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She frowned. ‘Not formally, no. But I like to play around.’ She clicked through another couple of eyesore slides.
‘You don’t have any landscapes?’ he couldn’t help asking.
‘What, like mountain scenes?’
‘Yeah.’ He grinned.
‘No,’ she said flatly and put the remote down.
He chuckled and wandered around the room. On the table was a single flower—some big, beautiful bloom that looked delicate, as if the petals would fall if you so much as brushed it. Yet she’d put it in an antique glass bottle that had a worn ‘poison’ sticker on it. He grinned at the juxtaposition. He looked again at the stairway to nowhere, the paintings, the vases, the collection of kitsch knick-knacks overflowing on one shelf while the shelf beside that one was completely bare. ‘You have a lot of weird things.’
‘Things that don’t readily make sense,’ she agreed. ‘It’s a way of freeing up my imagination. To encourage creativity.’
By having a collection of plastic animals walking up the wall? He lifted his brow at the rhino that had a miniature bottle opener hanging from its horn.
‘Mystery is always present,’ she said softly. ‘That’s the point.’
He looked at her. Yeah, the mystery was right in front of him. Adrenaline rushed, the precursor to fight, to drive for success. In that instant he wanted her more than he wanted his next breath.
Jack was staring at her. Just staring. Making her feel so self-conscious and so hot it was a wonder her skin wasn’t curling and crisping like bacon under a grill.
‘What are you doing here?’ she asked before thinking.
‘I’m deciding whether you’re real or whether this is jet lag causing a hallucination.’
Jet lag? Had he only just got back from Canada?
‘How are you going to find out?’ She could barely breathe.
He smiled lazily and she blinked in the face of its brilliance. Oh, he was so smooth, wasn’t he? She couldn’t be felled again by just a look like that.
She leaned forward—dangerously close. ‘I’m an illusion,’ she whispered. ‘Not real at all.’
He chuckled.
‘How was your trip?’ She stepped back and busied her hands by going into the kitchen and getting cups from the shelf. ‘Did the training go okay?’
‘Not as good as it could have.’ He followed her, leaning against the door frame.
‘No?’
His grimace said it all. ‘My knee is going to take a little longer than we first thought. I’m back for more physio. No point getting frustrated by being surrounded by snow and doing something stupid.’
‘Oh.’ She’d thought he’d handled the stairs no problem and was moving as lithe as a panther. But it must still bother him on those death-defying jumps.
‘What about you—you’re okay?’ He moved to where she was by the bench. Mind-blowingly, pheromone-dizzying close.
She stared at the seam of his shirt and reminded herself to breathe again. She had to keep it light. Didn’t want him to know how much he affected her—that was just embarrassing. The guy was a pro—but in sport and sex. And she was just another in that long line. So she had to get them laughing again as if none of this had ever mattered.
‘Actually, no,’ she said firmly. ‘Life’s not been the same since I last saw you.’
He stilled. ‘It hasn’t?’
‘No,’ she said sombrely. ‘Thanks to you I’m scarred for life.’ With a theatrical flourish, she pointed to her nose. ‘I got three new freckles.’
‘Freckles,’ he said blankly. ‘You got freckles.’
‘Three.’ She nodded. ‘From the sun.’
