“There are no women on the island.” The instant he’d spoken, he remembered Kirsty, but didn’t say anything, just went about his task.
She watched him as if he had grown two moose heads. “What are you doing now?”
He looked down at his hands. He wasn’t doing anything odd. He looked up again. “I’m polishing the dustpan.”
“You polish the dustpan?” she repeated. After a stretch of puzzled staring, she giggled.
“What’s so amusing?”
“Youarepolishing the dustpan.”
“Aye.”
She giggled again, which should have annoyed him like it did when Eachann laughed at him. But instead he only felt some of his earlier tension drain away. At least she wasn’t looking at him as if he was about to have her for breakfast.
He nodded at the glass in her hand. “Drink, lass.”
She frowned down at the whisky, then sniffed it.
“It’s not poison.”
“It smells like it,” she muttered.
He gave a small bark of laughter and she looked up, surprised, then after a moment where he couldn’t detect a thing from her blank expression, she gave him a small tentative smile.
The room was warm. Too warm. He stopped polishing the dustpan and was frozen there. He wanted to keep her smiling at him because... well, he didn’t know why. He just did.
He looked away and crossed to the desk in a few rapid and agitated strides. He put away the whisk and dustpan, then closed the drawer harder than he’d intended.
He then ignored her because somehow that made up for the smile he’d given her. He began to straighten the alphabetized piles of papers on his desk. They didn’t need straightening, but he did it anyway, tapping the piles on his desktop so every paper would be perfectly aligned. Finally the silence got to him and he cast a quick glance at her.
She was sipping the whiskey and staring into the fire while the light danced on her profile and made it look shadowy. There were no sounds but the crackle of the pine logs and the hollow, almost labored sound of his own deep breaths.
The air filled with tension and awareness. He shoved his spectacles back up his nose and tried to forget she was there looking at him with curiosity as she sat huddled under one curved wing of the chair the way the whooper swans tucked their heads beneath a wing while they napped.
He tried to forget her white skin that looked so soft and her cheeks that had turned pink from the room’s warmth. Don’t think of her, he told himself. He didn’t think. He just watched her long curling hair glow reddish gold in the hot gleam of the firelight.
He realized he couldn’t help but think about her. He could feel her presence deep inside of him, as if she were a part of him that he’d never known existed.
The clock struck three with loud and sudden gongs that made them both start. Simultaneously they both turned to look at the clock, realized what they’d done, whipped back around, and sat in awkward silence again. He ran a hand through his hair, then sat on a corner of his desk, staring at the mantel. He felt even more tense and somehow suddenly weak, as if the small blond woman was draining him of something vital.
The clock face came into focus and he remembered the time. That was the problem. He was just plain tired. He could feel the strain of the day like one felt a bruise. It was almost as if each hour had battered him as it past by.
No wonder his mind was playing tricks on him and his chest was tight and the room became warm when the lass looked at him. Exhaustion could do that, he rationalized.
He could imagine how she must feel, thanks to the antics of his wild brother. She stared at him with that same cautious look in her eyes, but just a moment before her eyelids had slipped down twice and she had stifled a yawn.
He stepped around the desk and walked toward her. He stopped and extended his hand. “It’s late.”
She must not have seen him because she almost jumped out of her skin. “What?”
“The time.”
She frowned at the clock.
“We need to go upstairs now.”
“Why?” There were those eyes again. Wary.Wide.
