Their Virgin Neighbor (5 page)

“
So what have you been
doing with yourself these past weeks?” he heard Jack
ask.

Anna shrugged and gestured to the
table next to the couch. “Walking, reading, knitting. I watch some
TV as well. Sally said there was no signal so I brought a booster
aerial. I have my laptop too. Again Sally said there wasn’t a WiFi
connection. It’s fine though, I have a dongle for it.”

“
A dongle?” Lee asked. “I
don’t even know what that is.”

“
For Wi-Fi.”

Jack grinned. “I’d stop there, Annie,
he’s technologically dumb.”

“
It’s Anna.”

Jack’s grin widened. “I prefer
Annie.”

So Jack was interested as well… Lee
took a deep breath and tried to work out how he felt about that.
Not surprised, that was for sure, he and Jack had fairly similar
tastes and Anna fit them to a tee. What that meant in terms of his
own interest he didn’t know. He guessed, in the end, it would all
come down to Anna.

“
Annie is not my name,”
she said.

“
It suits you though,”
Jack said.

She sighed. “Grand used to call me
Annie.”

Jack was instantly contrite. “I’m
sorry…I…”

“
No.” She took a sip of
her coffee. “It’s fine. It just sounded weird for a moment
there.”

“
Then Annie it is.
So,
Annie
, come
and have dinner with us tonight.”

Lee smiled. Jack, damn him, was one
hell of a fast worker.

“
We have some steaks in,”
he added.

Anna looked confused for a moment.
“Dinner?”

“
Yes,” Jack said.
“Tonight.”

“
Why?”

He shrugged. “Why not?”

“
Sally said…”

“
What?” Jack asked. “What
did Sally say?”

“
She said you were both
reclusive. That I probably wouldn’t even get to meet you. That you
liked to keep to yourselves.”

“
Sally was wrong about
that,” Lee said slowly. “We like some company now and
then.”

Jack nodded. “Lee can show you his
paintings.”

“
Paintings?”

Lee placed his now cold coffee on the
table and shot Jack a glare. There was a reason his studio was
closed off to the rest of the house. “It’s just a
hobby.”

Jack snorted. “He sells them for
ridiculous amounts of money.”

“
That’s what you do for a
living?” Anna asked and there was no extra flare of interest in her
eyes as she did so. Lee was not unduly surprised. Her clothes, the
car, the furnishings she had brought with her from the city, he’d
pegged Anna as someone financially comfortable for the
start.

“
In the main.”

“
And you, Jack?” she
asked. “What do you do?”

“
This and that,” Jack
said.

Turnabout was fair play in Lee’s mind.
“He sells shit on the internet.”

“
Like eBay?” Anna asked
and Lee only just stopped himself from laughing at the look on
Jack’s face. “I have a store on there too,” she added. “Just for my
small pieces not for the big jobs.”

“
Pieces?”

“
I knit, sometimes I
crotchet too,” she said. “Blankets, scarves, sometimes clothes.
Mostly I make them to order, but I tried eBay out and I had quite a
few orders. Do you have a store on there?”

Jack grinned. “Not quite. So,
dinner?”

“
I don’t want you to feel
obliged,” Anna said.

“
Obliged?” Jack
asked.

“
Yes. I’m content here by
myself. I’m happy to spend my evenings knitting and reading. It’s
so peaceful here. The hours drift by, and I’m happy
enough.”

Lee leaned forward so that he too was
on the edge of the couch. “You’re too young for pastimes like
that.”

“
I enjoy them. The city
is…” She paused, her pretty face scrunching up. “It’s so hectic. I
don’t know why it bothers me so much now. It didn’t used to. I love
the noise and the smells, but now it just feels like too
much.”

Lee sighed. “It’s because you’re
grieving. It’s a funny thing, and it does different things to us.
Some people shut themselves away. Some go a little bit wild. It can
go either way.”

She shrugged. “I guess.”

And how would she go, Lee wondered?
She’d already shut herself away, but would that be enough to help
her heal? Or would she need more than that? Suddenly, Lee wanted to
know. He wanted to spend more time with this woman. To hear her
talk. To see her face change expressions. What better way than for
her to accept Jack’s invitation.

“
Jack makes a mean steak,”
he said. “Better than his chili at least.”

Anna grinned. “I love chili. The
hotter the better.”

“
Really?” Lee asked. “Well
we’ve eaten it for the better part of a week. You’d be saving us
from eating the last.”

She looked from one to the other,
almost as if assessing them. When she finally spoke, Lee felt
excitement spike in his gut. “Well, I can’t say no then, can I?
Thank you.”

Chapter
Six

Anna smoothed down her dress as she
waited for either Lee or Jack to open the door to their farmhouse.
It was a knitted number, one she’d made herself in fact. A deep
ruby red, it went well with her blonde locks. At least that was
what Grand had told her. Anna had knitted it in the last months of
Grand’s illness. It gave her something to do as she sat next to
Grand, something to keep her fingers busy. Maybe she would make
another over the next few weeks, she mused. The blanket that she’d
been working on was almost finished and ready to ship to its new
owner. She didn’t have any other orders, mainly because she hadn’t
wanted to take any. For Anna the next few months were not about
work. She hadn’t wanted to put any pressure on herself beyond the
day-to-day things. She could knit just for the pleasure of it. And
Anna craved that pleasure.

The simple things in
life…

She smiled slightly at
that thought. Everything
was
simple now. Just the way she wanted it. She
shifted as a light came on in the hallway. A moment later and she
could see the outline of a man.

Which one was it, she wondered. Lee or
Jack?

She was half fascinated by both of
them. Anna could admit that to herself. After they’d left, and
she’d promised to arrive for dinner by seven, she’d sat on her
couch, still warm from where they’d been sitting, and tried to
analyze her reactions to them. They were attractive. That much was
a given. They were also fun to talk to, and they made her heart
beat a little faster than she would have liked.

Anna understood her own emotional
state enough right now to know that if she hadn’t been aching with
grief and pain she would have had real trouble keeping her
reactions to them to herself.

That troubled her.

What troubled her even more was the
fact that Anna liked them both. She’d looked from one to the other
and tried to work out who was causing the spark to fire. At first
she’d thought it was Lee. His green eyes were so expressive, his
dark hair falling over his forehead regularly enough that he’d had
to keep pushing it back. He was painfully gorgeous. So it had to be
him, right?

Only Anna looked across at Jack and
her body reacted in exactly the same way to him that it did to Lee.
His eyes were dark brown, like hers, and his hair was a little
shorter, but his angular face and full lips combined to make him
just as deadly as Lee.

Both men appealed to her. Anna
couldn’t say either one appealed more than the other. How was she
going to deal with that? Oh, Anna didn’t expect either male to try
anything with her. They were her landlords. Apparently reclusive.
She suspected this dinner was simply a way to introduce themselves
properly before she didn’t see them again for another two weeks,
maybe even more. But she didn’t want them to realize the way her
thoughts were heading. That would be embarrassing.

The door opened. It was Lee. He’d
change clothes and was now dressed in a pair of jeans and a thin
sweater. The sweater was almost the same green as his
eyes.

“
Anna,” he said, a smile
creasing his face. “You’re right on time.”

“
It wasn’t as long a walk
as I thought it would be,” Anna said and she tried to ignore the
way her heart started to race as she did so. “Here. I brought these
for you.”

Lee looked down at the tin held in her
hands. It was a vintage tin, one of the few she had brought with
her from the city. “Cookies?” he asked.

Anna nodded. “I wasn’t sure what to
make.”

“
You didn’t need to make
anything,” he said.

She passed the tin across to him and
then, for want of anything else to do, clasped her hands together
in front of her. “I wanted to. I like to cook, baking
especially.”

“
Baking, knitting,
reading…” Lee shook his head and gestured for her to come inside.
“You’re a strange woman, Anna.”

“
It was the way I was
brought up,” Anna said her words coming out in a rush. “I spent all
of my younger years surrounded by Grand and her friends. She had so
many. They treated me like another one of their group. They taught
me to knit, to bake, steered me through all the classics. Of
course, some of them were a little more raucous. Sheila taught me
poker, Manda insisted I learn to mix cocktails from scratch.” She
laughed softly as those cherished memories came to mind. “It was
quite a diverse upbringing.”

“
Do you still see
them?”

“
Grand’s
friends?”

“
Yeah.”

Anna shucked off her raincoat and
passed it across to Lee. He hung it on one of the hooks next to the
door. “There aren’t many left,” she said. “Grand had my mom when
she was in her late thirties. That was pretty old back in those
days for a first baby. Mom then had me when she was in her late
thirties too…add that all up and Grand, and her friends, were
already well into their sixties when I was born. I lost them one
after the other over the years. Grand outlived almost all of
them.”

Lee frowned. “You’ve seen a lot of
loss.”

“
I’m not the only one,”
Anna said, because when Lee had spoken in the cottage she’d
realized that her landlords understood her pain because
they
too had felt it.
Did that make them more appealing? Probably.

“
It gets better,” Lee
said. “Slowly but surely it does.”

His voice was soft, his gaze intense.
There, in the hallway, Anna felt her stomach clench. Their eyes
locked. She opened her mouth to say something, though in truth,
Anna had no idea what she was going to say. “I—”

“
Hey, Annie.”

Jack’s voice made her start. She
swiveled, her heart pounding, and caught sight of the other male
who was making everything so confused. He too had changed only
unlike Lee he wore a white shirt and jeans. The sleeves were rolled
up exposing muscular forearms sprinkled with dark hair. It would be
a lie to say that Anna didn’t shiver slightly. “Hi.”

“
You brought dessert?”
Jack asked, gesturing to the tin in Lee’s hands.

Anna nodded. “Cookies.”

“
Haven’t had cookies in a
long while,” Lee said, and for some reason he passed the tin back
across to her. He was smiling as Anna took it and she could only
think that he wanted her to give them to Jack. She stepped forward
and held them out.

“
Perfect.” Jack took the
tin from her, and Anna wasn’t sure whether she imagined it or not,
but she could almost swear that his fingers lingered on her hand as
they touched. Imaginary or not, the touch made her skin heat. The
moment her hands were free again she clasped them back in front of
her.

“
How do you like your
steak?” Jack asked.

Anna followed him into the kitchen and
was surprised by what she saw. It was a huge room, and it smelled
delicious. Numerous pans were on the range and a large, slate
chopping board held three enormous pieces of steak. Jack had
clearly been seasoning and tenderizing them when she
arrived.

“
Not too pink,” Anna
said.

“
Wine?”

“
A small glass,
please.”

He poured her one. Anna took it with
trembling hands. She looked from Jack, stood next to his chopping
board, then to Lee who was leaning against the doorframe. Did they
have any idea just how handsome they were?

“
Dinner will be a little
while longer,” Jack said. “Lee, why don’t you show Annie some of
your work whilst I get this all put together?”

Lee narrowed his eyes at Jack.
Something passed between the two men that Anna did not understand.
A moment later and it was gone. Lee shrugged and held out his hand.
“Sure, why not, come on.”

Anna didn’t take that hand, but she
did follow Lee from the room. She cast Jack one last look from over
her shoulder. He was grinning, the tenderizer back in his hand, the
steaks about to be pounded.