Hannah And The Hellion (Silhouette Treasury 90s)

by Christine Flynn

  A faint scraping sound had her looking back up, her glance drawn farther by the heavy chain and pulley looped over the steel bracing crisscrossing the ceiling. A second later, the dull thud of something metal hitting something wood preceded a truly inventive curse.

  Damon was inside the boat. He was also now visible. The top half of his broad-shouldered frame appeared above the stern. If the thunderclouds in his expression were any indication, whatever he was doing didn’t appear to be going well.

  “Problems?” she quietly asked.

  His head jerked toward her, his dark glance lasting a mere second before he returned his attention to whatever he was working on. “Nothing a stick of dynamite wouldn’t cure.”

  “Interesting.” Hannah caught a flash out the window and crossed her arms. “That was Mr. Lindstrom’s solution to fixing a radio. Is that a standard remedy with fishermen?”

  His annoyed scowl was directed at something she couldn’t see. Turning that irritated expression on her, he muttered, “What?”

  There was no mistaking his irritation, or his preoccupation. When it came to his boat, the combination seemed perfectly natural.

  “Never mind,” she murmured, since she didn’t really have his attention, anyway.

  “Hand me one of those rags over there, would you?”

  He indicated a cardboard box full of torn and tangled cloth. Picking up what looked to be the back of an old flannel shirt, she stepped over a huge, decidedly barbaric-looking hook on the end of a chain and held the rag up to him. A moment later, with her head tipped back and her eyes squinting at the brightness of the overhead work lights, she watched the rag and his hand disappear from three feet above her.

  “Can I get you anything else?” She directed the question to the mussels clinging to the wood in front of her. The little brown mollusks reminded her a lot of Damon. Stubborn, hard, the vulnerable places all hidden inside. As she gingerly touched one of the smooth shells, it occurred to her, vaguely, that the only way to get to the tender parts was to pry them out.

  She dropped her hand, curling it into her palm as she stepped back.

  “No, thanks,” came his disembodied reply. “I can’t start this until I finish bracing the boat. I just wanted to know if I could use a wrench on the engine bolts or if I was going to have to cut them off.”

  “I take it you have to cut them.”

  His silence implied hesitation. “Yeah,” he finally muttered, sounding as if he wasn’t sure how she’d known that. “That’s exactly what I’ll have to do.”

  Even as he spoke, another rag came sailing over the side. It landed with a soft plop on the scuffed concrete, its color indiscernible for all the thick, black grease on it. Seconds later, Damon appeared at the top of the ladder.

  Swinging himself over the side, he made the trip down in two long steps, then walked over to where she’d backed up, still wiping grease from his hands with the faded rag she’d given him. “I wasn’t disturbing you, was I?”

  “No. No,” she repeated, realizing he thought she’d shown up to complain about something. “I didn’t even know you were still here. I came down to check the greenhouse.” She offered him a smile that felt more strained than it should have and backed up another step. “But I can come back after you’ve gone.”

  “You don’t have to do that.”

  “Come back?”

  He gave her a level look. “Leave.” The rag joined the other. “If there’s something you need to do down here, do it.”

  His glance dropped to her mouth, lingering long enough to make her heart jerk before he met her eyes once more. She couldn’t tell if she’d been dismissed or devoured. Nothing in the masculine angles and planes of his features gave a clue to his thoughts. But, then, he was awfully good at giving nothing away. That was undoubtedly part of what made people so nervous about him. No one really ever knew what he was thinking.

  That was obviously the way he wanted it, too. With the faint lift of his eyebrows, he turned away, leaving her to stare after him or tend to her task. The choice was hers.

  Snagging her watering can from under the table supporting her greenhouse, she headed for the large utility sink at the back of the shop. Had her poor herbs not been gasping for a drink by now, she’d have bagged the chore and come back when she was sure he was gone. Hannah was edgy enough from the storm that had been building all afternoon. Now, between Damon and the threat of thunder, she felt downright anxious.

  She turned on the water to fill the can, then grabbed a bottle of liquid fertilizer, all the while listening to the rain gush from the waterspout outside, and to the whistle of the wind through the cracks in the window frames. Behind her, a metal tool hit the cement floor. The sharp, ringing sound made her jump, causing her to slosh the fertilizer she was measuring over the side of her watering can where it swirled straight down the drain.

  Irritated at herself for the waste, she took a deep breath, slowly let it out, then promptly tensed again when a flash of blue-white lightning lit the window behind the greenhouse.

  “That’s going to overflow.”

  The green watering can sat in the deep, stained sink, water shimmering at its brim. It had just occurred to Hannah that she wasn’t entirely focused on her task when she felt Damon’s arm brush hers. Jolted by the contact, she glanced around as he turned off the faucet and found herself eye level with the hollow of his throat.

  “I didn’t mean to startle you. I thought you knew I was behind you.” He took a step back and held up his dirty hands. “I just need to wash up.”

  Telling herself to get a grip, wondering why she hadn’t considered just how stormy it was around the lake before she’d moved there, she eased away from the sink with her can and watched him reach for a jar of something that looked like gray soap mixed with sand. The sleeves of his gray sweatshirt were pushed to his elbows, revealing the fine, dark hair covering the corded muscles of his forearms. Even now, long since Pine Point had seen much of the sun, his skin was still tanned from all the time he spent in the weather. She remembered the first day she met him, seeing him in the sleeveless black shirt that had revealed the thin tattoo circling his left bicep, and thinking that he looked as if he’d been hammered from bronze. Now she couldn’t help wondering if he’d worked his boat without a shirt, and if his back and chest were that same shade of walnut.

  She wanted to distract herself from the weather, but thoughts of Damon without a shirt didn’t do a thing for the agitation she fought. Leaving him to work the soapy gray stuff around his nails, she turned off the artificial growing light attached to the greenhouse and tilted back a quarter section of the long lid.

  “The radio says the storm should be peaking right about now,” she said, needing to fill the silence with something other than the sounds coming from outside. As if to back her up, rain blew against the window glass, the ticking sounds of ice telling her it was mixed with hail. Wind whistled around the edges of the window, cold leaking into the room. “I don’t remember what they said the wind gusts were supposed to be, but it didn’t sound too threatening.”

  “You should still have your storm windows up.”

  He didn’t glance up, didn’t stop scrubbing.

  “I had to order new ones for down here,” she told him, too busy anticipating the first loud crack of thunder to tell him she was well aware that everyone had put up their storm windows ages ago. “They were just delivered last week.”

  He reached for more of the abrasive-looking goop and went to work on his hands with a brush. “I’ll put them up tomorrow.”

  “Thanks, but you don’t have to do that. The building is my responsibility. I’ve already made arrangements with Brenda’s husband to do it as soon as he gets a free afternoon.”

  “When will that be?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Then I’ll do it tomorrow. We don’t need to be wasting heat.”

  She couldn’t argue that, so she didn’t try. She didn’t get to thank him, either.
He turned on the water, drowning out anything she might have said.

  Taking his not-so-subtle hint, Hannah abandoned conversation and went to work with her hand trowel and watering can. She loosened soil, pinched some plants back for fullness and thinned the dill threatening to take over one end of the long tray, making it into a sheaf to dry. The pleasure she normally took in the motions was nowhere to be found. She simply did it because it had to be done, much as she’d found herself doing more and more lately.

  The thought deepened the furrows in her brow. It had been the simple pleasures she’d come here to savor. If they lost their appeal, she’d have nothing left.

  From the corner of his eye, Damon caught Hannah’s pensive expression in the night-blacked window over the greenhouse. She was strung tighter than a bow tonight. When he’d come up beside her at the sink, she’d nearly jumped out of her skin. She’d done the same thing when he’d dropped a wrench putting his tools away.

  Ten minutes ago, he’d been ready to call it a night. When Hannah had shown up, he’d known that was exactly what he should do. The more distance he kept between them, the better. But he’d seen her this way before, and like before, something about the brave front she put on made it impossible for him to grab his coat and go.

  Thunder rumbled low in the distance, bringing her head up and magnifying her troubled expression. Her whole body had stiffened, but she diligently continued tying string around the stems of some long, weedy-looking plant, intent on ignoring what so clearly disturbed her. When she’d started talking about the weather, he’d thought she was just doing what she probably did with everyone by making polite conversation. Now he wondered if she hadn’t been trying to talk herself out of her fear of the storm.

  “Does thunder really frighten you, or does it just make you edgy?”

  A stalk of the weed slipped through her grasp. “Edgy?”

  Thinking an explanation was hardly necessary, he watched her swipe up the leafy stern. “You know, restless, jumpy.”

  “I’m not sure,” she murmured. “I’ve never thought about it before.”

  “Think about it now,” he suggested, since it was on her mind, anyway. “Think about something that scares you. Then think about something that makes you jumpy. Which feeling is closer to what you’re feeling right now?”

  The beat of the rain picked up again, hammering against the glass and the sturdy siding. Her delicate features strained, she quickly glanced toward the window, then returned her attention to making a hanging loop in the end of the string.

  “What scares me is the thought of losing the café. As for edgy, I really can’t thing of anything offhand.”

  He’d expected her to admit she was scared by fire or street thugs, or the thought of being lost in the dark at the edge of a cliff. Something that would put a person in physical danger. Losing some thing hadn’t occurred to him.

  “Try,” he prodded.

  You. You make me feel that way, Hannah thought, but there was nothing to be gained by that admission. “I don’t know of anything else that makes me feel quite like this.” It wasn’t exactly a lie. The restiveness she felt wasn’t completely due to his presence. “It’s not like I was ever traumatized by a storm as a child. I was never left outside during a thunderstorm, or hit by lightning or anything so dramatic. The wind starts blowing and I start pacing.” She gave her head a shake, shoving back the strands that had loosened from the restraining clip. “I told you once that it didn’t make any sense.”

  Her annoyance with herself was as apparent to Damon as the apprehension robbing the light from her eyes. She believed it was her own fault she couldn’t get past the distress she felt.

  “It might make more sense than you realize.” He grabbed a towel to dry his hands. When he glanced back up, her annoyance had turned to skepticism. “From what you describe, it sounds as if you’re sensitive to changes in the atmosphere.”

  “You mean the way animals are? Like some can tell when a storm is coming?”

  He shrugged. “Animals aren’t the only ones who pick up atmospheric changes. I’ve known sailors who can sense when the weather’s going to turn even before they check their instruments. In some cases it has to do with the effect of barometric pressure on the inner ear. I know one guy who claimed it was because his skin picked up the positive ions discharged during a storm. It’s the negative ions that usually make people feel good. That’s why some people like to walk in the rain, or stand by waterfalls.”

  “Shouldn’t that be the other way around? Which is positive and which is negative, I mean.”

  He held her glance, absently rubbing the scratches fading from the side of his neck. His dark eyes grew intent, almost reproachful. “Not everything is as obvious as it would appear.”

  Damon wasn’t speaking only of the storm. He was talking about people’s perceptions of him. And hers in particular. Hannah felt dead certain of that as the air in the shop became as charged as the air outside.

  “I’d love to think there’s a logical explanation for this,” she told him, unable to understand why he would think she judged him the way everyone else did. She pulled her glance from his hand, not caring to consider the telltale marks under it. “But I doubt I’m anywhere near as sensitive to the atmosphere as the people you’re talking about.”

  The reproach had already disappeared. So had his interest in their conversation. Or so she thought as she watched him turn away to toss his towel over a sawhorse.

  She’d turned away herself, thinking it best to just get her task finished and leave, when he came up behind her. Taking the trowel out of her hand, he stuffed it in the dirt.

  “Push up your sleeve.”

  Her glance skimmed from his chest to the shadowed angle of his jaw and collided with his enigmatic gray eyes. “My sleeve?”

  “I want to show you something. Push it up and give me your arm.”

  She didn’t know what it said about her state of mind that she didn’t question him any further. Doing as he’d more or less commanded, she held out her bare forearm. He lifted it, positioning it in an L between them as if she were about to exercise a karate maneuver.

  She didn’t know karate from a carburetor. She also had no idea what he was going to do.

  “You don’t think you’re especially sensitive?”

  More curious than wary, she murmured, “Not especially.”

  “What do you feel against your skin?”

  She frowned over at him. “Nothing.”

  “How about now?”

  He lifted his big hand, slowly skimming his blunt-tipped fingers a fraction of an inch above her smooth skin. He wasn’t even touching her, yet the unnerving sensation had her immediately dropping her arm.

  Shooting him a wary glance, she rubbed at the still tingling spot. “It tickles. What did you do?”

  “Hold it back up here and I’ll show you.”

  Between the banks of double fluorescent tubes above them and the work light over the long workbench a few feet down the wall, the spot where they stood was as bright as noon on a cloudless summer day. That strong light made it easy to see the gap between his fingers and her skin—and the fine, nearly invisible hairs covering her arm. He let his hand hover over one spot, lowering it until one finger scarcely brushed the end of just one of those tiny hairs.

  The sensation unnerved her, making her feel jumpy. Edgy.

  Her glance flew to his when she started to pull away, only to have him stop her short when his hand covered the spot he had sensitized.

  “That sensation can be disturbing,” he murmured, “if you’re not in the mood for it.” He moved closer, rubbing her lowered arm, and taking away the feeling he’d caused. “If the air in here was drier, I wouldn’t have to get even that close. I could do the same thing with electricity on the tips of my fingers.” The motion of his hand slowed. “That kind of subtle friction could be why you get so agitated when it storms. The physics are a little different, but the principle is the same. Especially w
hen you’re outside in the wind.”

  “Then why is it that the thunder bothers me when I’m inside?”

  “Maybe you’re like the guy who reacts to the positive charges and it doesn’t matter if you’re inside or out. Either way, the thunder is just the thing that makes you jump. If you’re already feeling edgy, any loud noise would do it.” Understanding settled in his smoky eyes. “You did it when I dropped a wrench a while ago.”

  He believed there was an explicable basis for something she had considered totally unreasonable. And while what he’d said actually made sense to her, she would have felt grateful to him even if it hadn’t. He hadn’t laughed at her fear, or teased her about it, or dismissed it as irrational or childish. He’d simply accepted it as something she felt, then helped her—made her—define it. It didn’t matter that she’d still feel the same agitation when it stormed. It helped enormously just understanding why that agitation was there.

  “What made you think the weather was the reason?”

  His hand still moved against her arm, the slower motion seeming almost unconscious as he quietly studied her face. He said nothing for a moment, but the way he looked at her made her think he was wrestling more with whether or not he should admit how he’d reached his conclusion, than with the answer itself.

  “There’s a difference in you when the weather’s bad,” he finally said. “In the way you hold yourself. The way you move.” He drew his fingers over her elbow, his eyes drifting to her mouth. “And I’ve noticed how sensitive you are to touch.”

  The sensitivity he spoke of now was only to his touch. But as vulnerable as that thought made Hannah feel, she couldn’t admit it. She found the phenomenon threatening, alarming, fascinating. The latter, most of all.

  The pressure of Damon’s hand had slowly decreased, the firmness of his touch easing until his fingers barely whispered along her inner arm. The sensations that had made her so edgy before now elicited an entirely different set of reactions. Instead of wanting to pull away, she wanted to lean into him, to feel those strong fingers work over her shoulders, her back.