He sighed. “You might as well come in and sit down out here by the fire, then. We can keep each other company until the lights come back on.”
She hesitated, just long enough for him to wonder if the tug and pull between them unnerved her as much as it did him. He couldn’t have said which he would prefer: that she go back to bed and leave him alone or that she come in and sit beside him so he could indulge his unwilling fascination a little longer.
She chose the second, pausing only long enough to turn on the light switch so they would know when the power was back on, then she sat in the armchair.
In the fire’s glow, he could see she wore soft, lace-edged cotton pajamas the color of spring leaves. He did his best not to think about how they would feel under his fingers.
When she pulled her knees up and wrapped her arms around them as if she were cold, he lifted one of the extra blankets she had brought him from the end of the couch and tossed it to her.
“Thanks,” she murmured. She snuggled into it, tucking the edges around her feet. They sat for a moment, accompanied only by the low rumble of the fire, their own breathing and the distant wind.
“When I was a kid, I used to love storms like this when the power would go out,” she said into the stillness. “That sounds crazy, doesn’t it?”
“I guess it depends why you liked it.”
“My dad would make it all seem like a big adventure. When the power went out in the middle of the night like this, he would pull out the sleeping bags from the garage and start a fire in the big fireplace in the great room and the three of us would roast marshmallows and pop popcorn and tell stories just like we were camping out.”
He had to admit that even after all these years, he didn’t like hearing anything positive about R.J. Maxwell. He had never quite understood how a woman like Lauren could come from such a bastard.
“Sounds great,” he said politely.
“It was. Even when I was in high school, Dad would still drag us down there. When he was home, anyway. He was always so busy, off on his business trips.”
The resentment in those last two words left him acutely uncomfortable. He knew the real reason her father spent so much time away from him, but he wasn’t sure if she knew he was one of the few who were aware of all the facts. They had never talked about this before, about the motives behind R.J.’s embezzlement and everything that went along with it. He wasn’t sure he wanted to talk about it now, in the hushed peace of the night.
Before he could come up with a response, she shook her head slightly; and even in the darkened room, he could see regret flitter across her lovely features.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to sound embittered. I really do try not to be, but sometimes it slips through.”
“You have a right to be angry, Lauren.”
She had a right to be angry at Daniel, he thought. She just didn’t know it—and he didn’t know if he had the courage to tell her.
“Most of the time the whole situation just makes me sad.” She gazed into the fire, avoiding Daniel’s gaze. “If R.J. hadn’t taken a coward’s way out of the mess he created, the first question I would ask would have been why my mother and I weren’t enough for him.”
“He loved you, Lauren. He was always proud of his daughter.”
“Right.” After a moment she smiled, though it looked strained. “Let’s talk about something else, can we? I’m really not in the mood to dredge up any more of the past tonight.”
What are you in the mood for? he wanted to ask. The question almost spilled out as images flashed through his mind of those heated moments in her kitchen earlier.
He forced his mind away from that dangerous line of thought. As much as he yearned to taste her and touch her again, he knew it was impossible.
“You want to pick the topic or should I?” he asked after a moment.
Her teeth flashed white in the dark as she smiled. “I will. I was wondering this earlier. What are you doing here, Daniel?”
“W-e-e-ll,” he drew out. “It’s a little cold sleeping out in my truck on a night like tonight. Your couch is much more comfortable for guard-dog duty.”
“I don’t mean here, right now. I mean, why did you stick around in Moose Springs? I know you came back to help your mother when she was sick. But after she died, why did you stay here when you could have gone anywhere?”
He hadn’t been expecting the question and it took him a moment to formulate a reply. “I don’t think there’s any one answer to that. This is my home and I love it here. That’s one reason, probably the easiest, most obvious one.”
“What else?”
“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “Maybe I felt like I had something to prove.”
Her eyes widened with surprise. “Why would you think that?”
“We grew up in different worlds, Lauren.”
“Not that different. You lived three blocks away.”
“In a shack that R.J. probably wouldn’t have considered a fit place to store his riding mower.”
In the glow from the fire, she looked flushed. “Your parents were wonderful people. Your mother was always so sweet. Every kid in town would save their allowance for weeks to buy those cherry empanadas she sold at Moosemania Days. And I don’t think I ever saw your father when he wasn’t smiling.”
“I agree. They were great people. That didn’t change the fact in a lot of people’s minds that we were dirt-poor Mexicans.”
As soon as the words were out, he heartily wished he hadn’t said them. He didn’t need to emphasize the differences between them. They were obvious enough.
“And so you wanted to show people you were more than that. That’s why you worked so hard in school, why you pushed yourself at football, why you worked to become an indispensable deputy in the sheriff’s office?”
“It started out that way, anyhow. Pretty pathetic, isn’t it?”
“You had nothing to prove, Daniel. Absolutely nothing! Look at all you’ve achieved! Not only did you have a full-on football scholarship, but you were the high school valedictorian, as I recall, and Ren was the year after you. Anna would have had the same honor in our grade but, uh, someone else beat her to it. She had to settle for salutatorian.”
“Don’t worry. She doesn’t hold a grudge against you. At least not much of one.”
She laughed, as he had hoped she would. It echoed softly through the room and warmed him at least a dozen degrees.
“I don’t know about Marcos, since he was a few years behind Anna and me. How were his grades?”
“He was third in the class.”
“What a slacker!”
“We think it’s because he was the baby and Mom and Dad took it easier on him than the rest of us.”
She smiled, then tilted her head to study him. “You’re a good sheriff, Daniel. Maybe the best Moose Springs has ever had.”
He fought the urge to rub an embarrassed hand to the burn at the back of his neck. “I don’t know about that. I can say, I never expected to enjoy it as much as I do. Being here, being home, feels right.”
“Think you’ll ever move away?”
“I don’t know. I get offers once in a while. But it all comes back to me asking myself if I could really be happy anywhere else. I don’t have a good answer to that so for now I’m staying.”
“Good.” She spoke barely above a whisper and the sound of her low voice strummed down his spine like a soft caress. His gaze met hers and she didn’t look away.
Again, the memory of that kiss seemed to shimmer between them and he could think of nothing else, the sound of her murmuring his name when he kissed her, the taste of her as she opened for him, warm and welcoming, how perfectly right she had seemed in his arms.
He wanted more. Much, much more.
He could kiss her again. He knew it wouldn’t take much for him to lean forward and close the distance between them. The ache to touch her again was a physical burn in his gut.
Even as he started to lean forward, to take what he so d
esperately wanted, reality came rushing in like that cold wind out there and froze his muscles.
Things were tense enough between them. Was he willing to throw in another kiss that could never lead anywhere?
Yeah.
Hell, yeah.
But he wasn’t sure where things stood between them. Though she responded the last time in the heat of the moment, she had looked stunned afterward and he was certain he had caught more than a glimmer of dismay in her gaze.
He let out a breath and the sound of it seemed to echo in the still room. “Lauren—” he began, not sure what he intended to say. Kiss me before I die on the spot, maybe.
Whatever it might have been was driven from his mind when the power came back on suddenly, an abrupt, jarring shift from dim to full, bright light.
He blinked a few times to adjust his vision. When he could see through the glare, he saw that in those brief moments she had drawn her arms tighter around her knees and all her defenses were firmly in place.
Just as well. The seductive intimacy of those few moments alone in the dark with her could never survive the harsh glare of light.
She was relieved, Lauren told herself firmly. The power switching back on at just that moment when he had been gearing up to kiss her—and she had so desperately wanted him to—must have been some kind of an omen, a karmic warning that she was messing in dangerous things she damn well ought to stay clear of.
She might be able to sell that argument to her intellect. Her body was another matter entirely, and all she seemed able to focus on now was the deep well of disappointment inside her.
The furnace kicked in and she knew it would be blowing its warmth through the house any moment now.
“Looks like we’re back in business,” she murmured, mostly to fill the sudden awkward void between them.
“For now. Let’s hope it stays on.”
She shouldn’t regret the loss of that quiet intimacy between them. She knew it was dangerous, knew it filled her mind with all sorts of treacherous thoughts, but she couldn’t help feeling as if she had lost something rare, something precious.
“I suppose I’ll say good night, then.”
“Try to get some rest.”
“Same to you.”
She rose, self-conscious now about her favorite threadbare pajamas. She hadn’t given them a thought when the power was out, but now she wished she’d thrown a robe on before wandering out.
In her bedroom, she closed the door behind her and leaned against it, just for a moment.
It was foolish, she knew, but she wanted the electricity to blink out again. She wanted to be sitting out there with Daniel in the dim firelight, to be listening to his deep voice and feeling the strength and heat of him. A few more moments. Was that too much to ask?
Too bad she had learned the bitter lesson long ago that a girl couldn’t always have everything she wanted.
Chapter 10
Two days later, Lauren was just about ready to climb out of her skin. She was beginning to understand the frustrated restlessness of a mouse in a cage.
After forty-eight hours in her house with only Daniel and Rosa, she was edgy and out of sorts and needed some sort of physical outlet. If the snow wasn’t still howling out there, she would suit up and jog around the block. The idea tempted her, despite the blizzard, but she decided she really wasn’t in the mood for the inevitable argument with Daniel about it.
She had to settle for the mild but distracting exertion of cooking dinner for the three of them.
Not wanting to bother Rosa and Daniel in the adjoining room, she tried her best not to bang pots and pans around as she pulled out the frying pan she needed to sauté chicken.
They didn’t even look up from their movie as she set it on the stove and added olive oil to begin heating.
They were watching a DVD of a comedy with Spanish subtitles and every once in a while she could hear their laughter echo through the little house. She was pleased to hear Rosa relaxing, but each time she heard Daniel’s bass laugh, she felt as if he had reached across the distance between them to stroke her neck with strong fingers.
Outside, the wind continued to lash snow against the window, as it had much of the day. The blizzard had continued on and off for two days and Daniel had been on the phone a great deal, coordinating his department’s response to the storm.
She didn’t find much consolation that this enforced isolation was tough on him as well, especially in the midst of a weather crisis. Some time ago, she tried to convince him she and Rosa would be fine here alone for a few hours if he needed to get out in the middle of the action with his deputies.
She thought it had been a reasonable enough suggestion. Daniel just raised one of those expressive eyebrows of his and assured her he wasn’t going anywhere.
More’s the pity. She sighed as she finished cutting up a chicken breast and slid it into the olive oil in the frying pan, filling the kitchen with sizzling heat.
Maybe he would let her go somewhere and help his department with the storm cleanup. True, she didn’t know a blasted thing about directing traffic or cleaning up weather-caused accidents. But at this point, she was just about willing to do anything that would get her out of the house for a moment or two so she could regain a little psychic equilibrium.
She filled her large stockpot with water for the pasta, then set it on to boil while she tackled the fresh vegetables for another of her few specialties. She was slicing red and yellow peppers when Daniel laughed again at something on the show.
A shiver slid through her and she almost chopped her finger off. Oh, this was ridiculous. Still, she couldn’t resist a quick peek into the other room. Rosa was stretched out on the couch while Daniel had taken over Lauren’s favorite easy chair. He sprawled in it, wearing jeans and a rust-colored sweater. He looked rugged and masculine and so gorgeous, he made her insides ache.
She was in serious trouble here.
She grabbed the onion and started slicing it fiercely. Her eyes started watering profusely, but she didn’t care. Damn him, anyway. For two days, she had done her best to ignore the thick tension between them, but she wasn’t making any progress whatsoever.
He was just so…there. He seemed to fill every corner of her small house with the potent force of his personality.
She found everything about him fascinating. She enjoyed listening to him talk to his deputies with a firm voice that managed to convey authority and respect at the same time. She liked watching him with Rosa. He treated the bruised and battered girl with a gentle kindness that touched her deeply.
She also admired his deep reservoir of patience, this further proof that he was often quite literally the quiet spot in a storm to those around him. For a man with such an overwhelming personality, Daniel had an almost Zen-like calmness to him in the middle of a crisis.
Calm did not mean detached. Not in the least. Even now, when he appeared relaxed and at ease watching a movie, he never seemed to shed that subtle air of alertness about him, like some kind of predator constantly sniffing the air for prey.
Throughout the last two days, he had put on his winter gear several times to brave the storm, ostensibly to shovel the driveway or for more firewood, but she had the feeling he also used the opportunity to case her house and its surroundings, looking for anything unusual.
He was a dangerous man, she thought as she stirred the chicken. More so, she imagined, because it would be easy—and disastrous—for an opponent to mistake his outward calm for inward placidity. Anyone foolish enough to err so badly would have to overlook those sharp dark eyes that never seemed to miss anything.
She could only hope they didn’t see everything. She would die of mortification if he guessed her attraction.
Oh, she had it bad. Now that it was out in the open in her psyche, she couldn’t believe she had missed it all these years, all the reasons she was tense and uncomfortable around him.
Her attraction had always been this undefined thing in her mind, this
awareness of him that was somehow lost in her frustration and sadness over the past.
How would their relationship change after this time with Rosa was over? How on earth could things ever return to the way they were before, that wary but polite accord?
She was checking the cookie sheet of breadsticks baking in the oven, their yeasty smell mingling with the spices in the chicken, when some sixth sense warned her Daniel had entered the kitchen behind her.
Even without turning around, she knew he was there by a sudden subtle vibration in the air, a stirring of the molecules, an alertness in her nerve endings.
Her pulse kicked up a notch, as it seemed to do whenever he was within five feet of her, but she pasted on a smile and turned around, only to find him watching her with an odd expression on his face, something dark and intense and unsettling.
He hid it quickly and moved to the coffeepot to refill his cup. “Smells delicious,” he said, gesturing to the sizzling chicken. Did he sound more gruff than usual? she wondered, then dismissed the thought.
“Thanks,” she murmured.
“You don’t have to do all the cooking. I know we’ve talked about this but I should have been more proactive. Sorry to dump the burden on you. Things have been a little crazy, with the storm and all. To be honest, I forgot all about it, but I promise, I’ll cook breakfast and dinner tomorrow.”
“I really don’t mind cooking,” she assured him.
“It’s only fair. And I don’t mind it, either.”
“Do you expect you and Rosa will still be here by dinnertime tomorrow?” she asked.
“I’m still waiting to hear from Cale on the status of their safe house situation. We’ll know better after he checks in.” He paused. “Whenever we get out of here, I imagine you’ll be happy to have us out of your way.”
“You’re not in my way.”
Much.
She was a lousy liar and his rueful half smile indicated he didn’t believe her any more than she believed herself.
Not that she would be completely thrilled to have them gone. On the one hand, she would be vastly relieved when her life returned to normal and her clinic reopened. On the other, she was terribly afraid she would be lonely when this was all over.
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