Behind Closed Doors Read Online Free PDF Page A

it hadn’t occurred to him that she wouldn’t follow.
    A little nervous that the shadows seemed to gobble him up, Beth hesitated and glanced over her shoulder. Craig and Troy were long gone. “Were you waiting to get rid of the witnesses?”
    The words were barely out of her mouth when light flooded the barn and she whipped her gaze back toward the spot where she’d last seen him. He stood partly under the steps to the hayloft, between a cabinet and a workbench, watching her with a look of amusement. “You must be from the city.”
    “I’m from Montana,” she said, a tad defensive and hoping he didn’t think she’d really been nervous. To prove she wasn’t, she strolled toward him, casually glancing at the bales of hay stacked as high as her shoulders, at the assortment of tools hanging on the rough-hewn walls, and inhaling the scent of oiled leather becoming more pungent this far inside. And tried to ignore the acceleration of her pulse the closer she got to him.
    “Where?”
    “Outside of Billings.”
    He barely reacted yet still managed to communicate “case closed.” Oh, but he was so wrong. He gave Billings too much credit. She’d seen more than half the world. As far as cities went, Billings was peanuts.
    She stopped several feet away to watch him rummage through a drawer. Without looking up, he said. “You have to come closer.”
    “Why?”
    Nathan glanced up then, amusement gleaming in his eyes. “What do you think I’m going to do to you?”
    “I have no idea.” In spite of her effort to play it cool, her laugh sounded nervous, so she gave it up. “Why do you think I was ready to bolt?”
    He held up a large can of paint thinner. “The light’s better over here.”
    “I knew it was something like that,” she muttered, and saw the corner of his mouth twitch before she sneaked another peek at her stained hands and awful nails.
    “Let’s see.”
    She slowly exhaled, then placed her hand on his outstretched palm. Of all the things she might’ve anticipated, this scenario was so far down the list that... Oh, hell, it hadn’t even made the cut. It wasn’t so much about the touching...it was his unexpected gentleness that made the contact feel irrationally intimate.
    “Do you give manicures, too?” she murmured, watching him use a clean rag to rub each stain off her hand.
    Still focused on his task, he responded with a patient smile, making her feel like a flustered twelve-year-old girl who didn’t know how to talk to boys yet. The way he was acting reminded her of the way she treated the guys she met at the Watering Hole. She joked around with them all the time, never taking any of them seriously when they tried to hit on her. They were all younger than her, and none of them were her type.
    Oh, damn, payback was really gonna be a bitch. Nathan was the first man she’d met in Blackfoot Falls who appealed to her. She was twenty-nine and she guessed he was in his early thirties. Good age difference in her book, but maybe he simply wasn’t interested. Maybe he didn’t care for blondes or tall women. Maybe he was the sort of man who would never get over his dead wife.
    “There you go, Bethany,” he said, meeting her eyes, his gaze lingering. “The sink is over in the corner.”
    “Thanks.” She did a prompt about-face so he wouldn’t see her giddy smile and scooted off to wash her hands.
    He’d done a thorough job of getting rid of every little mark.
    She’d wager he was just as thorough in the bedroom, and holy crap, did she ever want to find out if she was right.

3
    N ATHAN WATCHED HER stop to stretch her back. Bethany had clearly waited until she thought he couldn’t see her. Though she hadn’t complained once, and even tried to increase the loads she carried from the truck to the front porch, he knew she wasn’t used to this much manual labor. Twice he’d asked her to step aside and let him finish. Might as well reason with a mule.
    If he’d known she was going to be so