Lucy And The Loner

She swiped at a dusting of powdered sugar on her upper lip, then licked a scant dribble of jelly from the corner of her mouth. The gesture, although more than a little stirring—for him, anyway—seemed nervous, but he couldn’t imagine what she might have to feel uneasy about.

“Actually,” she said, decorously hiding her mouth behind her hand as she spoke, obviously embarrassed by his scrutiny, “this is about that debt, but you can’t possibly think that I’d consider a bag of doughnuts sufficient repayment.”

“Why not? All I did last night was my job. And I didn’t even do that well enough to save your house. Or much of anything else, for that matter.”

“You did a lot more than save my house,” she told him. “You saved my family. You saved me.”

“I saved your cat, you mean. You were almost out the door by the time I got there.”

She reached across the table and covered his hand with hers. Well, as much of his hand as she could cover with those child-sized fingers of hers. They were good hands, though, he noted. Sturdy with short, blunt nails and seemingly no special care. They were working hands, plain and simple. Boone liked that. Genevieve’s hands had Jooked like something out of a diamond advertisement. He’d never been able to understand women who seemed to make a career out of grooming their hands as if they were thoroughbred horses.

When he looked up at her face again, Lucy was studying him with an intensity that made him uncomfortable. And as much as he wanted to look away, he found that he just couldn’t.

“Like I said,” she told him softly, “you saved my family.”

Her cat was her family? he wondered. Her cat? Hell, even he wasn’t that alone in the world. Not really. Not like that.

He pushed the thought away and focused on Lucy instead. His gaze drifted to the angry blue discoloration on her chin again, and he wished he could have arrived at the scene of the fire sooner—before she had taken her spill. Nothing should mar skin that beautiful, he thought, especially something like a bruise.

Then he reminded himself that thinking such things had gotten him into trouble in the past. And he could no more afford that kind of trouble now than he had been able to then. Playing the sucker once was bad enough. No way was he going to get taken in like that a second time.

“I saved your cat,” he reiterated.

“And me, too,” she reminded him. “You carried me to safety.”

“I just happened to be the one on the scene,” he said, explaining away the action before she could interpret it as heroic. “I was just doing my job. Anyone else in my situation would have done the same thing. It was no big deal.”

She shook her head in obvious disappointment, then withdrew her hand from his and wrapped it around her cup again. For a moment she only stared silently down into its dark depths. Then she said softly, “That’s okay. I don’t expect you to understand about me and Mack.”

When she looked up at him again, a stark sadness glittered in her eyes. “But the fact of the matter is that last night you ran into a burning house—a burning house, for Pete’s sake— to save my cat. A cat that means more to me than you can imagine. And for that I owe you. Big.”

Boone wondered if she’d feel the same way if he told her the reason he’d returned to that inferno to retrieve her cat last night was because he’d thought he was going back to save a child. What would she say if he confessed that had he known what he was risking his neck for was a cat, he probably would have just sat out on the lawn and let the damned thing be toasted into a kitty waffle?

Ultimately he decided it was probably better to keep that information to himself. It was one thing to brush off a woman’s concern for a debt that didn’t exist It was another matter entirely to make her want to strangle you with her bare hands.

“And I’m going to pay you back for what you did,” she told him again. “I promise you I am.”

When Boone Cagney said nothing in response to her assurance, Lucy fidgeted a bit in her chair. Hoo boy, she thought. She’d really managed to get herself into it this time. Last night, in the chaos and panic of the moment, she hadn’t bothered to pay much attention to her rescuer’s looks. But now, seated here in the picture of domestic bliss at his kitchen table, sharing doughnuts and coffee as if it were something the two of them did every morning, she realized he was a lot more attractive than she had recalled.

Not handsome, really. His features were too irregular, too unconventional for that. But definitely very attractive. His heavy-lidded eyes gave him a deceptively calm appearance, but there was a fire burning in their green depths that was too vivid, too bright, too hot for her comfort. His thick, dark blond curls might have been considered tousled on another man, but on this man, their dishevelment seemed more the result of anarchy.

His mouth, however, was what drew her attention most. Lush, mellow and evocative weren’t words Lucy would normally use in relation to a man who seemed so hard and unrelenting, but they all sprang immediately to mind when she gazed at Boone Cagney’s mouth. It spoke promises of incomparable sensuality without him ever having to utter a word.

She lowered her gaze when she realized she was staring at him. Then she felt her face heat up at the blatant hunger that hummed in her midsection at the sight of his naked chest and the rich scattering of dark blond curls that swirled from his shoulders to his belly and beyond. Lucy had never much gone for the overdeveloped, muscle-bound type. And although Boone Cagney was clearly a man who worked out and took care of his physique, he was no bulging neckless wonder like so many body builders seemed to be.

His form was solid, but in no way overdone. Swells of well-defined musculature corded his torso, and sculpted curves of sinew whipped around upper arms that were truly things of beauty. His forearms, too, were lean and hard with muscle, and an involuntary tremble shook her when she realized those arms were what had carried her to safety the night before.

Figures she’d only be semiconscious during something like that, Lucy thought wryly. That was the way her luck always seemed to run. Then again she wondered if any woman would remain at all coherent when arms like those pinned her to a body like that.

Had she remembered how attractive he was, she might have reconsidered the proposition she was about to make. But she was resigned now to what she was going to do. Because she simply could think of no other way to repay him for all that he had given her.

“You don’t have to pay me back,” he insisted in response to the promise she scarcely recalled making.

That was another thing about him that made her nervous. That voice. So low and husky, so slow and sexy. He rolled over every word leisurely, thoroughly, as if each one were an erotic vow of the most carnal variety. It was the voice of a man who would be quick to seduce and slow to satisfy. Every time Boone said something, it sent a ripple of hot delight buzzing right through Lucy’s libido.

She ignored his assurance to the contrary and told him, “Here’s what I’m going to do.”

“Lady... Lucy—” he immediately corrected himself when she opened her mouth to do it for him “—like I keep telling you, it’s not necessary to pay me back for anything. Okay?”

Instead of succumbing to his tone of command, Lucy hurried on before she had a chance to change her mind. In a rush of words so quick they almost sounded like one, she told him, “Here’s the deal. I’m giving you myself for one month.”

When the only response she received was a silent stare of complete incomprehension, Lucy tried again. “I’m yours to do your bidding, at your beck and call, for four weeks.”

But still he seemed not to understand.

Finally, in an effort to make it as clear as possible, Lucy took a deep breath, met his gaze as levelly as she could and told him, “For the next thirty days, Boone Cagney, I’ll do whatever you tell me to do. Because for the next thirty days, I’m going to be your slave.”

Three

Not even the slightest flicker of acknowledgment lit his features when she outlined her intentions. Instead, he lifted his cup to his mouth for another idle sip of coffee and continued to gaze at her in that drop-lidded, maddeningly level way that made her want to reach over, take his hand lightly in hers and whisper, “Hey, big boy, why don’t you take me to the Casbah?”

“Did you hear me?” she asked instead, her voice sounding hollow and hesitant, even to her own ears. “I said I’m going to be your slave.” When he still remained silent, she elaborated further, “For one full month, starting today, I’ll do whatever you tell me to do.”

He bit his lower lip thoughtfully for a moment, his eyes never leaving hers, and gradually her offer seemed to register. “My slave,” he finally repeated blandly.

She nodded, but said nothing more.

“For one month.”

She nodded again.

“Starting today.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I see.”

Then he sipped his coffee negligently, his expression thoroughly bored, as if hers was the kind of offer he received every day. Then again, who was Lucy to say that he didn’t receive offers of enslavement from women everyday? She wouldn’t be in the least bit surprised to discover that there were scores of wemen just begging him to tie them up in his basement. Or wherever. And why did that realization bother her?

“That’s all you’re going to say?” she asked, surprised she could keep her voice steady. “‘I see?’ ”

He sipped his coffee carelessly again. “What am I supposed to say?”

She scrunched up her shoulders for a moment, then let them drop. “You’re supposed to take me up on my offer.”

“Well, since you couldn’t possibly be serious about your offer, why should I give you a serious response?”

“Who says I’m not serious?”