Carved in Stone Read Free Page A

might have been like if things had been different.
    But they weren’t, and she’d learned long ago that wishing for what might have been didn’t solve a thing. Leave it to Jessie to reawaken painful memories best forgotten.
    Dammit! Jessie could manage the remodeling, and by the time this job was finished, the studio would be almost ready to open.
    Jessie accused her of being a control freak. Alex had to agree. Win or lose, at least her future was in her own hands.
    Her mother obviously hadn’t had that choice.
    Now she was dead.
    Unlike her mother, Alex Martin’s life was controlled by no man.
    She felt his presence before she saw him. Turning quickly, she grabbed a towel to cover her nudity. He stood not ten feet away, fully dressed, watching her, holding two cups of coffee.
    “I thought you might like a cup,” he offered casually. A broad smile creased his face and he held the steaming mug out to her. He acted as if seeing her naked was an everyday occurrence.
    His cavalier attitude angered Alex more than it embarrassed her, but she knew immediately why he was here. Typical, she thought, the way men always need to even the score.
    “You might have waited until I finished bathing.” Alex’s voice trembled with anger, infuriating her even more. What if he took the audible quiver in her words as a sign of weakness? She grabbed her sweats and glared pointedly in Nathan’s direction.
    He didn’t move. Alex ignored the coffee he offered. “Do you mind?” she hissed, clutching the towel and the folded bundle of sweats close against her body.
    “Mind what?”
    His wide-eyed innocent look goaded her even further, and Alex recognized the precise moment when temper overrode common sense. She glanced at the fist-sized rocks along the streambed and thought longingly of the kind of damage she would love to do.
    But she had other weapons.
    Proudly she stood up and dropped the towel, giving Nate an unhurried look at her long legs, small breasts and the dark thatch at her center. She glared at him, letting him feel her anger. Then, very slowly, she proceeded to dress.
    What had he been thinking, to pull such a childish stunt?
    Nathan stared, transfixed, as she carefully pulled her sweatpants on and then slipped the worn sweatshirt over her head. She didn’t say a word. She didn’t have to . . . her blazing eyes spoke volumes.
    This wasn’t quite what he’d expected, but earlier she’d sent him off feeling embarrassed and foolish. Coming back to catch her at her bath seemed like a perfectly acceptable way to even the score.
    But by the time she pushed her long black hair out of her eyes and tossed it back over her shoulders, Nate’s mouth was dry. When she stepped close, reached out with one slender hand and silently accepted the coffee mug still clenched in his trembling fingers, he could hardly resist the urge to wipe the sweat beading his upper lip.
    As she took the cup, Nate made a strategic decision to beat a hasty retreat back to camp. Gritting his teeth in angry frustration, he turned away and stomped along the brushy trail, muttering to himself as he shoved the rich green foliage out of his way.
    He wasn’t certain who she was or what she was doing here, but there was no denying the fact his body was achingly aware of every curve and line of her dusky figure. Her small, firm breasts with their dark nipples beaded from the morning chill, the sleek line of her torso and the perfect curve from small waist to rounded hip to long, long legs. And all that thick, glorious hair, sleekly wet now, combed back from her fascinating face, hanging long enough to curl around her hips.
    It was bad enough that she didn’t belong here. It was even worse she had interrupted his morning bath. But the last straw, the thing that really ticked him off, was the fact he was responding deep in his gut not to her almost primitive beauty, but to something as unprovocative as the sound of her footsteps stamping angrily behind him along the