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“IF I HAD a room like this? That is what I would want to fill it with,” the woman said. “The important things. The things that really last. The things that are real. Love. Family.”
Real. Kiernan could tell her a thing or two about the reality of love and family that would wipe that dreamy look off her face. But why? Let her have her illusions.
They were no threat to him.
Or maybe they were, because just for a flicker of a moment he felt a whisper of longing sneak along his spine.
He shook it off. He just wanted to have a look at the bump on her head and send her on her way. He did not want to hear about her sugarplum visions of a wonderful world!
“Nothing lasts,” he told her, his voice a growl.
Stacy went very still. For a moment she looked as if she might argue, but then his words seemed to hit her, like arrows let loose that had found her heart.
To his dismay, for a moment he glimpsed in her face a sorrow he thought matched his own. He was intrigued but had enough good sense not to follow up! Not to encourage her in any way to share her vision with him.
“Follow me,” he said. “I think I’ve got a first-aid kit in my bathroom.”
His bathroom? Didn’t he have a first-aid kit somewhere else? He did, but it was outside and around the back of the house, where the staging area for outdoor excursions was, where he stored the outdoor equipment.
No, it was sensible to take her to the closest first-aid kit, to keep her out of the cold, to not take her through more snow in those ridiculous shoes.
But through his bedroom? Into his bathroom? It occurred to him that he should have sat her down in the kitchen and brought the first-aid kit to her.
He was not thinking with his normal razor-sharp processes, which was understandable. He told himself it had nothing to do with the unexpected arrival of a beautiful woman in his fountain and everything to do with Ivan.
He hesitated at the double doors to his master suite and then flung them open and watched her closely as she preceded him. He saw the room through her eyes, which were wide and awed.
The ceiling soared upward, magnificent and timber framed. But here the floors, instead of being hardwood, were carpeted with a thick, plush pile that their feet sank into. There was a huge bed, the bedding and the abundance of pillows in a dozen shades of gray.
She was blushing as she looked at the bed, which he should have found amusing as all get-out. Instead, he found it reluctantly endearing.
Who blushed anymore?
Something that heightened color in her cheeks, the way she caught her plump lower lip between her teeth, made Kiernan’s mouth go dry, and so he led her hastily through to the bathroom. Again, he saw it through her eyes. A wall of windows opened to the deck and hot tub area.
There was a shower a dozen people could have gotten into, and her blush deepened when she looked at that.
He’d never shared this room with anyone, but let her think what she wanted. It might keep him safe from this niggling awareness of her that was bugging him the way a single gnat could spoil a perfect summer day on the hammock with a book.
She stared at the deep, stand-alone tub and swallowed hard. While the shower might hold dozens, it was more than evident the tub could only comfortably fit two! Her eyes flitted wildly around the room and then stopped and widened.
Her eyes, he noticed, annoyed with himself, were green as the moss that clung to the stones of the hot spring deep in the mountains behind this cottage.
“That is not a fireplace,” she whispered. “In your bathroom?”
“You want it on?” he asked innocently. “Are you cold?”
He was fairly sure it was evident to even her, with her aura of innocence, that a fireplace like that was not about cold but about romance.
And yet he did not like thinking about her in that light. It was evident to him, on a very brief acquaintance, she was not the type of woman who would share his vision of romance.
For him, it was a means to an end, the age-old game of seduction.
The remarks about his floors and the suitability of his room for a Christmas tree were little hints she was not his type. By her own admission, she was the kind of girl who believed in love and things lasting.
Romancing a girl like her would be hard work! He was willing to bet, despite her awe of the room, it would require something a little less superficial than a bathtub and a fireplace. Romancing a girl like her would require time and patience and a willingness to be a better person.
No, he would stick with his type. Because his type required nothing of him but a few baubles and some good times, no real emotional engagement.
He had always been like that, avoiding emotional attachment. He had been like that before his friend Danner had died. Kiernan had a sudden unwelcome memory of Christmas ornaments being smashed. He suspected the memory had erupted out of nowhere because Murphy here had seen Christmas in a room where it had never been. Kiernan’s early life had always been threaded through with the tension of unpredictability, Christmas worse than most times of year.
For a while, having survived the minefield of his childhood, Kiernan had enjoyed the illusion of complete control. He had a sense of making not just his world safe and predictable, but that of his sister, Adele, too.
Yup, he had felt like quite the hero. And then Danner had died. Plunging him into a dark place where his real power in the world seemed horribly limited, where hope and dreams seemed like the most dangerous of things.
And none of that fit with a girl like this, who, whether she knew it or not, wore dreams on her sleeves. Who, despite—if her eyes were any indicator—having gone a round or two with life, seemed to still have that inexplicable ability to believe...
“Sure,” she said after a moment, startling him out of his thoughts. “Put it on. The fireplace.” She giggled. “I may never pass this way again.”
“We can only hope,” he muttered, and saw her flinch, the smile die, the words striking her like arrows again.
Just a reminder of how she was soft and he was hard, a reason this was never going anywhere, except him standing on the stairs seeing her off as she drove away.
“Nothing personal,” he said. “It just wasn’t my idea for you to come. I don’t need you.”
Having done quite enough damage—he really should not be allowed around these sensitive types—Kiernan turned from her and flicked a switch so that the flames within the fireplace licked to life.
“I’ve changed my mind,” she said proudly. “I don’t care to have it on.”
See? In very short time his abrasive self was managing to hurt her. Not making any effort to hide his impatience, Kiernan flicked the fire back off and gestured at an upholstered chaise.
Once she was settled, he came back, towered over her and studied the top of her head. “I’m just going to clean it first. We’ll see what we’ve got. Ironic, isn’t it, that I’m rescuing you?”
“In what way?” she stammered.
“You’re supposed to be rescuing me.”
* * *
Stacy studied Kiernan and realized his tone was deeply sardonic. Despite the glimpses of shadows she had detected in his eyes, she was not sure she had ever seen a man who looked less like he would appreciate rescuing than Kiernan McAllister!
He was bigger in real life than photos had prepared her for, the breadth of his shoulders blocking out the view of the fireplace!
The bathroom was huge, but with him leaning over her, his real-life stature left her feeling shocked. Even though Kiernan McAllister had graced the covers of zillions of magazines, including, eight times, the one she no longer worked for, nothing could have prepared her for him in this kind of proximity.
Pictures, of course, did not have a scent clinging to them. His filled her nostrils: it was as if he had come, not from a hot tub, but from the forest around this amazing house. McAllister smelled richly of pine, as if he had absorbed the essence of the snow-laden trees through his pores!
He was considered not only Vancouver’s most successful businessman, but also its most eligible bachelor, and here in the bathroom with him, his scent filling her senses, his hands gentle on her injured head, it was easy to see why!
In each of those photos that Stacy had seen of him, McAllister was breathtakingly handsome and sure of himself. Behind that engaging smile, he had oozed the confidence and self-assurance of the very successful and very wealthy. His grooming had always been perfect: smooth shaven, every dark hair in place, his custom-made clothing hinting at but not showing a perfect male body.
In those pictures, he looked like a man who could handle anything the world tossed at him, smile and toss it right back.
And that’s what he had a track record for doing. From daring real estate deals to providing start-up funds for fledgling companies that no one else would take a risk on, McAllister had developed a reputation as being tough, fair and savvy. In the business world, his instincts were considered brilliant.
Not to mention that, with his amazing looks, McAllister was that most eligible bachelor that every unmarried woman dreamed—secretly or openly—of landing.
And McAllister had availed himself to every perk his considerable fortune allowed him. He had squired some of the most beautiful and famous women in the world on that arm that Stacy had just touched.
But, despite having it all, he seemed driven to more, and he had as casually sought danger as some men would sample a fine wine.
And it was that penchant for the adrenaline rush that had led from that McAllister to this one.
Being able to watch him while he tended her head, she could see his silver-gray eyes were mesmerizing and yet different in some fundamental way from how he appeared in pictures.
Her mind grappled to figure out what that difference was, but the distraction of his near nakedness, the luxury of the bathroom and his hands on her head were proving formidable.
“Ouch.”
“Sorry.”
She deliberately looked at the floor instead of up into his face to break the trance she was in. Instead, it felt oddly intimate and totally inappropriate that Stacy could see the naked length of his lower legs. His feet were totally bare.
And, she thought, entirely sexy.
But she didn’t find feet sexy. Did she?
Since his feet provided no more reprieve from the terrible war of sensation going on within her, Stacy dragged her gaze away from his toes and back up the length of him. Despite his disheveled appearance—his hair, always perfectly groomed for magazine shoots, was sticking up in a cowlick at the back of his head, and his cheeks and the jut of that formidable chin were shadowed in dark whiskers—when Stacy looked into his face, she had to swallow a gulp of pure intimidation.
Kiernan McAllister radiated a kind of power that could not be tarnished by arriving at the scene of an accident, dripping wet and with a towel around his waist. Even though her job at Icons of Business had entailed interviewing dozens of very successful businesspeople, Stacy was not sure she had ever encountered such a prime example of pure of presence before.
McAllister’s wet hair, the color of just-brewed coffee, was curling at the tips. The stubble on his face accentuated the hard, masculine lines of his features.
The out-of-the-storm look of his hair and being unshaven gave him a distinctly roguish look, and despite his state of undress, he could have been a pirate relishing his next conquest, like a highwayman about to draw his sword.
His eyes were a shade of silver that added to her sense that he could be dangerous in the most tantalizing of ways.
In the pictures she had seen of him, his eyes had intrigued, a faint light at the back of them that she had interpreted as mischievous, as if all his incredible successes in the business world were nothing more than a big game and it was a game that he was winning.
But, of course, that was before the accident where his brother-in-law had been killed.
There was the difference. Now McAllister’s eyes had something in them as shattered as glass, cool, a barrier that he did not want penetrated.
By someone looking for a story. In that moment, Stacy knew Caroline had not set up anything for her. And she also knew, without asking, he would turn her down flat if she requested an interview.
He stepped back from her, regarded his handiwork on her head. “I think we’re done here,” he said, evidently pleased with his first-aid skills.
He once again offered his hand. She took it and he pulled her from the chair. She relished the feeling of his hand, but he let her go as soon as she was standing. She faced herself in the mirror. It was much worse than she thought.
The top of her hair was almost completely covered with a tightly taped down piece of gauze.
Now she really did look and feel like the poster child for Murphy’s Law. Everything that could go wrong, had. Who wanted to look like this in the presence of such a devastatingly attractive man?
Even if he was sardonic. And didn’t believe in Christmas. Or love.
“That’s going to be murder to get off,” she said, when she saw he had caught her dismayed expression.
“Isn’t it?” he said, apparently pleased that his handiwork was going to be so hard to remove.
She sighed. It was definitely time to set him straight about who she really was and what she wanted. She took a deep breath.
The phone that he had set on the counter began to ring.
Only it was the oddest ring she had ever heard. It sounded exactly like a baby squawking! There was no way a man like McAllister picked a ringtone like that!
In a split second, Kiernan McAllister went from looking relaxed and at ease with himself to a warrior ready to do battle! Stacy watched his face grow cold, remote, underscoring that sense of a solider being ready for whatever came next.
“What on earth?” she whispered, taking in his stance and his hardened facial features. “What’s the matter?”
“It’s time,” he said, his tone terse. “He’s awake.”
“Who’s awake?”
McAllister said nothing, his gaze on the phone, his brow furrowed in consternation. If he were a general, she had the feeling he would be checking his weapons, strapping on his armor, calling out his instructions to his soldiers.
“That isn’t a cell phone, is it?” Stacy asked slowly. McAllister was staring at it as if he was a tourist in some exotic place who had discovered a snake under his bed.
The squawking sound escalated, and McAllister took a deep breath, squared his shoulders.
“A phone?” he asked, his voice impatient. “What kind of person has a phone in the hot tub?”
In her career she had met dozens of men who she did not doubt took their phones everywhere with them, including into their hot tubs! Now, she could see clearly he would not be one of them.
“Cell phones don’t work up here. The mountains block the signal. I think it’s part of what I like about the place.” He frowned as if realizing he had told her something about himself he didn’t want to.
That he needed a break from the demands of his business. He was no doubt the kind of driven individual who would see some kind of failure in that.
But before she could contemplate that too long, the phone made that squawking sound again, louder.
“What is it then, if it’s not your phone?”
“It’s the monitor,” he said.
“The monitor,” she repeated.
“The baby monitor,” he said, as if she had not already guessed it.
She stared at it with him, listened to the squawking noises emitting from it. The monitor was small and state-of-the-art, it looked almost exactly like a cell phone.
