by Cindy Gerard
“Come on, Toby,” Helen said tactfully. “Let’s get out of here . . . unless you want to watch.”
Toby made a sour face.
“I tried out the new oven this morning,” Helen went on. “By the time we polish off some of those cookies I baked, they ought to have this mushy stuff out of their system.”
“Don’t bet on it,” Michael murmured, pulling January fully into his arms. “And don’t let her kid you, Toby. She likes this mushy stuff as much as I do.”
He ruffled Toby’s hair as the boy breezed by, making his great escape.
“Hello,” Michael drawled, settling January against his hips. “And look out. Now that I’ve got you alone, I intend to have my way with you.”
“Hi, yourself,” she said as she looped her arms around his neck. “You can have me any way you want me, but your imagination’s much more active than mine if you call being surrounded by a garrison of electricians, carpenters, and assorted painters who are apt to pop into the room at any moment having me alone.”
“You always have to be so damn practical,” he muttered, then kissed her sweetly.
“Have I told you lately that I love you?” she asked, brushing his impossibly too-long hair away from his face.
He kissed her again. “Sounds like a great song title.”
She smiled against his mouth. “Have I told you lately how much I appreciate that you’ve made Griffin House possible?”
“You can appreciate the devil out of me when you get me home alone tonight.”
“It’s a date,” she assured him, and then, arms linked loosely around each other’s waists, they wandered through the house, delighting in the work in progress.
Not only had Michael put up the money for the purchase of Griffin House, he’d footed the bill for the extensive remodeling required to bring the six-bedroom facility up to code. And he’d tirelessly devoted time and voice to fund-raising, ensuring the operation of Boulder’s newest shelter for battered children for at least the next five years.
Since January could provide her clients better access to her services there, it had only made sense to relocate her office to Griffin House. Now that she was settled in, all that remained were the finishing touches to the house itself.
The contractor assured her that all would be ready when the full staff, including house parents and counselors, arrived on the first of May. It couldn’t come soon enough for January, as Human Services had already given them enough referrals to fill all six bedrooms.
The only shadow to darken her horizon was the reality that a waiting list existed. Many more children than Griffin House could accommodate were in need of a safe house, a home where they could receive the love and attention they needed to help set them on the right path. That knowledge still hurt her.
“Hey . . .” Michael must have read her thoughts through her eyes. “You can’t do it all at once, Counselor.”
“I know.” She gave him a quick smile and brightened, looking around her. “This place . . . it’s beautiful, isn’t it? It’s like the house I always imagined growing up in. The open staircase, the gleaming hardwood floors, the leaded glass windows—” She caught herself and stopped abruptly. “And it’s going to be so full of love. Isn’t it wonderful?”
“You’re wonderful,” he said, pulling her back into his arms.
“Hey, Michael, January,” Toby called from the open kitchen door. “You gotta try these cookies. They’re like, awesome.”
“Be right there, sport.”
“Amazing,” January murmured, “what a cookie and a little love can do for a kid.”
“If only you were that easy,” Michael teased, draping an arm around her shoulders and walking with her toward the kitchen.
“You really love him, don’t you?”
“Just like you do.”
She thought of the way Toby had blossomed right before her eyes into a carefree, loving child. As soon as the paperwork was complete, he would legally belong to them. “Loving that child is easy.”
Michael nodded. “And less complex than loving a woman. But loving a woman”—his eyes glittered warmly as he fitted her snugly against his side—“loving my woman is infinitely more fun.”
And later that night, he showed her just how much.
Slow Burn
One
She recognized a stray when she saw one. The man limping down the pine-needle-covered path toward her, a beat-up duffel bag in one hand, definitely had the look of a stray.
Shoving back a bothersome wisp of burnished red hair, Jo kept him in her sights as she worked a rope through the pulleys on the boat hoist.
He was tall and well put together, even though he leaned toward the slim side. And despite his pronounced limp, her first impression was that he was laden with attitude—a rebel attitude that would have made her wary if firsthand knowledge hadn’t told her what it was hiding. Vulnerability was a trait she recognized all too well, though she’d choke on the word before she’d ever admit to feeling it herself.
That surprising and telling glimpse into his character intrigued her far more than it should have. She couldn’t afford to be curious. She needed to be concerned. Not many strangers wandered into the lodge this time of year. None had ever walked in who looked like this one.
He wasn’t a Northlander. From his too-long-to-be-respectable, wind-mussed blond hair to the worn bomber jacket hanging open over a dark T-shirt and equally lived-in jeans, everything about him said trouble. She’d bet her dwindling bankroll he wasn’t a potential client. Shady Point Lodge attracted retirees or vacationing family men who found a week or two in the wilderness of northern Minnesota a pleasant escape from the nine-to-five grind and city smog. This scowling stranger, who looked like he’d rather wrap his hands around the throttle of a Harley than around a fishing pole, stood out like the proverbial sore thumb.
As he drew nearer, however, and his striking, elementally male features came into sharper focus in the early autumn dusk, Jo realized this guy would stand out anywhere.
And, she concluded with another flash of insight, he was a restless, troubled man. A man in pain. Not just physical pain, as evidenced by his labored steps, but emotional. Though his stoic scowl was the stamp of a loner and invited nothing but avoidance, she sensed a loneliness in him . . . a loneliness that might even rival her own.
Stunned and shaken that she’d drawn yet another parallel between them, she pulled back quickly. Careful, Taylor, she cautioned herself, not fully understanding what it was about him that sparked her instant and unprecedented interest. Her first impression had been spot-on. He was just another stray. She’d do well to remember that stray dogs have a tendency to bite. Instead of standing there trying to armchair analyze him, she should be heading for the boathouse and the twenty-gauge shotgun she kept loaded with bird shot for those occasions when she needed to run off a pesky bear.
The truth was, though, she was too tired to move.
“I do not need this today,” she muttered under her breath, and turned her energy back to the boat.
But Jo had learned long ago that what she needed rarely equated with what she got. That was why it didn’t surprise her that when she planted her feet on the dock and gave the rope a hard tug, it jumped off the pulley. The leaky boat she’d been struggling to hoist out of the water for the better part of an hour skidded back three feet. She swore roundly and succinctly.
Cooper, who until that moment had been sleeping in the grass a few yards away, woke up with a start. The chocolate Lab lurched to all fours. The coarse hair on his broad back bristled to attention when he spotted the stranger. Jo could have kissed his bushy hide for putting things back into perspective. Cooper, at least, had the good sense to bare his teeth and issue a low warning growl.
The man stopped in his tracks. His gaze snapped to Cooper, who, bless his canine heart, played protector to the hilt.<
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“Something I can do for you, mister?” she asked, tying off the rope. Wiping her hands on her hips, she faced him with businesslike brusqueness, determined to insulate herself against the unsettling effect he had on her.
The eyes that met hers with such piercing intensity only heightened the tension. They were a deep slate gray, the color startling in its clarity. Diamond hard, heavily brooding, they barely veiled an inner turbulence that made her think of the lake during a storm: wild, reckless, volatile.
“For starters, you can tell that dog to back off.”
His voice, she wasn’t surprised, matched his eyes—hard edged and ominous.
Though it took some effort, she met his stony look without flinching. “Cooper won’t bother you if you don’t bother him.”
“And if I don’t bother you, right?” he said, his attention returning to the dog.
“And if you don’t bother me,” she confirmed with more assurance than she felt. Attack dogs and family-vacation resorts simply didn’t mix. Any minute now she was certain Cooper’s growl would give way to a doggy grin. The hair on his back was already losing its starch, and she suspected the effort it took to keep his tail from wagging would soon get the best of him.
She moved up beside Cooper as if to hold him back. “If you’ve got business here, I’d suggest you state it.”
He squinted against the reflection of the setting sun glinting off the lake. “It would be a lot easier to talk, kid, if I was sure he wasn’t hungry and I wasn’t on his menu.”
Kid? Jo gritted her teeth and bit back an oath. She forgot that she was tired and that for a moment she’d been moved by the sadness in his eyes. Forgot, even, that she should be wary. She glared at him, considering whether to give him fair warning that at this moment he was in more danger of being attacked by her than by her dog.
She should be used to it by now. At the ripe old age of twenty-six she had no delusions about her appearance. Joanna Taylor was plain. Her features were pleasant at best, giving her a street-urchin innocence that would undoubtedly prompt leery bartenders to card her until she was forty.
Her skin was fair but bore mercifully few freckles, which would have made her look even more like the Raggedy Ann she felt she resembled. Oh, the curves were all there, but by no stretch of the imagination would they ever be described as lush. Hard work kept her body lithe and compact. That was the way she wanted it. But, damn, she got tired of being called “kid”!
She would have been less offended if he’d mistaken her for a man. She worked like one, swore like one, and looked . . . like a kid, she conceded dismally as she mentally assessed her navy shorts, strictly business T-shirt, and the single thick braid she’d tucked under a black cap that boasted SHADY POINT LODGE above the bill.
So what did she expect? His reaction to her was typically male. Men either wanted to play big brother with her or treat her like one of the guys.
But this man wasn’t a typical male. Though it galled her to admit it, her response to him wasn’t one bit typical either. She was attracted to him. Unaccountably attracted. She’d taken one look at his dark, angry scowl and recognized the need in him. That he hadn’t bothered to see whether there was more to her than met the eye, too, was a blow to her pride—and further proof of just how tired she was.
Get a grip, Taylor. Drawing herself up to her unremarkable height of five feet two inches, she let the Indian-summer breeze that whispered off the lake clear her head. But her ire rose again when Cooper added insult to injury by giving up his pretense of watchdog.
The pup sliced her a slow, guilty look, then with his tail wagging shyly, lumbered over to the stranger and accepted a pat from his large hand.
Traitor, she accused silently.
Glaring at the dog and at the man, Jo finally realized why he was there. He must have seen her ad.
“If you came about the job,” she began, not bothering to hide her irritation, “I’m really not sure you’d be up to it.” She glanced at his bad leg before making a sweeping gesture over the twelve dilapidated log cabins and the main lodge. “As you can see, this place needs a lot of work.”
Cooper—the miserable mutt—had switched allegiance completely. He was on his back at the man’s feet, squirming like a beached whale and begging for a belly rub.
“I’m not here about a job,” he said, wincing as he bent to accommodate the wallowing dog. “I’m trying to find Jo Taylor. They told me at the Crossroads Store to look here.”
Jo’s wariness returned in a heartbeat, and with it, her anger. Her experience since she’d moved back from the Cities that spring had been that when someone came looking for her by name, it was usually because he’d gotten wind that a Taylor had plans to reopen the lodge. Generally he came with a bill in hand. An old bill, one of many her father had accumulated and then run out on when his drinking had stressed the resort’s finances. She’d been sixteen when it had finally gotten the best of him and he’d simply disappeared.
Now she understood. This guy was just another bill collector. And to think she’d— Well, it didn’t matter what she’d thought. Feeling even more foolish for her sophomoric reactions to his rebel good looks and brooding eyes, she sighed in resignation.
“So what’s the bad news?” she asked.
His head came up. His gray eyes questioned.
“Anyone comes looking for me by name, I figure it’s bad news. And if you think I’m going to be surprised by the fact that you want money, think again. It’s become a way of life.”
He straightened slowly, his look as doubtful as it was perplexed. “You’re Jo Taylor?”
“Last time I looked.” She answered his dubious scowl with an affronted snort. “Sorry to disappoint you.”
He shook his head. “No, it’s not that. It’s just that I was expecting . . .” His voice trailed away as she whipped off her cap, and her thick auburn braid uncoiled and fell heavily down her back.
For what seemed like an eternity, she endured his silent, measuring stare. Her cheeks burned with both the heat of anger and a devastating sensual awakening as his gaze tracked the length of her bare legs, the curve of her hips, and finally the shape of her breasts, which were unbound beneath her thin cotton T-shirt.
Brutally aware of her shortcomings, she straightened her shoulders and said defensively, “You were expecting a man?”
“No,” he stated bluntly as his gaze crawled back to her face. “A woman.”
Adam Dursky watched in considering silence as the girl—damned if he could think of her as anything more—drilled him with a look that could have blistered paint.
So this little green-eyed roughneck with a boy’s body and sassy red hair was John Taylor’s daughter.
He took a longer look, one she met with defiance, and hoped she was as tough as she wanted him to think she was. She needed to be tough. What he’d come to tell her wasn’t going to be easy to take, not by any man or woman’s standards.
He shifted his shoulders, feeling uncomfortably out of his element. Dark alleys and city streets were familiar territory. They ran in sync with the ugliness of hoods flashing switchblades, or strung-out junkies waving Saturday night specials. But here, with the clear air scented of pine and facing a fresh-scrubbed, wide-eyed kid . . . hell, it just didn’t match the dirty job at hand.
Before he saw it through, though, he had other needs to attend to. He had to get off his leg. It was burning like a blue bitch. He’d been lucky to hitch a ride from International Falls as far as the county road. But the two-mile hike from the main road to this backwoods lodge had been pushing it.
He stripped off his jacket. “Mind if I park on that bench for a minute?”
Her expression cooled a bit as she considered that, then she indicated with a negligent, one-shoulder shrug that he could suit himself.
Her attitude confirmed what he’d already suspected. She was a b
rat. That fact just might make his job easier to stomach.
Nothing, however, was going to make it easy to move. Bolts of fire ripped through his thigh as he stepped toward the cedar bench. He swallowed back the nausea that accompanied the pain. Clenching his teeth, he eased down.
When the worst had passed, he raised his head to see her working the devil out of the handle of an old pitcher pump. A jolt of heat shot through his lower body as he watched her trim little butt bounce to the rhythm of her pumping arm.
Whoa, he told himself, stung by his unexpected reaction. You’ve been on your feet too long, Dursky, if a tomboy like her can set your blood simmering.
Refusing to accept the unsettling sensation for what it was, he discounted it as another warning that he’d overdone it. He shook it off, only to be knocked off balance again by the concern in her eyes when she handed him a tin ladle.
The water felt good going down—almost as good as being off his feet. Wiping his mouth on the back of his wrist, he nodded his thanks and, for reasons he couldn’t explain, quickly looked away.
“He puts up a good bluff,” he said gruffly as the naturally friendly Lab curled up at his feet. “But he’ll never make it as a watchdog.”
When he met her eyes again, they had, thankfully, turned as cool as the water.
Leveling the same agitated look on him as she had the pup, she crossed her arms over her chest and leaned back against the pump. “Loyalty doesn’t seem to be his strong suit either. But I’m sure you’re not here to talk about dogs. You came looking for me, so you must have business. I’d appreciate it if you’d state it and let me get back to work.”
He had business, all right, messy business. Now that the time was at hand to deal with it, he wished he were back in Detroit.