Page 6 of A Baby to Make Her His Bride

Maybe that’s just how he feels aboutyou.

Stop it. She had been to therapy. She knew self-defeating thinking when it rang in her head.

Actually, that ringing was the door chime. He was going in and out while she was lingering up here, avoiding him.

She made herself go back downstairs and found Jasper had brought in most of her groceries.

“Howlong are you staying?” he asked, and set down the insulated box holding meat and dairy.

“I like to cook and knew I’d have time.”

The reality of sharing a house with him caused her stomach to pitch. She had never been so aware of a man. Not in this way. She’d suffered the friction of a difficult marriage where more went unsaid than was ever acknowledged aloud. Simply being a woman meant she’d endured the company of men who made a woman feel unsafe, but that wasn’t why she felt so uncomfortable right now.

Physically, she sensed no danger from Jasper. Emotionally? His unfriendliness stepped right on her old bruises. She was right back to feeling that every word or deed could be a giant misstep while she felt obliged to get along because their siblings were married.

Don’t make waves, Vienna.

It had always been her job to make everyone else feel comfortable, no matter what it cost her. She fell back on that habit as he came back with the jerrican of water.

“I was planning to make halibut tonight. There’s enough for two.”

He put the jerrican down in a corner on the floor. His casual strength was mesmerizing, but the way he eyed her as if looking for a catch kept a wall of antagonism between them.

“I thought we were going to stay out of each other’s way.” He picked up the little sack of fair-trade coffee beans and tucked it into a cupboard.

“We’re—” She didn’t dare call them family again. “In-laws. We should get to know each other.” Maybe then she would quit feeling like she was walking on hot coals.

“I know who you are, Vienna,” he said pithily.

“Really? How?” She prickled under his laser-sharp stare, feeling painfully transparent yet affronted. How could he possibly know anything about her when she had no inkling herself? She had lost any sense of self years ago. “Online trolls, I suppose?” She was instantly stinging with the poison of false reports. “I’ll disregard what your sister has said about you, then, and believe everythingI’veread.”

She hadn’t read much. Amelia had insisted he wasn’t the kind of person to walk away from a job or get someone killed, but that was what he’d been accused of. And maybe Vienna ought to give more credence to that, because the warning that flashed in his gaze was downright lethal.

All he said, however, was, “Touché.”

His acceptance of her remark did nothing to alleviate the uncomfortable tension in her belly. She didn’t care whether he approved of her. She didn’t.

She shouldn’t.

She went back to stowing items in the refrigerator.

“I thought this said ‘pastille’ and you’d brought a huge box of candy.” He was holding her brand-new case ofplein aircolors. “You’re a pastel artist?”

When she overcame her imposter syndrome enough to call herself any kind of artist, yes, but her whole body wanted to fold in on itself that he was touching her things. It was as if he was looking straight into her and ithurt.

“Sculpture,” she joked past the suffocating sensations. She crossed to take the box from his hands and tuck it away with her pads and colored pencils, moving the whole lots to the far end of the dining room table. “The hammer and chisel won’t bother you, will it?”

“Not while my heavy metal is playing.”

He cocked a brow that said,I can play that game too.

“I’ll pull your car in.” He picked up her key fob and exited out the side door, the one that led to the garage.

She let out another pent-up breath and was finishing the groceries when he returned.

“Is there a path to the beach?” she asked. “I’d like to walk off my travel.”

And get away from these oppressive undercurrents.

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