by Nora Roberts
“Sorry. I was just going to ask how you felt.”
“A little stiff, a lot hungry, but basically okay.” She tilted her head. “How about you?”
“Fine. I had a headache,” he said, suddenly inspired. “I took some of your pills.”
“Okay.”
“The ones in the little blue case weren’t marked.”
Her eyes widened, rolled, then filled with laughter. “I don’t think they’d do you much good.”
“But you need them?”
This time she closed her eyes and shook her head. “And he calls himself a scientist. Yeah, you could say I need them. Better safe than sorry, right?”
Baffled, but losing ground, he nodded. “Right.”
“Then let’s eat.”
She had plates by the range with buns open on them. Using a generous hand, she scooped the saucy meat into them, tossed a heap of fries beside it and was done. She didn’t speak again until she’d worked her way through half the meal.
He watched her dump a stream of white crystal from a pottery tube on her potatoes. He shook some on his own experimentally. Salt, he discovered. The real thing. Though the taste was wonderful, he resisted the temptation to use more and wondered about her blood pressure. If he could have figured a way, he would have popped her into the medilab on the ship for a checkup.
“I guess we’re going to live.”
He wasn’t sure what he was eating, but she was right again. It was delicious. “It stopped snowing.”
“Yeah, I noticed. Listen, I hate to say it, but I’m glad you were here. I’d have hated to be here alone the last couple of days.”
“You’re pretty self-sufficient.”
“But it’s better when you have somebody to fight with. I never asked . . . do you plan to hang around until Cal and Libby get back? It could be weeks.”
“I came to see him. I’ll wait.”
She nodded, wishing his answer hadn’t relieved her. She was getting entirely too used to his company. “I guess you must be in a position to take as much time off as you like.”
“You could say that time is exactly what I do have. How long are you staying?”
“I’m not sure. It’s too late to get into school this semester. I thought I might write to some colleges. Maybe I’ll try the East Coast. It would be a change.” She sent him a quick, hesitant smile. “How would I like Philadelphia?”
“I think you would.” He wondered how to describe it to her so that she would understand. “It’s beautiful. The historic district is very well preserved.”
“The Liberty Bell, Ben Franklin, all that.”
“Yes. Some things last, no matter what else changes.” Though it had never mattered much to him before. “The parks are very green and shady. In the summer they’re full of children and students. The traffic’s miserable, but that’s all part of it. From the top of some of the buildings you can see the entire city, the movement, the old and the new.”
“You miss it.”
“Yes. More than I’d imagined.” But he was looking at her, seeing only her. “I’d like to show it to you.”
“I’d like that, too. Maybe we can talk Cal and Libby into flying out. You could have a real family reunion.” She saw his expression change and instinctively laid a hand over his. “Did I say something wrong?”
“No.”
“You’re angry with him,” Sunny murmured.
“It’s personal.”
But she wasn’t going to be put off. He wasn’t the snarling idiot she had first assumed him to be. He was just confused. If there was one trait she shared equally with her sister, it was the inability to turn away a stray.
“J.T., you must see how unfair it is to resent Cal for falling in love and getting married, for starting a life here.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Of course it is.” This time, she promised herself, she would not lose her temper. “They’re both adults, and they’re certainly able to make up their own minds. Besides, well, they’re wonderful together.” He sent her a silent, cynical look that infuriated her. “They are. I’ve seen them with each other. You haven’t.”
“No.” He nodded. “I haven’t.”
“That’s nobody’s fault but—” She caught herself, ground her teeth and went on, more calmly. “What I’m trying to say is that I might not have known Cal before he became part of the family, but I know when someone’s happy. And he is. As for Libby—he does something for her no one else ever has. She’s always been so shy, so easily pushed into the background. But with Cal she just glows. Maybe it’s not the easiest thing to accept that someone else is the best thing that ever happened to a person you love—but you have to accept it when it’s true.”
“I don’t have anything against your sister.” Or, if he did, he intended to keep it to himself for the time being. “But I intend to talk to Cal about the change he’s made in his life.”
“You really are bullheaded.”
He considered the description and decided it was apt enough. “Yes.” He smiled at her, delighted by the sulky mouth, the lifted chin. “I’d say we both are.”
“At least I don’t go around poking my nose into other people’s affairs.”
“Not even pleasantly plump women who want to torture themselves into . . . what was it—a Merry Widow?”
“That was entirely different.” With a sniff, she pushed her plate away. “I may be cynical, but even I believe in love.”
“I never said I didn’t.”
“Oh, really?” Her lips curved, because she was sure she had backed him into a corner. “Then you won’t interfere if you see that Cal and Libby are in love.”
“If they are, I hardly could, could I? And if they’re not—” he gestured, palm up, “—then we’ll see.”
She steepled her fingers, measured him. “I could always send you back into the forest, let you freeze in your sleeping bag.”
“But you won’t.” He toasted her with his coffee cup. “Because, underneath the prickly hide, you’re basically kindhearted.”
“I could change.”
“No, you couldn’t. People don’t, as a rule.”
Abruptly intense, he leaned forward to take her hand. It was a gesture he didn’t make often, and one that he couldn’t resist at that moment. “Sunny, I don’t want to hurt your sister. Or you.”
“But you will. If we’re in your way.”
“Yes.” He turned her hand over thoughtfully. It was narrow, and surprisingly soft and delicate for one that packed such a punch. “You have strong family feelings. So do I. My parents . . . they’ve tried to understand Cal’s decision, but it’s difficult for them. Very difficult.”
“But they’ve only to see him for themselves to understand.”
“I can’t explain.” He shifted his eyes from their joined hands to hers. “I wish I could. More than I can tell you.”
“Are you in trouble?” she blurted out.
“What?”
“Are you in trouble?” she repeated, tightening her fingers on his. “With the law, or something.”
Interested, he kept his hand in hers. Her eyes were huge and drenched with concern. For him. He couldn’t remember ever being more touched. “Why would you think so?”
“The way you’ve come here . . . I guess the way you haven’t come before. And you act . . . I don’t know how to explain. You just seem so out of place.”
“Maybe I am.” It should have been amusing, but he didn’t smile. If he hadn’t been so sure he would regret it, he would have pulled her into his arms and just held on. “I’m not in trouble, Sunny. Not the way you mean.”
“And you haven’t been—” she searched for the most delicate way to approach the subject “—ill?”
“Ill?” Baffled, he studied her. The light dawned, slowly. “You think I’ve been—” Now he did smile, and surprised them both by bringing her hand to his lips. “No, I haven’t been ill, physically or otherwise. I’ve just been busy.”
When she tried to draw her hand away, he held on. “Are you afraid of me?”
Pride had always been her strongest suit. “Why should I be?”
“Good question. You wondered if I was—” he gestured again “—unbalanced. But you let me stay. You even fed me.”
The uncharacteristic gentleness in his voice made her uncomfortable, “I’d probably have done the same for a sick dog. It’s no big deal.”
“I think it is.” When she pushed away from the table, he rose with her. “Sunbeam.”
“I told you not to—”
“There are times when it’s irresistible. Thank you.”
She was more than uncomfortable now. She was unnerved. “It’s okay. Forget it.”
“I don’t think so.” Gently his thumb stroked over her knuckles. “Tell me, if I had said I was in trouble, would you have helped?”
She tossed her head carelessly. “I don’t know. It would depend.”
“I think you would.” He took both her hands and held them until she was still. “Simple kindness, especially to someone away from home, is very precious and very rare. I won’t forget.”
She didn’t want to feel close to him. To be drawn to him. But when he looked at her like this, with such quiet tenderness, she went weak. There was nothing more frightening than weakness.
“Fine.” Fighting panic, she shook her hands free. “Then you can return the favor and do the dishes. I’m going for a walk.”
“I’ll go with you.”
“I don’t—”
“You said you weren’t afraid of me.”
“I’m not.” She let out a long-suffering breath. “All right, then, come on.”
The moment she opened the door, the cold stole her breath. The wind had died down and the sun was fighting through the layers of high clouds, but the air was like brittle ice.
It would clear her head, Sunny told herself. For a moment in the kitchen, with him looking so intently into her eyes, she’d felt as though . . . She didn’t know what she’d felt. She didn’t want to.
It was enough to be free to walk, though the snow was up to her knees. Another hour of confinement and she’d have gone mad. Perhaps that was what had happened to her in there, with him. A moment of madness.
“It’s wild, isn’t it?”
She stood in what had been the backyard and looked out on acres of solid white. The dying wind moaned through the trees and sent powdery snow drifting.
“I’ve always liked it best in the winter. Because if you’re going to be alone you might as well be completely alone. I forgot the bird food. Hang on.”
She turned, wading through the snow. He thought she moved more like a dancer now than an athlete. Graceful despite the encumbrances. It worried him to realize that he’d been content to watch her for hours. In a moment she was trudging back, dragging an enormous burlap sack.
“What are you doing?”
“Going to feed the birds.” She was out of breath but still moving. “This time of year they need all the help they can get.”
He shook his head. “Let me do it.”
“I’m very strong.”
“Yes, I know. Let me do it anyway.”
He took the sack, braced, put his back into it and began to haul it across the snow. It gathered snow—and weight—with every step.
“I thought you weren’t a nature lover.”
“That doesn’t mean I’d let them starve.” And she’d promised Libby.
He hauled the bag another foot. “Couldn’t you just dump it out?”
“If a thing’s worth doing—”
“It’s worth doing well. Yeah, I’ve heard that one.”
She stopped by a tree and, standing on a stump, began to fill a big wood-and-glass house with seed from the sack. “There we go.” She brushed seed from her hands. “Want me to carry it back?”
“I’ll do it. Why any self-respecting bird would want to hang around here in the middle of nowhere I can’t understand.”
“We’re here,” she called out as he hauled the sack across the snow.
“I can’t understand that, either.”
She grinned at his back, and then, not being one to waste an opportunity, she began to ball snow. She had a good-size pile of ammunition when he came out again, and she sent the first one sailing smack into his forehead.
“Bull’s-eye.”
He wiped snow out of his eyes. “You’ve already lost at one game.”
“That was poker.” She picked up another ball, weighed it. “This is war. And war takes skill, not luck.”
He dodged the next throw, swearing when he nearly overbalanced, then caught the next one in the chest. Dead center.
“I should tell you I was the top pitcher on my softball team in college. I still hold the record for strikeouts.”
The next one smacked into his shoulder, but he was prepared. In a move she had to admire, he came up with a stinging fastball that zoomed in right on the letters. He’d pitched a few himself, but he didn’t think he would mention that he’d been captain of the intergalactic softball team three years running.
“Not bad, Hornblower.” She sent out two, catching him with the second on the dodge. She had a mean curve, and she was pleased to note that she hadn’t lost her touch. Snow splattered all over his coat. One particularly well-thrown ball nearly took off his hat.
Before her pile began to dwindle, she had him at eight hits to two and was getting cocky. It didn’t occur to her that he had closed half the distance between them.
When he took one full in the face, she doubled over with laughter. Then she shrieked when he caught her under the arms and lifted her off her feet.
“Good aim, bad strategy,” he commented before he dropped her face first in the snow.
She rolled over, spitting out snow. “I still won.”
“Not from where I’m standing.”
With a good-natured shrug, she held out a hand. He hesitated. She smiled. The moment he clasped her hand, she threw her weight back and had him flying into the drift beside her.
“What does it look like now?”
“Hand-to-hand.”
He grasped her by the shoulders. They only sank deeper. Snow worked its way, cold and wet, down the collar of his borrowed coat. He found it, and the way her body twisted and turned against his, impossibly stimulating. She was laughing, kicking up snow as she tried to pin him on the icy mat. Breathless, she managed a half nelson, and she nearly had the call when she felt herself flying over his shoulder.
She landed with a thump, half buried, and lay there for a second, dragging in air. “Nice move,” she panted. Then she dived at him again. She scissored, dipped and managed to slither out of his hold. Working fast, she twisted until she was half-sitting, half-lying on his back. Using her weight, she dunked his face in the snow.
“Say uncle.”
He said something a great deal ruder, and she laughed so hard she nearly lost her grip.
“Come on, J.T., a real man admits it when he’s licked.”
He could have beaten her, he thought in disgust as his face numbed. But twice when he’d tried for a hold his hand had skimmed over particularly interesting curves. It had broken his concentration.
“Two out of three,” he mumbled.
“If we try for two out of three, we’ll freeze to death.” Taking his grunt for agreement, she helped him turn over. “Not bad for a scientist.”
“If we took it indoors, you wouldn’t have a chance.” But he was winded.
“The point is, I came out on top.”
He lifted a brow. “In a manner of speaking.”
She only grinned. “I wish you could see your face. Even your eyelashes are white.”
“So are yours.” He lifted a gloved hand that was already coated with snow and rubbed it on her face.
“Cheat.”
“Whatever works.” Exhausted, he let his hand drop again. He didn’t know the last time he’d been taken—or when he’d enjoyed it so much.
“We’d better get some more wood.” She braced a hand to get up, slipped and landed with a thump on his chest. “Sorry.”
“It’s all right. I’ve got a few ribs left.”
His arms had come around her. His face was close. It was a mistake, she knew, to stay this way, even for a moment. But she didn’t move. And then she didn’t think. It was the most natural thing in the world for her to lower her lips to his.
They were cool, and firm, and everything she wanted. Kissing him was like diving headfirst into a cold mountain lake. Thrilling, exhilarating. And risky. She heard her own sound of pleasure, quick and quiet, before she threw what was left of caution to the winds and deepened the kiss.
She winded him. Weakened him. Loss of control meant nothing. Control was meant to be given up in passion. But this . . . this was different. As her lips heated his, he felt both will and strength drain away. There was a mist in his brain as thick and as white as the snow they lay in. And he could think of nothing and no one but her.
The women who had come before her were nothing. Shadows. Phantoms. When her mouth slid agilely over his he understood that there would be no women after her. She had, in one heady instant, taken over his life. Surrounded it, invaded it. Consumed it.
Shaken, he brought his hands to her shoulders, prepared, determined, to hurl her aside. But his fingers only tightened, and his need only grew.
It was like a rage in him. She could feel it. It was building in her, as well. A fury. A driving hunger. And his mouth, his mouth alone, was dragging her over the rocky border between heaven and hell. So close, she thought, that she could feel the flames licking at her skin, tempting her to tumble recklessly into the fire. For it would be all brimstone and heat with him. And she was afraid, very afraid, that she would never be satisfied with less.
She lifted her head, an inch, then two. She was amazed to find her mind spinning and her breath uneven. It had only been a kiss, she reminded herself. A kiss, however passionate, didn’t alter lives. Still, she wanted distance, and quickly, so that she could convince herself she was the same person she had been before it.
“We really have to get that wood,” she managed. Suddenly she was terrified that she wouldn’t be able to stand. It wouldn’t do her ego a bit of good to have to crawl back to the house. Cautiously she rolled away from him. Then, using every ounce of will she possessed, she dragged herself to her feet. She made a production out of brushing the snow from her coat and wished he would say something. Anything.