* * *
Before she stepped in the shower, Ally heard the click of computer keys in Mitchell’s room. Following her up here had probably played hell with his usual schedule, but if she knew Mitchell, he’d found a way to keep track of everything, even from this small town in Alaska. Even a serious infatuation wouldn’t alter Mitchell’s course for long.
She’d thought of bringing a laptop, but in the end she’d chosen to travel light, as Uncle Kurt had suggested. He’d promised to find her good deals on all the equipment she’d need—top-of-the-line cameras, a new laptop, and the right printer. He was researching good processing labs, too, for those times when she didn’t want to go digital.
But without a laptop, she couldn’t keep up her e-mail correspondence with him, and she missed that. They’d exchanged e-mails for years, ever since he’d paid that surprise visit during her sophomore year in college. She’d been fascinated to finally meet the mysterious Kurt, her grandfather’s son by his first wife.
Back when her grandmother and grandfather had married, Kurt had been eighteen, and Grammy’s son—Ally’s father—had been ten. Ally’s father had been adopted and given the Jarrett name, seemingly replacing Kurt, who’d chosen to live with his mother. Ally had always been curious about this stepuncle, but for reasons no one would talk about, he’d been banned from the Jarrett mansion long before she’d been born.
At last she could ask Kurt about those reasons. He’d explained that Grammy couldn’t bear to look at him because he reminded her that her beloved husband had once shared a bed with another woman. Because it was the only explanation Ally had ever been given, she had to believe it, although she thought it was horribly unfair.
Kurt still got a monthly trust fund allowance, and he’d admitted that he’d lose that if Grammy knew he’d come to see Ally. Not wanting him to be punished any further, Ally had suggested they keep in touch secretly through the Internet. They’d kept it up after she’d graduated.
Even though Grammy hadn’t shown any interest in the Internet, Ally hadn’t wanted to take any chances that someone in the household would figure out she was in touch with Kurt, so she’d arranged for him to use her college roommate’s e-mail address. After Grammy died, they’d kept the same routine out of habit. Together they’d planned her trip to Alaska so that she could follow her dream with Uncle Kurt’s help.
Now she just had to wait for Uncle Kurt to show up. She was eager to see him, but she’d love to get Mitchell out of town first. As she was contemplating the best way to do that, the water changed from hot to lukewarm. Uh-oh. She’d just lathered up her hair. She quickly rinsed it, but the lukewarm gave way quickly to cold, and then icy.
Without meaning to, she yelped.
Instantly Mitchell pounded on the bathroom door. “Ally! What’s wrong! Ally!”
She turned off the shower and grabbed a towel. “The hot water ran—” Then she screamed as wood splintered. With a huge crash the bathroom door flew open.
Mitchell stood in the doorway, breathing hard. “What’s… wrong?”
Gulping for air, she stared at him, unable to process what had happened. “You scared me to death!”
“You scared me to death! What happened?”
“Nothing that required breaking down a door! Good God, Mitchell. Betsy’s going to have your head on a platter.”
“But I heard you cry out!” His gaze flicked over her. “Listen, could you… wrap that around yourself?”
She glanced down at the towel she held in front of her and saw that it wasn’t quite covering the subject. “Um, sure.” She held it against her breasts and managed to get the edge of the towel around her and tucked in. But it wasn’t what she’d call a generously sized towel. The bottom hem barely made it past the salient points.
Then another fact registered. “You’re not wearing your glasses.”
His hand went to his face, as if he hadn’t realized it. “No, I guess not.”
“Well, there’s one good thing about this incident. You probably can’t see me very well.”
“Right, right,” he said immediately. “You’re really fuzzy. Extremely fuzzy.”
“Good, because otherwise this could be one embarrassing moment.”
“I think it still has potential. What was the yelp all about?”
She hated to tell him. “The hot water ran out.”
“That’s it? I broke down a door because you ran out of hot water?”
“I didn’t ask you to break it down, now did I? I had a natural reaction to ice water suddenly ending up on my… body, and then wham! Arnold Schwarzenegger crashes into the bathroom. I thought we were being invaded!”
“I thought you were in trouble!”
“You couldn’t have waited five more seconds for me to tell you about the water situation?”
“Sometimes five seconds is the difference between life and death!”
Ally sighed. She’d had no idea that Mitchell was wound so tight, but maybe all the talk about grizzlies and the Peeping Caribou had freaked him out. And it was sort of cute that he’d come to her rescue.
“Okay, I appreciate the effort,” she said. “But the thing is, Betsy’s door is busted, and we’re going to need a really good reason why that happened. I don’t think a little yelp from me is going to cut it.” She still couldn’t comprehend that Mitchell had done the busting, either. She hadn’t imagined he was that strong.
He rubbed the back of his neck. “Something could have gotten into the bathroom, for all I knew.” He shrugged. “Maybe even a mouse.”
Ally looked at the door hanging crazily by one hinge. Mitchell had really trashed that door. “Let’s say it might have been a mouse. I still think breaking down the door is a little over the top. Betsy isn’t going to be happy.”
“I suppose not.” Mitchell glanced over his shoulder at the door.
She took pity on him. “Tell you what. I’ll explain to Betsy that I screamed really loud when the water turned cold, and you were sure someone was in here murdering me, and that’s why you broke down the door.”
“That’s okay.” His grin was sheepish. “You don’t have to protect me from Betsy. I can take the heat. I’ll apologize and pay for a new door.”
She assessed the damage. “And a new doorframe, looks like. I hope that wasn’t historic.”
“God, do you think it was?” Mitchell turned and took a good look at what he’d done. “You know, that could be original. That’s probably why it gave way so easily.”
“It didn’t sound like it gave way easily. You made a horrible crash when you came through.” She peered at him. “How did you do that, Mitchell? It’s not like you’re into body building, or anything.”
“It’s adrenaline,” he said. “Like when a kid is pinned under a car and the mother comes along and lifts the car off the kid. That kind of strength.”
“And you summoned up that kind of strength to come and save me?” She was totally impressed.
“I would have done that for anybody I thought was in trouble.”
She gazed at him. “Okay.” But she didn’t think so. She thought he had a really bad case of unrequited love. “Well, in case you didn’t already know it, the bathroom’s available now.”
“Thanks.”
“That’s the good news. The bad news is, there’s no hot water. Guess I’ll go get into my jammies.” She turned and walked back into her room, closing the door between her room and the bathroom. Then she turned back, opening it a crack and peeking through. “Oh, and Mitchell?”
He was standing in the exact spot she’d left him, as if he’d been nailed to the floor. “What?”
“That system we worked out—it’s not viable anymore. Plus it seems to lead to extreme damage. We’ll have to come up with a different signal. We could try whistling. Good night, now.”
“Good night.” His voice sounded gravelly.
Yep, Mitchell was over the moon about her. And it made him do some very un-Mitchell-like things, like spontaneousl
y book a flight to Alaska and break down a bathroom door. She hadn’t thought he was a very interesting man, but much more of this and she might change her mind.
Chapter Seven
Mitch gladly took a cold shower. After interacting with an almost-naked Ally, he was thinking he might need to stand in a cold shower all night long. But eventually his equipment returned to normal and he began to shiver, so he toweled off and headed back to his room.
As for the bashed-in door situation, he managed to prop the door against the frame, but the privacy factor was definitely compromised. Peekaboo spots all around the perimeter. Therefore he pulled on his sweatpants and sweatshirt in a hurry, in case Ally wandered back in the bathroom to brush her teeth.
So far all he heard from the bug under her bed was plenty of rustling around, and something that could be the pages of a book turning. He glanced at his watch. Barely ten.
He was a night owl, which left a lot of night left to owl around in… lots of time to think about Ally naked except for the haphazard drape of a yard of skimpy white terry. Between the excitement of breaking down the door and the rush of seeing her fresh out of the shower, he might not go to sleep at all.
So he’d overreacted. Better too much protection than too little, in his estimation. Besides, he’d never guarded someone in the wilds of Alaska before. For all he knew, there might be a brand of Alaskan mouse that stood three feet at the shoulder.
And there was always the danger that Kurt had given the Anchorage PI the slip and driven up here in some badass Hummer. Or hired someone else to do it. Mitch didn’t have a handle on how much of a threat Kurt posed, but at the very least the guy would probably try to get his hands on some of Ally’s money. At the worst, he’d decide to eliminate her and go for the whole pie.
Mitch flopped back on the double bed and wondered how to spend the next couple of hours. Finally he resorted to his old standby and pulled a worn deck of cards from a pocket in his suitcase. Sure, he had solitaire and a bunch of other games on his laptop, but he liked the tactile experience of handling cards.
At one time he’d toyed with the idea of becoming a professional gambler. With casinos sprouting up on every reservation, a gambler didn’t have to headquarter in Vegas or Atlantic City anymore. Mitch liked figuring percentages and reading his opponents, some of the same skills he used as a PI. In the end he’d ditched the idea because he didn’t like cigarette smoke.
But he still loved a good game of poker. Unfortunately, he needed someone to play against for that, so he was reduced to solitaire. Shuffling the cards, he laid them out on the bed and started to play.
He was about halfway through his second game when the noises coming from Ally’s room changed. Her bed-springs squeaked, footsteps headed for the bathroom, and light shone through the sizable gap between the door and the splintered frame. Ally started brushing her teeth.
Turning over another three cards, Mitch continued with his game. Sort of. He wasn’t really paying attention to it anymore. Instead he listened to Ally, who didn’t let the water run while she brushed. She might have more money than God, but she conserved water. He liked that.
Because she was brushing her teeth, he couldn’t help thinking how straight and white they were. Of course, they would be the best teeth orthodontia could buy. She wouldn’t have been allowed to grow up with any flaws. Yet he was amazed that she wasn’t more high-maintenance as a result of all that pampering.
He went right past a five of hearts that would have played on the six of spades because he fell into a daydream about her lips, which at the moment would be decorated in toothpaste foam. She had a great mouth, the top lip creating a perfect archer’s bow and the bottom one full with a slight pouty look. Delicious.
By the time he realized he’d checked out of his solitaire game, he had a mishmash of hearts and diamonds in one of his suited piles. With a snort of disgust, he gathered up the cards, shuffled, and laid out a new hand. He needed to stop obsessing about Ally’s finer points. And speaking of her finer points, her breasts were two extremely fine points. She—
“Do you cheat?”
He glanced toward the bathroom door. She’d pressed one eye to the crack and was watching him.
“No, I don’t cheat.” He tried to gauge whether she could see the recorder he’d been using to listen in to her activities. He didn’t think so. The angle was wrong. “Do you cheat?”
“Never. If you’re gonna cheat, what’s the point? You haven’t really beat old Sol, then, have you?”
“Nope.”
“Why aren’t you wearing your glasses?”
Busted. He thought fast. “My eyesight’s okay up close. I need the glasses for distance.”
“But whenever I came into your office back in Bel Air, and you were working on the computer, you had on your glasses.”
That was part of the look your grandmother wanted me to have. “They have a special, nearly invisible tint that helps with the screen.” He wondered if she’d swallow that whopper.
“I see.”
He couldn’t tell if she believed him or not. “At least that’s what the optometrist told me. I’m not sure it makes much difference, so sometimes I forget to put them on.” Maybe that would cover his lapses.
“So you’re playing cards?”
“For a while.”
“Can I play? I’m not even slightly sleepy, and I’m going stir-crazy in my room.”
“Um, sure.” He hopped off the bed, headed for the receiver. “Let me get the door.”
“I can do it.”
He had about three seconds to flip the switch on the recorder and throw a shirt over it. He turned toward the doorway right as she came through it wearing red plaid pajamas and a pair of thermal socks.
As a sexual turn-on, her outfit should have been a miserable flop. The flannel was completely opaque and clownishly baggy. But it looked soft, the sort of jammies that women wore over bare skin. No underwear. That was enough to jump-start Mitch’s battery.
“Should we just play on the bed?” she asked.
His brain stalled. Oh, yeah, they could certainly play on the bed. Forget the cards.
“Unless you think the floor makes more sense. The bed might be a little bouncy.”
Bounce could be good. Getting a little rebound action going could put some real punch in the action.
“Mitchell?” She waved a hand in front of his face. “You’re spacing out on me. Maybe you’re too tired to play cards, after all. Listen, if you want to go to bed, that’s fine.”
Oh, he did, but not alone. “I’m not tired. I was listening to the wind. It hasn’t let up out there. We may be snowbound for a while.”
“God, I hope not. That would be so frustrating.”
No kidding. Especially considering that he couldn’t let himself get involved with the woman standing there in her fiendishly sensuous flannel. “Let’s play on the bed,” he said, and managed to say it in a normal voice, as if he’d never thought those words meant anything other than a simple card game.
“Good choice.” She climbed up and sat cross-legged near the end of the bed. “It’ll be warmer than the floor.” She waited for him to sit down at the pillow end. “Now what shall we play?”
Oh, man, this was going to be hell. “Poker?” The suggestion came out as a croak. Immediately he thought about strip poker.
“I’m not very good.”
Even better. He could literally beat the pants off her.
“But I think it’s a fun game. We played at the sorority.”
“Okay, then poker it is.”
“Don’t we need something to count as chips?”
It was an indication of how rattled he was that he hadn’t thought of that. “I’ll bet Betsy has kitchen matches.” A little trip downstairs might give him a chance to get his libido under control. He slid off the bed. “Let’s go see.”
“Good idea.” She followed him to the door. “Wait. Get your glasses. We left it pretty dark, and I don’t want you
falling down the stairs because you misjudged a step.”
“Right.” He had to pick up his orange parka to locate his glasses, but he managed to keep the recorder out of sight in the process.
They left his room and started down the darkened stairs, Ally going first.
“I haven’t heard Betsy come back, have you?” she asked.
“No.” But he’d been so busy listening in on Ally that he might have missed the sound of the front door.
“I don’t think she’s back. I wonder if that means she’s staying at Clyde’s for the night.”
“Could be. Let’s not think about that.”
Ally laughed. “I can’t help it.”
“Personally, I’m blocking those images.” Besides that, reminding himself that Betsy might not come home also reminded him that it could be just the two of them here tonight. Well, two people, but Mitch’s penis seemed to have a mind of its own, so he’d almost count it as a third party to the gathering.
“I feel like a kid sneaking downstairs to raid the refrigerator,” Ally said.
Mitch felt like a man ready to seduce a woman in a darkened kitchen. So he fumbled for the light switch and they both stood there blinking in the glare from overhead.
“Refrigerators are best raided in the dark,” Ally said.
“I know, but we’re not raiding the refrigerator.”
“Maybe we should. I’ve always wanted to.”
“So you’ve never done it?” Now that he thought about it, he had a tough time imagining how that would work in the Garrett mansion.
“I didn’t dare. We had security cameras, you know.”
He did know. He’d recommended an update. “Somebody would have busted you?”
“Not in the sense that I would have been punished, but I never could have completed a successful raid. And I would have been gently reminded to buzz the maid’s quarters so that someone could fix me whatever snack I wanted. Then I would be asked not to wander around the place in the middle of the night because it got the security staff’s undies in a twist.”
“That all makes sense.”
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