She faltered a little, just a tiny stiffening, but he felt the sudden tension and ice crackled through him.
He had forgotten. For one brief, amazing moment, he had completely forgotten the vast gulf between them.
He jerked away, his breathing ragged and his heart pulsing in his chest like the first time he’d jumped from a plane in Airborne School.
“You…didn’t have to stop.”
She sounded breathless, and she looked absolutely delectable—her lips slightly swollen, her cheeks flushed, her eyes dazed. He was almost positive she had been just as into the kiss as he had been.
It was the almost there that slayed him.
What if she hadn’t been? What if she had only been playing along to protect his feelings, so he didn’t feel like an ass for kissing her? They were friends, of a sort. She knew more about him than his family by now.
He knew she had a much softer heart than she let on—maybe she didn’t want to hurt his feelings by showing her revulsion.
He grabbed his shirt off the chair in the entryway and shoved his stump through the sleeve, out of sight. He was aghast at his sudden urge to plow his fist through the walls they had just scraped.
He mustered as much calm as he could. “We both know that was a mistake.”
“Do we?”
She seemed genuinely confused. How could she act all innocent, as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened, as if the world hadn’t suddenly shifted, as if she could see nothing wrong in the kiss?
“For the next few weeks, we’re obligated by the court system to work together. How will we do that when things are funky between us?”
“Why would things be funky over a simple kiss?”
It hadn’t been simple. To him, the kiss had been magical. Hearts and flowers and choirs of angels singing. Okay, they were naughty angels, yeah, singing about tangled bodies and slick skin and losing himself inside her, but singing nonetheless.
He wasn’t about to admit that to her, not when she was acting as if it meant nothing. A simple kiss. Huh. “Don’t worry. It won’t happen again. My stump and
I won’t disgust you anymore.”
“Who says you disgust me?”
“Your body language did. Come on, Gen. Don’t pretend. I felt how you flinched away when I accidentally touched you.”
Her color rose a little higher. “You’re imagining things.”
“Am I? Go ahead. Touch it.” He unpinned his sleeve and shoved the cuff up, extending his arm as far as it would go.
“This is stupid.”
She looked at him and at his arm, the puckered edge, the scars. He saw something in her eyes, something deep and troubled. Oddly, it didn’t look like disgust. After a pause when she made no move forward, he yanked the sleeve down again and shrugged into his coat.
“Yeah. It is stupid,” he said quietly. “So was kissing you. It won’t happen again.”
She opened her mouth to respond, but he cut her off. “Come on, Tucker.”
The dog rose, stretching his hind legs first and then his front before he padded sleepily over to Dylan.
“Wait. You don’t have to leave.”
He gave her a long, solemn look. “Your wallpaper is down. You should be all ready to paint now.”
She chewed her lip. “Dylan—”
“Good night, Gen. See you tomorrow.”
After a long pause she sighed, still looking troubled.
“Thank you for your help. You saved me a great deal of time and energy.”
He nodded, whistled to his dog and headed for the door.
That had to rank among the strangest hours of her life. Gen stood at the window watching Dylan’s battered old pickup drive away through the snow that had begun to flutter down, coating the roadway with a thin layer that reflected white in his headlights.
She thought of working beside him as they removed the wallpaper, of that strangely sweet mood, tenderness and affection and that sexual awareness that had swirled around them like the steam.
And then that kiss.
Everything inside her shivered at the memory of his mouth on hers, firm and demanding, of the scent of him, masculine and outdoorsy. In all her twenty-six years, no kiss had ever stirred her like that.
As usual, she had ruined everything, startled by the unexpected feel of his unnaturally smooth arm against her back where she had expected another hand.
He thought she had been repelled. She didn’t know how to tell him she hadn’t found anything disgusting, only different. If he had given her another minute or two, she would have touched him when he’d demanded it. She hadn’t been able to find the nerve, not with him watching her so intently. She had been too busy being overwhelmed with compassion and sorrow for all he had endured.
She closed her eyes, tasting him on her lips again, sweet and sexy. She wanted to savor the moment, especially given his determination that it had been a mistake that wouldn’t happen again.
Why would he want to kiss her again? What could she possibly have to interest a man like Dylan? He thought her some kind of empty-headed party girl who only cared about fashion and design.
She sighed and began cleaning up the mess left in the dining room. Shredded paper, sticky with wallpaper paste, covered the floor in piles.
Remodeling a house was sloppy and dirty and hard. Kind of like her life felt right now.
once agaIn, Grandma Pearl’s annoying Hallelujah doorbell rang just as she was giving her hair a final brush. Thus far, she hadn’t had a single visitor worthy of
such a gleeful announcement. She might have been happy to see Dylan the night before but by the time he left, she certainly wasn’t singing the man’s praises.
Luck still wasn’t with her. She opened the door with the security chain in place and saw only a faux-fur coat so authentic-looking she sometimes wondered if it was real.
She wanted to close the door again, lock it tight and sneak out the back. Too bad she instantly saw a few obvious problems with that. For one thing, she wouldn’t be able to back out her BMW without smashing her mother’s Mercedes SUV in the driveway. For another, eventually Laura would find her, and she was quite sure she wouldn’t like dealing with the consequences.
After fumbling with the chain with fingers that felt graceless and awkward, she pulled open the door. “Mother. Here you are again, bright and early.”
“I know. Crazy, isn’t it? I decided on a whim last night to drive into Denver to finish some last-minute Christmas shopping. When your father and I were in Switzerland in August, I bought a really lovely sweater for my friend Annamaria—you know, that nice tennis pro I’ve been working with lately. But she told me last month she’s expecting a baby. Can you believe that? I certainly can’t give her a size-four sweater now, when she won’t be able to wear it for a whole year.”
“That is a quandary.”
“I’ve shopped in every store in Hope’s Crossing without finding anything I think she would like, but I’m sure I’ll be able to pick something up in Denver.”
“Well, good luck.”
Her mother pushed her way into the house and pulled off her leather driving gloves. “I thought perhaps you could come with me, darling. We haven’t spent nearly enough time together since you’ve been home from Paris. Wouldn’t it be fun to have lunch at the Brown Palace and walk through our favorite shops?”
Laura gave her a strangely tentative smile. She seemed almost…desperate for Genevieve to go with her. “Oh, I can’t. I have to work at the center today. I wish you had called before driving over here,” she said, surprised that she meant the words and that she actually felt a little regret at having to refuse.
Her mother pursed her lips. “Again? Didn’t you work several days last week?”
Gen fought back a sigh. Despite having a workaholic husband, Laura seemed to think the rest of the world existed just to fill her own leisure hours. She couldn’t always have been this way. The Beaumonts were not wealthy when she was little, only for the
past twenty years or so.
“I really am sorry, Mother, but I have to finish a hundred community-service hours by January. I’ve completed sixteen, which still leaves me eighty-four to go. I’m probably going to have to go every day until Christmas.”
“It’s ridiculous. That’s what it is! I don’t understand how your father could let this happen. He said he would fix it. He talked to the judge! I thought everything was settled. You did absolutely nothing wrong. I don’t understand how you can let yourself become a virtual slave to that…that wounded-soldier outfit.”
“I’m not a slave. And Father did talk to the judge. While he couldn’t reduce my time, I did have the option to go somewhere else for the rest of my hours. I chose not to because I have committed to A Warrior’s Hope and right now they need me.”
She doubted her mother would understand that particular concept.
“You could call in sick. Surely they won’t make you come in to work if you’re under the weather.”
“True, but I’m not under the weather,” she pointed out. “You could tell them you are,” her mother persisted.
“Everyone deserves a little holiday. I was so looking forward to having a day of shopping, just the two of us. Girls’ day in the city. It’s just what we both need.”
Even if she didn’t have to go to the recreation center that day, she couldn’t have spared the time to shop with money she didn’t have in Denver. Not when she had this horrible house hanging around her neck like a hideous scarf.
“I can’t, Mother. They’re expecting me today at A Warrior’s Hope. We have new guests arriving, which is apparently a stressful time, and I’m in charge of decorating for the welcome reception.”
Anticipating the task ahead of her after Charlotte asked her Saturday, Gen had even bought some supplies the day before around town and gathered more from nature. She couldn’t wait to see how they turned out. She didn’t mind the decorating part of things, but she was more than a little nervous about meeting a roomful of wounded veterans and their families. Would they all be bitter and angry like Dylan? Anxiety fluttered through her.
“Come on, darling. Someone else could do that for you,” Laura pressed. “We haven’t had a moment together since you arrived. I’m anxious to catch up and find out about all those French men you’ve been dating.”
She didn’t have much to tell in that direction. She had dated a few. While she had inevitably been entranced by their charm and wit, she hadn’t had a silly girlish crush on any of them. None had made her chest tingle or her stomach twirl with nerves like Dylan Caine did.
She swallowed. “I can’t.”
Laura heaved a sigh. “I suppose I’ll have to spend the day in Denver by myself.”
If she didn’t know better, Genevieve might think her mother sounded almost…lonely.
On impulse, she stepped forward and kissed her mother’s cheek. Laura smelled of Estée Lauder makeup and the Annick Goutal perfume she always wore. “I’ll have an afternoon off either Wednesday or Thursday. Perhaps we can go to lunch here in Hope’s Crossing. Several new restaurants have opened since I’ve been back. If that doesn’t work out, let’s definitely plan on brunch Sunday.”
“I have a hair appointment Wednesday and a luncheon party at the country club Thursday. I’ll make reservations for Le Passe Montagne for Sunday morning. Charlie is coming home this week after his finals so we can all go together.”
“Deal.”
Her mother hugged her and then stepped back. She looked around the house, her carefully constructed nose wrinkled with distaste.
“This house. It’s terrible. It looks like you’re living in a war zone! I don’t understand why you can’t just sell the place as is. Whoever buys this land will probably tear this horrible house down.”
Though she suspected her mother was right, she still felt a pang of regret she didn’t quite understand. She hated the house, too, though the funkiness was growing on her. She didn’t want to contemplate the idea of someone razing it.
If that was the eventual outcome, she still wanted to pour as much as she could afford, financially and physically, into making the house presentable. The better the house looked, the more she could make in profit from the sale.
Her mother probably couldn’t understand that, especially as she wasn’t the one fighting for a future. Laura had always hated this place, only in part because of the outdated decor that Grandma Pearl refused to change.
Laura and Grandma Pearl hadn’t really gotten along. Her grandmother had had little patience for her daughter-in-law’s social ambitions, and Laura had had even less for Grandma Pearl’s loud, gaudy, sometimes abrasive personality.
“Oh. Look at that,” Laura exclaimed. “You’ve taken down that atrocious wallpaper. That must have been a job by yourself.”
She thought about letting the false impression stand but something compelled her to honesty. “I wasn’t by myself. I had help. Dylan Caine came over last night and worked with me to strip the walls.”
Her stomach tingled again as she remembered that kiss that had happened right about where her mother stood.
Laura frowned. “Which Caine brother is that? There are dozens of them.”
“Only six, Mother. He’s the youngest son.”
Laura looked baffled for a moment, trying to put the pieces together, and then her eyes widened. “Dylan. He’s the one who lives up in Snowflake Canyon. The one who lost his arm.”
“Yes,” she said calmly. “That’s the one.”
Laura stared at her. “Why would you have him help you? What can he even do without an arm?”
Kiss her until she couldn’t remember her name, for one thing. He had amazing skills in that direction, but she was quite certain her mother wouldn’t appreciate that particular insight.
“Plenty of things. Just about everything.” Whether he wanted to believe it or not. “He was amazingly helpful last night. I honestly couldn’t have managed without him.”
Her mother’s frown deepened. “Is there…something going on with you and Dylan Caine your father and I should know about?”
Heaven forbid. Her parents didn’t need to know any thing about whatever might be going on with her and Dylan. Not that there was anything to know.
“Why would you say that?” she countered.
“As I am remembering things now, he’s the one who got you into trouble, isn’t he? Yes. I remember now. He was in that bar fight with you. And now you tell me he came over on a Sunday night to help you with home renovations. What am I supposed to think?”
How would her family react if she started seeing Dylan? He was so vastly different from Sawyer, her parents’ ideal of a potential mate for her. Where Sawyer had been cultured, polite, polished and adroit, Dylan was rough, shaggy. Dangerous.
Her parents would probably totally freak. Her dad would start blustering around about bad boys and silly girls; her mother would shriek and ask what all her friends would think.
Charlie would be cool about it. Since his time in juvenile detention, she sometimes thought her little brother was just about the most grounded person in the family.
Not that it mattered how they might react, since it was the most hypothetical of questions. He had kissed her, yes, but swore it wouldn’t happen again.
On that depressing note, she ushered her mother to the door. “You don’t need to worry about me and Dylan Caine, Mother. We’re friends, that’s all. That’s why he helped me last night.”
Laura didn’t look convinced. She opened her mouth to argue, but Genevieve wasn’t in the mood to talk about Dylan another minute and especially not with her mother.
“I’m sorry but I’ve really got to go. I’m already late. Have a great time in Denver. Love you, Mother.”
Before Laura could protest or shove one of her black leather boots in the frame, Genevieve managed to close the door and lock it tight.
CHAPTER TEN
This was becoming a habit.
Genevieve adjusted a
fold of garland on the seventh
Christmas tree she had decorated for A Warrior’s Hope then eased back a little to admire the results.
This one—located in the main reception room just off the lobby of the recreation center, with equally stunning views of the mountains—was bigger than those in the cabins. While the tree already had a few basic decorations, they were sparse and lackluster.
Saturday she had bought jute and spray paint at the hardware store and then had stopped into the craft store for a roll of burlap and ribbon.
Just before scraping wallpaper Sunday, she had gathered some bare branches from Grandma Pearl’s yard, laid them flat in the garage and spray-painted them with a little silver. Not too much, just a hint.
She had felt more than a little silly spending money she didn’t really have, but she was pleased with the results.
As this room with its big river-rock fireplace and wide windows would serve as the main gathering spot for everybody, she had wanted it to be as warm and welcoming as their cabins. The program participants shouldn’t want to only spend all their time in their individual spaces.
“Oh, wow. This looks fantastic, Genevieve.”
From her perch on top of a ladder, she glanced down to find Dylan’s sister watching from the doorway. She looked smart and pretty in tan slacks and a pale blue sweater.
“Do you think so? I was afraid the silver branches were too much.”
“Not at all. They’re perfect. It sets just the right tone, I think. Not too fancy, with a focus on nature.” She moved farther into the room and looked around at the table decorations Gen had thrown together to be reused throughout the week, a mix of flowers donated from the florist in town, the burlap and more of those spraypainted branches.
“All I can say is, it was a lucky thing for A Warrior’s Hope that you decided to get into a bar fight at the Lizard.”
Gen gave a rueful smile. “I do what I can.”
“And we appreciate it.” Charlotte gave her a warm look that made Gen glow more than the eight hundred lights on the tree.
“I don’t have your aesthetic sense, that’s for sure,” the other woman continued. “Seriously, have you ever thought about being an interior decorator?”
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