They had reached the end of the driveway now, and she extricated herself from his hold.
“You’re dismissing me,” Buck said, his tone almost amused.
She nodded, smiling softly. “Good night, Buck.”
The next morning Loren pulled on an old pair of jeans and an equally old dark sweatshirt and tied a bandeau around her hair. The thrilling agenda for this Saturday included washing windows and scrubbing the kitchen floor. All morning as she rubbed at the windowpanes with cleaning fluid, she kept seeing her reflection, the wildly curling hair around the bandeau, the raggedy shirt, her face a smooth cameo without makeup, all fresh-eyed and smiling. She looked ten years old. She didn’t care. The smiles just kept coming, over absolutely nothing.
She didn’t expect to see her giant stranger again. She didn’t want to see him. But that bizarre one-time encounter had left her feeling strangely lighthearted, as though her responsibilities had suddenly diminished, and her problems had become a little less monumental than they’d been the day before.
By one o’clock, she had a rag in her hand and a bucket of soapy water on the kitchen floor. Her jeans were damp at the knees when she stopped working for a minute and inadvertently glanced out the kitchen window. Frowning, she saw a gray pickup pull into the yard with Leeds printed on the side. Buck stepped out of the truck, wearing coveralls and carrying a package in his hands, and stalked toward the house with all the determination of the dominant male bulldozer that he was.
All Loren’s lazy smiles of the morning abruptly died. As he reached the door, a kaleidoscope of emotions rushed through her, none of which she quite knew what to do with. “Buck, what on earth are you doing here? I hope you didn’t steal the truck?” Loren accosted him as she half opened the door. His eyes turned that dark jade she’d seen when he was angry in the bar yesterday; he was staring at the bucket on the floor and then at her ragged blouse and damp knees.
“Obviously, I must have borrowed it for the day.” She frowned, lips compressed, not opening the door any farther. He gave a sigh that sounded like a pent-up north wind, waiting for her to let him in.
“Look,” she started carefully, “you must have misunderstood. I really don’t think…”
A long metal rectangle urged its way through the slit in the door and clattered onto the counter. Next, a package of metal parts joined it.
“What is all this?”
“Payment for the free dinner yesterday,” Buck said easily. “The coil for your hot-water heater. A gasket for the faucet to stop dripping. And a fuse for the burner on the stove. Now will you let me in so I can install them?”
Loren flushed. “That’s very nice, but no thank you,” she said firmly. “For one thing, it would be an imposition on your time. For another, you surely figured out that I can’t afford to pay you. I appreciate the thought, Buck, but I really think it would be better all the way around if—”
She had to back up when he pushed the door open. When it closed behind him, there was the distinct reverberation of a near-slam. “Did anyone ever spank you when you were younger?” He handed her his coat, and she took it because it would have dropped on her wet floor if she hadn’t.
“Now just listen here—”
“I’m unemployed, remember? There are no jobs to be scouted out on a Saturday. So I’ve got nothing better to do, I wouldn’t expect payment even if you offered it, and you’re not going to stand there and deny you need a man around here.”
She glared at him furiously. She knew what he had come back for, and it wasn’t plumbing. She didn’t blame him for misunderstanding, and she wasn’t denying that she’d responded to him like some wanton little…whatever. Which was just the point. She needed no further complications in her life—she could barely handle what she had. “Just go away, Buck,” she said in a low voice.
With a wicked glint in his eye, he said, “I don’t think so.”
She shrugged off the bandeau, letting loose a bounce of disheveled rusty curls. “You don’t understand. The big thrill in my life is a bath on Sunday night. The rest of the days are filled from six in the morning until nine at night, and at nine I’m something between a zombie and a dead dishrag. Do you want to hear the schedule for today? Because I have a zillion things to do, and there’s no one else to do them.”
“I think you’re presuming a hell of a lot, but I’m certainly willing to discuss your bath habits—any time,” he assured her mildly, taking up the tool kit and parts packages. “It could just be that all I had in mind was fixing your hot-water heater.” He was on his way downstairs before she had the chance to say another word.
Sure, stranger, her mind replied dryly. She stood still for a few moments, staring at the cellar door, and then stubbornly got down on her knees to finish the floor. A half hour later she was done, but Buck was still in the basement. Angela had been in and out, discovered Buck’s presence, and had gone down to keep him company. Gramps had been in and out, discovered Buck’s presence, and had gone down to keep him company. The Shephards were a very gregarious family, Loren thought wryly.
Determinedly, she filled a wicker basket with cleaning supplies. When the ground-floor rooms were dusted, she headed upstairs, and when she’d cleaned all the bathrooms there, she headed toward her own room. She had on a fresh pair of jeans and was pulling a soft wool sweater over her head when she heard the rap on the door. A full second later, he opened it.
“I seem to be looking for a badly behaving hairdryer.”
Her coppery hair was wispy around her face from the static electricity of the sweater, and Loren knew he guessed she’d just pulled it on and was remembering exactly what was beneath it. He looked incongruous, that giant of a man in her mauve-and-white bedroom with its muted Monet prints. “Well, it’s not in here,” she said irritably.
Barefoot, she led the way to Angela’s room, a screaming shout of color and youth—posters of punk-rock stars, an unmade bed, clothes strewn all over furniture and floor. She sighed. “Finding anything in here… Look, Buck, you really don’t have to do this…”
“It certainly would be a pity if your sister had to lift a finger herself around here,” Buck said idly. “She gets off school at noon every day, you said?”
She flashed him a warning glance as she burrowed in the overcrowded closet for Angela’s broken hairdryer. “She’s had it rough, losing both our parents.”
“You didn’t lose the same two parents? She’s spoiled,” he said flatly.
“Fine,” Loren snapped. “Handle her then, Buck—you certainly did a good job yesterday. Take over the whole damn house if you want, but I have to go out and get the groceries for the week. I’ll say my goodbyes now.”
“Oh, I don’t know. I’m getting a hell of a list from your two relatives. I may still be here when you get back.”
She shoved the bulky hairdryer at him with a silver-eyed stare. “If you want to waste your Saturday, that’s up to you. But don’t count on conversation from me unless it’s over the roar of a vacuum. I don’t have time to play.”
Chapter Four
Buck emerged from the house just as Loren was coming up the driveway. She’d barely shut off the engine before he had the side doors of the van open. He managed three grocery bags to her one, toting them ahead of her wordlessly, and Loren found herself shaking her head. Dammit, what was she going to do about him? Why on earth was he doing all this?
The kitchen table was strewn with a pile of clean clothes, half folded. She set down the grocery bag and her purse, taking off her coat even as she was starting to unpack the canned goods. A cup of coffee was whisked in front of her; she ignored it, working silently as Buck sat down at the table.
“You’ll have hot water within the hour. The faucets upstairs and down are no longer dripping, and the burner on the stove’s fixed. But the hairdryer is beyond repair, and your washing machine is going, Loren. There’s a leak in the attic that could at least be token-patched from the inside, and the lamp in your sister’s room has a
worn out electrical cord. Very mechanical, your family. I made out a list once I started the wash. It came to two pages. Actually, very few of these things are expensive if you don’t have to pay a repair man for his time. And in the meantime,” Buck continued mildly, “I threw out the slip with the hole in it. I knew damn well it was yours—your sister’s things have ‘brand-new’ all but written on them. The bras were easy to divide, but the panties I gave up on. They all stretch. You and your sister will have to sort out the rainbow. Perhaps Angela might even be able to rouse herself off that sweet little ass of hers…”
Loren smash-shut the vegetable bin, smash-shut the refrigerator and turned to his expectant green eyes with her hands on her hips. “You are driving me nuts.”
Buck nodded mildly, as if the subject were of little interest to him. “I can’t find your pajamas,” he complained.
“I don’t wear any.”
“Cheaper that way?”
She drew in her breath, trying to contain the laughter that was bubbling up inside her. He had set up such a darned good show to prove his unusual (for a man) domestic skills—taking on her wash, indeed! Yet she couldn’t laugh. Her pride was smarting from his help, she was no one’s charity case and she didn’t like anyone running interference for her. But…he had put in a three-day work week in a few hours, and professional help would have cost her a bundle she didn’t have; she even felt a grudging respect for this man who pitched in with an energy and determination that matched her own, obstacles or no. She just couldn’t seem to pigeonhole him—he seemed neither a nomadic Jack-of-all-trades nor the goodwill neighborly type.
“Who are you, Buck? What are you doing here?” she asked finally.
“Sit down and I’ll tell you, after you answer the question about the pajamas.”
“Pajamas? Oh…” She brought the coffee cup with her and sat down at the head of the table. It was her first chance to sit all day, and she could not help the weary sigh that escaped from her. “I sleep without pajamas because I have a deliciously secret fantasy sex life,” she said ironically. “That’s what you wanted to hear, isn’t it?”
“Good girl,” he said approvingly. With his elbows on the table, he leaned forward and gave a wry little shake of his head. “You really don’t ‘throw’ off balance easily, do you?”
“I work with more than four hundred men,” she responded smoothly. “You can’t expect to take me unaware too easily. Now it’s your turn.”
“All right,” he returned promptly. “I’m the president of a local die-cast company.”
She blinked. She’d just said she couldn’t be taken unaware, and he had managed it just that quickly. For an instant, she could see him as the executive he claimed to be, with those shrewd green eyes and take-charge arrogance, the way he walked and the way he held those shoulders of his. And then she chuckled.
“You don’t believe me.” He was clearly amused.
She shook her head, still chuckling, and picked up the now-cooled coffee to take a sip. “No, I don’t, thank heaven,” she said gently. “You’ve got the arrogance to run something, Lord knows, and anyone could tell you’ve got a decent education behind you. But that ‘president’ image reminds me of my husband…the snob appeal of a prestigious title, the social elite game, the little hobbies that only money can pay for. All the really honest emotions that can take place between two people become buried under the gold.” His expression froze, and she raised her eyebrows at him, sorry she had mentioned her ex-husband. “I associate very selfish qualities with money; I already told you that,” she said clearly. “And you haven’t got them. Besides, I already know your story.”
“Oh, you do?”
The longer he stared at her, the more she felt an unwilling sexual awareness of him creep up on her as it had the night before. The virile breadth of his shoulders and the strength of his features, a certain quiet way he moved, the lingering promise in the embrace that still haunted her. “You weren’t laid off, and you didn’t quit,” she said quietly. “You were fired, Buck. It was a good job, the problem is that you need to work for yourself. You couldn’t cut it under someone else’s gun. It wasn’t that you couldn’t do the work—you were probably excellent at it—but you wouldn’t snap when someone belted out an order. Right?”
Buck looked startled and then scraped back the kitchen chair as he stood up to get himself a cup of coffee. “I will tell you this. The only job I was ever fired from was for just that reason. And you’re right, I don’t take orders well from anyone but myself. Loren?”
She cocked her head at him questioningly.
“I like the game. For now. Maybe you do, too. It’s like seeing myself through your eyes, without any past intruding, without any judgments made because of status or titles or appearances. But it shouldn’t go too far. When you want an honest answer to any question…”
She stood up, too, carted her empty cup to the counter and then finished putting away the last of the groceries. “I hear you,” she said finally. “Maybe I just like the game, too, for now. I’d like to believe that I really don’t care who you are or what you’ve done. That I can judge all I need to judge from the man I see, as far as trust or character or…anything that matters.” He didn’t answer, just came close to her when he set down his coffee cup. She could feel the sudden electricity crackle, the special awareness of a man’s nearness that she so rarely felt. “Thank you for doing all that work today,” she said swiftly. “I’d offer you a drink instead of coffee, but unfortunately we don’t stock any liquor, as you might have guessed.”
“I don’t want any liquor,” he growled.
“No. We both know what you want, heaven knows why,” she said wryly, but there was a sadness in her silvery eyes. She turned away, bunching up the last of the grocery bags with a nerve-crunching noise that didn’t last very long. She started to loop the folded clothes over one arm, piling them up to her chin, and with an exasperated sound from the back of his throat, Buck piled a load in his own arms and followed her up the stairs.
“You can’t have it, Buck,” she said without looking back at him. “I mean it. I had a broken heart once; it was the only thing I couldn’t handle. I just don’t play anymore. I haven’t the time; I haven’t the emotional energy. I’ve got too many people to take care of now, so don’t ask me. Do me a favor and just go, would you? You can do better in a thousand ways, and I think you know it.”
“Loren—”
He hurried to open the door ahead of her, and there was Angela just on the other side, startled in her own rush to get down the stairs. Her eyes widened on both of them, and then she grinned pertly. “Hey, hey,” she scolded. “No men above the stairs but Gramps. Those are Loren’s rules, you know.”
Unaccountably, Loren flushed. Angela was not only quick but invariably had a one-track mind. “Where are you off to?”
“David’s, naturally. Gramps is napping, so don’t make too much noise, you two. I mean, two black sheep in the family are enough. Loren’s our resident angel, Buck. You tarnish the title, and we won’t like it.”
“I can’t imagine what you think you’re talking about,” Loren said tartly.
Angela only waved and sprinted past them down the stairs.
“Now all I need is for Joan to come up from the basement and start in,” Buck complained as he trailed after Loren, who sorted through the piles of laundry and distributed the clothes room to room. “Your grandfather had at me while you were gone.”
“Don’t worry about it,” she said shortly. “I can say my own nos very well, thank you.”
“Had a lot of practice?”
“My fair share.”
“From the four hundred men you work with?”
“Among others.”
“Anyone current?”
She walked into her bedroom and then turned around, pushing her hand firmly to his chest to shove him back out, closing the door. She heard his low-throated chuckling. All she wanted to do was run a quick brush through her hair and p
ut on a fresh bit of lipstick…and gain two seconds of freedom. The stalk through the bedrooms had been fraught with undercurrents, verbal and physical. After a moment, she opened the door.
“I like your hair mussed, and I don’t like you to wear lipstick,” he said promptly.
“Those are your problems, not mine.” But she was pleased.
“Anyone current?” he repeated.
“No,” she said with exasperation. “How about you?”
He hesitated. “No one that matters.”
“A sleeping partner,” she guessed, and saw his jaw tighten. “I’ll bet you have a lot of those.”
“It took practice to become an outstanding lover.”
She managed to look disappointed. “What a shame. I’m just not in that league; it’s been too long. This day and age, though, I’m sure you can find someone in your own ballpark.”
“Loren…”
She hurried ahead of him down the stairs. He followed her through the hall, through the kitchen’s swinging door, through the kitchen itself, all the way to the back door, which she opened and then stood there. “No,” she said firmly. “Now go home.”
He took his time getting his coat from the kitchen chair and putting it on, his eyes never leaving hers. She met his look until he started walking toward her, and then almost helplessly she averted her eyes, her long black lashes spiking her cheeks as she waited for him to pass. When he was next to her, he crooked one finger beneath her chin to tilt it up. “I’ve heard that no,” he said quietly. “You say it another way, Loren, and I’ll believe you.” Ever so gently his face bent toward hers, and like quicksilver, their lips met. An unwilling softness shone from her eyes by the time he took his mouth from hers. It was not a blush of innocence that colored her cheeks but the warmth from his closeness. “Say no now, Loren,” he murmured roughly.
Kisses From Heaven Page 4