The Maid's Daughter. Janice Maynard

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СКАЧАТЬ poured each of them a cup of tea. The juxtaposition of his big, manly hands against the wafer-thin china teapot was incongruous and alarming. How could she keep him at arm’s length if he didn’t remain in the box she had labeled “spoiled rich philanderer.”

      She didn’t want to like Devlyn Wolff. Not at all.

      He took her lack of enthusiasm the wrong way. “It’s herbal tea,” he said. “No caffeine. But I can get you coffee if you’d rather have it.”

      Picking up the lovely ivory cup scattered with blue forget-me-nots, she shook her head. “I prefer the tea. Thank you.”

      He had fixed a tray of sandwiches as well—tiny, slightly ragged squares of white bread with the crusts removed. Peanut butter and honey.

      Her whole body tensed. “Why did you make these?” she asked, her insides in a knot.

      Devlyn shrugged, his expression moody. “As a penance, I guess. I remember watching you eat them in the kitchen when your mother was on her lunch break. I was jealous, you know. My mother never cooked anything.”

      Gillian didn’t know what to say to that. No one cooked peanut butter. But she understood what he was telling her.

      He waved a hand. “You need to eat something so the medicine won’t upset your stomach.”

      Too late. The accident, this intimate tête-à-tête, Devlyn’s unexpected domesticity … all of it had her in turmoil.

      Mute and uncomfortable, she picked up a piece of sandwich, chewed and swallowed. The familiar tastes from her childhood opened a floodgate of memories. His hostility. Her feelings of inferiority. The emotions were as sharp and crisp as yesterday.

      Yet he spoke of penance.

      “You have nothing for which to apologize,” she said slowly, eyeing him over the rim of her teacup. “You were hurting. We were both children.” She didn’t insult him by pretending not to understand what he was talking about. Their youthful confrontation in the cave all those years ago had clearly bothered him as well as her.

      Devlyn wolfed down five mini-sandwiches to her two, and drained three cups of tea. For some reason, she was infinitely fascinated by the play of muscles in his throat as he swallowed. Everything about him was intensely virile, dangerously sexual.

      When a woman became aroused by watching a man eat peanut butter and honey, she was in trouble. Big trouble.

      He sat back in his chair and drummed his fingers on the arms. “I was hateful and cruel,” he said quietly. His voice dropped an octave. “You were trying to express sympathy in the only way you knew how. I acted like a jerk.”

      She could almost see his frustration. “You were a kid. It was a long time ago. Forget about it.”

      “Have you?”

      The sharp question caught her off guard. “I … uh … no,” she muttered. “I never forgot.”

      After an awkward pause, he handed her some tablets. “These are nonprescription, but Jacob says they’ll be the best thing for muscles aches. Take them now so you’ll be comfortable in bed.”

      Their fingers brushed as the medicine changed hands. The word bed hovered in the air between them. She clenched her fist. “Thank you.”

      Without taking his eyes off hers, he covered her hand. “Now,” he said hoarsely. “Don’t wait. And quit being so damned polite.”

      She jerked away and swallowed the pills, almost choking because of the knowledge that he had touched her. It meant nothing … She was the one freaking out, not Devlyn. He was merely being a gentleman.

      Avoiding his cobralike gaze, she scooped up a shortbread cookie. It melted on her tongue like ambrosia of the gods. “I’d forgotten how good these are,” she moaned.

      Devlyn reacted visibly to the involuntary sound she made. Feeling her cheeks heat in embarrassment, she bent her head and took another sip of tea. Was it just her, or was Devlyn reacting as strongly as she was to the odd sense of intimacy that shrouded the room in hushed layers?

      Three

      Devlyn couldn’t remember the last time he’d spent this much time in a woman’s bedroom without both of them getting naked. When Gillian made a surprisingly sexual response to cookies … goddamned sugar cookies, his sex hardened from zero to sixty in five seconds.

      And she wasn’t even pretty in the traditional sense.

      He adjusted himself unobtrusively and ate another sandwich. Maybe if he kept his mouth full he could quit thinking about licking his way down that swanlike white-skinned neck. Good lord …

      “So tell me, Gillian. What do you do for a living … when you’re not smashing cars into trees?”

      She stared at him with affront.

      “Too soon?” He grinned at her, surprisingly entertained by the unexpected turn his evening had taken. The quick phone call to his investor had not been pleasant, but Devlyn was determined. The outlook might be grim, but he’d fought his way out of worse situations.

      Gillian wiped her mouth daintily with a snowy cloth napkin, leaving a faint trace of pink color on the fabric. Seeing the stain from her lips, he imagined other oral scenarios. Perhaps because her lips were the only truly curvy thing about her. They belonged more to a porn star than to a quiet, wary-eyed, little mouse.

      She curled her legs beneath her, drawing attention to slim thighs and a narrow waist. He wondered if he could span that waist with his two hands.

      Gillian seemed blissfully oblivious to his baser instincts. “Do you joke about everything?” she asked, disapproval evident in her wide-set eyes.

      He shrugged. “I’d rather laugh than cry.”

      And there it was again. That pesky, awful memory. Hell. He hadn’t meant to bring it up again … or had he?

      She cocked her head. “Why did I make you so angry that day?” she asked. “I’ve always wondered. Was it only because I saw you in tears?”

      Any humor he’d tried to generate evaporated. He leaped to his feet and stoked the fire, throwing on another couple of logs for good measure. Leaning an arm on the mantel, he poked at the embers, wishing he didn’t feel the same prodding at a place that would never heal.

      “Sure,” he said curtly. “That was it.”

      “You’re lying.”

      He jerked around so quickly that he knocked over one of the andirons. Replacing it clumsily, he sat down hard in his chair, staring at her with bemused eyes. “I don’t know what to make of you, Gillian Carlyle. So let’s go back to my first question. What do you do for a living?”

      “I’m a teacher. Third grade.” Pride glowed on her face and in her voice until something stole it away, some weary acceptance of an unpalatable truth. “Or I was,” she said, her tone subdued. “The county I worked for outside of Charlottesville cut forty positions last week. I was four years into a five-year tenure track.”

      “That СКАЧАТЬ