Nathan's Child - By Anne McAllister Page 0,41

broader than she remembered, his arms were harder and more muscular. There was a bit more hair on his tanned chest.

Nathan’s chest, Carin decided—purely from an artist’s perspective, of course—was a work of art. She knew that some men worked hard at the gym to achieve masculine perfection.

Nathan’s beauty was a by-product of working hard. And wherever he moved—whether around the kitchen or the garden, on the beach or in the water—he did so with an effortless masculine grace.

He had always been a man who was comfortable with his body.

And it was all too easy to remember what he’d been like in bed.

Carin knew she shouldn’t think about that. But it was impossible not to.

She was a captive of her injuries, stuck in the house where they’d slept together with far too much time on her hands. It was too easy to look at him and remember. The days were hot, the nights were barely less so. She saw a lot of Nathan’s bare, tanned skin.

She touched it, too. At night when he came to check on her, he was usually bare-chested and wearing only a pair of shorts. Before she could walk and he carried her into the bathroom or out onto the deck, she felt those strong hard arms supporting her. Her body was pressed against the firm warm wall of his chest.

She remembered when he’d been hot with passion, remembered when their bodies had linked, when their hearts had beat together, when, however briefly, the two of them had become one.

They weren’t restful thoughts.

She tried to stay out of his way.

“You don’t have to stop and fix lunch for me,” she’d protested when he’d brought her a sandwich and a cup of soup the day after she arrived. It was enough that he had cooked dinner for them the night before and had brought her breakfast in the morning.

“I’m fixing lunch for me,” he’d said patiently. “Easy enough to make two sandwiches.”

She would have looked foolish if she had made an issue out of it. So she’d thanked him politely and had eaten the lunch—which had been very good—and every day after that he brought lunch to her in her room or carried her out onto the deck on nice afternoons so she could enjoy the weather.

Bad. Worse, instead of disappearing again, he sat and ate with her.

She couldn’t tell him not to. It was his deck.

Nor could she refuse to answer the perfectly polite questions he asked her and take part in the perfectly pleasant conversations he began. So they talked. Carefully at first, as if they were treading in a minefield, which in many respects they were.

At first Lacey had hovered around every minute, obviously afraid that leaving them alone together might be a disaster. But as the days passed and the truce endured, like any twelve-year-old, she got bored with spending every minute with her parents. She went to Lorenzo’s. She went to Marcus’s. She went to the shop and helped Elaine or she went to see Hugh and Molly. In other words, she resumed her regular life.

She had already gone and they were eating lunch one afternoon when Nathan asked Carin about her painting.

“I remember thinking you had talent when I saw the stuff you showed me,” he said. “But you didn’t have a ‘style’ of your own then.”

“You’re right. But then I met Gretl.”

And she told him about Gretl Hagar, the internationally known Austrian folk artist who had spent a winter on Pelican Cay when Lacey was small.

“Miss Saffron owned the shop then. And I was working for her,” Carin told him, “and dabbling in various artsy things when I could. Gretl used to come by the shop and play with Lacey and talk to me about her work. She encouraged me to find what I liked to do. I told her I didn’t have a lot of time to do anything, except when Lacey was napping. And she said to come to her place and she would play with Lacey a couple of mornings a week and I could work.”

Nathan’s brows lifted. “Gretl Hagar played with Lacey?” Obviously, even he knew who Gretl was.

Carin nodded, smiling as she remembered that winter. Gretl had been so kind, so supportive.

“She said it was important to mentor. Someone had helped her get started. She helped me. I’ve tried to do that, too. Though I’m not nearly the caliber of artist Gretl is.”

“You’re very good,” Nathan said flatly.

“What about you?” she asked. “Did you have