Her Holiday Secret. Jennifer Greene

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СКАЧАТЬ okay. I don’t think Horace is highly motivated to reform anyway. The only neighbor who gives me real fits is Cleopatra—she’s a raccoon, and I swear she steals anything that isn’t nailed down or padlocked. You want a refill on that coffee?”

      “Thanks, but I really should be going.” Andy figured he’d stayed long enough for an uninvited visitor. “Never heard a name like Cleopatra for a raccoon before.”

      “Well, it seemed to fit. Honestly, if you saw her, you’d fall for her. All the guys do. She turns up pregnant every spring. I think it’s in the eyes. She’s got that fatal allure kind of thing.”

      “Maggie?” She made him chuckle again, imagining a raccoon with fatal allure. But they were ambling through the kitchen toward his coat. Andy considered he only had a few minutes left to get in anything serious, and Maggie cocked her head curiously when she heard the change in his tone.

      “You’re pretty isolated on this stretch of road. You really getting around okay since the accident?”

      “Yeah. Really. Just fine.”

      “How about wheels?”

      “Well, I have to get around to car shopping. A fate worse than death, if you ask me...but I’m fine for now anyway. Colin brought in some fresh groceries, and this time of year I’ve always got a stocked freezer because there’s always at least one blizzard before Christmas. My sis has a car I could borrow if I had to. Really, I’m fine.”

      “You want some company car shopping?”

      She’d paused to stir her spaghetti pot, glanced up. “Frankly, I wouldn’t ask that of my worst enemy, Andy...but if you mean it...sure.”

      “Yeah, I mean it. The doc clear you to be out and around?”

      “The doc ordered me to sack on the couch for a couple of days. I’ve rested until I’m blue in the face,” she said dryly.

      “So rested that the memory came back that was bothering you so much? You remember the accident now?”

      It was the first time he saw that upbeat smile of hers falter. The shadows darkening her eyes made him think of that rumpled, torn-up bed. “No,” she admitted quietly. “It’s like that whole twenty-four hours before the accident was just wiped off my map.”

      He unhitched his leather jacket from the hook, burrowed into it, but his eyes stayed honed on her face. “It still just happened a few days ago.”

      “I know. And the doc must have told me a dozen times that it’s really common. It’s just... Andy, you don’t know me. But I’m just not a person who folds in a crisis. I do rescue work. I hiked the Appalachian Trail alone when I was a kid. I’m no wimp. And especially since the accident wasn’t my fault, I just don’t understand why I can’t make those memories come back unless something else serious happened.”

      She was so frustrated, she didn’t seem to realize she was waving her spaghetti spoon around, spattering bits of red on her brick-tiled floor. Andy’d told himself—several times now—that it was time he left. But he instinctively stepped back into the kitchen to remove the lethal weapon from her hand. “I don’t know what you’re worried that ‘something else’ could be. You think you held up the local liquor store earlier that day?”

      She had to know he was teasing, but he still couldn’t win that smile back. “Heck. Maybe I did.”

      “And maybe cows fly. You’re right that I don’t know you, Maggie. Not well. Not yet, anyway. But offhand, I’d say the community’s safe from your thieving, murderous ways. No offense. But I’d bet the bank you don’t even hit the aspiring criminal ranks near any of the seven deadly sins.”

      “Hey, I speed,” she said defensively.

      “Well, hell. Let’s cuff you right now and send you up the river.”

      “Darn it, Andy. Cut it out. You’re making me feel better.”

      “Um...that was kind of the idea. In fact, seems to me if speeding’s enough to give you a guilt attack—whether you can remember the specifics or not—I think you can safely rest your mind that you didn’t rob any banks that day.”

      “Okay, okay, I admit I really doubt I did anything like that either,” she said wryly, but then she sighed. “Only I keep waking up from these dreams. Nothing there. No substance. But my heart’s pounding and my hands are sweaty. And the whole feeling just tastes like guilt, like I must have done something really wrong.”

      Andy was standing close enough to touch her, but he never intended to. His hand just somehow lifted to her cheek. The thing was, she seemed so troubled about that little twenty-four-hour memory lapse, when everything about her came across as strong and honest. She was a woman who damn near reeked integrity. He just wanted to communicate empathy, reassurance, and words alone didn’t seem to be getting the job done. Possibly, conceivably, there were a few other small factors motivating his need to touch her, too.

      Like the little swish in her behind when she walked. And the mischief in her humor. And her naming a deer Horace. And that elusive, evocative scent she wore. And the way being near her had his rusty hormones kicking up an unsettling tizzy, when that hadn’t happened to Andy in a dog’s age. He didn’t lack for female company and he wasn’t particularly wary—hell, every matchmaker in town had been throwing single women at him since the divorce. But leaping for an impulse just wasn’t his way. He was too old to be impressed by a cute tush, and the kind of attraction that mattered took both time and seriously testing the compatibility waters before risking a bunch of grief that wasn’t worth it.

      So it was way too soon to even think about touching her.

      And way out of line to be thinking about kissing her.

      But once his palm touched her cheek, she lifted her face. Something was there. An expression that made him feel heart-punched, a connection in her luminous eyes that made his thumb instinctively stroke the edge of her jaw. She didn’t move. She met his eyes, with all the wariness of a doe edgy with a buck in her territory. But she watched him on that long, long trip when he was bending down. And her lips were parted by the time he’d traveled the distance to hers.

      Soft. She tasted soft and warm and tremulous. Both times he’d met her, she’d come across with that I’m-sturdy, I-can-take-care-of-myself routine. He believed it. It was probably why he’d taken to her so damned impossibly fast. But that wasn’t how she kissed.

      It’d been so long since he kissed anyone he figured he’d forgotten how. Real quickly he realized that past experience wasn’t going to rescue him from this problem anyway. This wasn’t like any other kiss. She wasn’t like any other woman.

      His lips touched down, traced hers, in a testing questing kiss that she seemed to answer in the same language. It was like discovering a field of wildflowers in a snowstorm. Magic where it couldn’t be. A time-out from reality that made no particular sense. He could smell her spaghetti sauce bubbling. Feel her kitchen lights glaring. His life was going fine, he wasn’t all that lonely. Until he kissed her.

      Her hand lifted, clutched at the folds of his leather jacket. Not pushing him away, just holding on. And that wooing, whisper-soft kiss kept coming on, like a spell being woven from her textures, her scents, the way her mouth fit his like she belonged to him, like he’d been missing her all this time and СКАЧАТЬ