Serenity Harbor
Page 10
Who had time for a wife or a girlfriend? He had been too busy trying to prove he wasn’t the punk self-taught hacker who had lied his way into MIT. “None. I have enough complications in my life right now, suddenly being forced to become guardian of a younger brother I didn’t know about a month ago. I can promise there’s no wife or girlfriend waiting to come creeping out of the woodwork, too.”
“That’s something, at least.” She gave a smile he wanted to think held a shadow of regret. “My point is, a year ago a great-looking single guy like you moving in would have been the most exciting thing to happen around here in forever. Trust me. I would have camped out on your doorstep until you noticed me. But I’m not the same woman I was then. My priorities have changed.”
“Gabi.”
“Exactly. I need to focus all my energies and resources on the adoption—and you’re helping me do that by paying me an exorbitant amount to hang around with your brother.”
“Glad I could help,” he said drily. He was aware of a thick regret that circumstances hadn’t been different between them. What if he had moved here last summer, as Ben had wanted him to—before Milo burst into his life, before she left for her adventure in South America and found a child who needed her?
I would have been on you so fast your head would spin. He had a feeling that particular thought would haunt his dreams for weeks.
She glanced at the clock. “Oh. It’s late. I should probably go.”
She slid her chair away from the table and rose, and he followed suit.
“I’ll walk you out,” he said.
“I would tell you it’s not necessary—that I’ve lived in Haven Point my whole life and it’s perfectly safe—but I’m fairly certain you would only argue with me and walk me out anyway.”
He couldn’t help smiling, completely charmed by her. “That’s me. Boring and predictable.”
She made a low, rumbly sound in the back of her throat but didn’t comment. Instead, she grabbed a slouchy woven bag from the counter and headed for the door.
When Bowie followed her outside, he saw the rain clouds of earlier in the day had blown away, leaving the night air cool and sweet and the sky a vivid scatter of stars.
“Wow. Beautiful night,” she said. “You’ve sure got a view here.”
“I’m convinced there aren’t very many houses in Haven Point that don’t have a view, either of the mountains or the water.”
“True enough. What was your house in Silicon Valley like?”
He pictured the small condo he still owned in San Jose. When he paid cash for it after his first big dividend check at Caine Tech, he had felt completely empowered. This was his and no one could take it away. Nobody could wake him in the middle of the night saying it was time to move on.
His.
The condo had represented everything to him—safety, security, roots. All the impossible things he had craved as a child.
“Nothing special,” he answered, which was a bald-faced lie. “A town house with three bedrooms and a little backyard that was barely big enough for a grill and a patio table.”
He could have purchased something far more grand after their risky start-up took off in a huge way none of them had expected, but he hadn’t been able to bring himself to part with the first thing he had ever owned outright.
He wasn’t sure he would ever be able to sell the condo and tried to justify that reluctance by telling himself owning a place in San Jose made perfect sense when Caine Tech still had significant facilities there.
“It was just right for a bachelor,” he went on. “I didn’t have to mow the grass or worry about maintenance.”
“There are a couple of new condo developments here in town and several more in Shelter Springs. I know, because I was looking around a little last summer before I took off. If you enjoyed the condo life in California, why not move into one of those after you came out to Lake Haven?”
“That was the plan,” he admitted. “I was checking out a few possibilities with my real estate agent when she had to stop here to drop something off for an open house the next day. Since the house was empty, she asked if I wanted to take a look around instead of waiting in the car.”
She snorted, reinforcing his vague suspicion that he’d been conned. He had a feeling his agent had dropped by the house only because she fully expected him to fall in love with it.
“Let me guess.” A thread of amusement curled through her voice. “Roxy Nash was your real estate agent.”
“Yeah. Do you know her?”
“In case it’s escaped your notice, Haven Point is a small town, Bowie. Everybody knows everybody. Roxy is sort of a friend of mine, and she’s excellent at her job.”
“One look at this view and I didn’t see any point in looking elsewhere.”
“Like I said. She’s excellent at her job.”
He didn’t care and figured she deserved props for doing her job well and understanding what her client needed even if it hadn’t necessarily been what he thought he wanted. “It worked out. I love the house—and it turned out to be for the best, since I’m not sure a condo situation would have worked out after Milo came into the picture.”
“Good point. It’s nice you have all this space for him to run. Now you just need to add a swingset for him. And a dog.”
“A dog.”
She laughed. “You know you’re going to have to eventually. He loves them too much. You might as well surrender to the inevitable.”
She didn’t give him time to respond. “I really do need to go. The dinner party should be wrapping up by now. It ought to be safe for me to go home—for tonight, anyway, until my mom tries to set me up with her friend’s cousin’s son from Bozeman.”
“If you really want to avoid your mother’s matchmaking, you could always stay here while you’re in town.”
The words spilled out of nowhere, and he had to wonder just how long his subconscious had been mulling over that particular idea.
While he might have been a little surprised by them, she looked completely gob-smacked.
“Here?”
Maybe his subconscious was smarter than he gave it credit. The more he thought about it, the more he loved the idea. “Sure. I’ve got plenty of extra bedrooms, and that way I wouldn’t have to worry about keeping you after hours when I have to stay late on a project.”
“You want me to move in with you,” she said, her voice curiously flat.
“Why not? It would only be for a few weeks while you’re in town and would be a huge help to me. I’ll even add to the Adopt Gabi fund by paying you double our agreed-upon rate, since you’ll basically be on call twenty-four hours a day.”
There. That was a subtle way to help her meet her Adopt Gabi goal while at the same time giving himself a little breathing room on nights like tonight when he had to work late.
“Double,” she repeated. In the moonlight, her eyes looked huge, shocked.
“Look at it this way, if you’re not staying with your mom and stepfather, you won’t have to worry about your mom’s matchmaking while you’re home. Out of sight, out of mind, right?”
She stared at him for a long moment, and then she burst into laughter that had an edge of hysteria.
“You are delusional, Bowie Callahan,” she said when she caught her breath. “What do you think will happen if I move in with the most eligible bachelor in Haven Point? My mother will think she just won the matchmaking lottery.”
“You can explain it’s merely a business arrangement.”
“Oh, I can explain until I’m blue in the face. Remember what I said earlier? She thinks she knows me and what I want. She can’t see me as anything but silly, flirty, man-hungry Katrina. If I move in here for the few weeks I’ll be in town, somehow Charlene will think I engineered the whole thing to be closer t
o you. I have a feeling she already believes our encounter at the grocery store that first day was deliberate on my part, just a way of meeting the sexy new guy in town.”
He could only wish—both that he were the slightest bit sexy and that she might want to arrange things to meet him.
“So what? Let her think what she wants. You and I will both know there’s nothing between us, and that’s the only thing that matters, isn’t it?”
He could tell she was wavering.
“We could always prove it.”
“What did you have in mind?” she asked, eyes suddenly wary in the moonlight.
The same thing that had been on his mind since he walked into his house and found her sleeping on the sofa.
Kissing her.
He ached to taste her soft mouth, to pull her close and run his fingers through that silky hair. It probably wouldn’t prove a damn thing except that he was stupid and crazy and reckless, but he had resisted her as long as humanly possible.
“Bowie?”
“This,” he finally said. Tossing the rest of his common sense to the wind, he edged forward, slid a hand behind her head and lowered his mouth to hers.
She froze for a moment, her breath caught between them, long enough for him to be certain he had just made a terrible miscalculation. Then her mouth softened under his and she pressed that slender, luscious body against him and returned the kiss.
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE ONLY THING they were proving by this kiss was that they were both out of their freaking minds.
Katrina knew it even as she kissed Bowie, as his hard mouth on hers tangled the breath in her lungs and scattered her thoughts like October leaves in a hard wind.
They should not be doing this. It would now be that much harder not to kiss him again. How would she possibly be able to live in his house and share the same space when she was afraid she would constantly be remembering the delicious way he smelled, masculine and earthy and outdoorsy?
Or that he tasted even better, like chocolate cake and heaven?
She was vaguely aware of the slow, sluggish churn of her blood, the heady excitement, the butterflies twirling in her stomach. She wanted to stand here all night and savor every second—or, better still, to tug him over to those chaise lounges, where they could both really prove there was nothing between them.
All night long, if that was what it took.
She swallowed a moan. No. That was the sort of thing the old Katrina would do, let her decisions be ruled by something—okay, someone—she wanted in the moment.
She was trying to become more than that, a woman of substance and strength and determination.
The only thing she needed to prove here was that she had the strength to walk away from something she wanted with every single aching beat of her heart.
It required every ounce of strength inside her to slide her mouth away from his and suck in a greedy breath. That gave her a little more clarity and strengthened her resolve enough that she could lower her hands from around his neck—oh, he smelled so good—and step back a pace.
“Okay. There,” she said, her voice raspy in the quiet night. “Now we both have that out of our systems.”
“Do we?” he murmured. His eyes were heavy-lidded, aroused, and the corner of his mouth quirked up into a sexy half smile that made her want to grab his shirtfront, yank him toward her and explore that hard, delicious mouth again.
She drew in a shaky breath, reminding herself of all the reasons why kissing him was disastrous. “Yes. Like you said, there’s nothing between us. We have a business arrangement, one that has worked out well for both of us up to now. You want me to continue helping you with Milo, and I need the outrageous amount of money you’re willing to pay me. Let’s not complicate things unnecessarily.”
She tried to sound casual, unaffected, though it was a serious struggle when she felt as if she had just been kicked in the head—when her entire being wanted nothing more than to stretch and purr like a cat in a sunbeam and keep on kissing him forever.
Her words had the intended effect. As he gazed at her, she could almost see his control click back into place, inch by slow inch. After a long, charged moment, he nodded. “Sound advice. Neither of us needs unnecessary complications.”
“Right?!” Her hands shook a little as she tucked her hair behind her ear, but she hoped it was too dark for him to notice. “You want me to stay here. I get that. It’s not a bad idea, and I can’t say I want to turn down an increase in salary. I’ll do it, but only if we both agree there won’t be more of this kind of nonsense.”
He arched an eyebrow, eyes still blazing with heat and hunger. “Define nonsense.”
How about kissing me until I can’t think straight, throwing all my plans and intentions into Lake Haven while you do?
She released a shaky breath. “I’ll leave that to your imagination.”
“Thanks for that, at least,” he said.
He spoke in such a deadpan voice, it took her a moment to realize he was making a joke.
The last few moments left her disoriented, as if she had fallen asleep in one location and awakened somewhere completely different. He had a subtle, sly sense of humor—a fairly acute one, by all indications. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know that. Somehow it seemed easier to think of him as the serious—albeit gorgeous—one-dimensional computer geek.
She liked him. It was a rather surprising discovery. He was devoted to his brother, he was passionate about his work, he was clever and funny.
She was aware of the vague, unsettling sensation that something significant had shifted and her life would never be the same. As soon as it registered, Katrina pushed the strange feeling away.
It was just a kiss, for heaven’s sake, no different from all the others she had known.
The assurance rang hollow, somehow. She sensed this man saw her as no one else did, that he could devastate her in ways she hadn’t begun to imagine.
“I really do need to go,” she said. That was the absolute truth. She needed to get away from him, where she could breathe and think again. So what was stopping her? Only her own inaction. With a deep breath, she forced herself to slide into her car.
“Good night.”
He leaned into the vehicle, one hand on the frame, the other on the door. “Thank you again for helping me out tonight with Milo.”
“You’re welcome.”
“So you’ll stay?”
She was so stupid to agree to this, given these fragile new feelings bursting to life. “Yes. I’ll stay. I’ll bring my things with me tomorrow morning.”
He must have sensed her conflicted feelings. He leaned in, his eyes serious and intent. “You don’t have to worry about a repeat of what just happened. You’re saving my ass, helping me out with Milo until the autism specialist can arrive. I know what a huge favor you’re doing me and that it means you won’t be able to spend as much time as you intended with your family. Believe me, I fully understand what’s at stake, and I won’t jeopardize that again. I would be stupid to screw things up between us simply because I’m attracted to you.”
“Good night, Bowie,” she said, then pulled away, wondering why his firm assurance left her feeling vaguely depressed.
By the time she made the ten-minute drive between Serenity Harbor and her childhood home, her heartbeat had almost returned to its normal rhythm and the butterflies in her stomach had quieted down for the night.
Her thoughts continued to race, though, after she pulled into the driveway and turned off the engine.
That kiss.
When she closed her eyes, she relived every heavenly moment of it. Who would have guessed that a computer geek would be so tightly muscled or that he would know just how to kiss a woman to make her feel like she was some kind of priceless gift?
I would be stupid to screw things up between us simply because I’m attracted to you.
His words rang through her head again, and she had to close her eyes. She didn’t want to know he shared this low hum of awareness that seemed to sizzle through her veins whenever they were together. Now that she knew, how on earth was she going to focus on her job, on taking care of Milo and keeping focused on her goal of adopting Gabi and making a new life for her child?
It would be so much like the same old Katrina to throw away everything important to her because she was weak. She wasn’t proud of her track record when it came to men. When she looked back now, she was mostly embarrassed that she had dated so many different guys and typically lost interest after a month or so.
Contrary to what some of the old biddies in town might think, she wasn’t promiscuous. Yes, she liked to flirt and have fun, to tease and flatter a guy, but that was about as far as it went, for the most part.
She had kissed more than a few, but she had slept with only three guys—her first boyfriend in high school, her college boyfriend whom she had dated for a year, the standing record, and then stupid Carter Ross.
After giving it considerable thought these last eight months when she had been focused on everything but having a man in her life, she thought she finally understood why she thrived on the attention.
When a guy was smiling at her—totally focused on her—she didn’t feel stupid, weird, wrong.
That was just one of the repercussions of the epilepsy she had suffered as a kid, that constant awareness that she was different, that at any moment she could totally lose it and have another stupid seizure.
Limbs thrashing, teeth grinding, head flung back, out of control.
Having an overprotective mother hadn’t helped her fit in at all. Charlene hadn’t allowed Katrina to play sports or even go out on the lake with other kids. She hadn’t been allowed to go to sleepovers either—not that many of the kids’ parents wanted her.