“Your leaving is easy,” he said, ushering her inside. With a sophisticated lens, someone could snap a decent picture even through the screen. But no need to court problems now. “You said you want me to take you away. I know a place so secure that no one will have a hope of getting near you.”
She banged a pot on the stove with enough force to let him know she was still fighting mad. The soup she poured from a glass container was homemade if he didn’t miss his guess. “Where?” She glanced at him, a frown marring her finely etched features.
“Wolff Mountain.”
The lid to the pot clattered onto the counter before she retrieved it and placed it with exaggerated care on the warming soup. “I’ve read about your family. They don’t like outsiders mucking around in their business.”
“It’s my home. I can invite whomever I want. And I happen to know that no place within five hundred miles is as secure. I’ll take you there, stay a couple of nights to get you settled and then you can consider the next few weeks a vacation in a mountain resort.”
She wiped her hands on a dish towel and leaned back against the cabinet, her smile wry. “That’s the most absurd thing I’ve ever heard.”
“It makes perfect sense,” he insisted. “Far more sense than finding an out-of-the-way location and paying round-the-clock staff to guard you. My sister, Annalise, is having a birthday party for her husband on Saturday. So I was planning on going to Wolff Mountain anyway. We’ll circulate to the press a story that you’re vacationing in St. Barts. The paparazzi will head south, and your house will be free of harassment. The story is bound to blow over while you’re gone, and soon it will be safe for you to go back home, particularly with the added security my people will have installed.”
“You came up with that plan in the last hour?” She cocked her head, studying him as if she were trying to see inside his head.
“The best plans are simple.”
“It’s not simple at all. Tell me, Larkin. Am I the type of woman you usually take home for a visit?”
She had him there. His typical encounters consisted of mutually satisfying sex with older women who weren’t likely to want anything from him. Not married women. Never that. But women who were devoted to their careers and didn’t want to put a lot of time into a relationship. In other words, female versions of himself. He opened her refrigerator. “You got any beer?”
“Answer me,” she said.
He found an imported ale and popped the cap with the opener she handed him. “I think, with your permission, we’ll tell my family the truth. I’ve never taken a woman to Wolff Mountain, so I don’t want them getting any mistaken ideas. We have an abundance of newlyweds in my family. They are all nauseatingly happy. I’d prefer not to be the subject of speculation.”
“I’d think that seeing all of your family content and settled would encourage you to follow suit.”
“Not gonna happen.” He took a long slug of his drink and sighed with appreciation. Nothing like an ice-cold beer on a hot day. When Winnie continued to stare at him in silence, he pulled a chair from the kitchen table, turned it around and sat down, arms resting on the curved wooden back. “I don’t want to have to take care of anyone or anything but myself. Now that Annalise is Sam’s problem, I choose not to answer to any woman. I’m a selfish bastard, I guess. But I like being footloose and fancy-free. Nobody looking to me for support, emotional or otherwise.”
“And yet you spend your days taking care of people.”