“Thank you,” he forced out, stuffing his feet into his boots without bothering to lace them. He stumbled toward the door, his hand reaching for the doorknob.
“Aren’t you forgetting something?”
The oilskin.
He spun around. Imogen smirked at him from farther away, one hand planted on her hip, the other casually holding the oilskin aloft.
“Give it back.”
Her chin rose higher. “Not until I have a look inside.”
Tommy lunged forward just as she dove under the table. He dropped to his knees to follow, but she merely popped out the other side, her clever fingers already undoing the outer flap. He bided his time until her gaze strayed to the complicated knots, then he sidestepped the table and encircled her slender torso in a vice-like grip. The victory was short-lived. He winced when sharp nails raked across the back of his hand.
“Play fair,” he grunted.
“Never!”
She wiggled in his arms like a creature with its paw caught in a trap. He grunted as her sweet bottom rubbed over his crotch. Gritted his teeth when his cock leapt to attention. Now was not the time. But his cock—the traitorous bastard—only hardened further when she twisted against him. He released Imogen and stumbled backward, his breath heavy and erratic. A moment later, the flap was open and the book was in her hands.
“Be careful,” he ground out.
She flipped to the title page, and her gloating smile twisted into a sneer. “A first edition of Moby Dick is far from boring paperwork. Why did you lie to me?”
He scrambled for a plausible excuse, but she knew him too well.
“Let’s see.” She tapped her chin, and her voice dripped with sarcasm. “You’re in a hurry to return to Seattle and you’re carrying a costly book you didn’t want me to see. Looks like your thieving days are far from over, and you didn’t learn a thing. Tell me I’m wrong.”
There were so many things he wanted to say, but the words stuck in his throat. It was too complicated, too messy. Perhaps she’d understand—she always had before—but it would gut him if she didn’t. He was going to have a hard enough time forgetting this ill-fated meeting without adding a heart-to-heart talk that left his own in tatters.
In a few quick movements, he swiped the book from her hands, slipped it back into the oilskin, and tucked it inside his coat pocket.
“Goodbye, then,” he said curtly. He didn’t wait for a reply, but hurried to the cabin door and wrenched it open.
And cursed fate anew.
The darkening sky had shifted from a dull gray to an unsettling, ashen blue. The towering evergreens groaned in the wind, which bit and gnashed like a malevolent spirit. Snow fell with increasing intensity, filling in the nearby footprints and casting a forbidding haze in the background. A metallic tang laced the air, the taste of an impending storm come home to roost.
Imogen’s shoulder bumped his as she made space beside him. They stood in silence, watching the storm unfold. When she spoke, her words rang like a death-knell.
“Looks like we’re stuck together. And you’re sleeping on the floor.”
Chapter 4
Imogen huddled inside the empty wooden bathtub, clutched a pillow to her face, and screamed.
Two days.
Two excruciatingly long days trapped inside with a closemouthed man who refused to stop touching her belongings. He cooked, he cleaned, he tidied. Why couldn’t he sit in the corner and brood like every other villain she’d read about?
It was slowly driving her mad.
She had no doubt he knew exactly what he was doing. The few times he’d entered her bedroom when they were young—the odd occasion both Imogen’s nanny and Tommy’s mother, the Radford’s cook, were distracted at the same time—he’d delighted in rearranging everything from her stuffed animals on the coverlet to her hairbrush set on the dressing table. Claimed it made more sense and she’d thank him later.
She gulped in a fresh breath of air and screamed again. It was a good one, straight from her belly. There was a momentary respite—the whirlwind inside her tamed, if only for a fleeting breath. She lowered the pillow and glared at the staging screen, which separated her from the redheaded cretin doing God-only-knew on the other side. She didn’t care one bit if he heard her; an intelligent man would take the hint and sit still.
To be fair, he had fixed the hole in the ceiling and stuffed rags in every crevice to keep them warm. He even let her tinker with her photography equipment in peace. Not once did he look at her with disapproval or mystification, like her former fiancé had on numerous occasions. A rather obvious sign he was going to jilt her, now that she thought back on it. Tommy, on the other hand, gave her space to work. Never mind that the work was currently limited to lens cleaning and fine-tuning settings. When she disappeared behind the screen, he always quieted, as if he didn’t want to interrupt her process.
Fine, so he wasn’t always annoying.
