Ginna Gray - A Man Apart

That had suited her just fine. From their first meeting she’d had the good sense to know that someone like her, a simple homebody at heart, had no business getting involved with an intense, complicated man like Matt.

Shaking her head, Maude Ann gave a throaty chuckle and pulled her arm from his grasp. Matt’s eyes narrowed, his expression going from sensual to surprised, then annoyed. Clearly, he had not expected that reaction.

“Tempting as it is, I think I’ll pass on that offer, Detective. I may be a frustrated widow, but I know when I’m in over my head. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go get some bandages for those wounds.”

“Don’t bother. I can manage.”

“Fine. Then I’ll say good-night.” Only moments ago she would have argued, but now a hasty withdrawal seemed the wisest course.

The instant Maude Ann pulled the door shut behind her, she leaned back against the kitchen wall and fanned her face with her hand. “Whew! That is one potent man,” she whispered.

The encounter with Maude Ann served as a wake-up call for Matt.

What his doctor’s repeated lectures and weeks of his friends’ pleas and cajoling had failed to do, the humiliating episode in the shower accomplished in mere minutes, firing in him an iron-willed determination to regain his strength—and with it, the life he’d had before he’d been shot.

He had allowed the doctor’s pessimism to infect him, to rob him of a sense of purpose. He had wanted a guarantee that he would recover. When he didn’t get one, he refused to try. It was easier to accept defeat from the start than to fight and struggle for weeks, maybe months, and fail, anyway.

He had been so mired in bitterness and self-pity he couldn’t see what a pathetic loser he’d allowed himself to become—not until he’d found himself sprawled helpless as a newborn baby on the shower floor, completely dependent on a woman to help him out.

It had stung to have Maude Ann see him so weak and helpless. So had that husky laugh of hers and her blunt honesty. The easy way she had twice dismissed the flare of desire between them had been downright insulting. Labeling her feelings nothing more than frustration had made it painfully clear that it wasn’t him she wanted; her reaction would have been the same with any man. Abstinence, not attraction, had prompted that smoldering inspection she had given him.

Intellectually Matt knew he shouldn’t let the incident bother him. Men, after all, had been guilty of the same impersonal lust for eons. The problem was, coming from a warm and sensual woman like Maude Ann, it had seemed doubly insulting to be relegated to nothing more than a sex object.

What the devil. She wasn’t his type, anyway, and he sure as hell wasn’t interested in getting involved with the woman.

Still…her attitude had rankled.

The way Matt figured it, the sooner he got back in shape and got out of there, away from the maddening woman and her ragtag bunch of kids, the better.

The morning after the shower incident, Matt rose early and did his exercises, this time with vigor, pushing himself almost beyond endurance.

Before going into the kitchen for breakfast, he braced himself for awkwardness, but it was a wasted effort; Maude Ann wasn’t there.

Loath to ask where she was, Matt pretended not to notice her empty chair, but the kids had no such inhibitions.

“Where’s Miz Maudie?” Tyrone demanded the instant he took his seat.

“Yeth, where ith she?” Debbie echoed.

“She’s gone into Cleveland to do some shopping,” Jane replied. “She’ll be back in an hour or so. Now you kids eat your breakfasts. Soon as we clean up the kitchen we’re going to do some chores.”

That brought groans all around the table, especially from Tyrone. Fighting the urge to laugh, Matt ducked his head and ate his waffles in silence.

After breakfast he went for a walk, taking the path through the woods that he’d seen Maude Ann and the kids use. Every step was agony. He limped along, sweating and breathless from the exertion and pain, putting most of his weight on his cane and forcing one foot in front of the other.

Jane was in the kitchen when he staggered in at last to get a drink. She looked up from icing a cake and raised an eyebrow when she saw his flushed, sweaty face.

“Gracious me, you look like forty miles of bad road. What on earth have you been doing, Detective?”

His mouth tightened. He crossed to the sink, the soft thud of his cane almost silent on the brick floor. He had made no attempt to cultivate a friendship with the woman or anyone else in the house, but Jane Beasley didn’t let that stop her.

She was a gregarious woman with a sometimes caustic forthrightness about her. She didn’t believe in formality and had no time for it. Everyone who came within her sphere she treated exactly the same. You could like it or lump it, it made no difference to her.

“I went for a walk in the woods.” He drew a glass of water, chugged it down in three long gulps and filled the glass again.

“Are you sure you’re up to taking walks just yet? You look ready to keel over to me.”

“I’ll be fine. I just need some water is all. I got kind of dehydrated.”

“Mmm, I’m not surprised, in this heat. Next time take a bottle of water with you. Oh, by the way, your shower is fixed. Maude Ann put some adhesive non-skid strips on the shower floor as soon as she got back from town.”

“She told you what happened?”

“Just that you took a fall last night. ’Course, Maudie being Maudie, she fretted about it all night. Took off at first light to buy those strips to remedy the situation. I swear, that woman’s a born mother hen.”

“That’s what she went shopping for so early?”

“Sure. What’d you expect?”

He hadn’t expected anything, really. Certainly not that she would make a special trip into town just for him.

Jane swirled the last dollop of icing on top of the cake with a flourish. Wiping her hands on a towel, she gave Matt another long look. “Why don’t you go out on the veranda and sit in the shade and rest a bit? You look plum peaked. I’m real glad you’re making an effort to recover, but it’s not good to push yourself too hard, you know. Particularly at first.”

“Funny, I don’t recall asking for your opinion,” Matt said in the cold voice he used to keep people at arm’s length.

“Well, you got it, anyway. No charge.” She waved both hands in a shooing motion. “Now go on out there and sit down before you fall down.”

He was tempted to refuse, just because she’d ordered him, but the veranda did look inviting. Besides, he was tired of being cooped up in his room.

“All right, all right. I’m going.”

The first thing Matt saw when he stepped out onto the back veranda was Maude Ann and the children working in the vegetable garden, about thirty feet behind and to one side of the lodge.

He gingerly lowered himself into a swing and settled back against a pillow to observe Maude Ann and her crew of pint-size gardeners.

As he followed her movements, his first thought was the same one he had over and over for the last four days. What the devil was she doing with this motley bunch of kids and only Jane Beasley to help her?

It didn’t make sense. She was an educated woman, a doctor. She could have a successful and lucrative career in Houston. She wasn’t his type, but she was an attractive woman. She was also incredibly sensual and responsive. He had firsthand knowledge of that. So why had she buried herself out here in the middle of nowhere?

Despite the nagging questions, a smile teased Matt’s mouth when he noticed that every one of the kids wore a straw hat. More of Maude Ann’s mothering, no doubt. Probably slathered them all with sun block, as well.