Dangerous Lover by Lisa Marie Rice Page B

renewed, great rolling flames greedily licking at the wood, filling the room with heat and the friendly crackle of the flames. It was like a third person in the room with them.
    Caroline sat back on the sofa, sipping her coffee. As so often in difficult times, she tried to count her blessings. She was in good health. January’s bank payment would be made. February’s—well, that was in the future, wasn’t it? Jack said he was staying. He didn’t look like the kind of man who’d run screaming from a temperamental boiler. She might make it through February. She might not. One thing the last six years had taught her was not to sweat the things she couldn’t influence or change. And to make the most of things, thinking resolutely positively. She’d trained herself to do it.
    Unfortunately, frantically thinking happy thoughts didn’t always work as well as she wanted. Tomorrow was Christmas Day, when the world as she knew it had come to a crashing end. Christmases were always so hard.
    There were so many memories of happy Christmas Eves in this room. Mom and Dad and Toby, music and laughter and firelight. She remembered a Christmas Eve with Sanders, before the accident. Toby’d been, what? Seven? She’d started dating Sanders—the first of their many stop-and-go affairs—and she’d invited him over for Christmas Eve. Her parents had been charmed by Sanders’s good manners and adult conversation. That was before they got to know him. Later, her father had grown to despise him. But that first evening they were all smiles.
    She—well, she’d been blindly infatuated. So blind that she lost her virginity to him a couple of months later.
    That evening, Mom had filled the living room with candlelight. Her mother had loved candles. She lit them on every possible occasion and sometimes just because she felt like it.
    The memory of that evening could warm her still. She could even remember the sharp smells of that evening melding together—Mom’s Diorissimo, hot candle wax, woodsmoke, the cook’s cakes and scones, Earl Grey tea and Dad’s bourbon. A heady scent of joy and celebration.
    She’d played the piano and they’d sung Christmas carols. She’d played—
    “…play?”
    With a wrench, Caroline brought her mind back to the present. Her boarder was sitting next to her. Not so close itmade her uncomfortable, but close enough so that she could feel his body heat and feel the air move and the sofa dip as he leaned forward to put his cup on the coffee table. Seeing him this close, she felt slightly overwhelmed by the sheer size of him. It seemed his shoulders took up half the sofa.
    Her perfectly normal-sized coffee cup looked tiny in his hands. His hands were compelling, unlike any other male hands she’d ever seen. Though they were huge, the skin visibly rough, as if he worked with them a lot outdoors, they were also naturally well shaped, long-fingered, elegant and strong, with a light dusting of black hairs on the backs. The nails were clean but clearly unmanicured, so very unlike Sanders’s hands, which were pale and soft, with perfect, buffed nails.
    Oh my God. She was doing it again—drifting with her thoughts. He’d said something. “I beg your pardon?”
    Jack inclined his head toward the piano. His voice was patient. He was a strong guy—a soldier. Presumably that gave him extra patience not to roll his eyes and shout at the crazy lady who drifted away in her head at the drop of a hat. “I see you have a piano. I imagine you play. I’d love to hear you play something.”
    No , absolutely not was her first instinct, and she had to clench her jaws tightly closed to keep from saying the words.
    No way could she play. She hadn’t played since before Toby died. Not enough time had passed. Her feelings were too close to the surface, the memories too bright, the pain still razor-sharp…
    “Please,” he said and waited, watching her patiently.
    Her chest was so tight it was hard to breathe. The