He frowned down at her. “I don't think I've ever met anyone like you before.”
“Nathan! A compliment?”
“I'm not sure that's how I meant it.”
She grinned. “That's how I'm taking it.”
“Big surprise.”
Keira wasn't fooled. There was a twitch at the corner of his way-too-kissable mouth that told her he was fighting the urge to smile. In the last day or so, she'd noticed he fought down smiling a lot. And she wondered why.
“So,” she asked, “are you really going to dance with me?”
He sighed. “If I don't, are you going to sic the fishermen on me again?”
She lifted her arms into the dance-with-me position and said, “Nothing wrong with a good threat.”
Four
The music slowed down into as close as a rock band could get to a romantic ballad, and Nathan reached for Keira. The instant his arm went around her waist, he felt a charge of something that jolted him from the soles of his feet straight up through the top of his head.
She smiled at him and he knew she'd felt it, too.
Her right hand felt small in his and the featherlight weight of her left hand seemed to be branding his shoulder. The air was icy and the street was crowded with people, yet he felt as if he and Keira were alone in the tropics, heat pouring through them with enough intensity to kindle a white-hot flame.
“What're you thinking?” she asked as he steered her around the makeshift dance floor in the middle of town.
“I don't think I'll tell you,” he said and deliberately raised his gaze from the sparkling beauty of her green eyes. “I have a feeling you'd find a way to use it against me.”
“Oh, you're a sharp businessman, aren't you?” she asked, and suppressed laughter colored her voice.
He risked a glance down at her and found that the power in her gaze hadn't lessened a bit. “You've already blackmailed me once,” he reminded her.
“For a good cause,” she pointed out.
“I really don't think that's an excuse the legal system would smile on.”
“Hey, I'm the mayor. Would I do anything illegal?” She smiled at him again, and damned if Nathan's body didn't do a quick lunge. His arm tightened around her waist, tucking her in even closer, and when she moved in the dance, she did things to him he didn't want to think about.
So he didn't. To distract himself, he let his gaze sweep the town, and it didn't escape him that he could see the whole thing in a matter of seconds. The buildings were old, but well cared for. Fresh paint shone in the lights and sidewalks were swept clean. Flower boxes jutted out from window fronts and he presumed that if spring should ever come to the mountains, those boxes would be full of bright flowers.
A couple hundred people crowded the blocked-off streets, and he saw everyone from old couples sitting quietly holding hands to teenaged lovers gazing at each other so intently, he half expected to see tiny cartoon hearts circling their heads.
Keira fit right in here. She was greeted by hugs, kisses, teasing laughter and shouts, and Nathan wondered briefly what it must be like to so thoroughly belong somewhere. He hadn't known that feeling since he was a kid. And he had, over the years, done everything he could to keep from belonging anywhere in particular. Yet he could see that Keira thrived on the very kind of life he'd avoided.
Overhead, the moon peeked through a wisp of clouds and shone down onto the town, bathing it in a silvery glow that made it look almost magical. Which was a ridiculous thought, since Hunter's Landing was clearly no more than a tiny town in between a couple of bigger ones.
If Hunter Palmer hadn't chosen this town—no doubt for the pleasure of building a mansion in a town that shared his name—Nathan would never have known of the place's existence. He wasn't a man to go wandering down unbeaten paths.
He preferred big cities. The anonymity of hotel rooms with an ever-changing sea of faces surrounding him. He had no interest in bonding with a town and people he'd never see again once he got off this mountain.
And yet …
Keira held his hand a little tighter as if she could read his thoughts and was subtly trying to hold him here, to this place.
She felt good in his arms, her curvy little body pressed up close to his, and Nathan could admit, at least to himself, that he wanted her. He hadn't had any intention of making a connection of any sort with the people of this town, but she just wouldn't go the hell away. And was it his fault if his body reacted to hers?
This reaction was chemical, pure and simple.
He'd been so long without a woman sharing his bed that he was reacting to the first female to get close.
Not that she was close.
But the thought of her in his bed was enough to set a flash fire racing through his bloodstream.
“Oh,” she said, tipping her head back to stare up at him, “now I really have to know what you're thinking. Your face just got all stiff and your eyes went slitty.”
“Slitty?”
“It's a word,” she argued.
“Barely.”
“You're changing the subject.”
“Apparently not successfully,” he said, not surprised at all that she wasn't willing to back down.
“Once you get to know me,” she countered, “you'll know that I don't give up all that easily.”
“Trust me,” Nathan said, “that much I've already learned.”
“Wow!” Her face lit up and her eyes sparkled in the overhead lights. “We're really making progress here, aren't we?”
“Progress?”
“You bet. I know that you get all stiff when you don't want to talk about something, and you know that I'm a little stubborn …”
“A little?”
“… we're practically friends already.”
“Friends?”
“Nothing wrong with that, is there?” she asked and came to a stop as the song ended and a new one, one with a raw, savage beat, started up. “You have so many friends you can't use another one?”
No, he didn't have friends. Purposely. That need had been satisfied then discarded ten years ago. Now his life was streamlined. Just the way he wanted it.
Nathan let her go gratefully, though he couldn't help but notice just how empty his arms felt without her in them. A warning flag if he'd ever seen one. Keeping a few feet of space between them seemed like the smart move, here. And he'd always been smart enough to protect himself.
“We're not friends, Keira. Friends don't use extortion to get their way.”
“Really?” she asked, tipping her head to one side so that her hair fell in a reddish-blond wave to the side of her head, “isn't that what your friend Hunter Palmer did?”
He felt himself stiffen again and couldn't seem to stop it. “Excuse me?”
“Well,” she said, linking her arm through his and leading him farther away from the pulsing beat of the song and the jostling crowd on the dance floor, “you clearly don't want to be here, but you're going to stay the month because your old friend asked you to in his will. So, isn't that extortion?”
He supposed it was and hadn't he been thinking pretty much along the same lines earlier today? “You can be extremely annoying.”
“I've