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“Jess, are you still there?” Doris asked.
She was staring at Rob. Jess knew she was staring, and she forced herself to pull her eyes away. “Doris, I’ve got to go,” she said into the telephone.
“Just remember what I said, hon.”
“Goodbye,” Jess returned firmly and punched the off button on the phone. She turned back to Rob. “Sorry about that.”
“It’s okay,” he said in his quiet, accentless voice.
“You’re hardly making any noise at all,” she told him. “I heard you pull into the driveway while I was on the phone and I meant to come out and ask if you needed any help. Can I give you a hand with the rest of your things?”
“No, that’s all right.” Rob looked over the railing at his car in the driveway below. “I don’t have that much stuff, and I’m almost done. There’re just another couple of boxes.”
“I can help you with them.”
Rob shook his head. “No, really. They’re both too heavy. They’re my free weights. I didn’t pack ’em real well—I just threw all the plates into a couple of crates.”
Free weights. Rob lifted weights. Funny, she would have never known. If he had a weight lifter’s physique, it was hidden underneath his loose-fitting shirt. At first glance he looked so much like a computer nerd, barely capable of lifting a too heavy briefcase, yet here he was, bringing weight-lifting equipment into her apartment.
Her apartment? His apartment now. He’d signed a six-month lease just this afternoon. For the next six months, Rob Carpenter was going to be her closest neighbor.
As she gazed up into his eyes, Jess felt again that spark of awareness, that whisper of heat.
But he turned away. “Well…I’ll, um, get the rest of my, uh…”
“I’ll get some iced tea,” Jess offered, heading for the door to her kitchen. “You look like you could use something cool to drink.”
“That would be nice,” Rob said, stopping at the top of the stairs and looking back at her, smiling very slightly. “Thanks.”
He moved silently down the stairs as Jess pulled open her screen door.
Doris was right about at least one thing. Rob did make Jess’s heart beat harder. Just one little smile, and her pulse was pounding.
She got another glass from the cabinet and pulled the ice cube tray from the freezer. She added several fresh cubes to her own glass, still sitting out on the counter, as Rob moved quietly past the door, carrying a large, heavy-looking box filled with free weights. The box looked awkward and unwieldy, yet he carried it easily, as if it weighed almost nothing.
He moved silently past the door again, heading back toward the stairs as Jess took the iced tea pitcher from the refrigerator and filled both glasses.
What did she know about this man?
Jess knew that Rob worked as a software consultant for some local computer company—she couldn’t remember the name—and that he traveled rather extensively throughout Florida and the southeast, sometimes taking as many as eight or nine business trips in a single month.
She knew that he had moved to Sarasota from up north—which city or state, Jess couldn’t say. She didn’t think he’d ever mentioned it.
She knew he had nice eyes, that he was polite and quiet, maybe even shy.
And that he drove a staid, dark gray Taurus sedan.
He liked to listen to folk music, and he’d attended nearly all of her gigs. He’d come when she played her guitar and sang at local clubs, often bringing along one of the guys from his office—a friendly man named Frank—but never showing up with a date.
She knew Rob liked the food at the China Boat, the small restaurant three blocks south. She’d seen him carrying bags of takeout as she’d driven past, after picking up her daughter from Doris’s after school day care. Of course, that didn’t necessarily mean he liked the China Boat’s food. Maybe it simply meant that he didn’t like to cook.
They’d really only spoken a few times. Unlike his friend Frank who was very chatty, Rob never stuck around her gigs long enough to talk, as if he were somehow afraid to impose.
That wasn’t a lot to go on, but it didn’t take much imagination to picture Rob Carpenter fitting easily into Jess’s life. Her life and Kelsey’s. Her six-year-old daughter actually knew Rob better than Jess did. Kelsey’s best friend lived next door to the house Rob had been renting. Kelsey had told Jess that Rob had often come into her friend’s yard to play baseball with the two children and her friend’s dad. Rob apparently had a natural way with kids. Kelsey—who was usually so reserved around men, thanks to Ian—adored Rob. He’d given both children nick-names—her friend was Beetle and Kelsey was Bug.
Sure, Doris was right. Jess didn’t know much about Rob’s past. But Kelsey liked him, and that was worth quite a bit in Jess’s book.
As Jess put the iced tea pitcher back in the refrigerator, Rob moved past the door again, carrying his last box. Moments later, he tapped softly at the screen.
“Come on in,” she said.
He opened the screen door quickly and came into the kitchen without bringing in any of the bugs that were circling the light—not an easy feat. He carried in her evening newspaper. With a quick smile, he handed it to her.
“I was wondering which side of the driveway you wanted me to leave my car on,” he said. “Or if you’d prefer that I parked on the street.”
“The driveway’s fine,” Jess said, putting the paper down on the kitchen counter and handing him one of the glasses of iced tea. “Just don’t block the garage in case I have to get out before you leave in the morning. And if you ever have anyone stay overnight, any…” She was about to say girlfriends, but she paused, suddenly uncertain. What if he was gay? He couldn’t be, could he? No, from the way he always looked at her, she had to believe that he wasn’t. Still… “Any friends,” she continued, “Just have…them…park on the street.”
Rob noticed her carefully genderless sentence, and he fought hard to keep his reaction from showing. Jess actually thought that he might be gay. He wasn’t sure whether to laugh or feel insulted. Or feel relieved.
Because here he was, standing in Jess Baxter’s kitchen. She was not more than six feet away from him, dressed in a short-cropped T-shirt that didn’t quite meet the waistband of her cutoff jeans. Although she wasn’t very tall, her legs were long and slender, and standing there like that in her bare feet, with a narrow strip of smooth, tanned stomach showing between her shorts and her shirt, she looked like something out of a beach boy’s fantasy.
Her short dark hair curled softly around her heart-shaped face, and her eyes had to be the darkest shade of brown he’d ever seen in his entire life.
The first time Rob had seen her, when he’d first moved to Sarasota, to this neighborhood, he’d known that she was someone he should stay far, far away from. When he’d first spotted her with Kelsey, he’d fervently hoped that she was happily married. He prayed that she had someone that she loved, someone who adored her, someone who would protect her.
Naturally, she was divorced, a single mom. She wasn’t seeing anyone, wasn’t even dating. His bad luck just never seemed to quit.
Still, he’d kept his distance. But he couldn’t keep from watching her. He noticed her when she played in her yard with Kelsey. He watched her when she worked in her garden. He spied her when she grocery shopped, early every Thursday morning, like clockwork. He’d even watched her cooking dinner through her uncurtained kitchen window. He also went to her shows, and listened to her play her guitar and sing.
She had a smile as sweet and welcoming as a warm spring morning, and eyes as mysterious as the darkest night sky. Her voice, with its gentle southern accent was velvet—husky and soft and unbearably, achingly, painfully sensual.
When the Hendersons had written him of their impending return, he should have moved clear across to the other side of town. This woman didn’t need the kind of trouble he brought with him. But she had seemed as desperate to find a tenant as he’d been to find a place to live.
“You want sugar in that?” Jess asked him, gesturing toward the tall glass of iced tea she’d handed him as she crossed to the cabinet and took down a sugar bowl. Her jeans shorts fit her perfect derriere snugly and she swayed slightly, naturally, as she walked. Sweet God, if she only knew what he was thinking, she’d be convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt of his heterosexuality. “Or would you like some lemon?” she added.
“Sugar,” Rob heard himself say. “Thanks.”
He should be getting out of there. He should go into his new apartment and organize his things, set up his weight-lifting gear, watch some mindless television sitcom. He should be leaving Jess Baxter alone, not standing in her kitchen, looking at her legs, thinking dangerous thoughts. Instead, he sat down across from her at her kitchen table.
“You know, I realized I don’t know that much about you,” Jess said, taking a sip of her iced tea and gazing at him with her bottomless dark eyes. She pushed the bowl of sugar and a spoon in his direction.
She was going to ask him some questions. Some personal questions. Rob stirred sugar into his glass, carefully keeping his face passive, fighting the hot surge of anger that pulsed through him. God, he hated questions. He hated lying, he hated all of it. He hated his entire life, loathed what he’d become. Boring, he reminded himself. Make yourself sound unbearably boring. She’ll change the subject soon enough. “There’s not that much to know,” he said blandly. “I work for Epco, Inc., downtown. I work with computers, you know, software consulting. It’s pretty mundane.”
God, he hated small talk. But that’s all he ever did—all he ever could do. It was too risky to have any kind of real conversation, too nerve-racking to say anything that would make someone take a closer look at him. So he always stuck to small talk. Always. For the past eight years, he’d had his real conversations in his head, with himself. Sometimes he felt well on his way to being certifiably nuts. But he had to keep his interactions with other people to a minimum. He had to be boring. He had to remain invisible.
“I travel a lot,” he added, “but I only see the insides of office buildings.”
Jess nodded, still watching him. “That’s too bad.” Her eyelashes were amazingly dark and incredibly long. And she didn’t look the slightest bit bored. In fact, she looked interested. More than interested. Attracted. Beautiful, vibrant, sexy Jess Baxter was actually attracted to dull, mild-mannered, boring Rob Carpenter.
Her cheeks flushed very slightly as Rob met her eyes and held her gaze, wondering if she could see past his disguise, wondering if somehow he’d slipped and given himself away. She looked away, embarrassed or nervous. Damn straight she should be nervous around him.
“With my schedule, I don’t have time for anything besides work,” he added, hoping she’d pick up his double meaning. He didn’t have time for anything else, especially romance. He couldn’t risk the sweet intimacy of a lover’s quiet questions or the expectations of shared secrets and whispered confessions.
Jess took another sip of her drink, removing a stray drop of tea from her lips with the tip of her tongue. It was sweetly, unconsciously sexy on her part, and Rob felt his body respond. Man, it had been too long…
“No hobbies?” she asked, one elegant eyebrow arching upward. “No clog dancing classes?”
Rob had to laugh at that. “No,” he said. “Sad to say, I had to give it up.”
“Music, then,” Jess prompted. “You must have an interest in music—I’ve seen you at some of the folk festivals, and at some of my gigs. You even brought along that friend of yours—Frank. I appreciated your helping pad the audience.”
Rob nodded. “I like music,” he said. That was true, but he’d really gone to those festivals and concerts expressly to see Jess sing. “But I never brought Frank. We’re not friends—more like acquaintances. We both happened to show up at one of the folk festivals and we got to talking—we both work at Epco.”
Jess nodded, taking a sip of her iced tea. “How about movies?” she asked. “Kelsey and I saw you a couple of times at the Gulf Gate Mall theater.”
Now this was something he could talk about. Rob smiled and let himself relax a little. But only slightly.
“We love going to movies,” she continued, pushing a stray curl back behind one ear. “We go to everything a six-year-old can see, that is. I’ve become a Disney expert.”
“I’m more into Pulp Fiction than Pocahontas myself,” Rob admitted. “I’m a Spielberg fan. And I like James Cameron, too. He did the Terminator movies, remember those?”
“Aha.” Jess smiled at him as she took another sip of her iced tea. “You do have a hobby, if you watch movies enough to be a fan of a specific director.”
“I don’t know, it’s slightly more passive than clog dancing,” Rob said, smiling back into her warm brown eyes. God, she was pretty.
“So is stamp collecting.”
“You win,” he conceded. “I guess I have a hobby.”
“We also saw you in Books-A-Million,” she said. “Buying a stack of books about two feet high.”
“I also like to read. Fiction, mostly.”
“But I didn’t see you move in boxes and boxes of books,” Jess said, resting her chin on the upturned palm of her hand as she continued to gaze across the table at him.
Rob shrugged. “I don’t usually live in a place big enough to keep bookshelves. I read ’em, then donate ’em to a local nursing home.”
Her big dark eyes softened. “That’s sweet.”
God, he could lose himself in those eyes. He could just fall in and disappear forever, drowning, suffocating, pulling her down with him. They’d both simply vanish, never to resurface.
“You moved down here from up north,” Jess said, wondering if he could hear the breathlessness of her voice, wondering if he knew it was caused by the way he was looking at her. “Didn’t you?”
Across the table, Rob nodded, pulling his gaze away from her and giving his iced tea another spoonful of sugar and another stir. She’d been wrong about him, Jess realized. She’d thought he was shy, but there was nothing in those brown eyes that suggested shyness. In fact, his gaze was confident and steady. Rob Carpenter wasn’t shy at all. Just…polite. Reserved. Quiet. And as attracted to her as she was to him.
“Where are you from?” she asked.
“All over the place,” he answered, glancing up at her and giving her a ghost of his earlier smile.
Could he be any more vague? Jess took another sip of her tea. “I grew up here in Florida,” she said. “Out on Siesta Key. My parents still have a beach house there. I use it sometimes when I’ve got a gig at the Pelican Club.”
He didn’t comment or offer any information on the location of his own childhood. He just watched her.
“My folks are up in Montana right now,” Jess continued, more to fill the silence than because she thought he’d be interested in the whereabouts of her parents. “They’re retired and doing the RV thing. You know, the enormous silver cylinder on wheels? Camping without the nasty outdoors part?”
That got another genuine smile out of him. And a response. “They’re in Montana, huh? It’s pretty out there—different from Florida.”
“I’ve never been to Montana,” she admitted. “Have you?”
He nodded, yes, but didn’t elaborate. She’d asked another faintly personal question that he wasn’t going to answer at any length. Apparently, he was willing to converse about superficial things but he didn’t like to talk about himself. But then, to her surprise, he actually volunteered some personal information. “I lived out west for about a year and a half.”
“So you really are from all over the place,” Jess said. “Where did you grow up?”
His smile faded quickly, but he still gazed at her. There was something else in his eyes now. It wasn’t amusement. It had a harder edge. Maybe it was alertness. Or was it wariness? Why should a question about his childhood make him wary?
“Jersey,” he finally replied. And as if he somehow knew that he was being too vague again, he added, “Near New York City.”
“Really?” she said. “Where exactly?”
“Just across the Hudson River.”
So much for “exactly.” “Does your family still live up there?”
“I don’t have a family.” He was still watching her.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured, instantly backing down.
“I’m not.” He said it so matter-of-factly, it took her a moment for his words to make sense. How could he not be sorry that he didn’t have a family?
The first thought that occurred to Jess was that Rob Carpenter didn’t want her to know the name of the town he’d grown up in because he’d done in his entire family and was now living under an alias, on the lam. It was a thought that would have made Doris proud. It was also ridiculous. Wasn’t it…?
The man was clearly hiding something. Wasn’t he? Or was he simply a private person, unwilling to talk about personal things to a near stranger?
Rob gazed across the table at Jess. She was watching him steadily, warily. He knew he made her nervous, he could see it in her eyes. But he could also see her attraction to him, too. It simmered between them like something living, ready to devour them both.
He knew without a doubt that if he reached across the table and put his hand over hers, she wouldn’t pull her own hand away. And he could only imagine where that one touch would lead. But that was part of the problem. He could imagine. He could see it quite clearly.
Rob pushed his chair back from the table and stood up. “I should get going. Thanks for the drink.”
Jess stood up, too. “Feel free to drop by anytime,” she said. “Kelsey and I are home most evenings.” She shoved her hands into the front pockets of her jeans shorts, a sweetly nervous gesture that exposed another half inch of her flat, tanned stomach. “We’re neighbors now. I hope we’re going to be friends.”
Friends. Rob put his hand on the screen door’s handle. He and beautiful Jess Baxter were going to be friends. He couldn’t help but wonder just how friendly she intended to be.
Damn, he shouldn’t have moved in here like this. For Jess’s sake, he should have gone far, far away. Because he knew damn well he wasn’t going to be able to resist her. If he was reading her right, and she was attracted to him, he didn’t stand a chance at keeping his distance. If she made even the smallest attempt to seduce him, he’d surrender. He was strong, but he wasn’t that strong. And where would that leave him? Where would it leave Jess?
Rob stepped out onto the porch, shutting the door behind him. “Thanks again.”
He didn’t wait for her to respond. He turned and headed for his apartment door, down at the other end of the deck.
