And if there were anyplace around here open at this time of night, he’d turn around and buy her a nightgown himself, Nick thought. A satin one. A pale rose satin nightgown with ecru lace around a bodice cut low enough to offer tantalizing glimpses of her breasts. And a midthigh slit up the side so that he could catch glimpses of her long legs as she moved.
“Is there any place I could buy something to wear?” Gina asked with a hopeless look around the wooded area he was driving through.
“Nothing closer than Vinton, which is twenty miles away. Except for the convenience store, all the local shops are geared to the tourist trade, and they close at five. I’ll take you to Vinton first thing tomorrow and buy you some clothes.”
“You can take me, but I’ll buy my own,” she said firmly. “My credit card was in my purse so I still have it.”
“Consider it an advance on your salary,” Nick said.
That certainly sounded as if he could afford to pay her, she thought. Or was it a case of him doing without something in order to come up with her salary? She instinctively rejected the idea.
“About this job…”
“You can’t weasel out now,” he said, suddenly afraid that she might have changed her mind.
“I’m not trying to ‘weasel’ out of anything! I was simply going to say that I would prefer a trade to a salary.”
“A trade?” he asked cautiously.
“I’ll do some housekeeping chores in exchange for room and board for a few days.”
Nick gritted his teeth in frustration. He hadn’t even gotten her home yet, and she was already making plans to cut out as soon as she could. Where was she in such a hurry to get to? Or was it that she was in a hurry to get to someone?
He felt a sharp twist of some emotion that he refused to analyze.
“When I said temporary, I meant weeks, not days. Why don’t you give the job a two-week try?” he said. “Unless someone’s expecting you somewhere?”
“It’s not that. I just don’t want to tie myself down.” In case he turned out to have zero interest in her as a person, she thought. In that case she sure didn’t want to hang around and be constantly reminded of what she couldn’t have.
“I would think your lack of transportation, to say nothing of lack of money, would do that more effectively than a job. A job gives you freedom to make choices. If you didn’t like being a data-entry clerk, what does interest you?” He decided the question wouldn’t seem unreasonable from someone offering her a job.
“Teaching,” she said promptly. “I had almost three years of my teaching degree finished before I had to quit to help out at home when my father was diagnosed with lung cancer. He died thirteen months later. That was two and a half years ago.” Her voice broke on the painful memories.
Nick reached across and gently brushed the tips of his fingers across her cheek in a gesture of sympathy that unexpectedly made her want to cry.
She took a deep breath to steady her voice and continued, “He left me enough money to finish my degree. I’m enrolled at the University of Illinois for the winter semester, which starts in January. In the meantime I’m determined to do a Robert Frost.”
“‘The road less traveled,”’ Nick quoted, wondering why she hadn’t used her father’s legacy to go back to school immediately after his death instead of taking a job that by her own admission she’d hated. There was something else there that she didn’t want to talk about. And for the moment he had no choice but to respect her silence.
“That’s right.” Gina blinked in surprise that he’d understood the reference. Not many people she knew were acquainted with Frost’s work.
“How about if you try the job for two weeks?” he offered.
Gina thought it over a moment and then said, “All right. Two weeks.”
“And after that, we can negotiate a longer stay.”
“I really am just passing through,” Gina said, feeling she was warning herself as much as him.
“So pass through at a walk. That way you can get a good look at the scenery.”
“From what I’ve seen so far, it’s certainly worth looking at,” Gina latched on to the impersonal subject gratefully.
Nick, feeling he’d won a victory by her agreement to stay two weeks, was perfectly willing to let her change the subject.
Ten minutes later he turned off the road, pulling onto a blacktop driveway. For a moment, a huge clapboard house was illuminated in the headlights before he cut the engine, plunging them into total darkness.
Gina blinked. “If that’s a cottage, what do you call a house?” And more important, how was one person supposed to clean something that big? she wondered.
“My great-grandfather built it as a summer house, and summer houses are always called cottages by the locals no matter how big they are,” Nick explained.
She glanced around in the stygian blackness and shivered at the house’s isolation.
“This looks like a stage in a science fiction movie,” she muttered. “I wouldn’t be a bit surprised to find an alien lurking in the corners.”
“I would,” he said dryly. “Any being smart enough to build interstellar spaceships would be far too smart to have anything to do with mankind.”
“Good point,” she admitted.
“Watch your step.” Nick used the irregular footing of the path as an excuse to give in to his growing compulsion to touch her.
Gina swallowed uneasily as his fingers closed around the bare skin of her upper arm. His touch made her feel both excited and safe at the same time, which made no sense. The excitement she could understand. Nick Balfour was a very exciting man. Especially given her limited experience. It was the feeling of security his touch brought that confused her. She knew full well that security didn’t come from outside. It came from within. Not only that, but she didn’t know this man. Not really. So why did she find his touch so reassuring?
Confused, she watched as Nick unlocked his front door. Maybe her whole reaction to him was nothing more than a temporary aberration? Maybe tomorrow morning she’d wake up, take one look at him in the cold, hard light of day and wonder what on earth she had ever seen in him. Other than the fact that he was ruggedly handsome, tall and well built. Very well built.
“Welcome to my humble abode.” Nick’s voice broke into her thoughts. He flipped a switch just inside the door, and light flooded the entrance hall, momentarily blinding her.
Blinking to clear her vision, she followed Nick through the archway to the right into what appeared to be the living room, and looked around curiously.
About twenty by thirty, it was painted a depressing, mud color and was filled with comfortable-looking, stuffed furniture that had clearly seen better days. Early Salvation Army, she labeled the room’s decor, wondering how well paid Nick was when he was working. Or was it simply that this was what he was used to and he hadn’t noticed the general air of shabbiness? It was possible. She remembered a few of her girlfriends complaining about their husbands’ refusal to part with old, worn-out chairs because they were comfortable.
Between the pair of French doors on the opposite wall, there was a table with a large television on it. Beside it was a VCR and an elaborate stereo system. On the floor underneath were stacks of videos, DVDs and CDs.
Surreptitiously, Gina studied Nick as he tossed the truck’s keys on the dusty surface of the end table beside the door. Somehow, the house didn’t quite mesh with her initial impression of him. But she wasn’t quite