Lucy And The Loner. Elizabeth Bevarly

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СКАЧАТЬ onto the couch and bumped his head against her elbow, then nuzzled close before curling up in her lap. Lucy smiled and rubbed her hand along his back and under his throat, and the thrumming of his steady purr reassured her some.

      As long as she had Mack, she told herself, everything would be okay. Somehow, some way, she’d put her life back together again. She’d just have to force herself to focus on the future and not dwell on the past. Piece of cake, right?

      She sighed furtively and decided not to think about it for now. What consumed her thoughts instead was the huge debt she owed to Boone Cagney. And although Lucy prided herself in the fact that she always paid her debts, the settlement of this one eluded her. Everything she owned was gone. Her financial savings were meager at best. Whatever she received for her house from the insurance settlement was going to have to buy and outfit a new place for her to live.

      All she had was a tattered teddy bear whose inherent value would be useless to anyone but her, and Mack, with whom she would never part, no matter how grave the debt. She simply had nothing to offer the big, blond firefighter who’d saved Mack’s life, she realized morosely. Unless, of course, she wanted to give him herself. But why would he want something like that? No one else ever had.

      The hand stroking Mack’s back gradually slowed, then stilled altogether as a hazy idea rooted itself in her brain. Actually, she thought, that just might work. There was a way Lucy could repay Boone for everything he had done for her. There was something she could give him that would settle the debt in some small way.

      She could give him herself. Sort of.

      Now all she had to do was figure out how to wrap herself up all nice and neat and make him accept her small token of gratitude. Unfortunately, Boone Cagney didn’t seem like the kind of man who was open to receiving gifts, whether they were owed him or not.

      “So what do you think, Mack?” she asked the cat who had moved into her lap, tucked his legs up under himself, and curled his tail around his body quite contentedly.

      Mack opened one eye, clearly disinterested, then closed it again, sighed with much satisfaction and purred louder.

      Lucy thought some more as she rubbed Mack behind the ear. “I guess if he’s not the kind of guy who accepts things easily,” she murmured, “then I’ll just have to be a bit more persuasive than usual.”

      Mack grunted in his sleep, though whether the sound was one of agreement or dissension, Lucy couldn’t tell.

      “That’s okay, Mack,” she said softly to the slumbering animal. “I’ll take care of everything. You just be yourself.”

      

      Boone had finally managed to slip into a restless slumber when a rapid knocking at his front door awakened him with a start. Jerking his head up from the pillow, he squinted at the blurry green numbers on his clock, then swore viciously when he realized he’d only been in bed for a little over an hour. With another muffled curse, he collapsed back onto the mattress and mentally willed the intrepid intruder to go away.

      But the pounding only reverberated through his house again—louder this time. So he sighed his resignation and rolled out of bed, then stretched lethargically before scrubbing two hands through his hair. Because he was expecting to send his uninvited caller on their way right quick, he didn’t bother to put on a shirt, and instead padded barefoot across the bedroom, wearing only a pair of faded navy blue sweatpants.

      Man, it had been a bitch of a night, he thought, rubbing a knot at the base of his neck. It was a terrible thing to watch a person’s house—a person’s home—go up in flames along with all their worldly possessions. He supposed he’d never get used to that part of the job. The only thing worse than seeing something like that happen was seeing something like that happen to someone you cared about personalty.

      The thought stopped him dead in his tracks. Whoa, he instructed himself carefully, rewind. Cared about personally? He couldn’t even remember the name of the woman whose house had burned last night. How the hell could he care about her?

      The pounding erupted again, so he shook the thought off and returned to his slow progress down the hall. Prepared for an unwanted solicitation or an unexpected delivery, he jerked the front door open with a growl, only to find that the woman he had been thinking about only seconds ago had materialized from his ruminations and stood on the other side.

      Although it was common enough for women to cross the street just so they could walk by a fire station, Boone couldn’t recall a single incident where one had actually come to a firefighter’s house. Although now that he got a better look at her, he decided it might not be such a bad tradition to start.

      “Hi,” she greeted him with a bright smile. “Remember me?”

      For a moment he couldn’t say a word. He could only stare into those compelling blue eyes that had lingered in his thoughts until sleep had claimed him. No, he suddenly remembered, that wasn’t exactly true. Even in sleep, those eyes had haunted him.

      “Yeah, sure I remember. You okay?”

      She nodded anxiously but said nothing to confirm her condition for sure.

      Boone nodded vaguely in response and forced himself to pull his gaze away from her eyes. Inevitably, though, it roved relentlessly over the rest of her. Cleaned up, he noted, she looked a little sturdier than she had the night before. Cleaned up, she looked a little heartier. She looked older, too, probably near his own thirty-six years, and much less fragile and commanding of care. Last night, she had seemed close to crumpling into a hopeless, helpless heap of despair. But now...

      Now, he realized, in spite of the baggy, masculine, obviously borrowed clothing that hung on her body like sackcloth, she actually looked quite...fetching.

      Although her bangs were long—nearly down in her eyes— her black hair was cut shorter than his own. The style might have been boyish had it not topped such utterly feminine features. Her lashes seemed even darker than her black hair, a stark contrast to the pale blue of her irises. Her cheekbones were well-defined and stained with pink, though Boone knew without question that the color didn’t result from any manufactured cosmetic. Her full lips, too, were blushed with color, though again, he could see that heightened emotion, and nothing more, caused the flush.

      Dropping his gaze lower, he also saw that she bore a nasty bruise on the left side of her chin that reached to her mouth and swelled a small portion of her lower lip. Without even thinking about what he was doing, he curled his forefinger lightly against her mouth and brushed it gently over the injury. Vaguely he noted the warm breath that danced over his fingers. Vaguely he marveled at how soft her skin was. Vaguely he realized how much he wanted to touch her in other places, to see if they were warm and soft, too.

      Her lips parted a mere breath, but her pupils expanded to nearly eclipse the blue of her irises. Only when he noted her reaction did Boone fully understand the intimacy inherent in his gesture, and the strangely erotic path his thoughts had suddenly begun to follow. He yanked back his hand with then speed of a viper and shoved it down to his side. Then he tried to meet her troubled gaze with as much indifference as he could fake.

      He was about to say something else—although he couldn’t quite remember what—when she seemed to throw off the odd spell that had descended and snatched his hand back up to inspect it. Until then, he had forgotten about the jagged red line that rent his thumb from the cuticle nearly to his wrist.

      “Oh, my God, did Mack do that to you?” the woman asked, stroking the pad of her thumb delicately СКАЧАТЬ