Page 1 of Alone With You
CHAPTER ONE
It took him a while, but Logan finally realized there was a naked woman in the cabin.
He stood in the hallway just outside the bedroom, staring at the pool of clothing at his feet. A skirt stretched a splash of color across the carpet. Fragile lace formed the outline of a pair of women’s panties. Logan crouched and hooked a finger inside the back of a high-heeled shoe that still radiated warmth from its owner’s foot. He lifted it to eye level and glanced at the designer name scrolled along the curvy inner arch. A match, he thought. Its sexy mate teetered on the welcome mat by the cedar cabin’s front door.
What the hell?
Hearing the rumble of water through the pipes, he turned his attention to the master bedroom, with its frilly curtains and ruffled bedspread. The door to the master bath stood ajar. He could just glimpse a sliver of mirror fogged with moisture. The vision was blurry, but a woman definitely occupied that shower. She was very naked and very wet.
For a sharp second, his limbic brain took over. His blood flow shifted, heading south. Logan filled his lungs to restore oxygen and sense to his brain. Along with the rush of air came a subtle, sexy fragrance from the silky puddle of woman’s clothing. The scent bulleted to his glands.
He let the shoe drop. This wasn’t what he’d expected. When he’d come home to find a rental car parked on the gravel driveway, he’d assumed the visitor was some member of his meddling family. His mother, or one of his sisters, flying in to surprise him from Montana. He expected to discover them flitting around the place, clucking at the disarray, doing his laundry, cooking up a storm, staunch in their belief that a good meal could cure any ill, real or imagined. Or maybe it was one of his brothers, wanting to “crash” for the weekend, determined to get him stinking drunk—theircure for any ill, real or imagined. As if one good bender and a few good meals could make him forget everything that happened.
Whoever this woman was, she sure as heck wasn’t family. His mother and sisters didn’t wear Italian leather pumps. Neither did Mrs. Napoli, his nearest neighbor in this one-horse town in Washington State, the only woman he’d bothered to strike up an acquaintance with. Now that he thought about it, he should have figured out his visitor was a stranger from the first. No one he knew would rent the latest model Saab, when a good solid sub-compact Ford would take them anywhere a road led.
Then an image lit up in his mind, of the waitress who’d winked at him in the diner just outside of town yesterday. She’d reminded him that his hormones still ran hot, despite months of hermit-like solitude. Then again, that waitress didn’t look as if she could afford the string of pearls he’d seen on the kitchen table. Nor did that waitress have the throaty sort of voice now humming Mozart in the shower. None of that mattered, anyway, because he wasn’t of a mind to be ambushed by any woman. Sex would just bring complications. He refused to invite anyone into his messed-up life.
The pipes rumbled to a sudden silence. Wooden rings clanked as the intruder drew the shower curtain back. He should say something. Call out to her. Warn her of his presence. Let her know in no uncertain terms that he wasn’t entertaining guests. Give her time to collect her clothes and her dignity. But that was his Montana breeding talking, his mother’s chiding voice, and it was fading fast under the rising anger that his most recent domicile had been invaded – even if it wasn’t really his home, and even if the invader wore smoking hot underwear.
He stood in the bedroom doorway, crossed his arms, and leaned a shoulder into the frame, just as the intruder emerged wearing nothing but a glaze of steam. He glimpsed a slim, rosy figure and full, pear-shaped breasts for only a flash of a second, before she gasped and swathed all that lovely flesh in a very ratty, very short towel.
But he’d done some branding in his days, on the ranch where he’d grown up. It only took a second to mark a beast for life. Now he stood amid a ghostly smell of smoke, feeling scorched.
***
Jen Vance lunged for the table lamp on the nightstand. In some corner of her mind not fried by shock, she reasoned that this intruder would have to clamber over the bed between them to reach her. That would slow him down long enough for her to swing the bottom-heavy lamp at his head. If she aimed well, it would knock him out. Or at least disable him long enough for her to dial 9-1-1.
She curled her hand around the cool base and yanked it until the cord ripped out of the wall. Her heart pounding, she hiked the lamp over her shoulder and stared down the intruder. He had hooded eyes and wild black hair. A blinding white T-shirt bore witness to a powerful chest.
“Stay back,” she said, struggling to hold the lamp while keeping the towel fixed in place. “I’ll use this, I swear it.”
“Darling, you don’t need a weapon to knock me out.”
Switching the lamp to one hand, she seized the cell phone she’d left on the bedside table. She lifted the cell phone so he could see it, saying, “I’m calling the police now.”
“You do that.”
“I’m not joking.”
“I see that.” He crossed his feet, clad in scuffed cowboy boots. “Let the cops know I’m here.”
“Just—” She pressed a ‘9,’ her thumb shaking “—leave!”
“Oh, I ain’t leaving, Red. Not until I know who you are, and what the hell you’re doing in my cabin.”
“Yourcabin?” She pressed ‘1.’
“My cabin.” He pointed with his chin. “My lamp. My shower.” His voice dropped. “My towel.”
The towel threatened to slip. She tightened her elbows against her ribs. He waslying.She knew the owner of this house, and he wasn’t a piercing-eyed cowboy who lacked only a Stetson and an oversized belt buckle to complete the picture. This morning, she’d found the house key exactly where Dr. Springfield had said it would be—hidden in a secret compartment of the cast-iron turtle under the geraniums. This was the right house. This was the wrong man.
Yet the hulking giant in the doorway looked as annoyed as she was stunned, standing here dripping with her legs pressed together.
She said, “This cabin doesn’t belong to you.”
“Doesn’t belong to you, either.”
“I know the owner, and he’ll have something to say about you staking a claim.” Her thumb hovered over the last ‘1,’ but she didn’t punch it as a doubt crept in. Her intruder didn’t seem afraid, nor was he threatening her physically. He just stood there and took in an eyeful.
