out. Then I’ll show you around.”
Rousing Frank Lee took some doing, as he was comfortably ensconced atop her bed, snoring with his head on her pillow. Six feet away, the ultimate dog bed, a billowy bag whose advertising promised never-ending comfort, lay unused.
“What am I going to do with you?” she asked the stretching greyhound. “That bed cost more than your therapy certification.”
Frank Lee yawned in answer, his long pink tongue curling—which was probably the most exercise he’d had all week.
After walking the dog, she returned to find Jack munching the last of a pack of peanut-butter crackers from the pantry. He washed it down with milk, then rinsed the empty glass and set it in the sink.
“Thanks,” he said. “I’m more wiped out than anything, but I needed to eat something.”
Nodding, she fought an impulse to brush a few crumbs off his upper lip. An image reared up from the past, of the day the thirteen-year-old came home from school with his glasses broken and a suspicious swelling beneath his left eye, both resulting, she knew, from the stand he’d taken against Paulo Rodriguez and his delinquent brothers at the bayou. To save her, she understood now, from something an eight-year-old could never cope with.
But Jack had long since grown past the brave boy she remembered. She had only to look at the strong shoulders and the rough stubble on his face to see that. She had only to see him looking at her with his man’s eyes—with a man’s needs reflected in their darkness.
“Let me show you to the bedroom.” Against thequiet backdrop of the ticking kitchen clock, her traitorous words sounded suggestive. Disgusted with herself, she chattered on. “This is the bathroom. There are extra towels beneath the sink, and I think I have a spare toothbrush in that second drawer, probably a pack of disposable razors, too. Here’s your room—sorry you’ll have to share space with my treadmill and punching bag. But the sheets are clean, and there are blankets in the closet if you need them. The thermostat’s out here in the hall. If it’s too cold—”
“It’s fine,” he said as the greyhound trotted up and sniffed his hand. “Don’t worry. Uh, do you have an extra key, so I can lock up when I leave?”
She nodded, then went to get him one. “There’s a tub of dog food on top of the refrigerator. If you’d give Frank two scoops and take him out back to do his business in the morning, I’d appreciate it. Just put him back inside before you go.”
“So Killer here can guard the house, right?” Jack’s hand glided over the animal’s smooth white head, and he gave the dog an exhausted-looking smile.
Reagan wondered how it would feel to have him look at her with the same easy affection, his eyes bleary after a night spent—
She gave her head a shake to clear it and quickly said good-bye. She needed to get the hell out of this house, before the evening’s stress and whatever-the-hell estrogen attack she was suffering conspired to push her into doing something stupid.
Or more stupid, she decided, as she’d already crossed that particular line when she’d invited him to stay here at her house.
It was all Jack could do to keep from reaching out to Reagan as she turned to go. Though his better judgment provided a thousand reasons he should keep his peace, at that moment he would have given almost anything for the perfect pretext to get her to stay here with him.
And not only in her little house, but in his bed and arms as well. He wanted—needed desperately—to lose himself in a woman, to forget the nightmare that his life had become. Between the ebb and flow of memory and what he’d seen today—or yesterday, he supposed—of Reagan’s courage and compassion, he saw a thin sliver, no more than a scalpel’s edge, that gleamed with possibility.
The possibility of a cut straight to the heart , he warned himself as he listened to her moving through the house and toward the back
Rousing Frank Lee took some doing, as he was comfortably ensconced atop her bed, snoring with his head on her pillow. Six feet away, the ultimate dog bed, a billowy bag whose advertising promised never-ending comfort, lay unused.
“What am I going to do with you?” she asked the stretching greyhound. “That bed cost more than your therapy certification.”
Frank Lee yawned in answer, his long pink tongue curling—which was probably the most exercise he’d had all week.
After walking the dog, she returned to find Jack munching the last of a pack of peanut-butter crackers from the pantry. He washed it down with milk, then rinsed the empty glass and set it in the sink.
“Thanks,” he said. “I’m more wiped out than anything, but I needed to eat something.”
Nodding, she fought an impulse to brush a few crumbs off his upper lip. An image reared up from the past, of the day the thirteen-year-old came home from school with his glasses broken and a suspicious swelling beneath his left eye, both resulting, she knew, from the stand he’d taken against Paulo Rodriguez and his delinquent brothers at the bayou. To save her, she understood now, from something an eight-year-old could never cope with.
But Jack had long since grown past the brave boy she remembered. She had only to look at the strong shoulders and the rough stubble on his face to see that. She had only to see him looking at her with his man’s eyes—with a man’s needs reflected in their darkness.
“Let me show you to the bedroom.” Against thequiet backdrop of the ticking kitchen clock, her traitorous words sounded suggestive. Disgusted with herself, she chattered on. “This is the bathroom. There are extra towels beneath the sink, and I think I have a spare toothbrush in that second drawer, probably a pack of disposable razors, too. Here’s your room—sorry you’ll have to share space with my treadmill and punching bag. But the sheets are clean, and there are blankets in the closet if you need them. The thermostat’s out here in the hall. If it’s too cold—”
“It’s fine,” he said as the greyhound trotted up and sniffed his hand. “Don’t worry. Uh, do you have an extra key, so I can lock up when I leave?”
She nodded, then went to get him one. “There’s a tub of dog food on top of the refrigerator. If you’d give Frank two scoops and take him out back to do his business in the morning, I’d appreciate it. Just put him back inside before you go.”
“So Killer here can guard the house, right?” Jack’s hand glided over the animal’s smooth white head, and he gave the dog an exhausted-looking smile.
Reagan wondered how it would feel to have him look at her with the same easy affection, his eyes bleary after a night spent—
She gave her head a shake to clear it and quickly said good-bye. She needed to get the hell out of this house, before the evening’s stress and whatever-the-hell estrogen attack she was suffering conspired to push her into doing something stupid.
Or more stupid, she decided, as she’d already crossed that particular line when she’d invited him to stay here at her house.
It was all Jack could do to keep from reaching out to Reagan as she turned to go. Though his better judgment provided a thousand reasons he should keep his peace, at that moment he would have given almost anything for the perfect pretext to get her to stay here with him.
And not only in her little house, but in his bed and arms as well. He wanted—needed desperately—to lose himself in a woman, to forget the nightmare that his life had become. Between the ebb and flow of memory and what he’d seen today—or yesterday, he supposed—of Reagan’s courage and compassion, he saw a thin sliver, no more than a scalpel’s edge, that gleamed with possibility.
The possibility of a cut straight to the heart , he warned himself as he listened to her moving through the house and toward the back
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