How could it be possible McAllister was out here in his driveway, one hand gripping her firmly, glaring at her tires, when he was dressed in nothing more than a pair of shove-on sandals, a towel cinched around his waist?

The shock of it made her release the arm she clutched, and the wisps of her remaining sympathy were blown away as if before a strong wind. All that remained was awareness of him in a very different way.

She would have staggered back—and probably slipped again—but when she had let go, he had continued to hold on.

His warmth and his strength were like electricity, but not the benign kind that powered the toaster.

No, the furious, unpredictable kind. The lightning-bolt-that-could-tear-open-the-sky kind. The kind that could split apart trees and turn the world to fire.

Stacy realized the hammering of her heart during the slippery trip into the mountains, and after she had bounced over the curb into the fountain, had been but a pale prelude to the speeds her heart could attain!

CHAPTER TWO

KIERNAN MCALLISTER WATCHED the pulse in the woman’s throat. The accident had obviously affected her more than she wanted to let on. Her face was very pale and he considered the awful possibility she was going to keel over, either because she was close to fainting or because her shoes were so unsuited to this kind of ground.

As he watched, her hand, tiny and pale, fluttered to her own throat to keep tabs on the wildly beating tattoo of her pulse, and McAllister tightened his grip on her even more.

“Are you okay?” he asked again. He could feel his brow furrow as he looked in her face.

He had told his sister, Adele, not to send assistance. He had told her, in no uncertain terms, that he found it insulting that she thought he needed it. She seemed to have agreed, but he should have guessed she only pretended to acquiesce.

“I think I’m just shaken.”

The girl—no, she wasn’t a girl, despite her diminutive size—had a voice that was low and husky, a lovely softness to it, unconsciously sexy. She was, in fact, a lovely young woman. Dark curls sprang untamed around a delicate, pale, elfin face. Her eyes were green and huge, her nose a little button, her chin had a certain defiant set to it.

Kiernan’s annoyance at his sister grew.

If she had needed to send someone—and in her mind, apparently she had—he would have hoped for someone no-nonsense and practical. Someone who arrived in a car completely outfitted for winter and in sturdy shoes. In other words someone who coped, pragmatically, as a matter of course, with every eventuality. If he was going to picture that someone he would picture someone middle-aged, dowdy and stern enough to intimidate Ivan the Terrible into instant submission.

Now, he felt as if he had two people, other than himself, to be responsible for!

“You’re sure you are all right?” He cast a glance at her car. Maybe he could get it unstuck and convince her to disobey his sister’s orders, whatever they were, and leave him alone here.

Alone. That was what called to him these days, the seduction of silence, of not being around people. The cabin was perfect. Hard to access, no cell service, spotty internet.

His sister didn’t see his quest for solitude as a good thing. “You just go up there and mull over things that can’t be changed!” his sister had accused him.

And perhaps that was true. Certainly, the presence of his little nephew did not leave much time for mulling! And perhaps that had been Adele’s plan. His sister could be diabolical after all.

But the woman who had just arrived looked more like distraction than heaven-sent helper, so he was going to figure out how to get her unstuck and set her on her way no matter what Adele had to say about it.

For some reason, he did not want the curly-headed, green-eyed, red-shoed woman to make it past the first guard and into his house!

He regarded her thoughtfully, trying to figure out why he felt he did not want to let her in. And then he knew. Despite the fact the accident had left her shaken, she seemed determined to not let it affect her.

Look at the shoes! She was one of those positive, sunny, impractical people and he did not want her invading his space.

When had he come to like the dark of his own misery and loneliness so much?

“Yes, I’m fine,” she said, her voice, tremulous with bravery, piercing the darkness of his own thoughts. “More embarrassed than anything.”