LITMIR.BIZ

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smiled and her face just—lit up. Sam’s breath caught in his chest as he looked at her. That flash of something hot, something staggering, hit him again and he desperately tried to fight it off. Even while that strong buzz swept through him, remnants of the phone call with his mother rose up in his mind and he wondered if Joy had been in on whatever his mother and Kaye had cooking between them.

      Made sense, didn’t it? Young, pretty woman. Single mother. Why not try to find a rich husband?

      Speculatively, he looked at her and saw sharp blue eyes without the slightest hint of guile. So maybe she wasn’t in on it. He’d reserve judgment. For now. But whether she was or not, he had to set down some rules. If they were going to be living together for the next month, better that they both knew where they stood.

      And, as he took another bite of her spectacular pasta, he admitted that he was going to let her stay—if only for the sake of his stomach.

      “Okay,” he said in between bites, “you can stay for the month.”

      She grinned at him and took another sip of her wine to celebrate. “That’s great, thanks. Although, I wasn’t really going to leave.”

      Amused, he picked up his beer. “Is that right?”

      “It is.” She nodded sharply. “You should know that I’m pretty stubborn when I want something, and I really wanted to stay here for the month.”

      He leaned back in his chair. The pale wash of the stove light reached across the room to spill across her, making that blond hair shine and her eyes gleam with amusement and determination. The house was quiet, and the darkness crouched just outside the window made the light and warmth inside seem almost intimate. Not a word he wanted to think about at the moment.

      “Can you imagine trying to keep a five-year-old entertained in a tiny hotel room for a month?” She shivered and shook her head. “Besides being a living nightmare for me, it wouldn’t be fair to Holly. Kids need room to run. Play.”

      He remembered. A succession of images flashed across his mind before he could stop them. As if the memories had been crouched in a corner, just waiting for the chance to escape, he saw pictures of another child. Running. Laughing. Brown eyes shining as he looked over his shoulder and—

      Sam’s grip on the beer bottle tightened until a part of him wondered why it didn’t simply shatter in his hand. The images in his mind blurred, as if fingers of fog were reaching for them, dragging them back into the past where they belonged. Taking a slow, deep breath, he lifted the beer for a sip and swallowed the pain with it.

      “Besides,” she continued while he was still being dogged by memories, “this kitchen is amazing.” Shaking her head, she looked around the massive room, and he knew what she was seeing. Pale oak cabinets, dark blue granite counters with flecks of what looked like abalone shells in them. Stainless steel appliances and sink and an island big enough to float to Ireland on. And the only things Sam ever really used on his own were the double-wide fridge and the microwave.

      “Cooking in here was a treat. There’s so much space.” Joy took another sip of wine. “Our house is so tiny, the kitchen just a smudge on the floor plan. Holly and I can’t be in there together without knocking each other down. Plus there’s the ancient plumbing and the cabinet doors that don’t close all the way...but it’s just a rental. One of these days, we’ll get our own house. Nothing like this one of course, but a little bigger with a terrific kitchen and a table like this one where Holly can sit and do her homework while I make dinner—”

      Briskly, he got back to business. It was either that or let her go far enough to sketch out her dream kitchen. “Okay, I get it. You need to be here, and for food like this, I’m willing to go along.”

      She laughed shortly.

      He paid zero attention to the musical sound of that laugh or how it made her eyes sparkle in the low light. “So here’s the deal. You can stay the month like we agreed.”

      “But?” she asked. “I hear a but in there.”

      “But.” He nodded at her. “We steer clear of each other and you keep your daughter out of my way.”

      Her eyebrows arched. “Not a fan of kids, are you?”

      “Not for a long time.”

      “Holly won’t bother you,” she said, lifting her wineglass for another sip.

      “All right. Good. Then we’ll get along fine.” He finished off the pasta, savoring that last bite before taking one more pull on his beer. “You cook and clean. I spend most of my days out in the workshop, so we probably won’t see much of each other anyway.”

      She studied him for several long seconds before a small smile curved her mouth and a tiny dimple appeared in her right cheek. “You’re sort of mysterious, aren’t you?”

      Once again, she’d caught him off guard. And why did she look so pleased when he’d basically told her he didn’t want her kid around and didn’t particularly want to spend any time with her, either?

      “No mystery. I just like my privacy is all.”

      “Privacy’s one thing,” she mused, tipping her head to one side to study him. “Hiding out’s another.”

      “Who says I’m hiding?”

      “Kaye.”

      He rolled his eyes. Kaye talked to his mother. To Joy. Who the hell wasn’t she talking to? “Kaye doesn’t know everything.”

      “She comes close, though,” Joy said. “She worries about you. For the record, she says you’re lonely, but private. Nice, but shut down.”

      He shifted in the chair, suddenly uncomfortable with the way she was watching him. As if she could look inside him and dig out all of his secrets.

      “She wouldn’t tell me why you’ve locked yourself away up here on the mountain—”

      “That’s something,” he muttered, then remembered his mother’s warning about hermits and muttering. Scowling, he took another drink of his beer.

      “People do wonder, though,” she mused. “Why you keep to yourself so much. Why you almost never go into town. I mean, it’s beautiful here, but don’t you miss talking to people?”

      “Not a bit,” he told her, hoping that statement would get her to back off.

      “I really would.”

      “Big surprise,” he muttered and then inwardly winced. Hell, he’d talked more in the last ten minutes than he had in the last year. Still, for some reason, he felt the need to defend himself and the way he lived. “I have Kaye to talk to if I desperately need conversation—which I don’t. And I do get into town now and then.” Practically never, though, he thought.

      Hell, why should he go into Franklin and put up with being stared at and whispered over when he could order whatever he wanted online and have it shipped overnight? If nothing else, the twenty-first century was perfect for a man who wanted to be left the hell alone.

      “Yeah, that doesn’t happen often,” she was saying. “There was actually a pool in town last summer—people were taking bets on if you’d come in at all before fall.”

      Stunned, he stared at her. “They were betting on me?”

      “You’re surprised?” Joy laughed and the sound of it filled the kitchen. “It’s a tiny mountain town with not a lot going on, except for the flood of tourists. Of course they’re going to place bets on the local hermit.”

      “I’m starting to resent that word.” Sam hadn’t really considered that he might be the subject of so much speculation, and he didn’t much care for it. What was he supposed to do now? Go into town more often? Or less?

      “Oh,” she said, waving one hand at him, “don’t look so grumpy about it. If it makes you feel better, when

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