Page 3 of Charmed
“It wasn’t your responsibility.” His voice was cool, neither friendly nor unfriendly. Ana had the uncomfortable certainty that she was being weighed, from the top of her head to the bottom of her grass-stained sneakers. “Jessie is naturally curious and friendly. Sometimes too much of both. It doesn’t occur to her that there are people in the world who might take advantage of that.”
Equally cool now, Ana inclined her head. “Point taken, Mr. Sawyer. Though I can assure you I rarely gobble up young girls for breakfast.”
He smiled, a slow curving of the lips that erased the harshness from his face and replaced it with a devastating appeal. “You certainly don’t fit my perception of an ogre, Miss Donovan. Now I’ll have to apologize for being so abrupt. She gave me a scare. I hadn’t even unpacked yet, and I’d lost her.”
“Misplaced.” Ana tried another cautious smile. She looked beyond him to the two-story redwood house next door, with its wide band of windows and its curvy deck. Though she was content in her privacy, she was glad it hadn’t remained empty long. “It’s nice to have a child nearby, especially one as entertaining as Jessie. I hope you’ll let her come back.”
“I often wonder if Ilether do anything.” He flicked a finger over a tiny pink rose. “Unless you replace these with a ten-foot wall, she’ll be back.” And at least he’d know where to look if she disappeared again. “Don’t be afraid to send her home when she overstays her welcome.” He tucked his hands in his pockets. “I’d better go make sure she doesn’t feed Daisy our dinner.”
“Mr. Sawyer?” Ana said as he turned away. “Enjoy Monterey.”
“Thanks.” His long strides carried him over the lawn, onto the deck and into the house.
Ana stood where she was for another moment. She couldn’t remember the last time the air here had sizzled with so much energy. Letting out a long breath, she bent to pick up her gardening tools, while Quigley woundhimself around her legs.
She certainly couldn’t remember the last time her palms had gone damp just because a man had looked at her.
Then again, she couldn’t recall ever being looked at in quite that way before. Looked at, looked into, looked through, all at once. A very neat trick, she mused as she carried the tools into her greenhouse.
An intriguing pair, father and daughter. Gazing through the sparkling glass wall of the greenhouse, she studied the house centered in the next yard. As their closest neighbor, she thought, it was only natural that she should wonder about them. Ana was also wise enough—and had learned through painful experience—to be careful not to let her wondering lead to any involvement beyond a natural friendliness.
There were precious few who could accept what was not of the common world. The price of her gift was a vulnerable heart that had already suffered miserably at the cold hand of rejection.
But she didn’t dwell on that. In fact, as she thought of the man, and of the child, she smiled. What would he have done, she wondered with a little laugh, if she had told him that, while she wasn’t an ogre—no, indeed—she was most definitely a witch.
***
In the sunny and painfully disorganized kitchen, Boone Sawyer dug through a packing box until he unearthed a skillet. He knew the move to California had been a good one—he’d convinced himself of that—but he’d certainly underestimated the time, the trouble and the general inconvenience of packing up a home and plopping it down somewhere else.
What to take, what to leave behind. Hiring movers, having his car shipped, transporting the puppy that Jessie had fallen in love with. Justifying his decision to her worried grandparents, school registration—school shopping. Lord, was he going to have to repeat that nightmare every fall for the next eleven years?
At least the worst was behind him. He hoped. All he had to do now was unpack, find a place for everythingand make a home out of a strange house.
Jessie was happy. That was, and always had been, the most important thing. Then again, he mused as he browned some beef for chili, Jessie was happy anywhere. Her sunny disposition and her remarkable capacity to make friends were both a blessing and a bafflement. It was astonishing to Boone that a child who had lost her mother at the tender age of two could be unaffected, so resilient, so completely normal.
And he knew that if not for Jessie he would surely have gone quietly mad after Alice’s death.
He didn’t often think of Alice now, and that fact sometimes brought him a rush of guilt. He had loved her—God, he had loved her—and the child they’d made together was a living, breathing testament to that love. But he’d been without her now longer than he’d been with her. Though he had tried to hang on to the grief, as a kind of proof of that love, it had faded under the demands and pressures of day-to-day living.
Alice was gone, Jessie was not. It was because of both of them that he’d made the difficult decision to move to Monterey. In Indiana, in the home he and Alice had bought while she was carrying Jessie, there had been too many ties to the past. Both his parents and Alice’s had been a ten-minute drive away. As the only grandchild on both sides, Jessie had been the center of attention, and the object of subtle competition.
For himself, Boone had wearied of the constant advice, the gentle—and not-so-gentle—criticism of his parenting. And, of course, the matchmaking. The child needs a mother. A man needs a wife. His mother had decided to make it her life’s work to find the perfect woman to fit both bills.
Because that had begun to infuriate him, and because he’d realized how easy it would be to stay in the house and wallow in the memories it held, he’d chosen to move.
He could work anywhere. Monterey had been the final choice because of the climate, the lifestyle, the schools. And, he could admit privately, because some internal voice had told him this was the place. For both of them.
He liked being able to look out the window and see the water, or those fascinatingly sculptured cypress trees. He certainly liked the fact that he wasn’t crowded in by neighbors. It was Alice who had enjoyed being surrounded by people. He also appreciated the fact that the distance from the road was enough to muffle thesound of traffic.
It just felt right. Jessie was already making her mark. True, it had given him a moment of gut-clutching fear when he’d looked outside and hadn’t seen her anywhere. But he should have known she would find someone to talk to, someone to charm.
And the woman.
Frowning, Boone settled the top on the skillet to let the chili simmer. That had been odd, he thought as he poured a cup of coffee to take out on the deck. He’d looked down at her and known instantly that Jessie was safe. There had been nothing but kindness in those smoky eyes. It was his reaction, his very personal, very basic reaction, that had tightened his muscles and roughened his voice.
Desire. Very swift, very painful and totally inappropriate. He hadn’t felt that kind of response to a woman since … He grinned to himself. Since never. With Alice it had been a quiet kind of rightness, a sweet and inevitable coming together that he would always treasure.
This had been like being dragged by an undertow when you were fighting to get to shore.
