Secrets of the Lost Summer (28 page)

“Not far. We can turn back now and walk with you, unless you’d rather be alone.”

“I’m alone enough at that house.”

Olivia let his comment go at that but no sooner did she get Buster redirected than the rain picked up. Within a few seconds, they were in a downpour. She hadn’t brought a jacket and was just in a lightweight sweater. She was drenched almost immediately.

Dylan grabbed the leash from her. “Want to run?”

Olivia figured she was soaked no matter what she did. “Just remember who’s an athlete and who’s not an athlete.”

He laughed and jumped over a pothole rapidly filling with water, then picked up his pace. Buster got right into the spirit of things and trotted alongside him. Olivia kept up as best she could, but not only was Dylan a trained athlete, he was taller. She tended to take almost two steps for his one.

When they reached her house, it was practically raining sideways, water streaming down her driveway in cracks and splits in the dirt. She and Dylan were both soaked to the skin. He hooked Buster’s leash over his wrist and then caught her by the waist, lifting her off her feet.

She gave a little whoop of surprise and pleasure. “What are you doing?”

“Carrying you.”

She knew that much. She could tell because her feet weren’t on the ground but her body was still moving up her walk. He kicked open her front door and set her on the floor. He wasn’t winded. He wasn’t even breathing hard. He got Buster’s leash off and let the big dog shake off in the middle of the kitchen, rainwater flying everywhere.

Dylan grinned. “Guess I’ll have to get acquainted with your mop now.”

“Getting caught in a chilly rain is a cardinal sin,” Olivia said with a shiver. “We’re lucky we don’t have hypothermia.”

“I’ll build a fire. You should get out of those wet clothes.”

“You, too.” She still could feel his arms around her. Every stitch of her clothing was completely drenched. With a shaking hand, she pulled off her soaked shoes and socks and left them by the kitchen door. Her heart was racing, her blood pounding as she manufactured an easy smile. “Amazing how you can be dry one minute and soaked to the bone the next.”

“Uh-huh. Amazing.”

Olivia was aware of his eyes on her, then realized that her thin, wet sweater was clinging to her skin from the waist up, revealing more than she was prepared for him to see. She took in a shallow breath. “I’ll get changed upstairs. Feel free to borrow a towel. There’s a half bath down here and a full bathroom at the top of the stairs.”

Dylan gave her a head start, at least. She was up the stairs and on the landing before she heard his first step below her. He moved deliberately, in no apparent hurry, but she doubted he was tired after their morning on Quabbin or their run in the rain. She stood back, not sure if she was pausing to catch her breath or just waiting for him. She was freezing now and wanted to get dry and warm and by the fire.

He didn’t look cold at all when he reached the top of the stairs. She noticed his broad shoulders, his slim hips, his muscular thighs—he’d obviously kept in shape since his peak hockey days.

She pushed back her wet hair and searched for something to say. “Why are you so interested in an old jewelry robbery? You can’t possibly care about any reward or profit from the jewels themselves. Is it the hunt, or is it because of your father?”

“Maybe it’s because of you and your note.”

“Ah.” Her senses were on overdrive, tuned in to his presence, reacting to his sexiness. “It was the chives, then. On my card.”

He smiled. “
The Farm at Carriage Hill
got me, too.” He curved two fingers and wiped water from her hair off her cheek. “You’re not what I expected.”

“As the owner of Carriage Hill pestering you about your yard?”

“That, and this.” He lowered his mouth to hers, just skimming her lips with his, then staying close. “I didn’t expect I’d come out here and fall for you.”

“You came because of your father. Otherwise you’d have just hired someone to deal with me.”

“Aren’t you glad I didn’t? Go on. Change before you freeze.”

“I’m not likely to freeze now,” she said half under her breath as she slipped into her bedroom.

Dylan leaned in the doorway. “Will I turn into a toad if I step over the threshold?”

“You’re the big risk-taker. Try it. See what happens.”

She pulled open an oak wardrobe she’d found at a yard sale last fall and had painted a warm, restful cream, never imagining she’d be living here come spring. Pretending to have nothing else on her mind, she grabbed dry wool socks, jeans and a shirt, then subtly tucked underwear between them. As she turned, she remembered that she’d had some of her antique linens out first thing that morning, before Dylan had whisked her off to Quabbin. They were laid out on her bed, sorted according to color, fabric or edging.

Dylan had stepped onto the wide-board pine floor. He was fine. He was, she thought, more than fine. Just looking at him made her tingle with desire.

“You probably don’t have lace-edged pillowcases in San Diego,” she said.

“Not probably. Definitely.”

She suppressed a touch of self-consciousness and set her clothes on the foot of the bed. The room overlooked the backyard, and on warm mornings, with the windows open, she could hear the birds and smell her gardens on the breeze. That morning, she’d imagined Dylan with her.

He planted his hands on her hips from behind and turned her to face him. “Olivia.”

“I collect them.” Suddenly she was having a tough time forming a coherent thought. “Antique linens. I thought I could use them here, especially when I start taking in overnight guests. I can make things out of some of them. Sachets, pillowcases. The lace on one is so fine, so beautiful, I can actually cut it out of the rest of the pillowcase, which is a disaster, and frame it.”

“Good. Excellent. You’re an amazing woman with an amazingly creative eye.”

She draped her arms over his shoulders. “You don’t care about antique linens, do you?”

“I do because you do.”

She smiled. “I actually like hockey.”

He’d had all he could take. She could see it in his eyes, feel it in the tightening of his hold on her. He eased his arms around her and lowered his mouth to hers again, and in the split second before his lips touched hers she knew this wasn’t going to be a soft, gentle kiss. As if just to torture her more, his palms somehow found the bare skin of her lower back, eased under her wet sweater and up her midriff to just beneath her breasts. When she gave a little gasp, he deepened their kiss as he let his thumbs ease up and under her soaked bra.

Emboldened, aching with anticipation, Olivia coursed her hands over his shoulders and down his back, drawing him tightly to her. When she came to his leather belt, all she could think of was unbuckling it, stripping off his wet clothes, and her own.

He gave a ragged moan, then raised her sweater. “Time to get this off,” he whispered, kissing her again before he pulled back just enough to get the sweater up over her head. He tossed it onto the floor. His gaze swept over her. “You’re beautiful, Olivia. You’re so damn beautiful.”

“Dylan…”

In the next two seconds, her bra was off, on its way to the floor with her sweater.

He took her hand, placed it on his jeans, under his belt buckle, so that she could feel the size and shape of him. He kissed her again, then lowered his mouth to her breasts.

She was melting, aching, dying for him to be inside her.

If she hadn’t slipped in her wet feet, on the wood floor, anything could have happened.
Everything
could have happened. Instead, she found herself on her bed tangled in antique sheets and pillowcases.

Dylan’s blue eyes seemed darker, grayer in the late-afternoon light. The rain had stopped as abruptly as it had started, and now a ray of bright sun raked across her simple, attractive bedroom. Olivia realized she had linens scrunched in front of her, as if she were trying to cover herself. Dylan helped her up, giving her a soft kiss on the lips. “Go ahead and get on dry clothes. I’ll meet you downstairs.” His voice was slightly hoarse, but he cleared his throat and grinned. “Still want that fire?”

She threw a pillowcase embroidered with tiny violets at him as he left.

As she reached for the dry clothes she’d left on the bed, she caught her reflection in the mirror above her dresser. The short-lived sunshine was gone, but her eyes, her skin, her expression all seemed brighter. She wanted to credit her run in the rain but she knew it was mostly one Dylan McCaffrey.

She tugged off the rest of her wet clothes and got dressed.

“I think your father is the only reason you’re here,” she said when she returned to the living room. “You didn’t come here because of a run-down house you didn’t know you owned, the junk in the yard or missing jewels. You came here—and you came back—because of your father. He died suddenly, and too soon.”

Dylan stood back from the fireplace. He had a small fire lit and he’d dried Buster off and let him flop on the hearth. “You don’t think I came just to be a good neighbor?”

“You could have been a good neighbor by calling Stan to move that junk by himself. Or asking me to call Stan, or whomever. You wanted to see for yourself this mysterious property your father had left you.”

“Maybe my father got me here but you’ll keep me here.”

“How? By tying you up in the attic?” Olivia was only half kidding. “Not that I have an attic. Dylan, you don’t trust us. At least not yet.”

“Us?”

“Grace, my sister, my parents, me—any of us in Knights Bridge.”

“I don’t even know you.”

“My point exactly. How did your father learn about the jewelry heist?”

Dylan stirred the fire with a poker, set the screen back in place and settled onto the floor next to Buster. Finally he said, “I found notes about the robbery on my father’s laptop.”

“He left you his laptop?”

“It was in an old trunk he left me.” Dylan stretched out his thick, muscled legs as if he belonged there and glanced up at her. “I opened the trunk once right after he died, shut it and didn’t open it again until I got your note and discovered that I owned a house out here.”

Olivia lifted a log out of her wood box and set it on the fire. She was too restless to sit. “Tell me about the notes you found on his laptop,” she said.

“I didn’t find them until this last trip to San Diego. They describe the Ashworth robbery but don’t explain why it caught my father’s attention. I finally dug through the trunk and sorted every piece of paper, every file, every book, brochure and folder.”

When he paused, Olivia turned to him, noticing the play of the flames in his eyes. “What else did you find, Dylan?”

“A newspaper article about the robbery. It was tucked in a book about Quabbin.”

“From the Knights Bridge paper?”