makes you say that?’
‘Your hands, for a start. Not calloused enough.’
* * *
‘I’m not sure that’s a compliment,’ Art drawled, glancing at his hands. The last time he’d done anything really manual had been as a teenager when he’d had a summer job working on a building site. He recalled that his father had been going through divorce number three right about then.
‘Office jobs?’
‘You ask a lot of questions.’
‘No more than you,’ Rose pointed out and Art grinned at her, dark eyes never leaving her face.
He hadn’t thought through the details of why he was here and it hadn’t occurred to him that his presence would be met with suspicion. He was having to revise his easy assumption that he could just show up, mumble something vague and get by without any questions.
‘I’ve been known to sit behind a desk now and again. I confess I’m interested in the details of a sit-in, in what motivates people to give up their home comforts for a cause.’
‘You’re not a reporter, are you?’
‘Would you object if I told you that I was?’
‘No. The more coverage the better...’
‘Well, sorry to disappoint but,’ Art drawled with complete honesty, ‘I personally can’t stand the breed. Nosy and intrusive.’
‘But excellent when it comes to getting a message out there to the wider public.’
‘They’re a fickle lot,’ Art countered. ‘You think that they’re on your side and you usually open yourself up to inevitable disappointment. If you’re going to make me dinner and you won’t allow me to buy anything in, then the least I can do is help.’
‘Okay. You can chop vegetables and tell me why you’re interested in what’s happening here.’ Rose rummaged in the fridge and extracted a random assortment of vegetables, fetched a couple of chopping boards and nodded to Art to take his place alongside her. ‘Asking questions is what I do for a living.’ She smiled, not looking at him. ‘So you’ll have to excuse me if I’m asking you a lot of them.’
Art was busy looking at the bundle of onions and tomatoes neatly piled in front of him. He held the knife and began fumbling his way to something that only laughably resembled food preparation. He only realised that she had stopped what she had been doing and was staring at him when she said with amusement, ‘You haven’t got a clue, have you?’
‘These bloody things are making my eyes sting.’
‘They have a nasty habit of doing that,’ Rose agreed. ‘And you’re in for a rough ride if you intend to take a couple of hours dicing them. By the way, you need to dice them a whole lot smaller.’
‘You’re having fun, aren’t you?’
‘I’m thinking you look like a man who doesn’t know his way round a kitchen very well.’
‘Like I said, cooking has never appealed.’
‘Not even when you’re relaxing with someone and just having fun preparing a meal together?’
‘I don’t go there,’ Art said flatly. He gave the onion a jaundiced look and decided to attack the tomatoes, which seemed a safer bet. ‘I don’t do domestic.’
‘You don’t do domestic? What does that mean?’
‘It means that I don’t share those cosy moments you’ve just described.’
‘Why not?’ she asked lightly.
‘I don’t do personal questions either.’
Looking into the ancient mirrored tiles that lined the counter, Art noted her pink cheeks. He met her eyes to find her staring at him, her pink cheeks going even pinker. She looked away hurriedly to continue slicing and dicing. Strands of her wildly curly hair fell around her face and she blew some of them out of her eyes, blatantly making sure not to look in those mirrored squares in case she caught his eye again.
‘You don’t do cosy and domestic,’ Rose said slowly, swivelling to lean against the counter, arms folded, eyes narrowed, ‘and you don’t do personal questions. So, if I’m joining the dots correctly, you don’t invite women to ask you why you’re not prepared to play happy families with them.’
‘Something like that.’ Art shrugged. He was sharp enough to realise that there was no way he would ever get her onside if he came across as the sort of unliberated dinosaur she would clearly despise.
‘No cooking together...no watching telly entwined on a sofa...’
‘I definitely do the entwined bit,’ Art joked. Rose failed to return his smile.
‘You don’t want to encourage any woman to think you’re going to be in it for the long haul because you’re a commitment-phobe.’
‘I could lie and tell you that you’re way off target there,’ Art drawled, holding her stare, ‘but I won’t do you the disservice.’
‘I like that,’ Rose said slowly, not taking her eyes off him.
‘Which bit?’
‘The honesty bit. In my line of work, I see a lot of scumbags who are happy to lie through their teeth to get what they want. It’s laudable that you’re at least honest when it comes to saying what you think.’
‘You’re giving me more credit than I’m due.’ Art stopped what he was doing and let his eyes rove over her. Her skin was satiny smooth and make-up-free. ‘I like the way you look,’ he murmured. ‘I like the fact that you’re completely natural. No warpaint. No pressing need to clone yourself on the lines of a certain doll. Really works.’
* * *
Rose glanced at him and looked away hurriedly. Those dark eyes, she thought, could open a lot of boxes and kick-start a whole host of chain reactions and she might not know how to deal with them.
Rose wasn’t ready for a relationship with anyone and she certainly wasn’t up for grabs when it came to any man who was a commitment-phobe. Thanks, but no thanks. Enjoying this man’s company was a wonderful distraction but anything more than that was not going to be on the table.
She had to shake herself mentally and laugh inwardly at her fanciful thoughts; it wasn’t as though she was in danger of any advances from this passing stranger, who had been nothing but open and polite with her!
And even if he had made any suggestive remarks then she would, of course, knock him back regardless of whether he was a drop of excitement in her otherwise pleasantly predictable life.
She was careful. When it came to men, she didn’t dive head first into the water because you never knew what was lurking under the surface.
With the electrifying feel of those dark eyes broodingly watching her, Rose breathed in deep
