The Thawing of Mara (9 page)

"I wanted you to know I'm going for a walk. I'll be back in an hour," she told him. "Would you like anything before I leave? More coffee?"

"Maybe some more cookies?" Adam suggested with a bright gleam in his eye. "Sin sampled them. They were very good, as usual."

"The cookies were good," Sin reaffirmed her father's statement.

"If you'd like more, I'll get them, but I wouldn't want you to spoil your lunch, Adam," said Mara.

"No, you're right. If I eat any more, I won't want lunch," he agreed, and glanced at Sin. "Mara's specialty is really lemon pie. It's always as cool and tart as its maker."

Mara turned away. "I'll be back in an hour." She walked to the front door, never hearing Sin's response to her father's jibe.

Chapter Five

THE MIDDLE OF NOVEMBER arrived with blustering winds and cold temperatures. The ground was hard beneath Mara's feet as she trudged along the rutted track to the cottage, a small bag of groceries under her arm, It would have been faster and easier to take the car to deliver the supplies, but they were so few to carry that she had chosen to walk.

The air was sharp and clear, an invigorating morning punctuated by the puffy clouds of her breath. A swirling wind rustled the thick carpet of leaves in the woods, the dark, skeletal outlines of the tree limbs etched against the blue of the sky.

This last week Mara had rarely ventured out of the house. Adam had caught a cold and she had spent most of her time looking after him. Her life had been very sedentary and the exercise of this brisk walk felt good.

Adam's fever had broken in the night. His temperature had dropped to near normal that morning. When she had left the house, he had been resting comfortably, assuring her that he would probably sleep for an hour or so.

Glancing ahead of her, Mara saw the cedar shakes of the cottage roof through the dark columns of tree trunks. She wondered which day Sin would be coming to the house to visit her father. Since that first social visit, Sin had regularly called at the house once a weekend to see Adam. Mara had no idea what the two men talked about, and she never asked.

Nor did she revoice her objections to having Sin Buchanan as a visitor in the house. It would have given him too much importance to make an issue of his visits with her father. So Mara spent most of her time ignoring his presence in the house during his visits.

As she approached the front door of the cottage, she reached into her jacket pocket for the key. Although she had continued to run the advertisement for a housekeeper in the paper, she hadn't had any more replies. Spending a couple of hours there Monday and Friday mornings had become part of her routine, another one of the chores she did on a regular basis.

It required both hands to unlock and open the door. Setting the grocery bag on the stoop, she inserted the key in the lock and turned the doorknob at the same time as the key. She pushed the door open, slipped the key back in her pocket and picked up the groceries.

Entering the cottage, she walked across the living room to turn up the thermostat, only to discover it hadn't been turned down. She stared at it for a puzzled instant, then shrugged. Monday morning was when Adam had woken up with the chill and a fever. In her haste to get back to him, she had probably forgotten to turn the heat down in the cottage after she had cleaned.

She carried the grocery bag into the small kitchen and set it on the counter. Unbuttoning the cumbersome parka, she slipped it off and draped it on the back of a kitchen chair. The nippy walk to the cottage had numbed her senses. She had taken the first item out of the bag before she noticed a familiar aroma in the air.

In disbelief, she glanced at the coffeepot plugged into the wall, the fragrant smell of fresh coffee coming from its spout. At almost the same instant she heard a footstep from the vicinity of the bedroom, and pivoted toward the sound.

Sin's frame filled the archway to the bedroom. Clad only in a pair of rough brown denims, he walked into the kitchen. The hard, muscled chest looked deceptively trim. His naked skin was the color and smooth texture of leather stretched across his build, broken only by the V-shaped pattern of golden dark chest hairs.

The frosted steel hair was uncombed, its thickness in attractive disarray. Lines of sleep had softened the harsh carving of his features, but his eyes were alert as he took in the look of shock on Mara's face.

"Good morning." His greeting sounded so natural that it made her wonder if she had got her days mixed up. Was it Friday or Saturday? No, it definitely was Friday.

"What are you doing here?" She recovered enough to demand, then remembered, "I didn't see your car outside."

"You didn't look. My car is there, parked alongside of the cottage," Sin informed her, his steel-blue eyes regarding her with lazy interest.

Alongside the cottage—that explained it, Mara realized. Since she had walked instead of driving, her angle of approach to the cottage hadn't given her a glimpse of the far side where his car was.

"Then you're the one who turned the thermostat up and made coffee," she concluded, relieved that it hadn't been an oversight on her part.

"I must be," he agreed, "unless there's a ghost haunting the cottage that you didn't tell me about." His mouth curved into a half grin. "Did you think you were going mad?"

"I…I had a lot of things on my mind," Mara faltered in her own defense. "Adam has been sick with a cold all week. He's better now. But it was possible I might have overlooked a few things Monday."

"Not you," he taunted. "You're Miss Perfect."

"Why are you here?" His biting comment brought a chill to her voice. "It isn't Saturday."

"I decided at the last minute to come up a day early. Is that all right?" Sin asked, knowing that he didn't require her permission. "I don't recall reading any restriction in the lease that said I didn't have the use of the cottage seven days a week."

"Of course there wasn't," Mara retorted impatiently. "But you could have let me know you were changing your routine."

"I told you it was a last-minute decision. I didn't think you would appreciate a telephone-call in the middle of the night." His explanation held a hint of challenge.

"The middle of the night," she unconsciously repeated his phrase.

"Yes, it was after midnight before I decided to drive up here a day early," Sin elaborated on his previous explanation.

At that hour of the night, Mara doubted that he was alone. That thought prompted another that maybe he hadn't made the journey alone. She glanced beyond Sin to the bedroom where a corner of the sleep rumpled brown satin sheets could be seen.

Sin followed the direction of her look and her thoughts. "There's no one with me, if that's what you're wondering." Amusement edged the hard corners of his mouth when her dark gaze flew back to him.

"You've been spending more and more of your weekends alone lately," Mara observed. "Aren't you worried that you might get bored without anyone to entertain you?"

"It's possible," he conceded dryly. "But if it gets too dull around here, I have the consolation of being able to sharpen my wits with you."

Why had she ever got involved in a conversation with him in the first place, Mara wondered angrily. He took malicious delight in laughing at her, finding something to poke cynical fun at no matter what she said or did. She turned away and began taking out her displeasure at the situation on the items in the grocery bag.

"I've had a long week, Mr. Buchanan. I'm too tired from taking care of Adam to engage in a battle of words with you," she issued tightly.

His astute gaze investigated her profile, noticing the strain etched in her features but unable to guess that he was the cause of most of it. Her eyes were large black smudges against the ivory cream of her complexion. The line of her finely drawn mouth was tense, her expression rigidly contained to be without emotion.

Sin walked to where the coffeepot was plugged in only a few feet from her. Opening the cupboard door above it, he took out two cups and set them on the counter.

"Why don't you take a break for a few minutes, Mara, and have a cup of coffee with me?" he suggested. "It's fresh and hot. The groceries can wait until later."

Resentment smoldered that he should suddenly begin using her given name and pretend a solicitous concern for her well-being. She flashed him an icy look as he filled the first cup with hot coffee.

"I have no desire to have coffee with you!" The sharpness of her retort flung his invitation back in his face.

The pot was set back on the counter as a heavy silence filled the air, charging the atmosphere. His steady blue gaze was on her, piercing the cool.

"Is it that you have no desire to have coffee with me…or simply that you have no desire?" His question was a low, accusing challenge.

Mara hesitated only an instant before answering coldly, "Both." She continued unpacking the bag her movements as brisk and rapid as she could make them without throwing things around.

"You shouldn't say things like that." Sin's voice changed subtly, an undefinable quality entering its low pitch. "It challenges a man to prove you're a liar."

"Which says something about the arrogance of men, doesn't it?" Mara countered with contempt.

"Or the trait of a woman to be provocative," he suggested smoothly.

"I wasn't lying when I said that." A loaf of bread was in her hand, and she paused before putting it away to turn and confront him. "And I wasn't trying to be provocative."

"Weren't you?" Sin was closer to her than she had realized. She started to take a breath to make a scathing reply to his taunt when his hand touched her neck.

His fingers began tracing the base of her throat, exploring its hollow, and all her muscles constricted. Mara could neither breathe in nor breathe out. Her heartbeat was erratic, speeding up, then slowing down as his fingertips lingered or moved over her sensitive skin. Her gaze was locked with his and she had the sensation of being drawn into the murky blue depths of his eyes.

"I'll bet ice cream doesn't melt in your mouth," Sin declared in a soft, taunting voice that somehow managed to caress.

The straight line of his mouth never varied. There wasn't a hint of a curve nor a smile. He seemed oddly detached, as if conducting some simple exercise that didn't require his concentration. His fingers began outlining the neckline of her madras blouse. At the point, they partially entered the shadowed valley of her breasts before encountering a button. Then they started their upward slant to the base of her throat.

"It doesn't melt." Her voice was choked to a husky level by the confusion of her senses. "I have to chew it up like food."

A crazy wild shaking started in her knees. No matter how she tried, she couldn't make it stop. Not as long as he was touching her, she realized. Initially she had submitted to the caress of his fingers to prove it didn't affect her. Now that she knew better, she had to bring this sudden intimacy to a close.

Fighting the threatening sensation of weakness, Mara reached up and pushed his hand from her neck. Immediately she took a step away and turned her back to him. The grip of her fingers had made indentations in the fresh loaf of bread she held.

"What's the matter?" Sin asked in a voice that said he knew.

"Nothing's the matter." Mara opened a cupboard door to put the bread away. She seemed to lack coordination. Her movements were jerky and out of time. "I'm simply not interested in sex for the sake of sex."

"Oh?" There was a curious, lazy lilt to the sound, a laid-back sort of quality. "When are you interested in sex?"

Instead of attacking him, her remark had tripped herself. It was a question she couldn't answer and she knew she didn't dare try.

"You've had too many celibate weekends recently," she told him. "Call Celene and have her visit you; then your ego can get fed on all her 'Sin, darlings.'"

He tipped back his head, amused laughter rolling from his throat at her sniping words. "That becomes old quickly, but I never find things growing dull with you. Each time I think l have you trapped in a corner, you come charging at me from another direction."

"I don't happen to be doing it for your amusement," she snapped.

"I'm aware of that." A trace of a smile lingered, but his look was totally serious. "It's a case of self-preservation. You don't want anybody getting too close."

"If you've got the message, why don't you leave me alone?" Mara challenged coldly.

But Sin completely ignored that. "You don't want anyone to be even physically close to you. You're a young, beautiful woman, a human being. That's a statement, not a compliment" he added. "Your body was designed with procreation as the plan. Having sex doesn't necessarily go hand in hand with love. So how do you suppress your biological urges?"

"I don't see that it's any of your business." With curtness, Mara tried to elude the topic that made her feel so uncomfortable.

Pushing the cupboard door shut on the bread, she reached into the bag for a new can of coffee. But when she lifted it out, Sin took it from her hand and set it on the counter, shoving it out of her reach.