herself, when crinkles appeared at the corners of his eyes. “Just cut it right out.” She slammed her hand across her mouth when she realized she’d spoken those words aloud.
Caught out, she jumped to her feet. “I’ll…I think I’ll see what’s going on in the kitchen.” She didn’t know why she’d said that; she didn’t want to be alone with her father because she didn’t know what to say to him.
Schyler saved her. “Uh-uh. Dad hates to have anybody in that kitchen with him when he’s cooking.”
She sat down. Trapped. She had to get out of there. Away from him and his mesmeric eyes and seductive smile. “In that case, I think I’ll go for a walk. You must have something you’d rather be doing.”
His teasing grin and the sparkles in his eyes couldn’t be taken for anything but frank deviltry. “Not another single thing,” he said and placed his right hand over his heart. “Just keeping you company, and it’s my pleasure.”
No sooner had he said it than Richard appeared in the door of the living room. “There you two are. I know you wanted to finish that descrambler, Son. So I appreciate your taking the time to get to know Veronica, because that’s important to me.”
As Richard looked from one to the other, Schyler put up his hands, palms out, in surrender. “Okay, so I lied. Truce?”
“I won’t ask what that was about,” Richard said and left them alone.
She didn’t realize her demeanor had changed until Schyler frowned. “How can you dislike him so much when you don’t even know him?” he asked her. “Is he kind, warm, gracious, honest and decent? Is he? Does he pay his debts, and does he help people who can’t do for themselves? Does he? You can’t answer, and that means you can’t judge him.”
She wanted to erase the pain reflected in his eyes, to hold him and…For a quick moment, her gaze went toward the ceiling. A father she’d been taught to despise inextricably tied to a man whose smile made her head swim and whose every gesture made her long for the feel of his arms hard around her. A man who made her dream dreams that kept her blushing for days. If she was being punished, she’d like to know what she’d done to deserve it. She wished her ambiguous feelings toward him would sort themselves out, that she could either despise Schyler Henderson and dismiss him from her life or let herself feel what her heart and body longed to experience. And while her conflicting feelings battled with each other, she searched for a gentle reply. Truthful, yet without the verbal tentacles that could pierce the heart.
“It’s best not to pry, Schyler—if I may call you that. There’s a well of hurt and misery that you apparently know nothing about. I don’t know anything about it, either, only what I’ve been told, what I had drilled into me ever since I’ve known myself. You said you’re not callous. Neither am I. Don’t dig deep. It’s enough that one of us carries the burden.”
He reached across the three feet of space that separated them and grasped her hand. “Don’t make that mistake, Veronica. All three of us feel the pain. Tell me why you’ve taken a three-month leave from CPAA and why you’ve hinted you might not return to your job.”
She shared with him her reasons for downplaying the importance of a job that had consumed all of her energies, thought and passion for the previous five years. Her proving ground. The place where she’d taught herself that she could do whatever she set herself to do and do it well. Her chest went out and her shoulders back.
“I had to get away from there, to find myself. I’d done a lot of things, covered a lot of miles and garnered my share of laurels, but…” she faced him fully, wanting him to understand what she’d never told anyone “…but I’d never lived. Never wrestled with a relationship slipping through my fingers, never argued and gossiped with girlfriends, never opened my arms wide and let the breeze blow me wherever it would.”
“Back up a minute,” he said, and she had the impression that he was putting events into their proper perspective. “That case wasn’t the only reason why you decided your office can get along without you for three months?? Is that what you’re telling me?”
“Some of my reasoning was bound up with that, the fact that after so much acclaim, the community that I had served so selflessly could forget so quickly.”
“What do you mean, people forgot?”
She waved a hand in disdain. “Not one reporter asked me for an interview when that case was closed in my favor.”
His sharp whistle sliced through the room. “I never dreamed.”
“It’s okay now. I learned a lot from that.”
“So you went to Europe. Then what?” he asked.
“I think I’ve done more living in the weeks since I left CPAA than in the previous thirty-two years and five months of my life.”
He leaned toward her, an animated expression on his face, and squeezed her fingers. “You did something you always wanted to do?”
The mere memory of those few exhilarating days eased the harsh feelings that had beset her since she’d stepped across Richard Henderson’s threshold.
She nodded eagerly. “Yes. Oh, yes. I skied the slopes of the Jungfraujoch, hiked alone through the mountain terrain, spent the night with hospitable strangers and got a proposal of marriage from their six-foot-four-inch tall, blond and handsome elder son. Every single second of it exhilarated me. Free. Almost a part of nature. I’ll never forget it.”
Schyler felt her fingers soft and warm in his hand. He’d held them for all of five minutes, and she’d let him. He focused on her words. “A proposal? You sure you’re telling all of this?”
When had he last seen a woman wrinkle her nose in pure wickedness? He braced himself. Maybe she wasn’t as straitlaced as he’d thought.
“All except…uh…his…er request after I turned him down.”
“Wait a minute! Don’t tell me…you—”
She interrupted him, snatching her hand from his as she did so. “You think I’m crazy? The man was a gentleman. He asked. I said no to that, too, and he didn’t press me.”
Schyler let himself breathe. “I would have been surprised if your answer had been different.” He rubbed his chin, reflecting on some of his own temptations. “But when we’re under stress—and you certainly were—we sometime behave out of character.”
A softness seemed to envelop her. He wouldn’t have associated shyness with her, but he sensed it in her changed demeanor and saw it in her lowered gaze. Long lashes, half an inch of them, hid her large, almond-shaped black eyes—so much like his father’s—from him.
“Your eyes must be the most beautiful I’ve ever looked at. It’s a wonder they don’t get you into trouble. Every time you blink, it’s as if you’re flirting.”
She managed to look at something beyond his back. “I’ve been told that.”
Right then he made up his mind to get to know Veronica Overton. He’d seen her regal in her professional armor and arrogant with his father, but the woman before him at that moment was sweet and feminine. If he dug deeper…He stood and it seemed natural to reach for her hand. He did, and she grasped it.
“Come help me set the table for dinner. I can tell from the rattling in the kitchen that he’ll have it ready in five or six minutes.”
Being with her gave him a good feeling, he realized, but he didn’t fool himself. No woman would ever be important to him unless she showed genuine affection for his father. He eyed her as they set the table, and he liked the way she went about it. Unhurried. Self-assured. She might well have been in her own home. At the thought, his belly tightened, and whispers of air skittered through the hairs on his forearms and the backs of his hands, teasing his nerves. Warning him. No you don’t, man, he told himself. Don’t go there! Don’t you even think it. But an