Free Crossed Hearts (Matchmaker Trilogy) by Barbara Delinsky Page B

wasn’t concentrating on Latin. He was still thinking of the woman curled in the opposite corner of the sofa. Her legs were tucked beneath her and the book remained open on her lap, but her head had fallen into the crook of the sofa’s winged back, and she was sleeping. Silently. Sweetly.
    He felt sorry for her. The trip she’d made yesterday—first the drive from New York, then the harrowing hike to his cabin—had exhausted her. He felt a moment’s renewed anger toward Victoria for having put her through that ordeal, then realized that Victoria was probably as ignorant of mud season as any other nonnative. Now that he thought of it, she had only been up to the cabin in the best of weather—late spring, summer, early fall.
    They’d met for the first time during one of those summer trips, and even then, barely knowing her, he’d asked her why she came at all. She was obviously a city person. She didn’t hunt, didn’t hike, didn’t plant vegetables in a garden behind the cabin. He remembered her response as clearly as if she’d made it yesterday. She had looked him in the eye and told him that the cabin made her feel closer to Arthur. No apology. No bid for sympathy. Just an honest, heartfelt statement of fact that had established the basis of strength and sincerity on which their relationship had bloomed.
    Of course, she hadn’t been particularly honest in sending Leah to stay in a cabin that didn’t exist. He had no doubt, though, that she’d been well-meaning in her desire to get Leah and him together. What puzzled him, irked him, was that she should have known better. He’d fought her in the past. He thought he’d told her enough about himself and his feelings to make himself clear. Why would she think things had changed?
    Once upon a time he’d been a city man. He’d lived high and wild. The only things he’d feared in the world had been obscurity and anonymity. Ironically, that very fear had driven him higher and wilder, until he’d destroyed his career and very nearly himself in the process. That was when he’d retreated from the world and sought haven in New Hampshire.
    Now he feared everything he’d once prized so dearly. He feared fame because it was fleeting. He feared glory because it was shallow. He feared aggressive crowds because they brought out the worst in human nature, the need for supremacy and domination even on the most mundane of levels.
    He’d had it up to his eyeballs with competition. Even after being away from it for four years, he remembered with vile clarity that feeling of itching under the skin, of not being able to sit still and relax for fear someone would overtake him. He couldn’t bear the thought of having to be quicker, cruder, more cutthroat than the next. He didn’t want to have to worry about how he looked or how he smelled. He didn’t want to have to see those younger, more eager actors waiting smugly in the wings for him to falter. And he didn’t want the women, clinging like spiders, feeding off him until a sweeter fly came along.
    Oh, yes, he knew what he didn’t want. He’d made a deliberate intellectual decision when he’d left California. The world of glitz and glamour was behind him, as was the way of life that had had him clawing his way up a swaying ladder. The life he lived here was free of all that. It was simple. It was clean. It was comfortable. It was what he did want.
    Why, then, did he feel threatened by Leah’s presence?
    He blinked and realized that she was waking. Rolling slightly, she stretched one leg until the sole of her foot touched his thigh. He felt its warmth and the slight pressure behind it. He saw the way one hand dropped limply to her belly. He watched her turn her head, as though trying to identify the nature of her pillow, then open her eyes with the realization of where she was.
    She looked at him. He didn’t blink. Slowly, carefully, she drew back her leg and, pushing herself into a seated position, picked up her book