A Man Without Love

by Beverly Bird

  “What...what are you doing?” she asked.

  “It’s not really black.”

  She thought of lying again, and again she knew it wasn’t possible. “No.”

  He wasn’t going to kiss her. He was simply probing again. She looked back at the gun in her hands, trying to remember what she had been about to do with it.

  She dropped the speed-loader, the bullets spilling out into the sand. Jericho made an impatient sound, but in truth he was grateful for the diversion. He bent to scoop them up, but she dropped to her knees at the same time. When he closed his hand over the bullets, he found himself holding hers instead.

  She went absolutely still. He thought he could hear her heart pound. Or maybe, he thought, it was his.

  Damn her. Damn her for getting to him this way.

  Finally, slowly, she looked up from their hands. Her eyes were so big, so green, with flecks of honey gold.

  “Don’t ask me this time,” she breathed. “Just do it. I’m afraid to say yes.”

  An invisible fist rammed its way into his solar plexus.

  He told himself to stand, to load the gun for her. His hand found the back of her neck instead, pulling her toward him. He told himself he could have withstood anything but that—a breathy admission that was stolen right from his own heart. But he knew the truth was that he would probably have touched her anyway, because something about her drew him like a moth to flame.

  Of course, the moths always burned.

  He ground his mouth down on hers, too hard, too punishing. Catherine made an odd sound in her throat, but it was not a protest. His kiss was like everything else about him, hard and sure, hot and dangerous, and suddenly she craved it with reckless hunger because no one had ever made her feel like this before.

  She leaned into him, the gun sliding from her nerveless hand. She dug her fingers into the sand to brace herself as his tongue moved past her lips, sliding, urgent, demanding. She opened to him, meeting it with her own, leaning more, more, until finally his strong hands had to come up to hold her arms.

  Velvet and steel, she thought, and she shuddered again.

  He growled and pulled her into him hard, twisting at the last moment to drop her on her back in the sand. Then finally his body covered hers, and it was everything she had wanted, everything she needed. He broke away from her mouth to run his lips down her jaw, then he closed his teeth with shattering gentleness on the sensitive lobe of her ear. She cried out and drove her hands into his hair.

  As black as midnight water, as soft as his breath, the only soft thing about him. The curls slid through her fingers and this time she felt his arousal hard against her belly. She moved her hand there, amazed and a little frightened by the way he could want her so completely, so suddenly. An agony of hunger slammed through her, because this wasn’t all she wanted. No, she wanted all of him, everything he could give her, and sanity be damned.

  She gasped as his hand moved up her hip, over her ribs to her breast, covering her possessively. She arched into him, pressing herself into his palm. He made a sound that was half a groan, half the curse of a man who was lost. Then he pulled at her shirt roughly, tugging it free of her jeans.

  “Okay, Cat Eyes, let’s go for it. Maybe we’re both crazy.”

  She moaned something inarticulate then she froze. The scar.

  Something cold and jagged splintered suddenly inside her. If he undressed her here, in broad daylight, he would find it. Catherine panicked, pushing his hands away. “Please. No. I...can’t.”

  He reared back from her, confused, then his eyes blazed with anger. “Could have sworn you told me not to ask.”

  “Yes...no.” Suddenly her throat closed, aching painfully with the urge to cry.

  Someday, when all this was over, maybe she could tell him. But not now. It wasn’t only her fear, this time, that had her scrambling away from him. Suddenly she realized that if he knew about Victor and Victor did have a man out here waiting to see if she would talk, then Jericho could be in danger as well—if he shared her knowledge.

  “I’m sorry,” she managed feebly, but the response came from somewhere deep and raw in her heart and it echoed with real pain. Finally she grasped at straws. “I thought it would just be a kiss. I didn’t intend for it to go any further.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Sure you did. You’re a big girl.”

  Catherine flinched.

  Yes, on some level she had known. She had known that if their mouths met it would not be just a test this time. It would erupt into something neither of them would want to control—it had almost happened at the sing and might have if they had been alone. But she had panicked then too, and this time some small, reckless part of her had wanted the decision taken out of her hands.

  The part of her that had forgotten that Victor had forever marked her.

  She grabbed the gun where it had fallen in the sand and scrambled to her feet. She had been as crazy to come here as she had been to meet him in moonlight at the sing. She would do what he had brought her to do, and then she would go.

  He had set up targets in the middle of the canyon before he had brought her here, ten bottles perched upon various rocks. She rammed the bullets into the gun grimly and took aim. Breathing deeply, closing one eye to look down the sight, she blasted one after the other, then she lowered the weapon again.

  “Satisfied?” she managed. “I promise you I won’t shoot myself in the foot.” She turned around to look at him. Jericho was staring at the shattered bottles, slack jawed.

  It was too much. Her emotions were too exposed, too close to the surface, and they bubbled there. She laughed until she had to hold her stomach against the pain it brought.

  Jericho’s gaze moved from the bottles to her. He had never heard her laugh before, he realized. In fact, this was the first time he had ever seen her look truly happy. What the hell were her demons? He wanted to hold onto his anger, needed to curse every mewling, shrinking bone in her body.

  But broken birds didn’t shoot like that.

  Slowly he got to his feet. “Not bad,” he allowed.

  “Not good, either.” She gasped for breath. “I used to be faster than that, but I haven’t practiced in a long while.”

  “Where’d you learn?” His voice was hoarse and he had to clear his throat.

  He saw her hesitate, her smile trembling away. His temper flared again. “More secrets, Cat Eyes?”

  “No.” She shook her head. “No.”

  This was safe ground, she realized. Growing up with Paddy Callahan for a father had absolutely no connection to her life with Victor. Speaking of one would not jeopardize him with the other.

  “My father’s a retired cop,” she said softly. “And one of my brothers-in-law is active on the force. They were both determined that Paddy’s girls should know how to protect themselves.”

  His brows arched in that dry, skeptical look that was uniquely his. “Paddy’s girls?” he repeated.

  “Paddy’s my father. I have five sisters.”

  He opened the gun, emptying the spent cartridges as though he was only mildly interested. But it was the most she had ever told him about herself. Of course, he admitted, he hadn’t given her a lot of opportunity. Again, he told himself he didn’t want to know.

  “Your people are damned prolific,” he answered.

  “We’re Irish-Catholic. Paddy’s from the old country. For that matter, so was my mother.” She was talking too much, almost babbling, but he didn’t seem angry anymore and she was eager to leave that wrenching aborted moment in the sand behind.

  “The Irish don’t believe in birth control?” he asked finally.

  “Actually, it’s the pope who doesn’t. What about the Navajo?”

  “Excess is frowned upon. Only wolfmen accumulate too much of anything, even children.”

  “But you have a sister.”

  “Two’s about the norm. So what about you? Do you do everything the pope tells you?”

  “No, but I always
thought I’d have a big family. It just seems normal to have a bunch of noisy kids gathered around the dinner table.”

  He shook his head. “Can’t imagine it.”

  It was another difference between them, not that it should matter. She began walking back to the slope.

  “So where’s your mother?” he asked from behind her. “You said she was from the old country.”

  “She’s dead.”

  Catherine pulled herself up the canyon wall. She paused at the top to get her breath back, then she smiled again, almost whimsically. “Paddy was a hard-drinking, hardworking man in his younger years. Mom kept him under dubious control until I was about sixteen. Then she died from complications giving birth to Erin—she’s the baby. Kelly and Elaine—they’re the oldest—had already left home and gotten married by then, so I grew up fast. I —”

  “Elaine?” he asked.

  Catherine hesitated. “That’s right. She’s four years older than I am.”

  “Elaine and Lanie. Two sisters with the same name. Guess you Irish have some convoluted traditions.”

  “Lanie is short for Delana.” She wasn’t lying. That had been her grandmother’s name. Still, she felt herself flushing and she quickly starting walking again.

  “So you grew up fast,” he prompted, following her.

  Catherine shrugged. “I had to take care of the three youngest girls. Erin was a handful—crawling by then—so I quit school.”

  “Thought you needed all kinds of degrees to be a doctor.”

  “Paddy blew his top when he found out and made me go back. He gave up drinking and used the money to hire a live-in housekeeper so I could do it. That’s when I started applying for scholarships. It broke his heart when Mom died, and whiskey was his last remaining pleasure. I figured if he was willing to give it up, then I was damned well going to make it worthwhile.”

  He almost believed her...almost. There was a light in her eyes when she talked about her father. Maybe her name really was Delana, but he couldn’t quite buy that she had gotten her penchant for french-vanilla coffee from the childhood she had just described. Even in the city, he doubted if cops made enough money to provide such luxuries for six kids. Besides, she’d said he’d had to quit drinking to afford the housekeeper.

  They had reached the parking lot again. He stopped at his Rover. “So is he still off?” he asked.

  Her eyes came around to him, startled. “Who? What?”

  “Your father. Is he still off the booze?”

  “Oh. I don’t know.”

  Catherine bit her lip. This was getting into a whole different area. She couldn’t tell him that she hadn’t been in contact with Paddy since she had thrown all those scholarships and all that whiskey money down the drain to marry Victor Landano. As sure as the sun was shining, he’d want to know where Victor was now.

  She forced her spine straight. “So can I keep the gun?” she asked, changing the subject.

  His eyes searched her face, but then he leaned through the open window of his truck and brought out a box of ammunition. “You’re lying through your teeth, Cat Eyes,” he said mildly.

  Her heart thumped, but she shook her head hard. “No.”

  Maybe she wasn’t, he thought. Maybe she was just throwing up more shadows, telling him something, telling him nothing at all. He supposed he could find out. Shadow’s friend with the health service was Jack Keller. He could contact him and learn what there was to know about Lanie McDaniel.

  Assuming he wanted to. Assuming he had any inclination at all toward letting himself get all tangled up again with a woman who needed more than he could give her.

  He watched her go. She headed back toward the clinic trailer, all long legs and slender, swaying hips. He thought of those satisfying moments in the sand and something hot gathered itself inside him again, even as he knew it was best that they had stopped when they had.

  Suddenly he knew, again, that she wasn’t really like Anelle at all. Anelle had not loved that fiercely. He had thought there was more depth to her because he had needed there to be, so he had denied his instincts. Lanie McDaniel, on the other hand, was all secrets and shades of gray and wary cat eyes. And by their very nature, secrets demanded strength and cunning to remain well kept.

  Yes, he wanted to know what they were. But he wanted her to trust him with them. He wanted her to give them up on her own.

  In the end, he thought, maybe that was the most dangerous thing of all.

  Chapter 9

  Catherine couldn’t concentrate.

  She sighed, looking blearily at the case notes Richard Moss had left on the clinic steps before she had come in. She assumed it had been him, because he had returned Lisa Littlehorn’s clinic file along with them. They contained more information on the Mystery Disease than she had been privy to yet and she wanted very much to read them, but her mind kept wandering.

  She had arrived late this morning because she had grimly remained in bed long after dawn had come. But she hadn’t been able to sleep then, any more than she had all night, because her thoughts kept tangling and swirling. Images of Jericho’s mouth on hers were interwoven with flashes of the owl and memories of her conversation with Schilling. It had finally occurred to her in the wee hours of the morning that if Schilling should be able to trace a link between Victor and a hired man, then that link would probably lead him directly to the health-service clinic as well.

  If anyone found her, she preferred it to be the FBI. She wasn’t entirely sure why she had tried to hide her whereabouts from them as well. It had just been an instinct. The bumbling ineptitude of some of their men had appalled her. Like most people, she had always assumed their agents were smooth, shrewd men of great expertise. She had learned the hard way that that wasn’t necessarily true. She had lost a great deal of faith in them after Victor had shot her, so she had simply fled Boston without telling Schilling where she was going.

  She groaned. She was such an amateur at these hide-and-seek games, she thought. However inept Schilling’s agents might be, she was sure they were a lot better at it than she was. She hadn’t even been able to figure out a way to avoid telling that health-service official who she really was. And it certainly hadn’t taken Jericho very long to figure out that something was amiss.

  Jericho. Impossibly, when she closed her eyes, she could still feel his hands on her breasts, his teeth at her ear, his breath hot against her skin. Then she heard the distinctive thump-thump of his boots on the steps outside and her eyes flew open again. He appeared in the clinic doorway and watched her expressionlessly for a moment. Catherine carefully lowered her feet to the floor from where she had been resting them on the desk.

  Her pulse hitched. When had she become aware that he took those stairs unlike anyone else, that his footsteps had a quick one-two tempo because he always skipped the middle plank? She swallowed uncomfortably, not sure she wanted to examine the question too closely.

  “You look like hell,” he said finally.

  That snapped her out of her daze. “You would too if someone was dropping dead owls on your bed.”

  He shrugged one shoulder. “No doubt. Listen, I need you.”

  Her heart slammed. “I beg your pardon?”

  For the first time—and she thought maybe for the only time—his face actually seemed to redden. His gaze danced away from her uncomfortably, then came back.

  “Ellen’s visiting her boyfriend in Albuquerque,” he said. Then he added unnecessarily, “It’s Saturday.”

  Catherine’s head began to spin. What was he saying? Was he lonely without the nurse? She dismissed that possibility immediately. No matter what his relationship with her was, she could not in a million years imagine this man being uncomfortable or lost without companionship. As private as he was, as stony and forbidding as some of his moods could be, he would never be dissatisfied with his own company.

  She swallowed cautiously. “I don’t think...I mean, I don’t want—” His eyes narrowed on her face and she broke
off.

  “Go on. Spit it out. You don’t think what?”

  Her chin came up hard and her eyes flashed. “Okay. Fine. I don’t want to fill the gaps while your girlfriend’s out of town.”

  “My what?”

  “Girlfriend, lover, whatever you call it in this part of the world.”

  He looked at her blankly, then his face hardened. “If she was—and I’m not saying she is—would you care to tell me what you thought I was doing kissing you, then?”

  Catherine colored to the roots of her hair. God, how could she have misjudged him that way? Looking at him now, at his expression, it was perfectly clear that this was not a man who would treat an intimate relationship—any true relationship—so lightly. There was something too fiercely loyal about him. She remembered how he had looked out for Angie Two Sons, and the way Shadow could say almost anything to him and get away with it. She remembered the way he had wept for Lisa Littlehorn.

  Why had he kissed her, then? Her blood began to pump hard in her ears.

  “I don’t know,” she managed.

  He raked a hand through his hair. “Where the hell did you get such an idea?” he asked finally. “Ellen and I are born to the same clan. If anything ever happened between us, it would be incest.”

  “Well, how was I supposed to know that?” she answered indignantly. “Besides, it hasn’t stopped her from wanting you.”

  He considered that a moment, then he shook his head. “You’re crazy.”

  “No,” Catherine retorted. “I’m a woman. And women see things that go right over men’s heads.”

  “Given this some thought, have you?”

  “It’s just obvious,” she answered tightly. “If it were an animal, it would jump up and bite you.”

  She had indeed given it a lot of thought, though, and now that she knew the truth she was appallingly relieved. She was also very aware of his thoughtful, perusing eyes. In an effort to hide her expression, to do something with her hands, she got up and went for the coffeepot.