by Diana Palmer
“Does that matter? You don’t like people close,” she said.
She searched his arrogant profile. There were new lines in that lean face, lines she hadn’t seen last year, despite the solemnity of the time they’d spent together. “Something’s upset you,” she said out of the blue. “Or you’re worried about something.”
Both dark eyebrows went up. “I beg your pardon?” he asked curtly.
The hauteur went right over her head. “Not something to do with work, either,” she continued, reasoning aloud. “It’s something very personal…”
“Stop right there,” he said shortly. “I invited you out to talk about a job, not about my private life.”
“Ah. A closed door. Intriguing.” She stared at him. “Not a woman?”
“You’re the only woman in my life.”
She laughed unexpectedly. “That’s a good one.”
“I’m not kidding. I don’t have affairs or relationships.” He glanced at her as he merged into traffic again and turned at the next corner. “I might make an exception for you, but don’t get your hopes up. A man has his reputation to consider.”
She grinned. “I’ll remember that you said that.”
He pulled the car into the parking lot of a well-known hotel restaurant and cut off the engine. “I hope you’re hungry. I missed breakfast.”
“So did I. Nerves,” she added.
He escorted her into the sparsely occupied restaurant and they were seated near the window. When they finished looking at the menu and gave their orders, he leaned back in his chair and studied her across the width of the table with quiet interest.
“Is my nose upside down?” she asked after a minute.
He chuckled. “No. I was just thinking how young you are.”
“In this day and age, nobody is that young,” she corrected. She leaned forward with her chin on her elbows and watched him. “Don’t fight it,” she chided. “You might never run into anyone else who’d make you so uncomfortable.”
“That’s a selling point?” he asked, surprised.
“Of course it is. You live deep inside yourself. You won’t let yourself feel anything, because it’s a form of weakness to you. Something must have hurt you very badly when you were younger.”
“Don’t pry,” he said gently, but the words warned.
“If I hang around with you very much, I’m going to pry a lot more than this,” she informed him.
He considered that. He had cold feet where Phoebe was concerned. She wasn’t the sort of person who’d settle for a shallow relationship. She’d want to go right to the bone, and she’d never let go. He was like that, too, but he’d been burned badly once, by a woman who liked him because he was a curiosity
“I’ve been collected already,” he said quietly. “Do you understand?”
She saw the brief flash of pain in his eyes and nodded slowly. “I see. Did she want to show off her indigenous aborigine to all her friends?”
His jaw tautened and something dangerous flashed in his eyes.
“I thought so,” she murmured, watching the faintest of expressions in his face. “Did she care at all?”
“I doubt it very much.”
“And you found out in a very public way, no doubt.”
His head inclined.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Life teaches painful lessons.”
“Have you had any yet?” he returned bluntly.
“Not that sort,” she admitted, toying with her fork. “I’m rather shy with men, as a rule. And boys I went to school with either saw me as one of them or somebody’s sister. Digging isn’t very glamorous.”
“I thought you looked cute in mud-caked boots and a jacket three times your size.”
She glared at him. “Don’t start.”
His dark eyes slid over her dress. It wasn’t in the least revealing. It had a high lace collar and long sleeves gathered tight at the wrists. It cascaded down in folds to her ankles and under it she was wearing very stylish granny shoes. Her platinum hair was in a neat braid down her back. She wore a minimum of makeup and there was a tiny line of freckles right over her nose.
“I know I’m not pretty,” she said, made uncomfortable by the close scrutiny, “and I’m built like a boy.”
He smiled. “Are you still naive enough to think that looks matter?”
“It doesn’t take much intelligence to see that pretty girls get all the attention in class.”
“At first,” he agreed.
She sighed. “There are so few boys who like to spend an evening listening to exciting discoveries like a broken bowl of charred acorns and half a soapstone pipe.”
“Mississippian,” he recalled, from their discussion about the find last year.
She beamed. “Yes! You remembered!”
He smiled at her enthusiasm. “I did a few courses in cultural anthropology,” he confessed. “Not physical anthropology,” he emphasized. “And so help me, if you say anthropology should be right up my alley…!”
“You didn’t tell me that in Charleston,” she said.
“I didn’t expect to see you again,” he replied. He hadn’t even planned to come to her graduation. He wasn’t sure if he regretted being here or not. His dark eyes searched her pale ones. “Life is full of surprises.”
She looked into his eyes and felt a stirring deep in her heart. She looked at him and felt closer than she’d ever been to anyone.
The waitress brought salads, followed by steak and vegetables, and they ate in silence until apple pie and coffee were consumed.
“You’re completely unafraid, aren’t you?” he asked as he finished his second cup of coffee. “You’ve never really been hurt.”
“I had a crush on a really cute boy in my introductory anthropology class,” she said. “He ended up with a really cute boy in Western Civ.”
He chuckled. “Poor Phoebe.”
“It’s the sort of thing that usually happens to me,” she confessed. “I’m not terribly good at being womanly. I like to kick around in blue jeans and sweatshirts and dig up old things.”
“A woman can be anything she wants to be. It doesn’t require lace and a helpless attitude. Not anymore.”
“Do you think it ever did, really?” she asked curiously. “I mean, you read about women like Elizabeth the First and Isabella of Spain, who lived as they liked and ruled entire nations in the sixteenth century.”
“They were the exceptions,” he reminded her. “On the other hand, in Native American cultures, women owned the property and often sat in council when the various tribes made decisions affecting war and peace. Ours was always a matriarchal society.”
“I know. I have a B. A. in anthropology.”
“I noticed.”
She laughed softly. Her fingers traced a pattern around the rim of her coffee cup. “Will I see you in D.C. if I get the job at the Smithsonian?”
“I suppose so,” he told her. “You put me at ease. I’m not sure it’s a good thing.”
“Why? Are you being tailed by foreign spies or something and you have to stay on edge because they might attack you?”
He smiled. “I don’t think so.” He leaned back. “But I’ve had some experience with intelligence work.”
“I don’t doubt that.” She searched his eyes. “Is it expensive to live in D.C.?”
“Not if you’re frugal. I can show you where to shop for an apartment, or you might want to double up with someone.”
She kept her eyes on the coffee cup. “Is that an invitation?”
He hesitated. “No.”
She grinned. “Just kidding.”
His fingers curled around hers, creating little electrical sparks all along the paths of her nerves. “One day at a time,” he said firmly. “You’ll learn that I don’t do much on impulse. I like to think things through before I act.”
“I can see where that would have been a valuable trait in the FBI, with people shooting at you,” she said, nodding.
He l
et go of her hand with an involuntary laugh. “God, Phoebe…! You say the most outrageous things sometimes.”
“I’m sorry, it slipped out. I’ll behave.”
He just shook his head. “I’ll never forget the first thing you ever said to me,” he added. “‘Do you have shovel-shaped incisors?’ you asked.”
“Stop!” she wailed.
He caught her long braid and tugged on it. His dark eyes probed hers. “I hate your hair bound up like this. I’d like to get a handful of it.”
“I know how you feel,” she murmured, glancing pointedly at his own ponytail.
He smiled. “We’ll have to let our hair down together again some time,” he mused, “and compare length.”
“Yours is much thicker than mine,” she observed. She pictured it loose, as she’d seen it, when they were tracking people around the toxic waste site last year. She remembered standing on the riverbank with him while they kissed in a fever that never seemed to cool. If they hadn’t been interrupted, anything could have happened. She flushed as she remembered how his hair had felt in her hands that last few minutes they were together as he crushed her down the length of that long, powerful body…
“Cut it out,” he said, glancing at the thin gold watch on his wrist. “I have to catch a plane.”
She cleared her throat and tried not to look as hot and bothered as she felt. And he tried not to see that she was.
They finished their meal and he drove her back to the hotel where Clayton and Derrie were staying. He parked the car in a parking space a healthy walk from the hotel door, under a maple tree, and turned to her. The difference in their heights was even more apparent when they were seated. Her head barely came up to his chin. It excited him. He didn’t understand why.
“I have my own room,” she said without looking up. “And Derrie and Clayton won’t be back yet.”
“I won’t come in,” he said deliberately. “I don’t have much time.”
“I wish you could stay and have supper with us,” she remarked.
“I left a case hanging fire to come here. It was all I could do to manage one day.”
“I don’t know anything about you, really,” she told him honestly. “You said you were FBI when you were in Charleston, and then you told Derrie you were CIA, then you turned out to be a government prosecutor. You keep secrets.”
“Yes, but I don’t lie as a rule,” he said. “I would have told you more if I’d been around long enough. It wasn’t necessary, because I wasn’t going to be around, and we both knew it. I came here against my better judgment, Phoebe. I’m too old and too jaded for a woman your age. You haven’t even reached the stage of French kissing, while I’ve long passed the stage of Victorian courtship.”
She felt her cheeks burn, but she met his eyes levelly. “In other words, if you stayed around long enough, you’d want to sleep with me.”
His dark eyes ran slowly over her face. “I already want to sleep with you,” he said. “There’s nothing I want more. That’s why I’m going to get on a plane and go straight back to D.C.”
She wasn’t sure how she felt. Her eyes searched his. “You might ask,” she said.
“Ask what?”
“If I’d like to sleep with you,” she said.
“I might not like the answer.”
She studied his hard, lean face. “Would any woman do?”
He touched her cheek. “I’m old-fashioned,” he said quietly. “I don’t play games. I’ve only had a handful of women in my life. They all meant something to me at the time, and most of them still speak to me pleasantly enough.”
She sighed gently and her eyes were sad as she smiled up at him. “I wish you’d stay,” she said honestly. “But I wouldn’t try to make you feel guilty about it. Thank you for coming to my graduation,” she added. “It was kind of you.”
He was watching her hungrily and hoping it didn’t show. “It’s just as well that you’re bristling with principles,” he said. “Our cultures won’t mix at close range, Phoebe. They’re too different. You’ve studied anthropology for years. You know the reasons as well as I do.”
“Good Lord, I’m not proposing marriage!” she burst out.
“Good thing,” he mused. “I’m married to my job. But if you’re ever in the market for a lover, I’ll be around.”
She gave him a pointed look. “Thanks bunches.”
“Just a thought,” he returned thoughtfully. “All the same, you might consider me a friend, if you ever need one. D.C. is a big, exciting place. I’ll be close by if you ever get in trouble.”
She studied his hard face, seeing the maturity in it. He was devastating at close range like this, and she’d never wanted anything so much as she wanted a chance to have him in her life. But they were already at an impasse, just as they’d been last year. There was a conflict of principles as well as cultures between them, and complicating it all was that formidable age difference. But, oh, he was sexy. She smiled faintly as her eyes roamed over his lean face possessively.
He cocked a heavy eyebrow. “Looking at me that way will bring you to grief,” he chided softly.
She shrugged. “Promises, promises.”
He touched the tip of her nose with his forefinger. “If I ever make one to you, I’ll keep it. Congratulations. I’m proud of you.”
She sighed. “Thanks again for coming all this way to watch me graduate. It meant a lot to me.” Her eyes searched his and she smiled wistfully. “I hate public places.”
He caught her long, thick braid and tugged her closer, so that her head went back against the seat and her face was under his. “This isn’t public,” he whispered against her mouth.
She barely got over the shock of his warm, hard lips on hers before he drew back and released her. He was already cursing himself for that lapse. He hadn’t meant to do it. This whole trip had been against his better judgment, but he couldn’t help himself.
She was watching him like a blue-eyed cat.
“Something on your mind?” he prompted.
“Yes. Is that it?” she asked pertly. “That’s the best you can do?”
“Excuse me?” he asked.
She sighed and touched his chin lightly with her fingers. “I can’t help but compare that very anemic peck with the unbridled, passionate kiss you gave me last year on a riverbank,” she said outrageously.
He looked down his long, straight nose at her. “That was last year. Things were less complicated.”
Her eyebrows went up. “Yes?” she prompted.
He traced her small ear with his forefinger and seemed to be brooding at the same time. “I have a brother, Isaac,” he replied. “He’s fourteen years younger than I am. About your age, in fact. My parents and I managed to get him through high school, but ever since, he’s had one brush with the law after another. Now it’s woman trouble. My mother has a bad heart and my father and I are afraid that all this is going to kill her.”
She was sorry for his situation, but flattered that he’d be so honest about a personal matter with her. “I’d have liked a brother or sister,” she remarked. “Even one who had problems.”
He smiled gently. “I know your father is dead. What about your mother?”
“She died of cancer when I was eight,” she said simply. “My father remarried and six years later, he died in Lebanon in the Marine barracks attack. My stepmother remarried. I haven’t seen her in years. My grandparents and Aunt Derrie are all I have left.”
He scowled. She wasn’t asking for sympathy, and he didn’t offer it. But he felt sad for her. His family was dear to him. He’d do anything for them.
“Heavens, I didn’t mean to run on like that!” she exclaimed, laughing self-consciously. She looked up at him with raised eyebrows. “Wouldn’t you like to come inside with me and have wild, unprotected sex on the carpet?”
His eyes twinkled with suppressed humor. She was outrageous.
“Listen, I heard a girl say one time that if you used plastic wrap…!” sh
e persisted.
He held up a big hand. “Stop right there,” he said firmly, still fighting laughter. “I am not using plastic wrap for birth control.”
She sighed theatrically. “What’s going to become of me?” she asked the dashboard. “You’re condemning me to ridicule when I have to fill in employment forms.”
He leaned forward. “What?”
“There’s this place where it says sex, and because I’m an honest person, I’ll have to fill in that I can’t have any because the only man I want refuses to cooperate.”
He did laugh, then, shaking his head. “Get out of here!” He leaned over her to catch the door handle.
She was right up against him, with her mouth a scant inch from his, because she didn’t move, as he expected her to. At the proximity, she could see dark rims around his black irises, she could feel the minty taste of his breath against her parted lips.
Her fingers touched his warm throat gently. They were like ice. “I dated three boys this past semester alone,” she said in a husky tone. “I had to grit my teeth to even let them kiss me good night.”
“Are you making a point?”
Her eyes were eloquent. “I don’t feel anything with other men.”
“Baby, you’re very young,” he said in a soft, tender tone, his fingers lightly brushing her full lips. He wasn’t even aware of the endearment. His face was solemn. “Somebody will come along.”
“He already did, but he keeps leaving,” she muttered.
“I have a job,” he reminded her. He bent to her mouth and brushed it with his, very lightly. It was like electricity between them. “And a backlog of cases. I wasn’t lying.”
“I’ll bet you never take vacations,” she whispered against his lips, tracing them with her own in a desperate ploy to keep him with her.
“They’re rare.” He nipped her upper lip with his perfect white teeth, and then ran his tongue along the underside of it. His heartbeat increased abruptly and he felt his body responding to her with an urgency that he wasn’t used to. Involuntarily his fingers speared into the bound hair at her nape and tilted her face up to his. “This is not a good idea,” he ground out, but his mouth was already on her parted lips, and he was kissing her in a way that made her whole body leap.