While You Were Writing: Watkin's Pond, Book 2 (3 page)

She’d wanted to ask him what he meant about it not being his stuff.
Dammit.

Well, there was always the next time.

Deciding not to overthink her response to him, she set back to work—she really wanted to investigate the desk.

The initial search online for information about his uninvited houseguest only created more questions rather than answering any, so he decided to delve deeper.

The blinking cursor blinked on, not yet swayed by his attempt at changing the scenery to remove writer’s block, so there wasn’t a whole lot else for him to do with his day. Or so he told himself while ignoring an inbox full of blog requests, conference information and other email flotsam of writerly life, to continue probing the Internet’s knowledge of Sheri.

She wasn’t active on social networks, which struck him as unusual in this day and age. Most of his work happened in cyberspace and having a very public social media presence was a must for the creative arts, or so he understood. Yet, other than a defunct membership to an art-sharing site that was years old and her website, Sheri was invisible on the Internet. Radcliffe didn’t have an aversion to further searching, however, so he hit the newspapers.

Birth record, traffic tickets—all information he could gather off the web and he did without the slightest hesitation or fear of impeding on her personal space. When he started a family tree on an ancestry site to further dig into her history, he might have hesitated for a brief second…

But only that. He could access more newspapers faster that way.

He didn’t expect the obituary listing her as
beloved fiancée
.

The screen glowed back at him. The man in question died young—only twenty-four—after a long battle with illness. Which posed even more questions.

What kind of illness? How had having a fiancé die that young change a woman? Did she mourn him? Was she suffering from Florence Nightingale syndrome or had she dated him prior to his illness? She was creative—an artist. Where were the pieces she’d created in memory of her lost love?

What made a woman who’d been in a committed relationship with a dying man land in a grocery store asking a strange author she didn’t even read if she could stay with him?

Punching his desk in frustration, he rubbed his eyes to remove eyestrain. Hours of work, hours of intensive research, and he’d ended up with more questions rather than more answers.

A glance at the clock showed it was about dinner time, and the scents trailing in through his closed door suggested his roommate was cooking or had cooked something recently. His stomach rumbled in response to the stimulus. Standing and stretching, he strode toward the kitchen to see what she had gotten into.

Humming, her back turned to him while she danced in front of the stove, she looked remarkably fitting in his kitchen. She’d changed out of her dusty clothes from earlier and instead wore a denim skirt and T-shirt. Her feet were bare, toes painted a bright red, on his obviously recently scrubbed floor. A nearby stand held an iPod and music whispered out—not so loud that he’d hear it from his office.

When she belted out the line to the movie musical playing on the speakers, he couldn’t stop his smile. While the sound on the device might be soft enough not to be heard from his office, her off-key warbling could probably be heard all the way to town.

He shouldn’t have pinned her to the wall like an errant butterfly earlier. He’d instantly regretted the mistake, but the desire to touch her, to taste the tempting mouth that curved so easily from emotion to emotion, rode him constantly. He’d said he wasn’t a hero from one of his books…

He wasn’t. The fantasies he crafted watching her bob around the stove, singing in that tight little skirt, were far from heroic. Would she scream and flee, leaving his house and removing the enigma she brought with her, if he came up behind her and pulled that tempting ass firm against his body?

Or would she relax into his embrace, tilting her head back so he could sample the mouth that teased his thoughts even when she wasn’t in the same room?

Since he couldn’t seem to keep his raging libido from forcing possibilities into his mind, he cleared his throat to get her attention.

She spun, splattering spaghetti sauce onto the freshly washed linoleum. “Crap,” she muttered. “Sorry. I’ll clean that up.”

He grunted, moving to the sink to wash his hands. Since she’d been the one to mop the floor she currently sullied, he wasn’t going to complain about a bit of sauce.

“Are you hungry?”

“I could eat,” he answered.

“Well, you’re in for a treat then. I made my grandmother’s famous sauce. You had tomatoes out in your kitchen garden—which was a wreck, by the way—so I’m guessing me cooking them up won’t cause you any undue duress.”

Her nervous babbling didn’t do a thing for his raging hormones, so he moved to sample the so-called famous sauce.

He didn’t expect her to smack his hand like a child sneaking a taste of dinner.

It actually made him pause, sauce-covered fingertip midway to his mouth, to stare at her.

“You smacked me.” He waited for her response, reveling in her wide eyes and shocked expression, which said she’d surprised herself as much as she had him with her automatic swat.

She’d helped others, prided herself on following her calling and helping them, and never fought shards of attraction. She’d helped others without fumbling, without straying from her path.

She’d helped others without swatting them like disobedient children.

Nothing about this case was working out as she planned. She berated herself and didn’t even bother to attempt conversation with Radcliffe as she finished getting the dinner on the table. Not that he seemed to mind. After she’d smacked him, he simply looked at her. She didn’t apologize—it would have been a lie, something to say because of expectations rather than an honest feeling, and she anticipated his derision. When she said nothing, simply gaping at him like a landed fish, he raised a single brow. After another couple beats, he slowly finished bringing his finger to his lips to suck off the sauce.

Which shouldn’t have come across as erotic. He was eating spaghetti sauce off his finger, for God’s sake, not sucking on her clit. She was a big girl and even if she hadn’t been in a relationship for quite a while, she had a battery-operated buddy and wasn’t afraid to buy more batteries. Yet…

Her nipples hardened at the sight of him sucking that digit.

Dumb. Dumb. Dumb.

And she’d smacked him. How would she increase his trust in her to the point that she’d be able to help him if she kept acting irrationally around him?

“You’re thinking so loud I can practically hear you.”

Startling, she jerked at the sound of his voice. She’d been so wrapped up in tearing herself apart she’d almost forgotten he still leaned on the counter. “Sorry. So, well, here’s dinner.” She cleared her throat.
Way to be interesting, Sheri. Keep stating the obvious.

“Thank you.” He stood by a chair, waiting until she’d slid into her own seat before taking his.

“You’ve got manners.” The instant the words slipped out, she wanted to smack her forehead. Vocal diarrhea because he set her on edge, made her nervous and jittery and excited her all at once.
Double damn.

His lips did that half-smile thing, the almost-but-not-quite smile she was beginning to recognize as his way of showing mild amusement. “Although I prefer not to spend more time in society than absolutely required, I am aware of the culture we’re immersed in, yes.”

She snorted. Trying to cover it with sipping her water didn’t work since those laser-like eyes focused on her, demanding more. “Sorry, that was impolite.”

“Honest. I respect honest. What was the snort for?” He forked up a bite of pasta and ate it, still considering her like a bug under a microscope. The wildfire attraction she battled didn’t seem to be fazing him in the least, the bastard.

“I’m starting to think you use big words to try to distance yourself, like throwing them out will be a maze no one will want to wander through in search of meaning.” Trying to ignore his hulking presence, still slouched and dark, seemed akin to ignoring the sun, so she simply took a deep breath and began to eat.

She’d given up on him answering when he made her jump again by speaking. “I’d never really considered it, but it’s possible. And it works, so I probably won’t put a lot of effort into changing my pattern, if it is true.”

Sipping water, she mulled over that response.

“Enough about me, tell me why you’re here.”

“I told you why I was here yesterday.” Dismissing his question with a wave of her hand, she started to fork up another bite when he captured her hand.

Her fingers went lax at the unexpected touch and she dropped her fork to the plate with a clatter. “Don’t tell me lies, Sheri. I let you into my home. Tell me the truth.”

His hand withdrew and he went back to eating, but she swallowed hard. She never told the people she worked with what she was doing until after, until they didn’t really need her anymore.

Then again, this wasn’t a normal case and nothing was going like it should be.

Twirling her fork in the pasta, she weighed the idea and decided it couldn’t hurt anything.

“One condition.” He apparently liked rules, giving her a few that first day. If she wanted to crack his façade, find the man underneath and help him, perhaps she’d need to play it his way. “I’ll answer your question if you answer one of mine.”

His jaw clenched and he hunched back over his plate.

Blowing out a shaky breath, she went back to eating too. Her reaction to him was inexplicable. Like some teenager with their first crush, she was hyperaware of him, wanted him to give her a full smile, was shattered because he simply touched her hand? The sheer ridiculousness of the situation—

“Fine.”

Although she’d thrown out the gauntlet, she hadn’t really expected him to pick it up. “Why did you say the things in the house weren’t yours? Whose are they, if not yours?”

The baring of his teeth made her close her eyes. She knew before he spoke what his answer would be.

“That’s two questions. Are we doing two for two, then?”

Filling her mouth with another bite, even though her heart hammered in her chest, gave her a moment more to think. Chewing slowly, she rinsed it down with water. How bad could his two questions be anyway? It wasn’t like she had anything to hide, and if she did, he wouldn’t know enough to ask pointed questions this early on. “Yes, two for two.”

“Because it still doesn’t feel like they’re my things. And my mother’s.”

The rapid-fire response sent the gears of her mind whirring. She could look up his mother on her tablet when she got upstairs, possibly unravel part of the mystery of Radcliffe McQueen and—

“Now, for my questions. Why are you here?” He drained his water and raised a brow.

Sighing, but foreseeing that question, she answered him with the honesty he’d asked for. “I’m an artist, like I said, by trade. My real calling, though, has been helping people. I’ve been doing it for years, travelling around the country and finding people—like yourself—that are hiding from reality, that want to be part of society, but for whatever reasons aren’t sure how or don’t think they can. I help them find a reason to trust people, to laugh and to love and to move on. I consider it personality renovating.” Smiling at him, she waited for the typical response, but he didn’t give it to her, instead sneering at his empty glass.

“I’ll have more questions about that, but I think I’m starting to get a better picture. You think you’re going to help me, save the ogre from the swamp, so to speak.”

“Is that your question?” she countered.

He shook his head at her. “Oh no, Sheri. You’re not getting off that easily.”

A shiver of desire chased up her spine at the way he rolled her name off his tongue, only to be followed lightning fast with a tremor of unease. “So what is your second question?”
Maybe his mother had some criminal record? There had to be some reason he felt like the contents of his own home weren’t his…

She’d almost lost herself to her thoughts again when his chair scraped the floor as he stood. Glancing up at him, she set her fork down. She hadn’t been eating anyway.

“My second question is what did your fiancé die of, Sheri?”

Her breath shuddered out and she blinked up at him, unable to speak.

Asking was akin to admitting he’d researched her, but her expression made it worth it. He knew there was something to the fiancé thread, but the confirmation etched in her suddenly pale features still gratified him.

Clearing the plates, he began putting away the leftovers without saying more. It cost him nothing to give her a moment to collect herself and might glean him more answers—inadvertent ones in her choice of phrasing and body language.

“It’s none of your fucking business.” The breathless quality of the words snapped his attention back to her. White-knuckled grip on the table, face still pale, breath rushed. He’d touched more of a nerve than he might have guessed.

“Again, hate to be redundant, but my house. You
can
leave.”

She swallowed hard, didn’t move and closed her eyes. He turned back to the cleanup, finding containers to store the leftover food.

“I know I’m not supposed to state the obvious, but you’ve been looking me up.”

“It’s my right. My space, you’re in it.” To him, that said enough. He didn’t allow many to get close to him, physically or emotionally, however nothing about their current situation fit with his normative behavior.

“Radcliffe, Preston is a very personal piece of my past. I don’t share that story with just anyone.” Her voice seemed to be getting stronger, finding solid ground in her complaint. He mentally chalked a point up to her for changing the tone of the discussion from emotionally charged to logical. That she’d picked up, this quickly, that he’d prefer logic to emotional outbursts suggested she was paying attention and capable of learning.

“Duly noted.” But not a valid reason for her to welch on her own agreement.