The touch of her had haunted him—
Alexi clicked off the flashlight. He had only glimpsed her face before he moved to click on the battery-driven lantern, but the unsettling impact remained. Beneath the flattering tints and the mascara, her green eyes had flashed up at him, filled with the hot burn of temper.
She didn’t know Alexi. Why would she already dislike him?
Jessica stayed in the shadows of the gutted sunroom, taking in the table saw, the generator, rough workbench and the massive toolbox. Alexi sensed that she was studying him carefully, circling him—
A rich widow out for fun with a Wyoming cowboy wasn’t on his agenda. “Let’s have it,” he said briskly. “Why did you follow me here?”
In the dim light of the unfinished sunroom, her shadow moved on the rough walls stripped of damaged drywall panels. Outside, the mix of weather had changed again, as restless as the woman. Lightning outside the plastic-covered windows lit her face. Her lids were lowered, the length of her dark lashes creating fringe shadows down her cheeks. She ran her manicured hand along a smooth pine board and lifted her face to him. “You’re going to be difficult, aren’t you?”
“Depends. You’ve been researching me for this past week. Why?”
Those green eyes caught fire and then slid downward, shielding her expression. Alexi reached out to capture her chin and lift it. “I asked you a question.”
Beneath his thumb, her skin was creamy and cool with mist. The scent of rain clung to her, fresh and even more alluring than perfume. But he felt the heat beneath the surface, the nick of anger as she tensed, her eyes slowly opening to his, boldly holding his. He didn’t intend to stroke that flawless cheek, surprised as his thumb moved, contrasting the texture and color of this woman’s fine skin.
“I’m not ready to answer,” Jessica said slowly, huskily, as she raised her hand to push his away from her face. She stepped back as though she disliked being too close and, taking her time, circled the room. Rooms without doors led off the main room. A damp, chilly draft lifted a curl beside her cheek and she impatiently brushed it away.
She walked around the buckets that caught rain dripping from the ceiling. “Nice. You’re remodeling this for your father. He’ll probably want some kind of little shed, some livestock in the few acres attached to this place…maybe a garden. A man from the country usually wants those things. Why are you remodeling this place, and not your brother? Didn’t Danya want to come? Or did you need to get away from Venus and a love gone wrong? Your fiancée married someone else, didn’t she? That must have been difficult for you. Is that really the reason you’re in Amoteh, remodeling this place and tending bar? Changing your life?”
Alexi resented her prowling through his life, his emotions, and pinpointing his plans. “You tell me. You’re the one who’s been researching. You called some friends, pretending we’d been involved. If I checked the resort’s records, your outgoing calls would probably coincide with the calls to Wyoming. You should have tried my cousins, Jarek or Mikhail—they live right here. But then, you didn’t want them to know that you were asking questions, did you? It was safer to use another name…what was it? Mimi Julian, wasn’t it?”
Jessica shrugged away his question and turned to him. “I wanted to see if you were the right man for what I have in mind. I know that you’ll be staying here, working on this until you have it livable. From the looks of it, you’ll be a while.”
She shivered slightly, but stepped over a mound of odd wood pieces and walked toward a doorway leading into the kitchen and pantry area. She lifted aside the temporary plastic and looked inside the darkness. Though still without plumbing and cabinets, the room overlooked the ocean. There Viktor, Alexi’s widowed father, could sip his Russian tea and watch the waves, feeling as if he had a little bit of his homeland.
Alexi watched her move back toward him, graceful, purposeful, taking her time before she hit her target. What did she want?
He shrugged mentally, and thought of other times that women on the prowl who were fascinated with the Western male image had approached him. What did she want, other than the obvious—a rich widow wanting a little playtime, a little physical diversion before she went back to the suit-clad corporate world?
The wind pushed at the plastic he’d tacked over the sunroom’s old windows, howling around the corners of the house as Jessica came to stand in front of him.
She tilted her head and a long waving length of chestnut hair slid to her throat.
Alexi resisted the urge to ease that gleaming strand away from the pale smooth length, and met her searching look.
Those dark green eyes studied him coolly as she tapped her finger on a length of board. “You think I want you for a lover, don’t you?” she asked quietly. “Well, I don’t. I’m not in the market. This is business.”
Women like Jessica Sterling were usually motivated by business. It ruled their lives. Alexi nodded and said, “I’m listening.”
“You’re wondering why I’m here. I’ll answer—I need someone exactly like you, and you’re on site, so to speak. You know the people in Amoteh and they like you. Last year you and your brother, Danya, came into town to visit Mikhail and, gee whiz, when you left, so did a real mean troublemaker, Lars Anders. I think there is a connection between your departure and his. His removal from Amoteh was quiet and neat and Lars hasn’t been back since. Then there was the little girl who was kidnapped and saved by you, the publicity kept at a minimum to safeguard her privacy. There were one or two incidents in your local newspaper’s archives, including your support of an abused women’s shelter—and I’d say that was more than financial support. It probably included a little muscle.”
She stuck her hands in her pockets and shivered. “It’s freezing in here…. I think you’d be perfect for what I need done. You can be discreet, quiet—and if you take the job, well-paid. Are you interested?”
Alexi Stepanov would be perfect to safeguard Willow, Jessica’s friend.
Like the other Stepanov males Jessica had met, Alexi was absolutely trustworthy, an ethical man, one with old-fashioned values.
But Alexi had bitter edges encircling him and she sensed his immediate distrust. Why?
Towering over her five-foot-eight inches, Alexi’s lean muscular body was sheathed in a shearling coat, worn jeans and well-worn laced workman’s boots. In a hard-weathered face, those narrowed cold, gray eyes, locked jaw and firmly pressed lips said he didn’t like her.
He didn’t have to; he just had to do the job she needed—to protect Willow.
The wind howled and Jessica tried to forget her chilled body; she hadn’t expected he’d lead her so far—“You intended me to follow you, didn’t you?”
He nodded, his dark brown waving hair gleaming in the lamplight. The shaggy length just touched his shoulders, a contrast to his neatly clipped cousin, Mikhail. The waves did nothing to soften his jutting facial bones, those fiercely drawn dark brows.
Alexi’s hard expression now revealed none of his other cousin, Jarek’s, easygoing qualities. According to Amoteh gossip, Mikhail and Jarek doted on their wives and children and loved their parents, Mary Jo and Fadey Stepanov. From what Jessica had seen of Alexi playing with the children and laughing with his relatives, he was also a family man.
In contrast, his defenses had definitely been raised when they had danced, a silent cold shield seeming to drop between them.
His eyes had caught her. In the brighter light between the New Year’s Eve dances, they were a cold, brilliant blue. But in the shadows, the shade had become silvery, almost like ice—or steel.
At the