Home at Rose Cottage (9 page)

Judging from the glint in her eyes, she was lying through her teeth. She was actually eager to put Melanie through the wringer.

Melanie was jumpy as a June bug. She’d been skittish ever since Mike had arrived with a load of topsoil first thing Monday morning. If he didn’t know better, he’d actually think she was scared of him. What the hell had her sisters asked about him after he’d left on Saturday?

“Have a good visit with your sisters?” he asked, eyeing her curiously.

“Great.”

“They go back home?”

“Last night,” she confirmed.

“You sleep okay?”

She frowned at him. “I slept just fine. Why do you ask?”

“You look the way you did that first morning I showed up here, edgy and out of sorts. The only thing missing is the lamp.”

She stared at him blankly.

He chuckled. “You’re not clutching it so you can crack my skull open with it, but you do look as if you don’t quite trust me.”

“Oh.”

“Don’t want to talk about it,” he concluded.

“About what?”

“Whatever has you so edgy.”

“Not really.”

“Okay.” He dumped a wheelbarrow filled with rich topsoil in a cleared spot in the backyard, then headed back to his truck for more.

Melanie trailed after him, silent and clearly troubled. Eventually she sighed heavily.

Mike stopped shoveling dirt into the wheelbarrow and stared at her. “Okay, that’s it. Something is obviously on your mind. Spill.”

“It’s nuts.”

“Maybe so, but it’s bugging you, so ask.”

“My sisters think I should ask if you’re still carrying the torch for your ex-wife,” she said, color flooding her cheeks.

Mike’s pulse throbbed dully. “Who actually wants to know? You or them?”

“All of us, I guess.”

“No,” he said succinctly, hoping that would put an end to it.

“Is Jessie your only child?”

He regarded her incredulously. Where the hell had they come up with that one? “Yes,” he said tightly. “Did you think I kept two or three more stuffed in a closet somewhere? Or that I’d left them with a woman who’s addicted to drugs?”

She flushed at that. “No, of course not. I just had to be sure.”

He couldn’t help wondering if this had something to do with whoever had sent her scurrying away from Boston. What the hell had that guy—and he was assuming a man was at the root of her flight—done to her?

He gave her a quizzical look. “Anything else?”

“And you have full custody of Jessie?”

“Yes.”

“I see.”

He glanced over at her. “What is it you think you see?”

“Nothing. I just meant… Oh, hell, I don’t know what I meant.”

“If you’re out of questions and you’re not going to help me spread this topsoil, go find something else to do,” he suggested curtly. “Or at least drop the inquisition. Something tells me it has less to do with me than it does with that past you refuse to discuss.”

A wounded expression in her eyes quickly turned to wariness. She whirled away and headed toward the house. “I’ll be inside if you need me.”

After she’d gone, Mike sighed. He’d made a mess of that. She’d only been asking perfectly reasonable questions. Well, except for that one about him having more kids. That one was out of left field. Still, it wasn’t her fault that the whole subject of his marriage and divorce was so damn touchy. He thought he’d already made that clear to her, but obviously her sisters had filled her head with a lot of doubts and nonsense about him. He could hardly blame them for wanting to look out for her, especially when it was so plain that someone had hurt her recently, but that didn’t make it any easier to be asked about all that stuff he preferred to block out of his mind. Hell,
he
should have been the one asking questions. He should have pushed harder to find out who’d hurt her and how. Maybe then he’d know just how fragile Melanie was and whether he was destined to do the same thing to her.

The questions would have to wait for another day, though. Or at least until he worked off this ridiculous
desire to go inside and kiss her senseless. If things between them were confusing now, that would pretty much send the complication meter into the stratosphere.

Melanie stood by the window and tried not to stare. Mike’s shirt was stretched taut over flexing muscles as he shoveled the topsoil from his truck onto a growing mound in the area he’d designated for a perennial garden. She’d made an absolute mess of things just now. She knew what a private man he was, at least when it came to his marriage. Why on earth had she allowed her sisters to prod her into poking around in his personal business?

Of course, the answer was obvious. She wanted to know. She’d been burned all too recently by a man who’d kept silent about the important relationships in his life. She’d learned from bitter experience that she was incapable of telling when a man was lying to her.

Not that it mattered in Mike’s case, of course. It wasn’t like she was getting involved with him. Her emotions weren’t on the line. Her future wasn’t at stake. What did it really matter if he still had feelings for Jessie’s mother?

She glanced outside, saw that he’d stripped off his shirt, and sighed. She was lying through her teeth. She wanted him, all right. Her sisters had seen that immediately. That’s why they’d spent the entire weekend poking and prodding and asking all those unanswerable questions about Mike. They’d obviously seen her all but drooling over him. They’d definitely seen the way he kissed her. And they knew her well enough to understand that as clever and sneaky as Mike might be, that kiss would never have happened if Melanie hadn’t wanted it to. She could duck an unwanted advance with the best of them.

She ought to go out there right now and apologize for poking into things that were none of her concern, but
the truth was, she did need to know the answers to those questions. She did need to protect herself before this thing with Mike, whatever it was, went one step further.

Of course, he would only say he’d already answered her. Unfortunately, his curt, one-word replies had only stirred more questions.

It took a while, but she finally gathered her courage and went back outside. He glanced up, nodded, then went right on raking the topsoil over the ground.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

He stopped then and leaned on the rake. “Really?”

She flinched under his steady, disbelieving gaze. “Okay, I’m not sorry for asking, only for making you uncomfortable.”

“Thought so.”

“They’re reasonable questions, Mike.”

“Yes,” he agreed. “But I don’t have any other answers.”

“You could elaborate.”

“Have you elaborated on why you came up here looking like a wounded soul?”

“It’s not the same thing.”

“Isn’t it? How do you figure that?”

“What happened to me is over.”

“My marriage is over.”

“Not as long as you have Jessie,” she pointed out. “Jessie ties you to her mother forever. Linda could be in rehab right now trying to get her act together to come back to you.”

“I hope she is in rehab,” Mike said. “But she won’t be coming back to me. That door is closed.”

He sounded so sure of that. Melanie wanted desperately to believe him. Some crazy part of her wanted to take a risk and get closer to him, even if it was only for
a few short weeks. But despite the finite end to their relationship that was in the cards, there were far too many emotional perils to be weighed.

He stepped across the freshly raked dirt and stood directly in front of her, tipping her chin up until she couldn’t avoid his gaze.

“Linda is not an issue,” he repeated softly. “This is between you and me.”

Before she could question his declaration, before she could say that old baggage couldn’t simply be dismissed, his mouth covered hers and her senses went haywire, just as they had on the previous occasions when they’d kissed.

She couldn’t think, couldn’t remember even one of the questions she’d meant to ask. All she could do was feel the way his lips caressed hers, the way his heat and scent surrounded her, the way his body fit hers, the play of his muscles under her fingers when her hands drifted to his sun-warmed shoulders to cling to him.

It seemed like an eternity passed—or maybe only a split second—before he released her and went back to raking as if nothing the least bit monumental or life-altering had just occurred.

How the heck could he be so cool not ten seconds after sending her up in flames? she wondered irritably.

If she hadn’t already had her sisters’ warnings screaming in her head, that kiss would have been a wake-up call. She was up to her eyebrows, not in topsoil but in quicksand…and she was sinking fast.

H
e had to stop kissing her, Mike thought as he concentrated on getting that topsoil spread out just so, mainly to avoid meeting Melanie’s eyes. She was watching him warily. He could almost feel her gaze boring into him. He could practically hear the endless list of questions on the tip of her tongue.

Like what the hell was he thinking? He didn’t have an answer to that one.

Or what did he want from her? He didn’t have an answer to that one, either, at least not one that wouldn’t get him slapped silly. Oh, yes, he wanted to haul her into bed, but that was not exactly what she was itching to hear right now. And since he wasn’t going to let it happen, anyway, it was a moot point.

There were probably a whole litany of questions he hadn’t even thought of. Heck, there were probably a few that hadn’t even occurred to her sisters, and they were the grand masters of asking the unanswerable.

“We need to talk,” she finally said, sounding as edgy as she had when he’d first arrived.

His gaze narrowed. The very last thing on his mind was talking. What was it with women that they wanted
to talk about everything? The only woman in his life who’d ever kept silent was Linda, only because she’d had so blasted many secrets she wanted to keep from him.

“About?” he asked cautiously.

“I can’t talk to you when you’re only half-dre…” She blushed furiously. “When half your attention is on that dirt. Put on your shirt and come inside. I just made some iced tea.”

Inside? Mike stared at her. Inside was a very bad idea. Inside was where her bed was. Inside was where no casual passerby could happen to see whatever they were up to. Inside was damned dangerous.

“I’m filthy,” he protested, grabbing at the most obvious and convenient straw. “Why don’t you bring the tea out here? We can sit on the swing.” The chance of a passing boater intruding on their privacy was slim, but it might be enough to keep his hands where they belonged…away from her.

“I’m not worried about you tracking a little dirt through the house,” she said impatiently. “Besides, it’s hot out here. I’ve turned on the air-conditioning. The kitchen will be cool.”

Not as cool as the ice-cold shower he needed at the moment, Mike thought desperately. “Give me a minute,” he said, hoping to buy himself enough time to talk himself out of the insane desire he had to just go with the flow and haul her straight upstairs to her bed. “Go on in. I’ll be there.”

She regarded him skeptically, as if she didn’t entirely trust him not to take off, which, come to think of it, wasn’t a bad idea. Cowardly, but not a bad idea under the circumstances.

“Go,” he repeated. “I won’t be long.”

She nodded and walked toward the house, her hips
swaying provocatively in what was more than likely a totally instinctive and unintended turn-on. He was such a jerk. Women walked past him all the time with the deliberate intention of trying to snag his attention. Brenda put more sway into her caboose when she sashayed past his table at the café than any woman he’d ever seen. It never did a thing for him. Melanie walked away, all innocence and hurt feelings, and he wanted to jump her bones. Ridiculous. He really had been celibate way too long.

He yanked on his shirt and buttoned it all the way to his neck as if that might prevent her from getting any wild ideas about dragging it right back off him. Then he spent another ten minutes getting his hormones and his wayward thoughts under control before he followed.

En route to the house, he gave himself a very stern lecture on what was
not
going to happen. Whatever Melanie’s agenda, he was going to sit across from her at the kitchen table and keep his damn hands to himself. He was going to listen politely, nod when it was called for, then hightail it out of there at the first opportunity.

Inside, he found her pacing. She frowned at him as if he were unexpected and as if he’d caught her doing something vaguely compromising.

“Sit down,” she said at last.

She took her own place at the table. Ignoring the full glass of iced tea in front of her, she folded her hands primly on top of the scarred table, her expression troubled. His tea was waiting for him in front of the seat next to her.

Mike snagged the glass and moved to the opposite end of the table, grateful that it was one of those oval things with a leaf inserted. That ought to be sufficient distance to keep him on his best behavior.

Her brow rose at his actions, but she didn’t comment.
Instead, she met his gaze and asked, “What are we going to do about this?”

Mike tried to pretend he didn’t have a clue what she meant. “This?”

“Us. The kissing.”

Curiosity and that flustered expression on her face got the better of him. “What do you want to do about it?”

“It needs to stop,” she said at once.

“Which isn’t exactly an answer to the question I asked, is it? Do you want it to stop?”

Temper flashed in her eyes. “What am I supposed to say to that? If I say yes, you’ll call me a liar, since it’s obvious I’m as much into it as you are. If I say no, then I’m opening myself up to something I don’t want to happen.”

He gave her a quizzical look. “In other words, the kissing is okay, but what you really want to stop is anything more? Am I interpreting what you said accurately?” He really needed to be very clear, because one tiny miscue and they’d both wind up in bed…in flames.

“Why are you making this so difficult?” she asked with a trace of annoyance. “We’re adults. We should be able to decide in a perfectly rational way to quit playing dangerous games. We both know this can’t go anywhere. You have your reasons. I have mine. They’re all valid. Let’s stop tempting fate.”

Mike couldn’t help it, he had to ask. He was a man, after all. “Then you are tempted?”

“Oh, don’t be an idiot,” she snapped. “You know I am, or we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

“What would we be doing?” Mike asked. He was fascinated with the way her mind worked. She’d obviously given this a lot of thought since coming inside. He wondered if her thoughts had paralleled his own. He wondered
if she was having half as much difficulty as he was listening to her head, rather than her hormones.

“I’d have slapped you out there and put an end to any more wild ideas about you kissing me,” she insisted, though not very forcefully. She didn’t sound as if she believed it for a minute.

“So, instead you’re going to talk it to death,” he concluded. “Maybe get a written agreement, spelling out the parameters for all future contact?”

She sighed, her cheeks flushed. “When you say it like that, it sounds absurd.”

“It
is
absurd. I think we can control ourselves. I think we can prevent anything from happening that we don’t want to have happen.”

“In a perfect world, yes, we could,” she agreed.

Mike finally caught on to what was really worrying her. “But you’re just a little bit afraid that this isn’t a perfect world,” he suggested. “You’re worried that one of these days one of us will snap and lose our heads, and all these good intentions will go flying out the window.”

“Exactly.”

“That could happen even if we put the rules in writing and have them notarized,” he informed her. “You know what they say about the road to hell.”

“Yeah, that it’s paved with good intentions. Okay, bottom line, I don’t want this to get any more complicated than it already is.” She leveled a look straight into his eyes. “I’m trusting you to see that it doesn’t.”

Mike stared at her. Well, hell. His intentions were every bit as solid as hers, but that didn’t mean he was a saint. “You probably shouldn’t do that.”

“Well, I do,” she insisted, looking pleased with herself. “Let’s get back to work.”

She was up and out the door before Mike could gather
his composure, much less his thoughts. The naive woman had just dumped all responsibility for whatever happened between them from here on out on his shoulders. She’d planted a virtual No Trespassing sign in front of her and expected him to honor it. If she’d wanted to fill his head with nonstop schemes for getting around such a thing, she couldn’t have done a more effective job. Getting her into bed was just about the only thought dancing around in his brain. It was crowding out all the sane, rational reasons for keeping his distance. It was nudging aside all of
his
rules for keeping his life uncomplicated.

Oh, he was going to sleep with her. No question about it.

And then he was going to hate himself for letting it happen.

Melanie was rather proud of herself. For once she’d taken the initiative, laid all her cards on the table and told a man exactly what she wanted—or in this case, what she didn’t want. Mike had seemed a little startled by her honesty, but in the end he was bound to admire a woman who knew her own mind. And of course he was bound to be grateful that she’d set ground rules that would keep things from getting complicated for either one of them.

Of course, that analysis didn’t explain why he was watching her as warily as someone keeping a close eye on a snake that was coiled to strike. In fact, he seemed downright edgy, when the exact opposite should have been the case. He should be relieved.

“Is something wrong?” she asked eventually, poised at the edge of the pile of topsoil, rake in hand.

“Nothing,” he said grimly.

“Then why do you keep looking at me like that?”

“Like what?”

“As if I’m some strange species you’ve never encountered before.”

He chuckled. “You’re a female. That’s strange enough. Men far wiser than I have spent entire lifetimes trying to figure you out.”

“There’s no need to be insulting.”

“Actually I find the way your mind works rather intriguing.”

“Oh? In what way?”

He shook his head. “You really don’t have a clue, do you?”

“About what?”

“That now that you’ve declared yourself off-limits, all I can think about is how to get around that.”

She swallowed hard and stared at him. That was definitely not what she’d intended. Or was it? “Are you serious?”

“Very.”

“But we just agreed—”

“Not exactly, darlin’. You reached a conclusion, put me in charge of following the rules, than sashayed away as if there was nothing more to worry about.”

“Because I trust you.”

“You shouldn’t. I told you that inside.”

“But you don’t want to get involved with someone who’s leaving town soon, do you?”

“No.”

“And I don’t want to get mixed up in something that could get complicated and messy.”

“So you say.”

“Do you doubt me?”

“Intellectually, I think you believe that.”

“I
do
believe it,” she said emphatically.

“Then you obviously have no idea how men’s minds
work. Tell us to stay away and all we want is the opposite.”

She regarded him incredulously. “But that’s just perverse,” she said.

“True, but it’s a fact of life.”

“So now you want to have sex, even though we both know it’s a terrible idea?”

He grinned. “Pretty much.”

“It’s not going to happen,” she declared.

His grin spread. “Is that a challenge? Oh, boy, now you’re really making it interesting.”

Melanie stared at him, trying to fight the sudden desire to take her rake to him. “You’re just tormenting me,” she accused, aware that now the idea of sex was firmly planted in her head, too. “You’re getting some kind of kick out of watching me squirm.”

“I think you’ve got that backward. You’re the one doing the tormenting. This is verbal foreplay, darlin’.”

Shocked that he could have leaped to such a conclusion, she snapped, “Don’t you foreplay me, Mr. Mikelewski. Right this second I wouldn’t get anywhere near you if you were the last man on the planet.”

He laughed. “Uh-oh, now you’ve done it. You’ve questioned my ability to change your mind.” He took a step to ward her. “Want me to see how quickly I can prove you wrong?”

Melanie backed up, her pulse humming with something that felt a lot more like anticipation than anxiety. Was this the outcome she’d subconsciously been after? Surely not.

“No, I most certainly do not.” Liar, liar, liar. The voice in her head was raising quite a din.

His gaze never left her face. “You sure?”

“Very sure,” she declared, though some traitorous part of her was all but shouting that the opposite was true.

Mike laid down his rake, his expression suddenly sober. “Think about it, Melanie. Because the next time I come by, we won’t just be talking about this. We’ll be testing all those rules of yours.”

When he walked right on past her without so much as a casual touch, she stood there trembling, maybe with outrage, more likely with need. Damn, he was right. All this talk had obviously made both of them want the exact opposite of what they knew was sensible.

“You’re spending a lot of time at the Lindsey cottage lately,” Jeff observed when he and Mike took a break on a job a few days later.

Since Mike was still wrestling with his conscience over the game he and Melanie were playing, he was in no mood to get drawn into this particular discussion with his best friend. Jeff tended to cut through the crap, and Mike was trying very hard not to be totally honest with himself. He feared if he admitted the truth, he’d be over at that cottage like a shot.

“The garden’s almost finished,” he said tersely.

“As if you being there has anything to do with the garden,” Jeff commented dryly.

“That is my
only
reason for being there,” Mike insisted.

“Maybe it started out that way, but something tells me things have changed. What would be so wrong about you getting together with Melanie D’Angelo?”

“If she were the type to have a casual fling, nothing. But she’s not.”

“Then have a serious fling with her,” Jeff said reason
ably. “You’re long overdue for one. You’re single. She’s single. Maybe it’ll develop into something amazing.”

“I can’t take that chance,” Mike replied. “I have a daughter to consider, and Melanie’s made it clear she’s going back to Boston.”