Woodrose Mountain. RaeAnne Thayne

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СКАЧАТЬ or so. I was about to leave you a note when I heard you coming down the alley.”

       She didn’t feel at all prepared to talk to him, especially when she couldn’t focus on anything but her thirst. “I’m sorry, but I didn’t take my water bottle on my run and I desperately need a drink. Can you give me a minute?”

       “Sure.”

       “Do you want to come up or wait for me down here?”

       “I’ll come up.”

       On second thought, she should have phrased that differently. How about you wait here where it’s safe and stay the heck out of my personal bubble. Alas, too late to rescind the invitation now.

       She led the way up her narrow staircase, aware with each step of the man following closely behind her. She wasn’t used to men in this space, she suddenly realized. Yes, she had dated a few times since she’d come to Hope’s Crossing, but nothing serious and nobody she would consider inviting up to her personal sanctuary.

       For the most part, her life was surrounded by women. She worked in a bead store, for heaven’s sake, a location not usually overflowing with an overabundance of testosterone. If she wanted to date, she was going to have to put a little effort into it. Now that she almost thought she’d begun to finally achieve some level of serenity after the last rough two years, maybe it was time she did something about that.

       If she were to start thinking seriously about entering that particular arena again, she could guarantee with absolute certainty that the words Brodie Thorne and dating would never appear in the same context in her head—even though he was gorgeous, if one went for the sexy, dark-haired, buttoned-down businessman type.

       Which she so didn’t.

       She pulled her house key out of the small zipper pocket on the inside waistband of her leggings and unlocked the door. As soon as it swung open, she winced. She had forgotten the mess she’d left behind when she headed up into the mountains immediately after her return to town—the jumble of boxes and bags and suitcases. She really ought to have left Brodie down in the garden with Jacques.

       Brodie raised an eyebrow at the mess—or perhaps at her eclectic design tastes, with the mismatched furniture covered in mounds of pillows, the wispy curtains on the windows and the jeweled lampshades she’d created one winter night when she was bored. It was a far cry from her sleek little house in Topanga Canyon or her childhood home, a sprawling mansion in Santa Barbara, but she loved it.

       Brodie lived in a huge designer cedar-and-glass house up the canyon high on the mountain, she remembered. She could only imagine what he must think of her humble apartment—and the fact that she could spend even an instant being embarrassed about her surroundings sparked anger at herself and completely unreasonable annoyance at him.

       “Sorry. I’m in a bit of a mess. I only arrived back in town an hour ago from an art fair in Grand Junction. I’m afraid I only stopped here long enough to unload the car before Jacques and I took off for a run.”

       She moved her suitcase out of the way so he could enter the living room and immediately the space seemed to shrink in half. Good thing she’d left Jacques down in the garden or she wouldn’t have room to breathe, with two big, rangy males in her small quarters.

       “No problem.”

       He moved inside the room but didn’t sit down. For a man who usually seemed self-assured to the point of arrogance, he seemed ill at ease for some reason. She couldn’t define why she had that impression. Maybe the sudden tension of his shoulders or some wary look in his eyes.

       She swallowed and was instantly reminded of the reason she had come upstairs in the first place. She was parched. After crossing to the refrigerator in the open kitchen, she opened the door and pulled out her filtered pitcher. “Can I get you something? Water? Iced tea or a Coke?”

       “I’m good.”

       She closed the door and took a long, delicious drink, playing for time as much as quenching her thirst.

       Why was Brodie standing in her apartment looking restless and edgy? She couldn’t begin to guess. In the year since she’d arrived in Hope’s Crossing, she’d barely exchanged a handful of terse words with him, and most of their interactions had been in some public hearing or other where she was speaking out about his latest plan to turn the charming community into a carbon copy of every other town.

       A social call was completely unprecedented.

       What had she done lately that might have annoyed him enough to come looking for her? She’d been too busy during the summer with the art fairs to be around town much. Maybe he was still smarting from the last time she’d taken him on at a planning commission meeting over one of his developments she considered an environmental blight.

       She was painfully aware of the damp neckline of her performance T-shirt and her tight leggings, which she suddenly realized must have given him quite an eyeful of her butt as he’d followed her up the stairs.

       Hiding her discomfort, she lifted her ponytail off her neck in the hot, closed air. The room felt like a sauna. She set her glass down on the counter and hurried to open a window, wishing she’d had the foresight to do that before she headed out with Jacques for the peace and cool of the mountains.

       “You don’t have air-conditioning up here?”

       Evie shrugged, instantly on the defensive about her employer and landlady and, most important of all, good friend. “Claire wanted to install it earlier in the summer but I wouldn’t let her. A fan in the window is usually sufficient for me on all but the hottest summer afternoons and I can always sit down in the garden if it’s too stuffy up here.”

       She turned on the box fan placed in one of the three windows that overlooked Main Street. The air it blew in wasn’t much cooler but at least the movement of it served to make the room feel less stuffy.

       “I’m assuming you aren’t here to discuss my ventilation issues, Brodie.”

       He glanced out the window at the gathering dusk, his jaw tight, as if he were steeling himself for something particularly unpleasant, and her curiosity ratcheted up a notch.

       “I want to pay for your services.”

       O—kay. She blinked. The building that housed String Fever and her apartment above it had been a bordello in the town’s wilder days but she was almost positive Brodie didn’t mean that like it sounded.

       She was also quite sure she should ignore the little quiver low in her belly as her imagination suddenly ran wild.

       She sipped at her water again. “Did you want to commission some jewelry? Is it a gift for Taryn?”

       “It’s for Taryn. But not jewelry.” Again, that hint of discomfort flashed in his expression and just as quickly, he blinked it away. “You haven’t talked to my mother, have you?”

       “No. Not since before I left town Thursday.”

       “Then you probably haven’t heard the news. Taryn is coming home.”

       Some of her tension lifted, replaced by instant delight. “Oh, Brodie. That’s wonderful!”

       She might heartily dislike the man but she could still СКАЧАТЬ