Truly Daddy. Cara Colter

visit him on weekends.

      She would have loved to take a quick snoop through the medicine cabinet, but she had given up that brand of voyeurism at a party where the hosts had filled up their bathroom cabinet with marbles. To this day, she was grateful that she hadn’t been the one to set off that particular avalanche.

      “In here,” he called when she came out of the bathroom.

      She followed his voice back into the living room and through a rounded archway into the dining room and the kitchen adjoining it. It was a small area, the hardwood floors and log walls again giving an illusion of coziness where there really was none.

      No tablecloth over a scarred oak table. No tea cozy over a plain white pot. No oven mitts with pictures of cows hanging above a sparkling clean oven. No turnip and carrot magnets on the fridge.

      Again the word “military” entered her mind. The room was spotless, and everything precisely in its place. The potential was incredible.

      “This is a lovely home,” she said, noticing the French panes on the windows.

      “Sit,” he ordered her.

      He was feeding logs into a small black stove. He had left his jean jacket somewhere and was wearing a short-sleeved sport shirt that showed beautiful arm muscles that rippled effortlessly with each piece of wood he added to the fire.

      “Is this how you heat?” she asked in amazement.

      He looked at her as if she was from another world.

      She was.

      “Primitive,” she murmured under her breath. Watching the muscles play under his shirt as he hefted another log into the fire, she felt a pretty primitive feeling of her own.

      “Well?” he said when he was done. He sat back on his haunches and folded strong arms over the hard wall of his chest.

      She took a deep breath and started by introducing herself and telling him where she was from and how she had come to be in Vancouver. She told him all about Martin Ying and then her chancing upon the little jewelry shop.

      She liked the way he listened, his head cocked slightly toward her, his eyes narrowing in all the right places, stopping her every now and then and asking a quick question that showed keen intelligence and good observation skills.

      You like the way he listens. Oh, brother, she chided herself.

      He closed the door of the stove and she could hear the fire crackling. He moved to the sink and filled a kettle.

      And all the time she felt his focus never shift from her.

      At the end of her narrative, she rummaged through her bag. For an awful moment, she thought the ring, which could prove her story, was gone. But there it was right at the bottom.

      She set it on the table and then, as an afterthought, one of her business cards, too.

      He came over and picked up the ring, turned it over in his hand. Strong hands, short, well-manicured nails.

      Sexy hands. What about this man wasn’t breathtakingly sexy?

      “Anyway,” she said, beginning to feel as awkward as a teenager in braces on her first date, “I’ve troubled you quite enough. I’ll just hop on a bus and be out of your hair. I don’t suppose there’s a plane leaving here, is there?”

      “I’m calling the police.”

      “There’s really no point involving yourself. I can call them when I get back to my hotel.”

      She was suddenly overwhelmed by a feeling that she had to get out of this place. That the whole fabric of her life that she’d been weaving had just been wrenched from her control and if she did not grab it back now it would be too late.

      She had experienced something like this only once before. She’d been seventeen. And the doctor had looked at her with sad eyes and given his head a small shake. Her mother dead, life as she’d known it was over.

      She stood up abruptly. “The bus station?”

      “I’m making coffee. Sit down.”

      The kettle whistled.

      “I don’t drink coffee.”

      ‘Hot chocolate, then.”

      “I’m leaving.”

      “No, you’re not.”

      That last was said coolly, as a colonel to a buck private. She was not used to being addressed like this. When it came to men, she was accustomed to being the one with the upper hand.

      “I don’t think you can stop me, really, Mr.—”

      “Boyd. Garret.”

      “Mr. Boyd. As I was saying—”

      “I can’t stop you. That’s what you were saying.”

      His eyes had narrowed to slits. He looked dangerous and strong. Everything about him said he could stop her in an instant

      “If you’ll just show me in which direction the bus station is—”

      “It’s probably ten degrees below zero outside right now. You’re not exactly dressed for a hike to the bus station.” His eyes rested meaningfully on the short hem of her skirt, drifted down her leg like a touch, then rested on her flimsy shoes.

      She resisted the urge to tug the skirt down and tried to hide her toes. “Call me a cab, then.”

      He sighed. “You said you left him your card. In exchange for the ring.”

      “Yes, but—”

      “And that you left the name of your hotel and your room number on it.”

      “Well, still—”

      “You might find a very nasty surprise waiting for you back at that hotel. Or even back in San Diego. I think you’d better talk to the police.”

      She sank back onto her chair. He was right. She hated that. When other people were right.

      She watched him move to the shrieking kettle and unplug it, scooping up a telephone receiver with his other hand. He dialed a phone number—she didn’t even know that kind of phone existed anymore—and spoke quietly into it for a minute.

      He came back to the table, the steaming kettle in one hand, two pottery mugs in the other. He set them down, along with pouches of gourmet hot chocolate.

      “Constable Frey will be here soon. Twenty minutes to half an hour.”

      That was soon? “He’s not riding his horse, is he?”

      He shot her a look that branded her unbelievably stupid.

      “Royal Canadian Mounted Police,” she shot back at him. She’d seen postcards of Canada’s colorful police all over Vancouver. Always dressed in beautiful, flaming red jackets with Yogi Bear kind of hats, and always - on horseback.

      “They drive cars these days. Except for ceremonial purposes. Hot chocolate?” he asked. “This one’s good.”

      He showed her a packet labeled white chocolate and hazelnut.

      She nodded numbly and the steaming cup was set before her. Don’t ask, she commanded herself. Toni, don’t you dare ask

      “Where’s your wife?” she asked.

      “I’m not married.”

      Not married. If she was not mistaken, that ring, sitting in the middle of his solid oak kitchen table, had started winking like a neon sign.

      His voice held absolutely no invitation.

      She took a sip of the hot chocolate and nearly closed her eyes with pure pleasure. A man who could make this, not married?

      Toni, she told herself, it came out of a pouch. “This is delicious,” she murmured.