Free Linda Lael Miller Bundle by Linda Lael Miller Page B

answered in a tone he hoped sounded casual, “some of them have. All the most impractical things, anyway: pots and pans but no plates, sheets and pillows but no bed…”
    He instantly regretted mentioning the bed.
    Shay only smiled. She was relaxing, if only slightly.
    They ate in the library, picnic-style, before a snapping, summer-storm fire, their paper plates balanced on their laps, their wine contained in supermarket glasses. For all that, there was an ambiance of elegance to the scenario, and Mitch knew that it emanated from the woman who sat facing him. What a mystery she was, what a tangle of vulnerability and strength, softness and fire, humor and tragedy.
    Mitch felt his own veneer of sophistication, something he had long considered immutable, dissolving away. His reactions to that were ambivalent, of course; he was a man who controlled situations—at times his life had depended on that control—but now, in the presence of this woman, he was strangely powerless. The surprising thing was that he was comfortable with that.
    When the meal was over he disposed of the plates and the plastic wineglasses and returned to the library to find Shay standing in the center of the room, studying every bookcase, every stone in the fireplace.
    “Were you happy here?” he asked, without intending to speak at all.
    She started and then turned slowly to face him. “Yes,” she said.
    The ache in Shay’s wide hazel eyes came to settle somewhere in the middle of Mitch’s chest. “Feel free to explore,” he said after a rather long silence.
    A quiet joy displaced the pain in Shay’s face and Mitch was relieved. “But we were going to work,” she offered halfheartedly. “I brought the photo albums you wanted. They’re in the car and—”
    Mitch spoke with the abruptness typical of nervous people. “I’ll get them while you look around. Maybe you can give me a few decorating ideas. Right now, this place has all the cozy warmth of an abandoned coal mine.”
    She looked grateful and just a little suspicious. “Well…”
    Mitch pretended that the matter had been settled and left the house. Her car was parked in the driveway, only a few strides from the front door, and the box containing Rosamond Dallas’s memorabilia was sitting in plain sight on the seat. He took his time carrying the stuff inside, setting it on the library floor, sorting through it. Instinctively he knew that Shay needed time to wander from room to room, settling memories.
     
    The room that had been Shay’s was empty, of course. The built-in bookshelves were bare and dusty, the French provincial furniture and frilly bedclothes had been removed, along with the host of stuffed animals and the antique carousel horse, a gift from Riley Thompson, that had once stood just to the left of the cushioned windowseat. The nostalgia Shay had braced herself for did not come, however; this had been the room of a child and she felt no desire to go backward in time.
    She wandered across the wide hallway and into the suite that had been Rosamond’s, in a strange, quiet mood. The terrace doors were open to the rising rain-and-sea misted wind and Shay crossed the barren room to close them. She smiled as she stepped over the tangled sleeping bag that had been spread out on the floor, and a certain scrumptious tension gripped her as she imagined Mitch lying there.
    He was downstairs, waiting for her, but Shay could not bring herself to hurry. She reached down and took a pillow from the floor and held it to her face. Its scent was Mitch’s scent, a mingling of sun-dried clothing and something else that was indefinably his own.
    Shay knelt on the sleeping bag, still holding the pillow close and, unreasonably, inexplicably, tears filled her eyes. She couldn’t think why, because she didn’t feel sad and she didn’t feel happy, either. She felt only a need to be held.
    It was as though she had called out—in the future Shay would wonder many times whether or not she