Official Escort

To his relief, Madeline assumed responsibility for the tree once it had been placed to her satisfaction in front of the parlor’s bay window. She had turned up a supply of construction paper in one of the cupboards, which wasn’t surprising since the wife of the couple from whom Mitch was renting the farm was a kindergarten teacher.

Madeline settled herself at the kitchen table with the paper and a pair of sharp scissors she had extracted from the depths of the canvas satchel she’d fetched from her bedroom. Mitch continued to wonder about that mysterious satchel. Once the scissors had been removed, she snapped the bag shut and kept it close to her side. Why was she so careful about it? What was so precious about the contents?

Mitch, fixing a late breakfast for them, tried to ask her about it with a casual, “I’m all out of cornflakes. You got any to spare in there?”

She responded with an unrelated query of her own. “Is there any glue in the house?”

“Try the drawer over there.”

She was either so absorbed in her project that his curiosity hadn’t registered, or else she didn’t want him to know what the satchel contained. Probably the latter. He let it go. For now.

Madeline was interested in nothing but coffee. As he ate his own breakfast, he watched her work and was impressed by the ornaments she fashioned out of the simple stack of paper. A series of intricately designed snowflakes, whimsical angels, loops of paper chain. The pile grew. She was creative. He’d give her that.

Mitch would have been all right if he’d been able to keep his fascination focused strictly on her efforts and not on the woman who produced them. He couldn’t. Gazing at her across the table as she frowned with concentration behind a pair of reading glasses, he watched her lips making quirky little movements that he assumed were silent directions to herself. He kept remembering their encounter on the hillside and how that same sultry mouth had been so close under his that it seemed to beg him to take it.

When he abruptly shoved himself back from the table, she looked up from her work. “Where are you going?”

“To split some wood for the fireplace.”

He hadn’t used the parlor’s fireplace since coming to the farm, didn’t even know if it worked. But he needed an excuse to leave the house, to get away from her and what she was doing to him.

He spent the rest of the morning and part of the afternoon in one of the sheds, attacking logs they didn’t need, in an effort to rid himself of his mounting tension. When he returned to the house, she had the Christmas tree all decked out with her paper ornaments. Even without lights, the result was impressive.

He admired the tree, and she thanked him. Neither of them referred to the sparks they had been rubbing off of each other since her arrival yesterday. They got through the rest of the day politely pretending that the unbearable strain between them didn’t exist.

Their truce lasted until the next morning, when Mitch, emerging from his room, passed her door and noticed that it was ajar. He figured she was in the shower. He heard the water running behind the closed door of her bathroom. An empty glass on the bedside table told him she must have been down to the kitchen to get herself some orange juice and hadn’t bothered latching her bedroom door when she returned.

There was something else he could see through the gap. The canvas satchel was there beside the bed. It was an invitation he was unable to resist.

Spreading the door wide, Mitch entered the room and crossed to the bed. He hesitated before reaching for the satchel, knowing that what he was about to do amounted to snooping. But, hell, he was a PI, wasn’t he? He was supposed to investigate, especially when it was a woman with a history like Madeline Raeburn’s.

Burying his guilt, telling himself he was entitled to know just what he was dealing with under his own roof, Mitch opened the satchel and dumped its secrets on the bed.

MADELINE HOPED THE SHOWER would revive her. She had spent a sleepless night trying to quell the disturbing image of Mitchell Hawke. But even behind her closed bedroom door, those stormy blue eyes had haunted her.

All day long yesterday, whenever she had turned around or looked up from her work, she had caught him watching her. She could still feel his dark gaze on her, following her with a brooding hostility she didn’t understand.

He had been right, of course. She’d had no business going out on that hill without him. But she’d badly needed to get out of the house for a while, away from its charged atmosphere, away from him.

There was another memory that Madeline couldn’t seem to shake, one that was far more unsettling. She kept seeing him there on his rumpled bed when she’d so unwisely opened his door yesterday morning to check on him before slipping away.

It refused to leave her—the potent image of sleep-tousled hair, long legs and muscular chest, the covers barely draped over another area that didn’t bear thinking about. There had been a kind of flush on all that hard, naked flesh, as if its owner had spent a long night of heated lovemaking. And then on the hill when he had—

You have to stop this. You’re in no position to be intrigued by any man, much less some steel-eyed stranger who seems to resent you, maybe just because you’ve dared to intrude on his privacy.

Madeline’s mind continued to question that privacy, wondering if it had a connection with the harsh lines of suffering around his bold mouth.

Enough. Forget about him.

Impatient with herself, she slammed a hand against the plunger that cut off the shower portion of the tub. She left the water running in the tub itself, however, to wash away the soap and scum.

Her cosmetics bag wasn’t on the sink counter when she stepped out from behind the shower curtain. She then remembered having placed it on the chair just outside the bathroom door. Wrapping herself in her terry-cloth robe, she opened the door to retrieve the bag—

And caught Mitchell Hawke in the act of examining the contents of her satchel.

For a moment their gazes met, hers shocked, his wearing a challenge without apology. Then, outraged by his invasion, Madeline swiftly crossed the room and snatched the velvet pouch he was holding out of his hand.

She lashed out at him furiously. “If you have an explanation, I don’t want to hear it, because nothing you say can—”

“Oh, I’m not going to try to make excuses for myself. Why should I, when I’m supposed to be responsible for you?”

He made it sound as if he was her jailer. She could have smacked him for his smugness. “And that entitles you to look through my belongings?”

“Maybe it does, when it turns up something illicit.”

Madeline frowned at him. “What are you talking about?”

“Those.” He nodded at the articles strewn across the bed. “A hacksaw, blades, hammers, files. And then there’s the matter of that little bag you’re hugging. I saw the stones inside it. They must be worth a fortune. What would you say all of that adds up to, Madeline? Would you say it adds up to…oh, I don’t know, maybe a case of safecracking?”

She stared at him, wondering if she ought to laugh or smack him, after all. “I see. You think I’m involved in some form of jewel robbing.”

“Aren’t you?”

“I don’t know what branch of law enforcement you practiced back in San Francisco, but you couldn’t have been very good at it.” Opening the pouch, she emptied its shining contents on the bed. “This,” she said, picking up one of the stones, “is carnelian. And that’s a tigereye. The blue ones are lapis lazuli, the milky ones moonstones and opals. All of the others, including the garnets and amethysts, fall into the same category. There isn’t a precious gem in the whole collection. Now, would you like to know about the tools?” She scooped up the three hammers and held them out. “This is a chasing hammer, this one here a raising hammer, and this is called a planishing hammer. I seriously doubt that any of them, or all the rest in the satchel, could get you inside a safe.”

Mitch said nothing for a moment. She watched his gaze travel from the bed to the table beside it. Next to the empty orange juice glass was the enameled pendant she had worn that first night. His eyes came back to her. She saw understanding in them, and something more. For the first time he actually looked contrite.

“You made the necklace thing yourself, huh?”

“And designed it, yes.”

“Okay, so I made a mistake, and I apologize for it. But if all this is just about a hobby—”

“It isn’t a hobby. I’m very serious about my jewelry making. I’m good, and one day I expect to make a living from it.”

He had a look of surprise on his face, as if he thought such a pursuit uncharacteristic of the woman he believed she was. Obviously he didn’t know her, any more than she really knew him.

“All right, not a hobby. Then, why were you so secretive about the satchel?”

“I wasn’t being secretive, I was being protective. My tools are valuable, and I can’t afford to risk them. It’s bad enough I’ll have to replace all the larger equipment I had to leave behind in San Francisco. Do you know what a good rolling mill costs?”

“No idea. Here, give me the pouch. I made the mess, I’ll pick it all up and put it back.”

His hand came out with the intention of closing around the pouch and taking it from her. Madeline, who was holding the pouch by the drawstring, wasn’t ready to forgive him. She started to jerk the pouch back out of his reach. She wasn’t certain whether what happened next was deliberate or merely an accident. She knew only that his hand was suddenly grasping not the velvet bag but her own hand.

Jolted by his touch, she tugged against his grip. She expected him to release her. He didn’t. He went on clinging to her, his strong hand searing her flesh. Their eyes met, and she was instantly lost in his mesmerizing gaze, raw with desire. She stopped resisting, almost stopped breathing.

They stood like that for what felt like a long time. Then slowly, insistently, he drew her toward him until she was resting against the hard wall of his chest. Madeline wanted to believe that when she lifted her head and parted her mouth, it was to voice her objection. But she would never be sure of that, either. Never know whether, instead, she issued a silent invitation he was immediately prepared to answer.