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“Great,” he said, already heading over to her laptop before she could change her mind.
She typed in the name of the website, then scrolled down the page to the video she wanted to select. A beat later, his face filled her screen, his voice pumping out over the onboard speakers.
“Oh my God.” She hit the pause button at a particularly unflattering moment, his open mouth and squinted eyes flash-frozen on the screen. “What did you say your name was?”
“I didn’t. And you didn’t say yours.”
“You’re not—” She pointed at the appalling freeze-frame.
“Daniel Spencer.”
She gazed at him in horror. “Is that a yes, that’s me, or just a no, that’s just some guy who happens to look and sound like me.”
“Yes, that’s me.”
She groaned, covering her face with both hands. “I can’t believe this. I’ve been watching you for hours and hours, and I still didn’t recognize you.” She peeked out from between her fingers. “In my defense, can I say that I’ve mostly just watched your hands in the videos to see what you’re doing with the wood or tile or pipes?”
Nothing about her words should have made the cabin suddenly feel hot. But just thinking about her watching him—even if she really had been looking only at his hands—made the fire that had begun to burn inside of him the moment he’d pulled her against him on the ladder jump at least a dozen levels hotter.
Chapter Four
“Tell me your name,” Daniel said in a low voice that made Tasha feel warm all over in ways Eric never had, “and we’ll call it even.”
“I’m Natasha, but everyone calls me Tasha.” She hoped, with no little desperation, that he wouldn’t ask for her last name. Daniel was in the building industry, and her father had been building a resort, so it wasn’t impossible that he could connect the dots.
But her father hadn’t planned to actually build anything, had he? So it was unlikely that the two of them would have crossed paths.
Still, her stomach tightened and twisted, as it had for months, because who knew how far her father’s devious net had spread?
Thankfully, Daniel simply stuck out his hand and said, “Nice to meet you, Tasha.”
His hand was large and warm, with the most delicious calluses. Work hands. Big, tough man hands.
She’d already been on the verge of overheating simply from being this close to him—even with his shirt on, she would have been fighting the urge to drool—and now the feel of him wrapped around her hand like a blanket.
Forcefully, she reminded herself that all of this—her feelings, her attraction, her chatter—was bad. Wrong. She was supposed to steer clear of people, stay far away from temptation.
Maybe if he’d been just an average Joe, she’d be fine right now. Although honestly, it felt so good just to talk to someone that she’d gone on and on about every little thing she’d done around the place.
She wished she could chalk up her wildly beating pulse and slight breathlessness to being halfway to giddy after her fall, then shocked all over again after being rescued by a gorgeous, chocolate-eyed Adonis. One standing so close that she could smell the scrumptious all-male scent of him. It made her lightheaded and tongue-tied.
How could she have failed to recognize him immediately? Then again, who would ever have thought the Daniel Spencer would rescue her off a pitched roof? A tall, dark, handsome, filthy-rich guy showing up on her falling-apart doorstep?
That was like the prince putting the glass slipper on Cinderella’s foot and having it fit. It only happened in fairy tales.
The one thing Tasha knew for sure—the only thing she knew for sure anymore—was that her life was no fairy tale.
“You were going to show me…?” He pointed at his face on the screen. “I’d really like to stop staring into my open mouth, if you don’t mind.”
Horrified all over again—she couldn’t seem to do anything right today—she started to shut the lid on the laptop. “Never mind. It’s not important.”
“No. Please. Show me.” He tapped the touchpad, and his gorgeous screen mouth started speaking again. His voice was as chocolaty as his eyes, making her bones melt and her legs turn to jelly.
Why did he have to be living in the mansion down below?
The problem was that she needed him gone at least as much as she was dying for him to stay. He was too much temptation for her to rejoin the world.
Heck, he’d be too much temptation even if he looked like Godzilla, which he most definitely didn’t. It didn’t help, of course, that his sexy male scent tantalized her. The fine hairs on her arms rose as though trying to reach out to him. She rubbed her hands up and down her skin, trying to settle herself down.
