A Will and a Way by Nora Roberts

another woman exactly the way he felt about Pandora McVie. Uncomfortable, challenged, infuriated. The truth was that he was almost always at ease around women. He liked them—their femininity, their peculiar strengths and weaknesses, their style. Perhaps that was the reason for his success in relationships, though he’d carefully kept them short-term.
    If he romanced a woman, it was because he was interested in her, not simply in the end result. True enough he was interested in Pandora, but he’d never considered romancing her. It surprised him that he’d caught himself once or twice considering seducing her.
    Seducing, of course, was an entirely different matter than romancing. But all in all, he didn’t know if attempting a casual seduction of Pandora would be worth the risk.
    If he offered her a candlelight dinner or a walk in the moonlight—or a mad night of passion—she’d come back with a sarcastic remark. Which would, inevitably, trigger some caustic rebuttal from him. The merry-go-round would begin again.
    In any case, it wasn’t romance he wanted with Pandora. It was simply curiosity. In certain instances, it was best to remember what had happened to the intrepid cat. But as he thought of her, his gaze was drawn toward her workshop.
    They weren’t so very different really, Michael mused. Pandora could insist from dawn to dusk that they had nothing in common, but Jolley had been closer to the mark. They were both quick-tempered, opinionated and passionately protective of their professions. He closed himself up for hours at a time with a typewriter. She closed herself up with tools and torches. The end result of both of their work was entertainment. And after all, that was…
    His thoughts broke off as he saw the shed door open. Odd, he hadn’t thought she was back yet. His rooms were on the opposite end of the house from the garage, so he wouldn’t have heard her car, but he thought she’d drop off what she’d picked up for him.
    He started to shrug and turn away when he saw the figure emerge from the shed. It was bundled deep in a coat and hat, but he knew immediately it wasn’t Pandora. She moved fluidly, unselfconsciously. This person walked with speed and wariness. Wariness, he thought again, that was evident in the way the head swiveled back and forth before the door was closed again. Without stopping to think, Michael dashed out of the room and down the stairs.
    He nearly rammed into Charles at the bottom. “Pandora back?” he demanded.
    “No, sir.” Relieved that he hadn’t been plowed down, Charlesrested a hand on the rail. “She said she might stay in town and do some shopping. We shouldn’t worry if—”
    But Michael was already halfway down the hall.
    With a sigh for the agility he hadn’t had in thirty years, Charles creaked his way into the drawing room to lay a fire.
    The wind hit Michael the moment he stepped outside, reminding him he hadn’t stopped for a coat. As he began to race toward the shed, his face chilled and his muscles warmed. There was no one in sight on the grounds. Not surprising, he mused as he slowed his pace just a bit. The woods were close at the edge, and there were a half a dozen easy paths through them.
    Some kid poking around? he wondered. Pandora would be lucky if he hadn’t pocketed half her pretty stones. It would serve her right.
    But he changed his mind the minute he stood in the doorway of her workshop.
    Boxes were turned over so that gems and stones and beads were scattered everywhere. Balls of string and twine had been unraveled and twisted and knotted from wall to wall. He had to push some out of his way to step inside. What was usually almost pristine in its order was utter chaos. Gold and silver wire had been bent and snapped, tools lay where they’d been carelessly tossed to the floor.
    Michael bent down and picked up an emerald. It glinted sharp and green in his palm. If it had been a thief, he decided, it had been a clumsy and shortsighted