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“First, I’m supposed to be
here on business. I don’t think it appropriate to kiss a vendor on company
time. Second, I don’t know anything about you except that you can create
amazing statues with a chainsaw and you used to be a logger from Maine. I like
to know a lot more about a person before I have sex with him.”
    How little she knew about her one-night stands stabbed at
her conscience, but she ignored it.
    He grinned and came around to sit on the couch perpendicular
to her chair. He took her hand again. “If those are your only concerns, I can
work with that. You’re being very reasonable and I’m being impatient. Forgive
me. You’re so damn beautiful, it’s hard for me to control myself.”
    Heat rose in her cheeks and she looked down to see his big
calloused hand holding hers. She wished it were so simple.
    He raised her chin with his other hand. “Bea, I’ll try to be
patient if you’re willing to give it a chance.”
    She stared at him, this incredible man who her body and her
heart seemed to crave. A man who would suffer if she gave in to her own needs,
but she was weak. Her head nodded of its own accord while her mind screamed no.
    He leaned forward and brushed a featherlight kiss upon her
lips.
    She wanted to cry at his tenderness and she silently cursed
her deranged ancestor again for the poisonous nature he had inflicted on her,
on so many Rappaccinis. “I better go.”
    He stood with her hand still in his. “I’ll walk you to your
car.”
    She let him help her up, wishing she could figure out some
way for a relationship to work, but a deep-rooted fruitlessness settled deep in
her stomach.
    He let go of her hand to cup her face in his palms. “You
look as if you’re going to cry.”
    She put her hands on his chest. “No, I—oh no.”
    His brows drew together in concern and his hold tightened on
her face. “What’s wrong?”
    She stared at the scene over his shoulder. “I don’t think
I’m going anywhere now.”
    He turned toward the great windows, his arm coming around
her, but he remained silent. He squeezed her waist.
    Outside the snow fell hard, and on his massive deck a foot
of the beautiful white flakes announced her imprisonment. The Tamwick roads would
be impassable. How could she stay in his house overnight without sleeping with
him? “Maybe, it’s not as bad as it appears. You must have gusts up here,
right?”
    He raised his brow. “Study the snow. It’s falling straight
down. There’s no way you’ll make it back to Meriden in your vehicle.”
    She stared at her silent jailer, unable to fault the large,
white flakes defined against the dark grayness outside. He was right. In his
home with the snow piling up, it was as if they were the only two people on
Earth. But if that were the case, he would be dead within the week.
    She shook herself and the foreboding that flooded her body.
They weren’t the only two people in the world. In fact, she needed to call
Craig. “I better make a few calls. Let people know where I am.”
    He stepped away, the energy in his body palpable. “Sure,
I’ll go downstairs and get wood for the fireplace. I’m thinking it’s going to
be a cold one.”
    Zach gave her a reassuring smile that did everything but
reassure her. Then he headed downstairs, leaving her body in jitters, her heart
aching and her mind frantically searching for answers like a chickadee caught
inside a house, desperate to find a way out and accomplishing nothing but harm
to itself.

Chapter Three
     
    Zach reached the basement and went straight for the door to
look through its window. Flipping on the outside light, he grinned. The snow
fell faster than an eighty-foot pine. It must be fate. To have a beautiful,
passionate woman stuck with him for the entire night. He never believed in that
“meant to be” garbage, but tonight he’d won the jackpot. Poker with his friends
would never be the same.
    He switched off the spotlight and strode to the pile of logs
in the