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He was stocking shelves. The fact he was perched on a ladder gave his ass a nice taut lift and conjured a visual of him sprawled face down across a bed. He'd be sleeping, wearing nothing but a very artfully arranged sheet. A hint of pale buttocks above it, firm thighs exposed below. His fine toes would be curled against the cotton. One sandy lock of hair draped in his eyes, his lips parted, inviting a lover to press her lips to his, tease his tongue, wake him in all ways. A nice, normal fantasy.
"He's beautiful, isn't he? I've seen women's hands curl into fists at their sides, as if they're restraining an overwhelming urge to touch him."
She jumped, not only because she had company, but because her private thoughts had been intruded upon so accurately. When she turned, she discovered something even more disconcerting.
Her tongue had tangled at the sight of Troy. What she was looking at now stole all words and left only incoherent need, strong enough to close her throat entirely, take her breath.
Yes, Troy was beautiful. Everything a virile young man should be. What was standing behind her was what such a young man could aspire to be, even though she expected few achieved it. It wasn't merely this man's looks. It was everything she sensed beneath them, the inside creating the outside.
Like Troy, he was six feet tall or better, with a breadth of shoulders like she'd expected to happen to Troy with maturity. He wore jeans and work boots as well. The cotton shirt unbuttoned at his throat gave her a glimpse of curling chest hair. She saw Anglo-Saxon in the solid bones of his face, a large man with large hands, a commanding presence. The warm brown eyes that focused on her face held complex things. It would be impossible for a woman to experience anything bad standing inside that gaze. No heartache would dare intrude while she was under his spell. All she needed was to have him nearby.
Red alert! Red alert! Jesus, hadn't she made this mistake enough times already? Rein back crazy and return to reality. He was close to forty, with gleaming, thick brown hair brushed back from that masculine face. She couldn't see how far it fell down his back, but the fact he had it tied back suggested it went past his shoulders. Though she'd always thought grown men who wore their hair long looked ridiculous, as though they were attempting to hold on to vanishing youth, the look seemed right on him. It only enhanced his masculinity, the way it did a desert sheikh, fierce Viking, kilted Scots laird . . . or pirate captain.
Stop. It. She'd told Alice she loved that look in men--just not many men could pull it off.
He did.
For the second time today, she was staring, not responding like an articulate adult. Realizing it, she struggled to recall his remarkable statement about Troy's beauty. Not the usual thing for a straight male to point out. Please God, let him be gay as a maypole.
"Are you two . . . together?"
The word trailed off as his gaze sharpened on her. Christ, even if Matthews was an annex of the urban Charlotte area, she was still technically in a small town, not Boston. "I'm sorry. That was rude."
"Not where you're from, obviously." His amusement relaxed her, on that point at least. He had a voice that could narrate books. Whether they were romances with quiet whispers in the dark, seafaring adventures that called for commanding roars, or English mysteries needing a sexy, cultured tone with the right pauses for emphasis, his voice would hold attention, making ears strain to catch every intonation.
He crossed his arms and hooked his thumbs under his armpits. "No, we're not together. And not just because you're my preference. I'm training him for someone else, in exchange for blatant exploitation. Home Depot has fifty thousand square feet, but I have Troy. The local ladies turned out in record numbers for my spring gardening sale." He winked. "I even lured some of the males interested in that sort of thing away from the Depot's home decor offerings."
"Do you offer to let everyone touch him?" she asked.
"I wasn't offering that. Just observing how tempting it is to do so."
"Sounds like entrapment."
"A suspicious, intelligent woman. Just my type." His gaze got warmer, warming her inside. Even if flirting with this kind of man was like walking a minefield, it improved her mood. But the ache in her arms reminded her she was holding his package. God help her, she flushed at the unintended mental entendre, and felt as foolish as a teenager.
"Oh, I brought this. UPS left it at my place by mistake."
His fingers brushed hers as he claimed the package. "Sorry, I should have had you put this down right off. It's like a pile of bricks."
Twisting that excellent upper torso, he put the box on the counter. Being solid wood, it looked far more capable of handling the weight than her glass display case. "Clarence--that's our delivery guy--used to leave our stuff over there all the time, though he was usually considerate enough only to leave the lighter parcels."
"Did he have a problem delivering them here?"
"Yes. Alice was far prettier than we were, and she had cookies."
When he smiled, Madison decided it wasn't only Troy who lured women here. The younger women might gravitate to Troy, but any woman who'd graduated past teen crushes would head for this one like a fly toward a bug zapper. This had to be the hardware store's owner, Mr. Scott.
"As her illness progressed," he continued, "Clarence got in the habit of checking in with her first. He'd tell me what kind of day she was having, whether I should check on her. Since she'd get after us if we hovered too much, it was how we kept an eye on her without taking away her sense of independence."
All while her closest relative stayed in Boston, not doing a damn thing for her. It didn't matter that she hadn't known Alice was sick. Madison still had to squelch the overwhelming guilt, as well as the need to listen for condemnation in his voice, look for it in his expression.
"Even after she'd closed the store for good, he'd still occasionally leave a delivery at her door. He knew we'd see it." He regarded the box on his counter. "I think he kept doing it because letting go of the habit is letting go of the person."
She rubbed her temple, a nervous tic she usually tried to control, but today was proving a little too much. He and Troy could drive small-talkers to suicide. "You and Troy don't do chit-chat, do you?"
His eyes met hers. "Given our relationship with Alice, we're already past that, don't you think?"
So he and Troy had been pretty involved in Alice's life. Enough to make "Mr. Scott" assume he could be overly familiar with a family member he'd just met. She was starting to get a worrisome premonition. The authoritative vibes that emanated from him, the fact he knew Alice . . .
