Rescued by Mr Right

Yeah, right. That’s exactly why he was doing this. So he could demonstrate his CPR skills.

The thought of doing mouth-to-mouth on Victoria rippled through him. He quickly pushed it away. Jeez, five minutes after meeting a beautiful woman and he was on his way to becoming Valentino.

The living room was empty. So was the bathroom. Just past the archway connecting the living room and dining room he saw her. The shades were drawn, darkening the space into a dusky indoor twilight and giving an eerie cast to the long, narrow dining room table and the matching high-backed, claw-foot chairs. The wood floors, topped with a rectangular floral carpet. Like the rest of the house, the room was a throwback to earlier days.

Victoria had her back to him, standing beside a sideboard that took up most of the wall. A parade of family photos in silver frames sat across the top of the furniture piece. Victoria’s shoulders were hunched forward, her head down.

Oh, hell. Something softened in Noah’s heart. Try as he might to harden it again, his best intentions dissolved the second he heard a sob escape her throat. “Victoria?”

She wheeled around, at the same time swiping at her cheek. “Sorry, I…ah…I couldn’t find the phone book.”

“Listen, I’ll just—” He thumbed over his shoulder, intending to say, “leave,” but the word lodged in his throat.

“I was looking in a drawer for it, but…” Her voice trailed off, and in the final notes, he heard the one emotion he’d vowed never to come near again.

Loss.

Noah recognized it as surely as his own name. He’d seen it, in the faces of parents who’d lost their children to drugs. He’d heard it, in the final phone call before a gunshot. He’d felt it, in courtroom after courtroom as children too young to drive were carted off to finish growing up in jail.

But most of all, he’d carried that feeling with him all the way from Rhode Island, tucked squarely inside his chest.

What the hell was he thinking? That he could go to Maine for a few days and the whispers in his mind would stop? That he could sit on a dock and fish for bass like a normal man? As if he was on vacation, not a life departure? That some cabin in the woods would be enough to make him forget such a colossal mistake?

And did he really think he could walk out of this house right now, leaving that sound hanging in Victoria Blackstone’s dining room?

His feet carried him across the room, until he was close enough to see the shimmer in her eyes. “Are you okay?”

“Fine. Really.” Her smile trembled on her lips.

As easily as putting on a pair of jeans, Noah slipped into his familiar work persona. “Is there anything I can do for you?”

What was that about? Did he think he’d hook her up with some social services? Direct her to a food bank? Help her find a job with a great health plan?

“No. I’m sorry.” She ran a hand over the gleaming surface of the sideboard, whisking away nonexistent dust. “You…well, you reminded me of someone and it sort of hit me hard.”

“Oh.” For once, he had no rejoinder to that, no dispensation of advice. “Do you want me to go?”

She reached out and put a hand on his arm. “No. Not at all.”

Her touch on him was sweet, soft. Every instinct in his body told him to back away, head out the door and go on his way, hitchhiking if need be. But there was something about her touch that reminded Noah, too, of someone.

Himself. A long time ago.

“Listen, why don’t you stay for dinner? That way, you’ll have a meal in you before you hit the road again. It’s after Labor Day, so a lot of the beach restaurants here are closed down. You’d have to go into Quincy proper to find anything.”

He knew he should say no. Unfortunately his mouth didn’t take good direction from his brain. “Dinner sounds like a good idea.”

He’d stay for dinner, but only because the feel of her hand on his arm had awakened nerves he’d thought had been severed by his years on the job. Because it felt nice to be a man for a minute, a man who didn’t have the weight of other people’s lives sitting on his conscience.

“Great! I’ll set another place at the table.” That smile spread across her face again, socking him in the gut—

And warning him that he’d just done the very thing he didn’t want to do. Laid the first brick of a foundation with another person.

CHAPTER TWO

WHAT on earth had gotten into her? Victoria had always thought of herself as a woman who maintained control, never let her feelings show and never, ever betrayed vulnerability. At least, until Noah McCarty came along and proved within ten minutes that she was a liar.

And now she’d gone and cried in front of him. Cried, for Pete’s sake, like some helpless female who couldn’t find her way out of a cardboard box.

Okay, given her directionally challenged mind, that part might be true, but still…crying? That was really pitiful.

“I’m sorry. I don’t normally burst into tears in front of strangers,” Victoria said as they walked back into the kitchen.

“I understand,” Noah said, but Victoria suspected he was merely being polite. He had that look about him, with his sandy-brown hair and deep green eyes, that said he’d let you down easily and wouldn’t intentionally hurt your feelings. And yet, she saw something else, some other side of him that flickered briefly in those depths of green. Something that told her she could trust him.

The compulsion to tell him, to talk to someone, to share with a human, instead of these empty, silent walls, propelled the words forward. “My dad,” she said, “used to lean against the half-wall like that whenever he talked on the phone. Uncle Joe called him every Saturday morning and the two of them would go on for hours, debating taxes, the governor’s choices, whether I-93 or 128 had more traffic.” She let out a little laugh, the memory still sharp with grief but also tinged with a slice of happiness. “He died six months ago and there are funny things that will hit me sometimes, just out of the blue. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Noah said, taking her hand, making her feel for the first time in a long time that it was, indeed, all okay. His eyes weren’t filled with that awkwardness she’d seen so many times already, the kind where people felt compelled to say something, do something, if only to cover up their own discomfort about being so close to someone who had experienced a death. Instead Noah had reached out, his touch light yet sincere. “I’m sorry about your father.”

The words were enough to send the tears rushing back to her eyes. She blinked them back. “Thank you.”

“Hey, Charlie,” she said, changing the subject and bending down to the dog, whose pointy little ears perked up at the mention of his name, “you’re welcome to stay for dinner, too.”

The dog wagged his skinny tail, then jumped up on her legs, miniature nails scraping lightly at her bare skin. She lowered herself to her knees, scratched him under his chin.

“Watch him,” Noah said. “He’s…temperamental.”

“Him? He’s a sweetie-pie.” As if living up to what she’d said, Charlie dropped to his back and offered up his belly for the personal treatment. His tail beat ferociously against the linoleum floor, keeping up a steady tempo of “you-like-me.”

She let her fingers trail along his nape, then his ears, toying with the velvet tips. Charlie let out a groan and wriggled even closer.

“Now you’ve gone and done it,” Noah said, laughing.

She jerked up to look at him. “Done what?”

“Spoiled him. Now he’s going to make me get out the silk bed again.”

She arched a brow. “Silk bed?”

“Charlie is the king of my mom’s castle. He has his every whim indulged, sleeps on better sheets than Elvis did and even has his own teddy bear. She’s only been gone twenty-four hours and already called me three times to make sure I’m treating him right.”

“And are you?”

“Well, I drew the line at the silk bed and the Burberry trench coat.”

Victoria chuckled. “He’s a nice dog, though. I can see why she spoils him.”

Noah wasn’t so bad himself. Though “nice” might not be the first word that Victoria would use when asked to describe him. Gorgeous, with a haunting quality that told her a lot of him was kept behind a locked door.

Silence hummed between them and once again, Victoria wanted to kick herself. She was a complete and total social moron. She’d spent too much time here in this house, away from the real world. Away from other people.

But that was going to change.

She scrambled for something to say, something to fill the uncomfortable gap between them, to help her stop noticing the deep color of his eyes, the way one lock of dark hair stubbornly fell against his forehead. Strong, sexy and most of all, unaware of the effect he could have on a woman.

Focus, she told herself. Focus.

“I almost forgot about the mechanic. Larry is the guy we use. Used,” she corrected herself, since the car hadn’t needed service in a long time because she had yet to muster the courage to get behind the wheel again. She’d learned to drive years ago, but had never driven outside of Quincy. The thought of taking the car on the highway—or into the city—was way too much. “Anyway, his number is on the corkboard beside the phone.”

“Thanks.” Noah crossed the kitchen, found the name Larry on the neat, alphabetized list of names and numbers and dialed. When the phone was answered on the other end, Noah explained he was looking for Larry and needed a tow as well as a few repairs. “That’ll do. Thanks,” he said finally, then hung up the phone.

“Is Larry on his way?” Victoria asked, pretending she didn’t care, that the thought of company to help while away the long evening that stretched before her wasn’t as tempting as a bucket of chocolate.

“Yep. Be here in half an hour.” As he said the words, his stomach rumbled. “Listen, if my being here is difficult for you, we can forget dinner. I’ll get out of your hair.” He looked down at the dog, who had taken a proprietary space between Victoria’s feet. “We’ll both get out of your hair soon as the tow truck arrives.”

“You can’t leave,” she said, grinning. “Or I’ll end up eating leftover pot roast three times a day for a week.”

“Pot roast? I haven’t had that in about a hundred years.”

“Sorry it’s nothing more fancy. The roast happened to be what I had in the freezer. When I put it in the Crock-Pot, I knew I’d have way too many leftovers since it’s only me here, but—” She laughed. “Can you tell I haven’t had any company in a while? My mother used to say once my motor was running, there was no turning it off.”

Noah laughed. “I have a brother like that. Talks a blue streak sometimes about absolutely nothing. He—”

The words cut off as abruptly as they came. Victoria wanted to ask, to press him for more, but wouldn’t. She liked her privacy. She certainly couldn’t fault him for wanting the same.

And yet, in his eyes, she saw defeat, weariness. The emotions were too powerful, too private, and her gaze went to the floor, as if studying the black-and-white squares would provide some answer from the cosmos. They didn’t. What did she expect from forty-year-old linoleum anyway? “So, how do you like your roast?”

He grinned, clearly glad for the change of subject. “Done mooing.”

She laughed. “Do you like your potatoes baked? Or cooked with the meat?”

“Are you making gravy?”

“Of course.” Charlie started running excited circles around them, as if he understood the conversation.

“Then in with the meat.”

“Biscuits?”

“Homemade?” he asked, clearly teasing. Maybe even…flirting?

“Is there any other kind?” she said, returning the smile, the vibrations in the air.

“Not in my book.” His smile turned into a wide grin that seemed to take over his features and cast them in an entirely different light.

A sexy light.

The kind that lit a fire within Victoria’s belly that had never really been lit before. She swallowed, suddenly very glad she’d paid attention when her mother taught her to cook. “Carrots?” she said, the word a squeak.

“The whole works,” Noah replied, his gaze on hers.

The whole works. Well, heck, then she was going to bake a pie. Maybe even find that lone bottle of wine she’d been saving for a special occasion.

“I’m looking forward to it,” Noah said. “It’s been a hell of a long time since I had a home-cooked meal.”

Something about the way he’d said the words, the pained look that filled his green eyes, the way his shoulders seemed to drop…it all made her want to ask. To probe.

To help.

Because if there was one thing Victoria Blackstone did well, it was help other people. Florence Nightingale reincarnated, that was her.

She drew back, though. Helping Noah, getting involved with Noah, would detract from the plan. Tomorrow, there was going to be a whole new Victoria on the block.

But for tonight, there was Noah, his dog and a dinner to get on the table.

Because if there were ever two people she’d seen who deserved the whole works, at least for one meal, it was herself and this mysterious stranger.

An hour later, Noah sat at Victoria’s dining room table, Charlie lying at his feet, hoping to get lucky with a stray crumb, despite having devoured his own plate of meat. Noah had been as quick as the dog in downing his first helping of pot roast and was now making big dents in his second. The food was delicious, and had filled the permanently hungry ache in a belly that had subsisted for too long on fast food. “I haven’t had a homemade meal in years,” he said, wiping his mouth with a crisp white cloth napkin.

“Really?”

“I’m a bachelor. I can order take-out, and open a can of dog food.”

“For you or the dog?” She grinned and tipped her wine toward him.

He chuckled. “Based on the kind of fast-food junk I feed myself, I’d say Charlie gets the better end of the deal.”

Her laughter was soft and easy, a sound that seemed centuries away from the stiff, uncomfortable furniture filling her house. And a million miles away from the contemporary, stark loft Noah had just left.

He looked around at the floral wallpaper, his gaze sweeping over the brown shag living room carpet butting against the wood floor in the doorway, and thought maybe it was closer to two million miles.

“Go ahead, ask,” Victoria said.

“Ask what?”

“Why my house looks like something you’d see on TV Land. I can tell you’re wondering.”

“Oh, no, I…” His voice trailed off, no ready excuse to fill the space.

“My parents,” Victoria said, laying her fork across her plate, “didn’t like change. They took great pride in sleeping in the same bed all their lives, using the same stove for twenty-five years, making good use of the carpet that came with the house and grudgingly replaced a couple of rooms when the old carpet wore out. Call it frugal, sentimental…I’m not sure. But they liked things to stay exactly the same, day after day.”

“Liked?” he asked, catching the past tense. “You lost your mother, too?”

She nodded and started working on the interstate highway system in her potatoes again, but didn’t eat. “A couple months before my father. I’ve been here alone ever since. And well—” at this, she let out a sigh and looked around the dated room “—I haven’t had the heart to change anything.” She paused, took a second look and added, “Yet.”

Curiosity nudged at Noah. He wanted to know more, like what she meant by “yet.” And why she seemed to hold back parts of herself as she spoke, as if she was filtering out the bad scenes of her story.

Noah knew those signs. Knew the way someone sounded when they tried to paint a pretty picture, instead of telling him the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

So help him God.

But in the end, he hadn’t been all that good at divining the truth, had he? He may have seen the signs, but he’d ignored them, all the way down to the bottom. And in doing so, he’d disappointed the one person who was depending on him to make things right—his brother.

And now, Justin was on the streets, out of Noah’s grasp.

Against his hip, his now recharged cell phone began to vibrate. He glanced down at the number, then muted the ringer. He couldn’t deal with that.

Not now anyway.

What could he say to Robert, who was fighting a war on the other side of the world? “Oh, yeah, I know I screwed up when I promised I’d rescue your kid. But don’t worry. The same system that failed him will surely save him.”

He’d be throwing platitudes at a disaster, like using a squirt bottle to put out a five-alarm fire.

“There’s an apple pie, too,” Victoria said, interrupting his thoughts. “I baked it while you were outside helping Larry get your truck loaded up.”

“I had an aunt,” Noah said, the memory slipping from his lips before he could stop it, “who used to make us all fruitcakes for Christmas. The trouble was, she didn’t know how to bake. She was pretty nearsighted and had a little trouble telling the teaspoons from the tablespoons.”

Victoria laughed. “Oh, I shouldn’t laugh, but I can just imagine how badly that went.”

“Hey, at least you didn’t have to eat it.”

“I promise, mine will be better.”

Noah’s stomach growled with a memory of the dozens of pies of his childhood, served warm, cold, however, but always good. The sweet scent in the air formed a mental image with the treat baking in Victoria’s oven. “It’s been a really long time since I’ve had pie.”

“Pies are like families, don’t you think?” she asked, raising a fork to make her point. “No crust is exactly the same, but all the ingredients in the filling make it turn out perfect.”

“Not all families are like that,” he said quietly. “Not by a long shot.”

Victoria opened her mouth to say something, surely to ask him what he’d meant by that. He stood and tossed his napkin onto the table, the now silent cell phone a heavy reminder of the reality he was avoiding. “I’m, ah, full. Rain check on the pie?”

“Sure.” But the look of disappointment in her eyes made him feel awful.

She didn’t understand and he couldn’t explain.

Noah gathered up his dishes and headed into the kitchen. Charlie trailed after him, but wisely kept his own counsel about his temporary owner and curled up in a corner, leaving Noah’s jeans unscathed. Noah loaded the dishes in the sink, ran some water and squirted some soap over them, then turned and looked around the kitchen. No dishwasher.

Somehow, it didn’t surprise him. He began to wash, circling his plate over and over again, trying to scrub off a crimson stain that didn’t exist. One that wouldn’t disappear, no matter how many times he blinked.

“Are you okay?” Victoria’s quiet voice at his shoulder.

“Yeah.” No. He hadn’t been okay in a long damned time.

“It’s clean,” she said, gently taking it from his hands, running it under the water and putting it into the dish drainer. The action brought her closer to him, her breasts brushing against his back, the sweet fruit scent she wore whispering around them. She was warmth and goodness, something he hadn’t thought existed, at least not in his corner of the world.

He inhaled her fragrance. Kiss her. Kiss the woman who made you a pot roast. Baked you a pie.

Cared.

No. A kiss would only extend the thread between them, adding another knot in the tenuous string already begun.

He reached into the sink, picked up his glass and plunged the sponge into it, again and again, seeing all his mistakes pile up in the soap bubbles, quadrupling onto each other, weighing on him like so many stones.

“Noah.” She laid a hand on his shoulder. The touch suddenly seemed too much.

“Don’t,” he said, his voice a growl, a warning. “Don’t get close to me.”

She backed up, and he immediately wished he could take the words back, hit Rewind, do it again with more tact and less anger. But she’d gotten between him and some mighty bad damned memories. Victoria had just become another casualty in the war with himself.

And that wasn’t fair.

He spun around, the water dripping from his hands onto the checkerboard tile. “I’m sorry. I—”

What could he tell her? That he’d let down the only people in the world he loved? The only family he really had?

That he’d failed with the one kid who’d needed him more than any other? That he hadn’t been able to say the right words or be there at the right time to stop a life from spiraling into the depths? That he’d kept the real truth about Justin’s street life from Robert, because Noah had thought he, of all the people in the fourteen-year-old’s life, had the right combination to pull him back from the brink?

That he was a man who deserved to be alone, to hide from the world and lick his wounds?

Way to make a good first impression, McCarty.

“I know,” she said, and she approached him again, clearly not afraid of his grizzly bear attitude. She reached out. He watched her hand approach, telling himself he should back away, run from her.

From contact. From caring.

But then her hand touched his arm, warm skin against warm skin, and the human part of Noah that he had told himself was dead roared to life, craving the touch, the nearness of someone who had that understanding look in her eyes.

Longing. Needing. So very desperately needing this, just for now, just this once.

“Noah,” she said again, his name slipping from her tongue as gently as the summer breeze.

He swallowed hard. Then he ignored the warning bells in his head, leaned forward and kissed her.

CHAPTER THREE

WHEN Noah McCarty’s lips met hers, Victoria’s entire world screeched to a halt.

It wasn’t that she’d never been kissed before—she had, several times—it was the way he kissed her. Like he’d discovered a buried treasure and was intent on preserving it instead of plundering it.

His lips drifted over hers, slow, sure. Tasting. Exploring. Igniting. The blood rushed to her head, thundering in her pulse, and everything below her neck melted into a helpless puddle of hormones. She had read about kisses like this, dreamed of receiving one, but never, ever imagined a man could truly do such wonderful things with such a small part of her anatomy.

And then, he brought his hands, still damp from the dishes, up to cup her face. That was the touch that sealed it for Victoria, that sent her already frenzied hormones over the edge, screaming for more of whatever Noah McCarty had.

At first, she didn’t touch him back. Her lips returned the kiss, but her arms remained stubbornly at her side, as reclusive as she had been, afraid he was a mirage, a figment of her imagination—which had become far too active in the last few quiet months.

But as his touch explored her face and his thumbs tipped up her chin to allow his lips fuller access, she felt the realness of him, allowed herself to believe she wasn’t dreaming this kiss.

This man. This tingling, building, wanting need.

In one swift movement, Victoria reached around him, the soft cotton of his T-shirt slipping against her palms. Beneath the fabric, his muscles bunched, sending her mind down a path that went way beyond kissing.

And then, Noah pulled back, released her chin with a final reverent slide of his fingers and moved away. As if he’d flicked a switch, everything within him seemed to turn to concrete, going gray and cold. “I’m sorry. That shouldn’t have happened.”

“It’s okay,” she said, but not feeling okay at all. She’d thought he’d enjoyed their kiss as much as she had, but then he’d jerked away, and apologized? She may have been kissed before but she had so little dating experience that she wasn’t sure if this was a good thing or a bad thing…or something else altogether.

Like she was about as desirable as a damp dish towel.

“I don’t normally go around kissing women I’ve just met,” he said.