Книга - Sleeping Arrangements

Sleeping Arrangements
Amy Jo Cousins


Aunt Adelaine's final will and testament said that "Addy Tyler shall inherit all of my estate, including my quirky but very large castle of a house and its current tenant, the very stubborn lawyer, Spenser Reed. The only condition on this will is that Addy be married within the year…."Sometimes Addy thought it was all a dream. No way was she going to be bulldozed into marriage, like some nineteenth-century Victorian! But then she found herself standing at the courthouse saying "I do" to Spenser, the most gorgeous and sexy man she'd ever met. It was to be a temporary marriage in name only. Then they started talking about the sleeping arrangements….









Addy’s Eyes Drifted Open Slowly


Spenser was crouched at her side, fingers tangled in her hair. She felt a physical click run through her system as his gaze locked with hers, bringing her closer to wakefulness.

“You know, you’re incredibly beautiful when you sleep.” His voice was soft and low. She opened her mouth in surprise and he immediately covered it with his own. Someone was moaning softly. Addy was afraid it was her. Her brain struggled to recall how she’d gotten into this situation.

Spenser had been explaining something about the will, the house and the money…. His teeth nipped at her lower lip and he pulled her closer. Something about living here for six months…but there was more, she was sure of it….

With a near shriek of rage, Addy tore her mouth from Spenser’s and shoved hard at his shoulders.

“Did you say that I have to be married?”


Dear Reader,

Thank you for choosing Silhouette Desire. As always, we have a fabulous array of stories for you to enjoy, starting with Just a Taste by Bronwyn Jameson, the latest installment in our DYNASTIES: THE ASHTONS continuity series. This tale of forbidden attraction between two romance-wary souls will leave you breathless and wanting more from this wonderful author—who will have a brand-new miniseries of her own, PRINCES OF THE OUTBACK, out later this year.

The terrific Annette Broadrick is back with another book in her CRENSHAWS OF TEXAS series. Double Identity is an engrossing page-turner about seduction and lies…you know, all that good stuff! Susan Crosby continues her BEHIND CLOSED DOORS series with Rules of Attraction, the first of three brand-new stories set in the world of very private investigations. Roxanne St. Claire brings us a fabulous McGrath brother hero caught in an unexpected situation, in When the Earth Moves. Rochelle Alers’s THE BLACKSTONES OF VIRGINIA series wraps up with Beyond Business, a story in which the Blackstone patriarch gets involved in a surprise romance with his new—and very pregnant—assistant. And last but certainly not least, the engaging Amy Jo Cousins is back this month with Sleeping Arrangements, a terms-of-the-will story not to be missed.

Here’s hoping you enjoy all six of our selections this month. And, in the months to come, look for Maureen Child’s THREE-WAY WAGER series and a brand-new installment of our infamous TEXAS CATTLEMAN’S CLUB.

Happy reading!






Melissa Jeglinski

Senior Editor

Silhouette Desire




Sleeping Arrangements

Amy Jo Cousins







www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)




AMY JO COUSINS


loves words of all kinds, and her love of reading naturally led to a love of writing. Amy also has a passion for languages and there’s nothing she likes better than learning a new language and using it to explore the history of a foreign country, whether standing on the beaches of D-Day in Normandy or outside the Olympic Stadium in Munich.

Her collection of books is slowly crowding her out of her home, although her cat seems more than willing to fall asleep upon the various piles. Other than that, Amy loves learning how to do anything that takes her outdoors and away from her computer including kayaking, sculling, rock climbing and landscape water painting.


For the Albinack boys— Bruce Edward, Matthew McKinley and Finley Edward. You set the bar high, fellas.




Contents


Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten




One


“I admit I didn’t expect a professional appearance, but I thought at least you’d be clean.”

The crisp voice crawled like ice down Addy’s spine, drawing her up straighter with each word. Pride and irritation kept her from turning around to respond to the man who’d walked into the law office behind her.

She brushed a hand reflexively over her filthy blue jeans. No sense even trying to straighten her ratty curls. Running her fingers through her hair wouldn’t remove the caked mud, although, according to the mirror in her pickup truck, she was fairly sure she’d managed to pick out all of the twigs. The rest of her muck-covered body was definitely a lost cause.

“I told your assistant this was a bad time for me, but she insisted this was the only appointment you had available.”

Sharp footsteps on the worn linoleum floor allowed her to pull her body to the side, avoiding the man’s passing. As he moved to stand behind the scarred wood desk, she got her first glimpse of the man who’d been leaving increasingly irritated messages on her answering machine over the last month.

She wondered if Mr. Spencer Reed ever cut himself on the sharp creases in his pants. Certainly the suit he wore as if it had been hand sewn for him by a London tailor was worth more than her entire wardrobe. Even his horn-rimmed glasses looked more stylish than anything she’d ever owned. Ignoring the demon in her mind that whispered of a blond Christopher Reeve in Clark Kent mode, she let her gaze roam casually over his face and body in a manner calculated to return insult.

Dark blond hair waving in deliberately casual disarray indicated an excellent barber. His cheekbones screamed good breeding, and that firm mouth surely never uttered words unless it was to bend courts and clients to his will. The emotionless ice-blue gaze made it difficult to look away. She reminded herself that she’d always found her family’s uniformly dark eyes to be warm and welcoming. This man, she thought, was easily summed up by a few of her least favorite words.

Slick. Cultured. Upper-class.

Because she couldn’t stomach hypocrisy, even her own, she admitted that a couple more words could be added to that list. Compelling. Coolly handsome. The seduction of assurance. If he bothered to turn on the charm, she’d probably be a lost cause.

The mismatch of his appearance with the ratty look of his office momentarily sparked her curiosity. Mr. Sharp-Dressed Man just didn’t fit in with these worn and tatty surroundings. She forced herself to ignore the temptation to speculate on his circumstances.

The trust fund on legs was still speaking. She dragged her attention back, annoyed further that he seemed to take no notice of her rudeness.

“I am very busy, and most people find ten o’clock to be a perfectly civilized hour for a business meeting.”

“I’m not most people.”

“Clearly.”

Addy kept a throttling grip on her temper. She wished she possessed the same control over the flush she felt heating up her cheeks. Her awareness of being inappropriately dressed combined with his implication that his time was far more valuable than hers had kindled a fire of embarrassment and anger that she knew he read on her face.

“Listen, Mr. Reed. You called. I came. What’s so important I had to interrupt my job for you?”

“Your job. Would that be ladies’ mud wrestling?”

Her vision blurred. Addy was dimly aware that she might have spit at him in her struggle to get the sharp-edged words out fast enough. She glanced at his stunned silence then grabbed the closest solid object. Only his quick grip on her arm stopped her from pitching his etched-marble nameplate at his elegant face.

“I’m sorry.” The words took a long moment to penetrate the haze of her anger. “I’m sorry. That was completely uncalled for and very unprofessional. I’ve had a long, frustrating morning, but that is no excuse for taking out my bad temper on you. Can we begin again? I’m Spencer Reed. Would you care for a cup of coffee?”

His outstretched hand across the desk was meant as a peace offering, she supposed. And the lopsided grin was meant to be soothing. She managed to keep her mouth shut, but enjoyed thinking about where he could stick his charm.

“Save it for someone you can still make a good impression on,” she snapped. “What do you want?”

He sighed and eyed her briefly over the tops of his glasses, as if debating whether to continue his apologies. She caught herself before she could ask him to take the glasses off so she could see if he looked as good without them as he did with them on. After a moment, he shrugged and lifted a stack of legal documents off the corner of his desk. With a gesture, he indicated the armchair facing the desk.

Addy shook her head. Whatever business he had with her, she preferred to hear it standing. Getting cozy was not an option.

“I hope I’m not the bearer of bad news,” he said slowly. “Last month Mrs. Adeline O’Connell passed away in her sleep.”

A glancing wave of shock made her falter for a moment. Although she’d not seen the woman since she was a baby, Addy was her great-aunt’s namesake. She hadn’t known of her death. Carefully schooling her face to blankness, she replied briskly.

“My condolences to her family.”

“You are her family.” The stern look he shot at her felt like a scolding.

“Mr. Reed, the last time I saw my great-aunt, I was in diapers. I haven’t heard from her since, and I certainly don’t consider her a part of my family.” She clipped the words out as she glanced at the men’s watch on her wrist. There was still time to return to her crew and try to clean up the disaster she’d left behind at the construction site.

“Perhaps you don’t. However, Mrs. O’Connell apparently considered you a part of hers. The reading of her will took place immediately after her funeral, and she has left you a significant bequest.”

With one hand, he plucked a document off the top of his stack and placed it on the desk in front of her.

“Is that what this is all about?” Her astonished laugh echoed in the sparsely furnished room. “I could have saved us both a lot of trouble if you’d bothered to mention that in your messages.” She pushed the papers right back at him. “I’m not interested in anything that woman wanted to give me.”

“Don’t be too hasty, Ms. Tyler. Think of it as your Free Parking jackpot.”

It took her a moment to place the Monopoly reference.

“Oh, shut up.” The words she’d repressed at the mention of Adeline O’Connell burst out of her like an erupting volcano. “That woman treated my mother like dirt her entire life. She took pleasure in hurting people. Took pleasure in trying to make people feel ashamed of themselves.” She grabbed her backpack from the floor, where she’d originally dropped it. “I wouldn’t take anything of hers if you plated it in gold and tied it up with a pink ribbon. Thanks, but no thanks. I’m out of here.”

She swung the heavy pack on her shoulder and whirled to stalk out the office door. His footsteps followed hers more quickly than she would have expected.

“Ms. Tyler.” Her name in his mouth rang with the command of an order to halt and his palm smacked against the door, holding it shut. She stopped with her hand on the knob, but refused to turn and face him. “There is a monetary bequest of nearly fifty thousand dollars, and also a property.”

These words did move her.

He was so close that her shoulder brushed against him as she turned. She was shorter, and resented having to look up at him. She also resented that being this close to him, closer than was comfortable, and knowing that his hand held the door shut behind her, was making her pulse race. She was dancing on a thin line between dislike and desire.

“Don’t insult me.” She let the words drop like individual stones into a still lake. “Your apology was not accepted and neither is hers. Not everyone can be bought.”

His lake-blue eyes narrowed and dropped as he tilted his head a little bit.

“You know, when you’re not behaving with all the polish of a truck driver,” he said after a moment, “you are quite unfairly beautiful.”

She pulled her shoulders back and turned her face away from him, all of a sudden sure that he would kiss her in a moment if she didn’t move. They stood frozen for silent seconds. She felt more than heard him exhale and realized she was holding her own breath as he dropped his hand from the door.

The moment had passed, which allowed her to face him again.

“Don’t fool yourself, Counselor. I’m not for sale.”

With those words, she yanked the door open and slammed it behind her. The resounding crash she left in her wake was the most satisfying moment of her morning.

She would have been even more pleased if she’d managed to shut the door before his parting shot chased after her.

“Everyone is for sale, Ms. Tyler, in my experience. Particularly women.”

In the parking lot outside the nondescript office building, she cranked the key in the ignition and pulled onto the street, tires squealing in sympathetic anger. She took the corners tightly and the straightaways at speed, with two monologues battling in her head. Her conscious mind bowed to her will, focusing on the difficulties she’d faced this morning with the clearly inaccurate geographic survey of her latest engineering project. The shopping center was a tricky design, involving floodplain issues that demanded absolute accuracy. Repeated problems had forced her to the drastic step of going out to the site herself with the surveyors and wading through the January snowdrifts. A heretofore unrecorded runoff stream, hidden under layers of Chicago winter snow, had landed her on her butt in cold, not-quite-frozen mud. She still blamed Mr. Spencer Reed for putting her in the position of embarrassing herself with his insistence on interrupting her workday.

In contrast to her willed focus, her subconscious made clear her total lack of control, as thoughts of that man and his insulting offer continued to pop into her head throughout the day. During a meeting with one of her project managers, Addy caught herself comparing the brassy highlights of the man’s strawberry-blond mop to the rich, gold glints she remembered in Spencer’s hair. When she took a half hour to review a new proposal, the first residential property she’d been offered, she blinked herself out of a fantasy that the property Reed had mentioned might be a house as intriguing as the one she was being asked to work on. Even her lunch break was interrupted by constant thoughts of the witty, sarcastic comebacks she imagined herself using on the attorney in a world where her off-the-cuff remarks would outmatch his.

Stop it. Just stop it. She crumpled up the remains of her Italian sub sandwich in its wrapper and pitched it neatly into the wastebasket in the corner of her office. I’m not interested in anything that man has to say.

It was depressing, however, that Spencer was the first man in aeons to spark anything other than boredom in her. Not her type at all, but still…there was something about the arrogance, not to mention the body, the face and the very mussable hair, that made her want to get down on the floor and wrestle with him.

She shook her head once and commanded her sex drive to sit down and shut up.

And stop calling him Spencer, she berated herself. You don’t call your enemies by their first names.



“Adeline Tyler, don’t you dare tromp through my house in those mucky boots! Get back out on the porch.”

Her mother’s voice came rocketing out of the house before Addy had edged more than the toe of one boot over the threshold of the front door. By the time she bent down to begin unlacing her undeniably filthy boots, Susannah Tyler was planted firmly in the doorway, barricading the entrance until the offending articles were removed.

When the freezing air hit her toes, Addy realized that even her socks were soaked.

“Hi, Mom,” she said, and stepped into the welcoming embrace, returning it with a fierceness that had her mother narrowing her eyes in concern.

“Hi, yourself.” The concern switched gears as Susannah noticed the debris that had transferred to her own neatly pressed blouse and jeans. “Maybe I should take the rest of your clothes while we’re at it.”

“I’ll take you up on that, but can I come inside first?” Addy asked, grinning, as she swung her mother gently around by the shoulders and stepped into the warmth of her childhood home. The boots, she left on the porch.

“Get in, get in.” Her mother handed Addy a pair of slippers as she hustled her into the guest bathroom off the hall, disappearing and then returning moments later with a thick terry bathrobe. “Good Lord, girl. What happened to you?”

“Ladies’ mud wrestling,” she answered with a laugh, and stripped out of her clothes. Her mother accepted them gingerly with one hand. The bathrobe felt wonderfully clean. “It’s my new career.”

“And to think we could have saved all that money on your college tuition,” her mother called as she headed back toward the kitchen. “There’s coffee on, if you want some before you take a hot shower.”

“Absolutely.” She stepped into the sheepskin-lined slippers and followed her mother to the rear of the house. Through the smattering of architectural courses she’d taken for her own pleasure on her way to attaining a degree in civil engineering, she knew that her family’s home was a perfect example of the Chicago bungalow, one of thousands clustered around the city. But in her heart, the house was unique. She’d spent two-thirds of her life in this house and now, as she did each time she came home, she walked slowly through the rooms, pausing in each one to savor the memories evoked by every square foot of space.

And the photographs. Nearly every table, most of the walls, any shelf with a spare inch of space on its ledge, held collections of the pictures that tracked the Tyler family in their continuing lives. Maxie in fabulously outrageous Halloween costumes. Tyler, two seconds before carrying out his threat to tackle the photographer. Herself, Sarah and her mother caught off guard in dozens of moments.

Most of all, though, what caught her were the pictures of her father. Michael McKinley Tyler had been killed in a car accident when Addy was eight years old. Maxie hadn’t even been born yet. Addy knew she was the only one of his four children who could remember him clearly, remember his wickedly flashing dark eyes and the music he could pour out of his saxophone like a liquid-gold rain in their small living room. So she took special pleasure in the recognition that flowed warmly through her with every picture of his smiling face.

“Hi, Daddy.” She blew a kiss at a photo of her father wailing away on the sax in the smoky darkness of a jazz club. Having greeted the house, she followed the dark aroma of French roast to the kitchen.

“Still the same as you remember?” her mother asked as she cracked the oven door and peered inside. Two mugs waited, steaming, on the butcher-block table.

Addy wrapped cold hands around the heavy ceramic mug and inhaled deeply, drawing in the rich scent. She’d first tasted coffee the day she turned six and the only thing she’d wanted for her birthday was to be allowed to watch her dad play with his band. Perched sleepily on a chair in the corner of the club, up far past her bedtime, waiting for the late set to start, her mother had let Addy sip a milky café au lait to stay awake. Smoke, jazz and coffee were inextricably linked for her from that night on.

“I think I’d run screaming out the door if you ever redecorated.”

“Your brother and sisters would have me committed. But before they invade, how was your day? Other than finding your true career path in mud wrestling, that is.”

“Disturbing.” Her mother’s raised eyebrow encouraged her to continue. Addy bit her lip and tried to find the right words for her questions. In the end, the simplest way seemed best. “Mom, did you know that Great-Aunt Adeline died?”

Susannah briefly closed her eyes and dropped her head beneath the light of the stained-glass lamp hanging above the table. When she looked back at Addy, her eyes, and her words, were calm. Measured. “Yes, I’d heard.”

“Why didn’t you tell us? Tell me?” If she hadn’t known, Addy was sure her siblings were equally in the dark.

Her mother paused before speaking.

“You wouldn’t even remember meeting her. You were just a baby. But I used to send her pictures of you. Your brother and sisters, too, but I always hoped she’d feel some kind of bond with you at least. Since you were named for her.” She shrugged. “I honestly didn’t think you would even hear about it.”

“Surprise, surprise,” Addy murmured, mostly to herself.

“Who told you?”

“Aunt Adeline’s attorney.”

“What?” Confusion battled surprise on her mother’s face.

“Apparently you were more successful than you thought. I’ve been named in her will.” Addy’s irritation blossomed anew at the mere thought. She knew her anger was a mixed-up tangle directed at both her great-aunt and Spencer Reed, but she resolutely shut thoughts of the disturbingly attractive man out of her head. “Maybe she thought she could buy her way back into your good graces on her deathbed.”

Ceramic mug met wood tabletop with a forceful clatter.

“Watch your mouth, Adeline Marie Tyler.” Her mother’s voice crackled with real anger. “You may not live under my roof anymore, but in this house we don’t disrespect the dead, or their last wishes.”

Susannah jumped up and paced the tile floor, eventually stopping to yank plates and water glasses from a cabinet. She turned and thrust the stack of plates at her eldest daughter. “If Aunt Adeline changed her feelings at the end and then died before she found a way to tell us, that’s the saddest thing I’ve ever heard. Go set the table.”

Addy stood and took the dishes, but remained stubbornly in one spot.

“I don’t want anything from her. She meant nothing to me.”

Her mother cupped a hand against Addy’s cheek, brushed a tangle of curls behind one ear. Gentleness rested in her touch.

The shrill peal of the telephone rang through the house.

“Answer that. Set the table. You’ll figure the rest out later.” Her mom patted her cheek and turned back to the stove.

She set the plates down in the dining room before heading to the tiny phone table in the hall. Answering the phone with her mind on other things, she was confused by the voice she heard. She moved the handset away from her ear, stared at it for a moment and then put it back.

“Excuse me? Who is this?”

“Spencer Reed, Ms. Tyler. I wanted to let you know—”

“How did you get this number? It’s not even mine.”

She could hear the impatience in his words and pictured his lips thinning as he pressed them together. “There are a lot of ways to get information if you’re willing to pay for it. But in the case of your mother’s home phone number, your aunt gave it to me years ago.”

“Great-aunt,” she shot back, not willing to let him claim an ounce more family intimacy than absolutely necessary. “It would have been kinder of her to use the number herself and call my mother just once in the last twenty or thirty years. Speaking of which, why doesn’t this bequest go to my mother? She’s the nearest relation. Or why not my brother and sisters, too? Why just me?”

He paused before speaking. She could picture him leaning back in an oversize leather chair, looking up at the ceiling. He would treat even her snippy questions with serious thought, she knew—and wondered why she was so certain of that.

“Maybe she thought it was too late to make amends to your mother but not too late to try with you. And you are her namesake. She felt that connection.”

His voice had softened with the last words, but she refused to be drawn in on such a sentimental appeal. “How would you know? Are you in the habit of quizzing your clients about their intentions? Don’t you just have to witness things and perhaps insult the client as a side benefit?”

Her shoulder was getting sore from leaning against the wall and she found herself twirling a curling strand of hair around one finger.

“Your great-aunt was more than just a client to me. Why don’t you meet me for a drink or dessert after you and your family have finished dinner, and you can ask me all the suspicious questions you like?” He was teasing her, and she was glad he couldn’t see her through the phone.

“Tell the truth. You’re smiling just a little bit,” he said.

She almost laughed.

What are you? Twelve? Why not just ask him to pass you a note during study hall? She stood up straight and shook her head, scowling at how easily she’d been suckered in, despite herself.

“I don’t think—”

He cut her off immediately.

“Don’t say anything. I’ll be at Francesca’s at nine. Do you know it?”

“I don’t care how great their tiramisu is. I’m not waiting an hour for a table just to have coffee and dessert.”

“No waiting. I know the owner.”

“Of course you do.” Everyone else in the city had to call a month in advance for a reservation and hope the maître d’was in a good mood. But he knew the owner. Of course. “Don’t wait for me to order your coffee.”

“Just think about it over dinner.” She waited, already sure that he couldn’t possibly hang up the phone without one last push at her. “Come and share something sweet with me, Addy Tyler. You might be surprised how much you like it.”

She didn’t know if he could hear her softly voiced, “Ha!” as she quietly depressed the off button on the phone, severing the connection. Let him wait. She had no intention of thinking about that man for one more minute of her evening.

The gust of freezing air that announced the arrival of one of her siblings drew goose bumps on Addy’s skin beneath the terry robe. When the chill wind didn’t stop, and the cacophony of sound accompanying it clarified into two feminine voices bickering at top volume, she sighed and headed to the front door.

“Close the door, creeps. There’s snow enough outside without letting it in the house.”

Her sisters turned as one at the sound of her voice. Maxie, the baby, muttered one last dig at Sarah and sprinted over to Addy for a hug. Sarah, with raised eyebrows and a look of supreme frustration tensing her face, turned and shut the door.

Cold air radiated from Maxie’s jacketed body as she squeezed her sister. Maxie stepped back and eyed Addy’s attire, wrinkling her nose.

“Put on some pants. Vorks vonders vith ze chill factor,” she said, her voice rolling with the heavy Russian accent of a wicked seductress from a James Bond flick.

“Dress yourself, brat.” She paused to take in the enormous column of white fur perched precariously on Maxie’s short, spiky curls. “Or maybe not. Nice hat, Ivana.”

“Today I am Russki, nyet?” Her voice lapsed back into its typical American youthful enthusiasm. “I couldn’t resist, Addy. As soon as I saw it, all I could think about was horse-drawn sleighs and daschas in the woods and lots of ice-cold vodka in front of a roaring fire. Can’t you just picture it?”

Even Sarah was smiling as she walked over to the two of them and slung an arm around each sister’s shoulder for a group squeeze. Everyone in the family was used to Maxie’s soaring flights of the imagination and her tendency to dress herself up to suit them. “Of course we can, Max,” Sarah said. “And you can borrow my copy of War and Peace or Anna Karenina if you want to pick up a bit more atmosphere. Just please stop trying to set me up with that guy, okay? You may be acing art school, but postgrad veterinary science is kicking my butt. I just don’t have time for a whirlwind romance right now. From what I’ve read, they seem to take up quite a lot of time and energy.”

“Zat’s vhy zey call zem vhirlvinds, dahlink.” The playful accent was back, and forgiveness floated on the air kisses Maxie blew at Sarah. “And I’ll take whichever book describes the clothes better, please.”

“War and Peace,” Sarah said decisively.

“I don’t know how you read all of those incredibly long books, on top of all that studying,” Addy whispered directly into her sister’s ear as they turned and hugged each other hello. “Give me a nice, uncomplicated set of engineering plans any day.”

Melting snowflakes sparkled like tiny jewels in Sarah’s long, straight dark hair, the only one of the siblings not to inherit their parents’ waves and curls. She poked a careful finger at Addy’s still-muddy tangles. “It keeps me sane. And you liked Jane Eyre. Admit it.”

“Yeah, sure. It was okay. But do you know how long it took me to read that thing?” Addy scoffed out loud, although she’d been wondering for the past month if she should ask her sister to recommend another book to her. Studying civil engineering hadn’t afforded a lot of time to read grand, sweeping love stories, and she’d found herself oddly caught up in the story between the governess and the aristocrat, the tragedy and the joy of it.

“Let me guess. There was a fire at a farm and you had to stop, drop and roll in the pigsty, right?” Maxie’s teasing words and gentle tug at her hair reminded Addy that she still needed to clean up for dinner.

“Trust me, and don’t ask.”

Family dinner at the Tyler family homestead was, as always, a raucous affair, as stories, complaints and triumphs came pouring out of all of them. Addy braced herself for the onslaught of opinion and advice as she dropped her bombshell.

Standing in front of the plate-glass living room window after dinner, her head was full of conflicting voices arguing caution versus a take-the-money-and-run approach. Watching the exhaust billow in clouds from her truck as it sat running on the street in her hopeful attempt to warm the interior before her drive home, she found herself pulling up a picture of the irritating Spencer Reed in her mind’s eye. Dislike wound up with embarrassment, like a ball of snakes, settled heavily in her stomach as she recalled their childish bickering. She tried to remove her emotions from the equation, to look at her great-aunt’s bequest fairly and without prejudice, and found that she couldn’t do it.

No doubt Mr. Spencer Reed would have no difficulty shutting off his emotions and approaching the situation coldly and with a logical mind. But Addy couldn’t stop herself from feeling angry and insulted.

She only hoped she wasn’t letting her dislike of the urbane lawyer, with his pristine suits and polished manner, affect her good judgement.

“Take it, take it, take it, take it,” the voice hissed softly in the quiet room.

After a brief moment of toe-curling startlement, Addy reassured herself that in fact neither the devil nor her subconscious was whispering to her in a disembodied voice from the coziness of her mother’s living room.

“Speak to me, oh wise one,” she intoned.

Her brother, several feet taller than the skinny brass lamp behind which he was attempting to hide, cocked his head to one side and grinned the grin that unraveled scores of women on a Friday night at Sully’s Tavern as he walked over to her.

“I know this whole thing is freaking you out a little bit. I just think you should check it out is all. The woman is dead.” He glanced over his shoulder toward the kitchen, as if expecting their mother to come running to scold. “No disrespect intended, but she can’t hurt you now. Or make you do anything you don’t want to do. So why not take the chance to go after something you’ve always wanted.”

She knew her smile didn’t quite reach her eyes as she hugged him, her handsome brother with the wicked smile and the dark eyes that reminded her so much of their father. He was the only one in her family who knew of her secret dream, probably because it echoed so strongly in him, too.

But she couldn’t explain to him, because she didn’t understand it herself, that somehow she did feel hurt. A small, sharp pain like a bruise had lodged itself in her chest ever since Spencer had told her that her great-aunt was dead.

“How did you get to be so wise at twenty-four?”

“Hey, everyone knows that bartenders are the world’s cheapest psychologists. Besides, I’ve always been smarter than you. Mom still thinks you’re the one who broke her Belleek vase.”

“Christopher Robin…” she warned. She was still ticked about that.

He winced. “Jeez, Addy, don’t say that where people can hear you, will ya?”

Her brother’s given name was a standing joke in the family. Claiming delirium from the pain of giving birth to a boy with such a big, fat head, their mother had years ago absolved herself of all responsibility. Outside the home, he introduced himself by his last name, and all the world knew him as Tyler.

Addy and her sisters were forbidden, on pain of severe sibling torture methods, to mention Christopher Robin Tyler’s given name in public.

“It’s written in the bylaws of sisterhood, baby brother,” she teased. “Thou shalt torture thy brother at any opportunity.” She stood up on tiptoe and pressed a kiss to his cheek. “I get busted out of the union if I let you slide.”

His hands on her shoulders were gentle as he gave her a little shake.

“Just think about it,” he said and walked her back over to the window to keep an eye on the running truck.

“I will,” she promised.

After saying her goodbyes and collecting the copy of Pride and Prejudice Sarah had pulled off their mother’s shelves with a smile at Addy’s hesitant request, she stepped carefully down the slippery walk to her truck, heading for the short but chilly drive home.

When the snowball that exploded against the back of her head turned out not to contain rocks, she realized her baby brother really was grown up after all.

She had deliberately stayed late at her mother’s house, but the temptation to drive by Francesca’s and try to see in the plate-glass window front was nearly irresistible. At the intersection of the street that would let her perform a casual drive-by peek, she pulled over to the curb and sat through three changes of the light.

Had she been able to banish his voice from her head, she might have given in to the temptation to stop and see if he was still waiting for her.

But she couldn’t get him out of her head. So she drove home.

Back in her one-bedroom apartment, she slid naked between the flannel sheets of her bed and pulled the down comforter up to her chin. By the light of a bedside lamp, she opened the covers of the book and tried to still all the noise in her head with the elegant words of another time and place.

She fell asleep in a confusing swirl of clipped British commentary on marriage, money and misunderstandings, with some smart-aleck Chicago commentary on the side. The opening sentence of Jane Austen’s novel trotted on light feet in circles through her mind: “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”

In her last conscious thoughts before the dreams overwhelmed her, she wondered if, as a woman in possession of a good fortune, she’d have to watch out for rapacious wife hunters. And realized that she’d decided to find out more about Great-Aunt Adeline’s bequest.



Racing out of her apartment building front door at five o’clock the next morning, already running late for a breakfast meeting, she came within inches of flattening the FedEx man.

After catching him and then listening to him crab about early morning deliveries, she signed where he pointed, her handwriting illegible with cold fingers in thick mittens, grabbed the package without examining it and ran for her truck.

Scraping the accumulated snow off her truck warmed her up a little, although the icy vinyl bench seat sucked the heat right back out of her bones when she slid her butt across it.

Hidden patches of black ice and a need to drive defensively amidst skidding semi tractor-trailers necessitated a strict eyes-on-the-road policy. Not until she made the slow turn into her company’s parking lot, rear wheels fishtailing a little bit even at a crawl, did Addy have a safe moment to glance at the return address on the FedEx envelope.

“Damn it!”

Shooting pain lanced up her leg as she rapped her knee sharply against the dash, sliding out of the truck while glaring at the blue-and-white envelope. She hobbled into the building, smacked the offending object onto the middle of her desk and limped off to dig up some much-needed coffee.

Voices echoing from the conference room reminded her that their video teleconferencing call with the client from Japan was about to begin.

She just needed one minute.

Ripping off the cardboard strip labeled Tear Here, she yanked out the pages, and knew that if someone were to see her and ask why she was snarling, she’d be unable to give a good answer.

But just seeing that man’s name on a return address made her want to heave a rock through a plate-glass window.

Preferably his.

A handwritten note was paper-clipped to the top page.

A representative of the firm will be waiting at the following address this evening between 6:00 and 8:00 p.m. if you would like to view the property mentioned in your great-aunt’s last will and testament. I hope you will not allow any previous misunderstanding to scare you off.

Spencer Reed

P.S. The tiramisu was indeed excellent.

Fourteen hours later, Addy was still fuming.

Scare her off? Scare her off?

Her entire day had proved to be one disaster after another, made worse by the fact that she couldn’t keep her mind on her work. Not that she was surprised. How could she concentrate when the strangulation fantasies were running through her head with such startling visual clarity?

Now, spotting an open parking space in the vicinity of the north-side address, she slewed her truck into the gap, grabbed her backpack, jumped out and marched up the block.

Fifty yards ahead of her, silhouetted by the glow of a streetlight, a tall figure leaned casually against a wrought-iron fence.

She didn’t need the benefit of light to know who it was.




Two


Addy skidded to a halt on a patch of ice in front of the gate. He reached out a hand to steady her. She shrugged it off, glared up at his shadowed face and wished she were taller.

“What the hell are you doing here, Reed?”

“Good evening to you, too, Ms. Tyler.”

“There’s nothing good about it,” she snapped, the words exploding in cloudy puffs of her breath in the icy air. “What are you doing here?”

His tone was carefully modulated to soothe. She felt as if she was being handled, and resented it.

“My note said—”

“Your note,” she interrupted, “said a ‘representative’ of the firm would be here. Not you.” A sharp poke at his shoulder emphasized her final word.

Addy had a split second to note that she might as well have poked a brick wall, for all he moved, before the recoil of her own rude gesture threw her off balance again, her low-heeled boots skating out from beneath her.

Spencer yanked her up against his body, one arm wrapped around her waist, the other hand cupping her elbow. The heat of him radiated through his tailored black coat, cashmere no doubt, and she blamed her momentary dizziness on the sudden warmth. She was aware that she should be backing away from him.

Neither of them moved.

Light reflecting softly off the snowdrifts lit a glimpse of summer sky in his eyes as his gaze slid over the contours of her face, coming to rest on her lips. She experienced it like a physical caress and felt her mouth soften in response. Dazed, she was already visualizing the kiss when his voice broke in with the hard crash of reality.

“I was afraid you wouldn’t come.”

“What?”

Blood rushed to her face as she jerked herself out of his arms, embarrassed to realize that she’d been mooning over the man like a lovesick teenager hoping for a kiss at the end of a first date.

She reached out a hand to the fence and steadied herself, feeling the twist of wrought iron radiate cold like an icy bone in her clenched fingers.

“I thought you might not come,” he repeated patiently, tucking his hands carefully into his coat pockets. “Based on the outcome of our first meeting.”

“Based on the—” She sucked in frigid winter air and welcomed the cold pain in her lungs as it swept the fog from her brain. “So you lied. And on top of that, you implied in your little note that I’d be too scared to show up.”

“I thought that might get you here, even if it was only to yell at me. And since I am in fact a representative of the firm, I wasn’t lying, strictly speaking.”

“Tell me, Counselor, are the intimidation tactics part of your hourly billing, or did you charge my great-aunt extra for that?”

“I did what I had to do.”

Back on firmer ground, squared off against him like a prizefighter in the ring, she grabbed on to her anger and used it as a shield against other more confusing emotions. In the swirl of anger and attraction, of unwanted hurt and even more unwanted awareness of the man standing in front of her, the scents of old leather and warm vanilla spices still lingering on her clothes from where she’d been pressed up against him—Jesus, the man even smelled rich—one thing was clear. She should be asking herself the same question she’d thrown at him. What the hell was she doing here?

She didn’t need this, any of it, and she didn’t want it.

The realization settled like a burlap sack of wet sand on her shoulders, with none of the elevated light and joy she somehow thought she should feel upon deciding to walk away from her great-aunt, Spencer Reed and this entire mess.

“You did what you had to do.” She repeated his words, rolling them slowly around in her mouth as if they were part of a new dish whose taste she wasn’t sure she cared for. “Oh, that’s right. I forgot. The rules of polite society don’t apply to you, do they? You’re a lawyer.”

She opened her mouth, the torrent of scathing words near to bursting the dam, when she realized that she was just prolonging the encounter. Her teeth clicked sharply together as she snapped her jaw shut, shook her head, turned and walked away.

“Addy, please.”

The voice, low and quiet, calling her name the way a friend or a family member or a lover would, made her pause, though she didn’t turn around. She’d known the man for less than two days and it already seemed like every time she tried to walk away from him, he managed to get one last word in.

“Just take a look at the place, please.” The words slid around her like a gentle hand, curling around her elbow and tugging softly in his direction. “We’ll both go inside and get warm, I’ll explain some of the details to you and you won’t take any potshots at my profession.”

Her bark of laughter startled them both.

She had to see the look on his face after that, and the need brought her back to him where he stood in front of the wrought-iron gate up to his ankles in snow and looking perplexed by her sudden burst of laughter.

“You’ve got to be kidding.” All at once, her humor in the situation was genuine. “My potshots at your profession?”

For once, Spencer’s reserved facade slipped. She could see the physical moment when he remembered his comments to her the day before, and watched him visibly flinch. The sheepish grin and the brow slightly lifted in guilty acknowledgement begged her forgiveness, and the words swiftly followed.

“And I’ll continue to apologize for my massive and completely unprofessional lack of courtesy yesterday morning. What do you say?”

Addy bit her lip, chewing off her raspberry-flavored Chap Stick and feeling the last bit of warmth seeping out of her body. She started to shiver. Lord, it was cold.

Spencer took a step toward her, bringing his face clearly into the light for the first time. The skin of his face as it followed the sharp contours of his cheekbones was pale. She wondered abruptly if he’d been standing outside this gate and waiting for her since six o’clock. She’d stubbornly delayed until the last minute before driving over here, a gesture that had felt independent at the time but now seemed merely childish.

“Addy.” He stood close enough now to encompass her in his shadow, the streetlight behind him making a golden halo out of his hair. He lifted a hand and nudged her chin up with gloved fingers until her gaze met his again. She was conscious of her own breathing, the scratchiness of the knit wool cap pulled low on her brow, the dull ache in her fingers and toes. If she didn’t pay attention, she might forget to take her next breath.

His thumb scraped lightly along her jaw. Tucked a rampant curl behind her ear. Her ears were ice.

“Addy, it’s not really me that you’re mad at here.”

Like the ice of a frozen lake cracking beneath the blades of a skater, the moment shattered. Irritated again, she snapped a wave at the gate.

“Let’s get on with it, Reed. And keep the psychoanalysis to yourself. If I want a therapist, I’ll hire one who doesn’t know how to sue me sixteen ways from Sunday.” She raised her hands in the air, cutting off any response. “Sorry.”

“Right.” He exhaled sharply. A set of keys jangled in his hand as he wrestled with the frozen lock on the gate. “Sorry about the hedges. Your great-aunt meant to have them cut back, but time got away from her.”

For the first time, Addy noticed the towering wall of hedges pressing against the fence, leaning heavily over the iron spikes capping the fence rails. Branches struggled to squeeze through the narrow gaps between rails, reaching out to snag unwary pedestrians. Icicles as thick as her wrists pulled heavy boughs earthward in dangerous arcs.

“Jesus,” she breathed. “It’s the briar wood surrounding Sleeping Beauty’s castle.”

When Spencer laughed, she simply raised an eyebrow at him. “You know, all those knights in shining armor impaled themselves on the thorns and died horribly painful deaths in those hedges.”

“Well, then, I guess it’s a good thing I left my armor at home today,” he said, swinging the gate wide open before her. “Come on in, Sleeping Beauty.”

“Right,” she muttered as she stepped onto a clean-swept walk that drew a straight line to the front door. Or presumably it did. At the moment, with the snow-laden heights of the hedges blocking off the street, the yellow wedge of light arcing in from the gate was the only illumination. Although she could pick out the outline of the house—high, peaked roofs and other mysterious shapes—against the light of the city sky, details of the building itself were invisible.

“Got a flashlight, Reed?”

“Dammit. If the power’s out again…” Spencer brushed past her. “Stay here. I’ll be right back.”

“Again?”

She stomped her feet and crossed her arms tightly against her chest. After a minute or two, a light flickered from what looked like a porch. The man had apparently dug up his own flashlight.

“I’m going to check the fuse box…” His voice echoed slightly, as if reaching out to her from far off instead of across the lawn. “…be just one more minute.”

Three minutes later, after a particularly stiff gust of wind dumped a load of snow off a branch two feet in front of her head, Addy gave up on waiting. She’d damn well rather stand in a dark hallway than out here in the Arctic Circle. Picking her feet up high with finicky cat steps through the newly dumped snow, she approached the darkened house.

When the lights snapped on, she threw a hand in front of her face, reflexively blocking the sudden glare.

And then lowered her hand one millimeter at a time, her mouth hanging open and her eyes painfully wide.

It was a castle.

Towers and turrets. Candles flickering in sheltered sconces. The hedges, threateningly visible in the sudden light, loomed over her like the encroaching boundaries of an ancient forest. She could almost swear she heard horns, dying faintly away on the cold night air, calling the hounds to hunt.

When the wolf burst around the side of the building and raced straight toward her, giving one deep woof on the way, Addy decided that she was hallucinating. Clearly.

Her next conscious thought was that being body-slammed by a wolf into a snowbank sure did shoot the hallucination theory all to hell. Its paws were planted smack in the middle of her stomach and she could feel its hot breath on her neck as it shoved its nose beneath her scarf. She opened her mouth to scream.

And sputtered in disgust as she got a faceful of doggy drool when the thing licked her from her chin to her eyebrows.

“Ew, gross, disgusting.” She whipped her head to the side to avoid another lick and spat into the snow. “Get off me, you big lug.”

“Elwood! Heel!”

The dog gave a reluctant whine, swiped one last kiss wetly across her forehead and leapt off her to go trotting obediently away. Addy pushed herself up on her elbows, scraped the snow out of her collar and wished that the heat of her irritation could actually shoot red laser beams out of her eyes to burn to a crisp the man striding across the snow-covered lawn toward her.

“I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize he was out.” Spencer came to a halt at her feet. She could see him trying to decide whether or not it would be safe to offer her a hand up. The dog, an enormously overgrown puppy she now saw, bounced around his feet, tail wagging and tongue drooling. “Elwood, sit. Sit, Elwood.”

When Spencer finally gave up and shoved the dog’s butt into the snow with two gloved hands, Addy laughed out loud.

“Elwood?” she asked as she clambered to her feet and started brushing off her clothes. “Let me guess, he has four whole fried chickens for lunch every day.”

“That was Jake. Elwood ate dry white toast.”

“That giant wolf in dog’s clothing certainly eats more than white toast.” She could feel melting snow trickling down the back of her neck. “What kind of dog is it anyway?”

“Elwood’s a purebred Akita.”

“Of course. Even her dog sounds snotty, though I wouldn’t have thought Great-Aunt Adeline was a fan of The Blues Brothers.”

“I don’t think she ever saw the film. Elwood is my dog.”

Oops. So much for the truce on insults.

Before she could ask what his dog was doing at the house, Addy heard Spencer give what sounded suspiciously like a snicker. She glared up at him. His lips were clamped together in what was clearly a weak effort to keep from laughing out loud at her. “If you’re finding this funny, Reed…” she warned.

“Not at all,” he said, his voice strangled. “It’s just…dripping.” He reached out a gloved hand toward her hair.

“Don’t touch me,” she snapped, and jerked her head back. This had the unfortunate effect of dislodging the mountain of snow perched on her hat, spilling it down her face in a cold, damp mini avalanche.

“Dammit.”

Spencer’s laughter burst out of him in an uncontrollable guffaw. Through the ice water dripping into her eyes, she saw him strip off his gloves and shove them into the pockets of his overcoat. He stepped through the snow to stand next to her, crowding her.

“You’re invading my personal space, Reed. Back off.” She knew she looked ridiculous, and resented it.

“I’m cleaning you up, Frosty. Relax.” He tugged off her knit cap and ran his bare fingers gently through her wet curls, combing out clumps of melting snow. She felt the trails left by his fingers on her scalp like the burning afterimage of the sun. Spencer brushed his thumbs gently across her eyebrows and then her cheekbones. When his fingers passed softly over her mouth, she inhaled shakily, and the sudden narrowing of his eyes told her that he’d heard it. “And it wouldn’t kill you to call me by my first name, Addy.”

“You know, it just might,” she muttered, and nearly smiled at the grimness in her own voice. Her awareness of his hands on her skin shocked her with its intensity. In a sudden movement, she jerked her hands up to push his away, only to find her fingers entangled with his.

If I’m so cold, why does it feel like he’s burning me? As the words flashed through her brain, she tried to pull her hands away.

“That’s enough.”

“Not nearly.”

The clouds of their breaths lingered in the cold, still air between their faces, merging into one slowly disappearing fog. Addy felt the ridiculous urge to tuck her top lip over her bottom one and direct her next breath straight at her feet, and told herself she was being paranoid.

She didn’t think she sounded very convincing.

“Your hands are cold.”

Her fingers were still interlocked with his, and Spencer was rubbing them gently. With inexorable slowness, he pulled her hands to his mouth and exhaled warmly on them. When she shivered, his smile showed in his eyes.

Enough was enough.

“I’m soaking wet because of your goofy dog, Reed. I’m cold all over,” she snapped.

For the second time since her arrival, her irritation at his smugness saved her from further embarrassment. She yanked her hands away from his and shoved them deep into her coat pockets. “I suppose it would be too much to ask to go inside now, before I end up with a raging case of pneumonia?”

Spencer’s grin told her she wasn’t fooling anyone. Then she shivered again, and this time it was because she actually was freezing.

“I really am cold,” she said as her teeth started to chatter.

“Of course. Come on.” With a casualness she didn’t fall for, he snagged one of her hands and tucked it in the crook of his arm. He led the way back to the sidewalk and steered her toward the front porch. After a moment of mental debate, Addy decided that the advantage of not having to look where she was going, allowing her to stare at the house looming over them, was worth the inconvenience of bumping into Spencer’s body with every step. Elwood pranced about their feet, kicking up snow with a dog’s sheer joy in play.

But it was the house, the fairy-tale, castlelike vision of a house, that she couldn’t take her eyes off.

With all of the lights on and a little more composure under her belt, Addy could see that although the house was large, it was the height of the building that made it seem so imposing. The house itself was three full stories tall, and its towers—there are towers, with round walls and cone-capped roofs, for God’s sake—stretched another story or two higher. There were windows everywhere, almost more windows than walls it seemed, and warm yellow light shone out of dozens of them.

Closer to the house, she started to realize why the building gave off such a feeling of age. Her initial impression of stone walls had been given by the mottled, peeling gray paint on the clapboard siding. The wraparound porch that stretched across the front of the house and around one side lent an air of elegant welcome, until she noticed that the gutters were pulling away from the porch roof in several places.

“Careful here. Watch your step.”

“I see Great-Aunt Adeline didn’t exactly keep the place up,” she said as she gave a little leap over the first stair, most of which seemed to be missing, up to the porch.

“She was ninety-two when she died, Addy. New paint didn’t exactly top her list of priorities.” Spencer kept his gaze directly ahead of him, but his clipped enunciation communicated his displeasure well enough.

“I’m a little tense.”

She knew her words weren’t an apology, could hear her mother’s voice in her head demanding that she make one, but Addy felt as if she’d done enough apologizing to this man already.

“I know.” Spencer’s hand tightened around hers for a moment and he turned his head to look directly at her. His eyes were the blue of the sky a half hour after sunset. Then he let go and reached for the door.

“I know.” She mouthed the words at his back like a bratty five-year-old. Of course he does. Spencer Reed knows everything.

It was amazing how easily this man could get under her skin with just two words.

“Come inside. I’ll find you some dry clothes.” He called the words back over his shoulder at her as he pushed open the front door and then stepped quickly up the staircase directly in front of the door.

“I’m not going to be here long enough—” she started to call out after his retreating back “—to change clothes.” She ended by talking to herself. “Sheesh. Like talking to a brick wall.”

Might as well check the place out, Addy thought. Then she actually looked around her and realized that she would have no idea where to start. A long hallway extended on either side of the staircase toward the rear of the house, and what seemed like a dozen doorways opened off it, scattered randomly on both sides of the hall. Even the doorways themselves were varied, some with doors, some without. One was arched and another was an open cutout in the shape of the minaret of a Turkish mosque.

Flipping a mental coin, she started walking slowly down the right side of the hall, trailing her fingers along a chair rail. A faded Oriental runner muffled the sounds of her boots on the hardwood floors.

Above the chair rail, the walls were crowded. Oil paintings, photograph collages, dried flowers, even an old violin, were displayed with care for visual pleasure all the way down the hall. Addy stopped in front of an age-darkened portrait of a dark-haired woman with her hair pulled back severely in a bun and a small smile on her lips. The family resemblance was unmistakable, even if Addy couldn’t have guessed the century for the life of her. Surprised, she found herself wondering if this was where her mother’s habit of blanketing her walls with photographs and artwork and family mementos came from.

Reaching out a hand, she traced the line of the woman’s cheekbone, her fingertips a millimeter from the painting’s surface. An angular scribble in the corner of the painting caught her eye. After a moment’s examination, she realized that the scribble was numbers.

1899.

Spiderlike chills crawled over her skin, lifting the hairs on her arm. This picture of a woman who looked so much like her mother, her sisters, herself, was over one hundred years old. Some quick math allowed her to guess that she was staring at a picture of her own great-great-grandmother.

“Her name was Susannah.”

She jumped and clenched her jaw to keep from yelping at the sudden noise. One hand pressed firmly to her chest, she took a deep breath.

“Don’t do that,” she said. “You could kill someone.” Spencer was holding out a pile of neatly folded clothes. She ignored it. A grin quirked across his face.

“Sorry.” His voice didn’t sound very apologetic. He looked at the portrait. “I don’t even know who she is, but Adeline used to stop and look at that painting all the time. She told me once that the woman’s name was Susannah.”

“Susannah is my mother’s name,” she said after a long silence. “I think she was my great-great-grandmother.” Something was cracking inside her. What felt like an enormous pressure burst into existence behind her eyes and in her temples. She took a breath and felt it hitch alarmingly in her chest. Shook her head and closed, then opened, her eyes. “Is there a bathroom here?”

“Second door down. Take these with you.” Spencer pushed the clothes into her hands and she grabbed at them reflexively.

In the bathroom, she dropped the clothes on a green marble counter, cranked on the hot water and thrust her hands under the strong rush out of the antique taps. Everything was cold. Her hands felt like clattering ice cubes. She looked up and into a mirror and saw that her teeth were chattering.

No wonder I’m out of it—I really am about to come down with pneumonia. Time to stop being stupid just to prove I’m stubborn.

Five minutes later, she felt almost human again. Her jeans were still damp and chilly—taking her pants off was more comfortable than she’d wanted to get. But wearing a faded navy sweatshirt with Duke University emblazoned across the chest and thick, dry socks returned a little of her calm.

Duke?

She followed the sound of a whistling kettle and found Spencer in a tiny servant’s kitchen, not much more than a closet with a hot plate and a sink, off the other hall. He’d removed his overcoat, suit jacket and tie somewhere along the way and stood in gray slacks and a deep blue button-down with the sleeves rolled up. She stood in the doorway, reluctant to squeeze into the tiny room with this man who made all the little hairs on her arms stand on end.

“So, Great-Aunt Adeline was a big Blue Devils fan, was she?”

When he looked startled at her sudden appearance, she was pleased. Let him be the one off balance for a little while. His gaze skimmed over her from head to toe. She saw his eyes narrow and guessed that he’d noticed she still wore her wet jeans.

“Not that I’m aware of. That’s mine,” he answered as he returned to pouring tea from a fat ivory pot into two bone-china teacups. “Did the sweatpants not fit?”

“I don’t know,” she said, watching him pour. She found it irritating that instead of looking silly or a bit prissy with a teapot, the contrast between the fragility of the china and the muscles in Spencer’s hands and forearms only emphasized the strength of his physical presence in the tiny room. “I have this thing about wandering around big, empty houses with guys I don’t know while wearing their pants. I’d rather keep my own, thanks. So tell me, why are your dog and your sweatpants at my great-aunt’s house?”

His next words confirmed her suspicions.

“I’ve been staying here for a while,” he answered, dropping what she could only assume was an actual tea cozy over the pot and then turning to her. “Do you take anything in your tea?”

“I have no idea. I never drink it. Is living in my great-aunt’s house one of the perks of attorney-client privilege?”

“Of course not. Don’t you read anything?” He doctored both teacups with a dollop of honey and a splash of milk and placed them on saucers. “Let’s sit in the library. I’ll start a fire. You can warm up and I’ll tell you about all the information inside that useful packet of papers I sent you this morning.”

Trailing him down the hall, Addy felt like a fifth grader caught throwing spitballs during the teacher’s pop quiz. She had deliberately ignored the stack of legal documents since she had no intention of accepting the bequest. Now she realized that when dealing with Spencer Reed, it was better at all times to be fully prepared. She was clumsy enough around him without choosing to be ignorant, also.

The library was a long, narrow room that turned out to contain not only books and a fireplace but also a half-dozen glass-fronted cases holding collections of everything from iridescent pinned butterflies to small, fossilized sea creatures to dusty hunks of various minerals and semiprecious crystals. It was as if walking into a turn-of-the-century curio museum, and Addy tumbled straight into love at her first sight of its jumbled oddities.

“Here, curl up and get warm.” Spencer handed her tea to her and waved at a leather armchair with a muted plaid blanket draped over the arm.

She was more than happy to follow that order, and wrapped herself in the soft chenille throw while he squatted down in front of the fireplace and began fiddling with the stacked logs. His preoccupation allowed her to indulge in a lengthier look at the room around her. She was debating whether or not she ought to get up out of her comfy seat to take a closer look at some of the volumes on the far wall when she realized that her gaze, for the last several minutes, had been focused on the way the fabric of Spencer’s clothes stretched tightly against his shoulders and his butt as he leaned forward with the long fireplace match and lit the kindling.

Give yourself a break, girl, she thought, and raised the teacup to her lips to hide her smile. There’s no harm in looking, is there?

Just how much harm there could be was made clear, however, when Spencer suddenly turned and walked away from the fire, catching her stare. His grin rose like a slow tide on his face and she flushed. She would have sworn the dratted man could actually read her mind.

“Not too warm?” he asked, settling himself in the chair next to hers, tea in hand.

“Not at all,” she said, denying the heated redness of her cheeks.

“Good, then we can get started.” With these words, he leaned forward, bracing his forearms on his knees. “First of all, did you read any of the papers I sent you?”

“You mean the papers that arrived at five this morning?” she retorted smartly. The blatant lie was her best option. “I was in nonstop meetings all day long. I didn’t have the time.”

“I’m sure.” His drawl bordered on insulting and the way he sat meant his clasped hands rested only inches from her knees. She tucked her legs up beneath her in the chair. “What is it that you do? No poor-taste joke to follow,” he added.

“I’m a civil engineer.” Gotcha, buddy, she thought, as her words made him sit up a little and cock his head a little to the side. And you can just ask me what that means if you don’t know.

The silence held.

That was unexpected, Spencer thought. A civil engineer. He leaned back again in his seat and picked up his cup of tea, using the gesture to fill time as he thought about the implications. If she’d said she was an animal trainer for the circus, or a performance artist who did weird things onstage while reciting poetry under a black light, he wouldn’t have been surprised. Adeline had told him stories about her niece, Addy’s mother, who’d gotten pregnant and run off with a jazz musician at eighteen years old. So he was prepared for a little oddity in the mother’s daughter. And she certainly had a mouth on her that defied polite-society conversation.

A civil engineer. Although he wouldn’t want to be put on the spot to define what exactly that was—something to do with how a building affected the land and hooked up to various public-works systems, he thought—he was sure that you didn’t get to be one by having a few screws loose. She’d likely done postgraduate work in a scientific field and held licenses from several federal and state boards.

This changed things. He wasn’t sure how, but he was sure that it did.

First, a guess.

“Were you in the field yesterday morning?”

“How perceptive of you.”

Tromping around on a construction site went a long way toward explaining her mud-bespattered appearance at his office. Still, even now she looked more like an unemployed college student, with her wildly curly black hair and what he felt sure were braless curves under his sweatshirt. She had silver rings—some braided, some set with stones, some plain—on almost every finger of both hands, including her thumbs.

But, an engineer.

“Please don’t be offended if I tell you that that was not what I expected.” He decided that honesty would be best, and waited to see if she would spring out of her chair and attack him for it.

“You mean like I didn’t expect to find you living in my great-aunt’s house?” she asked with a real smile. She was warm. She was cozy. There wasn’t enough energy left in her body right now to get into a fight. Elwood strolled in the library door and flopped down in front of the fire. That’s how she felt, too.

“Yes, something like that.” He smiled at her, crinkling the corners of his ocean-blue eyes, and for the first time, she just smiled right back at him. The firelight was doing interesting things to his hair, dancing bronze and gold sparks off the ends. As their gazes held, she felt those same sparks take up dancing in her stomach.

“You’re going to explain that, right?” she asked at last, cutting through the building tension with her voice.

He laughed. “Don’t worry. It’s only temporary while my condo is being renovated. I knew Adeline my whole life. My family have been her family’s lawyers for almost a century, and when she heard I was going to move into a hotel, she invited me to stay here.”

“Really?”

“Cross my heart. You can ask my mother.” The thought of meeting the society matron who’d raised him did not excite her. “I hate hotels.”

“Me, too,” she murmured and curled up a little more in her blanket. The warmth of the fire was so soothing on her face, the low crackling of the flames hypnotizing. “So tell me what’s in all those papers.”

“Certainly. You should know, first of all, that this last version of your great-aunt’s will was drawn up just last year. Since there are no other living relatives outside of your family, there should be no contesters as to the validity of the will. Assuming you fulfill the conditions of the bequest, there will be no…”

Spencer’s measured baritone was very calming. His tone of voice asserted that there were no problems in this world that reflection and clear thinking could not solve. She was so reassured, in fact, that she thought she’d just rest her eyes for a moment while he spoke. She could listen to his very reasonable description of the terms of the will while she relaxed just a little bit after what had been an extremely long, tense day.

She fell asleep as she was listening to the conditions of the bequest, her sleepy brain certain that everything seemed very reasonable indeed. She even nodded her approval.

The room was silent when she next had a conscious thought. She wondered why the fire wasn’t snapping and hissing. She considered opening her eyes to look at it.

Too much effort.

Someone was stroking her hair, she realized fuzzily. Static electricity had strands pulling away from the side of her face as the hand drew away. Gentle fingers returned to tuck the hair behind her ear.

Her eyes drifted open slowly. Spencer was crouched down at her side, one arm draped along the chair back, fingers tangled in her hair. His other hand rested on her knee. She felt a physical click run through her system as his gaze locked with hers, bringing her closer to wakefulness.

“You know, you’re incredibly beautiful when you sleep.” His voice was soft and low. Maybe she was still asleep. Now he was smiling at her. “It helps that your mouth is shut.”

His shadow fell over her first as he leaned toward her and then captured her lower lip between his and sucked on it lightly. She opened her mouth in surprise and he immediately covered it with his own, his tongue smoothly curling around hers in a dizzying attack on her senses. She was electrically conscious of where his hand was tracing small circles on her knee.

“What—” Her voice was sleep-rough as she tried to speak between kisses.

“You’re beautiful,” he murmured. She could feel the vibrations of his voice against her lips. “When you sleep.” His mouth pressed hers open again.

Someone was moaning softly. Addy was afraid it was her. As her body surged into awareness of this man who was kissing her, who she wasn’t even sure she liked but whose touch was turning her insides into a puddle of melted wax, her brain struggled to recall how she’d gotten into this situation.

His teeth nipped at her lower lip. He swallowed her sudden gasp. Her fingers were running themselves of their own will around his neck and dipping, touching him beneath the collar of his shirt.

She couldn’t think. Tried harder. His hand was skating up the outside of her jean-clad thigh. He had been talking, explaining something about the will. Fingers slid under the bottom of her borrowed sweatshirt and skimmed the bare skin at her waist. There was the house and the money. His hand kneaded firmly at her hip. Something about living here for six months. His mouth was fiercer on hers now, the pressure arcing her head back and pressing her breasts into his chest. There was more, though, she was sure of it.

She had it.

With a near shriek of rage, she tore her mouth from Spencer’s and shoved hard at his shoulders. Scrambled to get her numbed legs out from under her and clawed her way past him and out of the chair. Standing in the evening-dark room in her stocking feet in front of the embers of a banked fire, a blanket half draped over her shoulders, she only wanted the answer to one question.

Could she possibly have heard him correctly?

“Did you say that I have to be married?”




Three


“Ow.”

Spencer looked up from his plate and across the corner of the long dining room table.

“Just pinching myself,” Addy said, sucking at the sore spot on the back of her hand. The silver fork and knife in her hands were heavy, another world from her stainless-steel utensils at home. “Thought I must have been dreaming to agree to stay here tonight.”

He tore his eyes away from the sight of her lips pulsing against her own skin. “Look outside. It’s like the blizzard of ’76 all over again.” He pointed to the velvet-draped windows. She didn’t turn to look at the swirling clouds of white made only more opaque by the light shining out of the room into the night. “You can’t drive in that, even if we could manage to dig out your truck.”

She glared at him. They’d already gone a few rounds about the fact that he’d let her sleep for three hours in front of the fire. He’d found it difficult to defend his decision since he wasn’t at all sure why he’d done such a thing. Being attracted to this prickly, sarcastic, hotheaded witch was one thing, but making sure she’d be stranded for the night with him was such a ridiculous strategy that he was startled to have given in to it.

He’d watched her struggle to pay attention to his words as the first wavelets of sleep began washing over her, then seen her head nod in approval of what he was saying even as he knew she was miles away in dreamland. And at first, he’d just meant to let her nap for a few minutes.

He had watched her sleep. Ruddy shadows and warm gold highlights had flickered over her face in the dancing light of the fire. Without her usual anger and defensiveness animating it, her face had looked like that of a teenager, the curves of her lips parted just enough for breath. Violet watercolor smudges had tinted the delicate skin around her eyes. She’d tucked her hands beneath her cheek, and the small, birdlike bones of her wrists had highlighted her aura of fragility.

He nearly snorted out loud, catching himself in the middle of this ridiculous reverie. Addy Tyler was about as fragile as a lead pipe, and she bent as much as one, too. It had been a battle every step of the way to get her to set foot in this house. He didn’t know why it mattered so much to him that she understand what she was giving up with her obstinate refusal to have anything to do with her great-aunt’s estate. He only knew that he’d planned to drag her to the house screaming for the police all the way if necessary.

The last thing he’d expected was to see this stubborn, un-sympathetic woman brought to the edge of tears by an old family portrait, an emotion that he knew surprised her as much as it did him.

He was beginning to wonder if that momentary glimpse of softness would turn out to be his downfall.

Of course, since at the moment she was only speaking to him when absolutely necessary, there didn’t look to be much chance of the two of them falling anywhere together.

On the upside, at least she wasn’t yelling at him anymore. It was almost peaceful right now, sitting at the same table and sharing a meal.

“This is very—” he began.

Silverware clattered as Addy threw her knife and fork onto her plate and shoved her unfinished meal away, an expression of disgust twisting her face.

Perhaps he’d spoken too soon.

“Was she insane?” she demanded. “I have a right to know whether there’s a history of mental derangement in my family. It might affect my decision to have children someday.” She threw herself back in her chair and crossed her arms on her chest. “Don’t give me that look. I’m being about as rational as good old Great-Aunt Adeline was in her will.”

He didn’t think this was the right time to mention that Adeline had considered Susannah’s branch of the family tree to be the unstable one. He’d settle for a smaller measure of the truth. “Your great-aunt was in her right mind until the day she died.”

“Says you,” she said, knowing she was displaying the maturity level of a two-year-old. She blamed her crankiness on leftover sexual tension. Waking up to what had at first seemed a continuation of a sensual daydream, she’d been overwhelmed by the slow pulse of sensation throughout her body. Her memory of Spencer’s description of the will’s terms, and her anger, were life preservers she’d clung to with the desperate grasp of a person swept overboard.

She was hanging on still.

“She was nuts.”

“Maybe she was just trying to make sure that you were, um…” Spencer paused for a moment. Was he hesitating? “That you were taken care of.”

Of all the insulting… “I don’t need a husband to take care of me.” She tried to keep her tone below that of a shout as she jerked out of her chair and stood next to the table. She didn’t think she’d been successful. “I take care of myself just fine, thank you. Where’s the kitchen?”





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