Why Not Tonight. Susan Mallery

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СКАЧАТЬ wasn’t sure what to do with that information. “You’re still not driving home in the storm.”

      “Stuck in the dragon’s lair.”

      Before he could ask what she meant, she brightened. “At least there’s a chandelier in the entryway. It’s really beautiful. I thought maybe candles, but the electric lights are nice, too.”

      “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

      She smiled. “You usually don’t. That’s okay. I move quick.”

      “Implying I don’t?”

      “You can be fast, probably faster than me, but quick is different.”

      He had no idea what to make of her. Two years ago Natalie had started working at Willow Gallery as the office manager and herder of the three Mitchell brothers. She monitored inventory, tracked sales and paid them when their pieces sold.

      He had always found her appealing. She was pretty and sexy and it had been a long time since he’d had a woman in his life. But the more he got to know her, the more he valued her happy spirit. He was not a happy-spirit kind of guy and he didn’t want to take the chance of changing her, of making her like him. So he tried to avoid her at the studio and kept to himself any interest he might have expressed.

      Having her in his house now wasn’t going to be a problem, he told himself. It was temporary. He would enjoy the Natalie-size interruption, be grateful for the distraction and, when the weather cleared, send her on her way.

      A gust of wind rattled the windows.

      “I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your house down,” she said with a laugh. “I’m glad this is the stone house and not the one made of straw.”

      “Me, too.”

      Lightning cut through the late afternoon, making the kitchen as bright as the sun. It was immediately followed by a boom of thunder that shook the house. They both jumped, then turned at a massive crack.

      Natalie sprang to her feet. “What was that?”

      Before he could say he had no idea, there was a colossal ripping sound, then a rumble, as if part of the mountain were being torn away.

      Ronan started for the front of the house, Natalie at his heels. He jerked open the front door in time to see a hundred-foot tree falling, falling, falling as the ground beneath it slid away. It started a cascade of trees around it swaying, then drifting toward the ravine in slow motion, pulled along by the mudslide.

      The noise was deafening and the whole earth trembled. The last of the trees trembled and hovered, as if it hadn’t decided which way it was going to tumble. Ronan saw the trajectory, took a step toward it, then stopped. There was nothing he could do—nothing anyone could do. The last tree hovered for a second before crashing to the ground. The only thing in its path was a very wet, very battered twenty-five-year-old Volvo. The tree hit Natalie’s car, crushing it flat. Then the tree and the car slipped away down the side of the mountain.

      “Holy crap,” she breathed, then started to laugh. “Did you see that? It was incredible.”

      Worry nibbled at the back of his mind. He’d always thought she was funny. Had he mistaken mental instability for humor?

      She did a little dance, then bounced back in the house and grinned at him as he closed the door.

      “You know you just lost your car down the side of the mountain, right?”

      She shimmied on the tile and spun in a circle. “It’s gone, it’s gone, it’s gone.” She faced him and clapped her hands. “I’m so happy.”

      “Which is not a normal response to what just happened.”

      She stopped dancing and drew in a breath. “My insurance agent told me to drop collision or replacement or whatever it’s called on my car because it’s so old and wasn’t worth it. Only I didn’t want to because it seemed, you know, kind of mean. Like I’d given up on it.”

      He was no less worried by her response. “You didn’t want to hurt your car’s feelings?”

      “Exactly.” The smile returned. “They’re going to have to pay me the value of my now-totaled car. I’ve been saving for a new one—well, new to me, anyway—but I don’t have enough yet. I wanted to pay outright and not take out a loan. But with the insurance money, I can finally get my new car. Woo-hoo! I hope I can find a red one.”

      She began to dance again. Ronan looked out the windows at the raging storm, the mud on the driveway, and doubted the roads were the least bit passable. They were stuck until the county road crew got up the mountain and cleaned things up. It was going to be, he realized, a very, very long couple of days.

       CHAPTER TWO

      RONAN SEEMED UNABLE to grasp the glory of the moment, so Natalie stopped trying to explain it. Losing her car was fantastic, but if he couldn’t see it that way, then she would be happy on her own.

      “I emailed the county while you were in the bathroom,” he told her. “I should hear back on the status of the roads in the next hour or so, but if those trees fell, I’m sure others did, too.”

      “So I’m stuck,” she said, turning the idea over in her mind. “Is that going to freak you out?”

      One corner of his mouth turned up. “I’m not easily freaked.”

      “Then I guess we’re good.” She wasn’t worried about staying with Ronan. He was basically a good guy, and they had food and a generator, so she would be fine.

      He showed her the laundry room, which was so much nicer than the one in her apartment building.

      “I can figure it out,” she told him, eyeing the sheets in the dirty clothes hamper by the shiny, front-loading machine. “I’ll use those to make a load. I’ll be fine, if you want to go, um, work.”

      He studied her for a second, then nodded. “I’ll be in my studio for a couple of hours,” he told her. “Then we can figure out what to have for dinner.”

      She’d just had soup and crackers, so wouldn’t be hungry for a while. Not that she wasn’t always up for a meal, but still. “Sounds great.”

      She watched him leave, put her sopping clothes into the washer, added the sheets and detergent, then started the cycle. Only then did she wonder if he really was going to work. Lately he hadn’t been producing. She didn’t know if she was the only one to notice, or if his brothers had, as well. She wondered if the lack of work was the reason Ronan had been so withdrawn over the past few months. To be as gifted and incredible as he was and then to not be able to work would be... Honestly, she couldn’t imagine. Maybe the saddest thing ever. To have that creative gift taken away was the definition of cruelty.

      The front-loading washer door locked into place. She watched it for a second, realized there was a timer that told her she had forty-seven minutes until the cycle was over and knew there was no way she could stay here watching laundry wash.

      The СКАЧАТЬ