“Jordan?” Holly said, her voice laced with concern. “Please say something. Are you hurt?”
“I’m okay.” He forced the words through the pain and awareness battling in his body. He couldn’t remember hurting this bad before, nor could he remember being this instantly aroused. It was an odd combination that again made him wonder if he had clipped his head on his way down.
“Do you think you can get back into bed?” she asked, then glanced from him to the mattress. “I doubt I can lift you by myself.”
“I can manage. Just give me a minute.” He continued to stare up at her face. She smelled like shampoo and soap. Her pale skin almost glowed in the early-evening lamplight. Her chest rose and fell with each breath, and the edge of the robe slipped open a little more, exposing a taut nipple and the underside of her breast.
Heat coiled low in his belly. The pain from his injuries and the ache from his groin set up a low-frequency hum that had him holding in a moan. He couldn’t continue to torture himself this way, he thought grimly.
He rolled to his side, then started to push himself up to his knees. Holly scrambled to her feet and bent over, grabbing him around his chest and adding her strength to his. Together they moved slowly to the bed. Jordan dragged himself onto the mattress. Holly lifted his legs into place, then bent over and smoothed the sheet over him.
“Better?” she asked. “Do you want a painkiller?”
He shook his head, which surprisingly only hurt a little. “I’ll be fine.”
“You sure?” She sat on the bed next to him. Her hip bumped his.
“Yeah,” he murmured, trying not to notice that now he could see her other breast.
She bent close and touched his forehead. “You feel a little warm.”
“I’m sure it will pass.”
She frowned. “I hope you’re not spiking another fever.”
He glanced at the deep V exposed by the oversize robe. “I’m sure that’s not it.”
She was so intent on his condition, she didn’t notice she was flashing him. He wasn’t sure if he should be pleased or insulted. While he appreciated the concern, no man wanted to be considered as sexually interesting as a eunuch.
“How did you end up on the floor?” she asked.
He’d almost forgotten the circumstances that had brought Holly rushing to his side. He rubbed his temple as he tried to remember. “I heard a noise.”
“What was it?”
“I can’t remember. I was asleep and something woke me. I got up to see what it was.”
“Maybe you were dreaming.”
“Maybe.” He stared at her for a moment, for the first time really taking in the oversize robe and her wet hair. He reached out and fingered a damp strand. “What have you been up to?”
Holly blushed, then turned her head away. “I, ah, was sort of using your shower. I hope you don’t mind.”
He wanted to say she could use it anytime, but only on the condition he got to watch. Though he figured she wouldn’t know he was kidding. Then he realized he wasn’t kidding. Had it been that long since he’d been with a woman, or was it specifically that Holly Garrett intrigued him?
Dangerous question, Haynes, he told himself, and decided to ignore it.
“I don’t mind,” he said. “Is there a problem with the plumbing at your new apartment?”
She drew in a deep breath. The edges of the robe trembled slightly but didn’t part any more. Staring at them was screwing up his concentration, so he lowered his gaze to her lap, where she rested her hands.
“Plumbing? Oh!” She seemed to realize how she was dressed. She touched her wet hair, then pulled the collar of the robe together and held it tight. “I, um, I don’t really have an apartment.”
He drew his eyebrows together and stared at her. “Where are you living?”
“At the shop.” She gave him a quick smile. “It’s really very nice. There’s plenty of furniture. Some of the sofas are very comfy. I have a sleeping bag, a hot plate and a small refrigerator. There’s even a bathroom, but it doesn’t have a shower. So I asked Louise if it was all right for me to use the shower here. You were sleeping, or I would have asked you.”
“You can’t live there,” he said.
“Why not? It’s perfectly safe. I didn’t have renter’s insurance, and right now I can’t afford to replace everything I lost, let alone come up with first and last months’ rent. But right after the holidays everything should be fine. It’s only for a few weeks.”
She was talking quickly, and he wondered if it was to cover her nervousness. He figured it was. Now that she was no longer acting as his nurse, she was shy and embarrassed.
As he watched, the fingers at her collar tightened. “Go get dressed,” he said gruffly, then closed his eyes as she scurried from the room.
When she was gone, he raised his arm to cover his eyes. He didn’t want to think about Holly Garrett living alone in her store. After six the shopping district was deserted. She could get into trouble, and no one would be around to call for help. To make matters worse, thinking about her living there made him think about her not having access to a shower and instead using his.
She’d been so soft and tempting in his robe. His mind filled with a hundred different ways he could take them both to breathlessness and back. But he wasn’t going to act on any of them. He was too old and cynical for a woman like her.
For a moment a flicker of regret raced through him. Regret for all he’d never experienced and for all he would never have. If he were someone else, if circumstances were different, he could pursue his interest in Holly. He could woo her slowly, risk caring about her and being cared about in return.
A fantasy, he told himself, even as he acknowledged the fantasy was a hell of a lot better than reality. It wasn’t that he didn’t believe in love; he just didn’t like the consequences.
Seconds later the noise that had awakened him returned. It was a low-pitched yowl. Before he could make up his mind about the risk of trying to get out of bed again, Holly returned carrying a large gray cat.
He eyed the beast distastefully. He recognized the face. That cat was responsible for him being laid up. He thought about grabbing the creature and expressing his feelings, but in his weakened condition he didn’t dare. The cat stared back at him, dislike gleaming from its bright green eyes. He figured the cat had gotten the best of him once, and that had been while he was healthy. God knows what it could do to him now.
Holly shifted the massive feline in her arms and smiled. “This is Mistletoe. Mistletoe, this is the brave man who saved your life.”
Man and cat glared at each other. Neither was impressed.
“Mistletoe is a pedigreed Persian,” Holly said, then set the animal on the floor. “I hope you don’t mind that I brought her over. She’s very special to me.”
At the sound of her name, the cat glanced up at Holly, then purred and rubbed against her legs. When the feline completed the circle, she looked at Jordan and flattened her ears.
He stared back. “She’s pretty fat.”
“She’s pregnant.”
He had a moment of guilt for thinking evil thoughts about an expectant mother, then realized Mistletoe would probably pass her bad temper on to her offspring.
“I don’t like to leave her alone at night,” Holly said. “She’s very well behaved. She won’t be any trouble.”
“Yeah, right,” he muttered.
Holly picked up the cat and walked toward the bed. “Maybe you should pet her and get acquainted.”
Mistletoe began to squirm. Holly set her on the foot of the bed. The cat glared at him. He glared back. She arched her back, gave a sharp pftt, then jumped down and stalked away.
Holly stared after her. “I don’t understand. She’s really very sweet and loves everyone.”
“Uh-huh,” Jordan said, knowing he’d just been insulted by a twenty-pound monster.
“I’m sure she’ll adore you once she gets to know you.”
Mistletoe had already sent him off the balcony of a building. He would hate to see what the cat was capable of when she put her mind to something.
Holly curled up in the chair Louise had brought into Jordan’s temporary bedroom. The overhead light was off. The only illumination came from two floor lamps in opposite corners.
Jordan sat up in bed with the sheet bunched around his waist. They’d finished dinner and were sipping coffee. Holly was pleased with how far she’d come. Despite being in the same room with a good-looking man and his handsome chest, she was able to talk like a normal person. Definitely an improvement over the first day. Jordan still had the power to make her blush, but that was getting better, too.
She studied his face and eyes, searching for signs of fever or pain. “How do you feel?”
“That’s the third time you’ve asked me, Holly. I’m fine.” Then he smiled.
She bit back a sigh. Okay, she was able to survive the bare chest and witty conversation, but the smile…That smile could still reduce her legs to the consistency of whipped cream. She leaned forward and set her coffee mug on the nightstand before she did something stupid like dropping it.
“I’m concerned about that fever coming back.” She rose to her feet and leaned over the bed. She touched his forehead, then his cheeks. “You’re cool to the touch.”
“You do that very well.” He raised his eyebrows. “Lots of practice?”
“With my mom.”
“How long was she sick?”
Holly settled back in her chair. “Ten years. I was fifteen when she found a lump in her breast. It was cancer. At first they just took the lump out, but then the cancer came back.” She closed her eyes, recalling the terror of that time. Her mother had been her only parent. Because it was just the two of them, they were very close. She’d tried to be strong, but all she could think about was what was going to happen to her when her mother died.
“That’s a lot to handle when you’re fifteen,” he said.
She nodded. “She had the usual treatments, but she was really sick. I guess some people tolerate them better. There were a lot of times I missed school to be with her.”
“What else did you miss?” he asked, his voice low and concerned.
She opened her eyes and stared at him. “What do you mean?”
“You were a teenager. Most kids have a hard enough time dealing with school and growing up. You had your mother to worry about. You must have missed out on a lot.”
Her eyes burned, and for a brief second she was afraid she was going to cry. Then she sat up straighter and blinked several times until the burning went away.
“Thank you,” she said.
“For what?”
“For saying that. No one really noticed before. I was just a teenager, but I was expected to act like an adult. There wasn’t anyone else to take charge. My mom couldn’t do it. The doctors and nurses were busy. Mom had a few friends, but she didn’t want them to know how sick she was. And my friends were young like me.”
His dark gaze met hers. “You must have been scared.”
“I was. I didn’t want her to die. It was hard because I’d just started high school and I was involved in a lot of activities. I had to give them up. There was even this boy. Jimmy. We sort of dated. As much as one dates at fifteen.” Holly stared down at her hands and realized she was twisting her fingers together. Consciously she stilled the movement. “He dumped me because I had to spend too much time taking care of my mom.”
“Tell me his last name. As soon as I’m better, I’ll find him and beat him up for you.”
She smiled. “That’s sweet, but no thanks. It was ages ago. It doesn’t matter anymore.”
“Sure it does. Some of those hurts never go away.”
They stared at each other for a long time. Something in Jordan’s eyes convinced her that he really did understand what she was talking about. She wondered what hurts he carried around from his past.
“Did your mother go into remission?” he asked.
“For a couple of years. I got through high school. After I graduated, I went to work full-time. I’d wanted to go to college, but there were medical bills. Then the same week we got the news that we’d inherited the antique shop up here, Mom found a lump in her other breast.”
Holly’s breath caught in her throat. She remembered hearing the sobs through the thin walls of their bathroom. She’d rushed inside and found her mother crouched down on the floor, crying and rocking. At that moment Holly had known the cancer had returned.
“Mom was strong. She had another remission, but this one was shorter. Then they found the cancer had spread everywhere. She hung on for a couple of years. It was hard on her, but she was very brave.”
“Sounds like you were, too.”
“I didn’t do anything.”
“You took care of her, didn’t you?”
“I was her daughter. What else was I going to do? I was all she had.”
She shifted in the chair and pulled her knees up to her chest. “Enough about this. I’m supposed to be entertaining you, not getting your spirits down. Let’s talk about something more lighthearted.”
Jordan thought for a moment. “If you could have gone to college, what would you have studied?”
“That’s easy. Business. I want to do a good job running the shop, but I don’t have all the education I need. I admire Louise for going back to school. That’s what I want to do. Next question.”
“You never mention your father.”
“I don’t have any contact with him.” She thought about the single conversation she’d shared with her father six years ago. She could remember everything about it, right down to the sound of the rain on the windows. “He had an affair with my mother. When she got pregnant, he disappeared.”
She said the words matter-of-factly. Jordan stared at her and wondered how she’d managed to stay so giving and innocent in the face of so much tragedy.
Holly had been abandoned by one parent and lost the other, yet she’d survived. More than that, she was happy and successful.
“I know about fathers like that,” he said. “My dad stuck around, but I often think it would have been better if he’d left.”
“Why?”
She looked at him intently. After her shower she’d dressed in jeans and a dark blue sweatshirt. The soft fabric deepened the color of her eyes. Her hair was long and loose over her shoulders. He wanted to pull her close and bury his hands in the long silky strands. He wanted to kiss her and make love to her until she forgot the past and its pain. He could make her forget. He could even seduce her. But if he did, he would break her heart, and that was one thing he wouldn’t allow himself to do. So instead, he told the truth. If that didn’t drive her away, nothing would.
“Haven’t you heard about the infamous Haynes brothers?” he asked.
She shrugged. “Rumors, really. Nothing specific.”
“Four generations of heartbreakers. Four generations of boys born into the family. Three generations of philandering men and bitter women.”
“You and your brothers are the fourth generation?”
“Yeah. We saw what our uncles did and how our father treated our mother. He was out with women several times a week. Earl Haynes believed everything he did was fine as long as he actually slept in his bed. Everyone in town knew about his affairs, including my mother.”
She sucked in a breath. “You and your brothers knew, too?”
He nodded.
“How awful.” She shook her head. “I don’t understand how someone could act like that.”
“It was easy.”
“What do you mean?”
“The men in my family have a natural ability to attract women.”
She raised her chin slightly. “I hadn’t noticed.”
“Gee, thanks.”
She looked startled, then laughed. “Oh, I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. What I meant was—” She paused.
He waited, wondering what she was going to say. Would she claim to be completely unaffected by him, and if she did, would he believe her? He knew all the tricks, but he didn’t use them anymore. But he’d caught Holly staring at him a couple of times. She might not be swooning, but he doubted she was immune.