Moonlight and Shadows (13 page)

It was Jack all right, and he was sculpting
steel with a welding torch, melting some pieces together, cutting
through others, and turning the whole majestic melange into a
soaring vision of strength, into a physical expression of emotion.
The man who could do that with his hands didn’t need to read
books.

She walked around the scaffolding in a daze,
careful to stay away from the sparks falling from above, but
touching the metal where she could. The sculpture invited touch,
from where it rose from its molten lavalike beginnings to the
spiraling arches and half arches reaching toward the dawn-lightened
sky she glimpsed through a skylight.

She traced a weld with her fingertip,
following the scorched seam into a sweeping curve and up the next
arc. Her hand looked small and fragile against the blue-black
luster of the steel. The metal was cold, but the sculpture itself
was hot, sizzling with power, electrified in its simplicity and
grace. She had no trouble comprehending his intentions when she
tilted her head back to take in the whole glorious thing. An
abstract phoenix rose from the ashes, renewal pulsing in the heavy
mesh and tracery of metal. He was an artist, and the tools he used
demanded strength of conviction. There was no turning your back on
a ton of precariously balanced steel.

There was no turning her back on him. What
she felt standing there in the web of shadows of his creation
wasn’t something she could deny. The man who’d hidden none of his
faults had suddenly revealed his innermost heart, and she saw the
complexity she’d only sensed the day he’d seen Danny’s photograph
of her. She saw the intensity of personality she’d felt each time
he’d kissed her. She now knew where his overwhelming passion came
from—it was inherent in the man, and it wasn’t purely sexual. He
lived with passion inside him. He tempered it within the physical
and structural constraints of building homes and gazebos that were
sound and safe. Then he let it unfurl and fly when he sculpted and
when he kissed, defying the laws of gravity with one and the laws
of decorum with the other.

The sparks had stopped falling from above,
and Lila realized the music had ended as well. She slowly lifted
her gaze to meet his.

“Hi.” His voice washed over her, deep and
steady.

“Hi.”

He hung in the air, bracketed by the
scaffolding, the goggles pushed up on top of his cap. A smile
teased the corners of his mouth, curious light gleamed in his
eyes.

“Hungry?” he asked, his grin broadening a
mile wide.

“Sure,” she said softly. He made breaking
all the rules so easy.

With a satisfied nod, he released himself
from the harness and climbed down to the floor. She watched as he
shut off his equipment and shrugged out of the coverall. She had a
million questions, but asked none of them. An acute attack of
shyness had stolen her tongue. She wouldn’t have left for anything,
but it didn’t make staying any less difficult. His assumption about
why she’d showed up at his house at sunrise was probably correct,
and he knew it involved more than just breakfast.

Jack was nervous, too, and higher than a
kite that she’d come. As far as he was concerned, the morning
couldn’t last long enough. He remembered the expression on her face
in the photograph, and he wanted it for himself, for what there
could be between him and the dark-eyed woman who haunted his
dreams.

She’d come to him. He turned and extended
his hand, his smile a permanent fixture. After a short hesitation,
she gave him her hand.

He noticed the slight quaver of her mouth
and her averted gaze. She looked ready to bolt. She also looked
incredibly lovely. The cold had pinkened her cheeks and the tip of
her nose. The wind had blown her hair into a riotous tumble of
curls. The upturned collar of her mink coat framed her face, and
the lush fur and silken strands of her hair contrasted sensually
with the cool creaminess of her skin. She looked ready to be
touched. Her mouth, full and sweet, looked ready to be kissed. But
he didn’t want to make any mistakes.

He entwined his fingers with hers, taking
his time and encouraging the small smile trying to form on her
face. When she glanced up, he lifted their hands to his mouth and
brushed his lips across her knuckles.

“You picked a good time to come. Breakfast
is my favorite meal. I always go all-out.”

Her smile came, brief and sweet, and shy
enough to increase his confidence. “I thought you looked like a
good breakfast man.”

“I could be your good anytime man,” he said,
soft and low, and watched an instant flush of embarrassment spread
across her face. She lowered her gaze again, and in repentance he
bent down and whispered in her ear, “How do you like your
eggs?”

“Scrambled.”
Like my emotions,
she
added silently,
and my nerves, and my senses when you’re this
close.

“Scrambled it is,” he said, tucking her
against his side and directing her out the door.

Her few minutes in the relative warmth of
the garage made the outside air feel cold to the point of
breathlessness. Or was that him stealing her breath?

Their boots crunched across the wide gravel
driveway, squeaking against the frozen rocks. She began shivering.
He pulled her tighter, and lengthened his stride until she had to
run to keep up.

“Almost there,” he said.

“G-good,” she chattered back, and hoped it
really was the cold and not her nerves making her tremble from the
inside out.

When they reached the house, he swung her
onto the front porch, past the half-finished parts, then jumped up
beside her. Two more steps brought them to the large, carved wood
door. She barely had time to register the intricate landscape cut
into the heavy oak before he whisked her inside.

“I’ll have you warmed up in no time,” he
assured her.

That was exactly what she was afraid of.

* * *

His house was a mess, but not in the usual
sort of ways. He’d invited her to take a tour while he fixed
breakfast, and she’d taken him up on his offer, with some wildly
unexpected results. She was lost, and she was jealous. The first
she knew she could remedy by backtracking. The second so
flabbergasted her, she wasn’t sure what to think. But every time
she turned back to the bathtub sunk into the terra-cotta floor and
saw the voluptuous bronze mermaid wrapped around its curving sides,
Lila’s mouth tightened a bit more. The mermaid’s smile was very
personal, and the name Christina had been worked into the tiny
scales, along with a date two years old. Jack was obviously a man
of many talents. She’d never seen a sculpture so drenched in
sensuality. The tail fanned out along the back of the bathtub,
making what looked like a perfect place to rest a person’s head
while they relaxed in the hot water. The mermaid held bluish copper
conch shells in her hands, which was where the water poured
forth.

No shells covered her breasts, but the wall
behind the sink was inset with real seashells, hundreds of them, in
all shapes and sizes, framing the mirror with no discernible
pattern. The wildness of the display, coupled with a free-standing
metallic garden of seaweed, and aqua-tinted blown glass in the
window casing, gave the room a definite watery atmosphere.

Lila stepped back out into the hall and
ducked under a two-by-four propped against the wall. She knew the
living room, with its panoramic view of the unfinished western
deck, was somewhere behind her, past the “undersea” bathroom, a
surprisingly stark room with a drafting table in it, and a kitchen
where no one had skimped on the windows or the exotic tile work.
She chose the uncharted territory ahead and found herself stepping
over gallons of paint and tubs of plaster, until she reached the
sanctuary of his bedroom.

Serenity reigned over the mellow oak floors
covered with hand-braided rugs in shades of blue and white. Three
of the walls were plastered. The remaining wall was paneled in
whitewashed one-by-fours. Four lightly stained totem poles held up
his bed.

Lila walked farther into the room. She
touched the multicolored quilt spread between the totem poles and
ran a fingertip over a row of hand stitching. Her gaze took in the
simple furnishings: a wooden dresser against one wall, two pine
bedside tables. His house was the strangest she’d ever seen,
beautiful but strange. Half the rooms were chaos incarnate, like
the “undersea” bathroom with its mermaid and the kitchen with its
wild tile on the counters, floors, and walls; and half the rooms
were functional yet warm, unadorned yet elegant. It was as if two
different people lived in the house, two people incapable of
compromise.

Of course, she thought with a sudden flash
of memory, he was divorced. There had been two people in the house,
Jack and Christina, she of the bare breasts and lovely smile.

With a sigh, Lila backed away from the bed.
She had no business being there. Christmas vacation was obviously
proving to be too much of a strain on her. She needed classes,
lectures to prepare and give, the immediacy of exams. Hanging
around had gotten her into trouble last year, and this year was
proving to be no different. She could see the essay assignment
now—What I Did on My Christmas Vacation—and her answer in one page
or less. “I talked myself into falling for the carpenter who was
building a room onto my house. He turned out to have a lot of
talents, not the least of which was his way with a kiss.” No matter
how she curved the grading scale, she had to give herself an F for
failure to learn from previous lessons.

There was no such thing as true love
anymore, she believed, not at her age and not in the society she
lived in. Once was more than most people got, and she’d had her
once with Danny.

The sudden finality of her reasoning took
the wind out of her sails, and a small, traitorous part of her
heart wished she could have had her once with Jack Hudson
instead.

She lifted a hand to her breast and inhaled
sharply, the sheer sacrilege of her last thought startling her
pulse into a jump. She definitely needed to get back to work, the
sooner the better. Even this morning couldn’t be too quick. There
was always something to do in her office at the university. Maybe
Didi would be in, and they could talk about literature and things.
Things like Jack Hudson.

“Lila?”

She whirled around as she heard him call her
name. At the next moment he was there, standing in the doorway of
his bedroom, and she knew she wasn’t going anywhere. For reasons
she didn’t want to analyze any longer and couldn’t explain, she
needed him. She needed the warmth of his smile and the strength of
his arms. She needed his easy laughter and his sure hands. She
needed the thrill of his kisses, and she only prayed she was right
to need anything at all from him.

“Breakfast is ready,” he said, offering her
his hand.

She liked holding his hand. She liked that
he wanted to touch her, to keep her close.

“Sorry about the construction,” he
continued, helping her over the tubs of plaster and paint, “but I
never seem to find time to work on my own house.”

“I know what you mean,” she said, following
him down the hall. “I started to write a book once, but I found out
I’m a lot better at critiquing other people’s books.”

“I guess that’s the same thing.” When they
cleared the hallway, he pulled her under his arm, and she
automatically slipped her hand around his waist.

“I noticed the one bathroom looks finished,”
she said. The words popped out, unbidden, unwelcome. Sabotage, she
thought with an internal groan. Somewhere inside her was a
subconscious necessity to sabotage any possible relationship with
Jack Hudson.

“Actually,” he said, “both bathrooms are
finished. There’s one in the master bedroom. After Christina, my
ex-wife, put the seashells and seaweed in the main bath, I needed
someplace else to brush my teeth. I got too dizzy in there.” He
laughed.

So she’d been right about his wife, Lila
thought. That was a hollow victory at best. “She did the work
herself?”

“Christina has taken the pursuit of arts and
crafts to new heights and some new lows, if not quite to art
itself.” A bare, almost indiscernible sarcasm colored his words,
and Lila looked up at him in surprise. She hadn’t thought him
capable of a discouraging word, let alone sarcasm. “She did the
tile work in the kitchen,” he added. “She ordered the front door as
well, and it was all I could do to keep her from roofing the house
in a checkerboard pattern of purple, green, and yellow.”

“Sounds like a free spirit.”

“She was free with a lot of things she
shouldn’t have been.” With that intriguing statement, they reached
the kitchen and he changed the subject. “I made eggs Benedict, but
I scrambled yours instead of poaching them.”

“Thanks,” she murmured. “It looks
wonderful.” And it did. He’d set them up in the breakfast nook, by
the bay window that looked out on the mountains to the west. Mugs
of coffee steamed next to plates of hash browns, fresh fruit, and
twin mounds of eggs Benedict floating in pools of hollandaise
sauce.

She hesitated for a moment before sitting
down, feeling compelled to add an apology for dropping in on him
unannounced and receiving such royal treatment. No matter what
words she came up with, though, they seemed inappropriate, even
ridiculous. He’d said he was falling in love, and he hadn’t
questioned her arrival with so much as a lifted eyebrow. He’d
accepted her presence as part of the natural order of life. He’d
opened his home as if she belonged. He’d cooked her an incredible
breakfast. Cooked, not zapped in a microwave or popped out of a
toaster. She was impressed and a little self-conscious. She’d never
made eggs Benedict in her life, and he’d whipped a whole meal up in
less than half an hour. For a man who believed in the importance of
women’s traditional roles, he’d picked a poor example of womankind
to be entertaining at his breakfast table.