He kicked aside a tangle of brier and weeds, which he had apparently hacked down earlier at the house corner. Underneath was a low brick curbing covered by a large concrete cap. Moving with quick efficiency and lithe strength, he bent and lifted the heavy concrete cover. It made a harsh grating noise as he shoved it from the curbing.
“Don’t!” she cried, stepping back.
He straightened, putting his fists on his hips. “You know what this is?”
“A cistern, of course,” she answered, incensed. “But my husband never—That is, he always said it was extremely dangerous. No one ever goes near it.”
Alec frowned. “It’s just a brick-lined hole in the ground. There’s not even any water in it anymore.”
“Howard was always afraid somebody, one of the kids, would fall in.”
“Then he should have filled it in. But it could be used now as a reflecting pool, if you wanted. It wouldn’t take much to seal the brick lining, make it watertight.”
“It would be so deep,” she protested.
“So’s a swimming pool,” he offered with a shrug, “but that doesn’t stop people from having them. Anyway, it’s not as if there are any kids toddling around to fall in.”
She shook her head, suppressing a shiver. “I’d rather not.”
“Suit yourself. It was just an idea.”
He was disappointed, she thought. The enthusiasm had died out of his face and his movements were stiff as he replaced the heavy concrete cap. Abruptly, she asked, “Did you see the creek?”
“I saw where one crosses the road below here. That it?”
Nodding, she led him toward the winding waterway that ran behind Ivywild, gliding among tall beeches, sweet bay trees and glades of ferns. She was halfway there before it came home to her what she was doing. She had actually left the fenced-in yard. She was moving farther away from the safety and comfort it represented with every step. How long had it been since she had done that so easily?
A shiver moved over her and the skin on the back of her neck prickled. She felt naked, as if she had deliberately abandoned her protective covering. Panic rose inside her, but she choked it down, breathing slowly in and out.
She would be all right—she would. The wide shoulders and hard body of the man at her side spelled protection. He was solid, like a wall or fence that stood between her and whatever danger might lie around her. She had felt it the night before, felt it even more strongly now.
Not that there was really anything out here, of course. Any jeopardy was all in her head, and she needed to get rid of it. She knew that and was determined to keep telling herself so until she believed it. Anyway, she would not be away from her house for long—only for the time it took to show Alec Stanton the small stream.
As she pushed on, moving ahead of him down the tree- and brush-covered slope, following a winding animal trail, she was hyperaware of the warmth and solidity of him beside her. He moved so quietly, with the natural grace of an Indian. In the dusky tree shadows, she thought she could see a copper tint in the deep bronze of his skin.
The awkwardness between them lingered, but it had a different quality from before. She couldn’t remember the last time she had been quite so aware of another human being. Nor could she recall the last time she had cared how any male felt other than her teenage son.
Alec was impressed with the creek. Standing knee-deep in the ferns that edged it, with his hair trailing in its damp ponytail down his back and leaf shadows making a tracery of gray dimness and golden light on his brown skin, he turned to her with a heart-stopping smile. Voice deep and reflective, he said, “This has possibilities.”
“I know,” she said and caught her breath, suddenly more afraid of those possibilities than she had been of anything in five long years.
He tilted his head, the darkness of his eyes as meltingly warm and sweet as chocolate. “Does this mean I get the job?”
He had done so much in so short a time. He could clear all the choking debris from Ivywild. He could make her rose garden for her. If she had not ventured out to see what he had done—what he could do—if she had not seen the promise, she might have answered differently. Now there was only one reply possible.
“Yes, I…suppose it must.”
Pleasure flared across his face in sudden brightness. “Good,” he said softly. “In fact, that’s great.”
Laurel wasn’t so sure.
She was even less certain when night closed in and Alec finally roared away down the drive on his Harley. She had grown used to being alone, and yet tonight she really felt it for the first time in ages. It was a warm evening, but she was chilled. Wrapping her arms around herself, she wondered what it would be like to have a man’s warm arms to hold her, or a firm chest to support her as she pressed close against it. It had been so long.
Of course, Howard had never been particularly good at simple affection. Whenever she’d tried to cuddle in his arms, she had usually gotten sex. That part of their marriage had been all right; not especially inspiring but no disaster, either. They had talked—mostly practical conversations of the kind necessary between husband and wife, about plumbing repairs, the children’s progress in school, what was for dinner. Sometimes they had gone out to eat or visited friends, driving home in companionable silence. Now and then, Howard had taken her hand. But no, he’d had no gift for gentle caresses, no interest in the passionless need to hold and absorb the essence of another person. It was foolish, perhaps, to miss what you had never had.
She was lonely, that was it. The night stretched empty and still and dreary ahead of her. There was nothing on television she wanted to watch, and she had read everything of interest on her bookshelves. She wasn’t sleepy, wasn’t even tired.
She couldn’t stop thinking of Alec Stanton. The way he looked at her, the way his smile started at one corner of his mouth and spread across his lips in slow glory. The deep set of his eyes under his brows, and the planes of his face that swept down from the high ridges of his cheekbones, giving him the predatory look of some ancient warrior. The easy way he moved, his deceptive strength. The gleam of his skin with its gilding of perspiration, the rippling glide of the dragon on his upper chest as his pectoral muscles contracted and relaxed.
How stupid, to indulge in sophomoric mooning over a hired hand, a young hired hand. It was even more stupid to allow herself the twinges of such a ridiculous attraction. If she could just be objective about it, she might laugh at the trick her mind had played on her, getting her worked up over such an unsuitable partner, like a canary eyeing the iridescent magnificence of a pheasant.
It was only hormones run amok, that was all. Nothing would come of it. Alec Stanton would do his job, then he would be gone and everything would be the same again. Everything, except she would have a new rose garden.
She would have to be satisfied with that.
It had been a mistake to leave her house, perhaps. There was more than one kind of safety, more than one kind of danger. Still, if she stayed inside now until after Alec had finished her garden, then she couldn’t get hurt.
Could she?
3
Laurel Bancroft was keeping an eye on him from the windows; Alec knew this because he had caught her at it.
He didn’t like it, didn’t appreciate being made to feel like a criminal she needed to stay away from at all costs. Or worse, that maybe he wasn’t good enough to associate with her. It had been going on for three days. He’d about had a bellyful of it.
He