“Oh, my God,” she gasped. “Your beautiful car! I’m so sorry!”
“Stop apologizing. You’re not in charge of the wind, you know.”
He sounded cold and rude, he knew. He was too filled with anger, too much negative emotion, for social niceties, that was all. Not too long ago, he’d had a successful career in the Charleston P.D. and he’d been a pretty decent guy. Then one fateful case had blown his life to hell and he’d spiraled into a black hole he was just beginning to dig his way out of. Supposedly, a little R&R was going to help.
“It’s not your fault.” He kept his voice ruthlessly hard as he went on. All he wanted now was to get the hell out of there and back to town. He moved, causing her to drop her hand from his arm, and turned to step off the porch. “I’ll see if I can get my cell phone out of there and—”
“Cells don’t work here. No signal.”
He swore under his breath and wheeled back. She was staring at him, her pretty face and clear eyes looking fresh and innocent, and a little wary. If Haven was one letter short of Heaven, she was an angel.
But she was no angel, no matter how sweet she looked. And Haven was turning into sheer hell and he’d only been in town an hour.
“And my truck’s in the shop,” she reminded him.
“Where’s the closest neighbor?”
“A mile that way.” She nodded in one direction. “A mile and a half the other way.” She indicated the other direction.
Rain poured in sheets. Wind blasted down the damn hollow, rattling leaves and jangling chimes hanging from one end of the porch. The warmer temperatures from earlier in the day were dipping quickly.
“And when it rains like this, the low water bridge flash floods,” she added. “It’s very dangerous, even if you wanted to get yourself soaked hiking off to find someone who would give you a lift. It wouldn’t be smart to try it. The water rises fast, faster than people expect sometimes.”
She looked fragile and worried suddenly. A little bit haunted. Generally, he was good at sizing people up. Decoding body language—every movement, every look and expression—was his business, which was also why he knew that the clues could be unreliable as hell. People smiled for all sorts of reasons and happiness was only one of them, and pathological liars could lie with flawless eye contact. The more information that could be gathered, the more likely the decoding would be accurate.
His instincts had him wondering what had brought that pained expression to Keely Schiffer’s face, but he reminded himself that he didn’t need to know and pushed the question aside.
Looking away from her, he stared out at the wild weather for a heavy beat. He didn’t really give a rat’s ass about the car other than its function as transportation. It used to be important to him, his pet, his baby, and he’d invested a ridiculous amount of his modest income in it. It didn’t seem important now. But he did care about being stuck out here in the middle of nowhere, and for God knew how long. Another one of life’s fun twists….
Jake breathed deeply, summoning the strength and willpower to push back his own pain and control the razor-sharp edge of his temper. She didn’t deserve to bear the brunt of emotions that weren’t her responsibility, though he had to wonder why the hell anyone lived out here in the sticks. He was a city boy, born and bred. This little trek to Haven hadn’t been his idea, but he’d do anything, anything, to get his life back.
He looked back to find her still staring at him.
“If it doesn’t keep up like this too long, the creek’ll go down in a few hours,” she said. “Dickie—he’s the mechanic—will be back with my truck then, or the phones’ll come back on. Or we can find you a ride.”
She was talking as if this was her problem, too. For some reason, that stabbed him with a slice of hot hurt.
Wind blew a piece of her sunshine hair in her face. She brushed it out of the way, tucked it behind her ear. He could almost feel the small, soft curve of the shell of her ear beneath his fingertips…. And those eyes of hers. They were compelling, private yet vulnerable.
He forcibly reminded himself that he wasn’t interested. Period.
But he wasn’t getting away that easily. Not yet.
She waved him into the house. “Come on. Come inside. It’s getting cold out here, and you’re going to get wet. Wetter,” she corrected.
He was already plenty wet, but she was right about one thing. Rain was blowing sideways onto the porch. And was he imagining it or was there something beseeching about her expression? As if she wanted him there. Almost as if she was relieved that he was stuck there for some reason.
She was hard to read, even for him, and that was bugging him.
“I’m a complete stranger. You don’t know me from Adam.” He had the stupid urge to tell her not to trust people. At all. Ever. He could go inside her house, and do anything he wanted to her after that. Not that he would. But a woman like her, alone out in this godforsaken countryside, shouldn’t be asking strange men into her home. She seemed…nice. Genuinely nice, even if slightly annoying and nosy.
He felt an unexpected and uncomfortable sense of protectiveness toward her that he fought to shake off. It wasn’t his concern if she was hopelessly naive about human nature.
“You don’t look like a serial killer,” she said flippantly, even as her sweet chocolate eyes studied him. “You’re not in the big city now. You’re in Haven. We’re friendly here.” She shrugged. “The people at the store sent you over here. You’re not going to hurt me unless you’re stupid. You’re not stupid, are you? Anything happens to me today, my friends’ll be looking for you, not to mention my family. Especially with your car sitting right out front.”
His car that wasn’t going anywhere. She had a point, but it was unrelated to why he really didn’t want to go inside her house.
“I’ll fix you something to drink,” she said cheerily. “I owe you anyway for all the trouble of driving out here to get the keys, and if you hadn’t had to do that, you wouldn’t be stuck out here now with a tree trunk on top of your car.”
She was already walking into the house, leaving the screen door to bang behind her and the front door open. Her slim, sexy figure disappeared through the shadowed parlor even as she kept talking, seeming to simply expect him to follow. He opened the screen door and stepped inside in spite of himself.
“You want water or tea?” she called back to him. “Or I’ve got some Coke.”
He walked through the front room, a parlor with a slanted, scuffed hardwood floor. Rows of antique-looking photographs filled the room, solemn-faced eyes following him from the walls. The house smelled good, like cinnamon and sugar. Homey. Not that it was anything like the home he’d grown up in on the seedier streets of Charleston. Homey like…you saw on The Andy Griffith Show. He half expected to find Aunt Bea in the kitchen, pulling fresh-baked coffee cake out of the oven.
He arrived in the open doorframe between the kitchen and the parlor. She’d gotten down an amber-colored glass from a cabinet and was pulling every beverage known to man out of the fridge. Coke, iced tea, lemonade, milk…She’d probably offer him a cookie next.
And she was still talking.
“I’ve got sweet tea made, but if you don’t like sweet, I can make some unsweetened. I don’t mind.”
“I’ll just take some water.” He didn’t really care, truth be told. The whole scene suddenly felt terribly domestic. When was the last time he’d been in a kitchen with an attractive woman?
He didn’t want to remember, but of course he could. Sheila had lived with him for two years in their nice, newly-constructed, cookie-cutter condo in South Charleston. She’d wanted to get married. He’d been in no hurry. Maybe he’d known all along it wasn’t