Scowling, he rubbed his chest and wandered into the kitchen. Grabbing a cold beer out of the refrigerator brought back strong memories of his A-team. Usually they were living at an Afghan village and alcohol was off-limits. It was one of the few good memories Roan had about getting to Kandahar, to the Special Forces compound, and being able to get a cold beer. The fine sand and grit got in every crack and crevice of a man’s body. He was always chafed raw around his collar and other places. A cold beer washed that crud out of his throat and gave his mouth a clean taste. Tipping it back, he drank deeply, the one concession he gave himself at the end of a tough day of wrangling.
Roan wanted to forget Shiloh was in the house as he rustled up some food from the refrigerator. He wasn’t heartless. Choosing two T-bone steaks, he put them on the wooden cutting board. He was big on salads, bringing out an armful of veggies and placing them on the counter. Wondering if Shiloh enjoyed them, he made more than usual. Grabbing flour and other ingredients, he whipped up some biscuits. Unsure of when she might wake up, if at all, Roan went ahead and made dinner for himself. He would cook up her steak later, if she wanted it.
Going to the living room, he turned on the television and selected a news station. That’s all he wanted was the news. He’d gotten a newspaper earlier and would read it as he ate. This was his normal nightly schedule. Nothing fancy. Just rest.
Roan half turned, sensing movement before he saw her. It was Shiloh coming out of her room, rubbing her drowsy eyes, her hair tangled around her shoulders. She was barefoot. Smiling to himself, Roan thought she looked like a child, not the woman she was. Yawning, she suddenly halted when she became aware Roan was watching her.
“Oh . . .”
“Feel better?” he asked, turning back and heading for the kitchen.
Shiloh felt drugged. The shock of seeing how large and broad-shouldered Roan was with that tight-fitting black T-shirt yanked her awake. She saw his gray eyes narrow upon her like a predator stalking his quarry. Unsure of whether to feel alarmed or not, her lower body sizzled instantly beneath his sweeping gaze. “I don’t know yet,” she admitted thickly, walking into the living room. The wood felt warm beneath her bare feet. Late western sunlight slanted in a set of windows on that side of the house, glinting and showing the gold and red in the wood. Her heart was beating a little quicker.
“Feel up to eating something?” Roan asked, glancing her way as she came and stood at the edge of the kitchen, looking unsure.
“I could eat.” Shiloh sniffed the air. “Something sure smells good. What are you baking, Roan?”
“Biscuits.”
“A man who cooks. I like that. Do all cowboys know their way around a kitchen?”
The corner of his mouth curved faintly. “It was a learn-or-starve situation.”
She chuckled, pushing the hair away from her face and across her shoulders. Roan Taggart didn’t look like a cowboy right now. Her imagination ran wild. Perhaps a dark, sexy biker on his black Harley hog. Or a mixed martial arts fighter. Or . . . in her bed. Wow . . . her drowsy brain was really stuck on sex, wasn’t it? “You said I had to cook for myself.”
Hitching one shoulder, Roan replied, “I’ll let you off the hook tonight. You’ve had a long flight and you looked like you were going to keel over from exhaustion at the airport. We’re having T-bone steaks, corn, biscuits, and a salad. Sound edible to you?”
Her heart warmed. His voice was low and husky, but she saw a glint in his gray eyes, maybe amusement. Maybe he felt sorry for her? Shiloh wasn’t sure. “It sounds wonderful. Thank you. Is there anything I can do to help?”
“You could set the table.” He pointed up to the cabinets nearby. “Dishes in there and silverware down here.” It felt strange to have a woman underfoot. Roan liked a woman in his bed. But in his house? When Shiloh came close, he could smell her feminine scent. His body stirred. Again. Dragging in a deep breath, Roan was unhappy with himself. Whatever door that was open between them remained that way. He’d always been able to shut out emotions when necessary because his survival was at stake. The only danger here was his damned body beginning to ache for hers. Shiloh wasn’t doing anything to cultivate that kind of a reaction from him. Roan tried to ignore her puttering around the kitchen barefoot. Worse, the sway of her hips got him. Big-time. She could wear sackcloth and he’d still see those hips of hers moving. She was shapely in all the right places and his hands practically itched to curve around her.
“What time did you come home?” Shiloh asked, putting the two white ceramic plates on the square cedar table.
Roan looked up at the stove clock. “About an hour ago.”
“I didn’t hear you come in.”
“You won’t.”
She hesitated at the drawer next to the stove where he was cooking the T-bone steaks. “Because you were in black ops?”
Frowning, Roan cut her a quick glance. “Did Maud tell you I was in Special Forces?”
“Yes.” Shiloh carried the flatware over to the table, placing it. “In my mind’s eye I could see you as an operator. Or”—she smiled a little—“maybe a biker on a big Harley motorcycle, or a mixed martial arts fighter.”
His flesh riffled listening to her smoky voice. “You’ve got quite an imagination.” He could envision several scenarios with her in bed with him, too. But he didn’t think she’d appreciate him being verbal about his fantasies that involved her.
“Yep, that’s me. When I see a person, I fantasize who they might be beneath the clothes they’re presently wearing. Faces tell me so much.”
Roan checked on the biscuits. They’d be crispy about the time the medium-rare steaks would be ready. “Have you always done that?” His curiosity about her was new to him. Maybe if he knew Shiloh better, she wouldn’t be such a damned magnetic draw for him. Maybe she had a dark side, was a bitch in disguise . . . anything to make her less appealing to him. However, looking at her face, Roan couldn’t see anything but honesty in her drowsy expression. He knew body language as well as breathing. Body language interpretation had saved his life too many times to count. Shiloh was open toward him. She wasn’t putting her arms across her chest, her eyes weren’t moving rapidly, as if looking for someone to jump them. Her stride was relaxed, not tense or shorter than normal. All those things served to tell Roan about a person’s state. She also candidly met his gaze and held it.
“What? Read faces?” She smiled sleepily and discovered the salt and pepper shakers in a nearby spice rack.
“Yes.”
“My Dad did it. I remember him teaching me about people, their expressions, and their body movement from the time I was six until he died. He used to take me to Central Park and we’d sit on a bench and he’d ask me what I saw in a face as someone jogged by or walked their dog past us.” Shiloh halted at the edge of the kitchen, thinking how much Roan filled it with his powerful, muscular presence. The man was big. His hands were big. So were his feet. Shoulders so broad. And a chest that reminded her of someone who swam a great deal; maybe a diver, her imagination whispered.
“Your father was teaching you body language?”
“Yes. He was a jet fighter pilot in the Air Force, but I think he always had a love of people and what made them tick the way they did. A curiosity. You’d see it in the characters he wrote so richly about in his books.”
“What did he write?” Roan put on an oven mitt and drew out the tray of biscuits. He set it on a trivet next to the stove and pulled down a straw basket. Without a word, Shiloh came over and quickly took a spatula and transferred the golden-brown biscuits to the basket. Roan smiled a little to himself. She was a team person. That was another box ticked off in his world of people. He’d always been a team player in the A-team. Everyone relied on everyone else. They all had specialties and, as a group, they were powerful. Shiloh took the biscuits over to the table and then went to the fridge and found the butter.
“My dad wrote military thrillers. His first book went number one on the New York Times Best
Seller list.”
“And how many did he write before he passed?” Roan pointed toward the plates on the table. Shiloh must have read his mind and understood what he wanted without even saying it. Which shook him. She brought the plates over so he could put a sizzling steak on each one of them. It wasn’t lost on Roan that she’d accurately pieced together what he wanted. That was pretty amazing to him.
Taking the two plates, Shiloh set them on the table. “He wrote four books. Every one a best-seller.”
He could hear the pride and the sadness in her voice. And when he looked into her eyes, Roan saw how much Shiloh still missed her father.
Turning off the stove, he removed the skillet from the burner. “When did you start writing?”
Shiloh was shocked when Roan came over and pulled out the chair for her to sit on. That was right: He was old-fashioned. But her heart skittered with pleasure over his thoughtfulness. Now, he looked like a gallant knight to her, scarred, hardened by many battles, seeing too much and yet surviving.
“I started writing when I was six, believe it or not. My Dad used to have me read what I wrote to him. He always praised me and that’s probably why I kept at it.” She unfolded the white linen napkin and spread it across her lap. Everything looked so good on the table and she was salivating, hungry for the first time in a long time.
“Did you get published because of your father’s work?” Roan wondered, spooning heaps of corn onto his plate.
“No. That doesn’t happen in publishing,” she said, taking the bowl from him. Their fingers met, warmth skating up into her hand. Shiloh watched as he lobbed tablespoons of butter onto the steaming corn. Did the man worry about cholesterol? Apparently not. Roan was in fit, athletic condition. It was usually those who were overweight, not getting exercise, and had a genetic predisposition, who had to worry, instead. “I published at eighteen, which is very young, really.”
“Your father’s publisher?”
“No, they weren’t interested in women’s romance. I went to another publisher who was.”
“And did you mimic your father’s success?” He saw pink come to her cheeks.
“Yes, I did. My first book was a runaway best-seller. Sure surprised me. Surprised the publisher, but believe me, we were both happy about it.”
“And how many books have you got in print?” Roan watched the way her mouth moved as she chewed a small piece of the steak. It sent a pang of need through his lower body.
“I’m twenty-nine now, and I’ve been writing two books a year.” Until the last six months. Shiloh’s stomach tightened. She’d hit a dry spell. A writer’s block. And she was too ashamed to confide it to Roan, even though he seemed sincerely interested in her career. Just having him sitting next to her, the breadth of his shoulders, that craggy profile, those glittering, intelligent gray eyes, excited her as no man ever had. A couple of recently dried strands of Roan’s dark brown hair dipped over his furrowed brow. He ate heartily, the expression on his face one of a man enjoying everything he put into his mouth. Shiloh tried not to stare at his mouth.
Everything about him shouted to her that he was a man in charge. A leader. Not a follower.
“That’s impressive. I couldn’t write one book, much less two a year.” Roan wasn’t going to denigrate her writing romances. He could see she loved what she did. Following in her father’s footsteps, but still being original and an individual. He finished off his steak in no time. The basket of biscuits went pretty quickly too. The type of hard, physical work he did daily, he tucked away a good five to ten thousand calories a day to make it happen.
“I think,” Shiloh said, “it’s in your genes. I hear the argument that writers are made or they’re born with the skill. And I really feel at this point, it’s an inner thing, a genetic ability. I know my father passed it on to me.”
“But there are people who have no writers in a family and they get published.”
“Right,” Shiloh agreed, opening the warm biscuit, inhaling the odor of it and slathering it with butter. “I call it the storytelling gene. People who love to tell stories are frequently writers. And if they don’t publish, then you often find them in many different careers, but they still like to tell a story.” She looked over at him, her eyes warm. “Your face has a story to tell.”
Mouth quirking, Roan growled, “It’s a top-secret face, Darlin’.”
Heat collected in her lower body as he rasped out the endearment between his lips, although Shiloh thought it was probably done with tongue in cheek. She found herself wishing the endearment had been said with affection. “We all carry secrets,” Shiloh said. “There isn’t a person on this earth who doesn’t.”
Nodding, Roan wiped his mouth with the napkin. “On that, we can agree.” He rose and picked up the plates. “You going to eat your salad?”
“No. I’m stuffed. Thanks. Would you like me to wash the dishes? Help out in some way?”
“You can start carrying your share of the load around here tomorrow,” he said, taking them to the sink.
He had a nice butt. Everything about Roan Taggart was sexy, Shiloh decided, defeated by her hungry body. His walk was so damned confident. The word indomitable came to mind. Shiloh couldn’t imagine anyone standing in his way.
“Dessert?” he asked, turning toward her after he washed off the dishes and put them into the dishwasher.
“What do you have?”
He grinned sourly. Shiloh had perked up at the question and Roan bet she was probably a sweet eater. “I bought a coconut cream pie from the grocery store the other day. Interested?”
“Not right now. Maybe later?”
Shrugging, Roan brought the pie out of the fridge. “Do what you want.”
Shiloh got up and made them coffee. “Would you like a cup, Roan?” She liked calling him by his first name. She saw a silver glint in his eyes when his name had rolled off her tongue. It sent her heart skittering. The look he gave her made her burn. Swallowing against a dry throat, Shiloh lowered her lashes. Roan Taggart wanted her. It was a raw, hungry look. Clasping her hands, she didn’t feel threatened by him. Just . . . desired. How long had it been since she was honestly attracted to a man? Years. Too many of them.
“Pour me some, thanks.” He took his plate of pie to the table. Whether Roan wanted to admit it or not, Shiloh was easy to be around. She wasn’t a pest. She didn’t get underfoot. She wasn’t a nonstop talker, which drove him absolutely nuts. She listened. Asked intelligent questions. And she was a team player. Where she saw an opportunity to help out, she went for it. He thanked her as she set the steaming mug in front of him. Roan wasn’t about to tell her she was dessert to him. It was a good thing Shiloh couldn’t read minds.
Chapter Four
Roan snapped awake. It took a millisecond for him to key his hearing. Moonlight filtered weakly through the semi-opaque curtains pulled across both windows. His six senses were online and he quietly moved out of bed. He wore only a pair of dark blue cotton pajama bottoms, his upper body naked. Twisting the doorknob, he quietly opened the door. Slipping like a shadow into the darkened hall, he sensed someone moving around out in the kitchen. Shiloh? He glanced at the watch on his wrist. Three A.M.
Halting in the living room, he saw Shiloh in the kitchen, putting a copper teakettle on the stove. Her hair was unruly and she was wearing pale pink silky pajama bottoms and a pink cotton tee that outlined her breasts to perfection. Hell. She looked sleepy, hair tangled, and wasn’t exactly graceful with her movements.
The realization that she could not really take care of herself came across strongly to Roan. It wasn’t that Shiloh was weak or stupid. And maybe because of his black ops training, he was at the other end of the spectrum; too alert and having that situational awareness that could help save his life. She was obviously sleepy, rubbing her eyes, yawning. There wasn’t anything to dislike about her and Roan’s mouth flexed downward and thinned. Shiloh wasn’t helpless, just not alert to her surroundings. Maybe he could help her open
up her awareness a little more since she was being stalked. It could save her life someday.
“Shiloh?”
Shiloh gasped, whirling around. The cup she had in her hand dropped. It shattered on the floor around her feet. Her eyes widened enormously as she saw the darkened shadow of a man in the living room. A scream nearly lurched out of her mouth. Heart thudding like a freight train in her breast, she saw him emerge from the shadows. And then her lower body got in the mix. Roan Taggart was so damned male.
“Oh . . .” she whispered, “you scared me . . .” and she crouched down to begin picking up the bits of the broken ceramic cup.
Roan scowled and halted at the edge of the kitchen. He saw her hands shaking as she tried to pick up the pieces. One shard had already sliced her finger, red blood oozing out and dripping on the floor. “Stop,” he ordered her.
Lifting her head, Shiloh felt the full impact of his protectiveness in that moment. Her finger smarted because she’d accidentally cut it. “What?”
“Don’t move. And stop trying to pick up the pieces. Let me get a dustpan and broom. You’re barefoot and if you move at all, you’re going to cut the soles of your feet.” Roan turned and walked to the closet on the other side of the door.
Gulping, her sleep torn from her, Shiloh watched the play of muscles in his long, broad back. The man was in incredible condition. When Roan turned around, her gaze absorbed his darkly haired chest, its powerful expanse. Mouth going dry, she followed that thin, dark line of hair down through his rock-hard abs until it disappeared into the waistline of his pajamas. Shiloh remained where she was, sticking her bleeding finger into her mouth. The metallic, salty taste made her wrinkle her nose. She watched as Roan quickly swept around her, placed the shards into the dustpan, and then transferred them to a large wastebasket at the end of the kitchen counter.
“Okay,” he growled, “why don’t you walk out of the kitchen? I need to look at your hand.” Roan dumped the dustpan contents into a nearby trash can and put the items away. Turning, he saw Shiloh had gone over to the sink, running cold water and then soaping down the cut on her finger. She had a mind of her own. Not surprising. Smiling a little to himself, he ambled into the kitchen and moved close enough to where she was washing her hand to inspect the cut.
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