Renee Roszel - Surrender To A Playboy

He shifted his attention back to her. She wondered what was going through his mind. Nothing in his expression gave away his thoughts. He took a step back and indicated the sink with his razor. “Go ahead. I can see over your head.”

She stared, realizing after a half dozen precariously rapid heartbeats her jaw had dropped and her mouth was open. Did he really think she’d get in front of him and bend over the sink—with him wearing nothing but a towel?

He lifted his chin and began to shave again. “Go ahead, Miss O’Mara.” His lids slid to half mast, a clear indication he’d taken his eyes off the mirror and was watching her. “In case you’re worried, the Playboy Handbook expressly prohibits attacking women in the act of brushing their teeth.”

She winced slightly as if her flesh had been nipped. Did this guy read minds?

“Pretend I’m not even here.” As he dragged his razor across his cheek she thought she saw a muscle bulge there. Did it annoy him that she’d think he might attack her? Or did it bother him that she was probably not going to be a conquest.

Probably not? That didn’t sound like she was sure about it! She shook herself. Get with the program, Mary. You hate this man. She saw him standing there, heard him when he spoke, yet she didn’t see him, didn’t hear him. Her thoughts ebbed and flowed as though she were slipping in and out of consciousness.

Before she grasped what was happening, he doused his razor under running water, replaced it on the glass shelf below the mirror and rinsed his face. He took a bottle of aftershave off the shelf, spattered it into his palm, rubbed his hands together and splashed the aromatic liquid on his cheeks and square jaw. She watched, transfixed, experiencing the kindling of an odd yearning deep inside her. For what? Certainly not this—this sexy—No! No! I didn’t mean sexy, I meant selfish! This selfish reptile.

He replaced the cap on the bottle and set it aside then snagged her gaze. “It’s all yours, Miss O’Mara.” She stood there motionless, torn between wanting to look deeply into those hypnotic eyes and scratching them out. “I’ll just slither quietly away,” he said, with the vaguest hint of a bow.

After he left, Mary didn’t know how long she stood there, stock-still, trying to gather her fragmented thoughts. The bracing, woodsy scent of his aftershave lingered, turning her malfunctioning mind to slush.

After what seemed like an eternity she found herself able to move, and leaned heavily against the doorjamb. She ran her hands through her hair and grasped wads in her fists, furious for allowing herself to get—flustered. Yes, that was all it was. She’d been flustered. She hadn’t expected to see him, especially nearly naked. The situation had been embarrassing and—and flustering.

She inhaled several deep breaths for strength, reminding herself of what she knew better than her own name. The man was a human slug. “I hate you Bonner Wittering,” she whispered in a guttural snarl. “I will hate you until the end of time!”

TAGGART felt eligible for the Olympic Speed Eating race. One minute and twelve seconds had to be a record for consuming a stack of pancakes, a slab of ham, a tumbler of orange juice and a cup of coffee, which scalded the back of his throat.

The throat-scalding and the breakfast-bolting had been accomplished in a good cause. Otherwise, he might have found himself clasped in the embrace of the infatuated cook. Though aggravated and losing patience, Taggart was determined to remain sympathetic to Pauline’s brazen overcompensations for her feelings of inadequacy.

He’d managed to break free of her panting attentions for a temper-cooling stroll through the evergreen forest behind Miz Witty’s home, a shady cloister of low-growing pinyon pine, juniper, oak and towering ponderosas.

His hike over the rocky, forested landscape took him constantly upward. With every step he managed to rid himself of a little pent-up tension. He spotted a porcupine, a red fox and a mother deer with her fawn before emerging from the chill of the wood into a sun-drenched meadow. A clear, shallow brook meandered across the clearing, gurgling and sparkling in the sunshine for a dozen yards before tumbling back into the forest.

Beyond the meadow, past a steep chasm, the landscape was forbidding, yet stunningly beautiful, the earth, fractured and jagged. The timbered mountainside rising above the canyon was strewn with abandoned mining structures, no doubt part of the Wittering silver mining heritage. From what Bonn had told him over the years, savvy investing by several generations of Witterings, had multiplied the family’s wealth a hundredfold, allowing Bonn the existence of leisure and excess he lived.

That thought brought Taggart harshly back to the present and the reason he was here. Spotting an outcropping of rock among a stand of tall ferns at the edge of the wood, he leapt across the shallow brook, walked to the boulder and sat down.

He scanned the clearing, awash with midmorning sunshine. Masses of flowers bobbed in the stony field, giving a delicate blue-violet cast to patches of ground. Along the bubbling stream, dense colonies of taller, pale pink flowers held court.

He inhaled crisp, clean air, experiencing a sense of peace in the vast quiet. He couldn’t imagine why Bonn avoided his hometown with such a vengeance. Of course, Boston had a great deal to offer in convenience and comfort as well as historical significance, but this untouched wilderness held a grandeur far superior to mere convenience and creature comfort. Plus, its historical significance went back not merely a few hundred years, but eons.

He scanned the unbounded, cloudless sky. In this lofty realm a man could easily feel like Zeus himself, his thunderbolts cast aside, unnecessary amid such serenity. Truly, this sanctuary in the sky seemed too idyllic for mere mortals. He had the strangest sensation he’d been given a gift, just being allowed entry.

For the first time since arriving in Wittering, he didn’t feel resentful. How many times in his life had he truly felt serene? Certainly never in his high-powered, litigious career. He sat very still for a long time, drinking in the quiet, becoming one with the solitude. He felt like a man who had been lost in a desert, dying of thirst, then stumbling into an oasis awash with cool, life-giving water. The single difference between Taggart and that tragic wayfarer was that Taggart hadn’t been aware of the depth and breadth of the parched void inside him.

The realization was both shocking and compelling, sending his conflicting emotions into a bitter fight for supremacy. He told himself his life was exciting, filled with challenges. He had power, respect, money—was a big fish in a big pond. So, why then did he find being in this quiet spot on a remote mountain so significant, so potent, it made him doubt everything he was?

It’s the prehistoric cave dweller in you talking, his logical side insisted. Sure, it was tempting, this idea of getting away from everything. But it was a pipe dream. A man had to survive in the real world, make a living. “Hell,” he muttered, “Getting away from the rat race is what vacations are for.” He wasn’t sure he appreciated his term “rat race” but, since he’d been the one to think it, he let it pass without examination. Nobody’s job was perfect. Cave dwellers had to risk life and limb just to eat.

As careers went, his was as vital as it was profitable. His quandary, this unexpected emotional quagmire, was simple to explain. He was sleep-deprived, and a little disoriented—thrust into the position of suddenly being so loved, so loathed and so lusted after, all in one day. That could be hard on any man’s psyche.

He heard rustling and turned expecting to find another mother deer with her baby, or a fox, maybe an elk. Instead, he was astonished to see a being far more extraordinary, exotic and welcome, no matter how unwelcoming her reaction might be when she noticed him.

Her back to him, she walked along the edge of the brook as it took a turn into the sunny meadow. Spilling over the crook of her arm, an array of willowy, blue flower clusters bobbed with her every step. She knelt to pick a handful of the tall, pink flowers at the stream’s edge. Her dark hair fluttered and cavorted in the breeze, taunting him with come-ons he knew to be lies.

She rose, the move as graceful as any prima ballerina. Wearing hiking boots, jeans and a clingy, white turtleneck, she walked on. In full, bright sunlight, she paused before a bush, a riot of contrast with light green leaves and bright red berries. Using garden shears she snipped off several branches and added them to her bouquet.

Some of the flowers she carried were identical to those in the vase in his room. He’d seen several others he’d recognized in the plantings around the house. It hadn’t occurred to him that anyone would hike up a mountainside to gather wild-flowers, simply to decorate a home.

What an urban creature he’d become. Or was it more likely his status as a widower? Before Annalisa’s death, she had insisted on having fresh flowers in the house, year-round. They’d come from a Boston florist, not a mountain meadow, but those bouquets had been one of the subtle feminine touches in life he’d lost with his wife’s death. He’d stuffed the memories into a dark corner of his mind as he’d thrown himself into his law practice, his way of dealing with his grief. He experienced a melancholy jab at that realization. He didn’t want to forget, yet remembering held its own kind of pain.

Mary O’Mara seemed to be having trouble juggling her swelling bouquet and snipping the berry laden branches at the same time. As he watched, she dropped her gardening shears. He decided to quit feeling sorry for himself and be useful. He planned to offer her help, no matter how much she loathed him. He stood, recalling this morning when she’d barged into the bathroom, obviously not expecting to find him there.

She’d been horrified, aghast, dumbfounded—however he cared to label it, she had been far from happy. Even in her abhorrence, she’d been a stirring sight, her hair in charming disarray, her cheeks bright pink with shock and embarrassment. Her smoke-gray eyes dazzling, even glittering with antipathy.

She had such a troubling, gut-level effect on him, the sight of her standing there had been hard to deal with. It had taken every ounce of control not to slice off his nose. He’d known this trip would be two difficult weeks, but he hadn’t counted on the likes of Mary O’Mara, making his sticky situation one hell of a lot stickier.

He loved Annalisa and always would. This surprising attraction to Mary was hard to understand. He didn’t want to feel stirrings for another woman. When his wife died, he’d contented himself with the fact that he’d had his great love, been luckier than most men. Then Mary walked into his life. The beauty of the experience had been pure, blinding and profound. Her forced smile and white-hot hatred hadn’t dimmed or sullied its significance. He didn’t understand it, was bewildered by it, and tried to put it out of his mind.

He had enough to contend with right now. First, he wasn’t Bonn Wittering. And second, even if he were open to love, he couldn’t tell Mary the truth about who he was. She would be furious with the deceit and refuse to go along with lying to Miz Witty. He had no doubt that she would immediately inform her employer, and in the process break the elderly woman’s heart. In Mary’s position, he would probably do the same thing.

This troubling, uninvited attraction he felt for Miz Witty’s caregiver had to be ignored, killed. The deception had begun and must proceed as planned. He headed down the slope toward the brook, hiking up the sleeves of his beige v-neck shirt. Getting into character as the carefree Bonner Wittering, he called, “Need any help?”