Here to Stay (Silhouette Special Edition) (10 page)

“So I noticed. Once I got used to the purring, it was nice to have company.”

Miles spread jam on his toast, then held the jar across the table for her. His gaze met hers and held. She took the jam but had to force her attention back to her own toast. Was it lack of sleep, or was everything from the cat to the jam involved in a conspiracy to make this setup look more intimate than either she or Miles wanted?

“I heard you go out pretty late last night. Emergency?”

She swallowed her bite of toast and, despite her exhaustion, smiled at the memory of the past few hours. “Not exactly. More a case of new-mother panic, except the one in a panic was the owner, not the new mother.”

“Everyone okay?”

She beamed. “Everyone splendid, after the owner came out of a dead faint.” His eyebrows shot up. She chuckled. “I haven’t lost an owner yet. We have a beautiful filly, and a doting mom.”

He smiled. “So what’s on your agenda for today?”

“The usual. Barn calls all day.” She took a breath, then plunged in. “So. Have you decided when you’re leaving?”

S
asha held her breath, not wanting to hear his answer, yet knowing it was better to make the break quickly and cleanly, rather than to drag it out. It was right for Miles to go now, when there was nothing more between them than simple physical attraction. Real feelings didn’t grow this fast, so what she felt was only infatuation, and that would fade as soon as Miles left and she got back to work. Out of sight and all that. But still, Sasha held her breath, not wanting to hear the words.

“Probably this afternoon, or early evening, depending on what’s available. I’ll call the travel agent after breakfast.”

It was what she had expected to hear, but the words still hit her like a low punch. The breath she’d been holding escaped. “Oh.” She got up and carried her dishes to the sink, to prevent him from seeing her sudden distress. “Well, I’ve got to get to work.” Her forced cheer sounded lame.

In the past she’d said goodbye to animals under her care and men she’d dated with the calm acceptance that parting company was in everyone’s best interests. But Miles was different from other men. He made
her
feel different. For the first time, letting go was going to hurt, and Sasha didn’t know how to pretend otherwise. She braced herself for his farewell.

He crossed the kitchen to stand beside her. She felt acutely aware of his bare torso, the scent of his skin, the heat of his body. His eyes met and held hers, and she knew that if he touched her, her fragile self-control would break.

He cleared his throat. “I’m out of clean shirts. Okay to use your washer and dryer before I go?”

Her nerves were stretched so tightly, Sasha almost giggled at his mundane question. “Of course. They’re in the basement, through the door next to the pantry.”

Miles glanced behind himself, to the door she’d pointed out, then turned back to her. A strange expression crossed his face.

“Well, I guess this is goodbye,” she said, determined not to make a fool of herself. “Good luck, Miles. I’m sorry I couldn’t help you more.”

His smile didn’t quite reach his golden eyes. “You saved my life. What more did you expect to do?” Before she could think of a reply, he reached up and settled his hands on her shoulders. His touch made her skin tingle, right through her clothes. She couldn’t remember another man’s touch having anything like this wild effect on her nerve endings. Breathlessly, she felt him draw her closer.

Miles looked down into Sasha’s eyes and saw himself reflected in those dark mirrors. He wondered if his hunger showed in his own eyes, the way desire showed in hers. It would take very little effort to seduce her now. He knew, without knowing how, that he had used and cast off other women for his own convenience. Some instinct deep within told him that Sasha was different from the other, nameless, faceless women he had known in his murky past. She didn’t deserve to be hurt by him.

“I don’t think I like long goodbyes.” He bent his head until his lips just brushed hers. Her earthy scent stole into his senses like wine, tempting him to deepen that token kiss and drink in her sweetness. “I wish things could be different, but I don’t have anything to offer a woman like you.”

“I never asked for anything, Miles.”

Her dismissal cut like a razor. “You didn’t have to.” He pressed a kiss to her forehead, then released her before she could feel him trembling like a randy teenager. “Goodbye, Doc.”

He got out of the kitchen as quickly as his still-sore knee would let him move. The front door closed even before he was halfway up the stairs. Miles told himself it was the best—the
only—
course of action, but that didn’t make it any easier.

Princess raced upstairs ahead of him, tail straight up. She was waiting for him when he reached the bedroom where he’d been sleeping. She watched him gather his meager laundry into a bundle, then raced downstairs again to wait for him in the kitchen. He opened the door Sasha had said led to the basement laundry room. The bare wood-plank stairs disappeared into pitch blackness. Miles stuck his hand into the opening, searching for a light switch.

Without warning, the darkness clutched at him, trying to suck him down into a vortex of swirling, oppressive images and sounds. He swayed, fighting the power that pulled at him. A band tightened around his head, making circles of light and color dance in his eyes. Something closed around his chest, stopping the air he struggled to breathe. Sweat broke out over his face, his body, but he shivered from a cold deep inside.

His knees buckled. He started to fall into the yawning blackness of the basement. Groaning, he caught at the doorframe and crumpled to the floor at the top of the stairs. Nausea threatened as he gripped the pillowcase full of laundry and stared down the stairs into the abyss waiting for him.

“Miles?” Sasha’s cry broke into the swirling darkness. “Oh, my God! Miles! What’s wrong? Miles? Are you still sick? My God! You could have fallen down the stairs!” He felt Sasha kneel beside him and slip her arm across his shoulders. Her breast pressed against his arm, warm, soft. Her hand gripped his other arm. “Let me help you—”

“No! I can get up myself!”

She eased away, still on the floor but not touching him anymore. “Okay. Fine. What happened?” she asked, her voice less urgent, but he still could hear her tension.

“Nothing.”

“Nothing? I find you groaning on the floor at the top of the stairs and you say
nothing
happened? Miles, I’m not stupid. You’re in a cold sweat, your pulse is racing and you’re shaking like a leaf. You could be having a relapse of the flu.
Please
tell me what happened so I can help you.”

If he pretended it was the flu, she’d try to persuade him to stay. If he told her the truth, she would try to wrap him in her pity. “I don’t need your help!”

“Fine.” She stood. “I just came back to get some insurance forms I need to fill out. Sorry I intruded.”

He knew he should reach out and stop her, but she was out the door before he could get to his feet. It was a hell of a way to say goodbye. Cursing his insensitivity, his stubbornness, he forced himself to feel along the inside stairwell wall for the light switch. He found it without having to look down into the black tunnel leading into the basement, and flipped it up. The lights flickered on, bright. No more abyss. No more shadows. Nothing to turn a grown man into a cowering wimp with legs like rubber.

He took a step forward and the stairs seemed to rear up at him. Suddenly he
knew.
He saw it all like a movie in slow motion. Shapes. Faces. No—one particular face. Ugly. Twisted. Mean. He saw the dark reaching for him, heard the screaming. High-pitched screams.
No! Please don’t hurt me! Please don’t do it!
They couldn’t be his screams.

But they were.

* * *

Sasha knew it was folly, but she drove home at half past eleven that morning, as bound by compulsion as a moth hovering around a flame. On the flimsy pretext that she had to check on the horses before she picked up Sam’s daughter for their weekly lunch date, she parked in the yard. Hands shaking, pulse racing, she sat in the truck for a few minutes, taking calming deep breaths. She wanted to do or say something to make up for that awful scene at the basement door. That was no way to say goodbye, but then, was there any good way to say goodbye? No, seeing Miles again would only be awkward. Mentioning the incident would only embarrass them both. Better not to, she decided. Giving in to cowardice, she climbed down and strode toward the paddocks instead of the house.

Houdini and his buddies were dozing in the spring sunshine that beat down on them. Several of them lifted their heads to gaze at her, but only Houdini approached the fence to greet her. She spent a while scratching around his ears and speaking softly to him before giving him a pat and sending him back to sunbathe. Then she made her way around the back to Desperado’s paddock.

The stallion was cropping grass near the fence line when she approached the gate. He snorted and blew before trotting toward her. With his ears forward, he looked eager, alert, unthreatening. It was the first time he had come to her without wearing his ears pinned back in hostility. She smiled at his progress and held out her hand, offering a piece of the crunch she always kept in her pockets.

Her heart pounded, but she kept her hand steady. Desperado sniffed suspiciously at her palm. Then, after several false starts, he reached his head out and delicately lipped the treat off her hand. Her heart soared at the tiny triumph.

“Good boy,” she crooned to him. His ears flicked back and forth. “There’s more crunch for you if you’ll be a good fellow and let me come in. All I want to do is rub your neck and give you another piece of lovely crunch.”

She felt his eyes on her shaking hands as she unlocked the gate to his paddock. He must have suddenly realized her intentions, because as she slipped the latch, he snorted, pawed, then lifted his front legs off the ground in restless leaps. Speaking softly, moving in slow motion, she pushed the gate in a few inches at a time, mindful of those potentially lethal hooves dancing in front of her. To her relief, Desperado suddenly stopped his nervous movements and extended his nose toward her. Murmuring praise, she eased a piece of crunch out of her pocket and held it out.

Desperado blew at her hand, then picked the crunch cube off her palm with barely a tickle from his muzzle. Then he lifted his head, pinned his ears and wheeled away. Sasha squeezed out of the gate seconds before he landed an explosive backward kick aimed at her. Adrenaline rushed hot and cold through her veins as she secured the gate with shaking hands. The stallion snorted, then took off bucking across the paddock, sending clods of dirt and grass flying.

“This round is yours,” she muttered, “but I’ll be back. You
will
learn to accept me.”

* * *

At the back of the house, Miles frowned as he took the shirt he’d hand washed off the old-fashioned clothesline. Was that a car door? He walked around to the front of the house, but the parking area was as empty as it had been since Sasha drove away. As empty as his memory. As empty as his life.

With an angry grunt he went back into the house to get ready to leave. After washing his shirt in the sink, he’d spent most of the morning talking on the phone to Eleanor. Now he needed to pack his few things into his duffel bag, and erase all traces of his presence. It was the least he could do for Sasha, now that he knew more about the kind of man he really was.

Upstairs, Princess sat on the bed and watched him button his shirt. The fabric smelled like sunshine. Suddenly he saw a woman hanging clothes on an outdoor line very much like the one behind Sasha’s house. She was talking to him and crying. What was she saying? Something about having to send him away because she was sick. He could see himself clinging to one of the sheets hanging from the line—how old was he? six? seven?—just breathing in the scent of sunshine and clean fabric and trying not to cry, too.

Ma Danby, the kids called her. She and her husband had been foster parents. Good ones. Miles smiled at the memories that shifted through his brain now, hazy but warm. Good food, clean bedding, laughter and hugs. And then Ma had gotten too sick to take care of any more kids. Miles had been the last to go.

Shaking off the image of himself clinging to his foster mother as a witch of a social worker tried to drag him away, Miles went downstairs for a last cup of coffee. His taxi to the airport was due in an hour.

When he walked into the kitchen he found himself face-to-face with Sam Hunter. The other man stood leaning against the counter, a mug of coffee in one hand. The sense of having his territory invaded was irrational—it was Sasha’s home, not his—but Miles felt compelled to stake his own claim. He walked across the room to take a mug out of the cupboard next to Hunter’s head. Without a word he poured the last of the coffee into his mug, then crossed to the table and sat down as if he were in his own kitchen.

Hunter took a sip of his coffee, then gave him a slow half smile. “You’re pretty comfortable here,” he commented dryly.

Miles sipped his own coffee before answering, “So?”

“So, I’m suggesting you don’t get any more comfortable. I don’t want you taking advantage of Sasha. You look like the kind of man who takes what he wants and doesn’t worry about the consequences. I don’t want her getting hurt.”

“She’s capable of making her own decisions.”

“She’s too generous for her own good. Everyone else comes first with her.”

“So you’re her self-appointed guardian.”

Hunter shrugged, then raised his mug to drink.

“I’ve got an airport taxi coming in an hour.” The relaxation in the other man’s stance was subtle, but Miles noticed it. A cold certainty settled in his gut. “You’re in love with her.”

“Only on my masochistic days.” Hunter flashed him a lopsided grin. Miles suspected that Sam Hunter had a lot of masochistic days. He could feel the emptiness the other man covered with quiet humor. “We have too much history, including my wife. Annie was Sasha’s best friend.”

“What happened?”

“Annie died three years ago. Allergic reaction to a hornet sting. Sasha kept Maggie and me going. She wants me to be her friend, so that’s what I am.”

“But you don’t want her to get involved with anyone else.”

Hunter crossed the room, pulled a chair out from the table and sat facing Miles. “Sasha doesn’t get involved. There’s always guys hanging around her. Like bees to honey. None of them ever shake her out of that serene groove she’s in.”

The other man’s smile was wry. “Sasha is a healer. She can’t fall in love with a man who needs to be healed. A man has to be very strong to make a place for himself in her life. He has to have something to give her, equal to what she can give him. A man with no past has no future to give.”

“Is that what you say, or what Sasha says?”

Sam shrugged. “She says she won’t settle for less than fireworks, and so far she hasn’t met a man who can compete with her work.”

Miles set down his mug and leaned back in his chair. He knew with sudden certainty that all he had was his work. Without it, he was nothing. The knowledge twisted inside him.