“Sorry,” he said quickly. “I’ve got an errand to run, but I should be back by the time you wake up.”
As he backed out of the room, she quickly dug in her duffel for eye drops and her good blindfold. She never spent this much time in daylight, and for good reason. She’d forgotten how bad direct sunlight hurt. She put in the anesthetizing eye drops and sighed with relief as they numbed her burning eyeballs. She popped a pain pill for her smashing headache, pulled a velvet blindfold over her eyes and fell asleep to visions of a tall, enigmatic stranger who was far too sexy for his own good and not her type at all.
She woke to the sounds of quiet swearing from the living room. Based on the rosy light that made her squint as she peeled up a corner of her blindfold, it looked to be near sunset. But just to be safe, she donned her sunglasses before taking off her blindfold all the way.
The swearing led her to Gray, who was seated on the living-room floor with nylon cord tangled all around him. And yet, he still managed to look … noble.
“Making your own fishing net there, Sparky?” she teased.
“Putting together a new curtain rod for your room. But these instructions stink. They’re really, really badly translated into English.”
“And I need a new curtain rod why?”
“I got you some blackout shades, but you need something to hang them on.”
The thoughtfulness of the gesture pierced her defenses almost painfully. People didn’t do nice things for Sammie Jo Jessup. Ever. She knelt down beside him and said softly, “That’s incredibly sweet of you. Thank you.”
He looked up in surprise and their gazes met. She rocked back on her heels, startled at what she saw there. It was like looking into the depths of … nothing. It wasn’t that he was a psychopath. She’d looked into the eyes of guys like that a time or two. After all, punks and jerks were her specialty.
Rather, it was as if everything Gray was had been stripped away from him. As if he was completely, utterly lost. He wasn’t caught in the abyss. He was the abyss.
Shaken, she offered lamely, “You don’t have to bother with a curtain rod.” She looked into his eyes again, and this time saw only a wall of gray-green. Had she been hallucinating there for a minute? She mumbled, “If you have a roll of duct tape, just tape the curtain to the wall. Minimizes leakage of light.”
“But it won’t be very attractive.”
She shrugged. “I’m more about functionality than beauty.”
“That’s too bad,” he remarked as he climbed to his feet. “Life’s too short not to enjoy its beauty.”
The words made sense, but they felt recited. Like he’d heard them before and was parroting them back with no conviction or real understanding. What in the heck was going on with him? Is this why Jeff had sent her out here? To rescue his buddy?
Gray fetched a roll of duct tape from a drawer in the kitchen and she followed him to her bedroom. Bemused, she held the fabric in place as he neatly taped the curtains to the wall. Their shoulders brushed as he taped his way across the top of the window frame, and a strange little shiver of pleasure washed over her.
That was weird. She’d just dumped the latest loser, Ricky “The Rocket” Rossini, and was still deep in her mandatory, man-hating, post-breakup phase. There weren’t supposed to be any shivers, thank you very much.
Gray cleared his throat as he stepped back from her hastily. “I got weather stripping for around your door frame, too. It’s the self-adhesive kind and shouldn’t take long to install.”
Stunned, she stood there in the middle of the tiny room and stared at the open doorway through which he’d disappeared. When he came back, holding two rolls of narrow foam stripping, she demanded, “Why are you going to all this trouble for me? You barely know me.”
He stared at her and looked downright confused. “Because it’s the polite thing to do?”
She scoffed. “What’s your angle? What do you want from me?”
He drew himself up to his full height, clearly not missing her implication. “I don’t want anything from you,” he snapped. “Not in that way. If you can help me figure out what Luke Zimmer and this Proctor guy are up to so we can both go back to our regularly scheduled lives, that would be fantastic. But that’s it.”
He didn’t give off a gay vibe. Was it possible he was straight and actually wasn’t interested in her? Truly? Every guy wanted to do her. It was just a fact of life she’d learned to live with. But this one … didn’t?
She wasn’t quite sure how she felt about that. She supposed she ought to be vastly relieved, particularly since they were going to be working together. But somehow, she wasn’t. Man-hating phase, darn it. She would be relieved he wasn’t panting after her, and that’s all there was to it.
“I’m glad we’ve got that clear,” she declared. Yup. Relieved. That was her. Except something buried deep in her gut felt … restless … at the notion.
“Hungry?” he asked casually.
“Uhh, sure.” Dang, a man who could cook was smexy—smart and sexy!
“What’s your pleasure, ma’am?”
Her gaze snapped up to his, startled.
“For supper,” he clarified dryly.
Darn it. So much for relieved. “I prefer vegan. But I’ll take simple vegetarian.”
He snorted. “You are going to stick out like a sore thumb around here. This is the land of hardcore carnivores.”
“I’ll be fine with a salad for now if you’ve got the stuff. I’ll go shopping later and lay in my own food supply.”
“Grocery closes at nine,” he commented from deep within the refrigerator. He emerged with an armload of salad fixings.
Great. How was she supposed to live her night-owl existence in a town that rolled up its sidewalks and went to bed about when she was waking up? And she wouldn’t even have satellite TV or streaming, Wi-Fi internet to keep her company in the wee hours. This place was going to suck.
She hopped off the stool. “If you’ve got a knife, I’ll start chopping. But you’re going to have to move those pictures so I can fix my breakfast.”
“Would you like an omelet to go with that salad?”
“You know how to make omelets?”
He shrugged. “Sure. They’re not that hard.”
Hah. She had literally ruined a pot while boiling water before. The crash of the Hindenburg came to mind when she thought about her one and only try at omelet preparation. As she recalled, a fire extinguisher had been necessary before it was all said and done.
“What kind of salad dressing do you like?” he asked.
“Anything sharp and tangy.”
“Should’ve
