manner had its desired effect; he could see her relax, could see he’d put her off-guard.
“That’s right,” she said. And added impulsively, “I have to admit that the last several months haven’t been easy. I’ve driven here every Friday after work, gone back to Seattle every Sunday night. It’s been awful, not being with Matthew through the week. I’ve missed him so much—but now we can be together all the time and I’m so happy about that. You’ll get to meet him in a minute,” she added with a smile. “He’s still asleep, but he should be wakening soon.”
She’d brought a lover here? Jordan stared at her incredulously. “He slept in this house last night?”
“Mmm.”
“He wasn’t in your bed!”
“I don’t let him into my bed every night—only when he’s whiny.”
“Whiny?” Good grief, what kind of a wimp was the guy!
“Look, I’m not expecting you to get involved with him. In fact, I’m assuming you won’t want to and I’d actually prefer that you didn’t. But it would be nice if you could send him a postcard once in a while when you’re abroad—”
“Are you out of your mind? I want nothing to do with him. I don’t even want to see him!”
His vehemence obviously jolted her; but at the same time he saw an expression of relief in her eyes.
“Then that will make everything easier for me,” she said. “I was afraid that if you once held him in your arms you might fall in love with him and want him for yourself.”
“What the hell do you—”
“I’m sorry, but try to see it from my point of view. I’ve been trying to contact you for months so we could straighten everything out but when I didn’t hear from you, I decided to forge on with my own plans on the assumption that you wanted nothing to do with the situation. You can’t blame me, since you didn’t even bother to come home for the funeral! And since you told me at the wedding that you’d never forgive me for supporting Tom and Janine when they wanted to marry, I figured I’d never see you again.”
“My sister was barely eighteen,” he snapped. “Your brother got her pregnant when she was little more than a child herself. He was twenty-four, and took advantage of a girl who was immature and—”
“They married because they were in love.”
“There’s no point in discussing this now. It’s water under the bridge. But you’re right about one thing. I’ll never forgive you for the part you played—”
“I don’t want your forgiveness. Nor do I need it. As for Tom, you never did understand him. You didn’t take the time to get to know him and if you had, you’d have learned what a fine and decent man he was.”
“No decent man would have—” He sliced his hand down in a dismissive gesture. “We’re only rehashing what we said on their wedding day. Let’s get back on track. Tell me about these plans of yours…to live in this house.”
Before answering, she poured her coffee and set the yellow ceramic mug on the table. When she spoke, it was quietly.
“Tom and Janine had signed the lease for a year and on their death it still had several months to run so I took over the payments. The lease came up for renewal last month and I signed the contract for another year at the same rate.” She toyed abstractedly with her thin gold necklace. “It’s a beautiful house, I can’t imagine why the owner lets it out so cheaply. I asked the woman at the Realty Management company but she didn’t know. All she could tell me was that the arrangements had been made through the owner’s lawyer.”
“Well, that all sounds fine and dandy.” Jordan’s lips thinned. “But ‘there’s many a slip ’twixt the cup and the lip’! And I see one little obstacle in your way.”
A frown crinkled her creamy skin into a neat little V between her eyebrows. “What do you mean?”
“Sit down,” he said, “and drink your coffee before it gets cold. I’m going up to have my shower. When I come back down again…I have something to tell you.”
Mallory stared after him as he left the kitchen. What on earth did he mean: an obstacle? It had sounded ominous, yet she had everything under control…didn’t she? The house was hers for at least the next eleven months, and Matthew would be hers forever—his uncle had made it more than plain that he had no interest in the child.
She sat down and drank her coffee. She usually loved that first kick of it the morning, but today it had no effect.
She couldn’t shake a dreadful feeling of foreboding.
She was still trying, without success, to figure out what Jordan Caine could possibly be going to tell her, when she heard the sound of a vehicle chugging up the drive.
Getting up, she looked out the window, over the garden fence, and saw a truck parking behind the Lexus. On the panel, it said AB Movers, the company she’d hired to cart her belongings from Seattle.
Well, at least, she reflected dryly as she hurried to open the front door, something was going according to plan!
CHAPTER TWO
JORDAN HALTED abruptly on the landing. When he’d come upstairs earlier, the front hall had been empty except for a D-shaped phone table and a spindly chair beside it. Now it was crammed with boxes and furniture and all sorts of other paraphernalia…and in the midst of the chaos stood Mallory.
“What the devil’s going on?” he called down.
She looked up. “My things have arrived from Seattle.”
Her things? Dammit, this was an added complication and one he didn’t need. He fought to contain his intense frustration as he glowered at the cardboard boxes…and the several bookcases, the chairs, the pine desk…an oil painting, a dozen potted plants, a set of wicker furniture—
Two men in beige overalls appeared in the doorway, their name tags proclaiming them to be Archie and Rock. Archie and Rock were carrying a teal-blue sofa.
“Where do you want this, miss?” asked Archie.
“In there, please.” Mallory indicated the sitting room, to her right.
As the men hefted the sofa into the room, Jordan pounded down the stairs.
“Mallory—”
She turned to him, and he saw that her cheeks were flushed, her forehead moist. “I know you want to talk to me.” She shoved back a clump of auburn hair that had tumbled from her topknot. “But it’ll have to wait till the men have finished—”
“Get rid of it.”
“I beg your pardon?”
He waved a hand around the hall. “This stuff can’t stay here. Tell the men to take it away.”
She looked at him as if he were speaking in tongues. “Would you
