Rake Most Likely To Sin. Bronwyn Scott

stale. Her head didn’t exactly hurt, but it was definitely fuzzy, consequences of too much wine right before bed. Patra groaned again, this time in remembrance. The latter part of the evening started to replay itself in her mind: the dancing, the hill, the stars, the kisses. Too much wine and too much Brennan Carr.

      What had she been thinking to have let things get so far out of hand? Oh, never mind. It was a poor rhetorical question. She knew very well what sort of deals she’d made with herself to get what she wanted in the moment last night. Now, she would repent at leisure.

      Only there wasn’t much leisure about it. The pounding persisted and she let out a loud, frustrated sigh. Good lord, where was that sound coming from? It seemed to be coming straight through the wall. As long as the noise kept up, there would be no leisurely anything. She had to go and see the cause of the commotion. Patra rolled over and gingerly got up, testing the quality of her legs. Unfortunately, they held. The last excuse to remain in bed was gone.

      She drew back the white-lace panel covering the bedroom window and let out a startled yelp. Sweet heavens, there was a shirtless man outside her bedroom!

      He leaped back, cursing and spitting out nails at her undignified scream. ‘Lucifer’s balls, woman, do you want me to swallow the nails?’

      She had a full view of him now. This wasn’t just any man standing outside her window. It was Brennan Carr, half-naked, and gorgeously carved; the sculpted muscles of his shoulders and arms, hewn from months of hard work on the boats, the defined planes of his torso narrowing like well-manicured steppes to the waist of his foustanella, the journey highlighted by a thin trail of copper hair arrowing to parts lower. It was quite a sight to wake up to. ‘What are you doing?’ Patra managed to ask once her thoughts reconciled themselves. Gorgeous he might be, but he was also uninvited. Last night wasn’t supposed to have led to this. Having him here was the last thing she wanted.

      Brennan held up his hammer and offered her a cocky grin. ‘I noticed your shutters were loose. I thought I might come by and fix them up.’ Part of her wanted to take his arrogance down a notch. It probably hadn’t even occurred to him she might throw him off her property. But the other part of her recognised this was an act of neighbourly kindness on his part if she would allow it. Could she?

      She looked past him into the scraggly yard where panels of bright blue wood lay on the ground. ‘You’ve done more than nail up some loose shutters.’ He’d taken them down and painted them. They looked pretty and bright. Noticeable.

      Brennan shrugged as if it were nothing. ‘Konstantine had some paint he wasn’t using. I thought they could use a little freshening. There was no sense in nailing them back up just to take them down and paint them later. Better to do them now.’ He nodded to a wagon parked on the edge of her yard, and the donkey grazing nearby with her goats. ‘I brought whitewash, too. I thought I might start on the house once you were up.’ He flashed her a smile.

      She ought to refuse. She ought to say thank you for the shutters and send him on his way for multiple reasons. The more immediate one being, men who did favours never did them for free. The Englishman would want something in return. After last night, she thought she had a pretty good idea of what that was. If so, he’d be disappointed. She couldn’t possibly reciprocate no matter how many shutters he painted. ‘Mr Carr, I thank you for your efforts. They are much appreciated. However, I don’t want to take you away from your obligations.’ Whatever those might be. She had no idea how he spent his days beyond fishing with Konstantine and working Konstantine’s booth in the market.

      He made an exaggerated show of looking around over his shoulder as if searching for someone. He braced his hand on the house wall and leaned in close to the window. His eyes sparked with mischief. ‘Mr Carr? Really, Patra, who is that? You had me thinking my father was here. Last night, you were perfectly content to call me Brennan.’

      Patra felt herself smile in spite of the reserve she wanted to maintain. He was positively infectious, irresistible. She tried again, this time more bluntly. ‘I don’t know exactly what you want, but I have no intentions of sleeping with you in exchange for your services. Some widows might be free with their favours, but I am not one of them.’

      He leaned close again, the nearness of him sending a tremor of excitement through her as his words brushed her ear. ‘I’ll let you in on a little secret, Patra. I don’t have to trade services to have a woman in bed. As for what I want? I’d like a little breakfast if it’s not too much trouble.’ He glanced out towards the road and shielded his eyes against the sun. ‘There’s been some traffic on the road this morning.’ He gave her one of his considering glances. ‘You might want to get dressed. No sense advertising wares that aren’t for sale.’ He smartly stepped out of reach before she could smack him and went back to work, calling over his shoulder, ‘Nothing fancy for breakfast, mind. I like my eggs scrambled.’

      He was worried about her modesty when he was the one strutting about her yard half-naked? Oh, she’d scramble those eggs, all right, right after she added incorrigible to the list of Brennan Carr’s descriptors. It was a good thing he was irresistible because that was the only thing saving him from a hand across his face. That and the truth: it had been exciting to find him outside her window.

      Patra crossed her arms over her chest in a belated bid for modesty. In the commotion of finding a man outside her window and the visual feeding frenzy of feasting on that man’s rather extraordinary physique, she’d forgotten her own; forgotten that she slept in a cotton night-rail that had been quite fine when she’d sewn it seventeen years ago for her trousseau. It had only got thinner over time. It hardly mattered, there was no one to see, but today there had been. She was suddenly conscious of the frayed hemming around the neck, the worn fabric. She was conscious, too, of what that thin material might have accidentally revealed, of how she must look with her tatty night-rail and sleep-tousled hair, hardly a paragon of beauty, much like her house. It had been a long time since it had been important to care about either. It had, in fact, been important to give the outward appearance of not caring.

      Patra retreated into her bedroom, careful to take her clothes behind the screen to dress. She pulled on a loose blouse and a dark skirt and tied on an apron over them. It wasn’t that she didn’t pay attention to her appearance. She did. Just like the inside of her home was neat and well kept, her appearance was tidy and clean, too. She had not let herself go after Dimitri’s death, but she’d had different priorities. She wanted no one’s attentions and there were consequences for that. When there was no one to please, no one to appreciate efforts, those efforts simply stopped being made. She missed making those efforts. She’d liked being a wife. But it was one of many things she’d given up to make sure everyone around her was safe, a small price to pay for saving lives.

      Patra picked her hairbrush up from the small table that served as her vanity and ran it through her hair. She reached for her hairpins and stopped. Usually, she pinned it up in a tight bun. It was severe but practical for working around the house. Maybe, just for today since she wasn’t going anywhere... Patra reached for a ribbon instead. It was dark blue and would hardly be noticeable in her brown hair. Should anyone happen by, no one could criticise her for being too girlish, for standing out and drawing attention.

      In the kitchen, she took stock of her supplies. She’d clearly overslept and her morning chores had gone undone. The goats hadn’t been milked yet or the chickens seen to, but she had a few eggs left over from yesterday, some bread and half a pitcher of goat’s milk. It would be enough and the animals could wait a short while more.

      Patra set about making breakfast, cracking eggs and putting a few pieces of bread on the grill over the fire for toasting, her chagrin over Brennan’s comments disappearing as she cooked. She liked to cook, it relaxed her, it centred her. To be honest, she had entertained thoughts of making Brennan’s eggs runny and burning the toast just to make a point about his ‘wants’, but food was hard to come by and while she enjoyed preparing food, it was time consuming—too time consuming not to do it right the first time. Besides, she had her pride. She could hardly have Brennan believing Katerina Stefanos was a better cook.

      Not, of course, that it mattered what Brennan thought, she reminded herself as she laid the breakfast tray.