“It’s after midnight. Of course I’m asleep, you twit. What do you want, Hallie? Don’t you take another step. You will not come in here, not with your father sleeping twenty feet down the corridor. Go away.”
She slipped through and quietly closed the door. “When I was little, I practiced walking on cat feet since I excelled at eavesdropping. The only person who would ever hear me was my stepmother. She told me it was a good skill to develop but I must promise not to use it on her. I never did.”
“I heard you. Go away.”
“Jason, I’m not going to jump you again,” she said, and she sounded both mortified and excited. She tossed her hair behind her, long thick hair, which he had no intention of thinking about, how it would feel rubbing against his cheek, a curtain over his belly.
“Stay there, Hallie. I have no nightshirt on.”
“Really? You don’t sleep in a nightshirt? Yes, I remember Corrie saying something about that. Do you know the moon is flooding through that window, Jason? If I come only five steps closer, I’ll be able—”
“If you come one step closer, I’ll personally throw you out that window. It’s a nice drop to the ground.”
“All right, all right, I’ll not move from this spot. Tell me, did my father try to break your arm?”
“No, he didn’t.”
“Do you know what my father is thinking? He wouldn’t tell me a thing, patted my cheek, bid me good night, and walked away. And here I’ve known him all my life.”
“I saw you slide your right foot forward. Step back, Hallie.”
She took a very small step back. He saw she was barefoot. “If my father didn’t hit you, then I know what he wants, Jason, but believe me, you don’t have to agree. What happened was my fault, I’ve told him so a good dozen times. He says nothing, only looks patient. I wish he would believe that no one could possibly know. It’s as if it simply never happened. Poof, it’s gone.”
Jason sighed. “Nothing’s gone. He’s your father. That makes all the difference in the world. I don’t think there’s going to be any choice here, Hallie.” He gave a short laugh. “At least our questionable partnership will be over.”
“No, don’t say it. I wanted to apologize to you for what I did, though I don’t remember thinking anything at all while I was doing it.”
“Usually it’s gentlemen who lose their wits and can think only of getting a woman flat on her back.”
“I hadn’t gotten that far,” she said. “I mean, your shirt was off and that gave me quite a lot to think about. When my hand made that very brief foray down your chest, well, perhaps I did think that getting you out of your trousers might be a very nice thing.” She paused, took a sideways step. “You’re out of your britches now.”
He sat up.
She stared at him.
He pulled the sheet around him, then a blanket up over his shoulders, pulling it together over his chest, like a shawl.
Alec Carrick said from the doorway, “Hallie, I cannot believe you are here. Have you no sense at all?”
“Is that you, Papa? Oh dear, I believe it is. I’m not touching him. See, I’m at least seven feet away from his bed.”
“Did you count the bloody feet?”
“Well, yes, perhaps I did, and how fast it would take me to cover those feet if I ran. Papa, I’m only here to make Jason tell me what you said to him. See, he’s all covered up. He’s safe.”
Alec Carrick laughed, couldn’t help himself. “
You’re going to chase him out of his own house if you’re not careful, Hallie.”
“He’s been chasing himself away lately,” she said to her father. “We’d be speaking, then he’d up and leave and not come back until dawn. I know it was dawn the other night because I was nearly awake, and so I told him.”
“I see,” Alec Carrick said. “How often does Jason simply leave like that?”
“He’s left a good half dozen times. Never a warning, he ups and leaves.”
Jason wanted to dump her into the horse trough. “My lord, nothing would have happened here, nothing at all.”
“I believe you. So you left, did you? How long do you think you could have kept that up, Jason?”