The Unexpected Landlord

by Leigh Michaels

  Rowan straightened his shoulders and turned slightly. “Now that we’ve got it all straightened out—”

  “But we haven’t.” Clancey stared blindly out the window, trying to figure out how and where she’d gone so wrong. “If you weren’t turning red from guilt that night, then what was it? Anger? Or embarrassment, maybe? What on earth—”

  “Clancey, please don’t.”

  Her head drooped. “I know. You want me to get out of your sight. I’m going. I just want you to know that I’m sorry, Rowan. I’m so very sorry.”

  She turned toward the door, and it was then she saw the bear — the panda bear with the sad, far-seeing eyes that Rowan had bought at Small World weeks ago. He was sitting sternly upright in the corner of an overstuffed chair. Clancey cautiously picked him up. The furry little body warmed quickly to her touch.

  “Clancey,” Rowan said, and took a step toward her.

  At the same instant she held out the bear. “You didn’t buy him as an ornament for this room, surely. You couldn’t have. He doesn’t fit the decor.”

  “No.” He sounded hoarse. “Clancey—”

  “Then why is he here? You said it was a peacekeeping mission, but—”

  “Damn the bear, Clancey.” Then he sighed and rubbed the heel of his hand across his forehead as if his head hurt. “I bought it for Kaye, if you must know. She collects the silly things, and I was going to take it to her when I told her about the civic center.”

  “But you kept him instead.” Clancey wet her lips with the tip of her tongue. “Rowan, why did you keep the bear?”

  He stopped and scowled at her. “Oh, what difference does it make? Because it reminded me of you, that’s why. Those big sad eyes.”

  She was afraid to hope, and yet — surely there was something left between them, something to build on. If both of them wanted to build...

  “Dammit, Clancey, don’t look at me as if you’re hungry.”

  “Even if I am?” She moved just a little closer to him, carefully, as if he were a wild animal who might dart away at any moment. “Rowan, can you ever forgive me for what I’ve done?”

  For an endless moment she was afraid that he was going to ignore her plea. Finally he said heavily, “I don’t know. It depends.”

  She took another cautious step. “On what?”

  He didn’t look at her. “On why you turned away from me. Why you couldn’t trust me. Why you assumed I was guilty, and didn’t even ask me straight out for the truth.”

  She could hear the sound of her own blood hammering loudly in her ears, and knew that this was the only chance she’d be given. She closed her eyes and looked deep into her heart, and then she said, “Because as long as I didn’t ask, even though I suspected the worst, I could still preserve my own picture of you — my idealistic image of what I thought you were. I didn’t want to have my doubts confirmed. What I believed I’d discovered was a terrible thing, but it would have been even worse if you had belittled my dream of you, or said straight out that you weren’t who I had thought you were.”

  She swallowed hard. It might do no good whatever, but there was no other option now but sacrificing every gram of her pride. “The man I loved,” she finished steadily.

  He looked at her without expression, as if he hadn’t heard what she’d said —or as if it didn’t matter. “Not because you hated me?” he said woodenly.

  She was so light-hearted from holding her breath that she was swaying. “I could never hate you, Rowan.”

  He said, almost casually, “I was going to ask you to marry me, if you’d gone to dinner with me that night.”

  Clancey sucked in a deep breath, and the oxygen hit her with a rush. But that was then, she reminded herself. This is now. Things have changed.

  “Thank you for that,” she whispered.

  “But when I came back with the Christmas lights, you’d changed somehow, and I didn’t have any clue why. I thought at first it was because you suspected I was in love with you, and you wanted to discourage me before I embarrassed myself by proposing.”

  Clancey was breathing as if she’d just finished a race.

  “Then you started in with accusations about my criminal tendencies. And I knew if you could believe that of me...”

  She shook her head. “Don’t you see?” she whispered. “I was afraid. It was breaking my heart to think you were dishonest, yet I still wanted you so much.”

  When his arms came around her once more, hard and strong and comforting, she buried her face in his shoulder and sobbed in the way that a terrified child cried — after the danger was over, when it was safe to let go and wail.

  He held her close and caught her tears with his fingertips and murmured soothing words into her ear — words that were so intriguing she soon lost interest in crying.

  He gently pulled her down onto the deep couch beside him and kissed her. And it was a long time later that he said, “Now we can get down to plans. How much of what you said you’d do with the house was serious? I was never quite sure.”

  She blew her nose and settled back against him with a sigh. “Most of it.”

  “Then we’ll do it.”

  “You just said you wanted to dynamite the place.”

  “Not if I can share it with you.”

  “Oh,” she said softly. “Is that why you weren’t making any progress with the wallpaper — because you weren’t sure about me?”

  Rowan pulled slightly away and looked down at her incredulously. “What do you mean, no progress? There are seven layers of that stuff under the paint, and it was put on with industrial-strength glue.”

  She smiled a little. “And the boxes of toys you were exploring? What about them?”

  He had the grace to look a trifle ashamed of himself.

  Clancey relented. “It was very considerate of you to wait and let me have a say in the decorating scheme.” She glanced around the apartment. “Not that this is bad, exactly, but...”

  He sighed. “I know. It’s got no personality. It was a reaction to living amidst old stuff all my life, you see. I’m the middle child, and it seemed to me that I had hand-me-down everything. I wanted a new look, so when I was dating an interior decorator a couple of years ago—”

  She snapped her fingers. “That explains the silk flowers.”

  “Yes. Well, I’ve always liked Kaye’s house, and I was ready for a change. I just didn’t know how big a change I was getting.”

  “That’s a safe statement.”

  “Besides, there you were, keeping everything stirred up. I thought I was coming around to check on the house, but from the first night — no, the second one, perhaps —I ought to have known it was you I was coming to see.”

  “And I thought you didn’t care,” she said, so softly that he had to bend his head to hear. “I practically begged you to make love to me, and when you didn’t—”

  “Things were moving too fast. The night the ceiling fell, I knew how important you were becoming to me. But I’m sort of old-fashioned that way. I wanted us to be friends first, and lovers last. And I was afraid that if I let myself go and really kissed you, I might not be able to stop at that. So...”

  She thought it over and smiled. “I would have understood,” she murmured. “Whenever things really get out of hand, it’s just the mushroom factor at work.”

  “Well, we’ve certainly got a first-class case of it. Now Small World has two locations. What are you going to do about that?”

  Clancey shrugged. “It was nice in theory, but living above the store wasn’t working out very well.”

  “I was hoping you’d say that. We’ll need the room someday, for our kids.”

  “Our kids?”

  “It would be a shame if all those toys of yours were never played with again, don’t you think? Marry me, Clancey?”

  She frowned and chewed thoughtfully on her index fingernail, and then shook her head. “Can’t. I promised a long time ago to make no legal claim on you or your house. Ever.”
>
  Rowan growled like a grizzly bear and pushed her down on to the couch.

  She shrieked and tried to fend him off, but it would have been impossible to push him away, even if her heart had really been in it. So finally — but only after he had kissed her quite unmercifully — Clancey yielded, and gracefully agreed to take her chances as his wife.

  After all, she told herself, she certainly owed him the benefit of the doubt.

  This book is copyrighted by the author and may not be reproduced without written permission.

  Leigh Michaels is the author of more than 90 books, including 80 contemporary romance novels and non-fiction books including On Writing Romance. She also writes single-title historical romance set in Regency England. Six of her books have been finalists in the Romance Writers of America RITA contest for best traditional romance of the year, and she has received two Reviewers’ Choice awards from Romantic Times magazine. More than 30 million copies of her books have been published in 25 languages and 120 countries around the world. Her website is www.leighmichaels.com