Ask any one of the hundreds of homeless people who consider a park bench luxury accommodation.” He scooped forks from a drawer, steak knives from the rack and sent the lot skimming over the work island toward her. “Here, make yourself useful, for a change. Set the table. You’ll find place mats and stuff inside the sideboard in the dining area.”
“Is ‘please’ a part of your vocabulary?” she snapped, catching the cutlery just before it flew off the granite surface and crashed to the floor. “Or didn’t your mother think it necessary to teach you any manners?”
He treated her to an evil and altogether beautiful grin. “I’m a Neanderthal, remember? We don’t do manners. And leave my mother out of this. She managed to raise five kids on her own without losing any of us, which is more than can be said for the family you come from.”
She supposed she deserved that, but it hurt anyway. And served to remind her why she was there to begin with. If she wanted this man’s help, she’d better fine-tune her approach. “I apologize,” she said, swallowing her aggravation. “I shouldn’t have brought your mother into this. I’m sure she’s a very fine lady.”
“Yes, she is,” he said. “And I’m a jerk to have said what I did about your family, so that makes us even. How do you feel about California shiraz?”
She found his habit of switching subjects without warning or lead-in highly disconcerting. “To drink, you mean?”
“No, cookie. To use as shoe polish.” He shook his head in mock despair. “Of course to drink—unless you don’t like it any better than the rum you were so quick to denounce but which, I notice, you managed to drain to the last drop.”
“I enjoy a good shiraz,” she said. “Also cabernet sauvignon and pinot noir. And my name is Linda. Kindly refer to me as such—or Ms. Carr, if you prefer.”
He favored her with a steely glance. “Lest we forget who’s in charge around here, let’s run over the ground rules. First, this is my house. Second, I didn’t invite you to come here. Third, I don’t take orders from anyone, particularly not a total stranger who’s looking for a favor. Remember that. Cookie.”
For the space of a second or two, she glared right back, a dozen pithy retorts buzzing through her mind and begging to be aired.
Forestalling her, he grinned again. Pleasantly this time. Disarmingly so. “Don’t do it, Linda,” he warned. “Don’t say something you’ll regret. And don’t gnash your teeth like that. It makes you look like a bad-tempered dog.”
“A rottweiler, I hope. One capable of ripping your throat out!”
He laughed. He was laughing, she decided, altogether too often and always at her expense. “Afraid not. You don’t have the hindquarters for it.”
She was wearing shorts, which fit trimly around her hips and showed plenty of leg, and the way he eyed her from the waist down left her in no doubt that he liked what he saw. Absurdly flattered, she blushed.
“Thought that’d soften you up,” he said with smug satisfaction. “Now hop to it and set the table. I’m about ready to throw these steaks on the barbecue. And one more thing: if you can do it without lopping off a finger or two, slice up that French loaf over there.”
She glared at his departing back. Much more provocation, and she’d slice him!
The steak was done to perfection, the potatoes tender and flavorful, the mushrooms, sautéed in butter and port wine, mouthwatering.
“You’re a good cook,” she said.
“I know,” he replied with disgraceful immodesty.
“Do you eat at this table when you’re alone?”
“No,” he mocked. “When there’s no one around to watch, I get down on my hands and knees, and slurp out of a bowl on the floor.”
“You don’t have to be so rude! I asked only because your dining room furniture is so big and from everything I’ve learned, you aren’t the kind of man who hosts large dinner parties.”
“You investigated me pretty thoroughly before you came calling, did you?”
“Enough to know you’re something of a recluse and don’t have many friends.”
“I have friends, Linda,” he informed her flatly. “Not many, I admit. I prefer to be selective. As for the furniture, it was my grandmother’s, and her mother’s before that. The table will seat twenty when it’s fully extended. They went in for lots of children in those days.”
She found it interesting that, for a man who shunned the company of others, he’d mentioned his family twice with obvious affection. “And you’re one of five yourself, you said?”
“My mother had five sons.”
“And brought them up by herself? My goodness, she must have had stamina!”
“She had no choice. My father died before my youngest brother was born.”
“Oh, how tragic! What happened?”
“Nosy, aren’t you?”
“I don’t mean to be insensitive. But the story is so…moving. A woman alone, with five little boys, one of them a baby who never got to meet his father…” She swallowed, the whole concept hitting a little too close to home.
“My father was a police officer killed in the line of duty.”
“Is that why you joined the force?”
“Yes,” he said brusquely. “He was my hero. I was ten when he died, and I remember him very well. He was a good man, a good father. My mother’s family were true monied blue bloods and never understood why she wanted to marry a cop when she could have had a life of ease with any number of other men. But she adored him and he her.”
“She never remarried?”
“With five boys?” he scoffed. “Even the men my grandparents tried to line her up with after she was widowed weren’t interested in taking on a gang like us, any more than she was interested in finding another husband. She’d had the best, she always said, and knew there’d never be another like him—except, possibly, for his sons who resembled him so closely that she couldn’t have forgotten him, even if she’d wanted to.”
Unexpectedly touched, Linda said, “It’s a sad but lovely story, Mr. Sullivan. It makes me doubly regret that comment I made earlier about your mother. She sounds quite remarkable.”
Actually, “superhuman” was probably closer to the mark, if her eldest son was anything to go by. He displayed a sophistication and certain male elegance strangely at odds with the tough resilience which was the legacy of his days as a police detective.
Watching him from beneath her lashes, she admired the lean, clean grace of his hands as he lifted his glass, and wondered if he handled a firearm with the same deft panache he brought to the dinner table. She suspected that he did; that even under extreme duress, he endowed his every gesture with innate style.
He might have inherited his father’s looks, but his mother’s aristocratic genes showed in his bearing, in his manner. Underneath that sometimes surly exterior lurked the heart and soul of a gentleman. She had only to look around his home to recognize his inborn good taste.
“My mother’s all that, and then some,” he said, reaching over to pour more wine into her glass. “And now let’s talk about you. Do you have any other siblings besides your sister?”
“No.”
“Which of you came first?”
“I did, by six years.”
“Making her about twenty.”
“Twenty-two.”
“In other words, plenty old enough to have developed the smarts to steer clear of a man so rotten inside