Stormbound With A Tycoon. Shawna Delacorte
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“You were right and I was wrong. The damper was open.” She glared at him with as much of a challenge in her eyes as in her voice. “There—are you satisfied now?”
He flashed her a dazzling smile, freely allowing the sound of victory to fill his voice. “That wasn’t really so difficult, was it?”
“Yes, it was!” Her angry retort quickly turned to an awkward moment as she shifted her weight from one foot to the other. She rubbed her hand across the back of her neck and glanced at the floor. Her words were soft, her voice a whisper. “I just assumed—”
“You assumed…what? That I’m a hopelessly inept jerk who isn’t capable of handling the most basic task?” He saw the embarrassment color her cheeks again and he immediately regretted the harshness of his words, regardless of how true they had been.
She tried to recover the upper hand. “You have to admit that your lifestyle certainly doesn’t lend itself to—”
“Perhaps my ‘lifestyle’ isn’t what you think it is.” He clenched his jaw in an attempt to bite off his anger. “True, I’ve spent the past few years more or less wandering around…” The sadness and despair that suddenly welled inside him forced an end to his comments.
He turned the word over in his mind. Lifestyle. He had no purpose in life or even any goals. Always a party to go to, but no one special with whom to share the joys or the sorrows…especially the sorrows. That was not a lifestyle—it was loneliness.
He had always envied Justin, who seemed to have everything he didn’t. Even though Justin was divorced, he had family and was very close to his sister. He had a career he loved, a home and close friends. He had roots, something that was important to him. And Jessica—she was a very together lady. They had everything that mattered. They had what he very much wanted.
What little family Dylan started with had long ago been taken away. He was an only child. His father had deserted the family when he was ten years old. He eventually learned that his father had died five years later. His mother died within two weeks of the time he had been left literally at the altar on his wedding day. It seemed that those closest to him had deserted him. It was a lesson he had learned the hard way—if you allow someone into your heart or to touch your place of vulnerability you will end up being hurt. Close emotional attachments weren’t for him, but he truly envied Justin and Jessica.
Dylan turned away before his moment of melancholy became obvious to Jessica. It was just the type of vulnerability he did not want to show to this woman who had already developed some very definite opinions of him. He grabbed the empty coffee mug from the kitchen counter, filled it and handed it to her. He forced an upbeat attitude to his tone. “You never answered me about cream or sugar.”
“Just black.” She reached out to take the mug from his hand. Their fingers touched for an instant, the warmth much more than what was being generated by the coffee. Her gaze locked with his, held there as if by some force beyond her control. Her breath froze in her lungs. She finally managed to look away, but it did not still the pounding of her heart.
He carried his coffee mug to the living room, taking a swallow as he walked. He desperately wanted to smooth out the tension that permeated the air. Then an incident from his youth popped into his mind. He couldn’t stop the chuckle that accompanied it.
She stared at him, her expression part curiosity and part irritation. “This entire morning has been a disaster. Just what is it that you find so funny?”
He took another sip of his coffee and settled into a comfortable chair. “The disaster with the fireplace reminded me of something that happened a long time ago, when I was about fifteen years old.” Another soft chuckle escaped his throat as the recollection from his past settled over him.
“My mother and I lived in an old house that had a fireplace left over from a time before the furnace had been installed. She was down the block playing cards with the neighbors. I decided it was a perfect evening to invite my girlfriend over on the pretext of our studying together. I planned to build this romantic fire in the fireplace the way I’d seen in movies.”
“At fifteen years old you were planning romantic evenings?”
He shot her a sly sidelong glance. “Fifteen-year-old hormones are difficult to argue with.” He allowed a quiet moment of reflection as the memory of simpler times warmed his consciousness.
“I had wood, newspapers and matches, all the things I thought I needed to build this romantic fire. I had everything put together the way I thought it should be, with newspaper on the bottom, little pieces of wood on top of that, then bigger pieces on the top of the pile. It was time for her to arrive. I struck a match and lit the newspaper which immediately flared up and caught the small pieces of wood. When I was sure the fire was going I opened the front door and went out on the porch to watch for her. Before I knew what was happening, the room filled with smoke and it billowed out the door. A neighbor saw the smoke and called the fire department.”
He turned and looked at her. “And that’s how I learned about dampers in a fireplace.” He emitted another gentle laugh mixed with a hint of embarrassment. “What about you? Do you have any most embarrassing moment from your past that you’d like to share?”
Only two truly embarrassing moments leaped to her mind. The first one was having several people show up for what she thought was her lunch date with Dylan when she was sixteen years old. The other was catching her husband in bed with another woman. She had no intention of mentioning either incident. “I…uh…can’t think of anything right now.”
“Oh, I see. I’m left here with my embarrassment exposed, and you’re keeping yours a secret.” His teasing grin let her know he wasn’t angry or upset.
He had shared a personal experience with her, something from his past. It was a warm few minutes that left her enveloped in a feeling of closeness, one totally different from anything she had been prepared for. It was as if she was seeing a totally different Dylan Russell than the one she assumed she knew. The reflective moment was broken when he rose from the chair.
“I guess the next order of business is to figure out exactly what’s blocking the chimney.” He bent down on the hearth and attempted to look up into the darkness, then turned back toward her. “Do you have a flashlight somewhere around here?”
“Yes, in the kitchen. I’ll get it for you.” She hurried to the kitchen. Her desire to escape the smooth presence that had been lulling her into a very receptive mood was as strong as the need to retrieve the flashlight. She quelled the uncertainty churning in her stomach. Nothing was as it should be—least of all Dylan Russell. It was more than Justin having let him use the cabin. More than her having inadvertently climbed into bed with him. She feared just how much more it might turn out to be.
Every time she tried to force him into a predetermined mold of who and what he was, he refused to fit. The harder she pushed and shoved, the more he seemed to resist. She found it very perplexing and very frustrating. She had a knack for being able to tag people as to who and what they were, but he refused to cooperate. Every time he flashed that sexy smile she increased her efforts to put him in his place and he seemed to resist all that much harder.
She toyed with the idea that she wanted him neatly classified because she felt threatened by his devil-may-care freedom to do as he pleased whenever it pleased him. It angered her that without even seeming to try, he had managed to make a mockery of her ordered and sensible life. But that wasn’t the worst of it.
His nearness sent little tremors of excitement racing through her body…tremors over which she had no control. And all this just from his presence. Other than when he wrapped his arm around her waist while he was asleep, there had been no physical contact between them. Unless you counted the brief moment when their fingers touched—a moment she could still feel as if it had happened only a second ago.
He was not a physical threat, but he surely was a very real emotional one. She reminded herself that she was no longer that impressionable fifteen-year-old schoolgirl who had the major crush on her older brother’s friend. Nor was she the