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  Obviously not the hired help. Not unless handymen were better educated down here than she was accustomed to. And just as obviously determined to be rude.

  “My husband’s body was pulled from the river here two days ago,” she said, deciding she had nothing to lose by a matching bluntness. “I need a place to stay until the coroner can tell me how he ended up there.”

  The silence stretched longer this time. In the few minutes she’d been here, the night creatures had joined the insect chorus, the combined noises the only sound for several seconds.

  “I’m Jeb Bedford. Lorena is my great-aunt,” he said. “At the moment I’m also her guest—a paying one, in case you were wondering.”

  She hadn’t been. She didn’t give a damn about whatever arrangements he had with Lorena Bedford.

  Actually, she was beginning not to give a damn about any of this. The commute back and forth to Pascagoula was becoming more appealing by the second.

  “Lorena’s gone to the monthly fellowship supper at the church. Judging by previous ones, she should be back in less than an hour.” His tone had changed. Still not welcoming, it didn’t contain the edge of sarcasm. “If you’d like to wait.”

  Would she? A better question might be whether there would be any point. After all, she still didn’t know that Mrs. Bedford would rent her a room.

  “Actually…” she began, and then hesitated, unwilling to burn any bridges. Of course, she also didn’t want to be reminded of her so-called proclivity for unfinished sentences. “I’d rather not wait if she’s likely to turn me down. If I’m going to have to try to find a room in Pascagoula on a Friday night, I should probably get started in that direction now.”

  “Lorena’s not going to turn you down. Not…under the circumstances. However, you might want to see the accommodations before you decide. What some people consider quaintly charming, others view as not having all the modern conveniences. All the rooms have private baths. And despite the area’s reputation, those are inside the house.” There was a hint of amusement or self-deprecation in that, but no sarcasm. “No coffeepots or microwaves, but with Lorena around you aren’t likely to need either. She enjoys waiting on people.”

  Which sounded more inviting right now than he could probably imagine.

  “The beds have feather mattresses,” he went on. “Not orthopedically sound perhaps, but you soon get used to them.”

  He certainly seemed to have changed his tune. She hadn’t intended to play the grieving widow, but he’d driven her to it. Given the results, right now she couldn’t regret that she had.

  “She should hire you for PR. You’re quite a salesman.”

  “I couldn’t sell ice in hell, but frankly Lorena can use the money. If you’re going to spend it somewhere, it might as well be with her. Do you want the grand tour or not?”

  The abrasiveness was back. For some reason her remark, intended to be humorous, hadn’t had the desired effect. So much for trying to mend fences.

  “With you as guide?” she couldn’t refrain from asking.

  Something of her irritation must have come through in the question. He responded in kind.

  “Since I’m all that’s available. Take it or leave it.”

  Her inclination was to tell this arrogant jackass what he could do with his aunt’s room. Only the knowledge that she would be cutting off her own nose prevented her from getting back into her car and heading toward the interstate.

  “Lead the way,” she said, stepping onto the bottom step.

  The screen door creaked again. She glanced up in time to watch him step back into the hallway. Although she was aware there was something awkward about the movement, it was not until he was inside and illuminated by the overhead chandelier that she understood what. He moved a couple of steps back in order to allow her to enter, heavily favoring his left leg.

  Despite the fact she had continued to climb the steps as if nothing had happened, an unfamiliar emotion stirred in the pit of her stomach. Guilt, perhaps, that she’d returned his rudeness with her own? Embarrassment? Pity?

  As he held the screen door for her to enter, she kept her eyes averted, examining the hallway instead of looking directly at him. The floor was of some dark wood that had been fashioned into narrow, irregular planks. It was probably a dozen feet wide and stretched into the darkness at the back of the house.

  Pocket doors opened onto a formal parlor on one side and a dining room on the other. Both were furnished in keeping with the age of the house. In the sitting room an old pianoforte sat in the corner. Several pieces of sheet music were scattered on its stand and on the upholstered bench.

  “When Lorena operated the house as a bed-and-breakfast, all the downstairs rooms were available for the use of the guests,” her guide said. “I’m sure that will still be the case.”

  With his comment, there was no way Susan could avoid looking at him. She turned, prepared to make some politely conventional reply. All of them, instilled in her brain since childhood, flew out of her head.

  She wasn’t sure what she had expected Mrs. Bedford’s great-nephew to look like, but certainly nothing like this. His close-cropped hair was so black the chandelier over their heads created no highlights in its midnight depths. In contrast, his eyes were a deep, clear blue. Black Irish, her grandmother would have said. Given the strong Celtic heritage of most of the South’s population, in this case she would probably have been right.

  His skin was almost as darkly tanned as the sheriff’s. It didn’t have the same weathered texture, but then this man was probably a decade or so younger. Although Jeb Bedford wasn’t handsome in any conventional sense of the word, no woman would ever have overlooked him in a crowd.

  She suddenly became aware that her lips had parted to reply to what he’d said, but no words had yet emerged. She was simply staring at him, stupidly open-mouthed.

  “That’s nice,” she managed.

  He was probably used to having this effect on women, she thought with a trace of disgust. She, however, wasn’t accustomed to reacting to a man in this way. Not to any man. And certainly not in this situation.

  She owed no loyalty to Richard, of course. He was the one who had walked away from their marriage. The sense of guilt her attraction to this man’s rugged good looks produced was because she had something far more important to concentrate on right now—her desperate need to find out what had happened to Emma.

  “The guest rooms are upstairs.”

  He tilted his head down the hall to where a narrow staircase climbed to the second floor. It was uncarpeted, its wooden treads visibly worn from the passage of thousands of feet going up and down them through the years.

  “How old is the house?” she asked, more as an attempt to get back on some normal footing with him than because she had any real interest in its history.

  He had already taken a step forward, but at her question he turned, looking back at her over his shoulder. “It was built in 1852. It’s been in the hands of the family ever since. When Lorena dies…” He shrugged a dismissal.

  “But surely there’s someone—”

  “My grandfather and Lorena were joint heirs to the property. Now that he’s dead, there is no one else.”

  “Perhaps your father…” He was right, she realized. She did have a proclivity for not finishing sentences, maybe because she always seemed to be stating the obvious.

  “My father died two years ago. He and my mother were divorced several years before that. Believe me, she wouldn’t have anything to do with this place. Or with the Bedfords.”

  This time she avoided the obvious reply. Whether or not he chose to sell the house or to let it go to rack and ruin when his great-aunt died was none of her business. She wasn’t even sure why she had bothered to pursue what he’d said. Maybe to postpone the moment she would have to follow his limping progress up the stairs.

  “I…I really don’t need to see the room,” she stammered. “I’m sure it’s fine. After all, from what the sheriff
told me, there isn’t any other accommodation near town.”

  The blue eyes told her that he knew exactly what she was thinking. They held on her face long enough that she felt color rise along her throat.

  “You have a bag?” he asked, finally breaking the standoff.

  Ridiculously, for a second or two she didn’t know what he was talking about. “It’s in the car.”

  “Then if you’re going to take the room, I might as well get it before I show you up. Keys?”

  Whatever she had seen in his eyes when she’d attempted to keep him from having to climb those stairs was back. In force. Challenging her to make another excuse.

  That wasn’t a mistake she would make again. Whatever was wrong with his leg, he obviously didn’t want her concern.

  And in all honesty, despite the limp, he looked like someone who was well able to take care of himself. Someone who was accustomed to doing that.

  “They’re in the ignition. My suitcase is in the trunk.”

  For an instant there was a gleam of something that looked like approval in his eyes. Whatever the emotion, it was quickly masked by a downward sweep of coal-black lashes. They weren’t long, but both their thickness and their proximity to the blue irises made them noticeable.

  Without another word, he started down the hall toward the front door. As he passed her, Susan pretended to look up the stairs as if the bit of the second story she could see from this vantage point was so interesting she couldn’t pull her eyes away. Then, drawn by a compulsion she didn’t pretend to understand, she turned, watching him limp toward the door.

  She’d been right about the breadth of his shoulders. The damp material of the olive-drab T-shirt he wore stretched tautly across them, revealing the contoured muscles of his upper back. The shirt was tucked into a pair of faded black sweatpants.

  Despite whatever was wrong with his leg, he looked like an athlete. She wondered if he might even have been working out when she’d disturbed him. That would explain the V of moisture at the neck of his shirt as well as the slight color along his cheekbone and dew of perspiration she’d put down to the heat.

  “Only one?”

  Startled, she looked up from her contemplation of the play of muscle in his back to find him looking at her over his shoulder, waiting for an answer before he opened the screen door. It must have been obvious that she’d been watching him.

  He seemed amused by her scrutiny rather than annoyed. For the first time the hard line of his mouth was relaxed.

  “Just the one.”

  “First room on the right,” he said. “I’ll bring the suitcase up, but you don’t have to wait.”

  She wasn’t sure why, but the instructions felt like a reprieve. At least a concession. As if she had just passed some kind of test and earned a grudging acceptance.

  “Thank you.”

  “You want me to move your car around back?”

  She hesitated, wondering if she’d missed a sign indicating that’s where guests were supposed to park.

  “Don’t worry,” he said when she didn’t answer immediately. “As long as it’s an automatic, I shouldn’t be able to do too much damage.”

  “I’d be very grateful,” she said, ignoring the attempt to intimidate her with the blatant reminder of his disability. “And it is an automatic. I never learned to drive a stick.”

  There was a slight upward movement at one corner of his mouth. “Somehow I was sure you hadn’t.”

  She didn’t know what that meant, but it didn’t matter. Without giving her a chance at a parting shot, he allowed the screen door to slam behind him, leaving her alone in the wide hall. She drew an unsteady breath, wondering if she had made a mistake in coming out here.

  She had sworn she would never trust officialdom again, and yet, because of what the sheriff had told her, she was in an isolated house with a rude stranger who carried an outsized chip on his shoulder. And she had just agreed to rent, sight unseen, a room in that house, never having met her hostess.

  If the accommodations were truly awful, she could always leave in the morning. She’d been vague enough about her intentions to allow for that.

  At least then she wouldn’t have to pretend she wasn’t aware of the absolute masculinity of the man who had gone out to retrieve her luggage. Sexual awareness this potent was a feeling she’d almost forgotten. And one she wasn’t sure she was ready to experience again. Especially not now.

  She turned, looking up the narrow stairs once more. Whatever the room at the top of them was like, it was hers for the night. Everything would probably look different in the morning. As for right now…

  Right now she needed a hot shower and a bed with clean sheets, even if it had a feather mattress. If Lorena Bedford’s house could provide either of those, she’d deal with everything else. Including Miz Lorena’s arrogant nephew.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “MY GOODNESS,” Lorena said. “I’d been thinking about that poor man’s family. Wondering how they must feel to finally know what happened to him. I knew some of them would come to Linton, but I never dreamed they might end up staying here. I’ll have to thank Wayne the next time I’m in town. What’s she like?”

  Jeb wasn’t sure his impression would be the kind of information his aunt was looking for. Since he’d been wounded, his reaction to people was too frequently measured by their response to his physical condition. It was a fault he was aware of, but unable to entirely suppress.

  When he had turned around tonight and found Susan Chandler watching him, resentment that his limp now seemed to be the most interesting thing about him had resurfaced. In the past, before Iraq, his relationships with women had been based on any number of things: mutual sexual attraction, shared interests, even simple proximity. Now he seemed to be defined by only one thing.

  He wasn’t sure at what point during the course of his rehabilitation he’d become aware of that. Certainly not in the beginning. He’d been too focused on his own adjustment to his new physical limitations to notice how others reacted to them.

  Maybe it had been coming back to Linton, where he’d spent a large part of his adolescence, that had made him aware of how differently the people he’d known then treated him now. Some were openly curious, which he’d been surprised to discover didn’t bother him. Others pretended not to notice, as Mrs. Chandler had done tonight when he’d opened the door for her.

  Some—and those were the ones he detested—were determined to be “helpful.” There was nothing more certain to set his teeth on edge than solicitude. Especially from a woman to whom he was physically attracted.

  In that respect, he would have to give his great-aunt’s guest credit. In a matter of minutes, she had been able to conceal, if not destroy, any tendency to try to protect him. She hadn’t wanted him to climb the stairs to show her the room, which had been a strike against her. She hadn’t tried to circumvent his determination to retrieve her suitcase or move her car, however, and thank God she hadn’t met him halfway up the stairs to take her bag from him. Despite that ridiculous announcement that she didn’t need to see the room she was about to rent, he grudgingly gave her full marks for the rest.

  “Exhausted,” he said aloud in answer to Lorena’s question. “And obviously still stunned.”

  “Why, I should say so. Bless her heart. What a thing to have happened. I swear they ought to close that bridge, as many people as have gone off into the river through the years.”

  “Maybe between the train wreck and this, they will.”

  He was leaning against the kitchen counter watching Lorena take things out of the refrigerator. Although she was almost ninety, she moved exactly as she had when he’d spent those long-ago summers down here. Her motions were quick, almost birdlike, an impression that was magnified by her size and her thinness.

  “I didn’t promise her supper,” he said when she pulled a loaf of homemade bread out of the bread box and began unwrapping it. “Actually, I didn’t promise her anything but the use of the
room. You don’t have to fix her a meal.”

  “You think she’s already eaten?” Gnarled fingers paused over the loaf she had baked this morning, she looked up at him, faded blue eyes questioning.

  “I doubt it,” he said, reluctant to add hunger to the many problems Susan Chandler faced. “She’s probably used to eating later than we do.”

  Most nights Lorena had supper on the table by six. Of course, since they both began the day shortly after five, Jeb wasn’t complaining. The timing had been an adjustment, however. As he imagined it would be for Mrs. Chandler.

  “From Atlanta, you say?”

  “That’s what her tag says.”

  “That poor woman.” Lorena’s eyes and hands had returned to her task. “I can’t even imagine what she must be feeling.”

  “According to the paper, her husband’s car had been submerged for years. She’s had a long time to come to terms with his disappearance.”

  Maybe this was only a welcome closure for something she had dealt with long ago.

  “Still…” Lorena said. “I mean she was married to the man. She must have loved him. And then…I guess he just disappeared, and she never knew what happened to him. It breaks my heart to think about that.”

  Jeb watched as she laid the two thick slices she’d cut off the loaf on a plate she had taken from the cabinet. After she’d spread mayonnaise thickly on both, she began piling ham on one.

  “Did you like her?”

  His great-aunt’s question caught him off guard. For one thing, he wasn’t sure whether he had or not. There was no denying that he’d found her attractive. And he had also admired her. Despite the day she’d had, she hadn’t backed down when he’d challenged her about the car. And even as much as she obviously wanted the room, she hadn’t been willing to cater to his rudeness. More pluses than minuses.

  “Well enough to offer her a room.”

  “You knew I’d want you to do that,” Lorena said.

  “Still, I wouldn’t have. Not unless I thought she was someone we could share the place with. At least for the night.”