Page 75 of Dangerous Lover

He nuzzled against her ear, head lying on her hair, the scent of roses rising sharply in his nostrils.

“After the security system goes up, we’ll do some decorating together. Paint the kitchen and the bedroom. And we canpaint the dining room yellow again. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? You won’t recognize the house when we’re done.” His voice was slurred with sleepiness and the aftereffects of sex.

He kissed her temple and went out like a light.

Caroline lay on her back,muscles lax with pleasure, inner muscles still so hypersensitive from the powerful orgasm that she couldn’t move her thighs without feeling a jolt of pleasure-pain.

Her body was sending a huge packet of powerful messages of joy to her head, but it was like feeling something happening far away. Her face felt numb with shock. Jack tried to move her into his arms, but she turned herself into a dead weight, as if fast asleep, and could feel his decision to let her be, to let her have her rest. He pulled the blanket up over her shoulders and settled down himself, so close she could feel his heat, but without touching her.

If he touched her again, she didn’t know what she would do. Run maybe. Scream. Her jaw muscles tightened.

The meal and the wine lay curdled in her roiling stomach. She had to swallow heavily against the bile rising up her throat.

Her instinct told her to get up out of bed and run—but run where?

Her head ached as she stared dry-eyed up at the dark ceiling, wondering whether some answers lay up there in the shadows, knowing there were no answers at all. Knowing that either she was insane or Jack had been lying to her all along.

Somehow the huge man lying next to her, who’d made loveto her for hours, who had been inside her body, who’d given her such mind-blowing pleasure, somehow he wasn’t who he said he was.

It would be wonderful to forget what he’d said. She’d found herself a magnificent lover, sexy as hell, who’d done nothing but help her since he’d arrived. Courteous, gorgeous, fantastic in bed, focused completely on her.

Rich, too, unless Jenna had played a trick on her.

Total dreamboat, Jenna would have said in high school.

Of course, the question of how a former soldier, a man who traveled with two pairs of ancient jeans and a leather jacket in the dead of winter could also have fifteen million dollars was better left unasked. Just let it ride, she’d told herself.

But his words ran round and round in her head, in an endless loop, mocking her. Words that shifted the ground beneath her feet and made her doubt her own senses. Words that made no sense at all coming out of his mouth. Out of the mouth of a man she’d met for the first time four days ago.

We can paint the living room yellow again, he’d said.You’d like that, wouldn’t you?

Yes, of course she’d like that. A nice canary yellow instead of puke green. Who wouldn’t?

It was very thoughtful of him to think of it.

Except, of course, the last time the living room had been painted yellow was over six years ago.

Chapter Sixteen

When Sanders walked into First Page, a very bad day suddenly turned worse.

Very few customers showed up and those few were, she suspected, dying from the cold instead of dying for a good read. By eleven o’clock she’d racked up a grand total of $27.15 in sales, her second-worst day. The worst had been Friday, with a grand total sales of 0.

Still, maybe it wasn’t a bad thing that the weather was still so bad people would rather re-read their old books rather than drop by First Page. She found it hard to pay attention to the few people who actually ventured inside the shop. They’d talk and she’d suddenly zone out, then have to scurry to apologize when it was clear she hadn’t been listening. So, all in all, it was a good thing she was mostly alone with her thoughts.

Except for the fact that shewasalone with her thoughts.

No matter which way she looked at it—upside down, inside out—Caroline couldn’t figure out how Jack knew that the living room had been painted yellow six years ago.

As if it were the first trickle from a cracked dam, now she felt the cold floodwaters of doubt rise in her mind, sickening her. Besides the color of the living room, she now realized with hindsight that he seemed to have an uncanny knowledge of Greenbriar. That first night, he hadn’t even wanted to be accompanied up to his room. He seemed to know where the tools were kept, where the wine cellar was, even—that first night—where her bedroom was. He’d said he recognized it by her smell, but it didn’t ring true.

He’d known.

How had he known?

And since she was in doubt mode, how could he possibly have fifteen million dollars?

And, most horrible of all, how could he at times look faintly familiar to her?

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