by Anne Stuart
She fell in love. It was an extraordinary place, full of magic and mystery. The walls were of stained wood and covered with tapestries, quilted hangings, romantic watercolors and tempestuous oils. There were books everywhere—in cases lining every spare inch of wall, piled on the floor, underneath tables. The furniture itself was a blissful mismatch—a Danish modern oak table with three baronial-style chairs. A wide, overstuffed sofa covered in rumpled English cotton, a brass-and-steel table shaped like an elephant. It was a traditional decorator’s nightmare. It was wonderful.
She turned back to glance at Daniel’s oblique face. “Obviously you haven’t owned this place for long,” she said, touching a rubbed green velvet cushion with loving fingers.
“Why do you say that?” He closed the door behind them, and the light filtered in from the crescent windows, meeting the blaze of light from the window on the far wall, with its expansive view overlooking the forest below.
“Because you haven’t had a chance to sanitize it yet.” She picked up a book, caressed it and put it down again. It was, of all things, a Georgette Heyer regency. “You forget, I saw your apartment. If you had the chance, you’d strip this place bare and paint everything white.”
“Why do you think I own this place?” It was a simple question, and she considered it.
“You probably bought it because it was so remote. You’re not the most sociable of creatures, and you probably liked the fact that people would have a hard time bothering you here. Do you have a telephone?”
“No.”
“Electricity? A television? Radio?”
“There’s a generator, but no outside source of communication.”
She nodded. She wanted to kick off her shoes and collapse into the huge, overstuffed sofa, taking the Heyer book with her. She restrained herself, but just barely. “You see. It proves my point. You own this place because you’re an antisocial curmudgeon.”
“If you say so.” He moved ahead of her, opening up the windows, letting in the fresh forest breeze. There was still a tang of fire lingering in the air, a fact which brought their circumstances home all too sharply. “I’m not sure what there is for food. I don’t tend to bother with it, but there’ll be enough vitamin drink for both of us.”
“Be still, my heart,” Suzanna said. “Where do I sleep?”
For a moment there was silence, long enough that she turned to glance at him. “Like the five-thousand-pound gorilla, anywhere you please,” he said lightly. “There’s a loft upstairs with a bed, and there’s the sofa. Take your pick.”
“Where are you sleeping?”
Again that charged silence. And then he shrugged. “I told you, I don’t sleep much.” He dropped down onto the huge sofa, stretching his long legs out in front of him.
“I do,” she said flatly. “And I need some coffee. You don’t mind if I explore?”
“Mi casa es su casa,” he said, sliding down on the sofa and closing his eyes for a moment. She stared at him. For a man who didn’t sleep much, he looked unutterably weary. He was used to life in a laboratory, not spending his time invisible, setting things on fire, running for his life and finding dead bodies. He probably wasn’t used to having anyone else around, either. All things considered, she was probably lucky he hadn’t set her on fire in a fit of pique.
She searched for the kitchen first. It was a small alcove off the living room, with open shelves filled with an odd assortment of staples—dried beans, brown rice and something that looked suspiciously like granola filled an assortment of mason jars. She found instant coffee and creamer, a tiny gas stove and a sink that after a moment or two of rusty shrieks gushed out clear mountain water.
She made a quick inventory. He was right, there wasn’t much. Cans of soup, lots of them, thank heavens. Crackers, powdered milk, even powdered eggs. Could someone make a powdered-egg omelet? She had a feeling she was a long ways from her last quarter-pounder and fries.
She found a hand-thrown mug and filled it with the coffee. She’d always hated instant, but that morning, in that mysterious, enchanted little house, it tasted better than any cup made from freshly ground beans she’d ever had.
She took the step up into the living room to tell Crompton just that, only to find him stretched out on the sofa, sound asleep. He’d unbuttoned his shirt, and even from halfway across the room she could feel the heat in his body.
He’d damned well better not spontaneously combust, she thought grimly, staring at him. Apart from the fact that it would be a waste of a gorgeous male, she didn’t want to have to deal with it. Though it seemed as if this particular gorgeous male was already going to waste.
There was a workroom off to the left of the living room, and for once Daniel’s passion for order seemed to rule. Books lined the walls, stacked haphazardly, but the work surfaces were bare and pristine. More Georgette Heyer. And science fiction, hardcovers, paperbacks, even a stack of comics. It was all very strange.
The walls were far from bare. They bore painted murals with strange, mythic images. There was nothing obviously sexual about them, and yet their sensuality seemed to reach out and entwine itself around her loins. How could the man concentrate in a room like this?
It had the same glorious view of the valley below. She opened the window, letting in the fresh cool breeze, and peered out, looking for any sign of habitation. There was none as far as she could tell. Daniel was right, they were remote and safe. At least for now.
It took her a while to find the narrow stairs up into the loft. It was a small room, with a king-size mattress at an angle on the floor. Light flooded in—a greeny, forest light—and the windows were covered with a filmy white cloth that looked like spiderwebs. The dresser was black-laquered Chinese, the rug was a kilim, the bed piled with antique quilts and laced pillows. Who had lived here, and why had they given it up to an ascetic grouch like Daniel Crompton?
When she came back down the stairs she paused, looking at the man sleeping so peacefully. His long black hair had come undone from the strip of material he’d used to tie it back, and it flowed around him. In repose he looked different. She would have thought he’d look younger, more vulnerable, but nothing could be farther from the truth. In sleep he looked every year of the thirty-four she knew him to be, and the elegant features of his handsome face looked intimidating. She moved closer, vaguely wondering how deeply he slept. She could feel the heat emanating from him as she approached.
He’d unbuttoned his shirt, and she could see his smooth, sleekly muscled chest beneath the denim shirt. She reached out a hand, to touch his forehead, to see if she could gauge his temperature, when his eyes flew open to meet hers.
“Look but don’t touch,” he said in an unbearably quiet voice.
She was mesmerized, by the darkness in his eyes, by the stillness in his face.
“Why?” she whispered.
“Because if you touch me, I’ll take you. And I don’t think you’re ready for that.”
The words shocked her into momentary silence. And then she fought back. “You’re really arrogant, you know that, Dr. Crompton?”
He smiled then. A slow, devastatingly sexy smile that would have melted her bones if they weren’t locked stiff with fury. “I know,” he said. “And you’re still not ready.”
Chapter Ten
He couldn’t have meant it. Suzanna leaned against the wooden counter in the tiny kitchen, staring into her mug of instant soup. Daniel Crompton was hardly the type to talk about taking her, like some romance hero bent on forced seduction. He was doing it to mock her.
But for once there had been no mockery in his dark, still eyes. They had been deadly serious, and she’d stumbled back from him, away from his heat, his intensity, away from temptation that was both a threat and a promise.
He’d risen from the overstuffed sofa, stretched, and he’d looked like a different man than the hidebound Dr. Crompton. His muscles moved sinuously beneath his skin, and he looked real, and dangerous, and far too human.
And Suzanna had run. She could hear him moving around in the living room, but she kept still, unwilling to face him for the moment as she concentrated on the watery soup. She was feeling warm herself, not uncomfortably so, and there was a faint tingling in her hands. Probably stress and exhaustion, she told herself. That would explain her idiot attraction to a man like Crompton, as well. Momentary insanity, caused by not enough sleep.
“Did you find something to eat?”
He stood in the doorway, filled it, and she wished she could tell him to button up his shirt again. She couldn’t—the heat from his body filled the small kitchen, bathing her. “There’s not much. What about you?” She was proud of the even tone of her voice.
“I can make my vitamin drink.” He didn’t move into the room, a fact for which she could only be grateful. It was a small kitchen. With him there beside her, it would be unbearably cramped. Dangerously so.
“You need something else. Aren’t you human? Don’t you have any physical needs?”
Wrong question. He just looked at her for a moment, and the temperature in the kitchen shot up another couple of notches. “There should be food in the freezer,” he said. “I stocked it before I left last time, but I don’t usually bother with it.”
“You have a freezer?”
“A gas one. In the shed.”
She managed a jaunty smile, hoping to cut the tension in the room. “Maybe I won’t starve to death after all. The only thing that would make life complete is a bath.”
“To the right of the living room.”
“There’s a bathroom, as well?”
“It’s positively sybaritic.”
She had to wait till he moved from the doorway. She trailed along behind him, through the living room, past a narrow door she hadn’t noticed, then stopped short. “God,” she breathed, “it’s heaven.”
The bathroom was larger than the kitchen. There was a stall shower made of azure tiles, a huge whirlpool tub encased in redwood, a stained-glass skylight letting in filtered rays. “The hot water’s gas-fired, as well. You can sit in the tub for hours.”
“Daniel, I love you,” she muttered, brushing past his hot body. She turned around, a beatific smile on her face. “Who did you buy this place from? It’s the most wonderful house I’ve ever seen in my life.”
“I bought the land from a friend of mine. I own about four hundred acres, he owns the rest. That’s why I figure we’re relatively safe here. The surrounding forest is private land.”
She had a sudden, unnerving thought. “You bought the land?”
“About five years ago.”
“Then how did this house get here?” She didn’t want to hear the answer. It would set all her preconceived notions awry.
“I built it.”
“How did you get workmen out here, plumbers, electricians…?”
“No,” he corrected her. “I built it. Myself.” He was watching her, gauging her reaction. “When it comes right down to it, construction, plumbing and the like is very mathematical. And I’ve always had a certain aptitude for math.”
She just stared at him. She’d fallen in love with this strange, unexpected little house. That it was the creation of a man she already found far too disturbing to her senses, that it reflected his heart and soul and mind, was something she wasn’t ready to accept.
“Enjoy your bath,” he said, turning and leaving her there.
She heard the music as she lay in the tub, the cool, herb-scented water flowing around her. Somewhere in that outer room he had a stereo, and the music filled the place. Another anomaly. She would have thought he’d like free-form modern jazz, something arrhythmic, atonal, entirely intellectual.
Instead, it was the unmistakable sound of Lyle Lovett, singing something plaintive and soulful. Any man who listened to Lyle Lovett couldn’t be all bad.
She didn’t want to come out. She didn’t want to look into his eyes again and see that cool, detached interest. He was far too tempting as it was.
When she emerged from the tub, she’d be calm, matter-of-fact, impervious to her own irrational streak. She’d make them something for dinner, and if things went as scheduled, she’d watch him disappear promptly at 6:00 p.m. She’d have an easier time with him if she didn’t have to look at him, didn’t have to keep her gaze from his thin, surprisingly erotic mouth. Didn’t have to ignore his eyes, the set of his shoulders, the long, long legs and muscled torso.
Together they could figure out what they were going to do next. She certainly couldn’t stay out here indefinitely, even if no one could find them. She’d go crazy.
Except that part of her wanted to drift. To lie in this cool tub of water, to float through this patchwork quilt of a house, to smell the piney air and breathe in the sunshine. She couldn’t rid herself of the notion that she’d come home. And she wasn’t ready to leave it quite yet.
When she finally rose from the tub, her body was still too warm. She combed her wet hair, slathered some cream on her skin and pulled on the clean clothes she’d brought with her. She surveyed her T-shirt with approval. It read If We Can Send One Man to the Moon, Why Can’t We Send Them All? Perhaps Daniel would get the message. She only wished he would.
DANIEL MOVED ONTO the narrow balcony that hung out over the valley, and drank in the cool air. He let his shirt flap around him in the breeze as he leaned forward, gripping the railing. He couldn’t imagine ever being cold again. Oddly enough, he wasn’t particularly uncomfortable. It was a dry kind of heat, burning inside him, filling him with an edgy energy.
Suzanna was wandering around his house, a cup of instant coffee in her hand, a wary expression on her face. He didn’t blame her. She didn’t know what to make of him. She’d decided he had to be kidding when he told her he wanted her, and she’d pulled away from him, keeping her distance, treating it all as a joke.
It didn’t feel like a joke. He wasn’t used to wanting anything as badly as he wanted Suzanna Molloy. Right now it was all he could do to stand out in the afternoon light and concentrate on his erratic powers.
She’d spent an hour in his sybaritic bathroom, and when she’d emerged, fresh-faced, dressed in another defiant T-shirt, looking at him out of wary brown eyes as if he were a polar bear who’d wandered into town, it had taken all his concentration not to grab her.
He didn’t consider for a moment that she might be wary of his freakish new powers. Molloy was made of sterner stuff than that. She was afraid of her own reaction to him. Something which pleased him enormously.
He heard her appear behind him on the narrow balcony. “What are you doing out here?” she asked quietly.
“A little scientific experimentation. I want to see whether I can set anything on fire.”
She moved past him and leaned out over the railing. He allowed himself the luxury of admiring the lush curve of her hips in the faded denim. “Do you think that’s wise?” she said. “I don’t think a forest fire would solve anything.”
“You’re right. But from what I’ve observed so far, the heat is so strong, and so concentrated, that whatever catches on fire simply disintegrates before the blaze has a chance to spread. I want to see if I’m right.”
“And if you’re wrong?”
“Science is a far riskier business than most people realize. If you don’t take chances, you never learn anything. See that tower through the trees? It’s an old metal watchtower, from back in World War Two. It has no earthly use.”
“So you’re going to put it out of its misery?”
“I’m going to try.” He leaned forward, concentrating on the wire structure, trying to remember how he’d managed to detonate the car. He stared, and nothing happened.
“Maybe it only works when you’re invisible,” she suggested after a long wait.
“No. Remember the parking lot outside my condo.”
“What makes you think you’re responsible?”
“An educated guess.” He tried blinking a few times, but nothing happened. His nose itc
hed, and he scrunched it.
There was no sound from that distance. Just yellow-white flames rocketing into the sky where the observation tower had once stood.
“Damn,” Suzanna said softly.
At least he’d been right about one thing—nothing else caught. Within moments the fire was simply a gray plume of smoke, billowing skyward.
She turned to look at him. “Can you do anything besides metal?”
“I don’t know. Pick something.”
She peered over the balcony, then pointed to a clearly dead, huge white pine that lay in the midst of fallen trees. “Try that one.”
The speed of it shocked him. He looked, he blinked, he scrunched, and the tree burst into flames. They watched in tense silence to see whether the fire would spread to the others, fallen timber, but it simply flamed out at the underside of the tree, leaving nothing but ash and charred fragments.
“Pretty neat trick, Dr. Crompton,” Suzanna said in a cool voice. “Got any other little talents?”
He looked at her. She was trying to look blasé, but he could see the worry in her brown eyes behind the wire-rimmed glasses, see the faint anxiety in her soft mouth.
“I don’t know,” he said. “But I’m going to find out.” His eyes narrowed. “You sure you’re feeling all right?”
He knew it was cool out on the balcony. He didn’t feel it, with his elevated body heat, but neither did she. She seemed perfectly comfortable wearing only a T-shirt.
“I’m feeling fine. Why shouldn’t I be?”
“You got dowsed with the slime, as well. I can’t figure out why you haven’t been affected.”
“Lucky me.”
“Do me a favor. Pick an object, stare at it for a moment, blink and scrunch your nose.”
“Why?”
“Indulge me.”
“I feel like something out of ‘Bewitched,”’ she muttered, leaning forward. “That tree down there. To the left of what used to be the observation tower.” She did as he’d ordered, concentrating. Nothing happened.
