Roomful of Roses. Diana Palmer

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      Chapter Two

      Wynn could sense McCabe watching her even as she opened the unlocked door of the white frame cottage behind Katy Maude’s monstrous Victorian house on Patterson Street. She stormed in, her hair flying, her step sounding unusually loud on the bare wood floors and area rugs.

      “McCabe!” she yelled, tossing her camera, purse and sweater onto the chair in the hall. But only an echo greeted her.

      She turned to go into the living room, which she’d redecorated the year before with western furniture and Indian rugs. She stopped short just inside the doorway and caught her breath.

      McCabe was sitting quietly in her big armchair by the fireplace, one big foot propped on the hassock, wearing leather boots and a safari suit that would have looked comical on any native of Redvale. But it suited his dark tan, his faintly tousled thick blond hair, which needed trimming badly.

      All the years rolled away. He looked just as Wynn remembered him, big and bronzed and blond—larger than life. His craggy face looked battle-worn, and the light eyes that were neither gray nor blue but a mixture of the two narrowed as they roamed boldly over her slender body.

      She stared helplessly, trying to reconcile her memories with the man before her. He seemed to find her equally fascinating, if the searching, stunned expression on his usually impassive face was anything to go by.

      “You’re older,” she said in a tone that was unconsciously soft.

      He nodded. “So are you, honey.”

      Casual endearments were as much a part of him as his square-tipped fingers, but the word caused an odd sensation in Wynn. She didn’t understand why, and she didn’t like it.

      “What are you doing here?” she asked reasonably.

      He raised both eyebrows as he lifted the smoking cigarette in his hand to his chiseled mouth. “My plane was hijacked,” he said with a straight face.

      She pursed her lips. “Try again.”

      “You don’t believe me?”

      “Very few planes are hijacked to south Georgia, in my experience,” she murmured. The words were just something to keep her mind occupied while her eyes helplessly roamed over him and she tried to fire up the old antagonism.

      “What experience?” he asked carelessly, narrowing his eyes as he studied her. “How old are you now?”

      “Just months away from my inheritance,” she reminded him with a smile. “When Andy and I marry, I’m a free woman.”

      “Andrew Slone,” he muttered, leaning back in the chair with a sigh. “How in hell did you get landed with him? Is he blackmailing you?”

      She gasped. “I love him!”

      “Elephants fly,” he scoffed. He ground out the cigarette in the ashtray on the table beside his chair. “You’d stagnate married to a man with his hang-ups.”

      “What do you know about his hang-ups?” she challenged.

      He met her eyes squarely and a wild little tremor went through her stomach. “Enough to know I’m going to stop you from making the mistake of your young life. I grew up with Andrew, for God’s sake, he’s a year older than I am!”

      “I like older men,” she shot back. “And he’s just thirty-six, hardly a candidate for a nursing home!”

      She stopped herself abruptly. Why should she justify her feelings for Andy to McCabe, for heaven’s sake? “What do you think you are, McCabe, the Spanish Inquisition? You don’t have any right to burst in here and start grilling me...and what are you doing here, anyway?”

      “Don’t get hysterical,” he said soothingly. “I’m here to help you sort yourself out, that’s all. Just until I recuperate.”

      “I don’t need help, and why do you have to recuperate here?”

      “Because my mother left the country, servants and all, when she realized I was on my way back,” he said nonchalantly. “I let the lease on my apartment expire and the only quarters I have at the moment are in Central America.” His eyebrows arched. “You wouldn’t want me to go back there to heal?”

      She averted her eyes before he could read the very real fear in them. “Don’t be absurd,” she said.

      “Then ‘here’ was the only place left.”

      “You could stay at Katy Maude’s,” she СКАЧАТЬ