She watched as he opened cupboards, took out bowls, plates, slid open drawers, reached in for spoons and napkins. He seemed at home. Silly thought. He was at home. It was just that it was difficult to imagine a man like this being comfortable in a kitchen, but he was.
"What can I do to help?"
He motioned to the pair of high leather stools drawn up at a black granite counter.
"No, seriously. There must be something I can do."
"You can check that top drawer. The deep one. That"s it. I"ve been away but my housekeeper expected me back today or tomorrow. With luck, she did some shopping and there"s some bread in the drawer."
There was bread. A crusty loaf of it. Jaimie found a knife, cut off a few slices and piled them in a straw basket while he ladled the soup into bowls and arranged them on the counter along with the spoons and napkins.
"Dinner," he said dramatically.
She dug in.
The next time she looked up, her bowl was empty. So was his. The loaf of bread was gone. He must have sliced the last of it.
"Oh, wow," she said softly.
He smiled. "My sentiments, exactly."
She reached for the bowls. His hand closed around hers.
"Leave them."
"The least I can do is clean up."
"After I did the cooking, you mean."
He was smiling. She smiled, too.
"Hey. A working girl opens cans for dinner all the time. n.o.body ever said that wasn"t cooking."
"What about takeout?"
She grinned. "I"m excellent at that, too."
"n.o.body else around to do the cooking?"
It was a simple question. Why did her throat suddenly constrict? Was it because his smile had changed, become personal and very, very male, and she felt it straight down to her toes?
"No."
"Are all the guys in D.C. fools?"
"Mr. Castelianos-"
"It"s Zach. And I"m not going to turn into the Big Bad Wolf."
She could feel herself blushing.
"I know. But-"
"But, yes, I"m flirting with you."
She wasn"t just blushing, she was turning crimson.
"I wish you wouldn"t."
"Why?"
Why? Why? What kind of question was that?
"Mister...Zach. See, I"m not terribly good at this."
"Guys must come on to you all the time."
"I never-I don"t-"
"You don"t encourage it."
She nodded. The tip of her tongue slid over her bottom lip. There was nothing coy or kittenish in the gesture and suddenly he knew that she was telling him the truth. She didn"t encourage this kind of thing, G.o.d only knew why, and he was a rat for doing this to her.
She"d told him, in every way imaginable, that she didn"t play around.
He was thirty-four.
He"d been with a lot of women, probably more than most men. No immodesty there, just simple honesty.
The thing was, he could read women pretty well. Be honest, Castelianos. He could read women extremely well.
This one was beautiful. Incredibly beautiful, and an amazing combination of tough and tender, and he could think of a thousand ways to kill the time it would take for the power to come on again.
And yes, he believed her when she said she didn"t play at hooking up.
He could change that in a heartbeat.
He"d caught her watching him. Felt her eyes following his every motion. He"d noticed the little blip in her pulse rate when he"d taken her hand and led her down the stairs.
Most of all, he"d felt the way she"d settled into his arms out there on that dark landing, the way she"d pressed her face against his throat and all but given herself up to him.
It had been enough to drive him crazy.
Earlier, before the power outage, he"d been fooling around. A man. A woman. Alone, obviously sharing an attraction to each other. Why not take it to the next logical step? Dinner, some wine, then a tumble into his bed.
Now...
Now, somehow, things had changed.
She"d gone from being a desirable woman to one he wanted with an ache so deep in his belly, it was almost a pain.
He"d been without a woman for a while. That was part of it, but there was more to it than that. There was something about this woman, something in her toughness, her sweetness...
Her-for lack of a better word-her innocence.
He believed her implicitly when she said she didn"t have a man in her life, that she didn"t go in for what he thought of as pickup games.
That was all the more reason he knew that he could have her in his bed tonight.
She was impressionable. She had convictions. She was honorable.
He was none of those things. Not anymore.
Maybe he had been, once, a very long time ago, but the years had left their mark on him. He had lived in the shadows too long.
He was not impressionable. He knew what life was like and nothing could ever change that.
He had convictions, but they"d been honed by the fires of war, and skills a woman like her could never imagine and, he fervently hoped, would never discover.
As for honor...a.s.suming he"d ever had any, his had given way to reality and the acceptance of life"s immutable truths.
Trust no one.
Believe in no one.
Give yourself to no one.
Stick to those rules and the world might just leave you alone.
This was not a woman for him, not even for one night.
His head knew that.
His body was telling him a different tale.
It said that he could get her out of those clothes-his clothes, and, h.e.l.l, was there anything s.e.xier than a stunning woman in a man"s clothes? He could get her out of them and into his bed in less time that it had taken him to heat the soup.
She was reacting to him. The simple truth was, she was dazzled by him. Everything about him was alien to her. She existed in a place of three piece suits, Ivy League degrees and polite conversation.
He was surely the opposite of everything she knew.
On top of that, they were in what could only be called an unusual situation.
They were isolated, as alone up here as they"d have been on the top of a mountain. No lights. No phone, except for a cell phone whose time on earth might be short. And there was no way of knowing how long their isolation would last.
Almost without thinking, he turned her hand over, lightly rubbed his thumb on the underside of her wrist.
Her pulse went crazy. Jesus. So did his.
He looked up, caught her eyes with his, watched as her pupils all but swallowed the pale blue irises.
The ache in his belly turned into a knot.
And, G.o.ddammit, what kind of an SOB was he? Did he need the comfort of a woman"s body so badly that he"d resort to becoming a predator stalking its prey?
Zach dropped Jaimie"s hand, shot to his feet, made a dumb speech about clearing the counter, stacking their dishes in the sink, putting a kettle of water on to boil so they could have coffee or tea.
He knew he"d surprised her, but she made a quick recovery.
"Let me do that," she said.
He did.
He was brisk. Businesslike. He pointed to the cabinet where she"d find mugs. Tea bags. Cookies or crackers, whatever his housekeeper had bought because he never paid much attention to stuff like that. He liked a good meal as much as the next guy, but mostly food was fuel for the body.
"OK," he said, in the no-nonsense tone of a dentist about to drill a tooth.
Then he turned from the sink and looked at Jaimie.
Big mistake.
She had set the counter. There was no other way to phrase it. She"d found place mats somewhere. Cloth napkins. She"d put one of the Mason jar candles, the most utilitarian of emergency items, on a small flowered plate he"d never have imagined anyone could find in a kitchen of his. A matching plate held...Oreos.
Yeah, well, his housekeeper had been with him for a while. She knew his tastes ran the gourmet gamut from Oreos to Twinkies and back again.
He stared at all of that. Then at Jaimie.
She looked hesitant.
And delectable.
She"d caught her bottom lip between her teeth and he wanted to replace her mouth with his, nibble on what would surely be sweet, tender flesh, absorb the taste of her lips...
"What"s all that for?" he growled, because growling was safer than what he was feeling.
Color swept into her face.
"I thought-you know, just to brighten things..." She swung away from him, s.n.a.t.c.hed up the napkins and he cursed himself for being not just an unfeeling SOB but an idiot.
"You"re right," he said, grabbing her wrist, tugging the bits of cloth from her fingers. "We need to brighten things."
"No. It was foolish to-"
"It was smart. No," he said quickly, when she shook her head, "really, it was. Morale"s important at a time like this. Keeping things cheerful. Focusing on the positive, not the negative..."
c.r.a.p.
He was babbling. Not just babbling. Psycho-babbling, the way some of the shrinks did during debriefings, but he had to say something to turn that lovely mouth up at the corners.