Gayle Wilson - Wednesday's Child

“I couldn’t sell ice in hell, but frankly Lorena can use the money. If you’re going to spend it somewhere, it might as well be with her. Do you want the grand tour or not?”

The abrasiveness was back. For some reason her remark, intended to be humorous, hadn’t had the desired effect. So much for trying to mend fences.

“With you as guide?” she couldn’t refrain from asking.

Something of her irritation must have come through in the question. He responded in kind.

“Since I’m all that’s available. Take it or leave it.”

Her inclination was to tell this arrogant jackass what he could do with his aunt’s room. Only the knowledge that she would be cutting off her own nose prevented her from getting back into her car and heading toward the interstate.

“Lead the way,” she said, stepping onto the bottom step.

The screen door creaked again. She glanced up in time to watch him step back into the hallway. Although she was aware there was something awkward about the movement, it was not until he was inside and illuminated by the overhead chandelier that she understood what. He moved a couple of steps back in order to allow her to enter, heavily favoring his left leg.

Despite the fact she had continued to climb the steps as if nothing had happened, an unfamiliar emotion stirred in the pit of her stomach. Guilt, perhaps, that she’d returned his rudeness with her own? Embarrassment? Pity?

As he held the screen door for her to enter, she kept her eyes averted, examining the hallway instead of looking directly at him. The floor was of some dark wood that had been fashioned into narrow, irregular planks. It was probably a dozen feet wide and stretched into the darkness at the back of the house.

Pocket doors opened onto a formal parlor on one side and a dining room on the other. Both were furnished in keeping with the age of the house. In the sitting room an old pianoforte sat in the corner. Several pieces of sheet music were scattered on its stand and on the upholstered bench.

“When Lorena operated the house as a bed-and-breakfast, all the downstairs rooms were available for the use of the guests,” her guide said. “I’m sure that will still be the case.”

With his comment, there was no way Susan could avoid looking at him. She turned, prepared to make some politely conventional reply. All of them, instilled in her brain since childhood, flew out of her head.

She wasn’t sure what she had expected Mrs. Bedford’s great-nephew to look like, but certainly nothing like this. His close-cropped hair was so black the chandelier over their heads created no highlights in its midnight depths. In contrast, his eyes were a deep, clear blue. Black Irish, her grandmother would have said. Given the strong Celtic heritage of most of the South’s population, in this case she would probably have been right.

His skin was almost as darkly tanned as the sheriff’s. It didn’t have the same weathered texture, but then this man was probably a decade or so younger. Although Jeb Bedford wasn’t handsome in any conventional sense of the word, no woman would ever have overlooked him in a crowd.

She suddenly became aware that her lips had parted to reply to what he’d said, but no words had yet emerged. She was simply staring at him, stupidly open-mouthed.

“That’s nice,” she managed.

He was probably used to having this effect on women, she thought with a trace of disgust. She, however, wasn’t accustomed to reacting to a man in this way. Not to any man. And certainly not in this situation.

She owed no loyalty to Richard, of course. He was the one who had walked away from their marriage. The sense of guilt her attraction to this man’s rugged good looks produced was because she had something far more important to concentrate on right now—her desperate need to find out what had happened to Emma.

“The guest rooms are upstairs.”

He tilted his head down the hall to where a narrow staircase climbed to the second floor. It was uncarpeted, its wooden treads visibly worn from the passage of thousands of feet going up and down them through the years.

“How old is the house?” she asked, more as an attempt to get back on some normal footing with him than because she had any real interest in its history.

He had already taken a step forward, but at her question he turned, looking back at her over his shoulder. “It was built in 1852. It’s been in the hands of the family ever since. When Lorena dies…” He shrugged a dismissal.

“But surely there’s someone—”

“My grandfather and Lorena were joint heirs to the property. Now that he’s dead, there is no one else.”

“Perhaps your father…” He was right, she realized. She did have a proclivity for not finishing sentences, maybe because she always seemed to be stating the obvious.

“My father died two years ago. He and my mother were divorced several years before that. Believe me, she wouldn’t have anything to do with this place. Or with the Bedfords.”

This time she avoided the obvious reply. Whether or not he chose to sell the house or to let it go to rack and ruin when his great-aunt died was none of her business. She wasn’t even sure why she had bothered to pursue what he’d said. Maybe to postpone the moment she would have to follow his limping progress up the stairs.

“I…I really don’t need to see the room,” she stammered. “I’m sure it’s fine. After all, from what the sheriff told me, there isn’t any other accommodation near town.”

The blue eyes told her that he knew exactly what she was thinking. They held on her face long enough that she felt color rise along her throat.

“You have a bag?” he asked, finally breaking the standoff.

Ridiculously, for a second or two she didn’t know what he was talking about. “It’s in the car.”

“Then if you’re going to take the room, I might as well get it before I show you up. Keys?”

Whatever she had seen in his eyes when she’d attempted to keep him from having to climb those stairs was back. In force. Challenging her to make another excuse.

That wasn’t a mistake she would make again. Whatever was wrong with his leg, he obviously didn’t want her concern.

And in all honesty, despite the limp, he looked like someone who was well able to take care of himself. Someone who was accustomed to doing that.

“They’re in the ignition. My suitcase is in the trunk.”

For an instant there was a gleam of something that looked like approval in his eyes. Whatever the emotion, it was quickly masked by a downward sweep of coal-black lashes. They weren’t long, but both their thickness and their proximity to the blue irises made them noticeable.

Without another word, he started down the hall toward the front door. As he passed her, Susan pretended to look up the stairs as if the bit of the second story she could see from this vantage point was so interesting she couldn’t pull her eyes away. Then, drawn by a compulsion she didn’t pretend to understand, she turned, watching him limp toward the door.

She’d been right about the breadth of his shoulders. The damp material of the olive-drab T-shirt he wore stretched tautly across them, revealing the contoured muscles of his upper back. The shirt was tucked into a pair of faded black sweatpants.

Despite whatever was wrong with his leg, he looked like an athlete. She wondered if he might even have been working out when she’d disturbed him. That would explain the V of moisture at the neck of his shirt as well as the slight color along his cheekbone and dew of perspiration she’d put down to the heat.

“Only one?”

Startled, she looked up from her contemplation of the play of muscle in his back to find him looking at her over his shoulder, waiting for an answer before he opened the screen door. It must have been obvious that she’d been watching him.