CHAPTER TEN

TESS PASSED THROUGH the side porte cochere door Quinn opened for her and stepped onto a landing enveloped in ocean-scented fog. The damp air brushed over her skin, leaving a trail of goose bumps behind. She shivered as she thrust her arms through her sweater and pulled it tightly across her middle. “I am so ready for summer.”

He didn’t respond, and she knew he was simply standing there, staring at her in that intense, motionless way of his. Wishing he’d quit the unsettling habit or telling herself to ignore those gorgeous, black-lashed, deep-set blue eyes of his wouldn’t reduce their effect on her nerves.

She glanced over her shoulder to find his tall, lean form framed by the massive door and backlit in the amber glow of twin carriage-house sconces. His gaze was as piercing as ever, but there was something new in his somber expression tonight. Something searching, something uncertain. It might have been the feeble lighting or the mist, but she thought she detected something…softer.

“What are you waiting for?” she asked. “Did you forget something?”

“No.”

She paused, expecting some kind of explanation, but he continued to study her, as if by merely looking he could penetrate her pores and strip bare all her secrets. She shrugged off her fanciful thoughts and walked down the steps, headed toward her car.

“You could have had me fired,” he said.

“Maybe.” She reached for the handle and then turned to face him. She wanted to push back, to knock him off balance and make him feel as uneasy as he made her. “Probably.”

He stepped down to the drive. “Why didn’t you?”

“You’re not worth the trouble.”

He shifted closer, shaking his head. “I’m going to be more trouble if you keep me on the job.”

“Is that a threat?”

His gaze roamed over her face, lingering on her mouth before raising to her eyes. His pupils expanded in the semidarkness until his eyes seemed as black as the pavement beyond the porch lights. “It wasn’t intended as one.”

“Well, then.” She let out the breath she’d been holding and sucked in chilled air, but the tiny tremor that followed wasn’t caused by the cold.

“It was a statement of fact,” he said.

He’d moved again, and he was standing much closer. Too close. The arches of the porte cochere cast sharp shadows over his features, outlining his angular cheeks and lining the deep grooves around his mouth.

She tossed her head back, shaking her bangs out of her eyes before angling her face toward his. “I like a man who’s honest about his bad intentions.”

One side of his mouth tugged to the side in something that wasn’t quite a grin. Something dangerous, something potent. “If I ever have any of those, I’ll be sure to let you know.”

“It’s a deal.”

He lifted a hand to her sweater and ran his fingertips from button to button, along the opening. His knuckles skimmed over her breast, and her nipples tightened and tingled.

“All right then,” he said. And then he grew very still, as only he could do, and looked at her in that way that made everything in her aware of everything about him. Of his height, and his breadth, and his strength, and his ridiculous, impossible appeal.

His thumb moved over the soft sweater wool, back and forth, in a soft caress, and her pulse pounded in her ears. Kiss me kiss me kiss me…

His lashes lowered again, and her lips parted on a silent gasp.

“Good night,” he said.

“Right.” She reached behind her, grabbing for the car’s handle with trembling fingers. “See you around.”

He disappeared beyond the bend, and she collapsed in her seat and pulled her door closed. A minute later, the deep vibrations of a big truck’s engine rumbled through the dark, and then the ghostly glare of headlights swept through the fog.

“Damn, that was a close call.” She turned her key in the ignition and pressed the heat and fan buttons. Warm air flooded the compartment, and she closed her eyes and slumped in her seat to wait for her sanity to return. “Too close.”

Too bad it hadn’t been closer. Closer would have been damn good.

QUINN COASTED down the winding bluff road, braking around the tight, shadowed corners, keeping his eyes on the road and his thoughts on the week ahead. He could do without Ned for a few days, but he’d need to take on more help before the end of the month. He’d check on the fencing around the site and ask Reed about the possibility of having a patrol car pass by a couple of times a night.

Payroll was coming up again. And his call to the city inspector to visit the site and sign off on the rough plumbing had gone unanswered-time to step up the pressure on the building department. Better phone the mill yard while he was at it, double-check the delivery schedule for the framing material. And find some time to talk with Tess about the specs for those glue-lam beams.

Tess. His fingers tightened on the wheel as his thoughts detoured into forbidden paths and blurred with the mist around him. Bits of the conversation beneath Geneva’s porch, that distorted slice of time before he’d made his escape. Those pulsing, electrifying moments when Tess’s head had tilted back, her lids drifting low over her whiskey eyes, her lips moist and begging, her breath a warm zephyr on his face, her flower-garden scent battering his self-control.

Control. The one thing he wouldn’t let her wrest from him, no matter how hard she tried. No matter how much he was tempted to surrender. If he took her up on her offer, it would be on his terms, not hers.

He’d been fighting this craving for weeks. Watching her, testing himself. Reasoning things through. She wasn’t a chemical; she wasn’t a drug. She wasn’t anything addictive-she wasn’t as insidious or dangerous as that. She wasn’t anything he couldn’t handle if he chose to try. He could walk away if he decided to. He’d done it before several times. The choice was up to him.

And he’d decided, by the time he’d descended from the bluff and reached level ground, that he was tired of fighting something that wasn’t a real threat, something that was bound to feel better than booze and more satisfying than tobacco. Why should he deprive himself-and Tess-of something that good? Sure, adding another layer to a complicated relationship might not be the best idea in the world. But she wanted this, too.

Is that an invitation?

Do you have to ask?

He slowed to a stop at an intersection near the marina and glanced at the headlights slung low across his rearview mirror. The headlights of a sassy red roadster. He’d known, before he pulled through Geneva’s gate, that she’d follow him here. He’d seen the heat and the bafflement in her dark eyes, and he’d understood she couldn’t leave things the way he’d left them. Unfinished, untidy. She liked things organized and beautifully arranged, and he liked that about her.

There were a great many things he liked about her, in spite of the pinprick twinges that came with admitting that fact. He knew he’d be safer if he continued viewing her as an irritant or an adversary, instead of…however it was he was beginning to think of her. He’d have to finish those thoughts, the sooner the better. And if they led to bad intentions, well, he’d have to let her know about those, just as he’d promised.

For now, he’d prefer to deal with whatever it was that was arcing between them tonight. He turned along the waterfront, pulled to a stop to unlock the gate, and then jounced about twenty yards into the Tidewaters site.

He stepped out of his truck and closed the door, waiting for the timed lights to switch off and plunge him into the uncertain darkness of the fog-draped, moonlit night. Waited for the low growl of Tess’s roadster to click to a stop, for her to stretch one of her long legs to the ground as she exited. She’d worn a pair of those black, high-heeled shoes tonight, the ones with the lethal-looking points at the toes and the sexy curves along the heels. She’d wobble a bit as she crossed the gravel-lined yard, making her way toward him, but it wouldn’t trip her up. She never lost her footing, no matter how tough the terrain.