Sherryl Woods - Courting the Enemy

No, he told himself firmly. He couldn’t do it. It would ruin everything. Certainly, it would destroy her fragile trust in him.

He forced himself to take a step back, to capture her hand in his and hold it away from his face.

“Thanks,” he said a little too curtly. “I can finish up if you’ll get me a towel.”

There was a startled flash of hurt in her eyes before understanding dawned. Then, cheeks flaming, she nodded and quickly ran from the room. When she returned, they had both regained their composure.

Grady toweled his hair dry as Karen made hot chocolate. His gaze kept straying to her rigid spine, to the soft curve of her hips, to the bare nape of her neck. He wanted to trail his hand down her spine until she relaxed, to rest his palm against that very feminine backside. He wanted to press a kiss to her neck, feel the shudder ripple through her.

He wanted things he had no business wanting, he chided himself, turning away. Staying here might be a necessity tonight, but it was a bad idea. He’d honed his willpower over the years, resisted more than his share of temptation, but this…this was torment. Karen Hanson was the kind of woman made for loving-not just physically, though that was the strongest temptation at the moment-but through and through.

Was that how Caleb had seen her, Grady wondered, as a woman who deserved a carefree world? Was that why he had struggled so hard to keep this ranch afloat, to give her a home? It was funny how the last week or so had taught him a thing or two about Caleb Hanson, when his goal had been getting to know the man’s wife. He found himself walking in the man’s shoes, understanding his stubborn determination in a way he never had before, even admiring it.

“The hot chocolate’s ready,” Karen said, breaking into his thoughts. “You’d better get started on that popcorn, or the drinks will be cold before it’s done.”

“I just need a couple of minutes,” Grady said. “Where’s your microwave?”

She grinned at him. “I don’t have one. You’re going to have to pull this off the old-fashioned way.”

His gaze narrowed at her amusement. “You don’t think I can do it?”

“It will be interesting to see, won’t it?” she challenged him.

He shook his head with exaggerated pity. “You’ve forgotten already about the bare-bones lifestyle my grandfather lives. I’m used to roughing it,” he said as he reached for a covered pan. He set it on the stove, turned on the heat, then dumped the contents of the bag into the pan and covered it. “Piece of cake. You’ll see.”

Grady’s gaze clashed with hers and held. She didn’t seem to be impressed yet.

Her gaze never wavered. Time fell away as he listened to the beating of his heart, and watched the flicker of some unreadable emotion in her eyes.

“Smells like it’s burning,” she said cheerfully, breaking the mood and the eye contact after several minutes.

He tore his gaze away, saw smoke billowing from the pan, and muttered a soft curse. He grabbed the pan off the stove and dumped it into the sink. He could hear the few last kernels popping even as he scowled at the offending pot. He’d been oblivious when they started to pop, oblivious to everything but Karen.

Her low chuckle drew his gaze. He studied her for a second, and saw the twinkling satisfaction in her eyes.

“You did that on purpose, didn’t you?” he accused.

“What?” she asked, all innocence.

“Distracted me.”

“Did I? How?”

“You kept my attention so I wouldn’t notice what was happening on the stove.”

“Why would I do that?”

“To prove a point.”

She grinned broadly. “Well, you have to admit, you were awfully sure of yourself.”

“And you were willing to sacrifice the popcorn just to take me down a peg or two?”

“It seemed like a fair trade to me,” she said without the least bit of remorse.

Grady sighed. “I really, really like popcorn when I watch a movie.”

“We don’t have to watch it,” she said. “The power could go any minute, anyway, and the generator doesn’t keep anything going except the furnace and the hot water heater.”

He deliberately locked gazes with her, just as she’d done with him. “If we don’t watch the movie, what did you have in mind?”

“We could go to bed,” she said with a perfectly straight face.

A smile tugged at his lips. “Somehow I don’t think you mean the same thing by that as I would.”

Her gaze faltered then. She swallowed hard. “No, I imagine I don’t.”

“Then let’s watch the movie. It’s the safest thing that comes to mind at the moment.”

They took their hot chocolate into the living room. Grady turned on the TV, popped the video into the player, then deliberately sat right smack in the middle of the sofa opposite it. Karen regarded him with narrowed eyes for a heartbeat, then sat next to him, albeit a careful few inches away. He barely hid a grin.

He pressed the start button on the remote, and Lauren’s gorgeous face filled the screen. She was a beautiful woman, but she had nothing on the woman beside him, Grady reflected. As the images on the screen flickered, it wasn’t the story, or even Lauren, that captured his attention. It was Karen.

She was totally absorbed in the romantic comedy, her eyes alternately shining with pleasure or misty with unshed tears. From time to time her lips curved into a smile.

When the movie ended, Grady couldn’t have said what it was about, but he knew every nuance that had registered on Karen’s face.

“That was wonderful,” she said, her eyes sparkling.

“Yes, it was,” Grady said, though he was talking about something else entirely. Watching her when her guard was down had been a revelation. The laughter had been close to the surface, completely uncensored. The flow of tears had been uninhibited.

He lifted his hand and touched her cheek, then brushed away the last traces of happy tears. She trembled, but she didn’t move away.

Once again, it was up to him to stop, up to him to be rational. The tests were getting harder and harder…the results more and more uncertain.

“I still can’t believe that glamorous woman on the screen is my friend,” she said, her voice a shaky whisper. “She used to steal the Twinkies out of my lunchbox.”

“Did she ever steal your boyfriends? That would be a far more serious crime.”

“Never,” she said fiercely. “Despite her reputation for having romances with her leading men, despite the two well-publicized marriages and divorces, the Lauren I knew was a shy girl. Most of the dates she had in high school were ones we set up for her. But even if she’d been some junior femme fatale, she would never have stolen our boyfriends. It would have gone against everything she believed about friendship.”

She looked at him. “What about you? Were you a love-’em-and-leave-’em kind of guy?”

“Nope,” he said, responding to the question as solemnly as she’d asked it. “Only one girl ever stole my heart, and then she broke it. I haven’t been anxious to repeat the experience. Haven’t had time, either, for that matter.”

“You seem to have a lot of time on your hands now,” she pointed out lightly. “Or do you justify all your time here as work? Part of your self-declared mission in life?”

He bit back his irritation that they were once again on the subject of her distrust of him and his motives.

“I’m here because I want to be,” he said, choosing his words carefully. “You need some help, and I can provide it.”

“And?” she prodded.

“That’s it,” he insisted, getting to his feet and heading upstairs before he did something to prove just how badly he wanted to stick around.