First Impressions

by Jude Deveraux

  “Tell me what’s happened,” he said, ignoring her comment.

  “It’s just that…I mean…” Sniffing, she moved slightly away from him and looked around. “Where are we?”

  “The well house,” he said.

  Blinking, she looked about her. A flashlight was pointed at the ceiling. The building, eighteenth century, and quite pretty, had once been the smokehouse to the plantation, so it had no windows. In the corner, inside an ugly plywood closet, were the tanks and pump necessary for piping well water to the house and the outside spigots. The rest of the small building had been used for storage, and it had always been filled to capacity. She saw that now it was clean and had what looked to be a mattress and blankets on the floor.

  “The men used it,” Jared said as he lit a fat candle and turned the flashlight off. He was sitting just inches from her on the mattress. “They were taking a chance that you’d find them, but a lock’s been installed and…” Trailing off, he shrugged and looked away.

  Outside, the rain began to sprinkle, making a pleasing noise when it hit the tin roof of the building. Eden wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “I better get back inside. Melissa will—”

  Jared caught her arm. “You’re not going anywhere until you tell me everything that’s been going on.”

  “Nothing,” she said. “I need to get back inside. Melissa might need me.”

  “I think that girl needs to be turned over somebody’s knee.”

  Eden smiled at him in the candlelight. “That’s no longer done. Besides, Melissa is a grown woman.”

  “She’s a little girl in a woman’s body,” Jared said, unsmiling, “and you let her stay a child. You ought to—”

  At that, Eden’s tears started again. She put her hands over her face and began to cry harder than before.

  Stretching out on the mattress beside her, Jared pulled her into his arms. “Ssssh, baby, be quiet. I’m here,” he whispered, stroking her hair.

  The rain came down on the roof, isolating them in the beautiful old building. She clung to him, plastering her body against his. She so needed the comfort of another human being. She was sick of trying to be strong, of trying to be everything to everybody. She was worn out from being strong.

  The harder the rain came down, and the harder she cried, the closer she wanted to be to the warmth of his body. He pulled her to him, but when her leg moved over his, he pulled back. “I can’t do this,” he said, his voice husky. “I can’t hold you and not do anything else.”

  “It’s okay,” Eden said, her tears beginning to dry. “It’s okay.”

  “I…” Jared began, but when he looked at Eden it was as though he’d made a decision. In the next moment, he was beside her, and pulled her into his arms.

  “Yes,” she murmured, her arms around him. “Yes.”

  He put his hand in her hair, clasped the back of her head, and turned her face to his. For a second he looked into her eyes, then put his lips on hers. He was tentative at first, giving her one last chance to back out, but her arms tightened about his neck, and his kiss deepened.

  Eden knew that never in her life had she needed anyone as much as she needed this man at that moment. Lightning showed through the holes in the old walls of the little building, and in the next moment a clap of thunder echoed around them, making her move closer to Jared.

  His hand went under her sweatshirt. She hadn’t bothered with a bra, and when his hand touched her breast, she moaned under his lips.

  After that, he didn’t hold back. Within seconds, he had her shirt off and he was caressing her with his warm hands. His lips were on her neck and moving downward. It seemed that it had been forever since she’d been in a man’s arms. Forever since she’d—

  She cut off her thought and for a moment she pulled back to look at the man who was kissing her. His eyes were half closed and his lips were full and soft. He’s in love with me, she thought. The Jared McBride she’d met such a short time ago was gone, and in his place was a man who had no defenses, no pretenses. What she was seeing was not covered under a mask of lies.

  He opened his eyes to look at her, and in an instant, that guarded look was back. It was the face of a man who had been hurt and needed to protect himself. Like me, Eden thought. Pain beyond bearing.

  Jared seemed to sense that something was different, and he started to roll away, his eyes hard, guarded, covered.

  But she put her hand on his shoulder. He hesitated for a moment, then he looked back at her. She was on her side, naked from the waist up, her jeans unzipped and pulled low on her hips. She saw the desire in his eyes, and she saw the deep feeling there. She knew that if she had any sense, she’d stop this here and now, before it went any further, but she didn’t. Smiling in invitation, she rolled onto her back and opened her arms to him.

  There was a moment of hesitation from Jared, then with a small smile, he went to her and slipped the jeans down over her hips, giving a low laugh when he saw that she was wearing no underwear. She laughed too, then he turned slightly away from her. “Oh, no, you don’t,” she said. “I want to see the hand I’m being dealt.”

  He laughed, and when he disrobed in what had to be less than a quarter of a second, they laughed together. He stretched out beside her, and even though she could see and feel his rampant desire for her, he lay still so she could look at his body. Years of exercise had kept him in trim fit, but there were many scars on his body. She traced one with her fingertips and looked at him in question.

  “Knife,” he said, then kissed her neck.

  Her hands on his back found another scar. “Bullet,” he said.

  There was another scar down by his hip. “You don’t want to know,” he said, then he put his mouth on hers and there was no more talking.

  They made love for hours on the old mattress. There was the first frantic meeting of bodies, a bit awkward, but wonderfully pleasurable, and when they came together, Eden nearly laughed with the joy of it.

  Jared collapsed on her, and for a second she thought he’d gone to sleep. She dug her heels into the mattress, then heaved him over onto his back and stretched herself out full length on top of him. “Come on, old man, you have work to do.”

  “No,” he said, eyes closed. “I’m too tired. I want to sleep. I am an old man and I’ll never be able to do this twice in one night.”

  “In that case…” Eden said as she made to roll off of him.

  But his hand caught her and pulled her back on top of him. His eyes were still closed. “Maybe I could,” he said tiredly. “Maybe you could bring me back to life.”

  “Me? And how would I do that?” Her hand moved downward.

  “That’s a start. I have a couple of other scars that you haven’t found.”

  “Oh?” Her hand went lower. “Here? No, I feel nothing. What about here? No, no scars. What about here?”

  Jared gasped as her hand closed over him. “Keep looking,” he said huskily.

  An hour later, they fell back on the mattress, not touching. Their skin glowed with sweat. The rain was slowing down, and at last Eden felt sleepy.

  Rolling onto his side away from her, Jared reached under a cardboard box and withdrew a bottle of wine and two paper cups and filled them. “No sleeping,” he said.

  Eden turned onto her side, facing him, pulled her legs up a bit and closed her eyes.

  Jared pulled a blanket over her, then held out the cup of wine. “You’re going to sit up and talk to me.”

  “In the morning,” she murmured.

  “Do you know the reading-out I got when I was pulled off your case?” he asked. “I was told that if I’d just talked to you more and—”

  She opened one eye. “And what?”

  “Drooled over you less,” he said, tight-lipped.

  “I like that,” she said sleepily. “Not many men have drooled over me.”

  “You can’t lie to me, Palmer, I’ve read your file, remember? As far as I can tell a whole lot of men have ‘drooled’ over y
ou. You’ve always dumped them.”

  “Scared,” she said, still smiling.

  “In my opinion, I don’t think you’re afraid of anything in the world except your daughter.”

  That made her open her eyes. “Afraid of my own daughter? That’s ridiculous.”

  Jared handed her the cup of wine, and reluctantly she sat up, pulling the blanket up under her arms. He was sitting there naked, seemingly oblivious to the fact that he was so exposed. But then, he did have a beautiful body. “How did you get—” she began, but a look from him cut her off. Sighing, she took a drink of the wine. “Okay, so what do you want to know?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, an eyebrow raised. “When I saw you tonight you were crying like you’d rather not continue living, so maybe from that I guessed that something was wrong. But I saw some of the tapes of what your daughter was saying to you, so I know some of what’s going on.”

  Eden looked down at her cup of wine and tried to compose herself. She tried to keep her face calm. “I assumed that the cameras had been disconnected. But if they haven’t, that means the case is still open.”

  “One of the agents watching your house was strangled.”

  “Melissa,” Eden said and started for the door.

  Jared just managed to catch her wine before she dropped it. Setting both cups down, he pulled her into his arms, but she tried to push away from him. “There are two other agents out there,” he said softly, his lips against her ear. “No radios, no sounds at all. And you can bet that they’re on the lookout. Eden, sweetheart, someone wants something from you to the point that they’ll do anything to get it. I need to find out who and what.”

  She pulled away to look at him. “Is that what this is all about?” she asked. “You made love to me just so I’d tell you my secrets?”

  The look on his face was enough of an answer.

  “Okay, I apologize,” she said, sitting back down and pulling on her clothes. When he gave her a questioning look, she motioned her head toward the outside. She didn’t want a couple of FBI agents bursting in on them. “Are there any cameras in here?”

  “What do you think?”

  “Okay, again I apologize.”

  “I want you to tell me everything that’s happened since I left. No matter how insignificant it is, I want to hear about it. Understand?”

  “There’s been nothing except some really hateful personal things.” She turned away, not looking in his eyes. “No one has mentioned the necklace or…or anything that could remotely be something anyone would kill for. Except Minnie. She might kill me just for the pleasure of it.”

  “Minnie? Her beef is with me, not you.”

  Eden looked at him in astonishment. “She thought you were her boyfriend.”

  Jared shrugged. “Hazards of the business. Happens to me a lot.”

  His statement was so vain, yet at the same time so honest, that she laughed. “It’s nothing to you, but Minnie wants a husband and a father for her child. And she wants a place to live. I think her deal with Brad is that…” Trailing off, she looked away.

  “Go on,” Jared said. “What happened?”

  “I’m sorry, it’s just that…”

  “I know,” he said, his jaw held tightly in position. “You can’t think of Granville without what? Great pain? He dumped you, so you had a tumble with the second-best man. Thank you, I enjoyed it, and I can assure you that I won’t tell him.”

  She looked at him for several seconds. “I see why your wife ran off with another man.”

  “I don’t see anything bad about you at all,” he snapped, “except your refusal to tell me what I need to know.”

  She looked down at her wine. Light was beginning to come in through the cracks between the old boards. Dawn was approaching. What was she going to think of herself when she was away from him? There was no future with a man like Jared McBride. He was a mover, a vagabond, a…a bum? He wasn’t a man to settle down in one spot and plant fruit trees. And he certainly wasn’t a man to elevate one’s social position in a snobby town like Arundel. No, there was no future with a man like Jared McBride.

  “You want to quit looking at me like that?” he asked as he pulled on his clothes. “I’m not something that you found under a rock.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean—”

  “It doesn’t matter, and stop apologizing,” he said as he buttoned his shirt. “I want to know what happened with Minnie.”

  Eden had to take a deep breath to give herself strength as she quickly told Jared the gist of what Minnie had said to her.

  “I don’t know about what she said about Granville, but she made everything about her and me up. I never gave her any encouragement.”

  She knew he was telling the truth, but that still didn’t keep Minnie’s anger from running around inside her head.

  Eden took a deep drink of her wine. It was now morning, and she’d never had an alcoholic drink in the morning in her life. But then she’d never made love with a man she knew she had no future with. She’d never been a one-night-stand type of woman. She looked at Jared, remembering his hands on her body.

  “Cut that out!” he snapped. “I can’t concentrate when you look at me like that. Remember when I told you that that ancestor of Mrs. Farrington’s had killed his wife and her lover? I was right, wasn’t I?”

  “Yes, but that was—”

  “Human nature. It’s something I’ve had to deal with a lot. Minnie is lying about Granville. If he called his former girlfriend, then it was for a reason other than getting back with her. What exactly did she say?”

  “What does this have to do with some spy swallowing my name?”

  “If Minnie lies about one thing, she’ll lie about another. I can see that she might think I was interested in her. That could have been an honest mistake. Happens to me all the time. And too, I was trying to make you jealous so—”

  “Why would you want to do that?”

  Jared ignored her question. “Tell me again what she said, word for word.”

  Eden did the best she could, but it had been an emotionally charged conversation, so it was difficult to remember clearly.

  Jared leaned back on the mattress, his hands behind his head. “Granville could have called the woman about something legal. It sounds to me as though Minnie’s mother is as fanciful as her daughter. They’ve both made up men who are hot for them. What else did she say?”

  Eden put down her empty cup and looked at her hands.

  “That bad, huh?” Jared asked softly.

  She lay down beside him, not touching him. “Minnie said that I was a slut when I was a teenager and I haven’t changed since.” She took a deep breath. “From the evidence of tonight, maybe she’s right.”

  “Angels live in heaven, not on earth.”

  “What?” Turning her head, she looked at him.

  “Did by chance your parents tell you that it was your fault that you were raped?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Eden said. “If I hadn’t been wearing my ankle-length skirt, if I hadn’t been walking in the woods, if I hadn’t…et cetera. It was all my fault.”

  “So you’ve tried to prove them wrong, haven’t you?”

  “Am I going to have to pay you for this therapy session?”

  “No, it’s free,” he said seriously. “I was curious why you let your daughter walk all over you.”

  “I do no such thing!” she said. “Under normal circumstances, Melissa and I…” She took a breath. “Yeah, I invented Doormat Mom. Think I could get a trophy from somebody?”

  “Maybe for sex, but not for being a doormat.”

  “Really?” she asked, turning toward him. “Have there been a lot of women to compare me to?”

  “Do you think that now is the time to start in about my sex life?”

  She lay back down. “Sorry. Okay, so Minnie is lying and Brad still loves me.” Beside her, she felt Jared stiffen. “Sorry, I—”

  Rolling away from her, he
stood up. “This is getting nowhere. What else happened that’s made you so upset?”

  “Daughter, boyfriend, life. That about covers it.” Yawning, she stretched, and when she opened her eyes, Jared was looking at her with interest. She blinked at him a couple of times.

  “No, we can’t. Besides,” he said nastily, “your boyfriend might show up soon.”

  “Jared…” she began.

  He put up his hand. “We can sort out our personal problems later. I need to do some checking on this Minnie. Give me her full name.” He pulled a pen and a little pad of paper from under the box where the wine was.

  “Minton Norfleet.”

  “If I stayed here awhile I think I could guess people’s names.”

  “It’s a custom around here.”

  “Yeah, made up in an attempt to exclude outsiders. Having one of the names lets you know who belongs and who doesn’t.” He closed the pad and looked at her. “Everyone in this town knows your history. Do you really think they’ll accept you?”

  “But they have. When I lived here before—”

  “When you lived here before, you were protected by the Grande Dame of Arundel. No one would go against her. What will they think when you marry the prize catch of the town? Will they say what Minnie did?”

  “It doesn’t matter what anyone says because I don’t think Brad will want me now,” she said softly. She was looking down at her hands and didn’t see the anger that flashed in Jared’s eyes.

  “Now that you’ve been sullied by me?”

  “I didn’t mean that,” she said. “There were other things before all this happened.” She waved her hand to mean their lovemaking.

  “He dropped you so you were free to get off with the hired help. Is that it? But if he would take you back—”

  “You’re so right. All this was completely calculated. Preplanned. I knew you were skulking around out here, living in my well house like some feral cat, so I made up a reason to come out here and jump on you.”

  For a moment Jared looked as though he was going to get angry, then he grinned. “Just so we understand each other,” he said. He started to say more, but his cell phone rang.

  Eden grimaced. Was it his mother or his boss? Either way, it wouldn’t be good for her.