all, it wasn’t every day a man encountered a woman who informed him out of the blue that she wasn’t going to sleep with him. Or who practically begged him to teach her to fly so she could rescue the local wildlife.
He’d been unwillingly impressed by that desire, too. Though he’d never considered himself particularly jaded, he had to admit there really wasn’t much that did impress him anymore.
He also had to admit that the idea of sex with her had crept into his thoughts with disquieting regularity.
The phenomenon was nothing more than a power-of-suggestion thing. He wouldn’t have thought of it if she hadn’t put the idea in his head. He felt certain of that. But thoughts of how soft her skin would feel, of burying his fingers in the wild tangle of her hair, of how shapely she was beneath the baggy clothes she wore, had crept into his mind, his sleep. The unwanted mental images had to be why his body had tightened when she’d touched him. And why the fresh wildflower scent of her had him feeling as taut as a trip wire every time he breathed it in.
“Do you mind if I ask you something personal?”
“That depends.” With his glance on her mouth, hesitation slipped over her face. “What do you want to know?”
“Why are these animals so important to you?”
The nature of his interest made her lips curve. “For some of the same reasons children are important. They need protection and care,” she explained. “Because I care, I do what I can for them.”
She looked as she sounded, as if she were certain he would understand something so basic.
He didn’t understand at all.
Not sure why it mattered, he ran a skeptical glance from the curls disappearing behind her back, over her clear, unembellished skin and paused at the hand-strung brown beads skimming her collarbone. His assessing glance narrowed on her shoulders.
He was unable to detect so much as a hint of a bra strap or cup beneath the soft fabric of her shirt, nothing to support or mold the high, gentle swells of her breasts. Making himself ignore the thought of how perfectly she would fit in his palms, he forced his glance to the loose linen drawstring pants riding her slender hips.
There was nothing artificial about the woman. Nothing made up, made over, restrained, restricted or enhanced. She was completely, unabashedly natural. He’d even bet her underwear was 100 percent pure cotton.
Not that he was ever going to find out. Since he was no more interested in a relationship than he’d heard she was, his thoughts were actually leaning more toward her beliefs than her bedroom. He now had the nagging feeling she was one of the vegan ilk who had refused to baby-sit at his house because he had leather furniture. “You’re a vegetarian.”
At the flat conclusion in his voice, T.J.’s expression mirrored his own.
“So?” she prompted.
“So are you into some esoteric philosophy that regards animals as gods or something?”
She had already struck him as being a little unconventional, which made her fit in perfectly on Harbor where eccentricities were the norm. The island was populated with a curious blend of kiwi farmers, entrepreneurs, loners and dot-com millionaires, each perfectly content to march to his own drummer. Considering who her mother was, he figured T.J.’s philosophies could be light-years away from his more traditional leanings.
“Do you mean, do I worship cows and that sort of thing?”
“Well…yeah,” he rather unintelligently concluded.
Her smile emerged, as warm as sunshine and faintly chiding. “My burgers are made of tofu,” she admitted, “but I’ve never confused something on four legs with anything other than what it is. I just happened to grow up with animals. They were always around the communes we stayed in when I was a child.”
One slender shoulder raised in a faint shrug. “They were my friends,” she explained, her voice softening as she thought of how much company and comfort those animals had given her. “It’s only natural that I should provide a safe environment for those who need it now.”
For a moment, Sam said nothing. He simply watched her study the wrenches on the cart before she glanced around the cavernous space. She seemed infinitely more at ease than she’d been when he’d first seen her standing in the office doorway, and terribly curious about what surrounded her.
He was feeling more than a little curious himself. Her comments about being raised in a commune had just summoned images of tie-dye and love beads.
He’d certainly heard of the communes of the sixties and seventies and their free-living lifestyle. He even knew several aging hippies himself, a few of whom ran the Mother Earth Spa on the north end of the island and whose faithful clientele flew in regularly on his airline. Then there was her mother.
“The animals lived in the commune with you?”
“I don’t remember any living with us. Except for this mangy yellow dog someone had. But he didn’t stay very long. The guy or the dog,” she mused. Having perused the wrenches on the cart, she looked back at him. “Metric, right?”
He nodded at her query and watched her glance swing to a spare propeller blade hanging above the long, brightly lit workbench. “For as far back as I can remember,” she continued, crossing her arms as if to keep from touching anything, “if I wanted company I headed for the woods.”
“How many people did you live with?”
“Anywhere from half a dozen to twenty or so.”
“Weren’t there any other children?”
“Sometimes. That depended on where we were. And on the weather. Winter tended to weed out the wannabes.” Tipping her head back, she studied the structure of the wing flap above her. “Even when there were other kids, they didn’t stay long enough to really get to know.” No one stayed long. Ever. Transience had always been part of the life. “But there were always animals. I’d find their dens and play with the babies.”
“You’re kidding.”
Her attention remained on the wing as she shook her head, her smile rueful. “I know. I’m lucky I didn’t lose a limb.”
“Or your life.”
“That, too,” she easily agreed. “Some babies’ mothers can be very protective. I think bears are the most aggressive,” she mused, still checking out the hardware. “But I ran into a beaver once that was a close second. She wasn’t happy at all about me playing with her kits.”
Without thinking about what he was doing, Sam let his glance slide over the long line of her throat as she followed the flap to the light on the wing tip. His first inclination was to ask where her mother had been while she had wandered the woods in search of playmates. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know, though. Wasn’t sure he wanted it to matter.
What she’d just so artlessly told him conjured the uncomfortable image of a very isolated child.
“It sounds lonely.”
Her inspection of his plane came to an abrupt halt. Meeting his eyes, she tipped her head to study his.
“It was,” she admitted with compelling candor. Sympathy unexpectedly moved into her soft expression. Her voice, already quiet, quieted further as she searched his face. “It’s hard, isn’t it? Feeling alone like that, I mean.”
She had caught him off guard before. She’d just never caught him as unprepared as he felt at that moment. As it had the other day at the bookstore, her candid manner had pulled him past the protective wall he’d built around himself, caused him to be curious and left him without the distance he tended to keep between himself and nearly everyone else.
He had no idea what he’d done to give himself away, but she had somehow recognized the emptiness living inside him. As ruthlessly as he battled that feeling, as diligently as he tried to avoid