she’d called Cord the second time to thank him and finalize the menu and time for his dinner, she got his voice mail again. The message he left in reply while she was on her route said only that what they had discussed was fine and that he’d see her at six o’clock.
She saw no movement inside. Wondering if something had happened and that he hadn’t returned from wherever he’d been, she pulled back.
She’d taken two steps away when the latch clicked, the door swung wide and her heart bumped her breastbone.
Cord filled the doorway. He had one hand on the knob. The other secured the end of a black towel slung low on his lean hips. Another towel was looped around his neck.
She swallowed, opened her mouth to speak and found herself taking a deep breath instead. His broad shoulders, chest and arms looked damp and as hard and as sculpted as hammered bronze. Below the dark terry cloth around his hips, his powerful calves gleamed with droplets of water he’d missed in his hurried attempt to dry off.
Suddenly aware that she was staring, her glance jerked to the carved lines of his recently shaved face. He had rubbed the towel around his neck over his wet hair. The short strands stood up in spikes several shades darker than its usual sun-bleached wheat.
“You’re early,” he said, seeming totally unconcerned about his state of undress. Glancing from the flush coloring her cheeks, he nodded to the items she carried. “Give me those.”
Stepping past the threshold, he reached for the bag in her arms and the plastic cake carrier balanced against her hip. The back of his hand brushed her breast beneath the bag. As his other brushed her side, her lungs filled with the clean scents of soap, shampoo and the minty smell of toothpaste.
“Got ’em,” he said, his face inches from hers. Stepping back, he tipped his head toward the open door. “Come on in.”
Her box of supplies sat on top of the cooler. Wanting badly to match his ease, she grabbed the cooler by its side handles, determinedly ignored the odd tingling sensations where his hands had so casually brushed her body, and followed him into a wide foyer. The space opened to a wall of floor-to-ceiling windows with a view of the bay that went on forever.
“Where did you go?” she called.
“To your right,” came the deep reply.
Peering around the box balanced high on the cooler, she glimpsed huge abstract paintings on the high walls, overstuffed leather furniture, lacquered tables and marble sculptures all perfectly placed. Beyond it all was that endless view of the bay.
Her glance had just settled on the mast of a sailing sloop moored at the edge of that view when she heard the quiet slap of bare feet on gleaming hardwood floor.
The box that had blocked part of her view suddenly disappeared. “The kitchen is this way,” he said, and left her to follow him once more.
“Did you get your truck ordered?” he asked as he slid the box onto a long slab of black granite counter. The built-in double refrigerator was stainless steel. So were the state-of-the-art appliances built into the counter that overlooked the living room and the water. A high, goose-necked faucet stretched over a stainless steel triple sink behind her.
“Yesterday,” she replied, looking around for a spot to set the cooler. She was almost afraid to touch anything. The closest she’d come to a kitchen like his—a house like his, for that matter—was pictures in magazines. “They have a used one they can refurbish with a propane coffee maker and cold section dividers like I had. It’ll only take about three or four weeks to get it.”
From where he turned to lean against the counter, Cord watched her set her cooler down by the pantry door. He had forgotten how pretty she was, he thought, watching her rise and brush back a strand of dark hair with her forearm. Or maybe when he’d seen her before, she just hadn’t been wearing the makeup that made her dark eyes look so sultry, her mouth so shiny and ripe. Dressed as she was in a crisp white blouse and slim black slacks, and with her dark hair swept up and away from her face, there was a natural elegance about her that hadn’t been quite so obvious in the cotton and denim.
He hadn’t noticed the hint of innocence about her before, either. For a few moments there, it seemed she’d actually blushed when she’d first seen him.
Watching her pull out pans and utensils from the box, he wondered now if the high color in her cheeks wasn’t there just because she was hurrying.
“Order a new one,” he told her.
“That’ll take longer.”
“Then rent the refurbished one to use until the new one comes in.”
“The beams didn’t land on a new one,” she pointed out over the dull clunk of a metal pan on granite. “I’m fine with the one I picked out. It’s the same model and year as my old one and I’ll have the same equipment.”
It seemed that she had no intention of taking more than she felt entitled to. She pulled a pristine white apron from the box. Turning from him, she looped it over her head and tied it around her narrow waist. “Do you have a cutting board?”
“I have no idea,” he admitted, not ready to drop the subject. He could see where the shorter turn-around on a used truck would hold a certain appeal. Getting back to her full route as soon as possible was important to her. He knew that. He just didn’t know another living soul who would refuse what he was offering her.
She glanced up. Deliberately avoiding looking anywhere but straight into his eyes, she murmured, “Excuse me?”
“I have no idea,” he repeated. He wiped at a drip running down his neck. “Except for the basics, I really don’t know what’s in this room. The designer I hired pulled this place together for me.”
The dark wing of her eyebrow slowly arched. “You don’t know what’s in your own home?”
“I’m hardly ever in this one. I bought it last year so I’d have a place to dock my boat while we’re building the mall. Most of the time, I live in Annapolis or Manhattan.” He wasn’t in those places much, either. The condo on the York River and the apartment across from Central Park were investments that happened to be handy places to crash when he came back from whatever challenge his restlessness drove him to conquer. There wasn’t any one place that he actually called home. Except, maybe, the family estate in Camelot. But that huge sprawling mansion with its private lake, tennis courts and riding stable had never felt like a place he belonged, either.
He didn’t care at all for the direction of his thoughts. Cutting them off with the ease of a man accustomed to burying what truly bothered him, he pushed himself from the counter.
“Tell you what,” he said, not totally sure why she looked so puzzled. “Help yourself to whatever you can find. Since the weather’s good, I thought we’d have hors d’oeuvres on the lower deck and dinner on the upper one. I had the housekeeper set up the bar and take the dishes out before she left, but you might want to check out everything first. I’m going to get dressed.”
Madison didn’t get a chance to do much more than nod before he lifted the towel from his neck and walked out, drying his hair. Staring at the muscles rippling in his naked back, grateful that the towel around his lean hips hadn’t slipped, she let out a breath of pure unadulterated relief.
She didn’t know which had been more unnerving. Trying to carry on a conversation while pretending to ignore all that beautiful muscle, or suspecting he knew how all that beautiful muscle rattled her.
She had seen men’s bodies before. In magazine ads for underwear that barely covered the essentials. On the beach, slicked with oil. She had just never been so close to one wearing nothing but terry cloth and a smile. And she mostly definitely had never been close to one who had turned her insides liquid at little more than the contact of his shower-damp skin when he’d relieved her of her load at the door.
She could hold her own with the men she knew. She could banter easily with the best of them. But her experience