Take My Breath Away. Christie Ridgway

hat. His hair was glossy, nearly black, and when he rubbed his palm over it, the strands settled into lines that screamed “This cut cost a mint!” She saw him finger off the sunglasses. As he stuck them into his coat pocket, she wondered if she’d imagined the surreal shade of his irises back at the grocery store. Perhaps they’d be ordinary on second take. Duller, like the color of a faded cotton patio umbrella. Or with gray overtones, like shadows cast on snow.

      He turned.

      Poppy nearly staggered back. Her mind hadn’t oversold them. His eyes were a hot, electric-blue that seemed lit from within. They were compelling. Mesmerizing. The eyes of a magician or a mystic or some supernatural being. Again, an acute wariness shot through her.

      Grimm whined and she quickly shifted her attention to the dog, needing to look away before she confessed her sins or offered up her life savings. God. Her pulse was racing and there was a queasy feeling in her stomach.

      “And the kitchen...?” he prompted, in that deep voice that carried to the corners of the cabin and maybe to the corners of her heart.

      God.

      “The kitchen.” She focused on the velvety golden hair between Grimm’s floppy ears and made a vague gesture. “It’s over there.”

      His footsteps sounded against the hardwood floor before finding the living room’s braided area rug. From the corner of her eye, she saw his big hand and those lean fingers curled around the scarf he’d had at his neck. If you look now, you’ll see his whole face, Poppy thought. Then she heard a rustle of sound that indicated he was removing his coat. If you look now, you’ll see his whole body, too.

      It shocked her how much she wanted to check out both, despite how anxious the man made her.

      She was a mother, for God’s sake! A Walker, focused on creating something of the family legacy.

      A woman who had proven herself an idiot when it came to romance, so had sworn off it altogether.

      None of which meant it would hurt to take a peek.

      That was the inner optimist in her, always trying to find sunshine on a cloudy day.

      It might even be good for you!

      Ignoring her little voice, she worked the cabin’s key off the ring. “If you’re still interested—”

      “I want the cabin. Until the end of the month.”

      Quintuple the rate until the end of the month! Poppy focused on that, and only that, as she slid the key onto the small table next to the sofa. “You’ll need to plug in the fridge. The heater should keep you warm enough, but there’s wood for the fireplace. I’ll make sure to keep some piled on the porch. Oh—and I should warn you. There’s no internet and there’s no TV.”

      “No TV?” he asked.

      “Don’t plan to put ’em in the cabins. We Walkers grew up without television—our mom’s idea—and I’ve never picked up the habit.”

      “So what do you do for entertainment?”

      “I read, and I—” She almost said she played with her little boy, but for some reason she didn’t want Mason’s name in this room, where she was responding so strongly and strangely to this man’s masculine charisma. Those blue eyes had done something to her internal wiring, heating her blood and making it buzz as it raced through her system. “I have a good imagination.”

      Oh, jeez. Why had she said that? Yet another time, embarrassed heat crawled up her neck.

      “We have something in common, then. I have an active fantasy life, too.” The sudden note of humor in his voice made her chin jerk up.

      Their gazes met.

      But there wasn’t a sign of laughter on his face. There were just planes and angles—strong cheekbones, a clean jawline—that made her instantly think of elegant European men stepping into lowslung sports coupes and spectacular parties where people in evening clothes ended up jumping into swimming pools while a band dressed in white dinner jackets plays Cole Porter tunes. He was classically, memorably handsome and his features, coupled with those spectacular eyes, put him at the absolute top of her list of the most beautiful—yet still so male—men she’d ever seen.

      Her skin was tingling, her stomach was pitching and her palms were probably sweating, but she couldn’t tell because her fingers were curled into tight fists. Everything inside her was reacting to him, but in confusing ways. While some of her was going soft and languid, a sense of melting low in her belly, at the same time her defenses were rushing into place and she felt hyperalert and poised to fight her way out of...out of...

      Danger.

      Silly, she told herself. Stop being so silly.

      Still, she backed up, keeping her gaze on him as she retreated toward the door. He remained where he was, though she thought she detected tension in the lean muscles revealed by the thermal Henley clinging to his powerful torso.

      Those magnetic eyes swept over her. “I don’t know your name,” he said, his voice soft now, the near-whisper of that seductive snake in the Garden of Eden.

      She shook her head to dispel the image. “Poppy,” she replied, trying to sound businesslike and brisk. “Poppy Walker.”

      He was strolling toward her now and she retreated farther, until her shoulder blades met the wood of the door. Before she could find her way through it, the man had her hand in his. Heat ran like fire ants up her arm. “Ryan Harris,” he said, his gaze fixed on her face.

      The words barely registered as the burning touch overwhelmed all her other senses. His palm was warm and strong, its size enveloping hers—making her feel small and feminine. That’s when she understood. That’s when she could finally put a name to what he’d been able to do to her from that first glimpse.

      After more than five years, Ryan Harris reminded her of what it was to be a woman.

      “I have to go,” she said, ordering herself to step away.

      “You do,” he agreed, nodding. Then he replaced the warmth of his skin with a bundle of bills. “Rent.”

      Squeezing her fingers around it, she hustled out the door and into the cold sunlight.

      The scent of sage lingered in the air. She thought perhaps her ritual had worked. Maybe the negative energy was gone. That would be good.

      And bad. Because it had apparently left a vacuum in its place, allowing in an entirely different sort of energy—one that Poppy was much too uneasy to name.

      CHAPTER TWO

      RYAN HAMILTON WONDERED if he’d make it to the end of March, as surviving the month had been iffy the past three years. Each turn of those particular thirty-one days had exacted a price: he’d wrapped his Maserati around an elm tree the first year; blown up a meat smoker and almost himself while passed out on a lounge chair ten feet from it two years ago; and last year he’d lost most of his good reputation. Now, if it hadn’t been for the stunt-driving course he’d taken before shooting his final movie a decade ago, he might not have managed the escape from his own lakefront villa.

      But he’d successfully evaded the celebrity photographer who’d been camped outside the gated drive. Had he even known it was Ryan he followed in that roller skate of a car? Ryan had been forced to take a few hairpin turns at speeds that had set his heart slamming in his chest.

      He wasn’t sure how he felt about the reminder that blood still pumped through his veins and that he retained enough emotional IQ to experience even a small drop of fear. Most of the time he didn’t feel much of anything—except, of course, this was March. Fucking March.

      He found his way back to the road that led him through Blue Arrow Lake. While the body of water it was named after was private, and the boat docks only available to those with a deed to one of the pricey surrounding estates, the village itself welcomed tourists as