Untamed

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She appeared small and pale and vulnerable in the muted glow of the fireplace. Something stirred inside Gavin, something that felt uncomfortably like sympathy. Remembering all too well the last time he’d made the mistake of comforting a troubled female, he tamped down the feeling.

“I’d better go get that plywood.”

She’d sensed his interest. And his caution. She nodded, relieved he’d chosen to avoid the issue, but wondered at the edge of anger she thought she detected in his tone.

“Thank you.” She glanced around, noticing that the room didn’t look half-bad considering the house had been vacant for six months, and wondered how it would look in the bright light of day. “I’ll want to repay you for all your work.”

“That’s not necessary. It wasn’t that big a deal.”

“To me it is. You’ve done me an immense favor. It would be a great deal more difficult to sell the house if it’d been badly vandalized.”

“You’re selling?”

He should have expected it, Gavin told himself. Especially when she didn’t care enough to show up for her grandmother’s funeral. But for some reason, he didn’t like the idea of a stranger moving into Brigid’s house.

“I don’t see that I have any choice.”

“Everyone has choices,” he argued, unknowingly echoing Lina Delaney.

“Of course you’re right.” She lifted her chin, daring him to challenge the decision that had not come easily. “And since my work is in San Francisco and the demands of my career preclude my having a second home, my choice is to sell the house and invest the funds in my IRA.”

Gavin wondered if she knew exactly how much she resembled her grandmother when she stuck her chin out like that. Despite the fact that she’d been nearly three times his age, Brigid had been the most appealing—and frustrating—woman he’d ever met. And now it appeared that Tara had inherited both her appeal and her tenacity.

“I never knew a witch with a retirement account.”

“Known many witches have you, Mr. Thomas?”

“Gavin,” he reminded her yet again. “And your grandmother was the only one. That I know of.”

“Well, now you know two.” She flashed him a smile. “And this one definitely believes in financial planning.”

That siren’s smile, which he knew to be as fake as her alleged eye of newt, reached her eyes, making them gleam like emeralds in the shimmering candlelight. When he found himself unreasonably tempted to kiss her, Gavin decided it was definitely time to call it a night.

“It’s late,” he said when the green lacquered long-case clock suddenly announced the hour with a silver-belled minuet rather than the expected peal of chimes. “If you’ve been driving all day, you’ve got to be exhausted. Why don’t you go on up to bed, and I’ll fix the window.”

The soft feather bed was undeniably appealing. However…

“I don’t mind waiting until you’re finished.”

“I’m not going to attack you, Tara.”

Tara wondered what she’d said to earn such a dark and deadly look. “I didn’t think you were. It’s just that I wouldn’t feel right leaving you with all this work.”

Gavin reminded himself that if she’d never heard of him, she couldn’t know about his admittedly unsavory past. “I told you, I’ve gotten it down to a science. Go to bed. I’ll lock up and sack out on the couch, in case those kids come back.”

“As much as I appreciate the offer, it’s definitely not necessary for you to stay. I may as well get used to being alone.”

“I thought you were going to sell the house.” He’d assumed she’d list it in the morning, then hightail it back to her safe, comfortable, predictable life in San Francisco.

“I am. But surely Brigid told you about the condition she put on my bequest?”

“She told me she was leaving the place to you. And she asked me, if anything ever happened to her, to look out for it until you arrived. That’s all.”

She gave him a long look and determined he was telling the truth. “Although Brigid believed in people following their own stars, she never believed me when I told her that the life I’ve chosen is the one I truly want.

“So she stipulated that before I can sell the house, I have to live in it. For a month.”

“A month?”

“Thirty days to be exact.”

“Thirty days. Imagine that.” Things were definitely going to get interesting around Whiskey River, Gavin decided.

“Interesting doesn’t even begin to describe the possibilities, Mr. Thomas.”

Her smile at his surprise that she’d discerned his thoughts was cool and knowing. Gavin found it irritating as hell. “You didn’t read my mind. You just made an obvious assumption and got lucky.”

“Whatever you say,” she answered pleasantly. Then, possessing a bit of her grandmother’s flair for the dramatic, she decided that it was time to exit the scene.

“I’m suddenly very tired. I believe I will go to bed. Good night Mr. Thomas. Please remember to lock up when you leave.”

As she entered the bedroom, she stopped in front of the photograph of Brigid. “Good try, Grandy,” she murmured. “And I’ll admit he’s sexy, in a kind of rough and dangerous sort of way, but I’m not going to let myself get involved.”

Ten minutes later, after brushing her teeth and washing her face, Tara slipped between the flowered sheets and the antique quilt. When the scent of yarrow wafted up from the goose-down pillow, she tossed it onto the floor, squeezed her eyes shut tight and vowed that she was not going to dream of Gavin Thomas.

Despite her best intentions, the vow was broken as soon as she drifted off to sleep.

IT WAS THE SOUND that woke her. Tara froze, willing her body to remain absolutely still while her mind, lagging behind, struggled to leave the misty, sensual dream.

Her heart was pounding so hard and so fast in her ears she had to strain to hear the sound. But there it was, a strange scratching noise at the window that reminded her of a movie she’d seen on late-night cable last week. Dracula, she remembered, had made that same sound against the glass just before flying into his victim’s bedroom.

Don’t be ridiculous, she scolded herself. That was only a movie.

She slipped from between the tangled sheets. Although she assured herself that it was only her over-stimulated imagination, she refrained from turning on the bedside lamp for fear of drawing attention to herself. She padded stealthily to the window in her bare feet, took a deep breath and jerked the curtain back.

Then laughed as relief flooded over her.

“It’s only a tree branch, dummy. Scraping against the window. Geez, you’d think you’d never spent a night alone.”

Feeling much better, Tara went back to bed. As she drifted back to a sleep filled with Gavin Thomas, she didn’t hear the faint creaking of floorboards over her head.

In the morning, Tara was relieved to discover that Gavin had obviously gone back to wherever it was he lived after boarding up the window. After a restless night, filled with vivid, disturbingly sensual dreams, having to face him first thing in the morning would have been too much to handle.

She searched the cupboards, frustrated but not surprised when all she could find were the herbal teas her grandmother had so successfully marketed through various catalogs. And as much as she had enjoyed the lemon balm tea with her mother the other day, what she needed now was a strong jolt of caffeine to rid her mind of cobwebs and lingering thoughts of a man she had no intention of becoming involved with.

Despite her grandmother’s interference.

Deciding the only thing to do was get dressed and go into town for coffee at the Branding Iron Café before meeting with Brigid’s lawyer, she went back upstairs to take a shower.

“I realize your talents far surpass mine, Grandy,” she muttered out loud as she blew her hair dry. “But if I wanted to, I could cast a spell of my own. To counter yours.

“Of course that’s also what you want me to do, isn’t it?” Tara frowned at her reflection in the wavy bathroom mirror. “That’s what all this is about. You’ve brought me back here to force me to get in touch with my roots. Well, I’ve got news for you, Grandy. I’m not going to cast any spells. I’ve made a life for myself that doesn’t involve magic. I’m happy.”

The falsehood hung in the air, mocking her. “All right, perhaps satisfied is a better word. But it’s only because I’ve had a grueling year. By the time I leave here, I’ll be itching to get back to work.”

Back to her tax tables and interest rates and stock indexes. Back to her tidy apartment on Russian Hill, decorated with no-nonsense Scandinavian furniture, where she spent her nights and weekends laboring over computer spreadsheets.

“I’ve worked hard to get where I am,” she insisted as she marched into the bedroom and for the second time that morning almost tripped over the suitcases that had not been there when she’d gone to bed last night.