She ushered him straight into the living room. On his first pass through her house, he’d been too focused on Ariel’s shoe to pay much attention. Now what he saw brought him up short. The room screamed of loneliness.
A stack of cartons lined one wall, waiting to be unpacked. Against an opposite wall, several stacks of books eight or ten high formed an irregular border on the floor. The scuffed hardwood floor had no rugs; the drapes looked as if they’d hung at the windows for fifty years, and pale squares on the empty walls showed where someone else had hung their pictures. Two mismatched armchairs bracketed a hearth where a fire crackled, the only settled aspect in the room.
The intensity of her isolation tightened around his lungs like a clamp. When Kendra died, he’d felt the way this room looked.
“Can I get you something to drink? Coffee? Juice? White wine?”
He wanted more than ever to know her better. “You don’t need to go to any trouble.”
“I have water on tap, orange juice in the refrigerator, and the coffee’s decaf but fairly fresh. I’d have to open the wine.” She didn’t smile, but she recited the options with a graciousness that inclined him to believe she didn’t regret her decision to let him come in.
Coffee seemed too businesslike. Water too mundane. Wine too intimate. “Orange juice, please.”
She wore jeans, a long pale sweater that molded to her waist and hips, and sneakers without socks. He added defenseless to his expanding impression of her—still as remote as she’d seemed that afternoon, but fragile rather than hard.
She served the juice in heavy deep-bowled goblets with short stems and thin gold rims. Crystal, for all he knew, and so inconsistent with the sorry state of her furnishings that he found himself staring at her.
She drew herself straighter. “Please, sit down.”
A little embarrassed, he sat and offered a grin he hoped would convey the favorable feelings he had for her. She curled into her chair with one leg under her and the other knee to her chest. He couldn’t decide whether she looked relaxed or defensive. Even the way she watched him over the rim of her goblet could be either speculative or cautious.
“Maybe it’s time we introduced ourselves. I’m Riley Corbett.”
“Margo Haynes.” She sipped her juice, then lowered her goblet with a slight smile. The firelight flickered over her face and highlighted her hair. She looked delicate and beautiful—and younger than she’d seemed that afternoon. It must have been the stark sunlight that had made him think she knew how to deal with life head-on.
He forced his attention back to the conversation. “I’d like to explain about this afternoon.”
“There’s no need.”
“I think there is. I lost my housekeeper a couple of weeks ago, and haven’t been able to replace her. Without a sitter, I try to be at the school when Ariel gets out, but sometimes I don’t make it by the bell. I’ve explained to her how important it is to wait until I get there, but she’s got a mind of her own. This isn’t the first time I’ve had to hunt her down.”
To keep the edge of anxiety from his voice as much as to relieve the sudden dryness in his mouth, he drank deeply. In the pause, he realized Margo Haynes was staring past him, at something more in her mind than in the room.
The lull only lasted a second before she blinked it away. “I can only guess how much you must worry.”
“Yeah.” But it didn’t seem like a guess. Somewhere in her tone or in her expressions, he sensed she knew the same concern. “I’d never forgive myself if anything ever happened to her.”
“No parent would.” She met his eyes over the rim of her goblet.
Something in her eyes rippled across the room and spread warmth across his skin. Not humor. Not invitation. Not even empathy. Unable to identify it, he let it slide over him like a breeze. He’d come for his daughter’s sake, and he’d expected his daughter to be their only common ground. “Ariel really liked visiting you today.”
“So did I. Very much.”
“You gave. her something I didn’t know she needed.”
A brief hesitation played across Margo’s features and lengthened into a pause before she spoke. “Maybe it was a fair trade.”
“Her mother died two years ago. It hasn’t been easy for either of us.”
“No.”
In the murmur of that single word Riley recognized the landscape of longing. The dark, empty paths he’d traveled since Kendra’s death had taken him to places he never wanted to visit again. Reminded of them by this woman’s tone, he searched her face.
She spoke before he could think of the right thing to say. “I wanted to read you the riot act for letting her wander around alone.”
He remembered. “I’d say you had a pretty good start on one. What slowed you down?”
With a debut of a smile that shimmered too briefly, she lifted her glass and met his eyes over the rim. “A strong self-preservation instinct.”
With a self-conscious laugh, he settled back and propped one ankle on the opposite knee. “Sorry about that.”
“Actually, your worry reassured me. I didn’t like to think of her straying around like that because nobody cared enough to be sure she didn’t.”
True concern for his daughter radiated from Margo Haynes, although Riley couldn’t say how. But she had an intensity—interest, warmth, something--that he hadn’t gotten from even those friends who’d helped him fill in the gaps after Kendra died. Or more recently, since Mrs. Whittaker left.
Far stronger than the brief impact of her smile, it resonated through him with an almost sensuous cadence, in an undertone like the low thrum of a city heard from a distance. Determined to ignore whatever it was, he stretched out his legs and polished off his juice. “So, what brought you to Laramie? Work?”
She shook her head and shifted her eyes to the fire. “The university library.” Her smile stayed fixed, but the vibration between them changed, not in speed but in timbre. No longer smooth, it took on a raspy, discordant quality.
In a lifetime of meeting people, confronting them, interrogating them, rescuing them and soothing them, Riley had never experienced anything like the rhythm pulsing between them. He wanted to know its cause, understand it, maybe explore it.
“Librarian?”
She shook her head. “Writer.”
“I guess writers need access to a good library.”
“It helps us keep our facts straight.”
As an outdoor type guy, he couldn’t imagine a job that could only be done while sitting down. The amount of desk work he had to do pushed the limits of his tolerance. “And where did you move from?”
“Texas.” The way she kept her eyes fixed on the fire made him wonder what she saw—how far away and how long ago. “I came here from Texas.”
“Just in time to enjoy winter in Wyoming.”
She shrugged. “I was tired of the heat.”
In the firelight, her eyes glinted, but he couldn’t tell if the sparkle was a trick of the blaze or came from within. It disconcerted him not to be able to read her. Interpreting people was a big part of his job, and he was good at it. He had a sixth sense that worked about ninety-five percent of the time. He could usually tell if someone was lying, or planning to pull a fast one, or sucking up, or scared, or willing to cooperate. He got none of those impressions from her.
The lack of tension in her expression made him wonder what the hell caused that unfamiliar vibration that continued between them. It had to be coming from