seen movement high in the center of the tree. It was a quick movement, little more than a flashing image of a woman with dark hair and her back to him. Then she was gone, but the voice was still there, echoing in the gingerbread-tinged air.
“What a waste, the dress, the panty hose, the stupid gingerbread family! I thought it would work. Well, color me wrong, very wrong.”
He smiled as he moved a bit closer, the voice drawing him as surely as the words she uttered. Then there was more movement at the bottom of the tree, and he could have sworn he saw a bare foot coming out of an arched hole in the trunk. It was a foot, then another, coming out soles-first, followed by an expanse of legs tangled in some material that could have been ice blue, but the lights were too low to let him see if he was right or not.
What he did know was that a woman was backing out of an arched hole in the tree trunk on her hands and knees. She was slowly inching out, showing a swell of slender hips, and all the time muttering. “Well, never again. Once burned, that’s it with me. You’ve run out of chances, Charlie.”
A narrow waist, then she was out with her back to him. But he could see that she was tiny, slender, and when she shook her head, hair the color of night tumbled around her bare shoulders and partway down her back. He remembered hearing somewhere that long hair was sexy on a woman, but he hadn’t realized the truth of it until that moment. Sexy. Damn sexy. As sexy as the way the fine material of her dress defined a tiny waist, clung to her hips and the ripped hem tangled with her slender legs.
Lucky Charlie, he thought, as something stirred in him, something so basic and sexual, that it startled him. He hadn’t felt anything like this for a woman for what seemed ages, if ever. No matter what his son thought, he’d had a personal life, but right then he knew that he’d never let himself really go.
Just find some sexy woman and go with the flow? Let it happen. Relax. Chill out.
Looking at the woman, he thought that maybe it was time to just go with the flow, to let whatever happened happen and not look back. He was on his own. He wasn’t protecting anyone anymore. He wasn’t looking for a miracle. He was looking at a woman who stirred him, and he hadn’t even seen her face.
He would have spoken then, said something to get her to turn so he could see her face. As if on cue, she started to turn, one arm tucked out of sight in front of her. Quint literally felt his breath catch in his chest with anticipation as he took in her profile, the elegant sweep of her throat, a small chin, softly parted lips, a tiny nose, improbably long lashes.
Then she faced him, her features filled with delicate beauty that he knew could haunt a man’s dreams. When she saw him, dark eyes widened with shock, and in the next second, she screamed, her hands flew up, and something came flying through the air toward Quint.
Amy Blake hadn’t known there was anyone else in the day-care center until she’d turned and found a tall, lean stranger, all in black, no more than two feet from where she stood by the tree. The world suddenly moved in slow motion as her first thought was to protect herself. And that meant instinctively thrusting out her hands to ward the man off. That’s when Charlie, the fat black-and-white pet rat, flew out of her hands and sailed through the air, headed right for the stranger.
Her second thought was that no matter what misery the animal had caused her by getting loose right before she began to close up and leave, she was sending him to his death. His little legs were flailing as he flew through the air, right at the stranger’s chest.
She lunged in an effort to save the poor animal from meeting a horrible end, and realized the stranger was moving, too, right at her. In a heartbeat he had the rat in both hands, but she couldn’t stop her own momentum any more than he could stop his. She was as out of control as Charlie had been a split second ago, but she wasn’t being caught and rescued. Instead, she hit the stranger, tangling with him, feeling a stinging blow at her forehead, inhaling a jumble of scents, from gingerbread to aftershave, all layered with body heat.
The momentum kept up, the uncontrolled tumbling with the man until she hit the ground, felt the back of her head make contact with the floor, gasping as the man seemed to be everywhere. In the next heartbeat she twisted and the world stopped. All motion ceased. She’d gone from flying wildly into a stranger, to lying on top of the stranger on the floor with her eyes tightly closed.
She could literally feel his heart beating, and it took her a second to define the fact that her breasts were pressed to his chest, that his body was under hers, a hard, lean body, filled with heat and strength. A horrid thought—she hadn’t been this close to a man since Rob had died—was there before she could stop it. All she had to do was open her eyes and see the man, but she couldn’t. She wouldn’t.
She pushed back then opened her eyes and was thankful that the man was little more than a blur of darkness to her. His hand was on her arm, his fingers all but burning her skin, and she tried to jerk free. But he wasn’t imprisoning her, just holding her, and the motion of pulling hard sent her to her right, and she fell sideways onto the carpet.
She closed her eyes again, so tightly that colors exploded behind her eyes. She gasped for air, while her mind raced. Just explain that she was tired, that Charlie was important to Taylor and the other kids at the center, and that she was ready to leave. That was all true. Very true. Weariness ate at her, weariness that sleep didn’t dispel, when she could sleep.
“Whoa, lady,” the man uttered in a deep, rough voice touched by a faint Texas twang.
She kept her eyes closed for a long moment, then scrambled to her feet, her chest tightening as she finally opened her eyes to look at the man. He was flat on his back on the floor, and his image was painfully clear to her, from the thick dark hair streaked with gray brushed back from a face with sharp features, a full, graying mustache and a strong jaw. But it was the eyes that caught her attention and held it. They were dark eyes, partially shadowed, narrowed as they looked up at her, yet capable of making her heart lurch in her chest. It didn’t help that they were crinkled at the corners from humor, the same humor that made the mustache twitch above a mouth with a decidedly sensuous bottom lip.
She looked away quickly, not prepared to be so instantly uneasy with a man, especially with a man who was smiling at her. No, it wasn’t exactly uneasiness she felt. As her eyes ran down his lean frame, over the perfectly cut tuxedo, she knew that she was disturbed. Very disturbed, and she was embarrassed by it while he lay on the floor laughing. She was also embarrassed by her own clumsy stupidity. She felt heat rising to her face.
“I am so sorry, I mean, really sorry,” she said in a rush, crouching down by him as she held out her hand to help him up. “You scared me and I didn’t think. Poor Charlie, I sure didn’t mean to throw him at you like that.”
“Poor Charlie is right,” he murmured in a low rumble.
“Poor Charlie is—” Horror shot through her. “Charlie!” Instead of taking his hand, she grabbed at the shoulder of his tuxedo, tugging with all her strength to move him quickly. But it was like trying to move the Rock of Gibraltar. “Oh, God,” she gasped. “Charlie—you’re killing him. Move, get off of him!”
He moved then, scrambling away from her and the rip of material was jumbled with frantic movement, then her own sigh of relief when she saw the carpet under where the stranger had lain. The only thing there was the vague imprint of his body on the new carpeting.
Relief almost left her giddy, and she exhaled in a rush as she sank back to sit on her heels. “Oh, thank goodness,” she said on a relieved sigh. “You didn’t kill him.”
“Kill him?” he asked from right beside her. “You’re the one who threw him at me.”
“I know, I know, but I thought you were lying on him. Crushing him.” She shuddered. “I was sure he was a goner.”
“All of this concern seems odd coming from someone who was threatening him with murder a few minutes ago.”
“Well, sure, but I didn’t want him dead.”
That brought unexpected laughter from the man as he crouched right