He looked around the kitchen. "It's just that...why would anyone want to come in here and move things around?''
"An antique buff?"
"Was anything taken?"
"No...I don't think so."
Rex was silent for a minute. She felt his fingers moving lightly, pensively over hers.
"Alexi--would your ex-husband be jealous or spiteful enough to want to follow you?"
She inhaled sharply and stared down at her plate. She remembered holding her breath on her first day in Fernandina Beach, thinking that she had seen his handsome blond head in a crowd.
Cruel? Yes--that could be said of John. Opportunistic, callous, ruthless--determined. But this...this stealth? This senselessness?
She shook her head. "I don't think so, Rex. I really don't."
His voice seemed tight and very low. "After what you've told me about the man, Alexi..."
"I know, Rex, I know," she murmured uneasily. She met his eyes at last. She'd never felt so vulnerable, and she knew his temper, too, but she was entirely unprepared for the heat of the emotion that burned so deeply into her.
"Rex...I... John was certainly no gentleman, but the only time he really hurt me, he'd been drinking and he was in a fit. A lot of it was ego; I rejected him. It never occurred to John that his behavior was unacceptable. He wanted to hurt me for the fact that I could walk away."
"He did hurt you. Badly."
"But not like--this." Her steak was cold. She'd lost her appetite anyway. In fact, a tremendous pall seemed to be falling upon a day that had been the most magical in her life. She smiled, trying not to shiver. “I probably am imagining things."
"Well," he murmured, sitting back, and his obsidian lashes hid his immediate thoughts. When he looked at her again he, too, was smiling. His fingers covered hers once again. "No one can be around now, huh? Samson would sound an alarm as loud as a siren."
Of course. She had forgotten Samson. No one could be anywhere near them. It was a nice thought. Very relieving.
"You haven't eaten a thing," Rex reminded her. He poured more wine into her glass.
Alexi sipped it and grimaced. "I'm really not very hungry." She stood and smiled again, determined to recapture the laughter that they had shared. "I know exactly what to do with it!"
"Oh?"
"Samson? Come here, you great dog, you!"
Barking excitedly and wagging his tail a mile a minute, Samson came bounding toward her, the kittens not far behind. Alexi gave the kittens tiny pieces of the meat and the rest to Samson.
"You have a friend for life," Rex assured her.
She laughed and picked up the rest of the dishes. She and Rex decided to take a short walk, but when they had gone only a few steps, Alexi gave him a playful pinch, commenting on the fit of his jeans. He laughed and cast her over his shoulder, commenting on the lack of fit of her attire and on everything that was beneath.
They laughed all the way into the house, up the stairs and into the bedroom, and there the laughter faded to urgent whispers of passion and need.
And Alexi did forget about being nervous. This night, like the one before it, was magic.
Chapter 9
One week later, the carpenters were just finishing up with Alexi's first project, the window seat in the kitchen.
Alexi, in a blue flowered sundress, stood by the butcher-block table, admiring the work and her own design. Her hair was drawn back in a ponytail, and she was wearing very little makeup. Joe's boy had brought out several pizzas, and Alexi had passed out wine coolers. Rex, coming in from the parlor, surveyed the little area of the house and admitted she had quite a talent for design. The window seat was perfect for the house; the upholstery and drapes were in a colonial pattern, and the seat added something to the entire atmosphere and warmth of the kitchen. It hadn't been there in the past, of course, but it looked like something that could have been.
Enthused, Alexi swung around to demand, "Well?" "It is wonderful and perfect," he told her, slipping an arm around her. With a satisfied sigh, she leaned against him. Skip Henderson, the elder of the two Henderson carpenters, chewed a piece of onion-and-pepperoni pizza, swallowed and told Alexi, "It's a wonderful design. It's great. I might try something like it in my own place." "Yeah?" Alexi asked him.
He was a nice-looking man with muscled shoulders-- like Rex's, bare in the heat--and a toothsome grin. He offered Alexi a grave nod then, though, but grinned again when he looked over the top of her head to Rex to say, "Smart, too, huh?" "As a whip," Rex agreed pleasantly. Alexi kicked him. "Hey! What was that for?"
"I'd kick Skip, too, except that I don't know him that well," Alexi retorted. "There was that nice assumption that blondes only come in 'dumb'!"
Rex wrapped his arms around her and drew her tightly against him, laughing. "I've never dared make any assumptions about you, Alexi."
"You'd be welcome to kick me if you wanted to get to know me a little better, too," offered Terry, Skip's partner and younger brother.
"No deal," Rex warned him with a mock growl, Alexi flushed slightly. She liked the note of jealousy in his voice as much as she liked the ease of the teasing repartee. Were she and Rex really becoming a couple? The thought was so pleasant that it was frightening. They'd been a couple, of course. Very much a couple. They'd barely been apart since the night on the beach. She couldn't count the times that they had made love, and that part of it was very thrilling and exciting...but there seemed to be so much more. She liked times like these almost as much. She loved the way that she could set about a project and, if she wanted his opinion, ask for it. He would take the time to answer her--unless he was behind a closed door, and then she knew that he needed his concentration. But they'd been together--living together--all these days, and they didn't seem to encroach upon each other's space. Sometimes she was so afraid that she held her breath a bit. Then she was wondering when he would decide that Eden had been fun for a spell but a woman as more than a lover was like a brick around his neck. He wasn't a cruel or cold man--he was the opposite in every way. But Alexi knew how the scars of the past could eat into a soul. The longer she and Rex stayed together, the more domestic she came to feel.
Would he run from domesticity if it became too confining?
"Finish your pizza," Skip told his brother. "I think we're overstaying our welcome here."
Alexi laughed. "Don't be silly. You're welcome as long as you want to stay. I'm going to run down to the cellar, though, and feed the creatures. I'll be right back. You all sit and enjoy yourselves."
She spun out of Rex's arms, thinking that it was nice, too, that their neighbors--Rex's friends and acquaintances from the mainland--all appeared to think it natural and romantic that the two of them were together.
Only Emily disapproved. Well, she didn't disapprove, but she seemed unhappy. Rex had told Alexi once that Emily didn't dislike her--Emily thought that she was simply too nice a girl for him. Alexi was amused--and touched. Few people would assume that she was too nice for anyone. She had made the front pages of too many gossip magazines.
The phone started to ring as soon as she reached the bottom step. She could hear Rex, Skip and Terry discussing the chances of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the coming season.
"Rex! Get that, will you?" She needed an answering machine for the house, she decided. Rex seldom thought to answer a phone just because it was ringing.
"Rex!"
The phone kept ringing. Alexi dropped the fifty-pound bag of Samson's dog food with an oath. Samson barked at her; his tail thumped the floor, and he stared at her with huge, reproachful eyes.
She patted him on the head. "I'll be right back, big guy.
I promise."
She almost stepped on a kitten as she started up. "I'll be back--I promise," she said again.