The Thawing of Mara (8 page)

Mara paused to catch her breath and glanced at him. All the raking had kept her warm, but after being outside for more than an hour, she guessed he was feeling the cold.

"Don't you think it's time you went inside, Adam?" She leaned the rake against the trunk of a tree.

"Not yet," Adam refused. "This may be the last day of good weather before winter sets in. I want to enjoy every minute of it."

"Don't blame me if you freeze and catch pneumonia," Mara warned.

"I wouldn't dream of it." He smiled lazily, his handsome dark features looking years younger.

Mara shook out a large plastic garbage bag and began scooping up the leaves from the pile to stuff them inside it. The red knit of her cap made a vibrant contrast to the sable black of her hair. It provided the one spot of color in the drabness of her work clothes, the dark blue of her denims and khaki brown of her old jacket.

As she picked up the last armful of leaves, she heard her father say, "Hello, Sin. Beautiful day, isn't it?"

"It certainly is. How are you, Adam?" was his response.

In a swift glance over her shoulder she saw the tall, well-muscled man strolling toward her father. Instead of the jogging suit, he was dressed in dark blue corduroys and a fleece-lined jacket that was unbuttoned to reveal the heavy ribbing of a pale blue turtleneck sweater.

He seemed impervious to the chill in the air as he combed his fingers through the rumpled thickness of his iron-gray hair. As if feeling the quiet inspection of her gaze, Sin glanced at her.

"You' re working hard, I see," he commented.

"Yes, I am." Immediately she set to work jamming the leaves into the sack already more than half-f.

"Have you had any luck finding a housekeeper?" Sin inquired.

"Not yet." Her answer was needlessly clipped and abrupt. She tried to cover it by picking up the leaves that had scattered over the edge of the bag.

"Mara is something of a perfectionist," Adam explained in an uncomplimentary tone. "She keeps looking for the same quality in others and refuses to compromise."

Tight-lipped, Mara offered, no defense since she felt she needed none. Gathering up the open end of the leaf bag, she attempted to carry it to the driveway, but the moisture of the wet leaves made it too heavy for her to lift.

"Let me carry that for you?" Sin offered, and took a step toward her.

"I can handle it," she insisted with a stubborn flash of independence.

Sin hesitated, then lifted a shoulder in silent concession. Straining, Mara dragged the plastic bag across the ground. The muscles in her arms were trembling from the effort by the time she reached the driveway. Determined not to show the effect, she walked back to pick up the rake again and set to work on the leaves in the other quarter of the yard.

All the while, Sin stood near her father, talking to him and watching her. It was a distinctly unsettling experience. The last pile of leaves didn't have to be bagged since she used them to cover the flower bed in front of the house.

"Why don't you rest for a while, Mara?" her father suggested when she had finished that. "You're making me tired just watching you work. You can rake the rest of the yard tomorrow."

"I think I will wait until tomorrow," she agreed, taking off her work gloves and unconsciously flexing her fingers. "The forecast was for more sunshine." In truth, she was exhausted and needed a rest, if only until the afternoon. "It's getting too cold out here for you."

"You're probably right," he agreed, which told her he was getting chilled. She walked to the back of his wheelchair and turned it toward the house, so far, she had pointedly ignored the man with her father, but Adam wasn't going to follow suit. "If you aren't doing anything special, Sin, why don't you come into the house?"

Mara froze in cold anger. "I doubt that Mr. Buchanan would want to neglect…Miss Taylor for long, Adam. You overlooked the fact that she's probably waiting for him at the cottage."

"No, she isn't," Sin offered quietly. Unwillingly her dark gaze was drawn to him. "Celene didn't accompany me this weekend."

The information caught her by surprise. It unnerved her and she sought to cover her confusion by responding sharply, "What do you do? Devote one weekend a month totally to rest?"

"Something like that," he agreed lazily.

"If no one is waiting for you, is there any reason you can't come in for a while?" Adam questioned.

"None that I know of," Sin answered, his gaze flickering to Mara in silent challenge, but she refused to rise to the bait. It was one thing to argue with her father and another to argue with Sinclair Buchanan.

Without waiting for any more to be said, Mara began pushing her father's wheelchair toward the ramp leading to the front door of the house. The uneven brick walkway made the going difficult. Her arms were already tired from all the raking. When she reached the ramp, a hand came around her to grip the chair handles.

"I'll take it from here," Sin told her.

"I can manage," Mara returned stiffly.

"Your father isn't a bag of leaves, and you had enough trouble with that." He firmly pushed her out of the way and guided the wheelchair up the ramp with an ease that Mara knew she wouldn't have been able to fake.

At his backward glance to see if she was coming, Mara offered a grudging, "Thank you," and walked up the ramp to open the door. Once inside, she immediately excused herself. "I have to clean up."

Her bedroom and bath was on the second floor. As she climbed the front stairs, Sin and her father went into the study. After bathing, Mara put on a pair of camel tan slacks and a matching sweater with black and tan horizontal stripes. She used the rear staircase that opened into the kitchen. From the front of the house she could hear the muffled sound of male voices in conversation.

The coffeepot was empty, so she made a fresh pot. While the coffee perked, she put away the breakfast dishes she had left to dry on the draining board. When the coffee was finished, she poured herself a cup and sat down at the table. After the bath and change of clothes, a cup of coffee was all she needed to relax.

The door to the kitchen swung open before she had taken her first sip. The tension that she had fought so hard to remove threaded back through her nerves as Sin Buchanan walked into the room.

Minus the bulky jacket, his physique was still formidable. Even the rough weave of his sweater seemed in keeping with the raw vigor of his manliness. He paused inside the doorway, his gaze sweeping slowly over her. Mara felt his inspection as surely as if he had touched her.

"Was there something you wanted?" She was sitting rigidly in her chair, a charged alertness in her senses.

"Your father sent me in to ask if there was any coffee," Sin explained his presence in the kitchen, moving forward with a quietness that was surprising in a man his size.

The steaming cup of coffee on the table couldn't be overlooked any more than the aroma of fresh-perked coffee in the air. Mara found his level gaze difficult to meet. To avoid it, she rose from the table.

"Yes, there's coffee. I'll fix a tray and bring it in to you," she offered in a coolly unresponsive voice.

"There's no need for you to bring it in. I'll wait and carry it in myself." He came to the counter where Mara had placed a serving tray.

"It isn't necessary." She didn't want him waiting. She wanted him gone.

"Why should I walk back empty-handed?" Sin countered with infuriating logic.

Mara didn't pursue the argument as she began arranging the mugs on the tray. "I hope Adam hasn't bored you with a lot of talk about the Civil War."

She made the barbed comment for want of something to fill the silence. Her father rarely bored anyone; he had been born with the gift of charm. Even her mother had gone on loving him after he had deserted her for another woman. Mara suspected the only reason she was immune to him was that she was his daughter.

"I don't remember his mentioning anything about the Civil War," Sin remarked. When she set the sugar bowl and spoon on the tray, he reminded her, "I don't need any cream or sugar for my coffee, thank you."

"What have you found to talk about?" Mara reached into the cupboard for the insulated coffee server.

"Many things," was his ambiguous answer.

"Including me, I suppose." There was a bitter taste in her mouth as she said that.

Sin watched silently for a moment as she poured the hot coffee from the pot into the server. "What makes you think we would have discussed you?"

"Nothing. Forget I said it," Mara shrugged, angry with herself. She set the server on the tray. When Sin would have picked it up, she stopped him. "Just a minute. I'll put some cookies on a plate." Her father knew she had baked oatmeal raisin cookies yesterday and she suspected he would send Sin back to the kitchen if she didn't include some on the tray. But in defense of her action, she explained, "Adam has a sweet tooth."

"Why do you refer to your father by his given name?" The gray head was tipped at an inquiring angle, smoke-blue eyes studying her with disconcerting directness, "In almost every other respect, you seem typically old-fashioned."

"It's what I prefer to call him," was as much as Mara would say.

"And your reasons are private," he concluded.

"My reasons are between Adam and myself. That doesn't include outsiders." Her cool glance let him know exactly to which category he belonged.

"But it has something to do with the estrangement between the two of you." He watched her arrange the cookies on a plate. "Adam mentioned he was crippled in a car accident."

"Yes, that's right." Mara replaced the lid on the cookie jar.

"It's a pity that it had to happen to such a vital man," Sin commented.

"It's possible that he got what the deserved," she suggested, knowing how callous her comment sounded and not caring. And she didn't particularly care what he thought of her for saying it.

His gaze narrowed slightly. "Do you resent so much having to take care of him?"

"I don't have to take care of him, Mr. Buchanan. I chose to take care of him because he's the man who fathered me." There was a haughty air to the tilt of her chin.

"It would be perfectly natural for a young single woman to resent the demands on her free time to care for her crippled father, especially a young woman as beautiful as you," he commented.

"Compliments don't mean anything to me, Mr. Buchanan." She added the plate of cookies to the tray. "I've been around Adam too long not to have learned that they have little value beyond the moment they are spoken."

"You don't care much for your father, do you, Miss Prentiss?" It was a quiet accusation.

"Do you?" she returned.

"I haven't known him very long, but he strikes me as a likable, intelligent man," he stated.

"But you don't know him as well as I do" Mara replied, indicating that this was the only explanation she needed to give.

"Mara the bitter. You were appropriately named, weren't you?" he commented.

"Weren't you?" Mara suggested smoothly.

Laughter rolled from his throat in a low chuckle. "And I thought you were the type that turned the other cheek."

"We all make mistakes, Mr. Buchanan," she murmured.

The sounds of laughter faded, but it still glinted in his eyes. "Except you, Miss Prentiss?" An eyebrow lifted in mocking question.

Determined not to let the discussion continue any further, Mara picked up the coffee tray and turned to him. "I believe you said you would carry this into the study."

The full force of his gaze was directed at her. "Is the conversation becoming too much for you?" Sin guessed accurately.

"I'm tired of being a source of amusement for you." She didn't mince words in her answer, letting them be as cold and harsh as her anger.

"You take yourself and life too seriously," he chided, "You have to learn to laugh at things."

"There are too many things that I don't find very funny, Mr. Buchanan." Again, she offered him the tray. "If you aren't going to carry this in I

will."

Sin held her challenging look an instant longer before reaching for the tray. His tanned fingers naturally encountered hers as he took the tray handles from her grip. Their contact was hard and warm and brief. It seemed to leave an invisible imprint on her skin, because the sensation remained long after the contact was broken.

Alone again in the kitchen, Mara discovered her cup of coffee had become cold. She emptied it in the sink and refilled it from the pot. But she couldn't find the same contentment that had preceded Sin's entrance to the kitchen.

The house was too confining, made smaller by the voices of the two men in the study. The bright sunlight shining outside became more inviting. Mara would have preferred slipping out the back door, but her strong sense of duty wouldn't permit her to go for a walk without informing her father of her intention.

Taking her heavy plaid parka from its hook, she put it on and walked through the house to the parlor-turned-study. Sin was the first to see her when she appeared in the double doorway, but she avoided looking at him to direct her attention to Adam.