Free Body Heat (Vintage Category Romance) by Maddie James

Then he stalked away.
    ****
    Blaire laid the towel down beside the sink, dumbfounded. Her gaze followed him until he sat in an overstuffed chair near the window. For several minutes, she watched him stare out over the countryside. Then she couldn’t stand it any longer. “If you want, I’ll fix a special dinner for us. I mean, you’ve been cooking and everything for me, I’d be glad to—”
    “ Don’t bother.”
    Okay, the civil approach doesn ’t work.
    His gaze settled over the snow drifted hills.
    “ All right.” She studied him for a few minutes more, took several steps across the cabin floor to him, and sat on an ottoman angled slightly in front of the chair. With her elbows on her knees, her fists propping her chin, she continued. “So, tell me the Darian MacGlenary story.” How about the blunt approach?
    Slowly, his gaze left the hills and rotated toward her. When his eyes, cold and empty, met hers, Blaire swallowed. Had she said something wrong?
    Leaning forward , his voice was low and edged in ice. “There is no Darian MacGlenary story.” His glare penetrated, pinning her directly to the ottoman, telling her with no words and so much body language to butt-the-hell-out. But Blaire wasn’t going to take no for an answer.
    “ I think there is.”
    Darian took a huge breath and held it. As he spoke, each word punched from his mouth tinged with anger, and perhaps frustration. “And what, dear Pixie, do you think you know about me. And what do you think you want to know about me. Which incidentally is none of your goddamn business.”
    Blaire licked her suddenly parched lips and blinked her eyes. “I don’t know that much about you at all, Mr. MacGlenary, nor do I really want to know anything about you, or your business. I just thought I’d make conversation, you know?” She rose, her fists clenched. “I don’t know how you can stand it all alone up here in this isolated, god-forsaken land. I’d go loony-tunes within the week.”
    She stomped off toward the door, not sure why in the hell she was doing so. The snow was piled up outside. She wasn ’t going any damn place.
    “ So what do you want to know?” he growled.
    Blaire stopped in her tracks and huffed out a breath. Looking skyward, she said a little prayer for support and shrugged her shoulders. She twirled, went back to the ottoman, and sat with a thump. “I don’t know. Tell me about your childhood, your grandfather, your Aunt Reva. Tell me why you left them.”
    For several minutes he simply stared ahead. Blaire waited. Suddenly, he let loose with a string of powerful sentences that nearly knocked Blaire backward off the ottoman. “My parents died when I was six. My grandfather gave me everything I ever wanted except a hug. My Aunt Reva was the bitch from hell and my legal guardian. She physically abused me until I was too old for her to sit on, then she let loose with the verbal and emotional abuse. I never had anyone to tuck me in at night or read me a story, never anyone to take me to father-son events, never a family member at my baseball games, and never an encouraging word from either one of them. Needless to say my childhood was no picnic. I was a loner. Still am. And that, my dear Pixie, is that.” He punched his body up straight and stood, as if the exclamation point to his diatribe.
    Blaire sensed his pain and saw it etched across his face. Reaching out, she cupped his hand in hers. “Darian,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t—”
    “ Think. Yeah. I know. You didn’t think . Well, before you go asking people to dig up the skeletons in their closets, you might want to think about how it might make them feel.”
    Blaire stood and faced him. “I said I’m sorry, Darian. I never meant—”
    “ Forget it.” He turned his back and walked away.
    “ But don’t you want to talk about it? Don’t you think it might help you to talk about it?”
    His nos trils flared. “Who made you junior counselor?” he