Snowfire Read online

  Sleep!

  She’d never sleep. She might well be locked up in a house with a murderer.

  No…

  Intuition was not proof, she reminded herself. But still, she just knew that he couldn’t be a murderer. It was absurd. After everything, she felt intuitively that he was a man who could be trusted.

  Fool…

  She closed her eyes. She felt the tension slowly ease away. She’d never, never sleep.…

  But she did sleep. A few minutes after her head hit the pillow, she was sound asleep.

  A low-burning fire continued to crackle in the room’s handsome fireplace, warming her.

  Outside, the snowstorm raged on.

  Justin was the one who couldn’t sleep.

  It wasn’t because he wasn’t in his own bed—he could sleep anywhere. He’d toured enough and taken enough business trips to be accustomed to sleeping in the worst possible locations.

  And it wasn’t the storm, or the past, or anything.

  It was the woman.

  The dark-haired beauty sleeping in his bed.

  He closed his eyes, and he could see her still, the way she had looked in his kitchen. She had worn his white terry robe. Even rolled up, the sleeves had been floppy and too big. It had been a chaste garment on her, covering her from head to toe.

  It had still been incredibly sexy.

  Her hair had seemed so dark against it, deep, rich and dark with its satiny sheen. And those eyes of hers. Dove-gray, steady, never seeming to falter. She stared at him with such an honesty about her. And her lashes were so long and rich and so demure.…

  She was really beautiful. He had known that from the first moment he saw her. Ah, yes, she was so very, very beautiful.…

  But he liked things about her, too. He liked the way she offered to cook. And he liked the way she did cook—her meal had been really delicious, the best he had tasted in a long, long time. And he liked her smile and the dimple in her cheek when she talked about her grandfather.

  He had liked her in his living room, the way she had leaned against him, watching the old-time movie. She had looked good there, too.

  She had felt good.…

  So good. When he kissed her, it had seemed that all the fires of hell had awakened inside his body. But those fires had been of the sweetest variety, the kind to awaken and restore.

  And he had wanted so much more than that kiss!

  Certain that she was the ultimate liar—an actress even finer than Myra had ever been!—he had still felt that searing attraction. Still wanted her with a passion stronger than any that he remembered.

  Snowfire was about to open again. The reporters would all come crawling around again soon enough.

  What the hell? If a really beautiful woman—who could cook, too—wanted to sleep with him for the story, why not get something out it? he asked himself wryly.

  Because he wanted more from her, he realized. He wanted her to be telling him the truth.

  And now, for the first time since she had arrived, he was beginning to be plagued with doubt. The amazement in her eyes when he had said the word murder had been so quick and so real, so damned real.…

  Could he have been wrong?

  He turned over with a groan, determined to sleep. He wasn’t going to lie awake all night because there was a stranger in the house.

  But he was. He crawled out of bed and padded over to the window. The snow was falling with a fantastic vengeance, beating against the house.

  He loved storms, the ferocity of the snow when it fell like this, the keening of the wind.

  Somehow, they were soothing to his soul.

  But nothing would soothe his soul tonight. He had meant to see just how far she would take a charade this evening. Instead, he had found himself pulling her into his arms.

  And she had been so stunned when he mentioned murder.… Could she really have faked that?

  She could be an excellent actress.

  He pulled his jeans back on and opened his door and walked out into the dimly lit hall. From the hallway he entered his dressing room, and the bath. To his surprise, the knob of the door to his bedroom turned in his hand.

  She hadn’t locked it.

  She’d probably locked the other door, and forgotten about the bath.

  He shrugged, hesitated, then went into the bedroom.

  He walked softly to the bed and looked down, and for a moment, a wry irritation seized him.

  She was sleeping just as sweetly as a babe.

  Still clad in his white robe, she was curled up on the bed. His pillow was beneath her cheek, and her flesh was cream and rose against it. Her fingers lay like red-tipped flowers over the darkness of his sheets. With her color restored to her, her lips, too, were a warm wine red against the black silk sheets.

  She was a picture of innocence. Just like a princess in a fairy tale.

  Life was no fairy tale, he reminded himself ruefully.

  But just once, he wanted something good in it to be the truth.

  He touched her cheek, and felt the softness of it. “Could you possibly, just possibly, be real, Ms. Kristin Kennedy,” he whispered aloud. “Please, be real.”

  Little drumbeats began to pulse in his head. And then they began to play havoc with his body. Despite his shirtlessness, tiny beads of sweat were suddenly dripping down his chest.

  He backed quickly away from her.

  Gritting his teeth, he moved silently through the bathroom and down the hall to the guest room. Once there, he stripped off his jeans again and flung himself into the bed.

  He had no reason to trust her. There was no reason to trust her at all.

  Except that he wanted to.

  He’d really be a fool if he did. He should have learned his lesson.

  Sleep. He needed to get some sleep.

  He closed his eyes tightly. He would not think about her anymore that night.

  Sleep, damn it! he groaned inwardly to himself.

  But it was a long, long time before he slept.

  Chapter 4

  Justin awoke to the subtle scent of enticing aromas coming his way. He frowned for a moment, then remembered that he had a guest in his house.

  An intriguing guest.

  He showered quickly, threw on a pair of jeans and hurried downstairs, barefoot, a denim shirt held slung over his shoulder.

  She was an early riser. And she seemed to rise in a surprisingly fair disposition. Especially surprising after the way that he had left her last night.

  “Good morning!” Kristin said as soon as she saw him in the doorway. “The electricity is still holding. Isn’t it a miracle?”

  “Umm. Quite a miracle.” The bacon was sitting on a platter. He leaned across the island and stole a piece.

  She was still wearing his white robe, but she, too, had been in the shower. Her hair was still wet, slick and damp and combed back from her face. She hadn’t a stitch of makeup on and yet it just made her classic features and the huge dove-gray eyes more beautiful.

  And he’d never known that the simple scent of soap on female flesh could smell quite so good.

  You’ve no reason to trust her, he reminded himself. None whatsoever. She could be trying to seduce you into the scoop of the decade, and doing a very good job of it.

  And then again…

  She was still in the midst of making breakfast. The bacon on a platter, but she had the waffle iron going and she was rinsing strawberries in the sink. She had already brewed the coffee and poured the juice.

  “Did you sleep well?” he asked her.

  “Wonderfully. Except that I feel horrible about putting you out of your room. That’s the most comfortable bed I’ve ever been on.”

  “Thanks.”

  He bit into another piece of bacon and then walked around the island to pour the coffee, dropping his shirt on the end of the counter as he did so. Her eyes flickered lightly over his bare chest and she flushed slightly. Then her eyes met his and she grinned.

  “It’
s a good thing that the electricity is holding. I wouldn’t want you to freeze.”

  “The heat here is oil.” He grinned in turn, surprised and amused that she would think anything of a male with a bare chest.

  And maybe she was even just a little uncomfortable. When he’d kissed her last night, he’d felt… fire. Something swiftly ignited and wild and sweet.

  She wasn’t the one growing uncomfortable, he determined. Watching her, damp and robed, and those dove-gray eyes on his, he felt something that could be damned quickly ignited himself.

  He crunched another piece of bacon. Loudly. He was still suspicious of her. Very suspicious. After all, if he was a stranger in an even stranger house casting about the word murder, she should have been damned uneasy. And this morning, she was just as cool as could be.

  “So.” Still bare-chested, he leaned across the island counter. “You slept well.”

  “Like a log. After a while, that is,” she admitted.

  A smile slowly curved his lips. “Ah, the truth! So did you lie there wondering if you’d awaken when morning came?”

  “No, I didn’t. Not after a while.”

  “And why is that? I did tell you that I had been accused of murder. Weren’t you surprised?”

  “You know damned well that I was surprised.”

  “I know damned well you might be a very good actress.”

  Kristin exhaled with impatience. “Actress or no, Justin Magnasun, I obviously have a certain faith in you now. Because, as you might notice, I have preferred your company to crawling back into the snow.”

  “And why is that?”

  She stopped what she was doing and stared at him, a brow arched, her tone just a bit on the superior side. “Because, granted, you were very rude when we met. Almost abusive. But then you did save me. And I was out cold for several, hours. Then I awoke all in one piece. And you gave me your room, your things…”

  “Murderers can be very polite, Ms. Kennedy.”

  “I never said that you were polite. I decided that a man who showed so much principle—despite his manners—couldn’t be a murderer. Also, you’re still a free man, walking around. If you went to court, a jury acquitted you.”

  He arched a brow, amused. “All that—when I really gave you nothing at all! So you thought this all through, and went to sleep. And you weren’t just a little bit curious?”

  “You know damned well that I was curious. I chased you down the length of the hall. You slammed a door in my face.”

  “I did, didn’t I?” He sighed. “Hard to imagine that I could do that to a beautiful woman in nothing but a robe trying to get into a room where I was sleeping.”

  She cast him a quick gaze of rebuke, then lifted a waffle out of the iron.

  “Thank you,” she told him.

  “What?”

  “I said, thank you. You called me beautiful.”

  “Oh, and you’ve never heard it before?”

  She smiled, her eyes on the waffle she lifted from the iron. “You certainly weren’t impressed yesterday when we first met. You told me I could freeze in the snow before you’d let me near you.”

  “I hadn’t had a good look at you then.”

  Her eyes shot to his as they both realized just how good that look had been. Justin lifted his hands quickly into the air. “I didn’t mean that exactly the way that it sounded. I didn’t mean that the way that it sounded at all. I meant…oh, hell! I meant that I really hadn’t seen your face,” he finished impatiently.

  Her lashes, thick and sooty, fell over her eyes again. “Want to hand me a plate?”

  He did so. And he poured the coffee. “Shall we eat in the sun room? Not that there’s much sun.”

  The coffee mugs in his hand, Justin walked past the counter area and sat in one of the window seats. He set the mugs down on the ledge beside it, and patted the seat beside him. Kristin walked the plates over and set them down and started back into the kitchen.

  “Where are you going?”

  “To get the juice glasses.”

  “I’ll get them.”

  She sat and he went for the juice. Then he returned and curled his feet beneath him, sitting cross-legged on the seat beside her. They were so close that his knee brushed her thigh. And it occurred to him that it was a nice way to be, that he was comfortable with her. He wanted her. He couldn’t remember wanting a woman quite the way that he wanted her. But all the other things were nice, too. Seeing her face, sitting beside her. Watching her smile, and seeing that single dimple in her left cheek deepen. Just talking. Hearing the cadence of her voice.

  Whoa! he told himself. Watch it. She can’t be as innocent as she pretends to be.

  He leaned back against the seat, looking out across the snow as he sipped his coffee.

  She could even make a really good cup of coffee, he mused.

  The snow was still falling. The storm hadn’t lost one bit of its ferocity. From the window seat, though, it was beautiful. Dark, but beautiful, as the sky continued to roil in gray with the white flakes falling and falling.

  She was watching him, he realized. He smiled. “I like storms.”

  “So do I. Except when I’m stuck in them.”

  “I didn’t think that it was so miserable here.”

  She shook her head, smiling. “I’m not miserable here. But yesterday, I was terrified.”

  They were coming back around. Was she subtly questioning him? Or was it the natural fun of conversation? He had thrown out the bait last night. He wanted her to question him.

  He wanted to talk. To try to find out if there was any way at all to determine whether she might just be telling him the truth.

  “Did I frighten you so badly?”

  “You bet.”

  “That’s right. When I was going to shoot you with my shovel.”

  She flushed. “You were pretty vehement.”

  He set down his coffee and picked up his plate. He bit into his waffle, then paused in his own chewing as he watched her mouth close over a strawberry.

  A flash of heat sizzled through him. He wanted to be that strawberry.

  He gave himself a serious mental shake. He couldn’t go on like this. He started to chew again, and then he swallowed hard. And took another bite.

  Kristin would never have guessed from his stony, immobile face that anything was disturbing Justin the least.

  She was concentrating herself on the way the man was disturbing her.

  In her lifetime she had been to dozens of beaches. She’d seen male chests before. Lots of them. But there was something about this particular chest…

  Maybe it was whom the chest belonged to. She wasn’t sure. But from the moment he appeared that morning, he had started something inside her. Something warm that danced along her spine and into her limbs and into her heart. He was fresh from the shower, his hair damp, his cheeks cleanly shaven. His broad, sleek-skinned shoulders were well muscled, and she had a feeling that those muscles came from his love for this place, from chopping wood, from lifting and lugging, rather than from an exercise club. She liked his chest. A lot. It was a perfect chest. Beneath it his belly was lean and flat. Crisp dark curls of hair lay spattered over his chest, then narrowed to a dark swirl and disappeared beneath the waistband of his jeans.…

  And she had to quit staring.

  She jerked her eyes back to his in sudden alarm, but for once he hadn’t caught her. He was looking out the window, talking about the weather.

  She moistened her lips. He was staring back at her again. His plate was empty and he unwound his long legs to take it into the kitchen. He reached for her plate. “Are you done?”

  “Yes. Yes!” she agreed.

  He took her plate and looked at the waffle remaining on it. His eyes met hers. “You’re not very hungry.”

  “I ate.”

  “Yes. I noticed. Strawberries.”

  There was something curious about his gaze. Something that warmed her.

  No, it made her downright hot.�
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  “Ah…more coffee?” she asked. She leaped up, picked up their empty juice glasses and moved to the kitchen. He followed her, setting the plates in the sink. Kristin walked back for their cups and refilled them. When she turned from the coffeepot, he was right behind her.

  “Well, we’ve had breakfast, and you haven’t said a thing to me about last night.”

  She stared up at him. At the tension in his blue eyes.

  “No,” she whispered.

  “Why not?”

  “Well, you slammed a door in my face last night.”

  “That was then. This is now.”

  She flicked her tongue over her dry lips. How could she explain what she was feeling?

  “Were you accused of murdering someone?”

  “Yes,” he said flatly. “But I can’t believe you didn’t figure that out by yourself last night. I thought that I might wake up to find you barricaded in my room. Instead, you’re down here making breakfast. Why?”

  “Not because I’m a reporter assigned to cover your case!” Kristin snapped out angrily. She would have pushed past him if she could have, but he was like a rock standing there before her. That same chest that had been so fascinating to her was barring her way.

  “Then?” he demanded.

  “If you were going to kill me, you could have done so already,” she told him, aggravated.

  “Yes, I could have.” His lashes fell briefly over his eyes, then his gaze focused on her once again, hard as steel. “But maybe I like to draw things out. Maybe I want to entrap you in a web of trust and then…”

  “Yes, maybe!” Kristin said icily. Then she exploded, “Why are you doing this to me?”

  “Why would you trust me?”

  “Because I thought it out. And I just don’t believe you’re that kind of a man. No, that’s not really a reason, is it? There is no real reason! Trust isn’t something that comes from knowing things!” she cried. “Trust is something that comes from intuition. I was frightened last night! You meant me to be frightened, and I was. But then I realized that I wasn’t frightened of you—that I hadn’t been, not since I awoke and discovered I was safe. You were honest with me. But that’s not it, either. I do trust you, that’s all. I don’t believe that you could have murdered anyone.”