pothole, and Annalise was jerked back to the present, clutching the steering wheel as she slowed to a crawl. Please, God, let Sam Ely’s visit be short. She would listen politely, take notes and bid him a civil goodbye. Then she could get to work.
If she ignored the debacle from the past, surely he would have the decency to do so as well.
As she rounded one last bend in the road and came in sight of the cluster of buildings that comprised Sycamore Farm, she saw a lone, immediately recognizable figure standing on the front porch despite the frigid temperatures. Her heart beat a sluggish rhythm as she put the car in Park and got out.
She was a grown woman, well-traveled. Sophisticated. Sexually experienced to some degree. She had done everything in her power to forget her first love, to deny how much Sam’s rejection had wounded her tender heart. Sam Ely was just a man like any other. For thirty-six hours, forty-eight at the most, she would impress him with her calm competence and her utter lack of interest in his sexy smile and masculine charms. By the time he left, all he would remember about Annalise Wolff was that she was damned good at her job.
He lifted a hand in greeting, the habitual smile nowhere in evidence.
Annalise opened her mouth to say hello. But in an instant that felt like the most dreadful slow-motion replay, disaster struck. Her heel hit a patch of ice in the driveway, her feet flew out from under her and she fell flat on her back. Hard.
When she opened her eyes with a groan, Sam Ely’s big body crouched over hers as his hands ran lightly over her limbs checking for damage. Gently he lifted her head and felt for a knot.
Annalise shivered inside her warm down coat, but it had nothing to do with the snow flurries swirling around them. All he had to do was touch her and she was that young, desperate woman again.
He brushed her cheek with the back of his hand. “Are you hurt?”
Sam winnowed his fingers through silky black hair that clung to his fingers with static from the cold air. “Say something, damn it. Are you okay?”
Annalise’s glare could have melted a snowman at ten paces. She struggled to sit up. “I’m fine,” she said shortly. “Quit pawing me.”
Though her words were clipped and showed her annoyance, beneath his touch she was warm and soft and womanly. Resisting the urge to touch the curve of her breast, Sam scooped her into his arms and stood, mentally counting to ten. He’d promised himself he wouldn’t let her push his buttons. But she was so aggravating, his blood pressure went up immediately whenever they got within sight of each other. Not that such a reaction was anything new. As a friend of the Wolff family, he inevitably ran into her from time to time. Neither of them ever managed more than bare civility.
The animosity was his fault, no doubt. But it wouldn’t hurt her to let go of something that happened over half a dozen years ago. Thankfully, she didn’t squirm too much. She was a tall woman, and if he slipped on the ice, they’d both go down.
On the porch, he reached with one hand to open the door and stepped inside, ruefully aware that the house held a distinct chill. He sighed. “The heat and air guys will be here in a couple of days to overhaul the vents and put in new units. In the meantime, I hope you’ve got plenty of warm clothes. The old system is cantankerous.”
“Probably learned it from you,” Annalise muttered beneath her breath.
He knew she meant for him to hear.
In the kitchen, he lowered her into a chair. A cheery fire crackled in the fireplace, and his grandmother’s collection of Fiestaware in the china cabinet brightened the room.
He knelt in front of her. “Tell me the truth. Are you hurt?”
Big eyes stared back at him. And for an instant, he thought her bottom lip might have quivered. But if there had been even a moment of vulnerability, it was gone.
“No,” she said bluntly. “I’m fine.” She stripped out of her coat, revealing a thin silky blouse in a shade of blue that matched her eyes, and black linen trousers with a knife pleat. “But I’d kill for a cup of coffee.”
For a long second, Sam stayed at her feet. She could have stepped off the runway and come straight to him. Vincent Wolff had kept his baby girl locked up like a nun for much of her life, but probably out of guilt, he had indulged her passion for pretty clothes.
Sam sighed. “Don’t try to stand up yet. I’ll brew a pot.” In moments, the aroma of coffee permeated the air. Annalise hadn’t moved from the chair where he put her. But she was pointedly ignoring him, smart phone in hand as she scrolled through messages.
He found a china cup, filled it with hot, fragrant liquid and set it on a saucer at her elbow, along with a tiny pitcher of cream and the sugar bowl. He smothered a grin as she frowned at the add-ons and instead put the cup to her berry-colored lips and drained half of it, black and straight, the same way Sam liked it.
He turned a chair around and straddled it, facing her across the table. “How’s your dad?”
She paused, the cup halfway to her mouth. “Fine.” Her suspicious gaze scanned his face as if searching for a secret agenda.
“And your uncle Vic?”
Annalise set down the cup. “Also fine.”
“Lots of weddings in your family in the last year.”
Her face softened. “Yes. It’s been wonderful. Gracie, Olivia, Ariel, Gillian…I finally have sisters.”
“Your family deserves happiness more than any set of people I know. I’m glad the past is behind you.” When Annalise was a toddler, her mother and aunt had been kidnapped and murdered. It was a blow that had marked them all, and it had taken years for them to truly recover.
Annalise’s eyebrows lifted, a glint of defiance in her expression. “Thank God for that.” She laughed, but there was little humor in the sound. And the sideways glance she shot him said louder than any words that a certain moment in their past was definitely not forgotten.
He reached across the table and took her hand in his, stroking the back of it, feeling the smooth skin, the delicate bones. “Give me a break, Annalise. We can’t work together if we don’t hash this out. I’ll admit I could have handled things better back then. But I’d known you since you were in kindergarten. And you were still a kid as far as I was concerned.”
She jerked her hand away. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Her scowl would have deterred most men. But Sam was tired of being treated like the Ebenezer Scrooge of the romance world. “Your father would have neutered me.”
“You said I was like a sister to you.”
“Damn it.” His clumsy lie was going to haunt him. “Clearly, I didn’t mean that. I was trying to escape with some grace.”
“So you were a lily-livered coward. Is that what you’re telling me?”
This time he had to count to fifty. Standing abruptly, he tried not to notice the plump curve of her bottom lip or the way dark lashes made feathered crescents on her cheeks when she looked down at her cup.
“Yes,” he said, conceding defeat. If she wanted to hold a grudge, there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it. “I was a coward.”
His admission seemed to take the wind out of her sails. “Whatever.” She sniffed and crossed her legs, picking at a spot of lint on the cuff of one pant leg.
As a comeback, it lacked a certain vocabularic grace, but he was willing to let it slide. “Why don’t I show you your room?” he said, trying to live up to Gram’s notion of hospitality. “I’ll get your bags. Relax and make sure you didn’t do any permanent damage.”
Her small, wry grin disarmed him. “My butt bone is probably bruised, but I’ll live.”
Seeing her smile in his presence was such a novelty,