“Oh, sorry,” she said sweetly, as she withdrew.
He watched her, his gaze narrowed. “What are you up to, Karen?”
“Up to?” she said innocently. “I just thought that piece was the one I needed.”
“Did you now?” he asked suspiciously. “Where did you think it went? Show me.”
She took it and tried it in the bottom corner. Of course, it didn’t fit. “Guess not,” she said with a shrug. She handed it back to him.
“You’re dangerous,” he said huskily. “You know that, don’t you, Karen?”
No man had ever suggested she was dangerous, and Karen discovered she liked it that Grady had. “Remember that,” she advised as she went back to work on the puzzle, deliberately ignoring him.
Naturally Grady wasn’t satisfied to leave it at that. Feeling his gaze on her, she glanced up to find his dark eyes studying her intently.
“Shouldn’t you be concentrating on the puzzle?” she inquired.
“You’re more fascinating,” he said.
Truthfully, he was more intriguing than the puzzle, too, but Karen didn’t dare mention that. The teasing actions she had meant to distract him had affected her as well. The deliberate flirting had made her a little too aware of him as a flesh-and-blood man, instead of an abstract enemy. She was losing her grip on that negative image of him, letting the barriers crumble.
When she realized that he was no longer staring at her but at the puzzle, that he’d used these few minutes to complete another big chunk, she recognized that letting her guard down, even for a second, was a mistake. It was a lesson she needed to keep in mind.
Glancing at the clock, she saw that there were fifteen minutes left in their competition. Grady had a serious lead. She couldn’t let him win. Not at this. Not at any of his games. The stakes were too high and, for one terrifying minute, she had lost sight of that.
It wouldn’t happen again, Karen vowed, as she went back to work on the puzzle with total concentration. This might be just a silly contest, but Grady was clearly playing as he did everything, with a winner-take-all attitude. It would be wise to remember that, because the next time she might lose more than a game.
* * *
Grady had never expected to get turned on by doing a jigsaw puzzle. Oh, he’d always found competition to be invigorating, but arousing? Never. Which meant this had to do with his opponent.
He glanced at Karen, amused by her flushed cheeks, by the tip of her tongue caught between her teeth, as she focused totally on the puzzle. She was a feisty, sneaky competitor, far more devious than he’d ever envisioned. She had taken him totally by surprise when she’d flirted outrageously in a very successful attempt to distract him.
Not only was he distracted from the game, he was totally absorbed by the female puzzle sitting opposite him. He realized that he was no closer to his goal of understanding Karen than he had been on the day he’d decided to start spending time with her. There were too many layers, too many contradictions.
Her blind loyalty to her husband’s memory bumped up against her sense of fair play. Her wistful dreams clashed with the harsh reality of her life. She was stubborn and hardheaded, yet vulnerable. Her eyes could flash with defiance and anger one minute, with heat and desire the next. And heat and desire were what she aroused in him, on a more continual basis.
Something was happening between the two of them, but Grady was at a loss to understand it or to predict where it might lead. Nor did he dare jump to any conclusions, because one misstep could ruin everything.
The ringing of a phone jarred the peaceful ambiance. Karen looked up, startled, and maybe even a little bit afraid. Or was it guilt that caused the color in her cheeks to heighten again? Guilt that she was sharing the day with him?
It took her a minute to react, but then she bolted for the kitchen. He heard her answer the phone with a terse greeting, then her voice dropped and he could hear nothing at all.
Knowing it would infuriate her, he used the time to add another dozen pieces to his section of the puzzle. He studied her work and his own and concluded that he had the game easily won.
When she came back into the room, she looked shaken.
“Everything okay?” he asked.
She nodded, but her expression remained troubled and she stood several feet from the table, as if she didn’t dare sit down and join him.
“I don’t believe you,” he said bluntly. “Who was on the phone?”
“Just Gina, making sure that everything was okay out here.”
So far, he didn’t see the problem. “And?”
Worried blue eyes finally met his. “She’d heard you were here.”
“How would she hear a thing like that?” he asked.
“One of the neighbors apparently saw you turning in here earlier in the day yesterday. Somebody asked Hank about it, and he told ’em to mind their own business. Dooley apparently wasn’t so circumspect.”
Grady was indignant. “Seems like a lot of commotion over you having a visitor.”
“Not just any visitor,” she reminded him. “You.”
“So what?”
“Grady, don’t play dumb. You know how the Hansons will feel when they hear about this. It’s bad enough that people are probably calling every ten seconds to report that you’ve been stopping by to help out. When they hear you were here overnight, they’re going to go ballistic.”
He reached for her hand, but she snatched it away. “Karen, nothing happened last night.”
She scowled at him. “Don’t you think I know that? But it’s appearances that matter.”
“Really?”
“With Caleb’s parents, it is.”
“And their opinion matters to you?”
“Of course it does. He was their son. This was their home. I have a duty…”
He found himself battling exasperation. “The only duty you have is to yourself.”
She shook her head. “You’re wrong. People don’t live just for themselves. You have to consider the impact your actions could have on everyone you care about.” Her gaze challenged him. “Isn’t that what you’re doing?”
He regarded her with confusion. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Don’t you? You told me you want to buy this ranch because of your grandfather,” she reminded him. “It’s never been about you, has it? It’s been about your sense of duty toward a man you admire and love and to those who came before him, people you never knew at all.”
The accuracy of her assessment made him pause. “Okay, you’re right.”
“So you have your obligations and I have mine. I don’t want to hurt the Hansons, Grady. I really don’t.”
“And my being here will hurt them.”
She nodded.
Because he hated seeing her so unhappy, he stood up. “I’m sure the highway has been plowed by now. My truck will make it down your driveway. I’ll go.” His gaze locked with hers. “If that’s what you want.”
“I do,” she said, but there was little conviction in her voice. Clearly she was struggling with herself.
Again Grady took pity on her. He would go, but not before he stepped closer, trailed a finger along her cheek. Unable to resist, he rubbed the pad of his thumb across her lower lip, needing to know if it was a soft as it looked. It was, and it quivered beneath his touch.
“It’s okay, Karen,” he told her quietly.
“It’s not,” she said. “I shouldn’t be insisting that you go. If something happens—”
“Nothing is going to happen. I’ll call you when I get to my place, if it’ll make you feel any better.” He forced a grin. “Though I’d think you might actually feel better if I slid into a ditch.”
She stared at him, clearly aghast at the suggestion. “How can you say a thi
ng like that?”
“I am a thorn in your side, aren’t I?”
“True,” she admitted with her unfailing candor. Then she sighed. “But I’m starting to get used to it.”
Another tiny triumph, Grady concluded. He would savor that on the long, cold, risky ride home.
CHAPTER 7
Grady stayed away for two weeks. Even though it was something she’d once hoped for, Karen found herself watching the driveway day after day, regretting the attack of conscience that had had her sending him off after the snowstorm.
She knew he’d gotten home safely, not because he’d called, but because his housekeeper had. It was as if he’d taken her cue and decided to go one step further, cutting off all contact. The disappointment she had felt the second he had left had only grown in the days since that afternoon.
“You certainly look miserable,” Gina declared when Karen drove into Winding River to have a spaghetti dinner at the restaurant where her friend was filling in as cook. Tony had used Gina’s willingness to step in for him as the perfect excuse to take his wife on a long-promised trip to Italy.
“Just what every woman wants to hear,” Karen said. “Maybe I should have stayed home. I can probably boil pasta as well as you can.”
“Ouch,” Gina protested.
“Well, I can.”
“But your pasta isn’t homemade. Mine is.”
“You’ve got me there, though I doubt I’d notice the difference.”
“Which brings us back to miserable,” Gina said, sitting down opposite her. “I’ve got some time to talk. We’re not that busy. What’s going on?”
“Nothing,” Karen said honestly. There was nothing good or bad going on in her life. Every day it was just more of the same exhausting work and loneliness. She’d had a brief respite, thanks to Grady…which made it seem even more depressing now.
“Hey, this is me you’re talking to, not those nosy in-laws of yours,” Gina said. “Tell the truth. Is this about Grady Blackhawk?”
Karen’s gaze shot up. “Why would you think that?”
“Just hazarding a guess. You two were spending a lot of time together until I told you I’d heard rumors floating around town about him being at the ranch the night of the snowstorm. Is he still coming by?”
“No.”
“Did you two have a fight?”
“Not exactly.”
Gina regarded her with exasperation. “This is like trying to get information out of the CIA.”
Karen grinned despite herself. “Sorry. I’m not being deliberately tight-lipped. I just don’t know what to say. After you called, I explained what you had said, and I told him it would be best if he left. He seemed to understand.”
“But he hasn’t been back,” Gina concluded. “Hasn’t called, either?”
“Nope.”
Her gaze narrowed. “And that really bothers you, doesn’t it? Were you starting to trust him, Karen? Maybe even like him? Was this turning into something for you?”
Karen felt compelled to deny it, even though the truth was that Gina had hit on the problem. “It was a pain in the neck at the outset,” she said. “It’s a pain in the neck now. Nothing’s changed.”
“Except that you’ve realized that the pain is actually a gorgeous, sexy man,” Gina guessed, clearly not buying her disclaimer.
Karen sighed. “Yes, well, there is that.”
“And that maybe you wouldn’t mind getting to know him a lot better,” Gina continued. “At least if there weren’t all these obstacles in the way.”
“But the obstacles are real,” Karen said despondently. “Caleb, his parents, the ranch—how can I overlook any of that just because I’ve been feeling a little lonely and Grady has filled a void in my life?”
Gina stood up. “I’m getting you a glass of wine. No, a whole bottle of wine.”
Karen regarded her with alarm. “I can’t drink and drive all the way back to the ranch.”
“You’re not going to. You’re going to drink and walk to my place and spend the night.” Gina walked off toward the bar before Karen could protest.
While Gina was gone, the rest of her words sank in. When she returned, Karen studied her intently, then asked, “Since when do you have a place in Winding River?”
Gina winced. “You caught that, did you? Since I agreed to stick around and help Tony out. I couldn’t keep crashing at my parents’ place, so I rented an apartment here in town.”
“For how long?”
Gina shrugged. “Yet to be determined,” she said, casting a look across the dining room to a table by the window. The man who’d been hanging around off and on since the reunion was sitting there with an empty wineglass and a stack of paperwork. He looked as if he’d set up a permanent office right there. At the moment he was the only other customer.
“Do you want to tell me who he is and what’s going on?” Karen asked, studying her friend’s face with concern.
“Nope,” Gina said.
Alarm rose as another thought occurred to her. “He’s not stalking you, is he?”
“Not the way you mean,” Gina said wryly. “Drink your wine. I’m going to fix your dinner. Forget spaghetti. This will make your mouth water. It will transport you straight to a trattoria in Rome.”
Karen noticed that, on her way across the room, Gina paused to splash a little wine into the man’s glass, though she carefully avoided his gaze, ignored whatever he said and kept right on going toward the kitchen, where the waitress was no doubt filing her nails.
Interesting, Karen thought. And troubling. Gina had never been known for her reticence. In fact, her bubbling enthusiasm and firsthand knowledge of Italian cuisine, combined with her innovative technique in the kitchen, had made her the perfect candidate for running a successful New York restaurant. She wasn’t bubbling now, though. At least not with the mysterious stranger.
And in all these months there had been no mention of that New York bistro or who was running it in her absence. Direct questions had been ignored or evaded, which was very unlike the candid Gina of old.
Another mystery, Karen concluded with a sigh. Her life seemed filled with them lately. And Grady was the biggest one of all. Had he been insulted, even hurt, by her cavalier dismissal that day? Had he simply given up the fight? As incredible as that might be, it was a possibility.
Maybe he was simply away on a sudden trip. She knew he had a ranch, but he also had other business interests. Perhaps he’d had to go to Cheyenne or Denver or who knew where else he might have his finger in some corporate pie. Maybe this disappearing act had nothing to do with her at all.
She sighed at the thought. More troubling than his disappearance was her reaction to it. She missed him, dammit. As Gina had guessed, Karen had gotten used to Grady’s company, exasperating as it was at times.
“It was just a habit,” she muttered. Like anything else that was bad for her, it could be broken.
“Deep thoughts?” a familiar male voice inquired behind her.
Her head snapped around, her gaze clashed with Grady’s, the wine she held with suddenly trembling fingers splashed on the table.
“Where have you been?” she asked before she could bite back the words. Even she recognized they were a stark contrast to her previous greetings demanding to know why he was there.
“Miss me?” he asked, a devilish twinkle in his eyes.
“No more than I would a swarm of bees,” she retorted.
He slid into the seat opposite her, taking note of the second glass of wine. “Where’s your date?”
“I’m here alone.”
“Good. Then I’ll join you,” he said, taking a sip from the untouched extra glass Gina had left for herself.
Karen frowned, annoyed by his presumption and by her own eagerness to
have him stay. “Grady, you can’t just waltz in here and invite yourself to have dinner with me.”
“Why not?”
“Just because.”
“Because it’s going to stir up more talk?” he asked, regarding her with a pointed look.
“That, too,” she agreed.
“And what else?”
“Maybe I don’t want to have dinner with you.”
“Maybe?” he teased. “Let me know when you decide, then we’ll discuss it. Until then, I’ll just sit here and enjoy the wine and the vision of a beautiful woman sitting across the table from me.”
“I don’t want you here,” she said with more conviction. “And you know perfectly well why it’s a bad idea.”
He studied her thoughtfully, then shook his head. “Yes, you do want me here. You just feel compelled to deny it. You’re tough enough to stand up to a little idle gossip.”
“If you believe that, then why did you leave the house when I asked you to?”
“Because my being there had clearly upset you and because I was way too tempted to kiss you senseless to make you forget that inconvenient conscience of yours.”
“And now?”
“You’re here. I happened by. I consider that fate.” He smiled, then turned his attention to the menu. “What are you having?”
Because she knew from experience there was little point in arguing, she gave up. Besides, the truth was, she was so happy to see him, so happy to know that he wasn’t furious with her, that her heart felt lighter than it had in days.
“I have no idea what I’m going to eat.”
“You haven’t ordered?”
“Gina wouldn’t let me. She’s fixing what suits her.”
Grady nodded. “Maybe I’d better stick my head in the kitchen and make sure she fixes enough for two.”
As he crossed the restaurant, Karen watched him intently. Her pulse had kicked into high gear the second she heard his voice and hadn’t let up since. This wasn’t good, she thought. Not good at all.
Gina came stalking out of the kitchen on Grady’s heels and followed him straight to the table. Her indignant gaze came to rest on Karen. “Are you okay with this?”
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