His gaze swept across the kitchen. A loose collection of webbing was anchored at the corner of the ceiling. Spiders spun webs near food sources, which meant there had to be a big supply of insects attracted to the moisture from leaks in the wall.
“Alex,” came the ghost’s urgent voice from the other room, “something’s wrong with Zoë.”
Frowning, Alex left the kitchen and found Zoë in the center of the main room, her arms wrapped tightly around her middle. She was breathing in airless pants, as if her lungs had collapsed. He reached her in two strides.” What is it?”
She didn’t seem to hear him. Her eyes were wide and unfocused. She was shaking in every limb.
“Did it bite you?” Alex asked, looking over her face, neck, arms, every exposed inch of skin.
Zoë shook her head, wheezing as she tried to talk. Alex found himself reaching out for her and snatching his hands back.
“Panic attack,” the ghost said. “Can you calm her down?”
Alex shook his head automatically. He was good at making women angry, but calming them wasn’t in his repertoire.
The ghost looked exasperated. “Just talk to her. Pat her back.”
Alex gave him an appalled glance. There was no possible way to explain his unwillingness to touch her. The sure knowledge that it would lead to disaster. But Zoë swayed on her feet, looking like she was about to pass out, and there was no choice. He reached for her, his hands closing lightly around her arms. The feel of her skin against his palms, the texture of her flesh, sent a thrill of heat through him, which, in light of the circumstances, was nothing less than depraved.
He had been with women in every imaginable sexual position, but he’d never taken one into his arms with the sole intention of comforting her. “Zoë, look at me,” he said quietly.
To his relief, she obeyed. She was panting, gulping painfully as if she couldn’t get enough air, when the problem was that she was taking in too much.
“I want you to take a deep breath and let it out slowly,” Alex said. “Can you do that?”
Zoë looked at him without seeing him, her eyes desperate and tear-blurred. “My ch-chest—”
He understood immediately. “You’re not having a heart attack. You’ll be fine. We just need to slow your breathing down.” She continued to stare at him, wetness leaking from her eyes, mingling with the pearly mist of sweat on her cheeks. The sight caused something to twist painfully inside his chest. “You’re safe,” he heard himself saying. “I won’t let anything happen to you. Easy …” His hand came to the side of her face. Her cheek was cool and plush, like the sepals of a white orchid. Carefully he touched her nose, pressing one nostril shut, holding it like that. “Keep your mouth closed. Breathe through one side of your nose.”
With the intake of air restricted, Zoë’s breath began to regulate. But it wasn’t easy. She gasped and hiccupped, and kept fighting to breathe as if she were trying to insufflate corn syrup through a straw. All Alex could do was hold her patiently, and let her body work it out. “Good girl,” he murmured, as he felt her begin to relax. “Just like that.” A few more constricted breaths. To his relief, she stopped struggling. He let his hand cradle her face, while his thumb wiped at the stippling of tears on her cheek. “Take long breaths from deep down.”
Looking exhausted, Zoë dropped her head to his shoulder, the pale golden curls tickling his jaw. Alex went very still. “Sorry,” he heard her whisper in between broken gasps. “Sorry.”
Not as sorry as he was. Because the feel of her had sent a shock of pleasure through him, so pure and searing that it was almost pain. He had known somehow that it would be like this. He found himself gripping her closer, until her body molded to his as if her bones had gone liquid. A few remaining tremors went across her back, and he chased them slowly with his hands. He felt his senses opening to take her in, the incredible lush delicacy of her. She smelled like crushed flowers, a dry and innocent scent, and he wanted to open her shirt and breathe it directly from her skin. He wanted to press his lips against the wild pulse in her throat and stroke it with his tongue.
Heat uncurled and rose through the stillness. The urge to touch her intimately, slide his hands through her hair and inside her clothes, nearly drove him crazy. But it was enough just to stand here with her, disoriented from the desire that flowed all through him.
Through heavy-lidded eyes, he saw a movement nearby. It was the ghost, only a few yards away, regarding him with lifted brows.
Alex shot him an incinerating glare.
“I think I’ll check out the other rooms,” the ghost said tactfully, and vanished.
Zoë clung to Alex, who was the one solid thing in the world, the still center of the merry-go-round. Dancing at the edge of her awareness was the mortified knowledge that, after this, she would never be able to face him again. She had made a fool of herself. He would have nothing but contempt for her. Except … he was so gentle … so concerned. His hand moved over her back in slow circles. It had been a long time since a man had held her—she had forgotten how good it felt. The surprise was that Alex Nolan was capable of such quiet, fluent tenderness. She would have expected anything from him except this.
“Better?” he asked after a while.
She nodded against his shoulder. “I … I’ve always hated spiders. They’re like … hairy wads of death on eight legs.”
“Usually they only bite humans to defend themselves.”
“I don’t care. I’m still scared of them.”
Amusement rustled in his chest. “Most people are.”
Zoë lifted her head to look up at him with wide eyes. “Including you?”
“No.” He caressed the edge of her jaw with the backs of his fingers. His face was austere, but his eyes were warm. “In my line of work, you see enough of them that you get used to it.”
“I wouldn’t,” Zoë said vehemently. Remembering the one in the kitchen, she felt her pulse skyrocket. “That one was huge. And the way it dropped out of the cabinet and started hopping toward me—”
“It’s dead,” Alex interrupted, his hand returning to her back, resuming the calming stroking. “Relax, or you’ll start hyperventilating again.”
“Was it a black widow?”
“No, just a wolf spider.”
She shuddered.
“They’re not lethal,” he said.
“There must be more. The house is probably full of them.”
“I’ll take care of it.” He sounded so assured and matter-of-fact that she couldn’t help but believe him. His face was so close that she could see the shadow of whisker-grain heralding a dark five o’clock shadow. “The only way spiders can get in,” Alex continued, “is through cracks and places that aren’t sealed. So I’m going to install door sweeps and weather stripping, caulk around all the windows and doors, and put wire mesh over every vent. Trust me, this is going to be the most pestproof house on the island.”
“Thank you.”
A moment later, it occurred to Zoë that she was still glued to him as tightly as a barnacle on a harbor piling. And her heart was still in overdrive. Standing as close as they were, it was impossible not to notice that he was becoming aroused, the pressure of his body hard and delicious. She couldn’t seem to move, only leaned against him in a dry-mouthed paralysis of pleasure.
Alex eased her apart from him, and turned away with a wordless sound.
Zoë still felt the vital imprint of his body everywhere they had touched, a throbbing awareness lingering right beneath her skin.
Desperately trying to think of a way to break the silence, she cast her mind back to what he’d said about pest-proofing. She blurted out, “Will I have to give up the cat door?”
A scratchy sound came from him, as if he were clearing his throat, and she realized he was struggling to hold back a laugh. He threw a quick glance over his shoulder, his eyes bright with amusement. “Yes,” he said.
After Zoë stepped out of his arms, Alex became businesslike again. While Zoë cautiously investigated the rest of the small house, he continued to take measurements for a rough floor plan. He tried to focus on anything other than Zoë.
He wanted to take her somewhere, to some dark quiet room, and undress her, and screw her nine ways from Sunday. But she possessed a fragile dignity that, for some reason, he didn’t want to undermine. He liked the way she’d stood up to him when they’d argued about the butcher-block countertops. He liked the little smiles that danced out from beneath her shyness. He liked far too many things about her, and God knew no good could come of it. So he was going to do them both a favor and stay away from her.
While Alex peeled off sticky notes and adhered them in a line across the old chrome table, Zoë went to the side door that opened to the carport. “Alex,” she said while looking through the dirt-striped window. “Is it difficult to turn a carport into a garage?”
“No. Structurally it’s built about the same as a garage. I’d just have to add sides, insulation, and a door.”
“Would you include that in the quote, then?”
“Sure.”
Their gazes caught, and an electric awareness crackled between them. With effort, Alex refocused on the pad of sticky notes. “You can go now,” he said. “I’m going to be here for a while, getting some measurements and taking pictures. I’ll lock up when I leave and have a new key made for you.”
“Thanks.” She hesitated. “Do you need me to stay and help with anything?”
Alex shook his head. “You’d only get in the way.”
The ghost approached the table. “All that charm,” he said to Alex in a marveling tone. “Is it natural, or do you have to work on it?”
Zoë approached the table and waited until Alex brought his gaze to meet hers. “I want to … well, thank you,” she said, her face pink.
“It was nothing,” Alex muttered.
“You were very kind,” she persisted. “Maybe to return the favor … I could make dinner for you sometime.”
“Not necessary.”
The ghost looked disgusted. “What’s wrong with letting her make you dinner?”
“It would be no trouble,” Zoë persisted. “And I’m … not a bad cook. You should try me.”
“You should try her,” the ghost repeated emphatically.
Alex ignored him and looked at Zoë. “My schedule’s pretty tight.”
The ghost spoke to Zoë as well, even though she couldn’t hear him. “He means he’d rather sit somewhere alone and drink like an attention-deficit camel.”
Zoë’s gaze dropped in response to Alex’s refusal.
“In a couple of days,” Alex said, “I’ll drop by the inn with some drawings. We’ll go over them and make changes if necessary. After that, I’ll work up a quote.”
“Come by any day after breakfast. It ends at ten on the weekdays, eleven-thirty on the weekends. Or … come a little earlier and have some breakfast.” Zoë touched the surface of the chrome table with a neatly filed fingertip. Her hands were small but capable, the nails clear-varnished. “I like this dining set. I wish there was a way to restore it.”
“It can be restored,” Alex said. “All it needs is a workover with some steel wool and few coats of spray chrome.”
Zoë looked at the table speculatively. “I suppose it’s not worth the trouble, with one of the chairs missing.”
“The fourth chair is in a corner of the carport,” Alex said. “You can’t see it because my truck is parked there.”
Zoë brightened at the information. “Oh, good. That makes the set worth saving. Otherwise I thought we’d have to sixty-nine it.”
Alex looked at her blankly.
She stared back at him with innocent blue eyes.
“You mean eighty-six it,” Alex said, his voice carefully monotone.
“Yes, what did I—” Zoë broke off as she realized the slip she’d made. A tide of crimson color washed over her face. “I have to be going,” she said in a small voice. She grabbed her bag and scampered from the house.
The door closed with a slam.
The ghost was laughing so hard he was soundless.
Alex braced his hands on the table and lowered his head. He was so turned on he couldn’t stand straight. “I can’t take this,” he managed to say.
“You should ask her out,” the ghost eventually said, when he was able.
Alex shook his head.
“Why not?”
“The number of ways I could hurt a woman like that …” Alex paused with a faint smile. “Hell. I can’t count that high.”
After Zoë had told her cousin everything that had happened at the lakeside cottage, Justine wasn’t merely amused. She laughed until she nearly toppled off her chair.
“Oh my God,” Justine gasped, grabbing a paper towel to blot the tears from her eyes. The sight of Zoë’s indignant expression only seemed to make it worse. “I’m sorry, sweetie. I’m laughing with you, not at you.”
“If you were laughing with me,” Zoë said, “then I would be laughing, too. And I’m not. Because all I can think about is stabbing myself with the first thing I can grab from the nearest utensil drawer.”
“Don’t even try,” Justine said, still snorting. “With the luck you’ve had today, it would turn out to be a melon baller.”
Zoë lowered her forehead to the kitchen table. “He thinks I’m the biggest idiot in the world. And I wanted so badly for him to like me.”
“I’m sure he likes you.”
“No,” Zoë said mournfully, “he doesn’t.”
“Then there’s something wrong with him, because everyone else in the world does.” Justine paused. “Why do you want him to like you?”
Zoë lifted her head and leaned her chin on her hand. “What if I say it’s because he’s so good-looking?”
“God, that’s incredibly shallow. I’m so disappointed in you. Tell me more.”
Zoë smiled. “It’s not really about his looks. Although he is … dazzling.”
“Not to mention a carpenter,” Justine said. “I mean, all carpenters are sexy, even the ugly ones. But a good-looking carpenter … well, that’s pretty hard to resist.”