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So that left you, he thought, forcing his attention from the faintly exasperated look she gave him. Standing there in her little tank top and shorts, the long lines of her body firm and lithe, her feet bare, she didn’t look much older than the seventeen she’d been when he’d last seen her. Only, when he’d met her when she was seventeen, her hair had been long and streaked from the sun, her skin had looked like golden satin—and it had felt as soft as silk.
He’d known how soft her skin was even before he’d felt it under his hand in the nursing-home parking lot.
The memories drew a scowl. They were unwanted. Pointless. Dangerous.
Ruthlessly shoving them aside, he crouched down, knees cracking, to inspect a lower cabinet. “This would have been easier if it hadn’t been left to dry,” he muttered, pushing his thumbnail into the plate-sized blotch. “To do these right, the doors need to be taken off, stripped and sanded.”
Looking straight ahead, all he could see was the long length of her shapely legs. Feeling his gut tighten, he jerked his glance upward.
He fully expected to see dismay or displeasure. What he saw in the delicate contours of her face was contemplation.
“Should I strip them all? Even the ones that aren’t messed up?”
“If you want them to match, yeah. You should.”
“Okay,” she said.
Just like that. No questions. No hesitation. Just “Okay.”
Amazing, he thought, rising.
“You can use the same stuff I gave you for the floor. But take the doors into the sunroom or outside. The ventilation is better. Are there any sawhorses around here?”
“I have no idea.” Amy glanced in the direction of the storage shed on the far side of the house. She hadn’t a clue what was out there.
“The job will be easier if you use them.”
She gave him a nod, then saw the muscle in his jaw jerk as he waited, giving her a chance to ask any questions she might have. He was clearly only doing what her grandmother had asked of him—showing her how to best clean up the paint. So she told him she’d be sure to look for sawhorses, and watched his glance settle where her arms crossed over the odd little knot of nerves jumping in her stomach.
He said nothing else. He just gave her a look she couldn’t read at all and, having complied with her grandmother’s request, he headed to the porch for the extension cord. Within minutes, he’d shattered the early-evening stillness with his power saw as he cut a five-foot-wide chunk out of the beautiful porch railing opposite the dining room’s double doors.
He worked until dusk, pounding stakes, running strings, loosening two circles of soil with a pick. Then he left without saying a word.
He also left a pair of his sawhorses for her on the back porch.
Chapter Three
Amy climbed down from the ladder, stripped off her gloves and hoped fervently that she’d be able to put her grandmother’s kitchen back together now that she’d dismantled it. She’d taken all the doors off the cabinets on the sink side of the room and stacked the dishes and glasses that had been in them on the delft-blue table in the breakfast nook. The stained glass pieces that had hung in the window were over there, too. Newspaper covered the counters to keep the thick goop she’d spread on the cabinet’s center supports from dripping onto the Formica.
She was winging it here. Other than to help a friend paint her baby’s nursery, the only painting projects she’d ever tackled involved finger paints or watercolors with her first graders. It wasn’t the painting she was concerned about, anyway. It was the stripping and sanding part she knew nothing about. The directions on the can of solvent seemed explicit enough, though taking off the doors had presented a challenge, until she’d found the proper screwdriver.
She was just grateful to be busy. As long as she was busy, she wasn’t worrying about whether or not her mother was still annoyed with her, or wondering how long she could put off talking to the man who’d arrived nearly two hours ago and started to work without bothering to tell her he was there. She needed to thank him for the sawhorses. She just wasn’t overly anxious to approach him.
Aside from that, since he hadn’t made any effort to talk to her, it was apparent that he wanted only to do his job.
He wasn’t wasting time doing it, either. While she’d climbed around on the counter, taking down the stained glass and painting on the solvent, he had dug two holes the size of beach balls twenty feet out from the side porch and centered a short length of four-by-four in each hole. He was now filling the holes with concrete he’d mixed with a hoe in a wheelbarrow.
As she looked out the window now, she could see him wiping his forehead with his forearm. Unaware of her, he turned, his back to her as he shoveled more concrete around the support. He made the task look effortless, but beneath the gray T-shirt straining against his shoulders, strong muscles flexed and shifted with his every move.
It took little imagination for her to picture how beautifully developed those corded muscles were. The cotton and denim he wore molded to him, betraying a body formed as perfectly as the Greek sculptures she’d once studied with such dedication. She’d even created those compelling lines herself in art classes with handfuls of clay, shaping, perfecting, struggling to get every line and curve right. The human body had fascinated her. Its movement. Its expressions.
Nick had fascinated her, too, and by the time she had entered college he had become her own standard of perfection. As she’d worked the clay, she had imagined the feel of those muscles beneath her hands, the strength in them, the smoothness of his skin. She had imagined the corrugated plane of his belly, the leanness of his hips, and how it would feel to be held against his very solid chest.
Watching his biceps bunch as he lifted more cement, she wondered the same thing now.
The breath she released sounded faintly like a sigh.
The one she drew caught, her eyes widening as she realized she was remembering how she’d once fantasized about him. Conscious of the fact that she was doing it again, she jumped back from the sink.
The ceiling fan rotated slowly overhead. Turning it up a notch against the lingering heat of the day, she headed for the refrigerator and pulled out a can of diet cola. With the cold can pressed to the skin above the U of her pink T-shirt, she swallowed a flash of disbelief and guilt and tried to decide between grilled chicken breast or a hamburger for dinner. It was nearly eight o’clock. If she didn’t fix herself something decent to eat soon, she’d wind up doing what she’d done last night and settle for an apple and Oreos.
The disconcerted sensation that had jerked her from the window eased with the diversion. What replaced it was an equally discomfiting sense of obligation. She still needed to talk to Nick. To thank him.
Since putting it off would only give her more time to dread it, she grabbed another can of cola and closed the fridge with her hip. He might not be interested in talking to her, and she still thought him terrible for what he’d done to her sister all those years ago, but she couldn’t ignore the need to return his thoughtfulness. Not just for leaving the sawhorses. But for what he was doing now—pushing himself so an elderly lady could return to her home.
The metallic clank of colliding metal greeted her as she walked onto the porch outside the dining-room doors. Beyond the gap in the porch railing, she saw Nick turn from where he’d just tossed the shovel and a hoe into the wheelbarrow. A dusting of fine gray powder coated his work boots, his worn jeans sported a frayed hole above one knee, and a streak of something dark bisected the Manhattan Athletic Club logo on his faded gray T-shirt.
She was wondering if he’d belonged to the prestigious-sounding club when he’d lived in New York when his eyes, blue as lasers, locked on hers.
Caution immediately clouded his face.
“You look thirsty.” Aware of the faint flutter of nerves in her stomach, she walked to the edge of the porch, her sneakers silent on the wide yellow boards. She held out a can of cola. “I noticed that your water bottle is empty,” she said, nodding toward the clear plastic container on the strip of lawn between them and the driveway. “I hope you don’t mind diet. It’s all I have.”
Warily eyeing the can she held, he walked over to where she stood in the center of the gap.
She was thinking about telling him she hadn’t poisoned it when he reached up.
“Diet’s fine. Thanks,” he murmured, taking what she offered.
“Are you about finished for the day?”
“Just about. I just need to wash out the wheelbarrow and clean up the tools.” He popped the top on the can, the sound sharp against the evening stillness. The sun skimmed the treetops, slanting long shadows in what was left of the hour before dark. “The footings didn’t take as long to put in as I thought they would. If I’d brought lumber with me, I could have started framing the ramp tonight.”
From the self-deprecating frown that creased his brow as he raised the can to his mouth, it was apparent that he wished he had realized how quickly the work would go. The hour he could have put into the project now would have put him that much closer to getting the job finished.
Not wanting to hold him up now, she figured it best to do what she needed to do so he could leave. “I just wanted to thank you,” she said, watching him tip back the can and swallow. “For leaving the sawhorses,” she explained. “That was very kind of you. But especially for what you’re doing for Grandma. It can’t be easy working all day then coming out to do this.”
He’d drained half the can before he lowered it. Contemplating its pull ring, he muttered, “It’s not a problem.”
“I appreciate it, anyway.”
“Then, you’re welcome.”
“Did you have dinner before you came here?”
The question was out before she realized she was going to ask it, much less have time to consider where it would lead.
Nick looked caught off guard by it, too.
“Uh…no,” he murmured, glancing at his watch as if he might have been putting off knowing exactly what time it was. “I didn’t want to waste the daylight.”
Amy’s conscience tugged hard.
“I was just getting ready to grill a hamburger,” she said, aware of exactly why he hadn’t wanted to waste it. He wanted to help an old woman go home. The very least she could do was repay his kindness. On behalf of her grandmother, of course. “If you don’t mind staying, I’ll make one for you, too. I can have dinner ready by the time you get your things cleaned up.”
For a moment, Nick said nothing. He just stood with the can of cola dangling at his side while he considered the wariness in Amy’s eyes, along with the delicate curve of her jaw, her throat. She did nothing to call particular attention to herself. Her makeup, if she was even wearing any, was minimal. Her clothes were loose and practical. Yet her tousled hair fairly begged a man to sink his fingers into it, her lush ripe mouth taunted him with its fullness and her willowy little body was as tempting as sin itself.
If you don’t mind staying, she’d said. He would have laughed at the irony of the suggestion had he been in the mood to find anything even slightly amusing about being there to begin with.
In the past couple of hours, he’d done what would have taken some men twice as long to accomplish just so he could get away from her. It seemed as if every time he’d looked up, he’d caught sight of her as she’d worked by the open kitchen window above the sink. And each time he’d seen her, he’d found himself having to try that much harder to shove her out of his thoughts.
The first time he’d noticed her, she had been reaching to take down the little stained glass birds that had hung along the top of the window. Her waist-length top had ridden up, exposing the strip of flesh between the waistband of her ragged cutoffs and the band of her bra. He hadn’t known which he’d found more tantalizing: the glimpse of ice-blue lace or the smooth expanse of her flat stomach.
He still hadn’t decided, even though the images were burned into his brain.
The last time he’d noticed her, she’d been standing on the counter painting something—solvent, probably—on a cabinet. Mostly what he’d seen then was the sweet curve of her backside and the long length of her legs.
Certain he’d have to be unconscious not to be aware of her, and mindful of his less-than-illustrious history with her family, he told himself the wisest thing to do would be to leave. But he was a pragmatic man. And a logical one. His job there would be infinitely easier if he and Amy could somehow call a truce. Since she was offering the opportunity, it seemed only reasonable to meet her halfway.
Aside from that, he was starving.
“Do you still burn them?” he asked, his tone mild.
“Excuse me?”
“Hamburgers. The last time you made them when I was around, they were charred on both sides and gray in the middle. We wound up having cold cuts.”
She blinked at the unexpected hint of teasing in his eyes. But before she could ask what he was talking about, she remembered, too.
The exact sequence of events was fuzzy, but she remembered him being at her parents’ house with Paige for a family barbecue. Amy had been left in charge of the grill, and she’d knocked over a cruet of salad oil that had been set on its sideboard. The resulting ball of flame had turned the meat into little lumps of coal.
“I can’t believe you remembered that.”
“I remember a lot of things about you,” he replied, his glance holding hers. “And yeah,” he murmured, “a hamburger would be great.”
The carved lines of his face were inscrutable in the moments before he swiped up the empty cement bags and carried them to the truck parked in the drive. He sounded as if remembering her was merely a matter of fact, as unremarkable to him as recalling his own name. She just had no idea why he would recall anything about her beyond the fact that she’d simply been around.
Unless, she thought as she headed into the kitchen to search drawers for matches, it was because he’d been aware of how awkward she’d felt around him, or because he’d been present during some of her more embarrassing moments. At least, they’d been embarrassing to a shy girl of seventeen with a desperate need to please her family.
She’d certainly been embarrassed the day she’d incinerated the family meal. Yet Nick hadn’t let on if he had noticed how badly she’d wished she could twitch her nose and disappear. As gallant as the hero in any young girl’s fantasies, he’d come to her aid, quietly removing the smoldering evidence to the trash while everyone else had come down on her for not paying attention to what she’d been doing. Then he’d told her with a wink that he hadn’t been in the mood for hamburgers anyway, that any one of them could have done the same thing, and whisked Paige off with him to the deli around the corner for packages of turkey and ham.
She had felt pitifully grateful to him for his kindness, and had thought him quite wonderful for defusing her little disaster. But she’d already thought him pretty wonderful, anyway. The problem was that she’d grown to feel more than simple gratitude. She had begun to feel things she had no business feeling toward a man who was going to be her brother-in-law. Things that had made her heart hurt when she’d realized he wouldn’t be part of their family. Things that had actually made her feel relieved when he’d gone, because her feelings toward him had started making her feel uncomfortable with her sister. She and Paige had next to nothing in common and Paige had always done everything so much better than Amy felt she ever could, but Amy had never in her life felt envious or jealous of her until she’d fallen so hard for Nick herself.
No one had known she’d had such a crush on him. And a crush was all it could have been at seventeen. No one but her grandmother. When her confused feelings had driven her to confide in the dear woman, Bea had gently assured her that it wasn’t at all unusual for a young girl to become infatuated with an unattainable older man. It was simply part of growing up.
Amy absently adjusted the flame on the grill. The flash of guilt and attraction she’d experienced earlier as she’d watched Nick from the window was back. Only now, the disturbing feelings were a little harder to tamp down, a little harder to deny.
She pointedly turned to the house, putting her heart into the effort anyway. She had been young and impressionable then, but she was adult enough now to know that it was only memories making her feel those old conflicts. That, and being back in Cedar Lake, back in a place where she would perpetually feel the insecurities of being seventeen.
“Mind if I go inside and wash up? I could use some soap.”
Nick’s deep voice vibrated over her nerves like the roll of distant thunder. Her stomach jumped. Pressing her hand to it, she turned to see him a few feet behind her on the concrete patio.
He’d washed out the wheelbarrow with the hose at the side of the house. Skimming a glance past the water-darkened spots on his jeans, she dropped her hand to her side. “Go ahead,” she murmured, wondering if he’d ever suspected how she’d felt about him. She would have died of mortification if he had. “Take the door to the left inside the kitchen. It’s the first door on your right in the hall.”
He glanced from the gas jets sending flame over the metal coals. “Is there anything I can do to help?”
“I’ll call if there’s a fire.”
She saw the corner of his mouth kick up in what almost passed for a smile, then watched him take the six back stairs two at a time and disappear into the house. Moments later, she followed, making herself concentrate only on the task of feeding him. The man was probably famished. Considering what she’d seen some of the older boys at school pack away, she had the feeling one little hamburger wasn’t going to cut it.
It took her mere minutes to throw the patties on the gas grill, pile sliced tomato, onions and cheese on a plate and gather condiments and buns and set them on the table on the back lawn. She was on her way back in after flipping the meat when she met Nick coming into the kitchen.
He’d washed his face. Splashed water on it, anyway. The neck of his shirt was damp and his thick hair was darkened to almost black from the water he’d used when he combed it. She didn’t know if it was because he’d combed his hair straight back or because it was darker, but his chiseled features seemed more elegant, somehow, the blue of his eyes more intense.
Preferring to ignore the catch in her pulse, she set a small sack of chips on top of a container of deli salad she’d taken from the fridge.
“Go on out,” she said, balancing the salad and chips in one hand as she reached for the napkins, utensils and plates. A bunch of grapes she’d rinsed sat in a bowl by the sink. “It’s just about ready,” she told him, thinking she’d have to make one more trip.
“What do you want me to take?”
“Nothing. I’ve got it,” she insisted, and decided to stack the plates on top of the bowl.
Seeing what she was trying to do, ignoring her disclaimer, he took the bowl himself.
“Is this everything?” he asked.
She hesitated. “I could heat some baked beans if you want. There’s canned goods in the pantry. Or I have some yogurt. Except for cereal, this is all I have. I didn’t buy much at the store.”
Confusion flashed in his eyes. Seconds later, comprehension replaced it. “I’m not talking about what you’re fixing for dinner, Amy. Whatever you have here is fine. I mean to take outside. There’s no reason for you to carry all this by yourself.”
“Oh,” she murmured, aware of the brush of his hand against hers as he took the chips and salad. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” he murmured in return, and moved ahead of her so he could hold the door.
The sun had just dropped below the horizon, the pale light of evening turning the pine trees a dusky shade of blue. The calm water of the lake reflected nothing but shadows, crickets called to each other and from the rocks along the water’s edge the deep croak of frogs filtered through the balmy air.
Amy was acutely aware of the twilight stillness as she took what Nick carried for her and placed it on the old redwood picnic table that sat halfway between the house and the water. It was a time of day she had once found welcoming and restful. Since she’d been in Cedar Lake this time, it had simply seemed lonely.
She attributed the unfamiliar feeling to the isolation of the place, and the fact that she was there by herself. She was accustomed to feeling isolated when it came to her family, but this was different. She’d never been at the lake house alone before, and it felt odd without her grandmother around. As Nick lowered himself to the long bench opposite her seat, she had to admit it felt even more strange to be alone there with him.
Her glance caught his across the table. The way he was watching her, he didn’t look all that certain about being there, either.
Refusing to let her gesture turn uncomfortable for them both, she handed him the relish plate. “Help yourself,” she said, and reached for the salad she really didn’t want.
He immediately took her up on her suggestion, piling tomato slices on his cheeseburger. “I always thought it would seem like one long vacation living in a place like this. On the water, I mean. I used to really envy the kids who could hang around a lake during the summer.”
“You make it sound as if you never had access to one. There are dozens of lakes around here.”
