by Sandra Brown
“What—” He spun around as though he had seen a ghost and needed desperately to assure himself that it wasn’t really there.
Dazzling blue eyes speared into Shay, and she wondered in some detached part of her mind if his black lashes looked spiky and thick because they were still wet or if they were like that all the time.
Incredulity, embarrassment, shock, and dismay were all stamped on the man’s rugged features. His face looked like the embodiment of masculine perfection that some talented sculptor had decided to have fun with. After arranging the features perfectly, the witty artist had carved absolute disbelief onto them. The result was comical.
Shay responded befittingly. She laughed. “Hi,” she said cheekily, “I’m Shay Morrison.” She extended her hand, barely maintaining her composure, somehow keeping from collapsing into unrestrained hysteria at the ludicrousness of the situation.
He looked at her hand stupidly, as though he’d never seen one before. Then his blue eyes, still disbelieving, swung back to her face. He whipped the towel from around his neck. Shay had the distinct notion that he didn’t know whether to cover his face, as would a guilty child, or to cover the part of him that undeniably declared his sex. He opted for the latter and wrapped the towel clumsily around his waist, holding it precariously as he said tersely, “Ian Douglas.”
“John’s son! My new stepbrother!” Shay chortled, finally giving in to the laughter that was building within her chest. “It’s so … so nice … to meet you,” she said between bursts of hilarity.
Irritation thinned his wide, full lips. “If you’ll excuse me, Miss Shay.” He reached for the door and began to close it.
Through the narrow crack she called, “I’ll see you later, Ian. Not as much of you, of course.” The door slammed shut in her face. Turning away from it, she laughed all the harder. Imagine her meeting her new stepbrother in such a fashion.
She trooped down the stairs to retrieve her bags from the car. She had traveled light, bringing only casual clothes. Her mother had stressed that they wouldn’t be going into town, but staying at the cabin all weekend. As she made her way back up the stairs, she heard dishes rattling in the kitchen. Ian Douglas must be dressed and downstairs.
She deposited her bags on the floor beside the bed, deciding to unpack later. Checking herself in the mirror, she saw that her hair could stand a brushing. Its wheat-colored strands hung to her shoulders. The natural curliness that she had cursed as a child she was now thankful for. Her hair was often an asset in her work, adding a wildness, a hint of the primitive to her “look,” which artists and photographers often found intriguing. The dark chocolate color of her eyes made her even more exotic. After whisking a lip-glossing wand over her mouth, she straightened her short-sleeved red T-shirt and descended the stairs, anticipating her next encounter with the black-haired man who was her mother’s stepson.
She found him glaring at a coffeemaker whose slow dripping, she gathered, was taxing his patience. When she entered the sunlit kitchen, he glanced at her over his shoulder, then turned back to stare at the coffeemaker without acknowledging her presence.
His indifference galled her. For reasons she couldn’t name, she found it intolerable. She knew men often found her attractive, though it rarely mattered to her if they did nor didn’t. He may be her new stepbrother, but he was a living, breathing male, and it was suddenly paramount to her that he see her as a female. Determination and pique tilted her chin arrogantly.
“You’ve no reason to sulk. I called out a hello, you know,” she began defensively.
“Obviously not loud enough.”
His unaccountable modesty puzzled her. Such shyness over one’s body had never been attributed to her, but then considering her work, it wouldn’t be. Perhaps she went too far the other way, but this kind of modesty seemed disproportionate. Mr. Douglas must have some real hang-ups, she decided.
Dressed, he was as attractive as undressed. His speaking voice was as soothingly melodic as the vibrating tones of a stringed instrument in a master’s hands. It bothered her more than she cared to admit that he seemed impervious to her as a woman, and she was determined to get a reaction out of him. “If you hadn’t been screeching at the top of your lungs, you would have heard me,” she said.
“I was singing in the shower. A common practice, I believe.”
“I didn’t open the door to the bathroom; it was already opened. That was negligence on your part. Didn’t you know I was expected? By the time I reached the door, you were stepping out of the shower with that towel around your head. What was I supposed to do?”
He turned to her then, and she was struck by his height. He towered over her a good six inches, though her willowy figure was considered tall for a woman. He had dressed in casual slacks and an open-collared sport shirt. The sleeves were rolled to his elbows, revealing the corded muscles of his forearms.
“Yes, Celia told me you were coming, but she said you wouldn’t be here until later this evening. And as for what you could have done to prevent both of us from being embarrassed, you could have left the room immediately instead of standing there like a voyeur at a peep show.”
Shay was delighted as he lowered his dark, shaggy brows over his luminescent eyes, revealing his anger. “I wasn’t embarrassed,” she said simply.
“You should have been.”
“Why? Are you ashamed of your body? Do you think the human form is something dirty and shameful?”
He ground his startlingly white teeth together. “No.”
“Then if it’s not nakedness that upset you, it must have been me. Don’t you like women?”
She flashed him a gamine smile and dropped into a chair. Bracing the heels of her hands on the seat between her knees, she leaned forward inquiringly. She knew the position was provocative. It pushed her breasts, unrestrained under the T-shirt, together to form a deep cleft between them. The cotton shirt wasn’t sheer, but it conformed to her shape, leaving little to the imagination. In retrospect, she might be ashamed of herself, but at the moment a demonic sense of humor prompted her to goad his temper, which she knew lay very close to the surface.
With seeming disinterest, he turned to the cupboard and took down a coffee mug. “I like some women,” he stated with an emphasis on some.
Trying to squelch her own rising temper, she snapped, “Just not the honest, independent, free-thinking ones. I can well imagine the type you like—meek and submissive.” She rose from the chair and stalked angrily around the kitchen. She was angry at him for his indifference, and at herself for caring about it.
“Look, I said I was sorry,” she said impatiently. “I don’t know why you’re making a federal case out of this. I saw you naked. So? If you’d had the chance you’d have taken a good long look at me or any other woman, and don’t even try to deny it. And your mind would have flown to thoughts much more intimate than mine.”
“I haven’t been intimate with any woman but my wife.”
“You’re married?” she asked, looking around in surprise, thinking she might see a ladylike, long-suffering, insipid creature materialize. Strange. She hadn’t even considered the possibility that he might have a wife. She was sure her mother hadn’t mentioned one.
“I was married.”
“Divorced?” she asked.
“No. My wife’s dead.”
Her desire to provoke him took one last gasping breath and died. Her teasing smile faded into a shattered, pale expression of deep embarrassment and remorse. Slowly she sat back down in the chair. Unseeingly she stared through the screened back door. A nondescript station wagon was parked just beyond the porch. It hadn’t been visible from the front of the house where she’d parked.
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly. The only noise in the room was the gurgle of steaming coffee as he poured it into a mug. “Mom didn’t tell me anything about you. I didn’t know.”
“Sugar?”
Her head came up to meet his stunning blue eyes. “Pardon?”
“Oh, no … no. But cream or milk, please,” she said, taking the mug from his outstretched hand. He went to the refrigerator and removed a carton of half-and-half, which he set on the table within her reach. “Thank you.”
To read more, look for Tempest in Eden by Sandra Brown.
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