bacon with a fork when she heard a creak on the stairs. Her heartbeat instantly went wild. She tried to concentrate on the meat sizzling in the frying pan, but she knew the moment he walked into the kitchen.
“Hungry?” she asked, without turning around.
“Starved.”
Dear God, he sounded so close, and she was reacting to him as stupidly as she had the night before. With an effort she asked, “Will bacon, eggs and toast do?”
“Sounds great.” She heard him pour coffee from the glass carafe on the counter then listened as a chair scraped against the floor.
Carefully, she forked sizzling bacon onto a platter, pushed down the button on the toaster, then cracked eggs into the frying pan. She felt his gaze boring into her back. When she turned to place plates on the table, she met his eyes briefly and her heart thundered.
Sleep still hovered in his eyes. Startlingly blue, they touched a vital part of her she had hoped was long dead. His hair was rumpled, falling over his forehead in a thick black thatch that matched the shadow covering his jaw.
“Rough night?” she asked, unable to resist baiting him.
“Rough enough. How about you?”
“I slept like a baby.”
The corners of his mouth twisted a bit. “Don’t tell me you woke up crying every two hours.”
She couldn’t help but smile. The fleeting glimpse of tenderness she’d seen in his eyes lifted her spirits. She slid into a cane-backed chair at the table.
He took a sip from his cup and motioned toward the food. “I didn’t expect this sort of hospitality.”
“I guess you got lucky.”
His lips twitched. “No arsenic in the jelly?”
She smothered a grin. “Not yet. But you’d better be on your best behavior.”
“Always am.”
“Hah! Last night you came charging in here like a bloodthirsty pack of wolves! Arsenic would’ve been too good for you.”
His gaze touched hers, remaining for a second before it shifted back to his plate. “You weren’t exactly all cordiality yourself.”
“I get that way when my character is assassinated.”
Pretending that he didn’t affect her, that she didn’t notice the seductive glint in his eyes, that her heart wasn’t slamming against her ribs, she buttered a slice of toast.
“I guess I deserved that.”
“And more,” she said, remembering his remarks about his uncle. A bite of toast stuck in her throat.
“I’ll try to keep that in mind.”
“Do.”
He watched her closely, studying her movements before finishing his meal and shoving his plate aside. “I thought you had a cook.”
“Milly usually gets here around nine-thirty. She makes lunch and supper for the hands, then leaves about seven. I may as well warn you now, you’d better not tangle with her. You might own this place, but she definitely considers the kitchen her turf.”
“I’ll remember that.” He stared at her again with that same stripping gaze that stole the breath from her lungs. “There’s something else I wanted to say.”
Here it comes. “Oh?”
“Last night got a little bloody.”
“You noticed,” she said dryly.
“I said some things I didn’t mean.”
She lifted a skeptical eyebrow, but let him continue, hoping he didn’t notice that her pulse was doing somersaults in the hollow of her throat.
“I was out of line.”
“Way out of line.”
He grimaced. “Right.”
“Forget it,” she said, trying to sound casual, as if nothing he said had wounded her so deeply that she hadn’t slept a wink.
“Then we can start over?”
Her heart skipped a beat and her hands trembled. Start over. If he only guessed that for years she had prayed for just that—to start all over—from the beginning. Before the fire, before the lies, before he had turned away from her forever. She couldn’t answer, but nodded quickly, hoping to find her voice as she cleared the table.
Denver set his cup on the counter and Tessa saw his hand. A few dark scars webbed across from his wrist to his fingers, the difference in skin tone barely discernible.
He, too, noticed the ugly reminder of the tragedy and shoved the disfigured palm into his pocket. “It never lets me forget,” he said, his jaw growing taut.
Instantly she pitied him, and the hard look in his eyes told her he must have recognized her pity for what it was. “Maybe we can’t start over—not completely over,” she said uncomfortably, avoiding his gaze. “But at least we can back up a little and ignore what happened last night.”
“I doubt it,” he ground out, shoving his hand under her face. “This”—he shook his palm under her nose—“won’t let us.” His eyes blazed, and any trace of tenderness