Taming The Beast. Amy Fetzer J.

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      Dewey positioned the logs on the pile, then turned back to the stump.

      “Will you at least tell me his routine so I don’t start another fight?”

      Dewey met her gaze and tipped his ball cap back, staring at her for a second. “Nope.”

      Her eyes went wide. “I beg your pardon?”

      “Mr. Blackthorne does as he pleases, ma’am, and if you run into him again, then I ’spect you’ll just have to handle him.”

      “Oh, you’re a big help.” She threw her arms out and let them fall. “Would you rather see him hide like a mole in this palace—” she flung a hand at the castle “—or actually get to know his daughter?”

      He didn’t respond, taking up Blackthorne’s chore, and Laura realized she wasn’t going to get anything out of Dewey. It was clear where his loyalties lay. Yet when he went to raise the ax, her hand on his arm stopped him. She met his dark gaze head-on, and said, “I am not leaving here until I feel Kelly will get good care and absolutely tons of love,” she drawled, letting her Carolina accent slide over him and do the job for her. “You hear, Mr. Halette?”

      There was a little twinkle in his eyes just then, and though his expression didn’t change, he said, “Yes’m. And call me Dewey, ma’am.”

      “Laura,” she conceded, then turned toward the house and added, “I’m having groceries delivered, which means company’s coming. So if you’ve a mind to keep up this pretense, I suspect you’d better wipe that smile off your face.”

      Behind her, Dewey blinked, fighting an even bigger smile. “Yes, ma’am.”

      The sweet aroma of something baking drifted up through the house, and with it came a chorus of laughter. It drew him, though he kept to the old servants’ staircase that had been walled up for years. Hidden passageways created a maze through the house inside the walls; the corridors were steep, narrow, and barely able to accommodate his size. He hadn’t been inside these walls since he’d discovered them, and part of him loathed that he was in here now. But there were people in his home, when for years only he and Dewey roamed the halls. But now she was here, making herself at home, baking in his kitchen. The temptation to see was as overwhelming as the scent of baking chocolate. Yet it was the laughter that pulled at him. And he could pick her laugh out of the din of voices. Bright, clean, unscarred. It did not stun him as much as he thought, for there was something about Laura Cambridge that grabbed him in places he didn’t want touched. She defied and rebelled, and the urge to tempt her to the brink surged in him, yet he suppressed it, for he knew he had everything to lose if she saw his face. His daughter depended on Laura being here for her when he could not.

      He stopped at the end of the dank corridor and depressed the spring panel, catching it so it did not swing open completely. She was at the oven, removing a cookie sheet, then sliding cookies onto a plate. It was such a domestic scene, something Andrea had never bothered to do, but what caught him off guard were the three people perched on stools around the butcher table. She brought the cookies to the counter, offering them to the guests. Guests. In his house. For the first time. He wanted to be angry. He wanted them gone for the simple reason that he could not join in. And seeing her talking so animatedly made his isolation all the more agonizing and bitter.

      Damn, but she was beautiful, and the three men surrounding the counter hung on her words. Then when she went to put a batch in the oven, he noticed them leaning out to get a good look at her behind. Granted, it was a sweet creation, he thought, but why were they really here? To gape at his house, him or at her?

      “This is quite a large house,” the teenager said. The regular delivery boy, Richard recalled.

      “Yes, it goes on forever.” She dropped spoonfuls of dough onto a fresh sheet.

      “Scary-looking, too,” one man said with a glance around.

      “I love it. It’s big and glamorous. And just the stone and design alone reeks with history from all over the world.”

      That’s exactly what he’d felt when he’d seen it, Richard thought, leaning back against the inner wall to listen.

      “Have you seen him?” the grocer said.

      “Of course.”

      “Is it…bad?”

      Richard peered, almost breathless as he waited for her answer.

      “Not that I could tell.”

      No lies, no information, and he wondered why she’d done that.

      “Then why does he hide?”

      “He’s obviously a private man, and perhaps it’s because he hasn’t been well received and…” She paused in fussing with her cookies to glance over her shoulder and Richard saw the heat ignite in her gaze. “I will tell you now that if even one person utters a single derogatory remark to his daughter, well…let’s just say my grandpappy taught me how to fire a shotgun and skin my kills.”

      Richard smothered a laugh, and when he looked back, the guests chuckled halfheartedly, not sure if she meant what she’d said. As if on cue, they thanked her for the coffee, the grocer telling her to call him if she needed anything, as they headed out the door.

      Laura closed the door and turned back to the counter, popping the sheet into the oven and starting on the last batch of chocolate chip cookie dough. She didn’t know a child that didn’t love them and hoped Kelly would. She wanted the child to feel welcome in this dark house.

      Suddenly she sensed she wasn’t alone and lifted her gaze. She saw him, wedged between the corner wall and the open pantry door, a broad shadow where she could see no more than angled light across the worn jeans shaping his body up to his hips. How the heck did he get in here without her seeing him?

      “I’d like to think my granny’s cookie recipe lured you, but I know better.”

      “Smart and beautiful.”

      Laura felt her feathers rise. Did everyone have to mention her face in the first ten seconds of conversation? “Want a cookie?”

      “No, thank you.”

      “Don’t tell me you are the one person who doesn’t like chocolate chip?”

      “No.”

      “Aah, you won’t come into the light to get one.”

      Silence.

      “What else do you deny yourself because you choose to stay in the dark, Mr. Blackthorne?” With her last word, she tossed a cookie in his direction. His hand shot into the light, snatching it from the air. For a second the signet ring glinted before his arm receded into the dark.

      “And what will you deny Kelly?”

      “Nightmares, Miss Cambridge.”

      “Call me Laura. And I think you are simply cheating yourself.”

      He scoffed, sarcastic. “You know nothing of me, beauty queen.”

      She slammed the spatula down on the counter. “You’re СКАЧАТЬ