Moonlight and Shadows (4 page)

Tonight, though, there was absolutely no
reason that she should have to put up with him hanging around her
house and doing all those things he did all day, like interrupting
her work to ask her opinion, or making her feel guilty by shoveling
the walk on his way out. He wasn’t doing penance, for crying out
loud. He was trying to keep her from ruining him.

She would simply ask him to leave.

Jack poured the last of his coffee out of
the thermos and looked around the office. He’d done a helluva job,
if he said so himself. Walls stood where recently there had been
only rubble and air.

He sipped his coffee, letting the fragrant
steam warm his nose and cheeks. He’d known the instant Lila had
come home, and he was trying hard not to count the minutes until
she entered the house, a habit he’d fallen into. It was doubly hard
this night, because he hadn’t expected her to come home at all. It
was New Year’s Eve, and he couldn’t imagine even the world’s
busiest photographer leaving his lady alone on the biggest date
night of the year. His own dateless status was a lot easier to
explain. The only woman he’d wanted to ask out for months was Lila
Singer. Walls surrounding her office would have been a definite
step in the right direction, if he hadn’t had the photographer to
worry about too.

The door opened behind him, and he slowly
turned.

The first thing Lila noticed was the music.
It was always the same, oldies rock and roll, and more than once
she’d caught him tapping his feet or swinging his hips with the
beat. She preferred her music with a little more age on it, about
two or three hundred years’ worth, and she couldn’t remember the
last time she’d swung her hips to anything other than an aerobics
routine.

The second thing she noticed was the
temperature in the office. The place was almost warm again. The
third and most striking thing she noticed was his smile. He never
failed to smile, and she never failed to notice it. Never failed to
notice his mouth. Never failed to remember that kiss . . . The
queasiness in her stomach increased. The man was going to drive her
right over the edge.

“Hi.”

“Hi,” she answered. “I . . . uh, didn’t
expect you to be working tonight.”

“No date.” He shrugged and blessed her with
another easy smile. “How about you?”

The man was too direct for polite company,
but Lila managed to hold her own. “I don’t date.”

If she’d said “I don’t rape and plunder,”
Jack might have understood the frostiness of her tone, but she’d
said “date” and made it sound like the sin of the century. He was
confused . . . and intrigued.

“Engaged?” he asked, and took another sip of
coffee.

“I beg your pardon?” she replied, and it was
the only reply she intended to give. With the right inflection that
phrase could effectively shut down any conversation.

“Engaged,” he repeated. “As in fiancé.”

She’d obviously missed her inflection. “No.
I am not engaged.”

How anyone could look so cuddly and be so
damned prickly was beyond him, Jack thought. “So, you’re not
engaged and you don’t date.” He broadened his grin. “What do you do
on Friday nights, and Saturdays, and New Year’s Eve?” What he
didn’t ask, though it was at the top of his list, was—
Who is the
photographer and what does he do to make you look like that?
If
the truth be known, when she wasn’t home he’d stood in her sitting
room more than once and stared at the photograph.

Lila let out a small sigh. She had not only
failed to kick Jack out or at least shut down the conversation, but
in less than a minute he had directed said conversation beyond her
range of approved topics. She should never have allowed him to kiss
her. It made him think he could take all sorts of liberties.

“I work, Mr. Hudson,” she said, drawing
herself up to her full height, “which is what I need to do now,
without the distraction of
your
work. So if you don’t mind,
I’d like you to stop for the evening.” Two, she decided, could play
at being direct.

“Fine with me,” he said, still grinning,
“but what are you going to do about him?” He lifted his coffee cup
and gestured toward the driveway.

Lila turned her head, and an unintentional
groan escaped her lips. She’d thought Jack Hudson was the last
person on earth she’d want to see tonight. She’d been wrong.

Trey Farris, her very own personal,
overardent teaching assistant, stumbled twice in the snow while
trying to find the makeshift porch of concrete blocks leading to
the French doors. He waved after each stumble, and Lila lifted her
hand in return, plastering a false smile on her face. She had hoped
to have the four weeks of Christmas break as a vacation from
fending off Trey’s not very subtle advances. Jack Hudson may have
outmaneuvered her for a few minutes, but she couldn’t let Trey have
even an inch of leeway. The graduate student had the camping
instincts of an Eagle Scout. Once he settled in, she’d never get
rid of him, and if he breathed on her neck one more time, she’d
probably hit him. She had about thirty seconds to think of an
excuse to get rid of him.

“Do whatever you have to. I’ll back you up.”
Jack’s voice came from behind her, and she gave him a startled
glance over her shoulder.

No, she thought, looking into those hazel
eyes shot through with flecks of green and gold. She’d be crazy to
make any kind of illicit pact with him, or to engage in anything as
intimate as a lie. One kiss had been more than enough of that kind
of business.

Jack saw a slight tension tighten her mouth
and the barest hint of desperation darken her eyes. He’d caught her
between a rock and a hard place, between himself and the gangly
young man flailing his way through the snow. By her reaction, Jack
surmised the teaching assistant obviously was not the photographer,
and Jack was powerfully curious to know which path Lila Singer
would find the least dangerous.

He was still willing to bet money she and
the photographer had something going, but she’d just admitted to
not being engaged, and he knew she wasn’t married. He would have
noticed a husband, or at least signs of a husband. The lady lived
alone . . . and she looked great in peach-colored sweaters with
pearly sequins. Really great.

The sequins swirled down one shoulder and
across the front of the sweater. The matching peach-colored skirt
was tight, his favorite style. Gray suede high-heeled boots gave
her a few more inches, and her full-length mink coat looked like
just the sort of thing he’d love to wrap his arms around,
especially with her in the middle of it. All in all, he was
probably outclassed, and his imagination was definitely out of
line.

And she was out of time.

At the sound of a knock, they both shifted
their attention to the door and the young man letting himself
inside.

“Hi, Dr. Singer.” He stamped his tennis
shoes on the bare plywood floor, leaving behind big clumps of snow.
“I was in the neighborhood and thought I’d better come by and see
how you were doing. I hated to think of you snowed in all by
yourself, especially on New Year’s Eve.”

“How thoughtful,” she replied in her usually
cool tone, and Jack had to give the kid a couple of points for
sheer guts or sheer idiocy. The young man must have known what he
was getting into with Miss Prickly Puss, and he’d still dragged
himself through the biggest snowstorm of the century to get out
there and be shot down. He must want her very badly. Jack didn’t
blame him for that. The more he saw of Lila Singer, the more he
thought about wanting her too. As a matter of fact, that was
exactly what he was thinking about even as the kid was making his
big play.

“I brought some wine,” he said, pulling a
bottle out of his voluminous, heavy wool coat. “A gift, actually. I
came by Christmas Day, but you weren’t here. Glad to see your house
is getting back together.”

Jack refrained from a snort of laughter. The
kid was about as smooth as corn whiskey. Jack hadn’t used the old
“don’t call first or she’ll make an excuse” ploy since high school,
and “gangly legs” had just admitted to using it twice. The wine,
though, didn’t bring laughter to mind. He raised one eyebrow as he
saw the two-digit price tag, then gave the kid a more thorough
assessment, wondering if there was more competition in the room
than he’d thought.

“Thank you, Trey,” Lila said, accepting the
wine bottle, “but we were just getting ready to—”

“Oh, wow,” Trey whispered, touching his
fingers to his head and bringing them away smeared with blood. Jack
had to give him two more points for originality, but he could have
killed the kid for interrupting her. She’d said “we,” and he was
the only available “we” around, and he sure would have loved to
hear what they had been just about ready to do. On the other hand,
he was a little disturbed that she thought he’d be easier to handle
than the novice he was up against.

“For goodness’ sakes,” she exclaimed, using
the soft, soft tone he heard all too rarely. “Come inside where
it’s warm. What happened? Did you do that on the steps?” She tucked
her arm through Trey’s and led him into the main part of the house,
leaving Jack standing alone, in the roughed-out addition. But not
for long.

He finished his coffee with one swallow and
set the cup on a stack of lumber. Then, without hesitation, he
followed the wounded dove and Florence Nightingale inside, flipping
off the switch to the single bulb hanging in the office. The kid
may be up on him about four to zip, but he hadn’t won the war. And
Jack’s masculine instincts told him this was war, the real simple
two men, one woman, and one night kind of war.

* * *

“Lila went to get some first aid supplies,”
Trey said to Jack when he entered the kitchen. Trey looked smug and
as happy as a tick on a dog, despite the thin trickle of blood
coursing down his brow. “You must be the guy fixing her
office.”

“Yeah.” Jack gave him a big smile and a
good, firm handshake. “Jack Hudson. And you are?”

“Trey Farris. Lila’s teaching assistant. We
work together at the university.” He opened a cupboard door and
lifted down two wineglasses. “She’s helping me with my master’s
thesis. We get together quite a bit to toss around ideas and
things. I don’t suppose you know much about nineteenth-century
British literature.”

“Not much,” Jack agreed, not fooled by the
younger man’s line of bull. He’d caught the formal greeting of “Dr.
Singer” at the door. The only thing Trey Farris had sewn up with
Lila Singer was a job. Which was about the same thing Jack had sewn
up with her.

“Everybody at the university heard about the
screwup on the construction,” Trey continued, working the cork out
of the wine bottle. He stopped every twist or two to push up the
sleeves on his fuzzy gray sweater. Everything he wore bagged and
sagged, and he seemed incapable of keeping his glasses on his nose.
“Lila was pretty upset. We all thought she should get somebody else
to . . .”

Trey droned on and on, but Jack quit
listening. He was too busy wondering if he should pop the kid, or
just grab him by the collar and scare him enough to make him
rethink his conversation. The kid had nerve, too much nerve, and he
was beginning to irritate the hell out of Jack, especially with the
two wineglasses bit.

Lila came back in the nick of time, saving
Jack from some macho foolishness and Trey from getting his
intellectual attitude mussed up.

“Have a seat over here, Trey,” she said, “by
the breakfast counter. I’m so sorry about those steps. Mr. Hudson?”
She turned to Jack, and he knew he winced. Mr. Hudson, Mr. Hudson.
It was going to drive him crazy. “Maybe you should build a handrail
to keep any more accidents from happening.”

Jack stopped himself from saying something
about lovestruck young studs forgetting where their feet were and
said only, “Good idea.”

Trey smirked behind Lila’s back and began
pouring wine into the two glasses he’d taken with him to the
breakfast counter. Jack did his best to level him with a dark
glare.

For her part, Lila concentrated on her
ministrations. She possibly dabbed at Trey’s forehead with more
force than was necessary, but she was upset. She wasn’t blind or
comatose. She felt the undercurrents running between the two men,
and she found them incomprehensible, disconcerting, and somewhat
scandalous. No one had a claim on her. What were they thinking?

On second thought, she didn’t want to
know.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Trey,”
she said when he picked up one of the wineglasses. “You have a
nasty bump on your head, and the roads are treacherous.”

“Nasty bump,” Jack repeated with another big
smile, leaning over to relieve the younger man of his wineglass.
“Treacherous roads.” He settled his hips back against the counter
and sipped the wine.

“I’ll be back in a minute,” Lila said. “I
forgot the antiseptic.” She swept out of the kitchen, ignoring both
of them as best she could.

Trey didn’t waste a moment staking his
claim. “I’ve known Lila for a long time . . . a very long time,” he
said meaningfully, pressing forward on the counter. “And I don’t
think she’s ready for some guy like you to push his way into her
life.”

“What kind of guy is that?” Jack wasn’t
offended by the kid’s bluntness. As a matter of fact, he gave him a
few more points for audacity and astute intuition.

“Well,” Trey started slowly, as if measuring
his words and the distance between himself and Jack. “You’re a
carpenter, right?”

“Right.” Jack was beginning to get
offended.

“Well, Lila isn’t exactly the carpenter
type. I mean, Danny Singer wasn’t what you’d call an average Joe
. The man had shows in New York, Los
Angeles, Chicago. The photographs he took of Lila sported price
tags of five thousand
dollars, and that was
before
he died. The stuff is probably
priceless now, and . . . Well, that’s the kind of man Lila is used
to. Cultured, intellectual, academic even. Have you caught my
drift?”