Still, it wasn’t a discussion she was looking forward to.
A few minutes later, Lindsay strolled through the kitchen. “Morning, Dolly.”
“Mornin’, child. Want some breakfast?”
Lindsay kissed her on the cheek. “Not until after I exercise.”
Dolly snorted, her black eyes looking Lindsay up and down. “That’s the last thing you should be doing. You need some meat on those scrawny bones.”
“Don’t start. Exercise keeps me sane.”
Dolly merely sniffed this time, but kept her silence.
“So where’s Daddy? Has he been down?”
“Hours ago, or so it seems. He’s having coffee with some of his men friends.”
“That’s a good sign.”
Dolly positioned her hands on her hips. “You should worry more about yourself than him, you know?”
“I know.”
Lindsay smiled, walked out the door, and immediately wavered. For a late June morning it was hot and muggy, a rarity. The eighties was the norm. She shuddered to think what the remainder of the summer would bring. She considered returning to her room and putting on shorts. But she didn’t. It wouldn’t hurt her to perspire; if nothing else, it would clean out her pores.
Suddenly Mitch Rawlins came to mind, and her good mood instantly disappeared. Still, she couldn’t stop herself from wondering if he ever broke a sweat. Somehow, she doubted it. After all, he had a crew to do the manual labor.
That was why, when she rounded the corner of the big house and saw him in the flesh, she pulled up short, barely able to keep her mouth from flying open.
She was shocked enough at having come upon him unexpectedly, but the fact that he wasn’t wearing a shirt made matters worse. And droplets of sweat were flying off him as he dug a shovel into the rich earth.
She stood mute and swallowed hard. What to do? For some inexplicable reason, she wanted to turn and run. Yet she wanted to stay put, too. The latter won out, especially when he stopped what he was doing and faced her.
“Mornin’,” he said in a low, mocking tone, though he was looking at her with something akin to a fluid passion that seemed to link them.
“Hi,” Lindsay responded in a breathless voice, while her eyes—half wild, half afraid—stared greedily at him.
Was her face red? Probably. She couldn’t stop staring, totally captivated by his six-foot-plus frame, her gaze homing in on that bare chest matted with dark crisp hair that curled its way down to his navel, stopping at the waistband of his jeans.
And though she had no intention of taking her gaze any farther, she did, then jerked her eyes upward again, warmth climbing into her cheeks.
Heat boiled inside her suddenly, and her insides felt scalded. Jerking her gaze away from him, she schooled her features to show none of the turmoil raging inside her.
“You’re Lindsay Newman,” he said in a low, easy-sounding voice.
Lindsay forced her eyes back on him. “And you’re Mitch Rawlins.”
He gave her another mocking smile at the same time that he took several fingers and wiped a thick layer of sweat off his forehead. Besides having a billboard body, his face was easy on the eyes, though not handsome in the true sense of the word. His features were too strong and his beard too heavy, giving the impression that he needed a shave, which in itself was a bizarre turn-on.
His eyes were a dark blue, complementing his dark hair, which had a gray streak running through it, another turn-on. While his looks had certainly garnered her attention, it was the fact that he was actually working the ground himself that upped her curiosity another notch.
“Is there anything I can do for you?” he asked, interrupting the growing silence.
His words were pointed, which boiled her blood again, but for a different reason. “I can’t think of anything,” she said, forcing a casualness to her tone that she didn’t feel.
“Well, then you won’t mind if I get back to work.”
His straight-from-the-hip directness drew both her anger and her admiration. “What are you going to plant there?”
He paused, raised his head, and though his lips twitched, she couldn’t say he was smiling.
“Do you really care?”
This time that directness hit a raw nerve. Nonetheless, she didn’t blink. “Not really.”
The corners of his sculptured lips rose in a real smile. “Didn’t think so.”
Even if she’d wanted to move, she couldn’t have. The power of that smile held her feet to the ground. “I guess I’ll see you around,” she finally managed to say.
He leaned on his shovel. “Probably will.”
She watched the sweat trickle down his belly before she lifted her eyes to his. Though the contact was brief, it was lethal.
“Have a good day, you hear?”
His drawling words broke the spell and jolted her into action. She turned and took off, her heart beating faster than her feet could possibly run.
Five
“Ouch!”
Lindsay figured Cooper and Dolly had heard her muttered groan of pain. She’d been in the small office in her bedroom suite all morning, going over her upcoming charity commitments. But every time she moved, she winced with pain, either silently or out loud.
Her shins were a mess. In fact, she had shin splints worse than she’d ever had them. She had no one to blame but herself for this predicament. Following her less than satisfying encounter with Mitch Rawlins, she had started to jog, thinking it would work off some of her frustration.
The problem was, she got carried away and took her stress management too far. She ended up jogging six miles instead of the three she normally did. Now, two days later, she was still paying for her over-industrious whim. Still, it had made her feel better, even though thoughts of Mitch Rawlins had run alongside her.
What was it going to take to strike him from her mind? Right off, she couldn’t think of anything. Disgusted, Lindsay turned back to the computer screen, to the words she’d typed. If she wanted to remove them, all she had to do was hit the delete key.
Voilà! Gone. Poof. Like magic. Too bad she couldn’t do the same with her erotic thoughts of Mitch Rawlins.
If only Peter attracted her in that way, then maybe there would be hope for them. But there was nothing about him that turned her on. The few times he’d kissed her, she’d felt nothing.
It wasn’t that she hadn’t tried. She had—admittedly more for her father than for herself, which in itself was wrong. Nonetheless, a future with Peter, for whatever reason, was not in the cards. But that didn’t mean she didn’t want a man in her life, though the thought of deeply caring about someone else and the responsibility that carried sent her into a panic.
She also panicked when she asked herself a hard question. After the real-life nightmares she’d lived through, could she ever sustain a lasting relationship with a man? What if… No! She wouldn’t sabotage herself like that—not when she’d been doing so well lately, especially now that she had a project in the making that she felt passionate about.
Speaking of passion… Her tummy suddenly flip-flopped as once again her mind betrayed her. She wondered if Mitch was married. She hadn’t seen a ring, but that didn’t mean anything. With luck, he would be attached, which would put the brakes on her thoughts as nothing