He said a word out loud that he was pretty sure you weren’t supposed to say in front of children.
Even ones who looked like little ruffians straight off the set of Oliver Twist.
CHAPTER TWO
TRIXIE MARSH SAW his shoes first. They were, without a doubt, the most beautiful sight she had ever seen. And it wasn’t just because the shoes were Berluti either.
And Trixie knew shoes. She had knelt in front of thousands and thousands of pairs of very good quality men’s shoes, patiently pinning the hemlines of trousers, handmade by her former employer, Bernard Brothers—Miles’s family’s business—one of the most sought after makers of custom men’s clothing in Calgary.
Daniel Riverton—she would have known it was him, because of the shoes, even if he hadn’t announced himself at the door—crouched down beside her.
This was a first! Reality better than a dream! Because she had dreamed of being rescued by Miles, and really there was no comparison. None at all.
Miles, was, well, ordinary. Daniel Riverton, was, well, not ordinary.
His eyes intensified her feeling that she was experiencing beauty as she never had before. They were a color deeper than sapphire, the astounding blue of deep, deep ocean water.
But it was the fact they were tinged with concern, and a certain take-charge expression, that made her gasp—muffled as it was by the bindings over her mouth—with heartfelt wonder. Just as she had been contemplating death, the knock had come on the door. It was like a fairy tale: a knight rescuing a maiden from an ignoble fate.
“Hey, don’t cry. It’s going to be all right.”
Again, her feeling of being in an altered state, where everything glowed from within, intensified. His voice was astounding, deep and sexy and a little rough around the edges. And it wasn’t because she knew it belonged to one of the most up and coming businessmen in Canada, either!
It was because she had spent the past half hour contemplating all the dreadful possibilities that could result from the pickle she had found herself in.
It was only because he was her rescuer, her knight, her prince, that her every sense was on high alert, that she found his voice so unbelievably sensuous. Wasn’t it?
As she lay there, helpless to do anything but try to blink back tears, wrapped head to toe in tissue and gauze that held her fast to her overturned chair, Daniel Riverton put his arms underneath her. She could smell the crisp, clean scent of him, and even through the thick layers of tissue, she could feel the banded muscle of his arms as he slid them beneath her. With easy strength he righted the chair.
For a moment, Trixie had to shut her eyes against a wave of dizziness. When she opened them, she expected she would have a more realistic perspective of her rescuer.
Instead, her first impression deepened. Now, she could see him fully, and he really was the most mouthwatering man she had ever seen.
She knew he really was incredibly, heart-stoppingly handsome. Add to that her every sense tingling with that blissful awareness of life’s glories that a close brush with catastrophe could bring? Daniel Riverton was irresistible.
“Please stop crying. I’ve got you.”
Again, the words seemed to shine, to be illuminated, as beautiful as any she had ever heard.
I’ve got you.
It wasn’t just that she had felt in way over her head since the arrival of her nieces. Even before that, she had been blindsided by Miles opting out of her dreams for the two of them.
She could still picture him frowning at her new bedroom curtains, soft white lace, saying This just isn’t what I want.
What isn’t to want? Trixie had cried. Begged as he packed his things, something grimly determined on his face, They’re only curtains.
But it obviously had not been about the curtains.
So, Trixie was trying to adjust to single life, trying get her fledgling business off the ground, feeling like she was back to square one, as alone as she had been since her parents died.
But this time determined to see her independence as an asset.
“I’ve got you,” Daniel said again, and the words were a shameful relief to someone who was determined to see independence as an asset!
His hand rested on her mummified shoulder, but even through all the layers and layers of padding, Trixie could feel something faintly electrical in his touch, something beyond strength and confidence.
She nodded, and willed the tears to quit spilling, but they wouldn’t. She saw her nieces sitting on the sofa, and the tears spilled harder. She had unwittingly put them in harm’s way. Some aunt she was!
“You look like the tire man in that commercial,” he said, attempting levity, probably because her tears were making him uncomfortable. When she had spoken to him on the phone he had sounded like a man who would be uncomfortable with tears—and she’d been close to crying then, too.
“You know the one?” he went on, in that deep, unconsciously seductive, comforting voice. “He’s totally made of tires? Only his eyes look out?”
She sniffled and swallowed, so trapped she could not even wipe her own nose. It was that thought—her helplessness in the face of nasal dribbles, as much as his attempt at lightness—that made her choke back more tears.
“Or maybe the Bisquitboy.” He was definitely trying to calm her, and his voice was intentionally without hard edges, soothing. “You know the one? He giggles when someone sticks a finger in his paunch?”
Of course she knew who the tire man was! And the pudgy little dough man. Trixie had always considered them both quite cute, but that was before she had been compared to them! But being seen as the tire man, or worse, the Doughboy, was humiliating on your first encounter with a devastatingly attractive man, even as his voice and presence strove to reassure.
Daniel Riverton was inspecting her carefully, trying to figure out where to start unraveling her.
One magazine had dubbed him Calgary’s most eligible bachelor.
Not that she should care! The last thing Trixie was in the market for was a man in her life. She was barely finding her feet after the breakup—make that dumping, a little voice in her head insisted—with Miles.
Still, even if you weren’t in the market, you’d have to be unconscious not to feel that little shiver of something in the presence of a man like Daniel Riverton, especially Daniel Riverton, in rescue mode, with no shirt on. Her eyes lingered on his bare chest.
Deep and smooth, golden, as if he had recently been somewhere warm.
The nearly naked Daniel Riverton decided on a starting point by her ear. He tried to rip through the layers of padded white.
“That’s stronger than I would have believed,” he muttered, and began to unwind the binding from around her head.
He was so close to her. She could see the amazing flawlessness of his skin. His scent—clean, masculine, sensual—tickled at her nostrils despite the fact they were still covered in several layers of tissue.
“Get me a pair of scissors,” he snapped at Molly and Pauline. His voice, to them, was brusque, but the quick efficiency with which he was unwrapping Trixie remained gentle.
“Not allowed—”
That would be Molly, always the leader of the shenanigans.
“Now you are allowed,” he said sternly.
Molly wasn’t about to let that go