“Whatever it is, it’s not coming too close to the house,” she said quickly. “Winston would be barking like crazy if there was a critter in the bushes at the edge of the porch.”
“Sure.” Rafe reached for the doorknob. Winston strained forward, preparing to streak through the crack in the door as soon as it appeared.
Real fear galvanized Hannah. Everything in her was suddenly focused on the danger of opening the front door.
“What, are you crazy?” She leaped to her feet and rushed across the room. She bent down to seize Winston’s collar. “You can’t send him outside. He was raised in a high-rise apartment in the middle of a city, for heaven’s sake. He knows nothing about wild animals. Whatever’s out there might be a lot bigger and meaner than he is.”
Winston tried to pull free of her grasp. He was trembling with eagerness. His nose did not waver from the crack between the door and the frame.
Rafe glanced down at him. “Okay, city dog. Stay inside and be a sissy. I’ll handle this on my own.”
“Oh, no, you don’t.” Exasperated, Hannah released Winston and threw herself in front of the door, arms spread wide. “You’re not going out there, either.”
Rafe looked amused. “Doubt if whatever is out there is bigger or meaner than me. This is Eclipse Bay, remember? Crime rate around here is almost nonexistent.”
Winston whined again and bobbed restlessly at Rafe’s heels.
Hannah glared at both of them. She did not budge from her position in front of the door. Frantically she searched for a rational, sensible reason for refusing to allow either male outside.
“Cut the raging testosterone, you two. Let’s have a little common sense here, shall we? It is entirely possible that there’s a skunk outside. Does either of you have any idea of just how long it would take to get rid of the smell if you got sprayed? You’d both have to sleep on the beach for a week.”
“Don’t think it’s a skunk.” Rafe looked thoughtful. “A skunk would head straight for the garbage cans. We’d have heard the clatter by now.”
“If it’s not a skunk, it might be something worse,” she said through her teeth. “Maybe somebody’s pit bull or Rottweiler got loose. For all you know, there’s a whole pack of vicious dogs out there.”
“Speaking of common sense,” Rafe said mildly, “I think that theory is a bit weak.”
“I don’t care. It’s my theory and I’m sticking to it. Neither of you is going out there and that’s final. Besides, you just got through saying that the fog was so thick you couldn’t see beyond the edge of the porch. It makes no sense to go floundering around in the stuff.”
Rafe looked at her. She realized that he was laughing silently.
“What?” she said.
“Nothing.” He pulled the curtain aside again and peered thoughtfully out into the darkness. “Just occurred to me that if you don’t let me outside, I won’t be able to get home tonight, that’s all.”
She hesitated. “You can leave after Winston relaxes.”
“Can’t see a damn thing in that muck.”
“You can leave your car here and walk home.”
He dropped the curtain. His eyes gleamed.
“Now what?” she snapped.
“What if someone drives past your house early tomorrow morning and sees my car parked in front?”
She sighed. “Half the town already thinks the worst, anyway.”
“Okay, then what about the pack of maddened Rottweilers and pit bulls I’ll have to confront if I walk home?”
She moved just far enough from the position in front of the door to lift the curtain. A single glance outside showed that the fog was an impenetrable barrier. The light from the yellow lamp over the door was reflected back from what looked like a solid gray wall.
She looked at Winston. He was now pacing restlessly in front of the door. Whatever it was that he sensed was still out there. She made an executive decision.
“We’ll drink the tea I made,” she said. “If nothing has changed by the time we finish, you can sleep on the sofa tonight.”
“Okay,” Rafe said much too easily.
Winston lost interest in whatever lay out in the fog about the same time they finished the tea. But when Rafe checked the view from the window he was pleased to see that the mist had not dissipated. If anything, it was thicker than ever.
Luck was with him tonight.
Hannah came to stand behind him. She peered over his shoulder. “How does it look?”
“Like a great night for mad dogs and skunks.”
“Not funny.” She hugged herself and rubbed her arms briskly, as though warding off a chill. “I guess you’ll have to stay here.”
“Don’t go overboard with the gracious hospitality routine. I don’t mind walking back to Dreamscape. It’s not that far.”
“No.” She turned away abruptly. “You can have the downstairs guest room. I’ll get some blankets and a pillow.”
He watched her climb the stairs. She had been a little too quick to suggest that he stay here, he decided. The expression in her eyes was wrong, too. He wondered how much of this new, brittle tension derived from the scene on the sofa earlier and how much came from Winston’s prowling at the door.
Logic told him that a few kisses wouldn’t have rattled her this much. She wasn’t a teenager, after all. She was a confident woman who had built a thriving business. It would take more than a sexy tussle on the sofa to throw her. In any event, he was pretty sure that if she really had been upset by the small skirmish, she would have been more than delighted to let him walk home in the fog.
Instead, she had insisted that he stay here.
He glanced at Winston. The dog was stretched out on his belly on the rug, nose on his paws, dozing. Hannah had said that it was the second night in a row that he had gone on alert.
Hannah and Winston were both accustomed to life in the city, Rafe reminded himself. They had merely overreacted to whatever small creature had wandered too close to the house. But if Hannah wanted him to stay here tonight, who was he to argue?
An hour later he was still awake. Arms folded behind his head, he stared up at the deep shadows on the ceiling. He was intensely aware of the fact that Hannah was just out of sight upstairs. He pictured her in a nightgown. Maybe a frilly little see-through number that showed a lot of skin. Fat chance. More likely a sober, long-sleeved flannel thing that fell to her ankles.