Abruptly she pushed to her feet. This was ridiculous. She wasn’t sure what was going through his mind, but she knew what was happening in hers, and it was dangerous to remain sitting here. But while putting some distance between them was the best solution, she couldn’t ask him to leave his own home. “I made a cinnamon coffee cake earlier if you’d like to have a slice.” At least that would move them to the kitchen table where the lights were brighter, and they’d be sitting a respectable distance from each other.
The look in Mac’s dark eyes told her that he’d sensed the change in temperature, too. “Coffee cake?” he repeated, slowly coming to his feet, too, and towering over her.
She nodded. “My thank-yous were getting repetitive, so I thought I’d express my gratitude with food. There’s fresh decaf to go with it. If you want.”
Abruptly, Erin shook her head in frustration. “I’m sorry. I’m not doing this very well. I seem to be playing hostess, but this is your home and I—” She pressed a finger to her lips, then removed it. “I’m just not sure what the protocol is at this point.”
“I’ve already told you, for now, it’s your home. Tell you what. If you’ll stop feeling uncomfortable about living here, I won’t feel uncomfortable if I have to get something from my rooms or check my own e-mail.” He smiled a little as he headed for the door. “As for the coffee cake, I know I’ll be sorry, but I have to pass. As I said earlier, I don’t like leaving Amos unattended for long periods of time. My not being here this morning when you arrived was a fluke. I got a call and had to take care of something at the store.”
“Of course,” she murmured, following and still embarrassed, hoping he didn’t think she’d been offering more than cake. “I’ll bring it to the house tomorrow morning and you can both enjoy it.”
“Sounds good,” he said, stepping out on the porch. “Thanks.”
It was fully dark now, a few stars and a sliver of moon shining through the thick pines, but light from inside spilled through the windows. Mac paused beside the door, his expression troubled.
“There was something else I wanted to talk to you about tonight. Amos’s PT.”
Concerned, Erin stepped out on the porch, too. “I asked him how it went, and he said it was fine—that he’s getting stronger every day.”
A skeptical tone entered his voice. “He also told you that we fired the first housekeeper because she was interested in more than doing laundry and baking cookies.”
“And you said that wasn’t true. Why was she let go?”
He considered the question for a long moment before he answered. “One night Amos had to use the bathroom during the wee hours, and she made him feel ashamed for needing her help. Sometimes it takes him a while to get his bad leg moving—it stiffens on him. He was depressed for days afterward because he couldn’t handle a simple thing like using the toilet on his own.”
Erin felt a rush of sympathy. “Oh, Mac, how awful for him.”
“Yeah. It meant a lot when you said you wouldn’t have a problem with that sort of thing.”
It had? At the time, he’d barely acknowledged her statement. “What about his physical therapy? Isn’t it going well?”
“It is, and it isn’t. He’s getting better—and he wants to get better. But he’s not doing the exercises Vicki gives him as often as he should. It’s slowing his recovery.”
“How can I help?”
Mac released a burdened breath. “I can’t tell you how much I hoped you’d say that. The exercises she gives him can easily be done while he’s lying on his bed or sitting watching TV—exercises to strengthen his leg. Having said that, he’s also getting too fond of his recliner. We need to get him up and moving.”
“Then that’s what we’ll do,” she replied decisively.
He wasn’t convinced. “It won’t be easy. He’s a world-class crab when he’s forced to do anything. He climbs all over me when I suggest it.”
“Then Christie and I will make it so much fun, he won’t mind.”
Mac cocked his head, obviously amused. “Forgive me, but how do you propose to do that?”
Erin smiled, feeling a sudden kinship with the tall man looming over her. Dealing with Amos would be like dealing with Christie. She couldn’t count the number of times she’d had to improvise to get some cooperation from her. “I don’t know yet. This is still new territory. But we’ll think of something.”
“Understand, I’m not asking for miracles—and of course, we’ll increase your pay.”
“Don’t do that. Helping him exercise will make me feel a little less like I’m taking advantage of your hospitality. Believe me, I’m getting a lot more out of this arrangement than you are.”
“No more than anyone else we would have hired.”
That wasn’t so, but she could hardly explain. She didn’t know him well enough to explain. She would never know him well enough. Suddenly that made her a little sad.
“You know,” he murmured, “I had my doubts about you when I saw how young you were. I wanted someone older. Someone we knew.” The night song of the crickets played in the darkness, wrapping them in another kind of intimacy, an intimacy that was somehow more potent. “I figured you’d be just one more woman who needed a job and phoned it in.”
“I’d never do that.”
He nodded as though he knew that now. Then he paused, reached out…and stroked her face.
Erin stood breathlessly as his index finger trailed down the slope of her cheek to her chin. It was the gentlest of touches. It was no more than a whisper against her skin, and it was hypnotic because she’d never been touched so tenderly before. Her nerve endings thrummed as he tipped her face up to his.
“You honestly care about people, don’t you?”
“I try,” she whispered, knowing this was inappropriate, yet unwilling to stop it. He was good and decent and so toe-curlingly sexy and attractive…and it had been so long since a man had shown any interest in her as a woman. So long since she’d wanted any man to show interest.
Mac’s head dipped slowly and surely toward hers, his voice taking on a husky rasp, his warm breath bathing her lips. “You can’t imagine how refreshing that is, Terri.”
The crash of a thousand cymbals couldn’t have jolted her more.
Erin backpedaled away, her pulse and heartbeat banging triple time. She wanted to say something, but suddenly, didn’t know what it was. Was there a correct thing to say at a time like this? Apparently not, because her lips weren’t moving and not a sound was coming from her throat.
Mac swore beneath his breath and expelled a ragged blast of air. “Well,” he said with obvious self-loathing, “that wasn’t the brightest thing I’ve ever done. I’m sorry. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
She did. It was the same thing she’d been thinking. “There’s no need to apologize,” she managed, working to bring her popping nerve endings under control. “Nothing happened.”
“No?”
Yes, it had. But confessing that she’d wanted that kiss, too, was begging for trouble. Worse, if he hadn’t called her Terri just then, she might have let him do a whole lot more—and that was a staggering realization for a woman who’d come to dread sexual contact.
“Okay,” she amended, “gratitude happened. You needed to talk about your granddad’s illness, and I was a convenient sounding board who said what you needed to hear. Don’t worry about it.” Her voice was stronger