Welcome to Paradise by Carol Grace Page A

reckless abandon, letting him think...letting him imagine what might come next. He squeezed his eyes shut and forcibly blocked the image. But he couldn't forget the way she'd wrapped her arms around him and opened her lips to welcome him in as if there was no tomorrow.
    But there was tomorrow. Tomorrow was now. He had to get rid of her. Now.
    “Here you are, little lady,” George said, sliding a half dozen biscuits onto a plate in front of her.
    Zeb shot daggers at his old friend and foreman but George seemed oblivious. “Wait a minute,” Zeb said. “She can't eat all those. What about me?”
    “Plenty more where those came from,” George said with a grin that showed his gold front tooth. Then with a deliberate wink in the direction of his employer, he left the room.
    The room was silent, except for the coffee percolating on the stove. Zeb reached for a cup. What in the hell was she doing there? It was bad enough she'd taken over his hot tub, now she'd invaded his kitchen as well. He snuck a glance at her out of the corner of his eye. And noted with satisfaction that she looked tired. Why he should feel a stab of sympathy in the vicinity of his gut, was beyond comprehension. Maybe it was just hunger. Yeah, that's what it was.
    The next time he looked at her there was a faint blush on her cheeks. She looked embarrassed. She should be embarrassed.
    “I didn't come here for breakfast,” she explained.
    “You could have fooled me,” Zeb grumbled, pouring himself a cup of coffee since it looked like no one was going to do it for him.
    “I came to thank you,” she said, “and—”
    “Forget it.” He sat across from her, took a biscuit off her plate and slathered it with butter and honey.
    Chloe studied him from under long lashes. She only wished she could look that good first thing in the morning. Maybe after she had her inflatable mattress set up she would. For now she felt like her back was in a vise. Her eyelids were heavy and red around the rims.
    Not him. His eyes were the clear blue of the ocean outside the Golden Gate, though he must have spent hours in the night bringing her goods down the trail to the springs. He moved around the kitchen with the grace of a panther. And he ate like a bear, putting away biscuits one after the other. Everyone she knew at home watched what they ate. A plain bagel for breakfast, a salad for lunch and lean meat for dinner. This man did hard physical work all day. It showed in every muscle of his physique. He was quite a specimen. She'd noticed that right away as he stood there in the bathhouse, in all his naked glory. She stared into her coffee cup as if there might be a message in the grounds. If there was, it would surely say: Don't get carried away. You 're in a vulnerable state. Just divorced, away from friends and family. Tired, hungry and depressed.
    But there was no denying he was a beautiful man. On the outside. If you liked the rugged type, that is. It was the inside she didn't understand. What made him tick? Why had he driven away in a huff, leaving her with a stack of boxes, only to return in the middle of the night to haul them to the resort?
    “As I said before,” she murmured, “I don't understand you.”
    “What's not to understand?” he said, lifting his cup in the air. “I didn't want to see your stuff dissolve in the rain. Call it thrift. Call it prudence.”
    “I call it kindness.”
    He glared at her. “Well, don't.”
    She hesitated, afraid to offend him again with another compliment.
    “Look,” she said, “I know you don't want me here. I shouldn't have come and barged in on your breakfast like this. But I don't have a phone, and I was grateful and the biscuits smelled so good.”
    “All the way over to the springs?”
    “No...no. I mean when I got to the door. But now that I know you don't want to be thanked, I just—”
    “You got that right.”
    “I just want to say, I was hoping maybe we could get along somehow. As neighbors, maybe