Midnight at the Oasis. Оливия Гейтс

about the way he’d said the words, the pained look that filled his green eyes, the way his shoulders seemed to drop…it all made her want to ask. To probe.

      To help.

      Because if there was one thing Victoria Blackstone did well, it was help other people. Florence Nightingale reincarnated, that was her.

      She drew back, though. Helping Noah, getting involved with Noah, would detract from the plan. Tomorrow, there was going to be a whole new Victoria on the block.

      But for tonight, there was Noah, his dog and a dinner to get on the table.

      Because if there were ever two people she’d seen who deserved the whole works, at least for one meal, it was herself and this mysterious stranger.

      An hour later, Noah sat at Victoria’s dining room table, Charlie lying at his feet, hoping to get lucky with a stray crumb, despite having devoured his own plate of meat. Noah had been as quick as the dog in downing his first helping of pot roast and was now making big dents in his second. The food was delicious, and had filled the permanently hungry ache in a belly that had subsisted for too long on fast food. “I haven’t had a homemade meal in years,” he said, wiping his mouth with a crisp white cloth napkin.

      “Really?”

      “I’m a bachelor. I can order take-out, and open a can of dog food.”

      “For you or the dog?” She grinned and tipped her wine toward him.

      He chuckled. “Based on the kind of fast-food junk I feed myself, I’d say Charlie gets the better end of the deal.”

      Her laughter was soft and easy, a sound that seemed centuries away from the stiff, uncomfortable furniture filling her house. And a million miles away from the contemporary, stark loft Noah had just left.

      He looked around at the floral wallpaper, his gaze sweeping over the brown shag living room carpet butting against the wood floor in the doorway, and thought maybe it was closer to two million miles.

      “Go ahead, ask,” Victoria said.

      “Ask what?”

      “Why my house looks like something you’d see on TV Land. I can tell you’re wondering.”

      “Oh, no, I…” His voice trailed off, no ready excuse to fill the space.

      “My parents,” Victoria said, laying her fork across her plate, “didn’t like change. They took great pride in sleeping in the same bed all their lives, using the same stove for twenty-five years, making good use of the carpet that came with the house and grudgingly replaced a couple of rooms when the old carpet wore out. Call it frugal, sentimental…I’m not sure. But they liked things to stay exactly the same, day after day.”

      “Liked?” he asked, catching the past tense. “You lost your mother, too?”

      She nodded and started working on the interstate highway system in her potatoes again, but didn’t eat. “A couple months before my father. I’ve been here alone ever since. And well—” at this, she let out a sigh and looked around the dated room “—I haven’t had the heart to change anything.” She paused, took a second look and added, “Yet.”

      Curiosity nudged at Noah. He wanted to know more, like what she meant by “yet.” And why she seemed to hold back parts of herself as she spoke, as if she was filtering out the bad scenes of her story.

      Noah knew those signs. Knew the way someone sounded when they tried to paint a pretty picture, instead of telling him the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

      So help him God.

      But in the end, he hadn’t been all that good at divining the truth, had he? He may have seen the signs, but he’d ignored them, all the way down to the bottom. And in doing so, he’d disappointed the one person who was depending on him to make things right—his brother.

      And now, Justin was on the streets, out of Noah’s grasp.

      Against his hip, his now recharged cell phone began to vibrate. He glanced down at the number, then muted the ringer. He couldn’t deal with that.

      Not now anyway.

      What could he say to Robert, who was fighting a war on the other side of the world? “Oh, yeah, I know I screwed up when I promised I’d rescue your kid. But don’t worry. The same system that failed him will surely save him.”

      He’d be throwing platitudes at a disaster, like using a squirt bottle to put out a five-alarm fire.

      “There’s an apple pie, too,” Victoria said, interrupting his thoughts. “I baked it while you were outside helping Larry get your truck loaded up.”

      “I had an aunt,” Noah said, the memory slipping from his lips before he could stop it, “who used to make us all fruitcakes for Christmas. The trouble was, she didn’t know how to bake. She was pretty nearsighted and had a little trouble telling the teaspoons from the tablespoons.”

      Victoria laughed. “Oh, I shouldn’t laugh, but I can just imagine how badly that went.”

      “Hey, at least you didn’t have to eat it.”

      “I promise, mine will be better.”

      Noah’s stomach growled with a memory of the dozens of pies of his childhood, served warm, cold, however, but always good. The sweet scent in the air formed a mental image with the treat baking in Victoria’s oven. “It’s been a really long time since I’ve had pie.”

      “Pies are like families, don’t you think?” she asked, raising a fork to make her point. “No crust is exactly the same, but all the ingredients in the filling make it turn out perfect.”

      “Not all families are like that,” he said quietly. “Not by a long shot.”

      Victoria opened her mouth to say something, surely to ask him what he’d meant by that. He stood and tossed his napkin onto the table, the now silent cell phone a heavy reminder of the reality he was avoiding. “I’m, ah, full. Rain check on the pie?”

      “Sure.” But the look of disappointment in her eyes made him feel awful.

      She didn’t understand and he couldn’t explain.

      Noah gathered up his dishes and headed into the kitchen. Charlie trailed after him, but wisely kept his own counsel about his temporary owner and curled up in a corner, leaving Noah’s jeans unscathed. Noah loaded the dishes in the sink, ran some water and squirted some soap over them, then turned and looked around the kitchen. No dishwasher.

      Somehow, it didn’t surprise him. He began to wash, circling his plate over and over again, trying to scrub off a crimson stain that didn’t exist. One that wouldn’t disappear, no matter how many times he blinked.

      “Are you okay?” Victoria’s quiet voice at his shoulder.

      “Yeah.” No. He hadn’t been okay in a long damned time.

      “It’s clean,” she said, gently taking it from his hands, running it under the water and putting it into the dish drainer. The action brought her closer to him, her breasts brushing against his back, the sweet fruit scent she wore whispering around them. She was warmth and goodness, something he hadn’t thought existed, at least not in his corner of the world.

      He inhaled her fragrance. Kiss her. Kiss the woman who made you a pot roast. Baked you a pie.

      Cared.

      No. A kiss would only extend the thread between them, adding another knot in the tenuous string already begun.

      He reached into the sink, picked up his glass and plunged the sponge into it, again and again, seeing all his mistakes pile up in the soap bubbles, quadrupling onto each other, weighing on him like so many stones.

      “Noah.” She laid a hand on his shoulder. The touch suddenly seemed too much.

      “Don’t,”