Two dark heads swiveled in her direction. They looked as surprised by her words as she was.
"What was that?" Kiel asked in an ominous tone of voice.
She sighed loudly. "Forget I said anything." Far be it from Lexi to meddle in parental affairs.
He waited until Kelsey stomped off to his room before he lit into her.
"I don't need your advice on how to raise my kid."
She arched a brow. "Oh really? You could've fooled me."
"What the hell does that mean?"
"That should be obvious. You were willing to marry me sight unseen to get a built-in babysitter."
The phrase If looks could kill suddenly took on new meaning. "Trust me, lady, it wasn't my idea."
"It wasn't my idea, either." Which was technically true if she wanted to lay the blame on her father and that ridiculous provision in his will. "You're not the friendliest man I've ever met."
"I'm not paid to be friendly."
"And I'm not paid to keep my mouth shut." Actually she wasn't being paid anything at all which was one of the reasons she was in the mess she was in. "I'm as much a victim in this as you are."
A victim?
She was calling herself a victim?
Kiel couldn't help it. He started to laugh.
"How dare you laugh at me!" she said.
He couldn't have stopped if he wanted to--which he didn't. He couldn't remember the last time he'd laughed like this. Full-bodied. Loud. From the gut.
"Stop that!" she ordered, advancing on him with a murderous glint in her big blue eyes. "I refuse to stand here and be insulted!"
Still laughing, he pulled out a chair and gestured toward her.
She looked at the chair. Then back at him. Her tiny hands balled into fists. The thought of that fluffy piece of female outrage pummeling him made him laugh even louder.
"Damn good thing we're not getting married," he said when he found his composure again. "We'd kill each other before we made it to I do."
Her eyes widened. He watched, fascinated, as the corners of her lush mouth twitched then stretched wide in a smile.
A real one.
One that even reached her eyes.
Suddenly he remembered the way her mouth had felt beneath his, all warm and soft and yielding. The harder he tried to banish the memory, the more real it became. Exactly what he wanted to avoid.
She glanced at the phone. "How long do you think it will be until the line is back up?"
"Don't worry about it," he said, feeling suddenly magnanimous. "You'll be out of here before nightfall."
"I can stand it that long if you can." She considered him for a moment then extended her right hand. "Truce?"
"Yeah," he said as his hand enveloped hers. "I think we can manage it for an hour or two."
She arched a brow. "I thought we'd take it on a minute-by-minute basis." The twinkle in her eyes softened the words.
He found himself grinning back at her. Now that he knew they wouldn't be stuck with each other through an Alaskan winter he was feeling optimistic. "Hungry?"
She nodded. "Actually I am."
"How does tomato soup sound?"
"Boring," she said, "but it will do."
His temper flared momentarily but he tamped it down. "Did you really think you were going to be eating caviar and bonbons up here?"
She sat down at the kitchen table, propping her elbows on the scarred wooden surface. "I didn't have time to think about it at all. When Jo called--" She stopped abruptly and looked away.
She must be new at this, Kiel thought as he rummaged through the closet for a can of soup. Most agents scrupulously avoided any and all allusions to the organization when they were on an assignment.
Trouble was he couldn't even ask her. PAX maintained its security on a need-to-know basis. Ryder had told him that Alexa Marsden--a fake name if he'd ever heard one--would be told the same environmentalist story that Kiel had told everyone else in Nowhere and it was understood that any operative worth her salt would keep questions to herself.
You never knew what would trip you up in this business. Especially with a four-year-old girl added to the already volatile mix.
Take care of yourself, sweetheart, he thought as he hooked the opener over the lip of the can. Slip up one time too often and you'll find yourself dead.
Even he knew it was an unforgiving business and he only worked on the fringes of the operation. Research scientists rarely found themselves in the middle of an intrigue--no matter how risky the science they're researching might be. He glanced over at Lexi. She was flipping through the issue of Time Magazine he'd been reading over breakfast, seemingly absorbed in the minutiae of the current world situation.
He tried to imagine her slipping across international boundaries, smuggling important papers and risking her life to keep the world free for the spread of democracy.
The idea was laughable.
She turned the page with a languid, graceful motion that made him think of drawing rooms in English manor houses. He dumped the tomato soup into a pot then took a container of milk from the fridge. She wasn't the guns-and-bullets type at all. PAX would have found better, more interesting ways to use a woman who looked like that. He had a brief flash of Ms. Marsden in the arms of a strapping freedom fighter from some war-torn eastern European battleground.
He'd splattered milk all over the top of the stove. Get a grip, man. What she does is none of your business.
Lexi grinned and looked back down at the magazine she'd been perusing. He was clumsy. Strange, but she found that quality rather charming. Up until that moment she'd half-believed he was some kind of android straight out of an episode of Star Trek. Mr. Perfect, with the muscular torso of a flashy film star and the laser-sharp brain of a computer.
When he made to pour the milk into the pot with the tomato soup, he missed it by a country mile and Lexi was pleased to note that she was the reason. An odd sensation filled her body, not unlike the sensation she'd experienced when he pulled her into his arms and claimed her mouth with his. There'd been something more than curiosity in his scrutiny, something very male, very primal.
She was accustomed to a certain amount of approval from the male of the species and it was nice to know that he wasn't immune to her after all.
Not that she cared what Kiel Brown thought, mind you. It was just that a woman liked to know she wasn't losing her touch at the advanced age of twenty-four and a half.
"How old are you?" she asked, looking up from Time.
"Thirty-four." He tossed a dishrag into the sink then wiped his hands on a paper towel. "You taking a census or something?"
"Just curious. We were going to be married, after all."
He lit a fire under the pot of soup. "So how old are you?"
"Almost twenty-five."
"Most women wouldn't sound so eager to hit the quarter-century mark."
She thought of her inheritance. "Let's just say turning twenty-five has its compensations." She tossed the magazine aside and focused her full attention on him. "How long have you been an environmentalist?"
"You must be great at cocktail parties," he observed. "Are we playing Twenty Questions?"
"I'm being polite," she said, bristling. "Something you obviously know nothing about."
He leaned against the counter and crossed his arms over his chest. The effect was alarmingly powerful. She wondered if he knew exactly how powerful. More than likely, she thought, as his biceps seemed to flex of their own volition. You didn't look at a body like that in the mirror every day of your life and not realize the impact it had on the opposite sex.
She, of course, was immune to his appeal.
"Do you want soup or not?" he asked.
Her stomach growled impolitely. "A little."
He shot her a look then reached for an enormous white stoneware bowl that rested on an open shelf above the stove. He filled it, dropped in a spoon, then placed it on the table before her.
"This is too much,
" she said, appalled at the gallon of soup sloshing in front of her.
"You'll need it," he said, tossing a packet of crackers down next to her bowl. "Who knows when you'll catch another meal.”
"You're logical," she said, lifting her spoon to her lips. "I've always hated that in a man."
He flipped a chair around and straddled it. "What else do you hate in a man?"
"Questions like that, for one." She swallowed the soup. "This could use a splash of sherry."
"I'll pass that on to the chef." He ripped open the packet and helped himself to a handful of crackers.
"You're spilling crumbs all over the table."
"My table," he pointed out with another maddening display of logic.
She gestured toward the stove. "Aren't you having soup?"
"I hate soup."
"What about Kelsey?"
"Finished before you got here."
She had nothing to say about that. She'd already learned he had a low flashpoint when it came to criticism of how he disciplined his child. Silence seemed the better part of valor.
After a few moments of silence, punctuated by the sound of her soup spoon returning repeatedly to the bowl, he got up and disappeared down the hall. Lexi let out a huge sigh of relief. His intensity was a bit daunting. He'd been watching her eat as if she were a new specimen on the endangered list. The thought of being the focus of that intensity on a twenty-four hour basis made her feel faint.
He's a widower, Joanna had said when she proposed the idea to Lexi. Helena was a physicist with an I.Q. even higher than Kiel's.
Yes, Lexi had said, but what did she look like?
Joanna had just laughed off Lexi's question. The truth was, Lexi knew exactly what the late Dr. Helena Worthington-Brown had looked like.
"Homely," she muttered into her soup. Most gorgeous men married mousy women. Lexi had a theory that preternaturally handsome men didn't much like sharing the spotlight...or the mirror. A brainy woman didn't pose half the threat a beautiful woman posed.
No wonder he'd disliked her on sight.
The knowledge didn't make Lexi like him any better but it did explain away the total absence of romantic spark.
All of which would have made the situation absolutely perfect for her needs, except for the fact that they couldn't say two words to each other without getting into a scrap.
It won't be much longer, she thought as she crumbled two crackers into her soup then quickly gobbled up the evidence. Telephone troubles or no telephone troubles, she'd be on her way home before nightfall or know the reason why.
Chapter 4
By four p.m., it was apparent to both Lexi and Kiel that she wasn't going anywhere. At least, not tonight.
"Damn phone," said Kiel, slamming the receiver down in the cradle. "It's never done this before."
She looked up at him from the rocking chair near the fireplace. "I thought you said this happens all the time."
"Never lasted this long."
"You don't have one of those cellular phones, do you? A car phone maybe."
"You sound desperate," he said, giving her a curious look.
"Not yet," said Lexi with a groan. "You'll know I'm desperate when I suggest smoke signals."
"It won't come to that."
"How do you know?" she demanded. "So far you haven't been right about anything."
"Believe me, I want you out of here as much as you do."
To Lexi's horror, her cheeks suddenly flamed with color. "That's impossible," she said, wishing her voice didn't sound quite so vulnerable. "If I had a sense of direction, I'd start walking."
"Good idea," he said, poking the fire with a particularly nasty looking stick. "You'd make a great appetizer for a hungry bear."
"Very funny." She pulled her jacket more closely about her. "I bet you say that to all your ex-fiancées."
"I'm not kidding," he persisted. "We see bear every few weeks around here."
"I really don't want to hear this."
"If you're thinking of going for an after-dinner walk tonight, you'd better hear it."
Bear? Big deal. If he was trying to make her feel inadequate, he was failing miserably. Besides, what made him think he was such a bargain?
"Can you use a microwave?"
She looked at him. "What?"
"A microwave," he repeated.
"Of course I can use a microwave."
"Great," he said, grabbing his jacket from the peg by the front door. "There's a beef stew in the freezer. Kelsey gets a glass of milk with dinner."
"Where do you think you're going?"
"To work," he said. "As long as you're going to be here tonight, I might as well get something done."
"And leave me here alone?"
"It's not like we're enjoying each other's company, is it?"
"No, but--"
"Exactly. Help yourself to anything you want. Kelse will show you where everything is."
"You're just going to walk out on me?"
He opened the front door. "Buzz me on the intercom if the phone lines go back up."
And with that he was gone.
She smelled like lilacs. She wasn't supposed to smell like lilacs.
None of the women in Nowhere smelled like lilacs. Most of them smelled like soap and water and fresh air. All of which he appreciated but to which he was immune.
He wasn't immune to lilacs.
Her scent lingered in his nostrils as he stomped through the snow on his way to the small building that housed his lab. He had half a mind to stick his head in the first available snowbank in an attempt to bring his temperature back down to normal.
"Damn it," he muttered as he punched in five successive code numbers then waited for the electronic security device to scan his fingerprint. Kissing her hadn't brought about the violent chemical chain reaction inside his body that the scent of lilacs in her hair had set in motion.
The buzzer sounded and he entered the lab, slamming the door shut behind him. The security devices whirred into action, executing a series of sophisticated locks and monitors.
Too bad there wasn't a device that could secure a man's libido.
It had been a long time since he'd made love to a woman. For months after Helena's death he'd been too numb, both physically and emotionally, to think of sex. Kelsey was only two years old at the time, and her needs had far outstripped his own.
After awhile lust reentered his life.
He doubted if love ever would again.
The air in his lab was neutral. Moderately warm. Moderately dry. Dust-free, germ-free, noise-free. The perfect, sterile environment for research that could change the future of the world.
And it didn't smell of lilacs.
"Not that button," said Kelsey an hour later. "First you press the big one, then you press the little one."
He’s only four years old, Lexi reminded herself. "Thank you," she said in a stiff and formal tone of voice that reminded her one of the nannies she'd had when she was a little girl.
She pressed the big button, then the little one. Wouldn't you know it: the microwave came to life as if by magic.
She sat back down at the kitchen table and took a sip of some very bad wine she'd found in the closet that served as an ill-equipped pantry.
Kelsey looked at her over the top of a mug of milk. "I can make toast."
"So can I," said Lexi. Good going, Alexa Grace. Trying to one-up a child.
"I can butter it and add jam."
Lexi thought for a moment. "I can make cereal."
Kelsey laughed into his milk. "Silly. The store makes the cereal."
Lexi smiled broadly. At last a subject she could handle. "The store doesn't make the cereal," she pointed out, trying not to sound too smug. "The cereal factory makes the cereal."
"Then who makes the factory?"
"I don't know who makes the factory." She took another sip of wine.
"Somebody made it."
"I know that," said Lexi, "but I don't know who
it was."
Kelsey leaned back in his chair. His eyes twinkled with mischievous glee. "The builder makes the factory."
Lexi considered her nemesis. "You're pretty smart for a four year old, aren't you?"
Kelsey nodded. "I'm a gee-nus."
"You're not very modest."
"I don't know what that is."
At last! "A modest person doesn't tell everyone good things about himself. He waits for people to find out for themselves."
"But you said I was smart."
"You're right," Lexi agreed with a sigh. "I did say that." It was a bit like being trapped in the Lincoln Tunnel during rush hour with a talkative cab driver who didn't speak English.
"You're pretty," said Kelsey.
Lexi's ears perked up. "Why, thank you." Nice to know one of the Browns felt that way.
Kelsey blew some bubbles in his mug of milk. "Are you going to live with us?"
"I don't think so, honey. I'm going home as soon as the phones are working."
The microwave dinged. She pushed back her chair and stood up. "Dinner's ready."
Kelsey nodded. "I want my blue bowl."
"Okay," said Lexi. She rummaged through the cupboard over the stove until she found a turquoise bowl with white and yellow flowers painted along the border. Not at all what she'd expected. She turned toward the boy. "Is this it?"
"My mommy got that before I was born."
Oh, no, thought Lexi as she moved the step stool back into the corner where she'd found it. What on earth did you say to a child who'd lost his mother in a tragic accident? Lexi remembered the foolish things people had said to her when her own mother had died just before Lexi's sixth birthday. Better to say nothing, she decided.
She popped open the microwave then reached for the Tupperware filled with stew. "Ouch!" She leaped back, waving her hands in the air madly.
"Pot holders," Kelsey said sagely. "Daddy uses potholders."
"You could have told me that," Lexi said, running her fingers under cold water. "That bowl's hot!"
"Didn't anyone ever tell you about potholders?"
"No," Lexi snapped, "no one ever told me that."
"But how do you make your food at home?"
The Bride Came C.O.D. (Bachelor Fathers) Page 4
