“That’s fine,” she said, her voice just a breathy whisper. She cleared her throat. “Please, help yourself to a drink from the lounge.” He didn’t want a drink, but it was obvious that she needed some space, so he left the kitchen for a moment to pour two small glasses of red wine. He took a sip of the sweet merlot and wished he had his own collection of excellent wines here to offer her.
“This seems like a remote part of the world. Have you lived here long?” He handed a glass of wine to her and she took it, careful not to touch his fingers. If he noticed, he at least had the good manners not to show it.
Katie stirred the pasta, trying not to look at him, but out of her peripheral vision she could see how long and lean his legs were as he sat down at the table. He’d changed into a pair of black denims and a gray sweater, neither of which did a thing to disguise how darkly handsome he was.
“Coming up on six years,” she said evenly. No one would have been able to guess from her tone how much had happened in that time.
“A reasonably long time, then. Do you like it?”
She shrugged her slender shoulders, then took a sip of the wine he’d given her. “Yes and no.” More honest than she’d meant to be, but something about this man made her feel like she could open up. Which was ridiculous given that he also made her feel like a cat on a hot tin roof.
“What yes, and what no?”
Her lips curled in a self-deprecating smile. “That was a bit cryptic, wasn’t it?”
His noise of agreement was a low rumble deep in his throat and it set her heart skittering again. “It’s a lovely community. They really took me in as one of their own when I moved here. My… my aunt had just died. We were close. She left the business to me.”
“That must have been difficult.” He blanked out his own resounding understanding of loss, refusing to grieve more than he already had. Not now, anyway.
“She had cancer.” Katie said matter-of-factly. “She was ready to go.” Only Marcus’s own experience gave him the impression that her brusque explanation was hiding how much the loss had affected her. Still did, probably. She busied herself straining spaghetti and then tipping it back into the large saucepan. “What about you?” She returned to her practiced hosting routine. “I think you said you were down to look at birds, David?”
Marcus grimaced inwardly. If there was one thing in the world he knew nothing about, it was birds. At least, not the avian variety. “Well, yes and no.” He repeated her phrase to her with a teasing grin.
“What yes, and what no?” She volleyed back, feeling a squeeze in her stomach at the way his smile transformed his face.
“Touche.” He dragged his hand backwards and forwards through his hair, making it stand up in dark, tousled spikes. “Truthfully, I need a holiday.” It really was the truth, he acknowledged to himself uncomfortably. Uncomfortably, because he hadn’t had a holiday since he’d left high school. He’d gone straight to university, then started his business, and within eleven years, he’d climbed to his lofty position as global tycoon. So why was there this emptiness? He knew why. Bryan. Iraq. His marriage breakdown. The landscape of his life was so different to what he’d thought it would be, five years ago. “If I get to see some birds, that’s good, but I intend to explore the local area and have a break.”
“You’ve come to the right place if it’s peace and quiet you’re after. Wadeford in the dead of winter is pretty much as quiet as it gets.” She slopped the tomato sauce in with the drained spaghetti and began to fry some garlic off in a separate pan. The smell made Marcus’s stomach contract.
He watched with admiration as she effortlessly flicked her wrist to splash garlic and oil through the pan, before adding some prepared seafood, and a squeeze of lemon. “You’re a good cook.”
His observation, made in his low, deep accent, set a shiver running down her spine. “How do you know? You haven’t even eaten my food.”
Katie was a stickler for professional distance, and she had never had a guest in her kitchen before this. Operating a bed and breakfast, she’d always felt it was important to have an invisible wall between herself and her customers, or else she ran the risk of feeling like she simply had strangers staying in her own home. She liked her own space too much to get friendly.
Why then did it feel so good to have this man sitting in her kitchen, asking her about herself?
She really needed to go on a date. She thought guiltily of Ryan Macaulay from the village. He’d asked her out so many times she’d lost count, and she’d always refused. Maybe she needed to at least meet him for a casual coffee. She was so sex-starved and love-starved she was actually fantasizing about this guest of hers. Not that he wasn’t worthy of fantasies. On looks alone, he was the stuff dreams were made of.
“I don’t need to. I can smell it. And don’t they say half of your taste buds are in your nose?”
She couldn’t help but laugh. “I don’t know who they are, but that’s ridiculous. All of your taste buds are in your mouth.” And without thinking, she poked her tongue out and tapped it with her finger. “Right here.”
It was a mistake. His eyes were drawn to her mouth, and even as she clamped it firmly shut, his gaze lingered, making her feel hot and cold at the same time. “B-but…” she stammered, “you do have olfactory receptors in your nose, so I know what you’re saying.”
“Do you?” He queried thickly, still staring at her perfectly pouted lips. He felt the stirring of an erection and leant forward in the chair to disguise it. He reminded himself that she was probably married, or at least taken, but his body didn’t seem to want to listen.
“I…” she shook her head. Nope. There was nothing to say to back-track that particularly heated exchange. She was grateful for the thick apron that hid the way her nipples were straining at the black wool dress she’d pulled on. She felt the crackle of sexual tension in the atmosphere and made an effort to ignore it. But if she felt it, she knew he did too. They were both adults and the mutual attraction was pretty obvious.
The last time she’d let her body fall under the spell of an interesting, handsome man, she’d learned her lesson ten times over. Not that she’d take it back, but she wasn’t about to make the same mistake twice.
“Mr. Trent,” she said shakily. “I think it would be better if you wait in the guests’ lounge.”
Marcus almost laughed. It was so unusual for a woman to push him away that at first he thought he hadn’t heard right. But one look at the set of her face and he knew she was serious. She meant business. And though he knew it reeked of egotism, he decided again that she must be in a relationship. There could be no other reason to ignore the heat in the air.
“Are you in a relationship? Married?” His eyes narrowed thoughtfully, and a frisson of nervous anticipation ran down Katie’s back.
“No.” She shook her head. She didn’t feel scared to admit to him that she was alone. Inexplicably, she knew this man was not dangerous. Well, not in the normal way. If she let herself give in to the desire that was threatening to overcome her, he would be very, very dangerous to her sanity.
He hadn’t realized until that moment how much he wanted her to be single. Available. Only she wasn’t really available, was she? Not to him, anyway. If she knew who he really was and why he’d come to Wadeford, he strongly suspected she wouldn’t want anything to do with him.
“I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable,” he said quietly, apologetically. “You’re a very beautiful woman. You must be used to men making fools of themselves around you.”
She scrunched her brows together and her face was so sweetly confused that, out of nowhere, he ached to kiss her, right on the tip of her little nose. “Beautiful! Oh, boy. You almost had me going.”
“Surely you can’t have any doubt as to how…attractive you are?”
She had been attractive once. Before she’d met that smooth-talking Roberto, she’d had the world at her feet and the joy on her face to prove it. That had all been sanded away by
the stress she’d endured over the last six years. Now, when she looked in the mirror, she saw someone too slender to be pretty, too exhausted to wear makeup or style her hair, someone who had hardly slept for years and had the shadowed eyes to prove it.
“Listen, Mr. Trent, David... I’m not really the kind of woman that those lines work on.” Not anymore, she silently added. “Besides, we’ve just met. You’re a customer at my Bed and Breakfast. This hardly feels like an appropriate conversation.”
He frowned. “Appropriate! This isn’t Victorian England. Surely two people are allowed to acknowledge a mutual interest in one another.”
“David…” her voice held a tone of warning.
He knew he should back off. She was like one of the jittery horses he’d seen being trained in college. He needed to be gentle or she’d bolt. “As you wish.” He let his eyes linger on her lips for a moment longer before wiping away the seriousness of their conversation with a bright smile. His most disarming, only it seemed to make her more uncomfortable.
“Dinner’s ready,” she announced awkwardly, wiping her hands on the skirt of her apron. “Excuse me a moment.” She went to the door of the kitchen and poked her head around, so that only her butt and legs were in the kitchen. He tried to remember he’d been raised a gentleman, but his eyes seemed to have a mind of their own.
“Maxie!” She called, her voice soft and warm in the cold night air. “Dinner’s ready, come down immediately.”
She moved back into the kitchen oblivious to his questioning look, sweeping her dark hair into a messy pony tail with a rubber band she had been wearing around her wrist. The action drew attention to her neat waist and voluptuous breasts and he was unable to tear his eyes away. Marcus opened his mouth to ask who this Maxie was when a small dark haired boy came bounding into the kitchen.
“David, this is my son, Maxie Collins. Maxie, say hello to Mr. Trent. He’ll be staying with us for a little while.”
So there had been a husband at some point. Or a boyfriend, at least. Well, what did he expect? That she was some impossibly beautiful virgin? Besides, she’d made it clear that the last thing she wanted was to acknowledge their obvious sexual chemistry, and now he at least understood why. It sure as hell hadn’t been because she didn’t feel the same powerful current of attraction flowing between them.
“Hello, Maxie. Pleased to meet you.” Marcus stood up and extended his hand, hiding a smile as the young boy gravely placed his own small paw into Marcus’s and shook confidently.
“Pleased to meet you too, Mr. Trent.” Marcus looked at the boy and tried to see any of his mother in his features. Perhaps in the pout of his lips. Other than that, he was a mix of unknown DNA. Swarthy and tanned, with dark brown eyes and black spiky hair.
“How old are you, Maxie?” Marcus asked, resuming his seat at the table. Maxie sat down opposite him, in his usual spot.
“I’m five and a half. And the half is important because it means I’m almost old enough for a skate board.” He spoke the words with such solemnity that Marcus knew he had to resist the temptation to laugh.
“I see. And you really want to ride a skate board?”
“Of course,” Maxie said with the hint of an eye roll. “All my friends already have skate boards. But mum says I’m too young.”
“Yes.” Katie cut across him, a smile curving her lips. “You are.”
“But, mu-um. I’m bigger than my friends!”
He was. Just like his father, and this man before her now, come to think of it. Maxie was going to be tall, dark and handsome. But with a hell of a good attitude to women, if she had anything to say about it.
“The answer is no, darling. And if you keep asking, you’ll have to wait another year.”
“That’s so unfair!”
Now Marcus couldn’t hide his grin. How many times had he and Andrew said that to their long-suffering parents when growing up? It was the eternal catch cry of the young.
A five year old boy. Out of nowhere, an image of his ex-wife popped to mind. Their child would have been almost five. He’d never known if it was going to be a boy or a girl. He wouldn’t have cared which, anyway. He would have loved either with all that he had to give.
As usual, he pushed the thought from his mind, letting his attention float to far more pleasurable topics. As Katie plated the pasta up into three bowls, topping it with a mix of seafood and a generous twist of lemon and a sprinkle of just-chopped parsley, her whole body moved in a way he couldn’t help but be distracted by.
Questions sprang to mind and jostled to be asked. Where was the father? When had they broken up? Did he support her financially? Was he still in the picture? Did she miss him?
Throughout dinner, which was even more delicious than he’d anticipated, Marcus surreptitiously observed Katie and her son, feeling his heart clench with an unfamiliar sensation at the obviously tender relationship they shared. He wasn’t close to his parents like that. He hadn’t been before the divorce and Iraq. Now, there was so much water under the bridge that he didn’t think they’d ever get him. He saw them often enough, but a true bond of affection had never formed between them. His mother had always said it was because of Marcus’s independence. Even as a toddler he’d balked at holding hands or being helped, a trait he very much had to this day.
“David, I’m just going to get this little troublemaker in bed.” Katie said with a polite ‘stay at a decent distance, thank you very much’ smile aimed somewhere in his direction. Gone was the relaxed warmth she’d enveloped her son in. This was pure, business like civility. It made him yearn to crack through her hastily erected pretence and remind her just how magical their chemistry was.
Once she’d gone, he stood and moved to the sink, enjoying the sensation of warm water on his cool hands as he filled it almost to the top. It didn’t take long to do their dinner dishes, and he was looking at the stunning collection of photographs in the lounge area when she came back down the stairs.
The stairway was in need of some attention, and the second step from the bottom tended to creak. As Katie’s foot touched it, she heard it squeak into the quiet room. And with that one little noise, she lost any hope that she could disappear unnoticed back into the kitchen to finish the washing up.
She was exhausted. While she had barely had a guest for weeks, the quiet time was her best opportunity for renovating, and she’d been painting and sanding two of the guest rooms for over a week. All she wanted, she fibbed to herself, was to do the dishes and go to bed. Alone, she reminded her treacherous brain, which immediately supplied her with the image of the man just in front of her, naked against her crisp white sheets.
She froze where she stood, her hand gripping the cedar banister for strength as their eyes locked across the room. The fire crackled in the grate, warming the lounge. But Katie didn’t need flames for warmth; she felt a fire inside her blood and it was all because of the man caressing her with his eyes alone.
CHAPTER TWO
“Is Maxie asleep?” He spoke first, breaking the silence that stretched and pulled between them.
“Pretending to be, at least.” She responded, trying to sound light-hearted and relaxed.
“He seems like a good kid.” He frowned. His experience with children was reasonably limited. Andrew and his wife Cecilia were expecting a baby in a few months, and Bryan had had a daughter who was almost ten.
She nodded. “He’s the best. I’m lucky.”
“I’m sure luck has very little to do with it.”
Katie ignored the compliment. She had learned the hard way that men who were too quick to flatter were also usually pretty quick to move on. Hardening her resolve, she moved down the last step, into the lounge area.
Now that Maxie was in bed for the night, she was truly alone with David Trent and the knowledge caused adrenalin to flash through her body. Though meters of floor spanned between them, she felt awareness in every nerve ending of her body. There was something indefinably beautiful about this man. Beyo
nd his obvious physical appeal, there was an air of mystery, almost a vulnerable quality, that didn’t seem to fit with the macho image he unconsciously projected. Studying human behavior was a bit of a hobby for Katie, and she had her pick of subjects though the summer when her bed and breakfast was filled to bursting with guests. She had become quite skillful at understanding what made people tick, and a sixth sense made her know, for certain, that this man had some pain he was grappling with.
Despite a natural curiosity, she blinked, to clear the thought. What he was, and what he might be going through, was none of her business. She smiled formally, in an effort to reinstate a professional footing, and moved towards the kitchen. “I’m just going to finish up in here then I’ll leave you be.” She turned to face him. “Oh.” Remembering her duties as host, she cleared her throat, and stood with one hand fiddling the pearl earring in her left ear. “Unless you want any information?”
He raised his eyebrows meaningfully. His mind was swirling with questions that he probably shouldn’t want to ask, but did.
“Any information on the local area, I mean.”
His laugh was like warm butter on banana bread. Sinfully, decadently delicious. “Why do I get the feeling I make you nervous, Katie?”
He hadn’t moved, but she felt suddenly trapped. When she spoke, her voice was breathy; her denial weak. “You don’t. Of course you don’t.”
“Come and join me for a while. I do, in fact, have some questions.”
The temptation to acquiesce was so strong that for a moment she thought she had. Instead, she just tilted her head to one side and stared at him, her mind suddenly jammed by the sheer attraction she was feeling. “I…” She swallowed. “I meant pamphlets. Maps. That kind of thing. I have a heap in that folder over there.” She thought of the dirty dinner dishes and decided spontaneously that they could wait a moment.
“Here.” She walked past him, careful not to skirt too close, and pulled a large laminated folder from the bookshelf. In it, she had an up-to-date list of activities and contacts in the local area.
A Bed of Broken Promises Page 2
