Kate Hewitt - Mills & Boon Christmas Set

And she must have felt safe, because she finally said, her voice low and tentative, “You know how you said I’m not a very good liar?”

“Hmm?”

“My name isn’t Brook.”

He waited.

She sighed as if she were weighing the wisdom of what she was about to do. “It’s Angelica. Angie.”

He waited, again, to see if she would go on, if she would explain the necessity of the subterfuge to him, but she didn’t. In fact, he felt her relax totally, and then her breath came in even little puffs against his chest. Her hair had fallen forward, shielding her face, and when he tucked it back, he saw she was asleep.

He sat there for a long time, afraid to waken her. Finally his arm felt as if it was going numb. He wondered, as he worked his way out from under the slight weight of her, if she had ever truly been awake.

He settled her back in the bed, drew the covers over her and gazed down at her for a moment.

Her face looked relaxed, angelic even, the perfect face for someone named Angelica. He bent and kissed her cheek, as if she was a child he had tucked in.

And then he turned swiftly from her, embarrassed by his tenderness. “I hope,” he muttered, “neither of us remembers a thing about this by morning.”

She had a chance of that. He did not.

He glanced once more at the sleeping woman, then went quietly down the steps and closed the door to the turret room behind him.

Jefferson was aware of steeling himself against whatever he had felt in that room. It was one thing to be a good man. But it was another to care about others. To care about others was to invite unspeakable pain into your life. He would use this incident to shore up rather than lessen his resolve for their relationship to be professional only. He would withdraw himself, as completely as it was possible to do while they were under one roof. Withdrawing was something he was an absolute expert at. After the blow of Hailey’s death, he’d withdrawn quite successfully from the world for the past three years.

Though it was now late at night, he was aware he would not sleep. He went into his office and shut the door. He was in the middle of a contract to revamp the computer systems for the City of Portland. This was what he loved and this is what he could lose himself in: researching, planning and coordinating the selection and installation of the software systems that gigantic enterprises, towns and cities, corporations and businesses counted on for smooth and efficient operation.

He sat down at his computer and sighed with satisfaction at the reassuring world devoid of emotional complexity. This was his world: analysis. Numbers and graphs and statistics appeared on the screen before him.

“Two weeks?” he told himself. “That’s nothing.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

ANGIE AWOKE IN the morning, bright light embracing her. For a moment, she had no idea where she was. But the ceiling had a display of dancing light on it, the windows reflecting patterns off the nearby water. She remembered the lake. She remembered arriving at the Stone House. And finding this bedroom and surrendering to the exhaustion that had been building in her.

And then, she remembered last night.

She remembered the panic that had clawed at her throat as she woke up to see a man’s figure silhouetted in the doorway.

Disoriented, her fears and stresses must have been playing out in her dreams, because Angie had thought, Winston found me. She had reached for that lamp and attacked with full force.

But it had not been Winston. She hoped it had all been a bad dream.

But, no, it was all true. There was the lamp, with a large chunk missing from its glass base and the shade completely crumpled, lying on her floor.

It hadn’t been Winston. It had been a man she barely knew. It had been her new employer, Jefferson Stone.

Heat raced up her cheeks as she remembered him comforting her even after she had smashed a lamp over his head. When he had climbed onto the bed? That’s when she should have protested more convincingly that she did not need him! When he had pulled her onto his lap? That’s when she should have put the wall up and resisted with all her might.

But, no, instead, weakling that she was, she had surrendered into it, allowed herself to feel something she had not felt in months, not even with the police.

It was a sensation beyond feeling safe. Angie had felt protected.

Even if Jefferson hadn’t said to her, over and over, that she was safe, she would have felt protected by him. It was not his words that had comforted. Unlike her, he was incapable of lying about who he was. She had felt the truth that was at the core of Jefferson Stone. She had felt the great strength and calm in his physical presence.

She had felt he was that man—that one-in-a-million man—who would lay down his life to protect someone he perceived as weaker than himself, or vulnerable.

Fresh from terrifying dreams—not to mention months of uncertainty—she had not been strong enough to resist what he had offered. It was what she had wanted most since her terrifying ordeal with Winston had begun. To feel safe again in the world.

And after she had felt safe? After she had realized she was in a lovely bedroom at a house on a lake that most people would not be able to find, even with a map? Then she should have told him to go, released him from that primal duty he felt to protect someone not as strong as him.

But, oh, no, she had given herself completely over to the temptation of being weak. She had relished his presence. The solidness of his chest, that delicious scent that was all his, the tenderness of his hand in her hair. She had lapped up his attention like a greedy child lapping up ice cream, and in the light of morning, that was exceedingly embarrassing.

Had he really kissed her cheek before he left the room? Her hand flew there as if she would be able to feel the evidence of it lingering. She had let down her guard. She had told him her name was not Brook. It was a moment of terrible weakness that had allowed these indiscretions. She vowed there would not be another.

Though maybe that would not be her choice. She had admitted she had lied to him. She had hit him with a lamp! He would be within his rights, in the cold light of day, to ask her to leave. Or at least to demand an explanation.

A half hour later, showered and dressed and ready for her first day of official duties—if she still had a job—she realized her new boss must also have a plan of avoidance. Obviously, she had managed to embarrass him, too.

His office door was shut when she went by it. There was coffee ready in the kitchen, but investigation did not show much else for breakfast. The man did not even have a loaf of bread! There was an empty box on the counter.

She picked it up and read the label. Apparently Jefferson had indulged in a microwavable bean burrito for breakfast. It was quite pathetic, actually.

She remembered her resolve, even before last night’s kindness, to make his life better while she was here. Now, standing there holding the burrito box, she committed more fully to that. She would see that he had proper meals and clean clothes, and that every surface of his house shone, reminding him of what a beautiful place he lived in. Maybe reminding him that it was a beautiful world.

That awareness, that it was a beautiful world, had evaporated from her in the past while, too. Maybe, in helping him discover it, she could recover some of her own faith in the world.

A little frightened, Angie realized she was allowing the most dangerous thing of all into her world.

She was allowing herself to hope.

That hope infused her as she did normal things. She made a grocery list, put dishes in the dishwasher, cleaned crumbs off the counter. It was a testament to how crazy her life had become that doing these small things filled her with such pleasure. She had never really appreciated how wonderful it was to just be normal.