His Sleeping Beauty. Carol Grace

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      Chapter One

      At eight o’clock the next morning a loud roaring sound woke Sarah with a start. She sat bolt upright in bed and blinked. She’d been dreaming. She was wandering through a forest in the moonlight, dressed in a long white gown, lost and alone until she saw a dark, mysterious man through the trees. He took her arm and they strolled farther into the trees until…he kissed her. A most amazing kiss that made her tingle all over. That made her want to kiss him back. But before she could, he was gone and it was too late. He’d disappeared, leaving behind only the memory of his shadowy face and the way he tasted, of wine and cigar smoke and coffee.

      She was surprised she was able to taste and smell in a dream. That was a first. Also a first to wake up and find her heart pounding and shivers running up and down her spine. Not only that, she’d awakened with her lips still tingling, but with a feeling of disappointment, disorientation and unfulfillment. Where was she? Who was he? What was wrong with her?

      One good thing. She hadn’t had an asthma attack in the middle of the night. She hadn’t had one for a long time, but the memories of gasping for breath, staggering into a steam-filled bathroom and the ever-present inhaler she kept at hand even now, just in case, would always be there.

      The sun was shining on unfamiliar, faux-finished, pale yellow walls. The air coming through the open window was perfumed with roses—instead of the traffic fumes she was used to. Considering her black thumb, the roses couldn’t possibly be hers. The antique armoire in the corner was smoothly finished in an aged patina and not hers, either.

      Then it all came back to her. Instead of sleeping in her own bed in her tiny apartment in crowded, foggy San Francisco, she was house-sitting at Aunt Mary’s sprawling home some thirty miles south in Portola Valley, a suburb of the City by the Bay. And that buzzing sound? That was the man next door cutting down Aunt Mary’s three-hundred-year-old oak tree! She’d been warned he might take advantage of her aunt’s absence and attack the tree just because it was shading his swimming pool. Not on her watch he wouldn’t. That was her primary job while she was there, to protect and preserve one defenseless tree.

      She bounded out of bed, tore off her white cotton nightgown and tugged on a pair of drawstring pants, a comfortable faded T-shirt, and her large glasses, and ran on the filed floor through the house and out the back door.

      “Just what do you think you’re doing?” she shouted across the fence. She was wasting her breath. He didn’t see her. He didn’t hear her. But she saw him, all six-foot-something of muscular man, naked to the waist of his low-slung jeans.

      She blinked. And stared. It was him. The man in her dreams. Then she shook her head. No, it couldn’t be, because the man in her dreams lived in a forest, loved trees and would never hurt one. He didn’t hear her, this tree killer, but she heard him, the whole neighborhood heard him.

      Finally he turned off the chain saw, wiped the sweat from his forehead and looked over the fence.

      “Hello,” he said with a dazzling smile on his tanned face that she supposed charmed every woman he encountered. And made them forget he was doing something he shouldn’t. But not her aunt. Not her, either, unless he put that chain saw down and swore never to use it again. “Did I wake you?”

      “Me and the rest of Portola Valley. Yes, you did.”

      He didn’t seem to get the message. Instead he merely set the saw on the ground and let his gaze roam over her baggy clothes. “Sleep well?” he asked as if this was an important question. He was anxious to hear her answer.

      What did he care if she’d slept well, unless this was a chain-saw related question. Still, it was an odd question to ask a stranger. What did that have to do with anything? She decided he was just trying to change the subject. “What do you think you’re doing?” she demanded. As if she didn’t know.

      “Just trimming the tree,” he said, bracing his arms on the fence between the two properties. “Before it trims me. It’s got some dead limbs I wouldn’t want to fall on my house or yours for that matter. I’m new here.” He reached over the fence to shake her hand. “I don’t think we’ve met. Or have we?” He was staring at her intently as if he wasn’t sure. But she was. They had not met anywhere, any time. Except maybe in her dream. If it had been in real life, she would have remembered. She didn’t meet that many good-looking men. And when she did, she was tongue-tied and shy. Not today. Today she had something to say.

      “No, I’m sure we haven’t.”

      “Max Monroe,” he said.

      Gingerly she extended her hand and shook his, her small hand immediately engulfed in his, while trying not to stare at the rivulets of sweat that dripped across the well-defined muscles on his chest. What did the man do to keep in such good shape? Was he a professional athlete? Or did he go to a gym and work out with a personal trainer? Things she might have done if she weren’t afraid of having an attack triggered by exercise. Never mind. She did what she could to keep in shape by walking to work in the city.

      She couldn’t remember what Aunt Mary had told her about him. She really hadn’t been listening. Now she wished she had so she could pigeonhole him, and put him in a category the way she, as a social scientist, would do with a piece of historical information.

      “You must be Mary’s niece. She told me about you,” he said. There she was at a disadvantage. He knew all about her, she knew nothing about him. Sarah wondered what her aunt had told him. That she was a nerd? That she didn’t date and had no social life to speak of? That she worked too hard and needed a break along with some new clothes and a new attitude? Was that why he was looking at her as if he was trying to figure her out, as if she might be a creature from another world.

      “Did she also tell you that’s her tree you’re hacking at?” Sarah asked.

      “It’s our tree,” he said pleasantly, slapping the bark with one hand. “And I offered to keep it trimmed so it doesn’t endanger either of our houses.”

      “That’s good of you, but my aunt is more worried about the tree than her house. You can replace a house, but a tree like that…” She looked up into the branches that towered above her, and felt a little dizzy. That’s what came from sleeping in a strange bed and being awakened so rudely and so suddenly. She’d been working long hours, too, trying to finish a project. Because of her past medical problems, she always tried to avoid the stress of deadlines by getting her work done ahead of time. Her aunt had said she looked pale and hoped she’d get some rest while she was house-sitting. Not with this Paul Bunyon next door, she wouldn’t.