A twinkle shone in her eye. "Economically disadvantaged? Blue-collar?" He laughed. "Poor works just fine." He drank from his cup, examining her more closely. She"d said she was a foster child, and he supposed that most homes that took such children in were not well-to-do, but she didn"t have that air about her, even in the dowdy clothes she sometimes wore. "You don"t look like that kind of a kid," he said with a frown. "Is there a mark you look for?" He pursed his lips, thinking of the trashy little houses back home, where hopeless women sat on rickety steps while their raggedy children wiped wrists over snotty noses. Wasn"t like that in the city, he knew that, but there were things he noticed, things he"d grown sensitive to over the years. "Not one mark," he said. "A few of them. The way people talk, their teeth." He narrowed his eyes. "A certain posture, maybe."
"Like you?"
"What"s that mean?"
"You don"t have bad teeth, and heaven knows there"s nothing submissive about your posture."
"My teeth are crooked."
"Only a little."
"But if I"d been a rich kid, they"d be straight, now, wouldn"t they?"
"I suppose." Her sultry mouth tipped at the corners in a mischievous expression. "And your grammar
could use some work."
"Hey, now," he warned, but chuckled in spite of himself.
"I think you"re being narrow-minded."
He lifted his eyebrows ruefully. "Maybe."
She stretched comfortably, like a cat, and Zeke admired the generous curve of b.r.e.a.s.t.s the pose
displayed before she curled up again, her gaze snagging on his books. "You must be a pretty serious reader."
Zeke shrugged. "No electricity. You learn to keep books around." She chuckled, leaning over to read the t.i.tles. "I guess you"ve read Black Beauty and King of the Windin recent months, then, huh?"
"Well, I guess there"s a few there from when I was a kid." His books had been all he"d taken with him, but he"d spilled enough of his guts to this woman. He was dangerously close to letting down his guard.
"Looks like you were horse-crazy," she said, and looked up curiously. "Were you?"
Maybe he could admit that much. "Yeah." His gaze cut involuntarily toward the empty corrals and barn
beyond the front window. Fences neat, ground smoothed, hay rotted to nothing in the stalls. Empty.
She followed his gaze and looked back at him, but didn"t say anything. Rare quality in a woman, the ability to realize some things were off limits. She"d done the same thing over his scars didn"t duck from seeing them, but made a simple acknowledgment of them and what they were without a lot of melodrama or gnashing of teeth. "I always wanted to be a cowboy," he found himself volunteering. "Wear a bandanna around my neck and a big hat."
She smiled. "I wanted to be in the symphony."
"What did you play?"
The grin broadened. "Nothing. I just thought it would be fun to wear black velvet dresses and pearls and have a whole bunch of people in fancy clothes come listen to me."
Again he laughed, unable to help himself, and the odd wild emotion in his chest swelled again. "I wanted to wear spurs, so when I walked it would make noise."
"Looks like you got a little closer to your dream than I did mine," she said, pointing to the corrals.
He should have known it wouldn"t slip by that easily. He stood up to pour another cup of coffee. "You hungry yet?"
"Not really. You don"t have to do everything, you know. I"d be happy to cook. I"m very good at it." She materialized at his side, holding out her cup for a refill.
Zeke turned and poured, feeling her warmth along the length of his side. They stood in stocking feet, both of them, and she was small enough to tuck up under one arm. Wisps of hair curled around her small ears and the long, pretty neck and he knew an urge to bend close, touch his lips to that white throat. Curve a hand around her breast, another around that not-so-tiny bottom. She was little, but nothing had been spared on the curves. He liked that. "I"ve got a feeling, Miss Mary, that I"m gonna have some trouble keeping myself in line around you."
She lifted wide brown eyes to his face and he saw the stirring hunger there, the curious and frightened expression he"d first read on her face that day in the cafe. Her siren lips softened and he watched her gaze flicker over his face, touch on his lips, dart back to his eyes. "Maybe-"
"No way, sweetheart," he said gruffly, and put the pot on the stove, willing himself to look away from that hunger in her face. She"d fall in love. No wayhe could bear that some long-twisted thing in his soul wasn"t capable of accepting it. Just as soon as he thought he could, he"d end up stomping all over her.
"I told you before I"m not your kind of man. You don"t need to get all torn up in addition to everything else that"s going on in your life right now."
"You"re a big, mean bear, all right," she said and he heard the amus.e.m.e.nt in her tone with surprise. "You think you are, Zeke, but you aren"t."
"I mean it, Mattie," he said and faced her squarely. Come h.e.l.l or high water, he found ways to drive women away once they proved themselves fool enough to fall in love with him. He liked Mattie too much as a friend to let that happen.
To emphasize his point, he put his coffee cup aside and settled his hands on her shoulders. Pretty, slim shoulders, fragile beneath his palms. "You"re real vulnerable right now. Your fiance betrayed you, you almost got killed and now you"ve had a little adventure."
She waited, her coffee cup between her palms, her eyes as calm as a summer morning. He could smell the faint scent of soap and motel shampoo around her, and felt the heat of her skin against his hands.
"Once you get back to normal life, you"ll wonder what the h.e.l.l you could have been thinking."
"Will I?" Her voice held a seductive, whispery note.
Zeke forgot what he meant to say, falling adrift in the seductively gentle liquid of her eyes. In their depths he saw something of himself, but stronger, all the things he might have been if only he"d had one person- He kissed her before he knew he would do it. Cupped her small head against his hand and bent to touch her lips with his own, lightly tasting that sensuous mouth. He closed his eyes to feel it better the moist plumpness of unseasoned lips, flavored with coffee and sugar and something that belonged only to her. And like an exhausted man sinking with grat.i.tude into the down of a pillow, he sank into the softness, losing himself as he explored the edges and corners, the sensitive inner edge. He suckled gently and heard her sigh as she inclined her head to take him more fully.
A kiss. It was only a kiss. But he couldn"t seem to surface, couldn"t remember what urgent reason he had for not doing it. When she parted her lips, ever so slightly, he opened his mouth and found her tongue ready to dance with his own.
And it was right, by d.a.m.n. The taste of her and the easy mesh of their ways, the fit of his lips against hers and the mingling of their tongues. He held her loosely, and kissed her. And kissed her. And once again.
A booming crack of thunder shattered the moment and Zeke jerked away. Her eyes had gone sultry, the hungriness in them a notch higher, a hunger reflected in the labored sound of his breath in his ears. "That wasn"t"
He swore. It had been a mistake to bring her here. No way on G.o.d"s green earth he could resist her for days on end. No way.
He gritted his teeth. "I"ve got rules, Mattie. It"s the only way I can keep things even. One of those rules is that I don"t mess with good girls like you." He shook his head. "It just isn"t a good idea for us."
Shenodded, her eyes wide and sad. "I understand."
"I want you," he said, and there was relief in putting it into words. "But it would be wrong."
"Okay."
He backed away, unable to manage the simple acceptance in her face and what that told him about her. Life had taught her not to want things she couldn"t have.
Hating himself, he grabbed the door handle. "I"ve got some things to take care of outside. Make yourself at home."
He fled, into the rain.
Chapter 8.
Mattie watched him go. Left alone in the cabin, she stirred sugar carefully into her cup and sipped the painfully hot coffee, trying to burn away the trembling need he"d awakened in her. Everything shook with an infinitesimal trembling she couldn"t control, didn"t understand. Her spine felt like rubber, her limbs like cooked spaghetti. Elsewhere, in her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and low in her belly and in dark places she"d rarely named, he"d awakened a deep ache. Her skin felt too sensitive, irritated by the cloth over it. She pressed a palm against her chest, trying to ease the feeling.
Turning, she saw Zeke through the window, heedlessly striding on those long legs through the rain and lightning, his hair darkening as it got wet, the shoulders of his white shirt soaked and showing the skin beneath. Her only comfort was that he obviously needed to work off the same restless burning that consumed her.
I want you.
As she watched, he picked up a fist-size rock and pitched it hard. It landed on the roof of the stable.
Mattie sighed. It could get a bit tense if this was what they had to face while they were here.
Then again, maybe both of them were just reacting to the intensity of the past twenty-four hours. Now it was raining, which to Mattie always seemed an emotional sort of weather. Once the sun came out, it would be easier.
A little desire was natural under the circ.u.mstances. He worried a little too much about her fragility, but if it kept him at arm"s length, maybe that was for the best. The kinds of things he stirred in her were probably better left unexamined.
He had warned her that once she got her life back together, she would wonder what she"d ever seen in him. The truth was,she had no idea who he was, really. Not intellectually. She reacted to him in purely instinctive ways, trusting him not because of what she knew, but what she felt to be true.
What if her instincts were wrong?
Absently, she touched the spines of his books. This was not the collection of a casual reader, whatever he wanted her to believe. The well-read volumes covered the childhood favorites she"d teased him about, but also included cla.s.sics by writers such as Shakespeare and Dante and d.i.c.kens. One whole shelf was devoted to philosophy, and another held thrillers and mysteries. Spencer was a favorite, which somehow didn"t surprise her. She pulled one book out at random and flipped through the pages.
But they didn"t hold her attention. Again and again, her gaze was drawn to the man beyond the window. A man who seemed to have no job, but had managed to buy land and build a cabin on it. A man who rode a motorcycle and had a tattoo and wore to-h.e.l.l-with-you hair, but read Shakespeare and Plato. A man with scars that suggested a kind of brutality most ordinary people could barely admit existed.
Secret sorrows of all sorts lurked in those pale green eyes. Mattie wanted to free them, let them out of the darkness where they moldered and into the sun, where they"d die a natural death.
But she knew even as she thought it, the wish was futile. If ever a man had built walls, Zeke had. She knew herself well enough to know she didn"t have the kind of tools she needed to knock the walls down.
With a sigh, she put the book back and set about making something for their dinner. The least she could do was make herself useful.
Dinner was a quiet affair. Mattie had managed to put together a fairly decent offering of soup and canned fruit and crackers, and they ate it silently before the fire Zeke built.
She hadn"t thought it was possible to be in the same room with someone for hours on end without speaking, but she"d never had to deal with a brooding man like Zeke before, either. Even when supper was finished and they"d cleaned up the dishes, he disappeared outside and didn"t come back for quite a while, then making no comment or apology for it.
She tried to amuse herself with a novel, but reading seemed too tame. The rain fell steadily outside, making her restless. Annoyed with Zeke for his silly brooding, restless with nothing to do, she took an oversize jacket from a hook by the door and stepped out to the porch. Steaming cup of coffee in hand, she settled in one of the chairs and gazed out at the night.
The clouds had moved off, leaving behind a breathlessly black night. All the overused, overworked metaphors applied: it looked like black velvet studded with diamonds; like a movie star"s dress; like magic and sequins and hope.
An ease pa.s.sed through her. The silence was unbroken by even the scurry of animals or the call of a bird. The wind whispered, water trickled from some high place, and dripped into an unseen pool.
She smiled to herself. Kansas City, with its traffic and noise and thick air seemed a million miles away, and she was glad of it. All her life, she"d dreamed of places like this. She"d read of the English countryside or quiet groves in the mountains, or wilderness retreats, and a soft bloom of curious longing would fill her. To sit in silence like that!
And here she was, after the strangest series of events she could imagine. A month ago, she"d been planning her wedding.
That woman, the one who"d spent her days typing memos to department heads, her evenings tracing Byronic influences in Regency era poetry, and her weekends choosing silver patterns, seemed like a stranger. What Mattie saw about herself when she looked back from this vantage point was that she"d been sound asleep. Not living at all, just going through the motions.
She sipped her sweet, hot coffee. Brian. Why was it so easy to see now what she should have seen then? She had never been in love with him. He"d dazzled her and charmed her; they had a good time when they went places, shared a common interest in some things. What she saw in retrospect was that their dealings with each other had always been unfailingly polite. Even the few times they"d actually made love had been neat and orderly, with the proper preparations and the lights turned low. Even the right music on in the background.
Mattie bit her lip. It was Zeke that made her old life seem so vapid. It was as if she"d been walking around in a black-and-white world until he walked into the cafe that morning and shown her Technicolor.
The sound track of her old life was a careful minuet. Zeke brought with him some roaring, loud rock and roll.
How could a person ever go back?
She wouldn"t. Whatever happened after all of this, she wouldn"t return to Kansas City. The sleepwalker had awakened, and as painful as it had been to cut her hair, the symbolic shearing away somehow made her feel freer to choose a new life when-
When what? When Brian was safely in jail? Maybe. When this was all over. That was as much as she could manage for now.
A light shone in the darkness a flashlight Zeke carried from the small shed he said contained a sauna.
He took his time, the ease of his att.i.tude evident in the lazy, long-legged way he crossed the clearing."Hey, Strider," she said when he gained the porch steps. "Strider?" "Lord of the Rings," she said. "Surely you"ve read Tolkien ."
He clicked off the flashlight and smiled. "Sure."
Seeing that smile, Mattie felt her breath leave her on a sigh of relief. "Does the sauna always improve your mood that much?"
"I reckon it does."
"You might have invited your guest along," she said lightly.
"Sorry, Miss Mary," he drawled. "But it was you I had to get away from."
The words stung, though she tried not to let them. "I didn"t ask to come here," she said quietly. "You
insisted."
"I know, and I don"t regret it." He leaned on the rail nearby her; she could feel his extraordinary warmth