Tempest in Eden

Dressed, he was as attractive as undressed. His speaking voice was as soothingly melodic as the vibrating tones of a stringed instrument in a master's hands. It bothered her more than she cared to admit that he seemed impervious to her as a woman, and she was determined to get a reaction out of him. "If you hadn't been screeching at the top of your lungs, you would have heard me," she said.

"I was singing in the shower. A common practice, I believe."

"I didn't open the door to the bathroom; it was already opened. That was negligence on your part. Didn't you know I was expected? By the time I reached the door, you were stepping out of the shower with that towel around your head. What was I supposed to do?"

He turned to her then, and she was struck by his height. He towered over her a good six inches, though her willowy figure was considered tall for a woman. He had dressed in casual slacks and an open-collared sport skirt. The sleeves were rolled to his elbows, revealing the corded muscles of his forearms.

"Yes, Celia told me you were coming, but she said you wouldn't be here until later this evening. And as for what you could have done to prevent both of us from being embarrassed, you could have left the room immediately instead of standing there like a voyeur at a peep show."

Shay was delighted as he lowered his dark, shaggy brows over his luminescent eyes, revealing his anger, "I wasn't embarrassed," she said simply.

"You should have been."

"Why? Are you ashamed of your body? Do you think the human form is something dirty and shameful?"

He ground his startlingly white teeth together. "No."

"Then if it's not nakedness that upset you, it must have been me. Don't you like women?"

She flashed him a gamine smile and dropped into a chair. Bracing the heels of her hands on the seat between her knees, she leaned forward inquiringly. She knew the position was provocative. It pushed her breasts, unrestrained under the T-shirt, together to form a deep cleft between them. The cotton shirt wasn't sheer, but it conformed to her shape, leaving little to the imagination. In retrospect, she might be ashamed of herself, but at the moment a demonic sense of humor prompted her to goad his temper, which she knew lay very close to the surface.

With seeming disinterest, he turned to the cupboard and took down a coffee mug. "I like some women," he stated with an emphasis on some.

Trying to squelch her own rising temper, she snapped, "Just not the honest, independent, free-thinking ones. I can well imagine the type you like—meek and submissive." She rose from the chair and stalked angrily around the kitchen. She was angry at him for his indifference, and at herself for caring about it.

"Look, I said I was sorry," she said impatiently. "I don't know why you're making a federal case out of this. I saw you naked. So? If you'd had the chance, you'd have taken a good long look at me or any other woman, and don't even try to deny it. And your mind would have flown to thoughts much more intimate than mine."

"I haven't been intimate with any woman but my wife."

"You're married?" she asked, looking around in surprise, thinking she might see a ladylike, long-suffering, insipid creature materialize. Strange. She hadn't even considered the possibility that he might have a wife. She was sure her mother hadn't mentioned one.

"I was married."

"Divorced?" she asked.

"No. My wife's dead."

Her desire to provoke him took one last gasping breath and d

ied. Her teasing smile faded into a shattered, pale expression of deep embarrassment and remorse. Slowly she sat back down in the chair. Unseeingly she stared through the screened back door. A nondescript station wagon was parked just beyond the porch. It hadn't been visible from the front of the house where she'd parked.

"I'm sorry," she said quietly. The only noise in the room was the gurgle of steaming coffee as he poured it into a mug. "Mom didn't tell me anything about you. I didn't know."

"Sugar?"

Her head came up to meet his stunning blue eyes. "Pardon?"

"Sugar.For your coffee."

"Oh, no … no. But cream or milk, please," she said, taking the mug from his outstretched hand. He went to the refrigerator and removed a carton of half-and-half, which he set on the table within her reach. "Thank you."

"You're welcome," he said formally, pouring himself some coffee. He took a seat across the table. For long moments he said nothing, only stared at the landscape through the windows and blew gently on his coffee to cool it before taking hesitant sips. At last he said quietly, "A drunk driver ran into us broadside one night. She was killed instantly. I walked away without a scratch. It's been almost two years. Better to tell people straight out. It saves them from asking and spares me having to answer."

Again a heavy silence ensued. Shay's love of life and everything in it was offended by such a waste of a valued human being. Her heart went out to the man who had suffered a senseless loss. She felt compelled to let him know she wasn't a stranger to heartache. "I was married, but it ended in divorce," she said thoughtfully. "Now we're a statistic. One of the thousands."

"As is Mary."

"Yes." Shay drank her coffee slowly. Covertly she eyed him over the rim of her mug. In profile, his features looked more stern then they did face on. Perhaps it was the brilliance of his eyes that relieved some of the rigidity of his jaw and chin. Were those eyes what had compelled her to mention her unfortunate marriage? She never talked about the episode in her life to anyone. It was a closed subject. She had erased the memory, if not the pain, had even gone back to using her maiden name. Yet she had spoken of it to Ian Douglas. Why should a man she had just met inspire such confidence?