He flipped through the stack of canvases, remembering the last night he’d seen her, the night of high school graduation. She’d been desperate to get out of town then, desperate to get away from her mother. Desperate enough to offer herself to him as a way out.
He cleared his throat as that particular memory took its effect on him. On more than one occasion he’d regretted the necessity of telling her no that night. No to taking her with him, and no to taking her to bed. But it didn’t take a genius to know he’d made the right decision. Still, if things had been different…
If things had been different, she wouldn’t have given up and resigned herself to a lonely life in the back of nowhere. And he wouldn’t be here cleaning up after the mess of a drunken bum.
He let the stack of canvases fall back against the wall, sick of his own thoughts. It was the real reason he’d come over, he reminded to himself. He was tired of his own company. And Becca was one hell of an improvement.
She didn’t hear him step up to the kitchen door. She stood at the counter slicing mushrooms, humming softly to herself. Her slender bare feet poked out beneath the shapeless sweats, and she reached up to brush away a strand of hair that had fallen and lay at her neck.
Colt stepped up to her and pulled at the pencil that held her hair up. “What’s this—uh-oh,” he said as her hair came tumbling down. “Sorry.”
Her hair fell, and his hand fisted loosely in it. Becca looked at him over her shoulder, and for a moment their eyes met, and held. Colt rubbed the slippery strands of hair between his fingers, then shifted his hand to cup the back of her neck. The cords of it felt fine and delicate beneath his fingers. Her eyes grew wide—dark green pools that looked bigger now that they weren’t hidden behind glasses. For an intense flash, Colt remembered what it had been like to kiss her, to have her on his lap, offering him everything. His eyes drifted down to her lips and watched them part almost imperceptibly.
Then she drew away, smoothing back her hair. “That’s okay,” she said. She fumbled with it, then finally let it drift loose down her back. She looked at the counter, the piles of chopped vegetables in front of her, anywhere but at him. “I hope omelettes are okay.”
“Anything sounds good to me right now,” he said. “Been a while since I’ve had a decent meal at all.”
He leaned back against the doorjamb and crossed his arms over his chest. What the hell had that been about?
Becca continued to move around the kitchen, chattering as if the moment hadn’t happened, chopping her vegetables. He hadn’t meant to scare her. But then, he hadn’t really meant to touch her. He had to admit, though, it had felt nice.
The last time he’d seen Becca, she’d been sitting on his lap, kissing him almost past the point of no return. It was hard to look at her now and not think of that night. He had assumed all these years that she wouldn’t remember; she’d been pretty drunk. But the look in her eye had him wondering.
He picked up the hunk of cheddar she’d set out, and the grater in the dish drainer, and began grating cheese into a bowl. “So, I thought you were going to Paris?”
“Who told you that?”
“You did, graduation night. You said you were going to New York to art school, then to Paris, because that was where all artists went.”
Becca made a show of concentrating on the eggs she was beating. She poured them into the hot skillet and tilted the pan to let the eggs spread evenly. “I said a lot of things that night. People do that when they’re drunk. They blather.”
“Sure they do,” he allowed. “And sometimes being drunk makes them relax enough to really speak the truth.”
“I wouldn’t know. That was the first and last time I ever enjoyed that particular experience— Do you like mushrooms?”
He nodded, and she sprinkled them in, along with a bit of chopped ham. She took the bowl of cheese from him and dribbled cheese in, too.
“So, what happened?”
“You know what happened. I didn’t get accepted into the art school. I believe I told you that.”
“Yeah, I remember.”
She looked at him then, and her face went still. “You do remember, don’t you. I was hoping you didn’t.”
“It’s not the kind of night a guy is likely to forget.” He couldn’t help the grin that started to creep up.
She mumbled something and turned back to her omelette, folding it over with a spatula.
“I figured you wouldn’t remember,” he said. “You were pretty wasted.”
“You don’t know women that well, Colt. Our most humiliating moments are the ones we remember most clearly. Wasted or not.”
She slid the omelette onto a plate and returned to work on the next, not looking at him.
“It wasn’t humiliating,” he said. “At least, it shouldn’t have been.”
“Come on, Colt. I acted like a fool.” She faced him, one hand gripping the spatula, the other on her hip. “I practically begged you to take me away with you. And I—I…” She sighed and turned back to the pan. “You know what I did.”
Oh, yeah. He knew.
He stepped up and took the plate she held out to him. He wanted to touch her again, but got the feeling he’d get a fork speared in his hand if he tried. Instead he rooted around until he found the silverware drawer, and carried two forks and knives to the small table in the dining room.
Becca followed with a tray containing her own plate, a smaller one with a stack of toast, two glasses and a pitcher of orange juice. Her face was flushed, but he didn’t think it came from standing over a hot omelette pan. He decided the gentlemanly thing would be to change the subject.
“The house looks nice. You’ve done a lot with it.”
“Thanks.”
“Did you do all the work yourself?”
“What I could. I had this window enlarged, and I hired Pete Huckaby to do it. He moved to Aloma after you left, I think. He just finished a few months ago. And there was some plumbing that needed to be redone, which I couldn’t do, of course.”
She tore off a bit of toast, but he noticed she didn’t eat it. She looked around the room.
“It was mostly cosmetic work. Paint and paper, and changing the furnishings. But it makes a lot of difference.”
He forked a bite of omelette and studied her as he chewed, thinking of the “cosmetic work” she’d done to herself. “Yeah, it makes a difference in the appearance. But underneath, it’s still the same house.”
She faced him head-on, and he knew from the steely glint that came into her green eyes that she caught on immediately. He knew, and was impressed when he saw her chin lift.
“Yes, it is. But then, the house was basically a good house, solid and strong. All it needed was cosmetic work and a little attention to make it a home again. So why not take it and make it into the home I always knew it could be?” She lifted one brow and almost defiantly stuffed a forkful of omelette in her mouth.
And for some inexplicable reason, that made him want to jump across the table and kiss her.
Instead, he just grinned and shrugged. “No reason I can think of.” He looked around at the design she’d painted on the dining room wall; deep green vines and morning glory climbing over a trellis. She was right—it did feel more like a home than it ever had when old lady Danvers lived here with all her dark, stuffy furniture.
“So you decided to just paint the house