when they were all growing up—but he knew Brody had stowed his gear in there.
Conner switched on the TV, then switched it off again, in the next moment. In his opinion, TV sucked, for the most part. He did enjoy watching athletic women in bikinis “surviving” in some hostile environment, but that was about all.
He hauled his shirt off over his head, to save himself the trouble of unbuttoning it, and tossed the garment to one side. Then he sat down on the edge of the bed, which was way too big for one person, and got out of his boots and socks. Standing up again, he dispensed with his jeans, too, and stood there, in the altogether, thinking Brody wasn’t so far wrong, implying that he didn’t have a life.
In the end, he tossed back the covers, crawled between them and reached for the thick biography of Thomas Jefferson sitting on the nightstand. He sighed. Another night with nobody but a dead president for company.
Yee-freakin’-haw.
* * *
TRICIA OPENED ONE EYE—how could it possibly be morning already?—and slowly tuned in to her surroundings, glimmer by glimmer, sound by sound, scent by scent.
The sun was shining. Rain dripped from the eaves, but no longer pelted the roof. The timer on the coffeepot beeped, and the tantalizing aroma of fresh brew teased her nose.
Valentino approached, laid his muzzle on her pillow, inches from her face, and whined almost inaudibly.
Something, somewhere, was clanging.
Tricia sat up, glanced at her alarm clock, which she’d forgotten to set the night before, and sucked in a breath. She’d overslept. And that wasn’t like her at all.
Clang, clang, clang.
Since she was wearing a sweat suit, and she figured that was the next best thing to being fully dressed, Tricia didn’t bother with a robe. Nor did she pause to put on the ugly pink slippers. Sasha, still clad in pink pajamas, joined her in the kitchen.
The child’s eyes were big. “What is that?” she asked, nearly in a whisper.
“I’ll find out,” Tricia said, annoyed but not alarmed. She went to the sink and, wadding up a dish towel, wiped a circle into the steam covering the window so she could peer out at the backyard.
The driveway was empty.
“Is something going to blow up?” Sasha fretted, probably imagining an antiquated furnace, or even a steam boiler with a pressure gauge, chugging cartoonishly away in Natty’s basement, building up to a roof-raising blast.
“No, sweetie,” Tricia said, offering what she hoped was a reassuring smile. “I’m sure nothing is going to explode. This is an old house, and sometimes the pipes make odd noises. So do the floorboards.”
“Oh,” Sasha said, clearly unconvinced.
Valentino, meanwhile, was standing very close to Sasha, actually leaning into her side. Clearly, he was no guard dog.
“Wait here, while I go downstairs and have a look around,” Tricia told them both.
Sasha swallowed visibly, looking small and vulnerable, and then nodded.
The clanging resumed, intermittent and muffled.
Tricia descended the inside stairway and followed the sound through Natty’s chilly rooms to the kitchen.
Silence.
Then the clang came again, this time from directly under her feet.
Tricia started slightly, then after gathering her resolve, marched over to Natty’s basement door. She barely registered the rapid rush of footsteps on the wooden stairs beyond—she hadn’t had coffee yet—and she’d turned the knob and pulled before it occurred to her that the idea might not have been a good one.
A squeak scratched its way up her windpipe and past her vocal cords when she found herself staring directly into Conner Creed’s smiling face. Because he was still on the basement stairs, they were at eye level.
And that alone was disconcerting.
“Sorry,” he said, clearly delighted by her expression. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“What are you doing here?” The squeak had turned to a squawk, but at least she could speak coherently now. Tricia’s heart seemed to be trying to crash through her rib cage.
Conner held up a roll of gray duct tape in one hand and a wrench—no doubt the source of the clanging sounds—in the other. “Plumbing?” he asked, as though he wasn’t entirely sure what he’d been doing and wanted Tricia to affirm it for him.
She folded her arms, foolishly barring his way into the kitchen. “You could have knocked,” she said.
Conner lifted one shoulder, lowered it again. His grin didn’t falter. “Natty called me last night and asked me to wrap the pipes. I crawled around under the house with a flashlight for a while, making sure there weren’t any obvious leaks, and then I checked the situation in the basement.” He paused, ran his eyes lightly over Tricia’s rumpled hair, coming loose from its braid, before letting his gaze rest on her lips for one tingly moment. “The padlock on the cellar door probably rusted through years ago. I didn’t need the key Natty told me about.”
At last, Tricia found the presence of mind to back up so Conner could step into the kitchen. Now he stood a head taller.
“I’ll be happy to replace it,” he added. His eyes narrowed a little as he watched her, as if he’d suddenly noticed something new and disturbing about her.
“Replace what?” she asked.
The grin returned, faintly insolent and, at the same time, affable. Even friendly.
“The padlock?” he prompted, in the same guessing-game tone he’d used moments before.
It was the most ordinary conversation—about padlocks and plumbing, for Pete’s sake. So why did she feel like a shy debutante about to step onto the dance floor at her coming-out ball?
“Oh,” she finally managed. “Right. The padlock.”
Natty’s kitchen was frigidly cold, and yet, because they were standing within a few feet of each other, the hard heat coming off Conner’s body made Tricia feel as though she were standing in front of a blazing bonfire.
Or was she the source of it?
Conner set the duct tape and the wrench aside on a countertop, rested his hands on his hips. “Will you be joining us for the trail ride on Sunday?” he asked.
Not for the first time, Tricia had a strange sense of needing to translate the things this man said from some other language before she could grasp their meaning. “I—guess,” she said, recalling in the next instant that she’d promised Sasha the outing, and backing out wasn’t an option.
“But—?” he asked, watching her.
She finally rustled up a smile, but it felt flimsy on her mouth and wouldn’t stick. “It’s just that I’ve never
