He would, because he didn’t have a choice.
Right then, Seth heard a woman swearing. Very colorfully, in fact. Intrigued, he rounded the corner to see an overstuffed armchair seemingly hanging in midair, the only evidence of human involvement being the slender ankles and feet standing on the concrete. The woman swore again as the chair began to tip onto the ground.
Seth grabbed the chair just in time. It was heavier than it looked. Grunting, he was about to ask which apartment the woman lived in when he was arrested by a face that he couldn’t forget.
Rose DiMarco. The woman he’d met outside The Fainting Goat, the most popular bar in town. Those wide blue eyes, that pert little nose. The dark brown hair tipped with blue.
She stared at him in surprise. “You.”
“You,” he drawled. “How have you been, princess?”
That pert little nose wrinkled. She tried to lift the chair away from his hold, but he had at least a foot on her and a whole lot more muscle.
“How about you tell me which apartment is yours, unless you want to stand out here all day?”
Rose hesitated before sighing. “It’s number 115. Just right around the corner here.”
Seth’s eyebrows shot up, but he bit his tongue in time. It just so happened he lived in number 117—right next door.
What a fascinating coincidence.
They maneuvered around the corner and into the apartment, setting the chair down with a thud in the mostly bare living room. Seth took in the boxes—most labeled BOOKS—and then he took in Rose herself.
Her long hair was in a braid down her back, her cheeks flushed. He told himself she was flushed from the exertion, not from him, but it amused him that she not only remembered him, but that she’d reacted to his presence so decidedly.
He’d seen her outside The Fainting Goat fending off some asshole, and when said asshole had grabbed her, Seth had come to her rescue. Except that Rose had taken issue with his interference, and Seth had wondered where the hell this beautiful, fiery woman had come from. He hadn’t seen her in a month, no matter how many times he went to The Fainting Goat. He’d almost wondered if he’d dreamed her.
Now here she was. His new neighbor.
A smile tipped up his lips, and when she saw it, she put her hands on her hips.
“Thank you for your help,” she said in a prissy voice, “but that was my biggest piece of furniture.”
“So you’re saying I should leave?” Now he was definitely amused.
“Not in so many words.”
“Are you always this kind to people who help you?”
She opened her mouth and closed it, looking very much like she’d like to stick out her tongue at him. Instead, she decided to turn around and say nothing.
Seth followed her to a hatchback outside. He wondered how she’d gotten that chair in her car in the first place. He saw boxes and more boxes, along with random odds and ends: pillows, blankets, picture frames. Except that the picture frames held no pictures in them, and her pillows and blankets and lamps and everything else were as nondescript as Rose was colorful.
He picked up two boxes, and when she looked like she’d balk, he just raised an eyebrow.
By the time he’d helped her get everything out of her car, her apartment looked slightly less depressing. He noticed she had no bed to speak of. Would she sleep on the chair? On her floor?
He suddenly wanted to know everything about her. What kind of a woman carts five boxes of books and no bed to a new apartment? No pictures, no knickknacks. He hadn’t seen boxes labeled clothes or shoes or jewelry like his sister Lizzie had had when she’d moved in.
“Is there a moving van coming?” he asked, intrigued.
Rose looked up from the box she’d begun to unpack. “A van? No. This is it.”
“Are you getting a bed later today?”
She wouldn’t look at him as she began to stack books. “No, I’m not.”
Well, that said plenty. But at her warning look, he decided not to push his luck. He started to help her unpack her books, glancing at the spines as they started to shelve them in a tiny bookshelf that wouldn’t hold even half of her collection.
Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, Elizabeth Gaskell, John Keats, Shakespeare, Virginia Woolf, Charles Dickens—so many books, most of which had clearly been read over and over again. Some were falling apart, barely glued together. When he took out a copy of Frankenstein, the cover fell off entirely.
“Oh, poor guy. This one has been through a lot.” Rose took the book from him, smiling.
That smile burst something inside him. Something hot, something dangerous. Something that felt exactly like longing. He caught his breath and forced himself to look away before he got burned.
After they’d shelved as many books as they could, Rose stood up, wiping her hands on her shorts. “Do you want something to drink?”
She didn’t wait for his reply. She returned with two glasses of water and handed one to Seth, which he took gratefully. And he realized, with an inward start, that helping Rose DiMarco move in had made him forget this morning’s nightmare.
At the thought of her last name, something itched in the back of his mind. He knew that name, didn’t he? He looked at her more closely, trying to find a clue, but all he saw were those bright blue eyes, like the lake on a sunny day. He’d never seen eyes like hers. As he gazed at her, he watched as a blush climbed up her cheeks.
So she wasn’t as indifferent toward him as she pretended to be. That only heightened his attraction. His blood thrummed.
But then something fearful flickered in her eyes, and she looked away. He recognized that look all too well: he’d seen it in the eyes of his men when they were facing down death. He’d seen it in his own face.
But what did Rose have to be afraid of?
Rose DiMarco, in all of her twenty-seven years, had never encountered a man as stubborn as Seth Thornton.
Yes, this was the second time she’d met him. No, she didn’t really know him. Yes, she had thought about him more often than she cared to admit after he’d saved her from Rich, one of her ex-boyfriend Johnny Porter’s cronies.
She’d moved to Fair Haven to escape—and to escape from men who wanted to use her for their own gains and pleasure.
She recognized desire in men’s gazes. She was no stranger to those heated looks, those looks of anticipation. It was rather like having a large predator spot you and decide to hunt you down. Running only made them want to hunt you more.
Rose had no intention of being the gazelle to Seth’s lion.
He looks more like a panther, she thought as she looked at him out of the corner of her eye. All muscle and darkness. And those blue-green eyes. Like turquoise.
A dog barked from her bedroom. Rose jumped, feeling foolish. She’d left her German shepherd, Callie, in her bedroom while she’d been moving in, forgetting her when Seth Thornton had appeared. Guilt assailed her as she went to let Callie out of her tiny bedroom.
Callie was all black, and small for a German shepherd. Rose had gotten her from the shelter three years ago, and Callie had proven herself a worthy companion and guard ever since. Rose had needed a large dog to keep people at bay; Callie had fit the bill perfectly, even though she was more likely to demand belly rubs than take a bite out of some villain.