damned strange was all he could say.
He
