She slammed against the door to open it and entered the kitchen.
He’d helped himself to a beer. The rest of the house might be a decaying, musty, dusty mess, but someone had kept up the kitchen—and had apparently seen fit to stock the refrigerator with beer.
“Have a beer,” Alexi invited him caustically.
He raised the one he had already taken and threw his head back to take a long swallow. He lowered the bottle and pulled out one of the heavy oak chairs at the the butcher-block table.
“Alexi Jordan in the flesh.”
What had he heard about her? she wondered. It didn’t matter. She had come here to be alone—not to form friendships. She smiled without emotion and replied in kind. “The one and only Rex Morrow.”
He arched a dark brow. “I take it your grandfather told you that I lived out here.”
“Great-grandfather,” Alexi corrected him. “Yes, of course. How else would I know you?” She should have known right away. Gene had told her that Rex Morrow was the only inhabitant of the peninsula. She had just been too immersed in her own thoughts at the time to pay proper attention. Thinking back, she should also have known that Gene might have him watching the place. She’d heard that Morrow had tried to buy the house so that he could own the entire strip of land. But, though Gene seemed fond of his neighbor, he would never sell the Brandywine house.
“My picture is on my book jackets,” Rex told her.
“I certainly wouldn’t buy your books in hardcover, Mr. Morrow.”
He smiled. “You don’t care for my writing, I take it?”
“Product of a dark mind,” she said. Actually, she admired him. She couldn’t read his books easily, though. They were frightening and very realistic—and tore into the human psyche. They could make her afraid of the dark—and afraid to live alone. She didn’t need to be afraid of imaginary things.
And his characters stayed with the reader long after the story had been read, long after it should have been forgotten.
Besides she felt defensive. She’d known him a few minutes; because of the circumstances, he had seen far too deeply into her fears and emotions. And he’d attacked her. He still hadn’t apologized. In fact, it seemed as if he was annoyed with her.
“Would you like a beer, Ms. Jordan?”
“No. I’d like you out of my house. I’d like you to apologize for accosting me on my own property.”
He gazed down, then looked up again with a smile, but there was a good deal of hostility in that smile.
“Ms. Jordan, it isn’t your house. It’s Gene’s house. And I don’t owe you any apology. I promised Gene I’d watch out for the place. You weren’t due until tomorrow—and who the hell would have expected you out here, alone, in the pitch darkness, breaking into the house through a window?”
“I wasn’t expecting anyone to be inside.”
“I wasn’t expecting anyone to break in. We’re even.”
“Far from even.”
As he watched her, she had no idea of what he was thinking; she felt that his assessment found her wanting.
“You won’t be staying,” he said at last with a shrug and a smile.
“Won’t I?”
She liked his smile even less when it deepened and his gaze scanned her from head to toe once again.
“No. You won’t be here long.” He stood again and walked toward her. His strides were slow, and didn’t come all the way to her. Just close enough to look down. She estimated that he was six-three or six-four, and she was barely five-six. She silently gritted her teeth. She wasn’t going to let him intimidate her now. He had already done so, and quite well. There was light now, and he wasn’t touching her. She could bring back the reserve that had stood her so well against so much.
“This is a quiet place, Ms. Jordan. Very quiet. The biggest excitement in these parts is when Joe Lacey pinches the waitresses in the downtown café. There are only two houses out here on the peninsula—Gene’s here, and mine. I get the impression that you need a certain amount of society. But you’ve only got one neighbor, lady, and that neighbor is me. And I’m not the sociable type.”
“How interesting.” Alexi crossed her arms over her chest and leaned back against the wall. “Well, then, why don’t you take your beer out of my refrigerator and then get your gruesome soul out of my house, Mr. Morrow?”
He took a long moment to answer; his expression in that time gave away nothing of his emotions.
“You can keep the beer. You’re going to need it.”
“Why is that?”
“This place is falling apart.”
“Yes, it is, isn’t it?” she returned pleasantly.
“And you’re going to handle it all?”
“Yes, I am. Now, if you’ll please—”
“I don’t want company, Ms. Jordan.”
“You keep saying that—and you’re standing in my house!”
He hesitated, taking a long, deep breath, as if he were very carefully going to try to explain something to a child.
“Let me be blunt, Ms. Jordan—”
“You haven’t been so yet? Please, don’t be at all polite or courteous on my account,” she told him with caustic sweetness.
“I don’t want you here. I value my privacy.”
“I’m really sorry, Mr. Morrow. I think I did read somewhere that you were a total eccentric, moody and miserable, but there are property laws in the good ol’ U.S. of A. And this is not your property. You do not own the whole peninsula! Now, this house has been in my family for over a hundred years—”
“It’s supposed to be haunted, you know,” he interrupted her, as if it might have been a sudden inspiration, an if-you-can’t-bully-her-out-scare-her-out technique.
She smiled.
“As long as the ghosts will leave me alone, I’ll be just fine with them,” she told him.
He threw up his hands. “You can’t possibly mean to stay out here by yourself.”
“But I do.”
“Ah…you’re running away.”
She was—exactly. And the old Brandywine house had seemed like the ideal place. Gene had been pleading with someone in the family to come home. To this home. Admittedly, she’d humored him at first, as had her cousins. But then the disaster with John had occurred, and…yes, she was running away.