“Let me be blunt, Mr. Morrow,” Alexi said. “I’m staying.”
He stared at her steadily a long while. Then he took in her stature from head to toe once again and started to laugh.
“I’ll lay odds you don’t make a week,” he said.
“I’ll last.”
He made a sound that was like a derisive snort and walked past her again. “We’ll see, won’t we?”
“Is that some kind of a threat?” Alexi followed him down the beautiful old hallway toward the front door. The light was low once again, filtering into the hallway from the living room and the kitchen. His dark good looks were a bit sinister in that shadowed realm. He really was striking, she thought. His features were both beautifully chiseled and masculine, and his eyes were so very dark.
Mesmerizing, one might have said.
“I wouldn’t dream of threatening you,” he told her after perusing her once again. “I’d thought you would be even taller,” he said abruptly.
It had taken him a long, long time to realize that he had seen her before this night. That he should have known Alexi Jordan for being more than Gene Brandywine’s expected relation. He had seen her in a different way, of course. In a classic, flowing Grecian gown. With the wind in her hair. He had seen her on the silver screen, seen her in fantasy.
Her classical features had been put to good use.
Despite herself, Alexi flushed. “You recognized me.”
“‘The Face That Launched a Thousand Ships,’” he quoted from her last ad campaign for Helen of Troy products.
“Well, you son of a—!” she said suddenly, her temper soaring. “You kept denying that I was Alexi Jordan when you must have known—”
“No, I didn’t know then. I didn’t really recognize you from the ad until we were in the kitchen.” He was irritated; she really irritated him. She made him feel defensive. She made it sound as if he had enjoyed scaring her.
And, somewhere deep inside, she scared him in return. Why? he wondered, puzzled. And then, of course, he knew. Maybe part of it had been the way that they had met. Part of it had been the terror in her eyes, the fear he had so desperately needed to assuage.
And part of it was simply that she was so achingly beautiful. So gloriously feminine. She made him wish that he had known her forever and forever, that he could reach out and pull her into his arms. To know her—as a lover.
He didn’t mind wanting a woman. He just feared needing her. And she was the type of lover a man could come to need.
“You don’t resemble the glamorous Helen in the least at the moment, you know,” he told her bluntly. It was a lie. Her face could have launched a thousand ships had it been covered in mud.
“And whose fault is that?”
He shrugged. Despite herself, Alexi tried to repin some of the hair that was falling in tangles from her once neat and elegant knot.
He laughed. “I should have known from all the lipstick.”
“Go home, Mr. Morrow, please. I’m looking for privacy, too.”
His laughter faded. He studied her once again, and again, despite herself, she felt as if she was growing warm. As if there was something special about his eyes, about the way they fell over her and entered into her.
“Go—” She broke off, startled, as a shrill sound erupted in the night. She was so surprised that she nearly screamed. Then she was heartily glad that she had not, for it was only the phone.
“Oh,” she murmured. Then she sighed with resignation, looking at him. “All right, where is it?”
“Parlor.”
“Living room?”
“That living room is called a parlor.”
She stiffened her shoulders and started for the parlor. She caught the phone on the fifth ring. It was Gene. Her great-grandfather had turned ninety-five last Christmas and could have passed for sixty. Alexi was ridiculously proud of him, but then she felt that she had a right to be. He was lean, but as straight as an arrow and as determined and sly as an old fox. He seldom ailed, and Alexi thought that she knew his secret. He’d never—through a long life of trials and tribulations—taken the time to feel sorry for himself, he had never ceased to love life, and he had never apologized for an absolute fascination with people. Everything and everyone interested Gene.
But he was too old, he had assured Alexi, to start the massive project of refurbishing his historical inheritance, the Brandywine house outside Fernandina Beach.
He had known she needed a place. A place to hide, to nurse her wounds. She had never explained everything to him; the bitter truth had been too hurtful and humiliating to admit, even to Gene.
Gene’s voice came to her gruffly. “Thank God you’re there. I tried the hotel in town, and the receptionist told me you had never checked in.”
“Gene! Yes, I—”
“Young woman, where is your sense?”
At that moment, Alexi wanted to rap her beloved relative on the knuckles. His voice was so clear that she was sure Rex Morrow, who had followed her back into the parlor, was hearing every word.
“Gene, I really didn’t want to stay in town. I made it into the city by six—”
“It’s pitch-dark out there!”
“Well, yes—”
“Alexi, there are dangerous people in this world, even in a small place—maybe especially in a small place. You could have been attacked or assaulted or—”
There are dangerous people out here, and I was assaulted! Alexi almost snapped. Rex Morrow was watching her, smiling. He could hear every word.
He took the phone out of her hand.
“What are you—”
“Shh,” he told her, sitting on the back of the Victorian sofa and casually dangling a leg. He smiled with a great deal of warmth when he spoke to Gene.
“Gene, Rex here.”
“Rex, thank God. I’m glad I asked you to watch the place!”
“Gene, there’s really not much going on out here, you know. No real danger, though Alexi might tell you differently. We had a bit of a run-in. Why didn’t you give her the key?”
Alexi snatched the phone from him, reddening again. “He did give me the key.”
“What? What?” They could both hear Gene’s voice. “Key? I did give Alexi the key.”