“Yeah.”
“Then you probably want to clean up.”
“That would be great.”
James wasted no time in striding out to his truck and grabbing his gear stuffed into an old army-issue backpack. When he came back in, she was waiting for him in the living room. Her expression was once again guarded and her hands were sliding up and down her arms as if she were cold. He wondered if Eric had left marks on her there, a thought that made him wish he’d done more than shoulder-check him.
He noted wood stacked in the fireplace, ready to be lit. He wondered if she would think he was making himself too much at home if he offered to light it for her. Yeah. Better wait.
As soon as he moved away from the door, she hurried over to lock it.
Then she turned back to the room, tossing her hair over her shoulder as she walked past him. “The bathroom is back here.” He followed.
She came to a stop in a narrow hallway and pointed. “On your left. Through the bedroom. Towels are in the cabinet. The shower takes five minutes to deliver hot water. Dinner in twenty minutes.”
She tried to let him pass, backing herself up until she was flat against the wall.
James turned sideways, too, but it didn’t quite work. The backpack slung across his shoulders wouldn’t allow him to press against the opposite wall.
Things were fine until his chest grazed her right breast. He heard her softly drawn breath on contact and sucked in his stomach in response. That only inflated his chest another inch, making more surface to brush against her. She began trying to slide past him, her gaze strictly on his chin. He was free to gaze down at her, to inhale the ginger scent rising from her hair. The mere brush of her against him, muffled by his clothing and hers, was enough to make him instantly hard as concrete.
He levered his body forward, jamming his butt against the wall in the hopes that his chest would be the only thing brushing her. If his johnson touched her she’d know he was ready for action.
“Sorry.” He murmured the word in a husky voice as he closed his eyes and tried to think of nothing.
Contact lasted only a few seconds but it seemed forever. Shay held her breath as she stared at the camo design of his jacket only a few inches in front of her nose. Her mind was fully on the rough drag of his jacket across every inch of her breasts. The contact was unexpectedly arousing as his buttons grazed first one and then the other of her nipples. To back him off a bit, she pressed a hand flat against his chest.
He felt rigid in places she didn’t expect, as if touching her were a test of his strength. And damn, every muscle in his body seemed to be trying to impress her with its definition. He was firm and contoured and—something moist and smooth and hard poked her!
Shay looked down. Bogart had stuck his wet nose into her open palm.
A second later, James was past her, moving into the bedroom with a swiftness she could only interpret as the desire to get away from her.
It struck her as she headed back to the kitchen that all she’d had to do was back up into the bedroom to let him by her.
Sure. Now her brain was working.
*
Shay rolled plump shiny silver oysters in cornmeal and spices before adding them to the skillet, glad she had decided to buy more than she thought she could eat in one sitting. Frying messed up the stove so she’d planned to cook enough to last for a couple of days. Now, of course, she had a man to feed. The thought made her smile. Immediately she banished the warm feeling.
She couldn’t afford to like James. He was an A-type take-charge personality. Just what she didn’t want or need after Eric. Not when the self-respect she’d worked so hard to build for herself the last few years had just come apart at the seams. Timing. Timing was everything. Hers had always been lousy.
As she forked the oysters to turn them over in the grease, she began to analyze her feelings so that they could be brought to heel before James emerged from her bathroom. She needed to think of something to talk about over dinner, nothing too personal. And maybe she should go brush her hair. She must look a mess after—
“Crap!” Shay glanced guiltily at the kitchen doorway. She was making plans for the possibility that the man in her bathroom might care how she looked.
As if she had just found a new prospect for her love life.
As if the last disaster hadn’t just stalked out her door.
No! James made her uneasy. For instance, why had he come back? Just because he had turned up in time to stop Eric before things got completely out of control didn’t mean her silent pleas for help had worked. He must have had some other motive.
She glanced down at Bogart. “I don’t suppose you’ll tell me what’s up with your partner?”
Bogart thumped his tail, his tongue lolling out of the side of his mouth.
She tossed him a fried oyster which he caught and swallowed without even rising from his prone position.