Jennifer Greene: Wild in the Moonlight

He felt the first drop of rain, didn’t move. If the sky got serious, he’d move onto the porch, but it was still warmish. If anything, the sudden spin of damp wind brought out her farm’s sweet scents. He told himself he was looking at the old red barn with the Dutch shingled roof, the rock fence, the rolling slope in front of him. But somehow his gaze kept straying to her house. Not the architecture of the sturdy old white farmhouse…but the shiny windows on the second story.

Specifically the window on the east. The one where the light had been switched off an hour before. The one with the filmy drift of white curtain at sill level. The one where he’d seen her unbraid that long, long pale hair and shake it free. The one where she’d reached behind her to unbutton her blouse-and then, damnation, disappeared from sight to take the rest of her clothes off.

He couldn’t figure her out.

She was awfully bright for a batty woman.

She cooked better than a professional chef. Had more business pots going-the land, the house, the greenhouses, her herb and flower business-than any one person could normally take care of. She seemed to be emotionally and financially thriving on all that chaos, even if she did choose to dress like an old-fashioned spinster. She also seemed to make a point of acting as if she were witless, goofy, one of those fragile women who’d swoon if life put any stress on them.

As far as he could tell, she loved stress.

Most confusing of all, though, those soft eyes were studying him-then shying away-as if she were a young girl unfamiliar with the chemical pull between the sexes. She’d been married, for heaven’s sakes. She’d surely had a hundred men react to her before. Besides which, he knew perfectly well when he sent off interested signals to a woman.

He was interested. Hell, she was sensual to her fingertips, complicated in personality and character, and he’d always liked complicated woman. But he needed to seriously work with her, and the instant they met, he picked up her wariness of him. So he’d sent out no signals, no vibes. He knew he hadn’t. And he sure as hell wouldn’t go near a woman when she made it clear she wasn’t in the market for attention-at least not from him.

But damn. She was a handful of fascination.

Another raindrop plopped on his forehead. Then another.

From one breath to the next, a meandering drizzle suddenly turned into a noisy deluge. Skinny needles pelted down, warm and wet. He climbed to his feet quickly enough, but before he could scoop up the sleeping bag, he heard a warning growl of thunder…followed by a breathtaking crack of lightning that seemed to split open the sky.

Abruptly her back screen door slammed open. “Damn it! Get in here!”

For a second he had to grin, lightning or no lightning. Unquestionably the screech came from his delicate flower of a hostess. The one with the vintage clothes and the fluttery hands who made out as if stringing a whole thought in a single sentence was a difficult challenge for her.

A yard light slapped on. Ms. Violet-harridan- Campbell showed up on the porch steps, barefoot, her tank and boxer shorts looking distinctly unvintage-like. In fact, her boobs looked poured into that tank, making him pause for another moment in sheer respectful appreciation.

“Have you lost your mind? That’s lightning, for God’s sake! Didn’t you hear the storm coming? I kept waiting and waiting for you to come inside, but obviously you’ve been living in France too long. In America, we know enough to get out of the rain.”

“I’m coming-”

“By the time you get around to coming in, we’ll both be electrocuted. Look. I may not have welcomed the idea of your sleeping in the house-for God’s sake, I don’t know you. But a storm is a storm, for Pete’s sake.

“Pete’s sake, God’s sake… I’m getting confused whose sake is involved here-”

“Lachlan! Move your butt!”

Well, he’d been planning on it, but while she was screaming at him, she was also getting rained on. Which meant that tank and boxers were getting wet. And so was that long silvery curtain of blond hair.

Maybe he was thirty-seven, but he hoped to hell he never got so mature he failed to appreciate a beautiful woman. Particularly a beautiful woman whose attributes were outlined delectably between the yard light and the rain and the lightning.

On the other hand, being electrocuted posed a threat to his long-term ability to appreciate much of anything, so he hustled to the door just behind her. The instant she opened the screen, four cats seemed to leap from nowhere, determined to cut inline. And then, in the blink of a second, her yard light went out.

“There goes the power,” she muttered.

It was his instinct to take charge, especially when a woman was in trouble. He couldn’t help it. It was how he’d been raised-not by his absentee father, but by his mom, who’d expected even small kids to step up when there was a problem. He’d never minded. He liked stepping up. But in this case, the image Violet projected of being scatterbrained and helpless was-he was coming to understand-totally misleading.

She moved around in the dark, apparently gathering up candles-not the pretty decorative candles she had strewn all over the place but the practical, no-drippers she apparently stashed for no-power circumstances like this.

The back door opened off her kitchen, where she lit two and put them on the oak table, then kept going. She put one lit candle into a hurricane lamp, placing it in the bathroom off the kitchen, then carried more into the living room.

The living room, he’d noticed before, seemed to be part of the original farmhouse. In the dark, a guy could kill himself on all the stuff, but basically it was one of those long narrow rooms, with long narrow windows, requiring a long narrow couch. She’d done it all in roses and pinks-in case anyone could conceivably doubt she was female to the bone. Wade past the estrogen, though, and there was a massive old-fashioned brick hearth-big enough to roast a boar or two-where she lit four more candles.

“Better?” she asked.

“Can practically see well enough to read,” he said mildly, although that wasn’t exactly true. No matter how many fat white candles she lit, they didn’t lighten the shadows. Mostly they lit up her. Eyes darker than secrets flashed up to his face, but he didn’t think she really noticed him. She was too frazzled to think. Too frazzled to notice how that damp, stretchy red tank top was cupping her breasts.

“I can’t guarantee we’ll have light or water before morning,” she said unhappily.

“Well, hell. I expected you to shut off that storm and restore the power immediately. What’s wrong with you?”

He’d thought to lighten her up. It didn’t seem to work. “I mean…I’m not sure the toilets will work.”

“Inconvenient for sure, but more for you than me. If I have to step behind a tree before morning, I can probably cope.”

“I’m afraid there’s no phone.”

“Damn. There goes another opportunity to make friends by calling people after midnight.”

“ Lachlan. Would you quit being so damn nice!”

He didn’t get it. She seemed to be chasing around, lighting more candles for no particular reason that he could fathom. It was the middle of the night. So there was a storm. It was a sturdy house, nothing threatened by a little thunder and lightning.

And accusing him of being nice was a low blow. No self-respecting male liked to think of himself as “nice.” Yeah, he’d offered to sleep outside and made a point of communicating that he was a here-today-gone-tomorrow kind of guy, but that was just so she wouldn’t be afraid of his coming on to her. It wasn’t because he wanted her to think he was nice. Sheesh, how insulting could she get?