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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.
