Home at Rose Cottage

by Sherryl Woods

  “Want me to stay away?”

  The offer startled her. “You’d do that?”

  “Now that you’re actually getting the garden under control, yes.” He searched her face. “If that’s what you want.”

  Was it? Melanie honestly didn’t know. It was what she should want. It was what she’d promised Ashley the night before—that she’d keep things between herself and Mike cool and impersonal. Keeping him away from the house was probably the only way she’d accomplish that, since he had the uncanny ability to get her all hot and bothered even when she was most determined to resist him.

  “You probably should keep an eye on things,” she said finally. “I could wind up planting hollyhocks on top of daffodils and spoiling everything.”

  He grinned. “You have a point, but I should probably take off now, before your sisters get back from wherever they’re hiding,” he said. “No point in getting them all worked up again.”

  She lifted her gaze to meet his. “I’m sorry they put you through the wringer last night.”

  “Actually it was kind of fun. Kept me on my toes.”

  She stared at him. “You enjoyed it?”

  “Sure, why not? It was harmless. I like that they’re so protective of you. Of course, it’s made me wonder why they think you need protecting.”

  “Long story.” She deliberately took a sip of her now-cold coffee and avoided meeting his eyes.

  “And you’re still not ready to fill me in?”

  Melanie wasn’t entirely sure why she’d kept quiet, beyond not wanting Mike to lose all respect for her judgment. After all, she had been duped for months by a married man. Yep, that was the reason for her silence, all right. No woman wanted a man to see her for the pathetic idiot she was.

  “I doubt I will ever be ready to tell that story to another living soul, especially you,” she said honestly. “I’m trying to forget about it.”

  “Some things you can’t forget about until you deal with them,” he said.

  “The way you’ve dealt with what Linda did to you and Jessie?”

  His expression sobered at once. “Touché,” he said grimly. “No more prodding, but I will listen if you ever change your mind, and I won’t pass judgment.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” Melanie said just as her sisters reappeared, showered and looking as fresh and crisp as if they’d never done a lick of work.

  “We’re ready for lunch,” Maggie announced.

  “The job’s not finished,” Melanie pointed out.

  “We don’t care,” Ashley said. “We’re going to lunch, anyway. Do you want to come, or do you have better things to do?” She grinned pointedly at Mike.

  “Mike was just leaving,” Melanie said firmly. “I’ll come to lunch with you as long as we stick to a preapproved list of topics.”

  “Where is this list?” Ashley demanded. “I haven’t seen any list.” She glanced at Jo and Maggie. “Have you seen a list?”

  “I believe it will be easier if you just take note of the one exclusion,” Melanie said.

  Three pairs of accusing eyes turned toward Mike.

  “Hey, it’s her rule, not mine,” he said. “If a bunch of gorgeous women want to talk about me, I’m okay with it. It’ll probably do wonders for my reputation.”

  “Well, there you go,” Ashley said. “No exclusions.”

  Melanie gave them all a sour look. “We’ll discuss this in the car.”

  “Want me to come along to referee?” Mike inquired.

  “No!” four voices chimed emphatically.

  Melanie grinned at her sisters. “At least there’s one thing we can agree on. Sorry, Mike.”

  “No problem. I’ll just go and track down some of the guys. See what they’re saying around town about the D’Angelo sisters.”

  He sauntered off before any of them could comment.

  “Do you think he was serious?” Jo asked, looking surprisingly worried. “Will people be talking about us? About the fact that we’re all here?”

  “More than likely, especially since we saw Lena last night at the restaurant. She’s like a one-woman newscast,” Melanie said. “It’s no big deal. After all, what could they possibly have to say about us?”

  “I’m not very hungry,” Jo said. “I think I’ll stick around here.”

  “Jo, you can’t do that,” Ashley protested.

  “I most certainly can,” Jo retorted.

  “But there’s nothing to eat,” Melanie reminded her. “We never did get to the store.”

  “You said there was stuff for grilled cheese sandwiches. That’ll do.”

  Something in Jo’s tone told Melanie that she wasn’t going to budge. “Okay, sweetie. It’s up to you.”

  “You’re going to miss out on pestering Melanie about Mike,” Maggie teased.

  “Oh, I think you guys can handle that without me,” Jo said. “Have fun. Bring home dessert. Something decadent.”

  She headed for the house before they could take one last shot at arguing with her.

  “Any idea what that was about?” Ashley asked, staring after her worriedly.

  “None,” Melanie said.

  “Oh, well, Maggie and I can gang up on her on the way home,” Ashley said. “Let’s concentrate on you for now. Organizing one sister’s life at a time is all I can handle.”

  “And we thought you prided yourself on multitasking,” Maggie commented.

  “A law practice is not nearly as complicated as Melanie’s life,” Ashley explained breezily.

  “Let’s leave my life alone, too,” Melanie retorted. “Or I’ll be staying here with Jo.”

  Her sisters determinedly linked arms with her.

  “Not a chance,” Maggie said.

  Ashley grinned at her. “It’ll be painless. We promise.”

  Judging from the glint in her eyes, she was lying through her teeth. She was actually eager to put Melanie through the wringer.

  Melanie was jumpy as a June bug. She’d been skittish ever since Mike had arrived with a load of topsoil first thing Monday morning. If he didn’t know better, he’d actually think she was scared of him. What the hell had her sisters asked about him after he’d left on Saturday?

  “Have a good visit with your sisters?” he asked, eyeing her curiously.

  “Great.”

  “They go back home?”

  “Last night,” she confirmed.

  “You sleep okay?”

  She frowned at him. “I slept just fine. Why do you ask?”

  “You look the way you did that first morning I showed up here, edgy and out of sorts. The only thing missing is the lamp.”

  She stared at him blankly.

  He chuckled. “You’re not clutching it so you can crack my skull open with it, but you do look as if you don’t quite trust me.”

  “Oh.”

  “Don’t want to talk about it,” he concluded.

  “About what?”

  “Whatever has you so edgy.”

  “Not really.”

  “Okay.” He dumped a wheelbarrow filled with rich topsoil in a cleared spot in the backyard, then headed back to his truck for more.

  Melanie trailed after him, silent and clearly troubled. Eventually she sighed heavily.

  Mike stopped shoveling dirt into the wheelbarrow and stared at her. “Okay, that’s it. Something is obviously on your mind. Spill.”

  “It’s nuts.”

  “Maybe so, but it’s bugging you, so ask.”

  “My sisters think I should ask if you’re still carrying the torch for your ex-wife,” she said, color flooding her cheeks.

  Mike’s pulse throbbed dully. “Who actually wants to know? You or them?”

  “All of us, I guess.”

  “No,” he said succinctly, hoping that would put an end to it.

  “Is Jessie your only child?”

  He regarded her incredulously. Where the hell had they come up with that one? “Yes,” he said tightly. “Did you think I kept two or three mo
re stuffed in a closet somewhere? Or that I’d left them with a woman who’s addicted to drugs?”

  She flushed at that. “No, of course not. I just had to be sure.”

  He couldn’t help wondering if this had something to do with whoever had sent her scurrying away from Boston. What the hell had that guy—and he was assuming a man was at the root of her flight—done to her?

  He gave her a quizzical look. “Anything else?”

  “And you have full custody of Jessie?”

  “Yes.”

  “I see.”

  He glanced over at her. “What is it you think you see?”

  “Nothing. I just meant… Oh, hell, I don’t know what I meant.”

  “If you’re out of questions and you’re not going to help me spread this topsoil, go find something else to do,” he suggested curtly. “Or at least drop the inquisition. Something tells me it has less to do with me than it does with that past you refuse to discuss.”

  A wounded expression in her eyes quickly turned to wariness. She whirled away and headed toward the house. “I’ll be inside if you need me.”

  After she’d gone, Mike sighed. He’d made a mess of that. She’d only been asking perfectly reasonable questions. Well, except for that one about him having more kids. That one was out of left field. Still, it wasn’t her fault that the whole subject of his marriage and divorce was so damn touchy. He thought he’d already made that clear to her, but obviously her sisters had filled her head with a lot of doubts and nonsense about him. He could hardly blame them for wanting to look out for her, especially when it was so plain that someone had hurt her recently, but that didn’t make it any easier to be asked about all that stuff he preferred to block out of his mind. Hell, he should have been the one asking questions. He should have pushed harder to find out who’d hurt her and how. Maybe then he’d know just how fragile Melanie was and whether he was destined to do the same thing to her.

  The questions would have to wait for another day, though. Or at least until he worked off this ridiculous desire to go inside and kiss her senseless. If things between them were confusing now, that would pretty much send the complication meter into the stratosphere.

  Melanie stood by the window and tried not to stare. Mike’s shirt was stretched taut over flexing muscles as he shoveled the topsoil from his truck onto a growing mound in the area he’d designated for a perennial garden. She’d made an absolute mess of things just now. She knew what a private man he was, at least when it came to his marriage. Why on earth had she allowed her sisters to prod her into poking around in his personal business?

  Of course, the answer was obvious. She wanted to know. She’d been burned all too recently by a man who’d kept silent about the important relationships in his life. She’d learned from bitter experience that she was incapable of telling when a man was lying to her.

  Not that it mattered in Mike’s case, of course. It wasn’t like she was getting involved with him. Her emotions weren’t on the line. Her future wasn’t at stake. What did it really matter if he still had feelings for Jessie’s mother?

  She glanced outside, saw that he’d stripped off his shirt, and sighed. She was lying through her teeth. She wanted him, all right. Her sisters had seen that immediately. That’s why they’d spent the entire weekend poking and prodding and asking all those unanswerable questions about Mike. They’d obviously seen her all but drooling over him. They’d definitely seen the way he kissed her. And they knew her well enough to understand that as clever and sneaky as Mike might be, that kiss would never have happened if Melanie hadn’t wanted it to. She could duck an unwanted advance with the best of them.

  She ought to go out there right now and apologize for poking into things that were none of her concern, but the truth was, she did need to know the answers to those questions. She did need to protect herself before this thing with Mike, whatever it was, went one step further.

  Of course, he would only say he’d already answered her. Unfortunately, his curt, one-word replies had only stirred more questions.

  It took a while, but she finally gathered her courage and went back outside. He glanced up, nodded, then went right on raking the topsoil over the ground.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  He stopped then and leaned on the rake. “Really?”

  She flinched under his steady, disbelieving gaze. “Okay, I’m not sorry for asking, only for making you uncomfortable.”

  “Thought so.”

  “They’re reasonable questions, Mike.”

  “Yes,” he agreed. “But I don’t have any other answers.”

  “You could elaborate.”

  “Have you elaborated on why you came up here looking like a wounded soul?”

  “It’s not the same thing.”

  “Isn’t it? How do you figure that?”

  “What happened to me is over.”

  “My marriage is over.”

  “Not as long as you have Jessie,” she pointed out. “Jessie ties you to her mother forever. Linda could be in rehab right now trying to get her act together to come back to you.”

  “I hope she is in rehab,” Mike said. “But she won’t be coming back to me. That door is closed.”

  He sounded so sure of that. Melanie wanted desperately to believe him. Some crazy part of her wanted to take a risk and get closer to him, even if it was only for a few short weeks. But despite the finite end to their relationship that was in the cards, there were far too many emotional perils to be weighed.

  He stepped across the freshly raked dirt and stood directly in front of her, tipping her chin up until she couldn’t avoid his gaze.

  “Linda is not an issue,” he repeated softly. “This is between you and me.”

  Before she could question his declaration, before she could say that old baggage couldn’t simply be dismissed, his mouth covered hers and her senses went haywire, just as they had on the previous occasions when they’d kissed.

  She couldn’t think, couldn’t remember even one of the questions she’d meant to ask. All she could do was feel the way his lips caressed hers, the way his heat and scent surrounded her, the way his body fit hers, the play of his muscles under her fingers when her hands drifted to his sun-warmed shoulders to cling to him.

  It seemed like an eternity passed—or maybe only a split second—before he released her and went back to raking as if nothing the least bit monumental or life-altering had just occurred.

  How the heck could he be so cool not ten seconds after sending her up in flames? she wondered irritably.

  If she hadn’t already had her sisters’ warnings screaming in her head, that kiss would have been a wake-up call. She was up to her eyebrows, not in topsoil but in quicksand…and she was sinking fast.

  8

  He had to stop kissing her, Mike thought as he concentrated on getting that topsoil spread out just so, mainly to avoid meeting Melanie’s eyes. She was watching him warily. He could almost feel her gaze boring into him. He could practically hear the endless list of questions on the tip of her tongue.

  Like what the hell was he thinking? He didn’t have an answer to that one.

  Or what did he want from her? He didn’t have an answer to that one, either, at least not one that wouldn’t get him slapped silly. Oh, yes, he wanted to haul her into bed, but that was not exactly what she was itching to hear right now. And since he wasn’t going to let it happen, anyway, it was a moot point.

  There were probably a whole litany of questions he hadn’t even thought of. Heck, there were probably a few that hadn’t even occurred to her sisters, and they were the grand masters of asking the unanswerable.

  “We need to talk,” she finally said, sounding as edgy as she had when he’d first arrived.

  His gaze narrowed. The very last thing on his mind was talking. What was it with women that they wanted to talk about everything? The only woman in his life who’d ever kept silent was Linda, only because she’d had so blasted many secrets she wanted to keep
from him.

  “About?” he asked cautiously.

  “I can’t talk to you when you’re only half-dre…” She blushed furiously. “When half your attention is on that dirt. Put on your shirt and come inside. I just made some iced tea.”

  Inside? Mike stared at her. Inside was a very bad idea. Inside was where her bed was. Inside was where no casual passerby could happen to see whatever they were up to. Inside was damned dangerous.

  “I’m filthy,” he protested, grabbing at the most obvious and convenient straw. “Why don’t you bring the tea out here? We can sit on the swing.” The chance of a passing boater intruding on their privacy was slim, but it might be enough to keep his hands where they belonged…away from her.

  “I’m not worried about you tracking a little dirt through the house,” she said impatiently. “Besides, it’s hot out here. I’ve turned on the air-conditioning. The kitchen will be cool.”

  Not as cool as the ice-cold shower he needed at the moment, Mike thought desperately. “Give me a minute,” he said, hoping to buy himself enough time to talk himself out of the insane desire he had to just go with the flow and haul her straight upstairs to her bed. “Go on in. I’ll be there.”

  She regarded him skeptically, as if she didn’t entirely trust him not to take off, which, come to think of it, wasn’t a bad idea. Cowardly, but not a bad idea under the circumstances.

  “Go,” he repeated. “I won’t be long.”

  She nodded and walked toward the house, her hips swaying provocatively in what was more than likely a totally instinctive and unintended turn-on. He was such a jerk. Women walked past him all the time with the deliberate intention of trying to snag his attention. Brenda put more sway into her caboose when she sashayed past his table at the café than any woman he’d ever seen. It never did a thing for him. Melanie walked away, all innocence and hurt feelings, and he wanted to jump her bones. Ridiculous. He really had been celibate way too long.

  He yanked on his shirt and buttoned it all the way to his neck as if that might prevent her from getting any wild ideas about dragging it right back off him. Then he spent another ten minutes getting his hormones and his wayward thoughts under control before he followed.