To Love and To Cherish

CHAPTER THREE

‘EEK!’ The sound escaped Tiffany as a sudden scrabbling noise erupted in the lounge room chimney. With a shaking hand she put down her cup of herbal tea and froze into position, where she sat on the sofa.

A second later, something large and furry and agitated landed in a spray of soot in the empty fireplace, just steps away from her bare feet.

The room was almost completely dark. Tiffany could see only a shape—large, with eyes that glowed. She sort of—well, shrieked, and leapt onto the back of the lounge, where she proceeded to dance from foot to foot.

It was a totally understandable reaction. As though to confirm this fact, the animal ran right towards her, then scrabbled sideways into a corner of the room. When her heart started to beat again, Tiffany heard the slap as the veranda room door was shoved open.

A light flared from there. Jack stood silhouetted in the aperture for a split second before he rushed into the room.

‘What’s wrong? What’s going on?’ Questions flew from his lips as he strode across the room to her. ‘Why are you up there? Why did you scream?’

‘Jack—oh, Jack. I couldn’t get to sleep, so I made herbal tea, and then that thing came down the chimney and it’s as big as an elephant.’

Jack was another human being, a welcome sight, and instinctively she reached out her arms to him.

When Jack got close enough, she did the only sensible thing. She removed herself from the precarious safety of the sofa to something that was, in her opinion, far safer.

‘Oomph.’ Jack absorbed the sudden impact of her launch from sofa to his hold with just that one sound. His arms tightened around her and she clung on, her legs around his waist—which was as far away from the floor as she could get.

‘I think it’s a p-possum. You know I don’t like rodents, Jack. Not without a lens and some distance between me and them. Not this close.’ Her arms wrapped around his neck. She had to force herself not to squeeze tightly.

It was such a nice neck, too. Strong and firm, the skin smooth and warm.

Don’t think about his neck or his skin or anything else like that. You have other problems right now. Possum problems.

‘I’m sorry I jumped on you, but the possum startled me.’ It had scared her silly, actually, and she still felt that way, but maybe she could brazen this out. ‘Um, maybe if you could help me get to the kitchen? Then you could get rid of it?’

‘All right. And possums are marsupials, actually.’ He growled his response in a husky tone that inexplicably sent shivers down her spine.

‘Well, yes. I know that.’ For some reason his tone made her suddenly aware of the close press of their bodies, of the scant layers of clothing that separated them, of the warmth of Jack beneath his T-shirt and boxer shorts.

Drat it. She couldn’t let herself do this again. It humiliated her to react to him when he didn’t even notice she existed that way. She steeled herself for the short trip to the kitchen, at which point she would immediately step away from him and become utterly businesslike thereafter.

But Jack tilted his head, as though listening. ‘Ah. I think I hear it now. Over there.’

He turned his head towards the scrabbling sound in the opposite corner of the room, and as he did so his whisker-roughened face brushed her upper chest.

Oh, wow. She sucked in her breath at that unexpected tactile experience.

Jack stilled completely. He wasn’t even breathing.

That knowledge made her stop breathing, too, and somehow the tension shifted in a completely different way. What was happening here?

‘You have to get down.’ As he spoke the words, his arms tightened even more around her.

Well, yes. She knew that. She’d even suggested it. But first he had to get her to the kitchen. Preferably without the need to put her feet on any part of the same floor the possum occupied.

‘In the kitchen…’

‘Right.’ He started in that direction. Almost reluctantly he looked into her eyes as he held her steady.

That was when she saw it. His eyes were dark pools filled with masculine awareness and interest. Even as she absorbed that fact—and it was fact, not fiction—his gaze dropped to her lips and lingered there.

‘Jack?’ A flurry of movement in her peripheral vision revealed the possum as it attempted to run up the wall beside the chimney.

Tiffany stiffened, but the possum scrambled down again, and headed back into the corner.

Jack walked them into the kitchen and shut the door behind them. She could get down now, but he made no attempt to release her, and she couldn’t take her focus from his gaze.

He wanted to kiss her. The truth shone in his eyes, showed in the droop of heavy lids as he focused on her mouth.

With all thought suspended Tiffany could only feel. And what she felt was Jack. Her hand drifted from his shoulder, down over his collarbone, towards his chest. She wanted his heartbeat beneath her fingertips, wanted to know if it pounded as hers did right now. She wanted his kiss, even if she didn’t understand it, and it didn’t fit with what Jack had said he wanted.

‘Don’t.’ The word passed between his suddenly compressed lips. Jack’s fingers closed around her wrist to arrest the movement of her hand.

A second later she stood alone. Jack stood on the opposite side of the kitchen and continued to back away from her even as he spoke.

‘Stay there. I’ll get rid of the possum.’ He shut her into the room, shut himself out, and she stood there and tried to come to terms with what had just happened.

Chilled suddenly, she took a few dazed steps to her bedroom and drew her robe on, tied it. With a part of her mind she heard doors open and close, then Jack’s low voice as he encouraged the possum to leave. Further scrabbling sounds, the outer veranda door being closed, then silence.

When she cracked the kitchen door open and looked around it she found…nothing. No possum. No Jack.

‘Is the possum gone?’

She asked the question into the yawning silence. Only then did Jack step from the veranda room back into the lounge room. Jeans and the overshirt pulled on top of his sleep-shirt covered him from neck to ankle once again.

‘Yes, the possum is gone.’ He remained close to the veranda room doorway, as though concerned that if he came closer she would somehow contaminate him or something. ‘It went willingly once I opened the outer veranda door, and it caught a glimpse of its normal environment out there.’

‘Thank you for getting it to leave. I realise it’s silly for me to be afraid, but I do prefer to enjoy my wild animals from a certain distance, and where they are happy in their own environment. I had the distinct feeling that possum was quite unhappy and might run up my leg.’

She used a deliberately calm tone, but her feelings on the inside didn’t match it. Unwilling to prevaricate, she spoke of the thing she needed to understand the most. ‘You almost kissed me just then. I didn’t imagine it.’

His gaze became remote, forbidding. Utter denial hovered on his lips. She could see it there.

But eventually he pushed harsh words through his teeth. ‘It was the middle of the night. I’d only just got to sleep. I heard you scream. You jumped into my arms wearing nothing more than a couple of scraps of satin. Any man would have been tempted. It was just a blip.’

‘Oh, so it happened because of proximity and circumstance?’ She narrowed her gaze as she searched his face for truth. ‘Sort of like if you walked into a bakery and smelt a chocolate éclair, and you headed for it before you remembered you don’t truly like chocolate éclairs?’

‘You’re not a chocolate éclair.’ One hand raised above his head to grip the door lintel. Strain showed in every line of his body, in the carefully blank face. ‘The reaction wasn’t intentional, that’s all. Now, it’s late. We should get back to bed. I’ll get up on the roof tomorrow and put some wire netting over the chimney hole so nothing else can come down it. I’ll help you clean up in the morning, too. Goodnight.’

Ooh, the man made her want to scream. In genuine frustration, not possum-induced shock. But Jack had already turned away. Unless she decided to pursue him into the veranda room, Tiffany could only do the same.

But she wasn’t happy. Jack was avoiding her all over the place, and he had reacted with awareness of her—which raised questions, drat him!

Tiffany spun on her heel and marched the few steps to her bedroom door. Once there, she shut herself into the room with more of a bang of the door than was probably strictly necessary.

Oh, she was grateful for the rescue from the possum, and for Jack’s willingness to make sure the thing couldn’t get into the house again. But as for the rest?

For someone so set on renewing a very platonic friendship, Jack had allowed himself to become quite distracted just now. And he’d been well and truly awake before that had happened, no matter what he said to the contrary.

It made her wonder if those other moments she had believed were all on her side hadn’t been at all.

She now had more questions than before, and she wanted some answers—darn the man’s attractive, confusing, irritating hide.

He should have stuck around long enough for her to get those answers.

Morning came before Tiffany was ready. She hadn’t slept well for the rest of the night, but the farm work had to go on.

A protein start to the day seemed like a smart idea. At least then she would have something in her stomach other than aggravation and confusion and butterflies. Since when had Jack turned into Mr Secretive and Contradictory Man, anyway?

Because she was a good hostess, despite everything else, she headed for the veranda room to get Jack’s opinion about the breakfast choices. Maybe he would be willing to discuss that, if nothing else.

Truly, Tiffany couldn’t stop thinking about what had happened last night. It had just seemed very real to her—more than a simple case of some sort of random and unanticipated hormonal reaction on Jack’s part. She still wanted those answers. She intended to get them. She just wasn’t certain how.

Jack was up and dressed. She’d caught sight of him as he’d moved through the kitchen when she had first got up herself. She stuck her head around the open door to the veranda room now, and spoke. ‘I thought I might make bacon and eggs for breakfast—a bit of a treat to start the day right.’

He’d had his back to her. Now he swung around. Blue eyes glared, and his fingers clenched around something small that he held in his hand. The other hand reached for the travel bag on his bed and whipped the zipper shut, as though the secrets of the government, the FBI and world peace all depended on her not seeing the contents.

His gaze narrowed and words snapped out. ‘I didn’t know you were up.’

Oh, he was in a great mood. Not.

Well, guess what? She didn’t feel particularly placatory right now, either. She wasn’t a blasted spy, and what did he have to hide that was so all-fired important, anyway? Another stupid two-pocketed shirt?

Did he truly want their friendship back? Because friends didn’t jump through the roof any time the other person came near them. And, yes, okay, fine, she still found him attractive, but she would get that under control and it had nothing to do with this.

‘I saw you pass through the kitchen earlier, so I thought I’d check what you wanted to eat.’ I didn’t barge in, Jack. I knew you were dressed, and your door was wide-open, so think that one over.

A glass of water sat on the bedside table, and he glanced at it before he turned a closed look towards her. ‘No problem. And bacon and eggs would be fine. I’ll be there in a minute.’

The subtext couldn’t have been plainer.

He didn’t want to acknowledge that he had overreacted to her presence, and he wanted her to leave the room.

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