up the umbrella, Kat jogged down the six wide steps and strode toward the motorcycle. Under her shoes the lane’s gravel lay slick with sleet, while her umbrella vibrated under the onslaught of snow and rain. Relentless since yesterday, the inclement weather chilled the air and vaporized her breath.
“Hi,” she said, approaching the man’s right side. “Lost your way?”
For the first time, he stirred, turning his head slowly in her direction. Her breath staggered. His irises were the electric-blue of the summer delphiniums she grew in the corners of the porch steps, and his lashes…the rain had clumped them into long dark spears. At first glance, she assumed he was a California beach-bum—his skin sported a deep bronze color. But looking into his cold eyes, she realized the last place he’d want to be was on some beach.
She lifted her free hand, gathered her wits. “I think you made a wrong turn down my road.”
His gaze traveled past her shoulder, to the oval sign next to the flag, the wooden sign she’d painted with a border of ivy and delicate white flowers circling scripted gold lettering that read, The Country Cabin.
“I don’t think so.” The last word cracked before his eyes settled on her again. “You Kat O’Brien?”
“I am.” She offered a smile and tried not to stare at how the slick plastic bill of his helmet caught the rain, trickling water onto his cheek in a jagged line following a scar on his whiskery jaw.
Unhurriedly, he removed the helmet and she saw that his neatly trimmed hair was the tarnished-gold color of a harvested grain field.
“I’m Dane Rainhart.” His voice was deep, rough. “I’m a day early.”
Kat blinked. Dane…Rainhart? When she’d accepted his booking eight days ago, heard his name, a mental picture of a tall, gangly teenager emerged. Seventeen years old, frequenting her mother’s house with a bunch of high school kids, looking to hook up with Kat’s older sister Lee.
Good grief. When had that boy changed into this man—this hollow-cheeked, stone-faced man?
Stepping back, Kat reined in her flustered senses. Once, eons before, she’d had a little crush on her sister’s boyfriend.
Little, Kat? Try huge. At night you used to squirm in bed thinking about him. And, all right. Since his call she’d reminisced about those days. Childhood memories, nothing more. Nothing.
Dane Rainhart had been a silly schoolgirl fantasy before she grew up, attended college and married the love of her life. Simply put, Rainhart’s request to rent one of her cabins meant one thing only: a steady three-month income.
Wrapping herself in a cloak of no nonsense, she said, “Why don’t you put your bike in the carport and come inside?” Then she headed around the side of the house, pointed to the empty spot next to her old red Honda Civic and waited as her guest walked the motorcycle into the stall. Watching him kick out the stand while his rain gear covered the cement floor in mini-pools of water, she realized he stood much taller than he had in her memories.
He set the helmet on the bike’s seat, tugged off the wet slicker and draped it over the handlebars. From the carport’s entrance, Kat had a crystal view. This was the boy—man—who, more than two decades before, had gazed at her sister with a yearning equal to Kat’s own at thirteen, looking at him.
Stripped of the rain gear, he wore a bomber jacket and black leather pants as pliable as bread dough. Did he have any idea how those two garments outlined his shoulders, biceps, thighs…?
Don’t look further!
She forced her gaze up, but already the tightening had begun deep in her abdomen, and she recognized its source. Dane Rainhart, her teenaged heartthrob, had grown into a powerful, sexy man.
And she’d been a widow for four years, a widow unable to describe the ache of missing her husband.
The man beside the Harley simply brought that loss home.
Across twenty feet of carport, Dane studied the woman silhouetted in the entryway. Her orange umbrella and red vest threw splashes of vibrant color onto the dreary afternoon. Of average height and with a runner’s frame, she could pass for a young girl—until a closer check confirmed the slight swell under the vest and the curve of denim at her hips.
She took a step back into the rain. “Come,” she said. “We’ll get you registered.”
“Is it okay that I’m early?” He had worried the cabin wouldn’t be available.
“It’s fine.” Then, as if she had access to his mind, “Your cabin’s ready.”
With a nod, he followed her through a side door to the back of the house where a cedar deck extended across half its length. Beyond a sketch of lawn and flower garden were two log cabins sheltered within the forest. The larger one stood to the left. A structure a third its size, which Dane assumed would be his for the next twelve weeks, stood to the right.
He couldn’t wait to vanish behind its walls.
At the rear door of the house, the woman collapsed her umbrella, shook off the excess water. The nylon covering gone, he noticed her hair was thick and straight as a mare’s mane. Curving an inch below her pale jaw, the dark locks framed her face in the same way wooden ovals once framed his granny’s ancestral portraits.
“Don’t worry about taking off your boots,” she said as they entered a spotless mudroom. “Just wipe your feet on the mat.”
After setting the umbrella to dry in a tall crock, she led him into an expansive country kitchen. Immediately, his mouth salivated at the aroma and sight of dozens of cookies cooling on tea towels spread across a green worktable with pots dangling overhead.
“Do you like oatmeal raisin cookies?” she asked, passing by the treats.
“Don’t mind ’em.” He couldn’t recall the last time he’d tasted a homemade cookie. Hell, make that homemade anything.
She paused, her brown eyes amused. “Grab a couple, if you want. My son loves them, says they’re better than chocolate chip. And that’s something coming from a prepubescent boy.”
“Thanks.” Dane took a cookie between his gloved fingers, savored its scent, then pulled open a panel of his coat and slid the treat into his shirt pocket.
She has a kid. His gaze tracked her to a door opposite the dining area, where she disappeared into another room. Of course, she does, fool. Why wouldn’t she?
Because the possibility hadn’t crossed his mind when he booked the cabin. He’d thought the owner or owners were older, with kids out of home or, at the very youngest, in high school. He hadn’t expected the girl-next-door as a landlord, and he sure as hell hadn’t expected preteens to live within a baseball pitch of where he’d be setting his boots on a mat.
Speaking of which… He glanced over his shoulder. There hadn’t been a single male article—boots or shoes, coat or ballcap, fishing pole or golf club—in that mudroom. All Dane saw were a couple of smaller jackets and a pink pair of those rubbery shoes women wore to garden.
Was she separated? Divorced? Widowed?
Why do you give a damn, Dane? You’re here to hide and lick your wounds, remember?
She stuck her head around the doorjamb. “Dane?”
Ignoring her familiar use of his name, he crossed the kitchen and entered a small neat office with a beat-up desk, two metal filing cabinets and a window viewing the circular driveway. Posters of her cabins and the main house, along with maps of the village of Burnt Bend and Firewood Island, decorated one wall. His gaze fell to a photo on her desk of a barrel-chested man in a fisherman’s hat, laughing at the camera, bear paw hand resting on the shoulder of a tow-haired preschooler. Husband and son?
Behind the desk, Kat O’Brien smiled. “You don’t remember me, do you?”
“Should