Sleeping Arrangements (Silhouette Desire) by Amy Jo Cousins Read Free Book Online Page B

thing he’d expected was to see this stubborn, un-sympathetic woman brought to the edge of tears by an old family portrait, an emotion that he knew surprised her as much as it did him.
    He was beginning to wonder if that momentary glimpse of softness would turn out to be his downfall.
    Of course, since at the moment she was only speaking to him when absolutely necessary, there didn’t look to be much chance of the two of them falling anywhere together.
    On the upside, at least she wasn’t yelling at him anymore. It was almost peaceful right now, sitting at the same table and sharing a meal.
    “This is very—” he began.
    Silverware clattered as Addy threw her knife and fork onto her plate and shoved her unfinished meal away, an expression of disgust twisting her face.
    Perhaps he’d spoken too soon.
    “Was she insane?” she demanded. “I have a right to know whether there’s a history of mental derangement in my family. It might affect my decision to have children someday.” She threw herself back in her chair and crossed her arms on her chest. “Don’t give me that look. I’m being about as rational as good old Great-Aunt Adeline was in her will.”
    He didn’t think this was the right time to mention that Adeline had considered Susannah’s branch of the family tree to be the unstable one. He’d settle for a smaller measure of the truth. “Your great-aunt was in her right mind until the day she died.”
    “Says you,” she said, knowing she was displaying the maturity level of a two-year-old. She blamed her crankiness on leftover sexual tension. Waking up to what had at first seemed a continuation of a sensual daydream, she’d been overwhelmed by the slow pulse of sensation throughout her body. Her memory of Spencer’s description of the will’s terms, and her anger, were life preservers she’d clung to with the desperate grasp of a person swept overboard.
    She was hanging on still.
    “She was nuts.”
    “Maybe she was just trying to make sure that you were, um…” Spencer paused for a moment. Was he hesitating? “That you were taken care of.”
    Of all the insulting… “I don’t need a husband to take care of me.” She tried to keep her tone below that of a shout as she jerked out of her chair and stood next to the table. She didn’t think she’d been successful. “I take care of myself just fine, thank you. Where’s the kitchen?”
    “All the way at the back of the house.”
    She collected her tableware and squelched the thought that she was being rude beyond belief, leaving her host sitting at the table, finishing the meal that he had made for the two of them. Hey, at least she was clearing her own dishes.
    At the end of the long hall, she found the kitchen, an enormous cavern of a room that ran most of the width of the back of the house. The faint odors—tomato and spicy sausage—of the Italian dinner Spencer had put together while she’d slept still lingered in the air. The room seemed to have been built before the advent of dishwashers, so she dumped her plate in the sink, determined to turn her back on the washing up and use some of her involuntary jail time here to explore the house.
    She got as far as the door to the hall.
    “A slave to my upbringing,” she muttered two minutes later, up to her elbows in soapsuds and dirty dishes. The freedom to wander the house wasn’t worth listening to her mother’s voice in the back of her head, haranguing her for leaving the cook to do the cleaning. She’d tossed the pots and pans from the stove into the sink for good measure. No sense doing a half-assed job.
    The house was old enough to give her fair warning when Spencer followed her into the kitchen minutes later, floorboards creaking from under the rug in the hall. His footsteps in the kitchen were silent. They’d both ditched their wet, snow-caked shoes soon after entering the house.
    But she didn’t need to hear him to know when he stood behind her, too close. She could see