His 1-800 Wife by Shirley Hailstock Page A

her.
    "It wasn't me. It was a stranger."
    Jarrod suddenly laughed. "Catherine, don't tell me after all these years, you don't know how beautiful you are? That was no stranger in the mirror. It was you."
    She looked at him curiously. She was beautiful, breathtaking. Jarrod didn't know how he'd missed it. All the years they lived side by side and he'd played joke after joke on her, while all this beauty had slept in the house next door.
    Jarrod went to her and took her hand. He led her into the hall by the door and stood her in front of the mirror. "Cathy, look at yourself," he said. He put his hands on her shoulders and stood behind her. "You're a beautiful woman. In a wedding gown, a nightgown, swathed in a towel or wearing nothing at all, you couldn't be anything else."
     
    ***
     
    The salt air smelled sweet to Catherine. She took a deep breath and relaxed as Jarrod sped along the beach road with the top open. The wind pulled all the curl out of her hair, but she didn't care. She needed to get out of the house, needed Jarrod to take his hands off her shoulders or she'd turn around in his arms and break her own rule.
    His voice had that rough, sexy quality to it. She could feel it undoing her defenses. Warmth burned up her face, into her ears; she even felt the strands of her hair grow warm. She faced him in the mirror, searching his eyes for a sign that he was teasing, that this was another of his jokes. What she expected to see there was a phantom of deception to complement his comment. She found none. What she saw made her heart pound. Did he really think she was beau­tiful?
    Here was a different facet to Jarrod's character. Every time she turned around he surprised her. She was engaged to someone she'd known most of her life, but he was still a stranger. Jarrod had always been the joker, her enemy, a thorn in her side. Infrequently he'd been her savior, but now who was he? And why was it every time she found herself near him, her heart did flip-flops and her knees turned to water? She didn't even want to think about what happened to the rest of her body.
    Jarrod had suggested they go to the beach, and she grabbed at the opportunity to move away from him and get her beach bag. He took her to her beach, the one where he'd put the ring on her finger, where the rock wall that was so prevalent in the state ran for miles, where she liked to talk to the sea. Newport didn't have many beaches. In fact, actual beach was rare and small. The amount of sand didn't cover an acre. Yet, today there were more people enjoying the sun than she'd seen in a while. Jarrod held her hand as he led her to a secluded place in the shadow of a craggy hill.
    "Do you want to go in the water?" he asked.
    "Not just yet. I love to hear the sound the waves make. I think I'll just sit here for a while, but you can go in."
    Catherine dropped down on the blanket Jarrod spread on the sand. She wore shorts and a sleeveless top over her swim suit. Jarrod stripped off his shorts, which came to his knees, and pulled the T-shirt over his head. Catherine struggled not to gasp when she saw him. Through clothes, she knew he had a powerful body. Without clothes, he was magnificent. His skin was evenly colored, darkened by the sun, with rich, red undertones. She couldn't help staring at the tight muscles of his legs and arms. He looked as if his job entailed manual labor on a daily basis. Everything about him was hard, and Catherine found her hands itching to reach out and touch him, run her palms over his strong physique. Her mouth went dry and definite signs of arousal stirred within her.
    "I'm glad you like what you see." Jarrod smiled and ran toward the water.
    Catherine couldn't deny his comment. Shame at being caught with her hand in the cookie jar washed over her. Between the sun and Jarrod's affect on her, she should be nothing more than a mass of Jello on the blanket. Yet her skin held her intact. She watched Jarrod run down the beach, unable to tear her