Killing Time

He met her stare unflinchingly. “Because I was mad at you and I was being a mean-spirited shit.” He rose from his chair and stepped closer, sending prickles of awareness throughout her body. “I’m sorry.”

Mick had never been a liar—as someone who reveled in his badness, why would he ever need to be? So Caro knew he was telling the truth now.

“I was going to tell you earlier—before you thoroughly trounced me at cards—that I’ve arranged for you to have Sophie’s house. It’s vacant. And I’ll give you back all your rent money.”

She shook her head. “I can’t. I can’t live in Sophie’s house.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Caroline, is a clean, vacant, pretty little house worse than living here with someone you despise?”

She thought about it. He looked slightly insulted that it took her so long to answer, probably because he’d been angling for a protestation that she didn’t despise him. He wasn’t getting one.

“I can’t live in Sophie’s house, Mick, because of my allergies.”

He quirked up one brow.

“Cats. Remember?”

“What about them?”

“I’m allergic.”

“The house has been thoroughly cleaned.”

“You don’t get it,” she replied, breathing an exasperated sigh as she dropped to the sofa and waited for him to sit opposite her. After he did, she continued. “I have major allergies. Those few minutes I spent in her house nearly made me break out in hives. No matter how much it’s cleaned, unless the place has been HEPA-vacuumed and recarpeted, I can’t spend more than a half hour in there or I’ll end up in the hospital.”

He looked stymied. “Have you always been allergic to cats?”

She nodded, crossing her arms. “Don’t you remember Coolie? My hairless? I had pictures of him all over my dorm room.”

Mick frowned. “I always thought he was a rat.”

She picked up a pillow and threw it at him.

“So, Sophie’s place is out.” He looked sheepish. “Damn, I really am sorry.”

Caro recognized the look. Mick was a notorious prankster, a joke-player, but whenever one of his harmless pranks turned out to be a little less than harmless, he’d always been the first to apologize and try to make things right.

She didn’t let him off the hook that easily. “You should be.”

Mick leaned forward and dropped his elbows onto his jean-clad knees. Caro followed his every movement with her eyes, wondering why eight years hadn’t been enough to make Mick Winchester look old and unattractive. She didn’t know that eighty years could.

He might still be a ruthless prankster, but he had definitely changed physically. Seeing him naked that morning a few weeks ago had proved that. Seeing him now, in his threadbare, stone-washed jeans and tight cotton T-shirt reminded her again.

As a young college guy he’d been a long, lean stud. Now he was thicker, filled out, bulkier and harder, with the kind of solid, muscular arms that said he did more than work in an office all day. His face had matured, too, losing its cute boyishness and gaining a heart-stopping male maturity that a lot of guys in Hollywood would have loved to have. But that grin, and that twinkle in his vivid green eyes was the same.

She drew in a shuddery sigh, forcing herself to pull her attention off his body and back on his rotten practical joke. “I guess I’d better get out of here.”

He instantly stood. “Where are you going?”

“I plan to go stay at the motel on the interstate for the night, even if I do have to pay by the hour.”

“You can’t.”

For a second, she thought Mick was being protective. Then he added, “The county fair is in town this week and that place is sold out.”

So much for tender and considerate. She scowled. “This is your fault.”

He nodded. “I know. So I guess you’re going to have to live with Day-Glo green. I think that’s the only rental one of your Hollywood buddies didn’t snatch up, so that’s your only choice. I’ll call the owner right now.” He gave her another apologetic look. “And I’ll pick up the rent.”

Her only choice? Not quite. Before she had a second to think about it, she replied, “I do have a lease, you know.”

He just stared.

“You rented me a room in your house and money exchanged hands. You can’t throw me out.”

This time his jaw dropped. “You can’t really live here.”

“Why can’t I? I’m legally entitled.” Knowing that Mick was appalled at the idea of having her under his roof for four weeks made Caro start to appreciate the merits of her impetuous idea. The more she thought about it, the more she liked it. “I have been looking forward to a nice, quiet room in this lovely old house, and you rented it to me. Unless you want the studio to sue for breach of contract.”

He thrust his hands through his thick, wavy hair, sending a few strands sticking out in a boyish tumble. For an insane moment, she thought about walking over and straightening it. Her fingertips rubbed against each other as if remembering the feel of that hair against her skin.

“This is impossible.”

Crossing her arms and feigning a calm she really didn’t feel, she leaned back into the couch, making herself right at home. “You made this bed.” She let a Cheshire cat grin cross her lips. “Now I get to sleep in it.”

MICK FINALLY AGREED that Caroline could spend the night, at least one night, while they figured out what to do. Caroline kept insisting, right up until the minute she shut the door to the spare room in his face, that she was staying put for the length of her lease.

“Staying put, my ass,” he said as he stood in the hall staring at the closed door. A door—such a minor thing standing between him and Caroline. Not even half a continent had been enough to get her out of his brain for the past eight years.

“Your tattooed ass!” he heard from within the room.

He muttered a quieter curse, but as he walked away, Mick was unable to resist breaking into a smile.

Who would have imagined an evening like this? A month like this? Caroline, back in his life, sleeping in his bed—okay, not the same one he was sleeping in—but a bed he owned, nonetheless. And that he’d be smiling.

He should have been throwing things. Cursing. Getting into his car and driving away from her, from the memories, from the thought of what an immature jerk he’d once been and what a scared brat she’d been.

“Well, hell, who said twenty-one-year-olds know anything?” he said aloud as he walked into his own bedroom and kicked the door shut behind him.

Especially not him at twenty-one. Christ, he couldn’t figure himself out now, at twenty-nine. So how could he have thought, as a college junior, that he knew what love was? Knew enough to propose to a girl?

“Propose.” He shuddered, the word tasting strange in his mouth. He hadn’t thought about getting married since that one crazy spring break when he and Caroline had taken a road trip up to Canada. He’d asked her to marry him while the two of them had frozen their asses off under a thin blanket and an endless midnight sky.

She’d said yes. Then a week later, she’d said a resounding no. All because Mick had never lost that need to charm, to flirt, to get his way in the same manner he’d always gotten his way: with a grin, a wink, an irresistible laugh, a little flattery.

He’d been using that technique ever since he was old enough to figure out his place in the large Winchester family. The Winchesters were to Derryville what the Kennedys were to Massachusetts. He’d been raised with cousins as siblings, grandparents up the block or in the kitchen, and various great-aunts, uncles and their kids perfectly willing to comment on everything he did from the time he was old enough to talk.

Probably that old-enough-to-talk thing was what had done him in. His first word had been cookie. And, according to family legend, it had been accompanied by such an adorable two-toothed smile that every woman he said it to would present him with exactly the treat he’d asked for.

Many women had lined up to give him their cookies over the years.

That was okay. Randy little flirt seemed as good a position in his family as anything else. His cousin, Jared, had already nailed down the role of smart and serious one, and Jared’s older sister—now living in Florida—claimed the role as oldest and boss-of-the-world. His own sister, Sophie, was the baby doll who hid a will of steel behind her sweet blue eyes.

So Mick was the prankster. The kid with the toothy grin who’d broken windows with baseballs but always gotten invited in for lemonade when he went to fess up. The one who made enough in tip money to buy a new bike just because the ladies on his paper route thought he was the cutest little thing in town.

He was the first one to admit he’d cruised through life. He’d found his place, settled into it and hadn’t bothered challenging himself too much in an effort for more. It hadn’t seemed worth the bother when no one in this town would ever see him as anything more than he’d always been.

Going away to college had been his first hint that he could be more than he’d always been. Being with Caroline had given him a real taste of adulthood, of a different kind of future. He’d had juvenile dreams of the two of them coming back to Derryville and creating the most respectable, responsible, warm and friendly family anyone had ever known.

“Gag me,” he muttered as he yanked his T-shirt off his body and shucked off his jeans.

Warm and friendly? Yeah. That was good. Respectable, responsible? “Gag me twice.”

Caroline had realized before him that he’d wanted what he wanted for all the wrong reasons. She wanted to go west, to L.A., to live a big life, take chances, be young and wild.

He’d wanted to go home. To…to…“To show them,” he murmured as he sat naked on the edge of his bed.

Yeah. He’d wanted to show them. To show the world that Jared wasn’t the only straight-up, all-around-great-guy, destined-for-success Winchester in town.

“How stupid was that?”

Very.

He tried lying down but that just kept him thinking about the stupid mistakes he’d made in his life. Being so rigid with Caroline about what he wanted to do once they got married. Letting his anger with her push him into a risky situation with another girl…who’d been after him for months. No, nothing had happened in that situation, but Caroline hadn’t believed that. Hadn’t trusted him. Had accused him, found him guilty and dumped his ass, all in a five-minute time span.

All because she’d wanted to live, and he’d wanted to prove something.

Finally, sick of calling himself a bunch of names in his head, he got up and pulled his jeans back on over his naked body. Though the evening was slightly chilly, he didn’t bother with a shirt. It had been a while since he’d heard any noises coming from Caroline’s room, which was separated from his by only one thin wall—wasn’t that thrilling.

Going downstairs in the darkness, he made his way to the rec room, still cluttered with overflowing ashtrays and half-filled glasses, and plopped down on the leather recliner. He dug around, came up with the universal remote he’d lied to Caroline about not having, and flipped on his TV.

He’d done about three minutes of serious channel surfing when the air suddenly changed. His body reacted to Caroline’s scent before his mind even registered that she was there. He grew tense, aware. He sat up straighter in his chair, not turning around, not needing to see her to know she stood there.

Caroline had always worn sweet, flowery perfumes when they’d dated. The college girl had been stuck in her Southern roots, with a tiny bit of a twang in her accent and a bit of steel in her spine. But since going west, she’d lost not only the accent, but also the light fragrance. Now her skin was perfumed with something headier. Warmer. A fragrance that had driven him crazy that day a few weeks back when they’d been sequestered in his car, looking for a place for her to live.

It wasn’t just her scent. He could swear he heard her breathing, felt her warm breaths touching the bare skin on his shoulders as she stood behind him.

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