Desire: Love and Passion (2 page)

             
"I don't need a rental," she replied. "I believe I have an old car on the property."

             
"Yes, an immaculate 1950 Jaguar XK 120. Not exactly an everyday ride." His
tone
was condescending.

             
"Ah, what do you know about me?"

             
"Nothing," he said,
"
s
ave
that
you turned down an offer for
more than
twice what that piece of property is worth."

             
"Money
isn’t
everything," Willow replied.

             
"Yes, that might be true for some of us." Again he had that condescending note in his voice. He hated that she hadn't sold. "Now that you know who your neighbor is, I will have to insist you stay within your property lines. There are signs posted for would-be-trespassers. This was
a rather unfortunate incident and
I cannot impress upon you the importance of keeping this private."

             
"Why would you think I cherish his privacy over mine?" She thumbed her finger in James’s direction as she spoke.

             
James almost laughed as he listened. Larry had
finally
met his match. Seeing the look on his assistant's face, James walked over to where they stood.

             
"Larry," he said
"
g
ive us a minute
, will you.
"

             
Larry hesitated but walked away. The woman turned to James. He had met a lot of beautiful women
in his time a
nd she was beautiful, but there was something wild and uninhibited about her
, too
. Her lips were not
as
full as he first thought, but not
that
thin
,
either. They seemed to curl at the very corners of her mouth. It was as if she was
forever
laughing at
an inside
joke.
Every
visible aspect of
her appealed to him on the most basic level.  That was not the only unsettling thing. What was most unsettling was th
at
strange sense of familiarity she had.

             
"I am really sorry about what happened."

             
"You've said that already," she replied.

             
"Are you related to John?" 

             
"Sort of," she replied. "I inherited his property. He never told me he had a neighbor like you
, though
."

             
"I don't think he knew I lived here."

             
"Well, your secret is safe with me, Mr. Monroe."

             
"Please call me James," he corrected. "I think we are
a bit
beyond the niceties."

             
He watched as her eyes zeroed in on his scar.
Again, h
e flinched under her gaze. He waited to see the pit
ying
look in her eyes, but it never came. She adjusted her gaze and he thought he saw a blush as she realized he was watching her.

             
"I didn't mean to stare," she apologized.

             
"It happens all the time," he replied.

             
"It's a pity you go t
o
such lengths to hide it," she was referring to the scar. He knew as her gaze shifted from the scar to his eyes then back again. "It reminds us that there are still true heroes. Besides, it looks quite fetching on you."

             
Her candor surprised him. He was at a los
s
for words.
He’d literally
heard it all before.  He
’d been given all the pity speeches and had
caught all the guilty look-away
s
. He sensed the tension in a lover during a kiss. This
, however,
was new.

             
"I'm sorry if I embarrassed you," she said in
to
the silence. "Your man, Larry, has offered to escort me and my belongings to my place in exchange for my silence. I think I'll get going."

             
"You can ride with me," he said. "I don't mind."

             
"Please," she said almost comically, "I
haven’t
been vetted by your security service. Your assistant would have a heart attack. As I said, he is only doing this bit for my silence, which I would have given anyway."

             
"Larry works for me," he said. "Not the other way around. He
’
s not allowed to have heart attacks on the job."

             
She smiled.

             
"Well, then, how can I refuse, Mr. Monroe?"

             
"James, please."

             
Larry did indeed protest. James would hear nothing of it as he climbed into the backseat of a heavily tinted black sedan with Willow
. The
items from her wrecked ca
r were placed in the backup car in which
Larry followed.

             
"If you don't mind me asking, what is it that you do?" James asked as the car started.

             
"I'm a photographer for a marketing company," she said.

             
"Really?" He was surprised. 

             
"Don't worry,"
s
he replied. "I do have an office that I disappear to ever
y
so often, so you can play stock-car racing on the road all you want."

             
He blushed.

             
"Why do you ask?"

             
"Just curious," he replied though he was thinking about her outfit. "I feel really awful about the accident.  I would like to invite you to dinner tomorrow."

             
"There
’
s no need. Accidents happen," she said.

             
"Well, let's say it is a welcome to the neighborhood dinner."

             
"Then tomorrow sounds perfect."

Chapter 2

James could not get the image of her legs out of his mind. He dreamed about her
that night and he
woke up feeling lonely and empty. It was the loneliest he
’d
felt in a
really
long time.

             
There was no news of the accident
which he took
as a good sign. It would be horrible to start the week on the front page with a wrecked Volkswagen. Now he stood over the stove stirring eggs in the frying pan. He should have made a day of the invitation. She had grudgingly given him her number, promising that five o'clock was not too early for dinner.

             
Impuls
ively, he reached for the phone and dialed her number.
She picked up on the first ring.

             
"Hello." She really had a bedroom voice
, the sound of which
sent images of his dreams racing through his mind.

             
"Good morning," he said. "It's James."

 
             
"Oh," she sounded disappointed.

             
"Did I catch you at a bad time?"

             
"If you have a few extra fuses hanging around no, otherwise, yes."

             
"I'll see what I can do. Have you had breakfast?"

             
"What is that?"

             
"I'll see you in a bit."

             
He turned off the stove and emptied the overcooked eggs in
to
a garbage bin. He packed a few items in a paper sack
and went to find
the fuses he knew were stashed in a utility room. James
had
dressed in torn blue jeans and a well-worn tee shirt
for the excursion to Willow’s house.
He took the Land Rover from the garage with an earful of protest from Larry and Simon, the head of his security services. James was not, as a matter of security and his safety, allowed to drive
unaccompanied
. H
is
status and position required round the clock security.

             
Willow opened the door after the third ring
of the doorbell
. Her dark hair was hanging loosely around her face. He realized looking at her face that she hadn't been wearing makeup yesterday.
His initial
thought
was that
the smoothness
of her face
was a product of great skin and good m
akeup b
ut no, it was all her. She
truly
was a stunning beauty. 

             
She wore a
n
over-sized man's shirt that stopped
at her mid thighs.
The shirt had what looked like the letter M or a badly embroidered W in Old English. He felt
a bit
silly
standing in her doorway appraising her like this
. He looked at her hand and came to the conclusion that she was single. A beautiful young woman like her most likely was not single
, though
. The
good ones
were never single.

James felt he was jumping ahead of himself only because she was the first beautiful woman who had not flinched at the sight of his scar up close and personal. Even as he scolded himself, it dawned on him today more than ye
sterday that she was all legs:
miles of
them
. A pair of glasses, absent from their previous meeting was perched precariously at the end of her nose.

             
"You," she said.

             
"Were you expecting someone else?"
h
e asked. "I said I'll see you in a bit."

             
"No, I wasn't expecting anyone. I thought when you said see you in a bit you meant later."

             
She stepped away from the door as a means of invitation. He walked into the house.

             
James had never seen the house before yesterday. It was a rather large house for a single person. It was a wood and stone structure with a carriage house garage tucked away in the back.  It blended
in
nicely
with
the wooded area that surrounded it. The inside was a marvel of Italian tiles, rough lumber and stones.

             
It was the only other house on this
dead-end street in Hampstead.
When the markets went belly-up five years ago, James bought every acre he could get his hands on. John was the only hold out, refusing offers of three times property value. The decision to purchase this particular street took careful thought. It was one of the few suburban streets buffeted by National parks on three sides. It provided above all else, privacy.

             
"What's in the bag?" She asked.

             
"Breakfast and fuses."

             
"I don't cook," she said. 

             
"Lucky for you, I make a mean omelet."

             
She led him to the breaker
panel
in the garage. In a few minutes the whole house was powered up. He followed her into a large kitchen. It featured a large island in the center with a pan-rack overhead. All the counter tops were of solid red onyx
; unique to say the least
. A four foot wide refrigerator was recessed in
to
a wall and on the opposite side, a similar sized range that boast
ed double
ovens. 

             
"Deliveries don't get
way
out here
, so how do you eat if you don’t cook?
"

He placed the shopping bag on the island.