His fingers were warm and just a little rough. They branded her skin in an oddly gentle way. He’d violated her space, and yet his touch wasn’t entirely unwelcome.
Startled by her own reaction, she tried to pull away, but he held her firm for one exquisite moment. “Leave the drawings. But we need to—”
“No!” She pulled her arm out of his grasp as her senses returned. She needed to protect herself. She needed to put distance between them.
He let her go without a struggle, allowing her to pick up the portfolio and run for her life.
Chapter Six
Topher stood in the doorway of the cottage, watching Jessica run away as if escaping a monster.
Which wasn’t far from the truth. His face was certainly hideous enough to be called monstrous, having been rearranged by shattered glass and shards of shrapnel. And he’d acted like a beast. He should never have touched her.
He turned away from the door and returned to the table, where he stared at her renderings for a long moment.
He’d asked for a big wall to keep the winds out, hadn’t he? And he’d told her that Granddad wanted a structure that would eclipse Howland House.
She’d certainly given him all of that.
He almost laughed out loud about the party house concept. Maybe he should have told her that Bachelor’s Delight had been purchased only a few months ago from one of his business partners—a swinger who’d partied like there was no tomorrow.
Erik Sokal would have loved the party deck, but Topher had no desire to hold parties. Unless it was for a pack of children who wanted to swim in the cove, or play pirate in a bunch of dinghies, or sit around a campfire telling ghost stories about the old lighthouse keepers.
No. He didn’t like her design because it wasn’t him. It was some other person he’d become. Someone he hardly recognized. The real Christopher Martin wanted nothing except to turn back time.
He wanted to escape into those days before Granddad had died. Before he’d wrecked his knee before his sophomore year at Bama and ended his NFL dreams. Before the deer had appeared in the headlights. Before he’d swerved and ended up wrapped around a guardrail.
He’d had it all once, and now…
He wanted to ball up her drawings and throw them at something or someone. The fury was enough to leave him breathless, but he didn’t touch the papers. Let them sit there as a reminder of what he had become.
He closed his eyes and drew a deep breath. Knowing that a house would never return Granddad or his innocence or his health, why was he so set on building one?
Stubbornness?
Maybe.
Maybe he should give it up.
The thought left him hollow. If he gave it up, then what? Would he live out the rest of his days in this cottage with Ashley and Sandra and Karen treating him like an invalid? Would he walk the streets of Magnolia Harbor, becoming a fixture that people would pity?
He grunted a laugh. Maybe he could get a part-time job as a pirate impersonator on the daily cruises that left from the marina. With his bad leg, eye patch, and scars, he could probably scare the crap out of the little ones.
He sank into the easy chair by the fireplace. How had it come to this? Living a life that belonged in an alternate universe.
No. He pounded his fist on the arm of the chair. He would not become an object of pity or derision. He wanted a house on Lookout Island.
And he wanted Jessica Blackwood as his architect because she’d actually tried to figure out what he wanted. She’d missed by a mile, but she’d paid attention.
And she’d looked him right in the eye.
But how could he ever persuade her to come back to him? He had no clue, except that the first step would probably involve an apology. He picked up his cell phone and dialed her number.
She didn’t answer. No surprise there.
When her recorded voice finished its message, he said, “I’m sorry. I’m an asshole. Can we start over? Please? Call me.” He disconnected the line and let his head fall back against the easy chair.
Would she call him back?
Probably not.
* * *
Jessica ran through the rose garden as if her life depended on it. She didn’t think, just moved in a panic that left her dizzy and shaking by the time she reached the confines of her ancient Volkswagen.
She fired up the engine and cranked the AC to full max, then peeled out of the parking lot, driving like a madwoman as she relived that moment, years ago, when Caleb Tate had cornered her in the locker room. That attack had started with him grabbing her by the wrist.
She didn’t drive back to her office. Instead, she found herself on the road out of town, heading toward the Atlantic Ocean and the house she’d inherited from Momma. The house had belonged to Momma’s parents, MeeMaw and PopPop, who had been gone for more than a decade.
She hadn’t been consciously going there, but it made sense. The place pulled her heart like a kite on a string because she’d always felt loved there. Not like Granny’s house in town, where she’d lived as a child with Momma and Daddy. At Granny’s house, she had to be careful not to spill the sugar or slosh the tea. At MeeMaw’s house, she baked cookies and went swimming and spent countless hours out on the porch drawing pictures of the ocean that her grandmother stuck up on the refrigerator.
She pulled into the gravel drive, cut the engine, and rested her head on the steering wheel, trying to think of what came next. She’d turned in her City Hall design, and she’d just blown it with her only other client—a client she’d never been sure about. And maybe worst of all, her main go-to friend wanted to change the nature of their relationship.
The confidence she’d shown last Thursday when she’d run into Harry Bauman and Caleb Tate had evaporated. She was in over her head.
She looked up through the windshield at the house she’d inherited. She’d taken a mortgage out on the place for her start-up money. If she didn’t make a success of her business, she would probably have to sell the house. And she couldn’t bear the thought of that.
Her eyes filled with tears. She was such a screwup.
Her phone rang.
It was Topher. She couldn’t talk to him now, in this state, so she sent the call to voice mail, and then, with fingers shaking, she called the only person who might understand why she’d just freaked out.
“Hey,” she said when Hillary Barnwell’s voice sounded on the phone’s tinny speaker. Hillary had been at Longwood Academy with her. And without Hillary’s courage and friendship, Jessica might never have survived being banished from her family for something she hadn’t done.
“What’s wrong?” Hillary asked, her voice low, sober, intense. After all these years, Hillary could still read Jessica’s tone of voice, even over the phone.
“I freaked out,” Jessica said. “I had a panic attack. I haven’t had one of those in years.”
“What happened?”
In a shaky voice, Jessica summarized everything that had happened from the moment she’d stepped onto Bachelor’s Delight until Topher had grabbed her by the wrist.
“And what did you feel? Did he scare you?” Hillary asked when she got to the last of her story.
Oddly, the question stopped Jessica cold. “Yes. No. Yes.”
She couldn’t quite make herself explain how Topher’s touch had been gentle and strong and like a jolt of electricity that branded her. And at the very same time, it had frightened her.