Sometimes she helped out with her sister Mac’s maid service. The temporary live-in tutor job she’d scored until summer’s end was kind of a combination of all three.
Redirecting her gaze to the northeast, she thought about her sister Poppy’s pet project. “And my family has a tract of land and some cabins we’re refurbishing there. We’re hoping to create a quiet and very exclusive retreat for people who want to get away from it all.”
It wasn’t clear whether the idea would come to fruition, though. Her brother and Mac were still unconvinced, claiming to hold on to the outlandish idea that the property was cursed. Shay was on Poppy’s side, but as the non-Walker Walker, she kept quiet about her wishes on the subject. Because that outside-the-circle feeling was impossible to leave behind. The whispers she’d first heard on her fourteenth birthday had rooted deep in her heart and it didn’t help when to this day she caught old-timers going over the old gossip.
Behind her, she sensed Jay rising. “Well,” he said, “I guess I’ll head back.”
She swung around, risking another glance his way. “Are you going to be—”
“I’m better now. Fine.”
Looking him over, she decided on a small suppressed sigh that yeah, he was fine. Very fine. Tall, broad, all heavy muscles and long bones that came together in one package that just...just hit her someplace deep. Someplace...private. “Goodbye,” she said softly as he moved onto the road.
One stride away from her. Two.
Suddenly, he turned back. “Let me buy you dinner.”
Her heart jerked at the command in his voice. “I—”
“You owe me that game of gin rummy, remember? My macho needs shoring up. You said it yourself.”
She couldn’t help but roll her eyes. He was at least six feet four inches of hot-blooded male, elevation effects or no. “I don’t think—”
“It’s still your birthday. We’ll have more cake.”
Oh, there was that pull again. Her mouth was curving upward and inside she felt a dangerous fever jacking up her temperature and overriding her good sense. “And fewer martinis?”
“Whatever you want.”
Shay sucked in a breath, remembering what she’d wanted last night. What she’d offered, and how he’d rejected her. How low that had brought her.
Now, though, with him looking at her with those warm golden eyes, she felt light, free, like a kite that could soar over the mountaintops and float through the blue, blue sky.
Then the expression in his eyes became more intent as his gaze roamed her face. She was no kite, now, but a woman, sexy and beautiful.
Rubbing her damp palms against the side of her jeans, she moved toward him, unable to do anything but. “All right,” she said. “Dinner.”
Upon their return, they made arrangements to meet in the grill in an hour. Though he still didn’t have a room, the inn had opened up an employee area where the refugees could wash up. Shay took a quick shower then appraised her outfit choices. It was a replay of the jeans or a repeat of last night’s dress. And while she knew it would be wiser to stay casual—and more fully covered—she put on the filmy garment anyway.
When she took the stairs to the restaurant and turned the corner to see him waiting at a secluded corner table, she was glad she’d changed. He was in slacks and a dress shirt, an expensive watch strapped around one strong wrist. He looked confident and successful and when he lifted his gaze to her, once again she felt lit up inside.
While still trembling, just a little, on the outside.
He stood as she approached, his mouth curved in an assuring smile that nonetheless delivered a jolt of nervous anticipation. Surely she’d never felt this dichotomy around a man before. There was a familiarity about him—as if he were someone she recognized—that was at odds with her wary response to the immense attraction he held for her. He pulled out her chair and touched the small of her back to direct her into the seat. It sent a flurry of chills up her spine that tumbled down the front of her in a hot wave.
For a full five seconds, she couldn’t breathe.
There were no martinis. Nor birthday cake or gin rummy. Instead they shared a bottle of wine with an appetizer platter that was a delicious mélange of carmelized Brussels sprouts topped with shavings of a tangy, salty parmesan cheese. Then it was two dinners of seared halibut, rice pilaf and crunchy steamed vegetables.
They didn’t talk of anything consequential, including themselves. At one point he said he was on the verge of asking her name—but that “Birthday Girl” had kind of grown on him. So she didn’t say a word about it. Instead, they made up stories about their fellow refugees. That man in the opposite corner was an antler chandelier salesman, Jay proposed: he sold them off the rack.
The grandmotherly woman at the bar was a Mafia boss’s wife on the lam for offering counterfeit knitting patterns on the internet. Shay added, she’d bought herself a skein of trouble.
Finally it was getting late and the tables were cleared and those patrons without rooms were collecting blankets and arranging themselves for the night. When someone took the extra chairs at their table in order to create a makeshift bed, Jay cleared his throat. “I guess it’s time to turn in.”
During dinner, he’d told Shay he’d spent the night before in his car. She cleared her throat, too. “You know...”
“I know what?”
Her fingertip made an aimless pattern on the tablecloth. She pretended it fascinated her. “The bed upstairs is king-size.”
Silence welled between them when she didn’t say any more.
Then Jay broke the quiet. “Birthday Girl,” he said, his voice low. “Can you look at me?”
Of course she could. It was easy, because he still really didn’t know her—not even her name. But it took a couple of seconds before she managed to comply. His golden eyes studied her, but she couldn’t read the expression in them.
Her face heated as she forced herself to continue meeting his gaze. “I’m saying we could just share it...you know, sleep,” she clarified. “Nothing more than that.”
He reached over and captured her wandering finger, then took her whole hand in his. His thumb, that work-roughened thumb that had pressed against her mouth the night before, rasped over her knuckles, back and forth, making the journey down the shallow valleys and up the low hills slow and hypnotic.
Shay felt the touch everywhere. Feathering along the groove of her spine, ghosting over her tight, tingling nipples, teasing the tender insides of her thighs. Her body was melting, and if something didn’t happen soon he’d have to scoop her out of the chair with a spoon. “Jay,” she whispered. It almost sounded like a whimper.
“We could try sleeping, I suppose,” he mused. “But we should probably be realistic about our chances of ‘nothing more.’”
Who wanted to be realistic? Who wanted to calculate odds? Not Shay. She only wanted him and this time, this time out of her normal world, her usual ordered, good-girl, scandal-averse existence.
Rising to her feet, she turned her hand to clasp his. To tug him up, too. “Let’s go to my room.”
It was near dark inside the space that seemed dominated by the bed. The only illumination came from the glow of the night-light in the attached bathroom. They halted just inside the entry door and Jay cupped her face in his warm hand before lowering his head.
At the touch of his mouth, she jerked, her body moving into his of its own accord. His other arm curled about her hips, keeping her against him and the hardness that pressed into her belly.
She shivered, and he murmured something soothing as his lips feathered over her cheek, down her neck, before returning to her