No Ordinary Man

Her cheeks flushed very slightly as Rob met her eyes and held her gaze, wondering if she could see past his disguise, wondering if somehow he’d slipped and given himself away. She looked away, embarrassed or nervous. Damn straight she should be nervous around him.

“With my schedule, I don’t have time for anything besides work,” he added, hoping she’d pick up his double meaning. He didn’t have time for anything else, especially romance. He couldn’t risk the sweet intimacy of a lover’s quiet questions or the expectations of shared secrets and whispered confessions.

Jess took another sip of her drink, removing a stray drop of tea from her lips with the tip of her tongue. It was sweetly, unconsciously sexy on her part, and Rob felt his body respond. Man, it had been too long…

“No hobbies?” she asked, one elegant eyebrow arching upward. “No clog dancing classes?”

Rob had to laugh at that. “No,” he said. “Sad to say, I had to give it up.”

“Music, then,” Jess prompted. “You must have an interest in music—I’ve seen you at some of the folk festivals, and at some of my gigs. You even brought along that friend of yours—Frank. I appreciated your helping pad the audience.”

Rob nodded. “I like music,” he said. That was true, but he’d really gone to those festivals and concerts expressly to see Jess sing. “But I never brought Frank. We’re not friends—more like acquaintances. We both happened to show up at one of the folk festivals and we got to talking—we both work at Epco.”

Jess nodded, taking a sip of her iced tea. “How about movies?” she asked. “Kelsey and I saw you a couple of times at the Gulf Gate Mall theater.”

Now this was something he could talk about. Rob smiled and let himself relax a little. But only slightly.

“We love going to movies,” she continued, pushing a stray curl back behind one ear. “We go to everything a six-year-old can see, that is. I’ve become a Disney expert.”

“I’m more into Pulp Fiction than Pocahontas myself,” Rob admitted. “I’m a Spielberg fan. And I like James Cameron, too. He did the Terminator movies, remember those?”

“Aha.” Jess smiled at him as she took another sip of her iced tea. “You do have a hobby, if you watch movies enough to be a fan of a specific director.”

“I don’t know, it’s slightly more passive than clog dancing,” Rob said, smiling back into her warm brown eyes. God, she was pretty.

“So is stamp collecting.”

“You win,” he conceded. “I guess I have a hobby.”

“We also saw you in Books-A-Million,” she said. “Buying a stack of books about two feet high.”

“I also like to read. Fiction, mostly.”

“But I didn’t see you move in boxes and boxes of books,” Jess said, resting her chin on the upturned palm of her hand as she continued to gaze across the table at him.

Rob shrugged. “I don’t usually live in a place big enough to keep bookshelves. I read ’em, then donate ’em to a local nursing home.”

Her big dark eyes softened. “That’s sweet.”

God, he could lose himself in those eyes. He could just fall in and disappear forever, drowning, suffocating, pulling her down with him. They’d both simply vanish, never to resurface.

“You moved down here from up north,” Jess said, wondering if he could hear the breathlessness of her voice, wondering if he knew it was caused by the way he was looking at her. “Didn’t you?”

Across the table, Rob nodded, pulling his gaze away from her and giving his iced tea another spoonful of sugar and another stir. She’d been wrong about him, Jess realized. She’d thought he was shy, but there was nothing in those brown eyes that suggested shyness. In fact, his gaze was confident and steady. Rob Carpenter wasn’t shy at all. Just…polite. Reserved. Quiet. And as attracted to her as she was to him.

“Where are you from?” she asked.

“All over the place,” he answered, glancing up at her and giving her a ghost of his earlier smile.

Could he be any more vague? Jess took another sip of her tea. “I grew up here in Florida,” she said. “Out on Siesta Key. My parents still have a beach house there. I use it sometimes when I’ve got a gig at the Pelican Club.”

He didn’t comment or offer any information on the location of his own childhood. He just watched her.

“My folks are up in Montana right now,” Jess continued, more to fill the silence than because she thought he’d be interested in the whereabouts of her parents. “They’re retired and doing the RV thing. You know, the enormous silver cylinder on wheels? Camping without the nasty outdoors part?”

That got another genuine smile out of him. And a response. “They’re in Montana, huh? It’s pretty out there—different from Florida.”

“I’ve never been to Montana,” she admitted. “Have you?”

He nodded, yes, but didn’t elaborate. She’d asked another faintly personal question that he wasn’t going to answer at any length. Apparently, he was willing to converse about superficial things but he didn’t like to talk about himself. But then, to her surprise, he actually volunteered some personal information. “I lived out west for about a year and a half.”

“So you really are from all over the place,” Jess said. “Where did you grow up?”

His smile faded quickly, but he still gazed at her. There was something else in his eyes now. It wasn’t amusement. It had a harder edge. Maybe it was alertness. Or was it wariness? Why should a question about his childhood make him wary?

“Jersey,” he finally replied. And as if he somehow knew that he was being too vague again, he added, “Near New York City.”

“Really?” she said. “Where exactly?”

“Just across the Hudson River.”

So much for “exactly.” “Does your family still live up there?”

“I don’t have a family.” He was still watching her.

“I’m sorry,” she murmured, instantly backing down.

“I’m not.” He said it so matter-of-factly, it took her a moment for his words to make sense. How could he not be sorry that he didn’t have a family?

The first thought that occurred to Jess was that Rob Carpenter didn’t want her to know the name of the town he’d grown up in because he’d done in his entire family and was now living under an alias, on the lam. It was a thought that would have made Doris proud. It was also ridiculous. Wasn’t it…?

The man was clearly hiding something. Wasn’t he? Or was he simply a private person, unwilling to talk about personal things to a near stranger?

Rob gazed across the table at Jess. She was watching him steadily, warily. He knew he made her nervous, he could see it in her eyes. But he could also see her attraction to him, too. It simmered between them like something living, ready to devour them both.

He knew without a doubt that if he reached across the table and put his hand over hers, she wouldn’t pull her own hand away. And he could only imagine where that one touch would lead. But that was part of the problem. He could imagine. He could see it quite clearly.

Rob pushed his chair back from the table and stood up. “I should get going. Thanks for the drink.”

Jess stood up, too. “Feel free to drop by anytime,” she said. “Kelsey and I are home most evenings.” She shoved her hands into the front pockets of her jeans shorts, a sweetly nervous gesture that exposed another half inch of her flat, tanned stomach. “We’re neighbors now. I hope we’re going to be friends.”

Friends. Rob put his hand on the screen door’s handle. He and beautiful Jess Baxter were going to be friends. He couldn’t help but wonder just how friendly she intended to be.

Damn, he shouldn’t have moved in here like this. For Jess’s sake, he should have gone far, far away. Because he knew damn well he wasn’t going to be able to resist her. If he was reading her right, and she was attracted to him, he didn’t stand a chance at keeping his distance. If she made even the smallest attempt to seduce him, he’d surrender. He was strong, but he wasn’t that strong. And where would that leave him? Where would it leave Jess?

Rob stepped out onto the porch, shutting the door behind him. “Thanks again.”

He didn’t wait for her to respond. He turned and headed for his apartment door, down at the other end of the deck.