"Don't move," a familiar voice commanded from behind her.
Not that there was much likelihood. She stood, frozen with fear as his dark figure moved past her.
Yancey expertly caught the head of the serpent between the forks of a stick and bent over to pick it up. She shuddered as he lifted it high and examined it. His bare back glistened as he walked across the patio and tossed the snake into the bushes. "It's just a black snake." He tossed the stick away and faced her. "I keep warning you about the wild life, but you have to learn for yourself, don't you? How many times have I told you not to leave the house at night in your bare feet?"
She stared at him, ignoring his rhetorical questions. "Where did you come from?"
"I've been sitting right over there." He indicated a chair in the shadow of a rose bush. He chuckled softly. "So I've finally found something you're afraid of more than me."
She shuddered and he moved close. Her gaze took in his masculine chin, the square cut lower lip and the piercing blue eyes - only right now they weren't piercing. She swallowed down her throbbing heart. A soft breeze carried a faint familiar odor, but it was gone before she could identify it. It was something she had smelled at the University . . . but when and where? Could it have been Marijuana?
"What's the matter?" He touched her arm and she moved away from him.
"Nothing." The moonlight formed shadows on his muscular chest. It wasn't the grotesque sinewy chest of a body builder, but the well developed chest of a swimmer. She tore her gaze from his chest. "You've been swimming."
"Ummm. Every night. You should join me sometime."
"No thanks." So that was where he got his stamina. It might have been something she would suspect if she had ever seen him in the pool. She had assumed the pool was for his daughter.
"How about right now?" His voice was seductive.
Her face burned. "I don't have my swim suit on."
"Me neither," was the instant reply.
She glanced down at the towel tucked around his midsection and gasped.
He laughed. "You've been admiring my chest, now let me admire yours." He reached for her robe.
She slapped his hand and clutched her robe closer. "I don't think so." She started for the patio door and he gripped her arm.