CHAPTER 2

          Early the following day, Martha was off on her vacation, and a few hours later, Kaleb was swamped by the empty silence. He reminded himself that it was how he liked his life best. No one bothering him. No one talking to him.

          One of the reasons he and Martha got along so well was that she respected his need to be left the hell alone. So now that Kaleb was by himself in the big house, why did he feel an itch along his spine?

“It’s because… it’s December,” Kaleb muttered aloud.

          That was enough to explain the sense of discomfort that clung to him. Hell, every year, this one damn month made life absolutely unlivable. He pushed a hand through his hair, then scraped that hand across the stubble on his jaw.

          What the hell was going on with him? Kaleb couldn’t settle. Hadn’t even spent any time out in his workshop, and usually being out there eased his mind and kept him too busy to think about…

          He put the brakes on that thought fast because he couldn’t risk opening doors that were better off sealed shut. Scowling, Kaleb stared out the front window at the cold, dark day.

          The steel-gray clouds hung low enough that it looked as though they were actually skimming across the tops of the pines. The lake, in summer a brilliant sapphire blue, stretched out in front of him like a sheet of frozen pewter.

          The whole damn world seemed bleak and bitter, which only fed into what he felt every damn minute. Memories rose up in the back of his mind, but Kaleb squelched them flat, as he always did.

          No, he wasn’t going there… He’d worked too hard for too damn long to get beyond his past, to be able to live and breathe, and hell, even survive, to lose it all now. He’d beaten back his demons, and damned if he’d release them long enough to take a bite out of him now.

          Resolve set firmly, Kaleb frowned again when an old blue four-door Sedan barreled along his drive, kicking up gravel as it came to a stop in front of the house. For a second, he thought it must be Sparkle Pearce, Martha’s friend, arriving.

          Then the driver stepped out of the car and that thought went out the window. The driver was too young, for starters. Every other friend Martha had enlisted to help out had been her age or older.

          This woman was in her late twenties, he figured, gaze locked on her as she turned her face to stare up at the house. One look at her and Kaleb felt a punch of lust that stole his breath.

          Everything in him fisted tightly as he continued to watch her. Kaleb couldn’t take his eyes off her as she stood on the drive studying his house. Hell, she was like a ray of sunlight in the gray.

          Her long, curly hair had the color of honey and flew about her face in the sharp wind that slapped rosy color into her cheeks. Her blue eyes swept the exterior of the house even as she moved around the car to the rear passenger side.

          A pair of black jeans hugged long legs, and her hiking boots looked scarred and well-worn. The cardinal-red parka she wore over a cream-colored sweater was a burst of color in his black-and-white world.

          She was absolutely beautiful and moved with a kind of easy grace that made a man’s gaze follow her every movement. And even while Kaleb admitted that silently, he resented it.

          He wasn’t interested in women. Didn’t want to feel what she was making him feel. What Kaleb had to do was find out why the hell she was there and get her gone as fast as possible.

          The young woman had to be lost. His drive wasn’t that easy to find… purposely. He rarely got visitors, and those were mainly his family when he couldn’t stave off his parents or sister any longer.

          Well, if she’d lost her way, he’d go out and give her directions to town, and then she’d be gone and he could get back to… whatever he was doing or not doing.

“Damn…”

          The single word slipped from his throat as she opened the car’s back door and a little girl jumped out. The eager anticipation stamped on the child’s face was like a dagger to the heart for Kaleb.

          He took a breath that fought its way into his chest and forced himself to look away from the kid. He didn’t do kids. Not for a long time now. Their voices. Their laughter. They were too small. Too vulnerable. Too breakable. Too much…

          What felt like darkness opened up in the center of his chest. Turning his back on the window, Kaleb left the room and headed for the front door. The faster he got rid of the gorgeous woman and her child, the better.

                                                                 * * *

“Wow… Oh, wow… Look! It’s a fairy castle, Mommy!”

          Sparkle Pearce glanced at the rearview mirror and smiled at the excitement shining on her daughter’s face. At five years old, Hayzel was absolutely crazy about princesses, fairies, and everyday magic she seemed to find wherever she looked.

          Still smiling, Sparkle shifted her gaze from her daughter to the big house in front of her. Through the windshield, she scanned the front of the place and had to agree with Hayzel on this one. It did look like a castle.

          Two stories, it spread across the land, pine trees spearing up all around it like sentries prepared to stand in defense. The smooth, glassy logs were the color of warm honey, and the wide, tall windows gave glimpses of the interior.

          A wraparound porch held chairs and gliders that invited visitors to sit and get comfortable. The house faced a private lake where a long dock jutted out into the water that was frozen over for winter.

          There was a wide deck studded with furniture draped in tarps for winter and a brick fire pit. It would probably take her a half hour to look at everything, and it was way too cold to simply sit in her car and take it all in.

          So instead, Sparkle turned the engine off, then walked around to get Hayzel out of her car seat. While the little girl jumped up and down in excitement, pigtails flying, Sparkle grabbed her purse and headed for the front door.

          The cold wrapped itself around them and Sparkle shivered. There hadn’t been much snow so far this winter, but the cold sliced right down to the bone. All around her, the pines were green but the grass was brown, dotted with shrinking patches of snow.

          Hayzel kept hoping to make snow angels and snowmen, but so far, Mother Nature wasn’t cooperating. The palatial house looked as if it had grown right out of the woods surrounding it.

          The place was gorgeous, but a little intimidating. And from everything she’d heard, so was the man who lived here. Oh, Martha was crazy about him, but then Martha took in stray dogs, cats, wounded birds, and any lonely soul she happened across.

          But there was plenty of speculation about Kaleb Brantley in town. Sparkle knew he used to be a painter, and she’d actually seen a few of his paintings online. Judging by the art he created, she would have guessed him to be warm, optimistic, and, well… nice.

          According to Martha, though, the man was quiet, reclusive to the point of being a hermit, and she thought he was lonely at the bottom of it. But to Sparkle’s way of thinking, if you didn’t want to be lonely, you got out and met people.

          Heck, it was so rare to see Kaleb Brantley in town, spotting him was the equivalent of a Yeti sighting. She’d caught only the occasional rare glimpse of the man herself.

          Well… none of that mattered at the moment, Sparkle told herself. She and Hayzel needed a place to stay for the month, and this housesitting/cooking/cleaning job had turned up at just the right time.

          Taking her little girl’s hand, Sparkle headed for the front door, her daughter skipping alongside her, chattering about princesses and castles the whole way. For just a second, Sparkle envied Hayzel’s simpler outlook on life.

          For the little girl, this was an adventure in a magical castle. For Sparkle, it was moving into a big, secluded house with a secretive and, according to Martha, cranky man. Okay, now she was making it sound like she was living in a Gothic novel, next to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

“Martha lives here year-round, right?” she mumbled to herself while Hayzel was chatting. “And she has been for years… Surely I can survive a month… I have to…”

          Determined now to get off on the right foot, Sparkle plastered a smile on her face, climbed up to the wide front porch, and knocked on the double doors. She was still smiling a moment later when the door was thrown open and she looked up into a pair of suspicious brown eyes.

          An instant snap of attraction slapped at Sparkle, surprising her with its force. His black hair was long, hitting past the collar of his dark red shirt, and the thick mass lifted slightly as another cold wind trickled past.

          His jaws were shadowed by a goatee and his mouth was a grim straight line. He was tall, with broad shoulders, narrow hips, and long legs currently encased in worn, faded denim that stacked on the tops of a pair of weathered brown cowboy boots.

          If it wasn’t for the narrowed eyes and the grim expression on his face, he would have been the star of any number of Sparkle’s personal fantasies. Then he spoke and the already tattered remnants of said fantasy went up in smoke.

“This is private property,” he said in a voice that was more of a growl. “If you’re looking for the town, go back to the main road and turn left. Stay on the road and you’ll get there in about twenty minutes.”