Ace’s shorts were dripping and clinging to him. He shook his streaming head, and Shahna gave a startled exclamation as water sprayed, spotting her shirt in large, spreading blotches.
“Oops, sorry!” Ace reached for a towel. “Thanks.” He began vigorously rubbing at his hair.
Shahna handed the other towel to Kier.
A silvery droplet ran from the curve of her jaw down into the neckline of her cotton shirt. Involuntarily following its progress, he saw that water had already darkened her shirt over one breast. He watched the center intriguingly peak beneath the fabric, and when his gaze jerked back to hers, saw the chagrin in her face, and recognized the helpless desire in her eyes.
The surge of his answering desire had him hastily allowing the towel to unfold while one fist held it loosely against his body. Triumph seemed to expand his chest, and blood drummed in his ears.
Shahna had inexplicably left him, but she still wanted him.
In that instant he made up his mind he wasn’t going to tamely go away and leave her here in the weird, closed little world she’d made for herself. They had always had terrific, incredible sexual rapport, and more besides that he couldn’t put into words. And there was that nagging, unsettling conviction that if only she would open up to him, he’d find something wonderful and precious, something he couldn’t afford to miss.
She might have been able to walk away from it all, but he couldn’t. And now he had found her again, he wouldn’t.
Shahna turned away, almost suffocating with the effect Kier had on her. She knew he’d seen and responded to it, and a treacherous part of her reveled in that knowledge.
But she had Samuel to think of. No longer a free, single woman whose mistakes would rebound on her head alone, she had knowingly taken on the enormous responsibility of bringing a child into the world. And now all her actions had to be weighed against that.
Kier might have been willing to “do the right thing” when he believed she’d given birth to his baby. But she’d told him he wasn’t Samuel’s father, absolving him of any moral duty, so couldn’t expect him to take into much account the needs of a child who wasn’t his. Looking after Samuel’s welfare was up to her.
Just as it had always been.
Kier changed in her bathroom. Ace, refusing to sit at the table in his wet shorts, parked himself in the doorway with a plate on which Shahna had piled cold meat, cheese and salad accompanied by wedges of crusty bread.
“Homemade?” Kier helped himself to a thick slice and looked at Shahna quizzically.
Shahna nodded. Although ready-sliced loaves were available at the garage-cum-mini-market a few miles away, she liked watching the yeast swell the dough, liked taking fresh new loaves from the oven and cutting off a few slices to eat while they were still warm.
“Delicious,” Kier decided after taking a bite. “There’s no end to your talents, is there?”
She glanced at him sharply, but there was no sarcasm in his expression.
From the doorway, Ace said, “She makes great chocolate nut cake.”
“Cake?” Kier queried.
She had sometimes whipped up a meal for the two of them, or made dinner for friends. But he didn’t recall her ever baking cakes.
“Ace has a sweet tooth,” Shahna said casually.
So she made cake for him? Regularly? Kier looked at the other man. His brawny, tanned shoulders and deep chest shone in the outdoor light, and surely the mop of sun-streaked hair, the candid blue eyes and the white-toothed, slightly cheeky grin would be attractive to women.
To Shahna? She’d sat watching the fence-building this morning, and whenever Kier looked up she certainly hadn’t been concentrating on him. Had her gaze been drawn to Ace, shirtless and muscular, and working with a practiced competence that Kier was unable to match?
Kier wondered how often Ace came to the cottage. And what else he did besides erecting fences.
Samuel had obviously recognized Ace, pointing and calling “A’e…A’e!” as if pleased to see him, which Ace had acknowledged with a cheery wave and “Hi there, Scamp!”
Samuel’s eyes were blue, too. Was it possible that Ace…?
He looked from the young man to Shahna.
She’d said she hadn’t—exactly—intended to bring up Samuel without a father, but also that she wasn’t living with a man. So how did those contradictory statements fit?
As Kier turned to stare at Ace with an oddly strained look on his face, Shahna studied him across the table. He was even better-looking than she remembered, and a little ache caught at her heart.
Leaving him was the hardest thing she’d ever done. And now, just when she thought she was finally getting over that and all the pain and anguish that had followed, he had to come sailing back into her life.
This morning she’d made the excuse that it wasn’t fair to shut Samuel out of the excitement of watching the men work, but the truth was she hadn’t been able to resist it herself.
Despite Ace’s minimal clothing and well-developed muscles, it was Kier’s lithe body and masculine grace that sent pleasurable goose bumps chasing over her skin when the close-fitting T-shirt stretched across his shoulders as he easily lifted a post, that made her heart pound as his jeans molded themselves to his haunches when he bent to drop the post into the ground. She’d watched him in covert fascination, plagued by memories that clogged her throat and made her blood run faster, only switching her attention whenever he glanced in her direction.
The men returned to the fencing while Shahna washed up, then she worked for half an hour in her studio before lifting a grouchy Samuel from his cot and placing the barrier across the doorway so he could see the men while she baked a cake.
By midafternoon a sturdy mesh fence, sporting barbed wire strung on angles at the farm side to discourage cattle from leaning on it, enclosed the front of the cottage.
“That’ll keep the little fella out of mischief,” Ace declared with satisfaction, “and the stock away from him.”
A gate with a childproof catch was the finishing touch, and then they celebrated with more beer and slices of fresh chocolate nut cake before Ace threw his tools and the unused fencing materials onto the tray of his truck, called, “See ya!” and roared off along a rough roadway through the trees.
“Thank you for your help,” Shahna said to Kier as she gathered up glasses. “Um…would you like a shower before you go?” His sweat-stained T-shirt and jeans would probably never be quite the same again.
“If you toss your clothes out the bathroom door,” she said, “I’ll wash them with a load I’m putting through.” It would mean he’d have to stay a couple of hours at least while his things dried but that would hardly matter now and, as she said when Kier hesitated, “I owe you that much.”
“You don’t,” he contradicted her, “but thanks.”
By the time he came out of the bathroom wearing clean clothes she had the washing machine going in the enclosed porch off the kitchen. Samuel was walking around the living room furniture, making his precarious way from the settle to a chair, to the sofa, and then complaining that the nearest dining chair was just out of his reach.
When Kier entered, the little boy twisted to look at him, lost his balance and fell on his rear end, breaking into a roar.
“Is he hurt?” Kier asked as Shahna picked him up.
“No, he’s just a bit niggly because his tooth’s bothering him.”
“Is that why he looks so flushed?” The rounded cheek that Kier could