Or imagined she’d surprised it.
His fingers tightened around the mug of tea, and then he set it down and straightened away from the bench. ‘It’s getting late. I think I’ll turn in. Goodnight.’
He started to walk away, past her, towards the enclosed veranda room that held her spare bed and opened onto the cottage’s rear garden—an area comprised of mostly weeds and overgrown grass.
Tiffany almost let him go. But then it would just go on and on, wouldn’t it? He had been here little over twenty-four hours, and in that time they had generated a great deal of tension between them.
If they wanted to rebuild a relaxed relationship, something had to be done about that—whether it made him uncomfortable or not. ‘There’s something I need to say before you go, and I don’t want you to stop me.’
‘Tiff—’ His face a forbidding mask, he swung back towards her.
She went on quickly. ‘Before you left I embarrassed you when I developed an interest you didn’t return. To make matters worse I pursued the situation to a point where you chose to escape overseas to get away from me.’
Jack muttered an expletive beneath his breath. ‘There’s nothing to be gained—’
‘Actually, there is,’ she corrected him gently. She wouldn’t be swayed. They could put this off for ever, or sort it out now. In the interests of trying to get past all the rest of it, she chose now. ‘I misread you, and I apologise, and I want you to know I won’t ever project those kinds of feelings onto you again. I’ve realised they were a mistake and, like you, all I want now is for us to be able to move ahead as friends again.’
It was all she could want. And she would get her thoughts in line with it as quickly as possible.
Tension poured from Jack. He seemed to fight some inner battle before he finally gave a sharp nod. For the moment he seemed incapable of speech, but that was all right. At least the matter was out in the open, where they’d have half a chance to move beyond it.
Tiffany turned away, stepped towards her bedroom door and tugged it open. ‘Goodnight, Jack. I really am happy you’re here. I’ve missed our friendship more than I can say.’
‘Goodnight.’ His voice was harsh.
He strode through the lounge room. A moment later the door to the veranda room slapped closed after him.
Tiffany stepped into her room and shut the door, then slumped against it. ‘There—see? That wasn’t so hard.’
If she didn’t count her embarrassment at having to address the issue, and the fact that those feelings she had just denied still simmered beneath the surface inside her.
Well, surely they would die away now that she had declared their futility so openly?
She climbed into bed and hoped that would turn out to be true. Some sleep would be good, too.
And then she tossed, and turned, and tossed some more.
CHAPTER THREE
‘EEK!’ The sound escaped Tiffany as a sudden scrabbling noise erupted in the lounge room chimney. With a shaking hand she put down her cup of herbal tea and froze into position, where she sat on the sofa.
A second later, something large and furry and agitated landed in a spray of soot in the empty fireplace, just steps away from her bare feet.
The room was almost completely dark. Tiffany could see only a shape—large, with eyes that glowed. She sort of—well, shrieked, and leapt onto the back of the lounge, where she proceeded to dance from foot to foot.
It was a totally understandable reaction. As though to confirm this fact, the animal ran right towards her, then scrabbled sideways into a corner of the room. When her heart started to beat again, Tiffany heard the slap as the veranda room door was shoved open.
A light flared from there. Jack stood silhouetted in the aperture for a split second before he rushed into the room.
‘What’s wrong? What’s going on?’ Questions flew from his lips as he strode across the room to her. ‘Why are you up there? Why did you scream?’
‘Jack—oh, Jack. I couldn’t get to sleep, so I made herbal tea, and then that thing came down the chimney and it’s as big as an elephant.’
Jack was another human being, a welcome sight, and instinctively she reached out her arms to him.
When Jack got close enough, she did the only sensible thing. She removed herself from the precarious safety of the sofa to something that was, in her opinion, far safer.
‘Oomph.’ Jack absorbed the sudden impact of her launch from sofa to his hold with just that one sound. His arms tightened around her and she clung on, her legs around his waist—which was as far away from the floor as she could get.
‘I think it’s a p-possum. You know I don’t like rodents, Jack. Not without a lens and some distance between me and them. Not this close.’ Her arms wrapped around his neck. She had to force herself not to squeeze tightly.
It was such a nice neck, too. Strong and firm, the skin smooth and warm.
Don’t think about his neck or his skin or anything else like that. You have other problems right now. Possum problems.
‘I’m sorry I jumped on you, but the possum startled me.’ It had scared her silly, actually, and she still felt that way, but maybe she could brazen this out. ‘Um, maybe if you could help me get to the kitchen? Then you could get rid of it?’
‘All right. And possums are marsupials, actually.’ He growled his response in a husky tone that inexplicably sent shivers down her spine.
‘Well, yes. I know that.’ For some reason his tone made her suddenly aware of the close press of their bodies, of the scant layers of clothing that separated them, of the warmth of Jack beneath his T-shirt and boxer shorts.
Drat it. She couldn’t let herself do this again. It humiliated her to react to him when he didn’t even notice she existed that way. She steeled herself for the short trip to the kitchen, at which point she would immediately step away from him and become utterly businesslike thereafter.
But Jack tilted his head, as though listening. ‘Ah. I think I hear it now. Over there.’
He turned his head towards the scrabbling sound in the opposite corner of the room, and as he did so his whisker-roughened face brushed her upper chest.
Oh, wow. She sucked in her breath at that unexpected tactile experience.
Jack stilled completely. He wasn’t even breathing.
That knowledge made her stop breathing, too, and somehow the tension shifted in a completely different way. What was happening here?
‘You have to get down.’ As he spoke the words, his arms tightened even more around her.
Well, yes. She knew that. She’d even suggested it. But first he had to get her to the kitchen. Preferably without the need to put her feet on any part of the same floor the possum occupied.
‘In the kitchen…’
‘Right.’ He started in that direction. Almost reluctantly he looked into her eyes as he held her steady.
That was when she saw it. His eyes were dark pools filled with masculine awareness and interest. Even as she absorbed that fact—and it was fact, not fiction—his gaze dropped to her lips and lingered there.
‘Jack?’ A flurry of movement in her peripheral vision revealed the possum as it attempted to run up the wall beside the chimney.
Tiffany stiffened, but the possum scrambled down again, and headed back into the corner.
Jack walked them into the kitchen and shut the