Gavin couldn’t sleep. His conscience kept teasing him with discomfort, like a small sliver just beneath the skin. He should have thought of some way to get through to Ben other than by barging in on the kid’s sister. He hadn’t come here to scare Anna Collins.
Hell, he couldn’t blame her a bit for being leery of him. He was a stranger, after all, and she was right, a woman couldn’t be too careful.
Still, the thought that he might hurt her was ludicrous.
Yeah, but she doesn’t know that, buddy.
No fooling.
Tomorrow he needed to find some way to make this up to her. What that way might be, he had no idea. He needed to figured out if there was something he could do for her. Something she maybe wanted that he could give her to make up for invading her home, scaring her, inconveniencing her. She was too damn prickly to open up to him, so he’d have to find some other way to ferret out what she might need or want that he could give her.
At the sudden noise coming from beyond his closed bedroom door, Gavin stiffened. After a moment he relaxed with a grin and wondered how long it had taken her to remember about the chair she’d braced beneath her doorknob. From the muffled curse, she didn’t seem all that pleased with her safety precautions.
Ha! And she told me to watch my language.
Finally he heard her go into the bathroom, heard the slight click of the light switch, then the rush of water through the pipes and into the sink.
The water ran for a long time, then a drawer opened, a cabinet door closed. And the water kept running.
Frowning, Gavin sat up in bed. She was sure taking a long time. What the devil was she doing in there? He was tempted to get up and find out, but told himself it was none of his business. Probably woman stuff. She wouldn’t appreciate his concern.
When he heard a soft growl of irritation mixed with pain, he tossed the covers aside and stepped into his jeans.
She’d left the bathroom door open, so he had no trouble seeing her. And what a sight, with her short hair mussed enough to look like a man had just run his fingers through it over and over. The sudden urge to run his own fingers through that short, honey-colored hair shocked him. As did the sudden rush of blood through his veins when he realized that her knee-length nightgown was so thin he could see through it to the mole on her right hind cheek. Without thought, he stepped quietly to her side.
The sight of her blood flowing bright red from an inch-long slice in her right arm just below her elbow, and a smaller cut on the outer edge of her right hand, cooled him off quicker than a bucket of ice water in the face. The blood trailed down her pale skin and turned pink where it mixed with water in the sink. Gavin swore.
At the sound of his voice, Anna shrieked and jerked, banging the back of her hand against the faucet. “Damn.” She squeezed her eyes shut for a long moment before opening them and glaring at him in the mirror. “I was right. You came here to kill me.”
“What happened?”
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you. You and your stupid suggestions,” she muttered.
Gavin scowled. “My suggestions? Good grief, you mean—I meant for you to put the knife somewhere close so you could get to it, not cuddle up with the damn thing. Let me see that arm.”
Anna covered the cut with her free hand. “I can handle it.”
Gavin snorted. “You can’t even get out of bed without hurting yourself.”
“This, from a man who can’t negotiate his way around a coffee table?”
“Yeah, yeah, I was a charm school dropout. Stick your arm under the faucet. Where do you keep your peroxide?”
“I said,” she managed through gritted teeth, “I can handle it.”
“Then handle it,” he answered tersely, “before you bleed to death.”
“It’s not very deep,” she said, looking down at her arm. “It’s just messy.”
“Messy is right.” Gavin opened the cabinet door next to the mirror above the sink and grabbed a washcloth and the brown plastic bottle of peroxide. “I can’t believe you actually went to bed with a butcher knife.” Setting the bottle and cloth beside the sink, he carefully pulled her arm from beneath the running water. “That is what you did, isn’t it?”
“I plead the Fifth. What are you doing?” She tried to tug her arm from his grasp.
Gavin kept his hold as gentle as possible, but firm enough to hang on. “I was beginning to wonder about that.”
“About what?”
He poured peroxide first into the cut on her arm, then the one on her hand. “If you had a sense of humor. Glad to see you do.” He pressed the folded washcloth over the slash on her arm and placed her hand over it. “Hold that. Press hard”
“I’m sure I don’t have the slightest idea what you’re talking about.”
“It will stop the bleeding.”
She scowled at him in the mirror. “My sense of humor?”
Gavin stared at her reflection, wondering why she should suddenly seem so much more appealing to him at two in the morning with her face scrubbed clean, a little puffy from sleep, her hair mussed, than she had in the light of day with makeup on and her hair neatly combed.
Hell, he thought, returning her scowl. He’d meant what he’d told her earlier in the evening—she damn sure wasn’t his type. He must still be half-asleep himself if he was thinking about leaning down and kissing that tip-tilted nose.
With a shake of his head, he pulled his gaze from her face in the mirror and looked down at her arm. “I meant the pressure on the cut. Pressure will stop the bleeding.”
“I know that.” Irritation, and maybe pain, roughened her voice.
Gavin grabbed another washcloth from the cabinet to press against the smaller cut. He reached for her hand, and felt again that sharp zap of electricity. He jerked his hand away. “Stop doing that,” he ordered tersely.
Anna had felt it, too, that tingling charge that had shocked her when they’d both reached for the phone. “Me? I’m not doing it. It just happens.”
That, Gavin thought, was what he’d been afraid she would say. Damn, that’s all he needed. A static charge every time they touched. It wasn’t sexual, he told himself firmly. It couldn’t be. No way.
But she couldn’t cover both cuts herself, so he reached for her hand again. Sort of snuck up on it.
This time there was no shock. Relieved, he pressed the cloth against the cut. Which essentially left him holding her hand.
When was the last time he’d held a woman’s hand? He couldn’t remember. High school, maybe, he thought, surprised.
His fingers rested against the inside of her wrist where the skin was so transparent he could see her veins. Beneath his touch the steady beat of her pulse sped up. “Does it hurt?”
Anna scowled harder. “Some.” But that wasn’t her immediate problem. Her immediate problem was a sudden breathlessness, a catch in her throat. Maybe she’d lost more blood than she realized, if simply looking at him in the mirror made her feel light-headed. She looked down instead.
The change of view didn’t help. She must have lost a lot of blood. Otherwise the sight of his big, dark hand wrapped around her smaller, paler one wouldn’t send her heart up into her throat to flutter like a trapped butterfly.
With fingers that suddenly trembled, she lifted the washcloth from the cut on her arm. The bleeding had slowed to a slight ooze. “Uh, thanks. I can take it from here.”
Gavin eased the washcloth away from the cut on her hand. “Much better.” But instead of stepping back to give her room, he reached into the cabinet again and pulled out a box of strip bandages. Without comment, he poured more peroxide on her cuts, then tore open a bandage and placed it over the cut on her arm. It took two to cover it.
Anna stood still and watched him as though she weren’t involved in the process at all. The fingertips of his left hand were callused, but his touch was gentle. Being taken care of this way felt odd. Anna wasn’t used to anyone fussing over her. She was the one who normally did
the fussing.
How many times had she cleaned and bandaged Ben’s countless cuts and scrapes in his younger days? Too many to remember.
Nor could she remember the last time anyone had cleaned and bandaged anything of hers. It made her feel weak, helpless. Made her knees watery. She didn’t much like it.
“Are you about finished?” she demanded.
“Aw, shucks, darlin’, and here I was hoping for a big ol’ kiss by way of thanks.”
Anna scowled, certain this must be another one of his jokes, but she failed to see the humor. “You’ll have to settle for my verbal thanks.”
“That’ll do fine.” He finished bandaging the cut on her hand. “So? Where is it?”
“Where is what?”
“Your verbal thanks.”
She gave him a tight smile. “Thank you.”
With laughter in his eyes, he gave her a mocking nod. “You’re welcome, Ms. Collins.”
On her way out the door, Anna tossed a look past him over her shoulder before pausing to look at him. “By the way, when not in use, the seat and the lid go down. Good night, Mr. Marshall.”
When Gavin woke the next morning, the sun was well up and he was alone in the house. How he knew the latter without even crawling out of bed, he had no idea. There was just this empty feeling in the air.
The idea that he could feel such a thing irritated him. It was only his imagination. He sure as hell wasn’t so tuned in to Anna Collins that he could tell from behind his closed bedroom door that she wasn’t even in the house. The very idea was ludicrous. And scary.
She was a quiet person. She was probably sitting on the couch reading the Sunday paper. Or at the table, eating breakfast.
The thought of food lured him from the bed. Looking down at himself, he figured he’d better at least tug on his jeans before leaving his room. In case he was wrong and he wasn’t alone in the house.
The instant he opened the door a moment later, jeans in place, he knew his first waking thought had been correct. Except for him, the house was empty. There was an absence of something. Energy? Scent?
Neither idea made any sense. Anna wasn’t a particularly energetic woman. She didn’t fidget, didn’t rush around. In fact, he hadn’t noticed that she wasted a single motion, no matter what she was doing.
And how could he miss her scent when the only thing about her he’d smelled was the clean fragrance of her sleep-warmed hair and skin last night when he’d stood next to her in the bathroom? He didn’t remember smelling any perfume.
So how could “something” be missing from the air? How could the air feel empty? He didn’t know. He only knew, without checking, that Anna Collins had left the house.
That’s bull hockey.
He of course couldn’t know any such thing. He stalked into the living room to prove himself wrong.
She wasn’t there. Nor was she in the kitchen, bedroom, or bath. Her car, when he thought to look, was not in the garage.
Okay, it was Sunday. She had probably gone to church.
Gavin assumed that being able to feel her absence this way was a bad sign. He had friends who spoke of being so close, so connected to a woman that they knew her thoughts, felt her feelings, sensed when she was near and when she wasn’t.
That was fine and dandy for his friends, but Gavin had no desire, no intention whatsoever, of being that connected with a woman. At least not in the foreseeable future. Particularly not with a settling-down kind of woman like Anna Collins.
He didn’t need that type of connection with a woman, didn’t want one. Wouldn’t have it. He had things to do, places to go, songs to write. No time for a regular woman of his own. He liked to keep things loose. Liked to be able to walk away whenever he wanted without worrying about leaving a broken heart behind.
Still, there was no reason to keep on making Anna angry. While she was gone he needed to come up with an idea or two to get on her good side.
Sitting in the pew at church, Anna prayed fervently that Gavin Marshall would be gone from her house when she got home.
She’d been taught in Sunday school as a young child that God answers every prayer. What she’d had to learn on her own was that sometimes God’s answer to a prayer was no. Anna was reminded of this when she pulled in her driveway and noticed that the Sunday paper, which she’d left on the porch, was gone, and that the living room drapes, which she’d left closed, were open.
This time, realizing that Gavin was still there, God’s answer didn’t feel like a simple no. It felt like a “No, and furthermore, Anna, my dear...”
Sitting in her car staring blankly at the garage door, Anna took a slow, deep breath. Maybe if she were nicer to Gavin, she could get him to tell her what Ben had been up to lately. Maybe if she made friends with him she could get him to leave. It seemed worth a try. Nothing else was working right in regard to that man.
Resigned to trying to be nice to him—although to be honest, he was rather likable in a rough sort of way—she got out of her car and went to open the garage door. She didn’t waste her time praying that the door would open easily for a change. Instead she used her key to open the lock, then bent, grabbed the handle, braced herself, and pulled hard, putting her back into it the way she knew she had to, to get the door to budge.
Instead of hanging, dragging and groaning in protest, the wide, heavy door flew up in its tracks so fast that Anna barely got her hand free of the handle before being yanked off her feet. A sharp squawk of surprise escaped her throat. She lost her balance and staggered against the brick wall beside the door.
Immediately she straightened and glanced around to see if any of her neighbors was looking.
Then, feeling silly for checking, she looked up at the garage door, wondering what had happened. Cautiously she reached up to pull the door down to try it again, just to see what would happen. It was surprisingly harder to pull down than usual. Normally, one tug and the double-wide door more or less fell down its tracks and slammed closed and woe be to anyone standing in the way. This time she had to actually tug it—although only slightly—all the way down.
It couldn’t be broken. Please, God, it couldn’t be broken. She had no money set aside for a new garage door.
With more reluctance than care, Anna bent and grabbed the handle again, this time pulling gently. The door raised easily. Easier than she ever remembered. It rolled up all the way without much effort on her part at all. Slowly she turned in a circle, craning her neck as she looked up at the door where it rested in its tracks above her head.
The door to the kitchen opened and Gavin smiled at her. “What do you think?”
Frowning, Anna looked back up at the garage door. “Is it broken?”
Gavin laughed. “It’s fixed.”
Anna straightened and stared at him. “Fixed?”
“Try it again.”
She did. Again it went down at a controlled speed instead of a crash. And again, it flew up with virtually no effort. Amazed, she closed and opened it yet another time.
Gavin got a kick out of the look on her face. As if she’d just discovered ice cream for the first time in her life. “Like it?”
Actually, he got a kick out of looking at her. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen a grown woman looking so damn prim and proper. Her pink suit was more feminine than tailored, with a waist-length, collarless jacket. The skirt hit the bottom of her knees, and her white blouse sported a crisp wide bow beneath her chin.
Prim. That was the only word for it, for her. Except maybe for cute.
Slowly, Anna smiled. She didn’t want to smile at this man, but she and that stubborn, heavy garage door had hated each other for years. “What did you do?”
“Adjusted the tension.”
“That can’t be as simple as you make it sound.”
He gave a slight shrug. “Pretty simple. It only took a few minutes.”
Anna pursed her lips to hide her smile. “You disappoint me. You’d have been better off to tell me you�
�d spent hours fixing it and that you broke three fingers in the process. Just so I could feel properly grateful.”
There came that sense of humor again, Gavin thought. The one Ben said she didn’t have.
But as Gavin looked into her eyes, he realized there was no humor there, the smile was forced.
Damn. She wasn’t joking. “Is that what Ben would have done?”
Anna turned abruptly away and marched toward her car. “Thank you for fixing the door.”
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly but loud enough for her to hear. “None of my business.”
Anna opened her car door, then turned to face him with another fake smile. “Don’t apologize. I appreciate your efforts. That door and I have been enemies for years.”
The prim pink Sunday suit was gone, and Gavin found himself missing it. Which was absurd.
After pulling her car into the garage and making another fuss over the garage door, she’d gone to her room and changed clothes. The suit had been replaced with beige slacks, tailored white blouse tucked in at the waist, brown leather belt, white socks and white sneakers. Everything straight and neat, as though she had to pass inspection. Instead of prim, now she looked too damn neat for comfort.
It occurred to him that she never looked as if she were comfortable. She always looked stiff, on guard. Did his presence cause that, or was she just an overly cautious woman? Or overly uptight?
Not his problem, he told himself. Except that if he was the cause, it was his problem.
And that hint of a bandage showing through her sleeve, not to mention the bandage on her hand—those were his doing.
Dammit, he hadn’t come here to scare or upset her or cause her any trouble, yet he’d done all three. He was sorry for that. But not sorry enough to give up and let her brother off the hook.
He sat on the couch and watched as she went to the kitchen, listened as she rattled around in there for a minute. The fridge opened. Ice cubes clinked. Liquid poured. Then she surprised him by returning to the living room and taking the chair across from the couch, a sweating glass of iced tea held in both hands.
Until You Page 7