At Home in Stone Creek (Silhouette Special Edition) by Linda Lael Miller Page B

arrived in an ambulance, day before yesterday. Is there a reason you didn’t mention this?”
    â€œYes, Counselor,” Ashley answered, “there is. Because I didn’t want you to know.”
    â€œWhy not?” Melissa sounded almost hurt.
    â€œBecause I knew I’d look like an idiot when he left again.”
    â€œNot to be too lawyerly, or anything, but why invite me to breakfast if you were trying to hide a man over there?”
    Ashley laughed, but it was forced, and Melissa probably picked up on that, though mercifully, she didn’t comment. “Because I’m overstocked on cherry crepes and I need the freezer space?” she offered.
    â€œYou were supposed to say something like, ‘Because you’re my twin sister and I love you.’”
    â€œThat, too,” Ashley responded.
    â€œI’ll be over before work,” Melissa said. “You’re really okay?”
    No , Ashley thought. I’m in love with a stranger,someone wants to kill him, and my bed-and-breakfast is about to become a stop on a modern underground railroad .
    â€œI will be,” she said aloud.
    â€œDamn right you will,” Melissa replied, and hung up without a goodbye. Of course, there hadn’t been a “hello,” either.
    Classic Melissa.
    The upstairs shower had been running through most of her conversation with Melissa—Ashley had heard the water rushing through the old house’s many pipes. Now all was silent.
    Thinking Jack would probably be downstairs soon, wanting breakfast, Ashley fed Mrs. Wiggins and then took a plastic container filled with the results of her last cooking binge from the freezer.
    A month ago she’d made five dozen crepes, complete with cherry sauce from scratch, when one of her college friends had called to say she’d just found out her husband was having an affair.
    Before that, it had been a double-fudge brownie marathon—beginning the night of her mother’s funeral. She’d donated the brownies to the residents of the nursing home three blocks over, since, in her own way, she was just as calorie-conscious as Melissa.
    Baking therapy was one thing. Scarfing down the results was quite another.
    Half an hour passed, and Jack didn’t reappear.
    Ashley waited.
    A full hour had passed, and still no sign of him.
    Resigned, she went upstairs. Knocked softly at his bedroom door.
    No answer.
    Her imagination kicked in. The man had aliases , forheaven’s sake. He’d abducted a drug dealer’s seven-year-old daughter from a stronghold in some Latin American jungle.
    Maybe he’d sneaked out the front door.
    Maybe he was lying in there, dead.
    â€œJack?”
    Nothing.
    She opened the door, her heart in her throat, and stuck her head inside the room.
    He wasn’t in the bed.
    She raised her voice a little. “Jack?”
    She heard the buzzing sound then, identified it as an electric shaver, and was just about to back out of the room and close the door behind her, as quietly as possible, when his bathroom door opened.
    His hair was damp from the shower, and he was wearing a towel, loincloth style, and nothing else. He grinned as he shut off the shaver.
    â€œI’m not here for sex,” Ashley said, and then could have kicked herself.
    Jack laughed. “Too bad,” he said. “Nothing like a quickie to get the day off to a good start. So to speak.”
    A quickie indeed . Ashley gave him a look, meant to hide the fact that she found the idea more than appealing. “Breakfast will be ready soon,” she said coolly. “And Melissa is joining us, so try to behave yourself.”
    He stepped out of the bathroom.
    Her gaze immediately dropped to the towel. Shot back to his face.
    He was grinning. “But we’re alone now , aren’t we?”
    â€œI’m still not on birth control, remember?” Ashley’s voice shook.
    â€œ That horse is pretty much out of the barn,”