Nathan's Child - By Anne McAllister Page 0,47
come out of the trees and into the clearing wearing nothing but the towel around his shoulders, she found herself tempted to settle for less.
Dear God, he was beautiful.
She would love to paint him, to capture the hard lines of his body silvered in the moonlight, to catch his catlike grace as he strode across the grass and mounted the steps. But more than that she wanted to touch him, to feel once more the strength and hardness of his body beneath her fingers. She wanted to run her hands over his hair-roughened skin. She wanted to trace the line of his jaw with her lips. She wanted to touch them to his chest, to kiss her way down the arrow of hair that ran down the middle of it, that arrowed directly toward his very visible masculinity.
She wanted to touch him there.
Carin sucked in a sharp breath at the heat in her own body, at its readiness to know him fully, to let him touch her!
Love.
She wanted love, she reminded herself.
And that’s when she knew that come daybreak she had to move out.
Living dangerously was one thing. But she was in danger of crossing the line from dangerous to foolish.
Because it would be foolish indeed—as well as all too easy—to settle for sex with Nathan Wolfe.
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE BANGING on the front door woke her. Carin struggled up, dazed, then worried. It was just past seven. Who would be knocking at this hour?
All she could think was that something had happened to Miss Saffron. The old lady didn’t have a phone. Maybe she’d fallen and someone had found her and needed to call Doc Rasmussen. She fumbled into her robe, cursed her cast and, not even bothering to comb her hair, she hurried down the stairs and jerked open the door.
It was Nathan. He grinned at her.
Carin stared, nonplussed, aware of her uncombed hair and hastily donned robe in the face of his freshly shaved bright-eyed face. “Nathan? I thought—” She dragged a hand through her hair. “What are you doing here?”
“Picking up Lacey.”
“Now? It’s seven o’clock! She’s not even up.”
“Well, if you were at my house, I could have woken her and you wouldn’t be bothered.”
He was baiting her, Carin knew. She deliberately didn’t respond to it. “I’ll get her up. You can come back later.”
Instead he stepped past her into the living room. “No problem. I’ll have a cup of coffee while I’m waiting.”
“I didn’t make coffee this morning.” Carin followed him into the kitchen, wishing she could just grab him by the collar and throw him back out the door. It had been bad enough being around Nathan at his place. There, at least, the rooms were big enough that it didn’t seem as if they were on top of each other. Here it did. As he got out coffee mugs, then turned to look in the other cupboard for the coffee, he literally brushed right against her. Carin jumped back.
Nathan didn’t even seem to notice. “You want a cup, too?” He found the coffee and began measuring it into the coffeepot.
“No, I do not.” She glared at him. “I’m going up to get dressed.”
“Don’t bother on my account.” He gave her a grin that had the effect of annoying her even more.
She banged on Lacey’s door, then took refuge in her room. It took her a long time to get dressed, partly because the cast made things difficult and partly because she was so flustered that she couldn’t seem to manage to button her shorts or do something with her hair. Ordinarily she would have asked for Lacey’s help. But she wasn’t going to ask this morning.
If she did, no doubt Nathan would be the one to button her shorts or braid her hair!
Besides, she decided, if she took enough time he and Lacey would be gone before she came back downstairs again. In fact, it was true.
A few minutes passed and Lacey clattered downstairs, a few more and she’d obviously grabbed breakfast because she sang out, “See you later, Mom!”
“See you later,” Carin called back and breathed a sigh of relief.
Five hours later Nathan was back.
“We ran into Thomas and Lorenzo at the dive shop when we got back,” he said. “She went off with them. So I brought lunch.”
“I don’t need you bringing lunch.” Carin said testily as he came in carrying a bag that she recognized as being full of conch fritters. Her mouth watered. Her stomach growled.
“Thank you, Nathan. I’m really glad