Operation Hero's Watch

This time she didn’t smile. “I see.” She looked hurt.

Nice work, Cahill. You’ve been in her house maybe three hours, and you’ve already hurt her feelings. Twice.

He hadn’t intended that. But then, he seemed to have the knack to upset women, so maybe he should have expected it.

Then again, given his weird reaction to her, maybe some distance was a good idea. She’d become the hottest thing he’d been close to in a long time, but he was here to help her, not lust after her.

They finished the meal in a silence that wasn’t quite strained but certainly wasn’t the pleasant way they’d started, even with the discovery he’d made outside hanging over them. He helped her clean up after, during which the only conversation was about the task at hand.

In a very businesslike manner she showed him the laundry room and told him to have at it. Still regretting having hurt her feelings, while facing the fact that he was in no way ready to talk about what his life had become since they’d left town, he ventured into Cory’s old room.

She hadn’t been kidding—there was stuff piled everywhere, and some of it made him step carefully. But he managed to dig a pair of sweatpants out of a bottom drawer. They would do while he was washing his own stuff, he thought.

He took a shower, quick and merely warm because he didn’t know what the hot water situation was. Then he pulled on the sweats. He was a little taller than Cory, but also leaner, so that made up for the length. They were a bit loose, so he tightened the drawstring a little, then grabbed up his clothes from the floor. He walked back to the guest room—Cassie’s old room—added the ones from the pack to his pile and dumped them all in the washing machine. They’d all been washed so often he didn’t worry about anything fading; they were already there.

When the machine was going, he turned to leave the compact but workable laundry space. And nearly ran into Cassie, who was standing in the doorway.

She was staring at him. And blushing.

Instinctively he glanced down, thinking he hadn’t pulled that drawstring tight enough. But while they were riding a little low, the essentials were still covered. And it wasn’t like Cassie hadn’t seen his bare chest before. True, it had been years ago, but still...

“I just thought...without a phone...you might need this. I moved it out of that room to the living room when that one died, but it can go back for now.” Only then did he realize she was holding a small electric alarm clock. “It doesn’t take up much room on the nightstand. I know you’re more of a play-it-by-ear kind of guy, but—”

“Not anymore,” he said, thinking it sounded almost like she was nervous. She didn’t usually jabber, and that’s what that flood of words sounded like. “Thanks.”

He took the clock. Odd, that little jolt as their fingers touched. It had been raining far too much for any static electricity to be lingering. But she pulled her hand back as if she’d felt it, too. He was still pondering it as he walked into the guest room, plugged the clock in, set the time and put it on the nightstand.

Yes, his days of dealing with time casually were long over.

* * *

Cassidy leaned against her closed bedroom door, breathing easily for maybe the first time since Jace had appeared on her doorstep. She wanted to close her eyes, but she didn’t dare, because she knew perfectly well if she did all she would see was that image of him, half-naked, Cory’s sweats slung low on his hips. That broad, strong chest, the flat, ribbed abdomen, the lean hips...he looked like an escapee from a fitness magazine.

Apparently even as a kid she’d had good taste, because he was still the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen. And she didn’t need to close her eyes, apparently, because it was playing back in her mind as vividly as if she were still standing there, gaping at him.

So much for breathing easy.

If she kept this up, he was going to be very sorry he’d come to help. And she’d best remember that was the only reason he was here—because she’d made that panicked phone call. If he’d wanted to come on his own, he’d always known where she was. Jace was here to keep a promise he’d made, probably never expecting it to be called in. It would be very shabby of her to start drooling on him.

She heard a dog bark and for a second wondered if it was Cutter. But she instantly discarded the thought; that yippy sound had never issued from that dog’s throat. More likely it was Mrs. Alston’s little terrier, down at the end of the block toward the thick grove of trees they’d played in as kids, where the old cabin was.

Next door to Jace’s old house.

And there she was, right back at the subject she was trying so very hard to avoid.

She bustled about, getting ready for bed with much more concentration than the task required, or than she normally gave it. She had the rueful thought that her life could never be normal with Jace just down the hall.

It was a long night, without much sleep accomplished. And she was up even before Jace, who, true to his word, was up at five. She knew, because she heard the faint creak of the floorboard just inside the door of that bedroom, a creak she knew all too well from when it had been her room and she’d tried to sneak out without her parents knowing.

When she was dressed, she went out and put coffee on. She was going to need it. A lot of it. A glance down the hall had told her the light was on in the guest room—she determinedly thought of it that way, not as her room, and spared a moment to be thankful she’d replaced her old, rather girly white bedroom set with something more neutral, since the idea of Jace sleeping in what had once been her bed was far too unsettling, no matter that she hadn’t slept in it in years, and God, even her thoughts were rambling now...

Thankfully, when Jace came out, he was fully dressed in jeans and a long-sleeved henley shirt. They both looked a bit worse for wear, but they were now freshly washed. She thought again of how people paid a lot of money to buy jeans that looked exactly like those, worn and broken in. But she’d be willing to bet Jace’s were that way genuinely, that he’d earned every hole and fray.