‘So, what can I do for you, Mr Fraser?’ she challenged tersely.
With her painfully thin frame clothed in a figure-hugging black tee shirt and faded blue denims, and at only a couple of inches over five feet tall, Casey Bridges had all the appearance of a bantam hen aligning itself against a hawk, Xander decided ruefully. Her soft blonde hair was styled wispily about her temples and nape, and her beautiful heart-shaped face was dominated by dark green eyes that did absolutely nothing to dispel that illusion of fragility.
And she looked exhausted… Even as he thought it, she swayed slightly on her feet.
Abruptly, Xander stood up. ‘Sit down,’ he commanded, ‘before you collapse.’
She obviously bridled at the order, but then did as he’d said. Perhaps she realised he was fully capable of picking her up and sitting her in the chair himself, if she refused…
The chair, the coffee table and the lamp were the only furniture in the room. He had noted that with a frown when he’d arrived earlier. There was no television in the room, either, and when he had taken a quick look around the rest of the house he had found that to be no better. Casey Bridges seemed to have taken the ‘minimalist’ effect to a barren degree.
Or else—as his daughter Lauren had already hinted—there was another explanation altogether for such austerity…
Xander’s eyes narrowed as he registered just how fragilely thin the woman before him was. He noted the shadows beneath those dark green eyes, the hollows beneath her cheekbones, and the skin on her hands and wrists that was almost translucent.
‘Exactly what’s been going on here, Casey?’ he asked, his blue gaze uncomfortably penetrating now. ‘Where were you this evening?’ He had thought she must be out with friends—possibly even a boyfriend, as her husband had left her a year ago—but she hardly had the look of a woman returning from a pleasant evening out.
She gave a firm shake of her head as she seemed to regain some of her composure. ‘That really isn’t any of your business, Mr Fraser.’ She stood up. ‘I should go up and check on Josh. I still can’t believe—Has he woken up? Is he aware that Hannah has left?’ she asked anxiously.
‘Josh is fine,’ Xander assured her. ‘He did wake up once, but when I told him I was Lauren’s daddy he wasn’t concerned. He and Lauren have become friends—did you know that?’
Yes, she did know that. Ironically, Josh and Lauren had become friends during the eight months when Sam and Chloe had lived together, their visits to their individual parents often coinciding. Casey also knew that Josh had missed seeing the little girl since Chloe and Sam’s deaths four months ago.
‘Yes, I believe they have—did,’ she corrected. ‘If you would just like to wait here while I go and check on Josh, we can—continue this conversation when I come back down.’ Her gaze didn’t quite meet his before she turned and left the room, to run up the stairs to Josh’s small bedroom above with a vague feeling of relief.
She had to admit to finding Xander Fraser’s powerful presence and fiercely intelligent blue eyes slightly overwhelming in the small confines of the three-bedroomed house that she had lived in first with her parents, then with Sam and Josh, and now just with Josh. The house she was determined to hold on to if humanly possible.
Quite what sort of conversation she and Xander Fraser were going to have she had no idea, but he obviously considered it important enough for him to have gone to the trouble of finding out where she lived.
She very much doubted Xander’s ex-wife would have told him. Casey and Xander’s previous two meetings had been when they’d happened to call at the same time to collect Josh and Lauren after one of their weekend visits to the house Sam and Chloe had so briefly shared. The dazzlingly beautiful Chloe had had no choice but to introduce the two of them, but her hypnotic blue eyes had been narrowed on them watchfully as she’d done so.
Casey hadn’t liked the sophisticated but brittle Chloe Fraser; she knew she wouldn’t have liked her even if she hadn’t been ‘the other woman’ in Casey’s marriage break-up. The two of them had absolutely nothing in common—except Sam, of course.
Only Chloe Fraser’s beauty had been such that her more negative traits obviously hadn’t repulsed the golden and handsome Sam, or the darkly brooding and immensely rich Xander Fraser.
But the fact that Chloe and Sam were now both dead—killed four months ago when the private jet they’d been travelling in had crashed—meant that Josh and Lauren’s visits to them had obviously stopped, too. And it should have meant that Casey would never have reason to see Xander Fraser again, either.
So why on earth was he downstairs in her sitting room, obviously waiting to talk to her?
XANDER became aware of Casey’s presence behind him as he stood in the kitchen. ‘You looked like you could do with a cup,’ he explained, as he turned and saw her brows raised at the two steaming mugs of coffee he had just made. ‘How was Josh?’ he prompted, when he noted the pallor of those hollow cheeks.
The shadows remained in her deep green eyes but she smiled. Deep grooves appeared beside the fullness of her lips, as if humour was something that hadn’t come easily to her recently.
And Xander doubted that it had. To Chloe, he knew, the seduction of the man who had come to their home as a landscape gardener had all been a game. A game she had played more times than even Xander was aware of. Or cared about. Although in Sam Bridges’ case Chloe had very quickly decided that she wanted to take their relationship to the next level—so the two of them had left their partners and set up home together.
The fact that at the same time she had robbed this woman of her husband, and six-year-old Josh of his father, wouldn’t have been of interest to the spoilt and wilful Chloe. She had seen something she wanted, and taken it without hesitation.
‘Fast asleep,’ Casey acknowledged ruefully. Then she flushed slightly. ‘Er—would you like a biscuit or something to go with that coffee?’
As he had checked all the cupboards in the kitchen while she was upstairs, and found them all bare—just like Old Mother Hubbard’s in the nursery rhyme—Xander didn’t hold out much hope of there being anything for him to actually have.
‘No, thanks—I ate earlier,’ he said easily. ‘Shall we go through to the sitting room, or would you prefer to stand in here and talk?’ Either way, only one of them would be able to sit!
Once again Xander wondered what the hell had been going on in this woman’s life these last four months. There was no food in the house, and very little furniture, either, and Casey Bridges looked as if a strong gust of wind would knock her off her feet.
‘Here is fine.’ Casey took one of the steaming mugs of coffee from him, her hand carefully avoiding coming into contact with his as she did so.
It was ridiculous, she told herself impatiently, to be so aware of this man. So physically aware of him. But there was no denying that her hands were trembling slightly with that awareness.
Perhaps she was just missing having sex?
Surely not! The physical side of her marriage to Sam hadn’t been that good in the first place, and had been completely nonexistent for the last six months they’d been together. No, it had to be Xander Fraser himself who had awakened all these sensual longings within her…
Her mouth tightened at the knowledge. ‘What did you want to talk to me about—?’
‘That can wait,’ he cut in abruptly. ‘First I would like you to tell me why there’s hardly any furniture in the house,