He surged up the bank, reaching his own sturdy four-wheel-drive vehicle just as headlights played across the cottage and red brake lights flared. A door opened and a figure straightened from the driver’s seat of a small, battered-looking car.
“This is absolutely beautiful!” Ana Birch said.
Garrett just stared at her. How in the hell had she managed to get organized fast enough to arrive here at practically the same time he had? He’d never known a woman who could pack and travel in less than a day’s time. His mother would have needed at least a week to get ready. And that would have been pushing it.
“Have you been here long?” She bent and touched her toes in one lithe motion, drawing his eyes to the long, smooth line of her back beneath the T-shirt she wore. As she placed her palms flat on the ground and swayed from side to side to stretch out her back, her bottom stuck up in the air in an incredibly provocative manner. He caught himself in the middle of wondering just how limber she really was and banished the thought. She might have bewitched Robin but he, Garrett, knew what she was.
“I—ah, just arrived.” His voice sounded rough and uneven to his own ears. “How did you get here so fast?”
She shrugged, straightening and flipping her hair back over her shoulders, drawing his gaze to the shining, curly mass. “I didn’t really have much to worry about,” she told him. “I packed everything I thought we’d need, stuffed the cat in a box—”
“The cat! I never said anything about sharing my cabin with a cat.”
She shrugged. “I’ll just have to keep her in my half, then. As I was saying, I hopped in my car late last night and started driving. When I stopped for breakfast, I called the bank and the restaurant and quit, effective immediately. I can get another job or two like that easily enough when I get back if I need it.”
“Jobs? You worked for a bank and a restaurant?”
“Some of us don’t have a fortune at our disposal,” she told him tartly. “What on earth did you think I did for money?”
The question fell into the space between them like a hand grenade with the pin ready to fall out. He bit his tongue, knowing that if he said what he’d thought, there would be open warfare in the cabin for the next month. It was going to be bad enough as it was without picking a fight with her.
“Never mind.” She turned away and walked around to the trunk of her car. “I already know the answer to that.”
There was an odd, wistful tone in her voice that made him, for one strange moment, feel guilty for the way he’d treated her. Then he reminded himself that she was nothing more than a gold digger, snagging an old man and talking him into putting her in his will. Two jobs…no wonder she was looking for an easier way to make a living. She hadn’t really loved Robin, he was sure. He’d had his own experience with the fickle nature of a woman’s love for anything but money, and nothing could convince him otherwise.
“Why do you have two jobs?” He opened his car door as he spoke and lifted out the suitcases.
“Employers don’t want to pay benefits so they get around it by hiring part-time help,” she said succinctly. She shrugged, and lifted out a large box. “The flexibility works just as well for me.”
He started down the path. “Follow me and I’ll give you the nickel tour of the cottage. I had the caretakers clean and open it earlier today.” But he couldn’t keep himself from wondering why she worked two low-paying jobs. She seemed bright enough. Surely she could find something more suitable. She did, answered his cynical side. Bewitching an old man.
Unaware of his thoughts, she said, “Good idea.” She hefted her box with both hands. “I’ll have to go and meet them. Did you tell them I’d be arriving?”
“No,” he said shortly.
There was silence behind him as they came to the porch. He set down the bags and unlocked the door, then picked them up and shouldered his way through the door, leaving her to follow with her unwieldy box. She wasn’t there by his choice, he told himself fiercely, and he wasn’t going to spend thirty-one days being courteous, holding doors and carrying everything in sight. In fact, it was probably better if they established ground rules first thing.
He headed straight for the stairs, ignoring her, and took his bags to his bedroom. When he came down again, she was still standing in the living room, looking out through the plate glass at the lake. It was nearly dark now so he knew she couldn’t see much.
He said, “The bedroom to the left at the top of the stairs is mine. You can have the other one that has a lake view. The one to the back is—” he caught himself “—was Robin’s den.”
She nodded.
“This is the living room and back there is the dining area. Those doors lead to the deck. The kitchen’s through here and—” he moved through the house “—this is my office. There’s a half bathroom in the hall and a full one upstairs. Laundry room is opposite the downstairs bath.” He paused as he realized just how intimate this enforced cohabitation was going to be. “Tomorrow we’ll make up a schedule of who gets the bathroom and the kitchen at what times. You’ll have to help chop and stack wood, too.”
Her eyebrows rose. “You don’t buy it by the cord?”
He shook his head. “Nope. A lot of it’s broken limbs we salvage from the previous winter’s storms. If you want to share this place fifty-fifty, you’ll have to share half the work.” He doubted she was used to lifting a finger to do much more than some light cleaning. After all, she’d sold her own home rather than deal with maintenance and upkeep. Cleaning. “The caretaker’s wife comes in once a week to clean,” he told her, “but you’ll have to do your own laundry, dishes and pick up any messes you make.”
She simply nodded.
There was an awkward silence.
“Well,” he said. “I guess I’ll finish unloading.”
Ana awoke to the sound of a bird trilling insistently right outside her window the next morning. The quality of the light coming through her window told her it still was very early. She’d been exhausted after the long drive and unloading her car last night, and she hadn’t expected to wake at dawn, but she knew she wouldn’t be able to go back to sleep now.
She threw back the light blanket and sheet with which she’d made her bed last night. Roadkill, the cat, leaped off the foot of the mattress where she’d been sleeping with a startled hiss and disappeared beneath the bed. She chuckled. “Relax, girl. I bet you’ll come out of there fast enough when I return bearing food.” She sat up and put her feet on the floor. Brrr! Even in midsummer, the night was cool.
Sliding her feet into sandals, she went to the window. Her bedroom looked out over the lake, and from this floor, she could see the earliest of the sun’s rays making the water sparkle and dance, casting outsize shadows from anything in its path. The cabin was situated on the west side of the little lake, facing the sun, and its warmth was just beginning to steal over the horizon. She’d stopped at the little general store for directions and soda last night, and the clerk had told her the lake was small. But looking north and south, she couldn’t see either end. Across the lake, there was a wooded shore. Farther down, just one other house peeked from between the trees, its dock floating out from the shore into the water.
A dock. She looked down and saw that Eden Cottage had a dock as well. The sight automatically brought a lump to her throat as childhood memories came flooding back. When she was young, her mother had rented a cabin along the Choptank River each summer for an entire week. It was their one annual splurge. Her mother, Janette, had loved the water and had taught Ana to swim as a very small child. They’d rowed on the river, swam and dived, held weenie roasts on their small stretch of pebbled beach and laid on the dock stargazing after dark.
Those times had been among the best of her life. They’d been anonymous vacationers, not a weird artist from England and her illegitimate child.
She dashed the tears away, annoyed with herself. Those had been good times. There was no reason to cry over them.
But oh,
how she missed her mother sometimes.
That thought brought back another memory, and she almost laughed aloud in the quiet morning silence of her new house. Her new half a house, she corrected herself. Which half of the dock was hers? The boat? The lake? As she grabbed a towel and went down the stairs on tiptoe so as not to wake her grumpy stepbrother—who probably would be even grouchier if she woke him at dawn—she had the whimsical thought that they ought to buy a huge roll of fluorescent orange tape so that they could mark off their boundaries. Because she was fairly sure she was going to have trouble remembering where she was and wasn’t allowed to tread.
Except on Garrett’s toes. There would be no avoiding that.
She stole out of the house, cussing the squeaking screen door. Oil for you later, buddy, she promised. The path from the cottage down to the lakeshore was steep and stony, covered with a slippery layer of pine needles.
Once on the tiny crescent of water-worn rocks that served as a beach, she stood for a moment, inhaling deeply and enjoying the first warmth of the sun on her face. It was going to be a beautiful day. Despite Garrett’s unfriendliness, she knew she could be happy here.
She crossed the rocks and walked out onto the dock. Looking up and down the lake, she could see no one. Perfect! She slid her feet out of her sandals, then quickly removed the oversize T-shirt in which she’d slept. Beneath it, she wore nothing. The air was warm and fresh on her body and the sensation brought back more memories from her childhood. Since she didn’t know how deep the water was, she used the ladder at the end of the dock to lower herself into the lake, shivering with cold at first.
It was invigorating, though, and she began to swim strongly, energetic strokes up and down past the dock, until she had warmed up again. Garrett hadn’t said anything about the lake, whether there were strong currents or hidden rocks, so she stayed fairly close to the dock, although she was an excellent swimmer and probably could have swum to the far shore and back again. At least, she could after a little training. It had been a long time since she’d done any regular swimming.
Finally she was ready to get out of the water. The sky was growing lighter and she was afraid someone might come by if she lingered any longer. As she put her hands on the ladder rungs, she cast an intent, nervous glance up at the house, but nothing stirred. She was pretty sure Garrett was still sleeping. Quickly she climbed the ladder and reached for her towel, drying herself as best she could, then pulling her T-shirt over her head and pushing her arms into the sleeves before wrapping the towel around her. Her body was still wet and the fabric clung to her. Tomorrow, she’d have to wear a robe.
Oh, it was so wonderful here! The moment she’d walked into the cottage, she’d known she couldn’t simply sell her half. She’d said that the other day solely to get under Garrett’s hide, because it served him right for being so judgmental and hateful. But now…she didn’t think she’d ever want to sell it. Not even to Robin’s beloved stepson. Robin had left half of this beautiful retreat to her, his daughter, for a reason.
Her good mood was dampened as she thought of her father. She’d gone to the cemetery three times before this abrupt change of address, and though the fresh grave was mute testimony to the reality of her loss, she still couldn’t believe he was gone. She was certain that if he’d lived longer, he’d have brought her up here. Thinking of him, trying to imagine him in this place made her eyes burn with the tears she didn’t want to start shedding again. She’d barely met him and already she’d lost him. For a heart that had craved the love of a father throughout her whole life, it was a terrible blow. As she hurried up the path to the house, the lump that so quickly rose to her throat these days made it hard to swallow.
Three
Garrett stood at the large plate glass window in the living room, his body quickening with elemental male interest. He still wasn’t sure what had awakened him, but he was damn glad he hadn’t succumbed to the urge to go back to sleep. He set his coffee cup down on the windowsill, shaking his head in disbelief and pure sensual appreciation.
There were some experiences every man ought to have before he died and a moment like this was one of them. It was no wonder Robin had been taken in by this temptress, he thought as he watched Ana prepare to emerge from the water. If he didn’t know what women like her really were after, he might have been hoodwinked himself in similar circumstances.
The water receded as she steadily climbed the ladder down at the dock. She had an absolutely beautiful body, with high, plump breasts and a tiny, nipped-in waist that flared to smoothly rounded hips and long, slender thighs and legs. Everything, however, was scaled down to perfect proportion for a woman as petite as she was. She probably wasn’t more than five foot two, if that. He really ought to look away. He felt uncomfortably like a voyeur…but there was no power in the world that could have torn his gaze away from her just then.
Besides, he reasoned, she’d gone swimming in the nude, right out in plain view in the lake. There could be a dozen people watching her right now, for all she knew. If she hadn’t been splashing so much as she swam back and forth, he might never have noticed her in the first place. And if she’d worn a bathing suit like any normal woman, he’d never have stayed glued to the window like this.
He completely disregarded the fact that he’d swum nude in the very same place more times than he could count. He was a man.
He hastily moved away from the window as she came up the path in the clinging, wet T-shirt and large towel. She already thought he was pond scum; what would she think if she realized he’d been watching her?
Why should you care?
He didn’t. Of course not. But he headed for the kitchen and began getting himself a bowl of cereal. She was nothing but an interloper, a minor inconvenience, a blip on the radar screen of his life. He knew what she’d said about not selling the place but he also knew she’d get tired of being hidden away up here in the woods real quick once the novelty wore off. And then, when he made her a handsome offer for her half as soon as the time was up, she’d take the money and get out of his life for good.
Sort of the way Kammy had vanished, except that he wasn’t stupid enough to be in love with this woman and he wouldn’t be devastated when she left. He snorted in disgust. He hadn’t thought of Kammy in…well, one hell of a long time. She’d been nothing but another blip on the radar screen, he assured himself. Only difference was, he’d learned a lesson from her: some women would do anything for money.
The squeak of the door warned him that Ana was coming into the house, and he made a point of pouring milk onto his cereal and replacing the container in the refrigerator as she came into the kitchen.
“Good morning.” Her voice sounded distinctly wary. “Have you been awake long?”
“Long enough.” He deliberately didn’t look at her. He already knew she was wearing the wet T-shirt with a large towel wrapped around her sarong-style over top of it, and that her wet hair was clipped atop her head. And he wasn’t going to ask her any additional questions that would necessitate further conversation, like how the water was. The less contact he had with her, the better.
There was a short silence, as if she were trying to decipher his meaning. Then she said, “That cereal looks good.” She turned to the cupboard and began looking through the dishes. “Where are the bowls?”
“Third cabinet on the left from the sink.” He kept his voice cool and casual. “Did you pick up any groceries last night? I left the right side of the refrigerator for your food. Same with the shelves in the pantry. We won’t be able to split up the dishes easily—there’s only one of most of the cooking utensils—but if we each clean up as soon as we’re done using them, we should be able to keep out of each other’s way.”
She set down a bowl and turned slowly to face him, her face a porcelain study in disbelief and something that looked suspiciously like…hurt? “Are you telling me not to eat your food?”
“Of course not,” he said smoothly. “If you haven’t laid in su
pplies yet, feel free to use some of mine. The store opens at ten, I believe.”
“I assumed,” she said in her precise little accent, “that we would share meals and food expenses. Wouldn’t that be easier than cooking for one all the time?”
“Not for me,” he said promptly. “I don’t want to have to worry about stopping work to make dinner or coming to the table at a certain time. My hours aren’t particularly regular.”
She was still staring at him and there was a clear look of doubt mixed in with the shock. She knew he was lying, knew he simply didn’t want to have anything to do with her. As he watched, her gaze dropped and she bit down on her lower lip. Turning back to the cupboard, she slowly replaced the bowl she’d removed and started out of the room.
“Hey,” he said. “I told you to feel free to use my stuff until the store opens.”
“Don’t be silly.” She didn’t even stop. “I wouldn’t dream of imposing like that.”
He was not going to let the pathetic droop of those shoulders or the quaver in her rich, round tones arouse his sympathy, he lectured himself. She was a hell of an actress. She must have been, to fool Robin so completely. Still, he couldn’t quiet the guilty feeling that made him sorry he’d chased her away. She hadn’t even eaten any breakfast—no! That was no concern of his. “I’ll make up a tentative schedule today,” he called after her, “for us to share the common rooms and the light cleaning. You can look over it and we can make changes if something doesn’t work for you.”
She was through the living room and halfway up the stairs now and he heard her mutter something beneath her breath, though he couldn’t make out the words. Somehow he doubted it was a compliment on his efficiency.
He barely saw her for the rest of the day. He took the canoe out of storage and maneuvered it down to the beach. It was a good thing he was the size he was. Someone as petite and delicate as his new housemate could never have done this alone. He felt rather magnanimous. Even though she hadn’t helped him, he wasn’t going to begrudge her the use of the small craft.
Billionaire Bachelors: Garrett Page 4