Harlequin Superromance September 2014 - Bundle 1 of 2: This Good ManPromises Under the Peach TreeHusband by Choice

by Janice Kay Johnson

  “It’s sensitive.” His voice was low, husky, his eyes intent on her face. “Soft.”

  Oh, God. The way he’d said the last word was sexier than a touch. Warmth flooded her, low in her abdomen.

  “Anna.”

  She couldn’t look away from him now. She wanted him to kiss her more than she could remember wanting anything in a long time.

  His head bent slowly, either because he was giving her time to retreat or because he himself was hesitant. She quit blinking, only stared into his eyes. And then his lips touched hers. They were cold, but his puff of breath warmed her face.

  A sound seemed to vibrate in his chest, and he tilted his head to fit their mouths more closely together. Anna reached out and gripped the sleek fabric of his jacket, her knuckles bumping something hard. Was he carrying a pistol under there? How was it she hadn’t noticed? But right this second, she couldn’t bring herself to care. Her eyes closed and she reveled in the astonishing feel of him nipping at her lips, his tongue stroking the seam until she opened her mouth and let him in. And then it only got better. She wasn’t cold anymore. All she felt was the stroke of his tongue, the scrape of his jaw, his big, still-gloved hand kneading her nape, the pressure of his muscled body against hers.

  When he finally lifted his head, his eyes burned into hers. Anna was grateful for the bulk of the SUV behind her, given how wobbly her knees were and how jellylike her thigh muscles felt. Although, okay, that might be because of the unaccustomed exercise.

  Only then did she hear voices and realize they were no longer alone in the parking lot. He must have stopped kissing her because he heard them first.

  “You’re carrying a gun,” she blurted.

  His lashes veiled his eyes and he let her go. “I usually do,” he said, sidestepping away from her on his skis.

  “But...why?”

  “Habit.” Face suddenly expressionless, he bent over and released his bindings, picking up his skis and shaking off loose snow.

  Anna followed suit while he unlocked the rear of the Expedition. Their equipment stowed inside, he opened the passenger door for her and put a hand under her elbow to help boost her in. She was embarrassed to need the help. She really was in decent shape. It was only that her pride hadn’t let her suggest they slow down.

  He started the engine right away, then unzipped his jacket and stripped off his hat, tossing it onto the backseat. Anna began to shiver, waiting for the icy air coming out of the vents to warm. Unlike him, she wasn’t willing to so much as lower the zipper on her coat.

  Neither of them said anything. When she sneaked a peek sideways, it was to see him frowning straight ahead through the windshield. Why had her asking about his weapon annoyed him?

  Or...was he sorry to have kissed her?

  A band closed around her chest. Of course that was it. He didn’t want to be attracted to her. She wasn’t even sure he wanted to like her.

  The knowledge felt...right, if unwelcome. Was it something about her? Surely he had friends. He couldn’t have reached what had to be his mid-thirties without having a number of lovers. So...what was so wrong about her?

  She clasped her still-gloved hands tightly together and bent her head, focusing on them. The silence felt stifling.

  The first warmth was seeping into the air when, with her peripheral vision, Anna saw him wrench his gloves off. The movement almost violent, he shoved the gearshift into Reverse. A moment later they were backing in a wide sweep, then following the tracks out of the small trailhead parking lot to the road.

  Five minutes passed. Her shivers slowly abated.

  “Better?” he asked.

  “What?” Her head turned.

  “Are you still cold?”

  “Oh. No. I just felt chilled for a minute. I’m okay.” Cautiously, she took off one glove, then the other, discovering the interior of the Expedition was warm enough now.

  “Good.”

  Several more minutes passed.

  “Does it bother you, knowing I carry a gun?” he asked abruptly.

  She opened her mouth to say an automatic, polite no, but paused to consider. Did it? “No,” she said finally, slowly. “I mean, I know you do on the job. I just didn’t realize you had one today until I—” Touched it. “And then I wondered why you do.” Before he could answer, she said, “It can’t be simply habit. You must think you’re going to need it.”

  “I don’t think that. I’ve never yet drawn a weapon when I was off the clock.” His frown had deepened, although he didn’t look so much irritated as though he was brooding about what he was saying. “I suppose it’s occupational paranoia. I’ve seen so much bad stuff happen to people at unlikely times and places—” His shoulders moved, half shrug, half discomfort. “I want to be ready.”

  “Do you keep it beside the bed at night?”

  His gaze flicked sidelong. “Yeah.”

  “What if, well, you have children? You’d have to lock it up then, wouldn’t you?”

  “Of course I would.” His jaw seemed to work. “I’m not sure I see myself as a father, though.”

  “Because of yours.”

  His breath gusted out. “Yeah. You are what you’ve been taught. You and I both know abused kids become abusers.”

  “Some do,” she agreed. “Mostly ones who aren’t self-aware. If you know what you don’t want to be, you can guard against it.”

  “Do you actually know anyone who can prove your theory?” He sounded deeply cynical. “From my end, I see nothing but a never-ending cycle.”

  “I do know people,” she said quietly. After a moment she lifted her chin. “I know myself.”

  He shot a look at her. “You said your mother wasn’t abusive.”

  Oh, God, why had she opened her big mouth. “She wasn’t.”

  After a minute, he said, “But someone was.”

  “A foster parent.”

  She watched him absorb that. “Were you there long?” he asked.

  “A year and a half. Although I guess that isn’t the same as spending your entire childhood with an abusive parent.”

  “How many foster homes did you have?” he asked.

  Startled, she met his eyes when he turned his head unexpectedly, his gaze intense. “Um...six, I think. No, maybe seven. Plus a few receiving homes in there.”

  “That’s lousy.” He sounded angry. “Why so many? Do people just lose interest?”

  She could answer this one as a social worker, not as a wounded child. “They do sometimes. Or they move out of state, or they have a baby and don’t want a troubled older kid around. Sometimes it’s just, well, not a good match. Or the caseworker suspects something is wrong.”

  “Like?”

  “We had an instance recently where we discovered a woman was denying the foster girl the same quality of food her own daughter was eating. It turned out she hadn’t been buying the girl clothes, either. She had one good outfit she had to put on whenever the caseworker was expected. Her drawers were just about empty.”

  “The woman was doing it for the money,” he said with disgust.

  “Yes. And sometimes we find out kids are being punished inappropriately. The people might lack basic parenting skills, or they didn’t understand what they were getting into with kids that came to them with so many problems.”

  “You’re excusing them,” he said flatly.

  “No.” Tension simmered in her, even talking about those instances. She herself had uncovered one especially egregious case of abuse, and after she’d removed the kids from the home and settled them in a temporary shelter, she had gone home herself and fallen to her knees in front of her toilet to throw up. Somehow she’d held in the nausea that long, but she’d had terrible nightmares that night and wondered why she’d chosen an occupation that so often reawakened her wors
t memories.

  Like I had a choice. A vocation, remember?

  She could tell Reid was still waiting for an explanation. “Understanding why something happens isn’t the same thing as excusing. I have to understand why things go wrong if I’m going to weed out applicants who seem enthusiastic but can’t be trusted with kids, or place children in the home that will be best for them.”

  “I get that,” he conceded. He was frowning, though. “Do you have any foster parents who grew up in abusive homes themselves?”

  “Yes. Several. One who has cigarette burns all over his back. He’s the kindest, gentlest man I’ve ever met.”

  “You’re friends.” His tone was impossible to read.

  “Insofar as it’s possible, when I have to keep some distance as a supervisor.”

  He drove in silence for a few minutes. “I look like my father,” he said out of the blue. “Gives me a chill sometimes, when I see my face in a mirror.”

  Didn’t he know what an extraordinarily handsome man he was? But, no—to him, that didn’t matter. He saw a face he hated—and, in that complicated way abused children think of their parents, possibly loved, too.

  “I don’t think appearance is one of the more important things we get from our parents,” she said very carefully. “Quite often kids don’t look much like either of their parents, or they take after one but not the other. But musical or athletic ability, a sense of humor, a gift for words, a tendency to like to think twice before speaking or, in contrast, to blurt out every little thought, those will be there anyway.”

  “I could make an argument about nature versus nourish.”

  She had relaxed enough to laugh. “You could.”

  They were entering the outskirts of Angel Butte, and traffic had picked up on the slushy roads. Reid drove with such relaxed competence, she guessed it was second nature.

  Sneaking a look, she saw the moment his face tightened again.

  “Physically, Caleb took after our father, too.”

  He might be hiding it, but she could hear how disturbed he was by what he’d said anyway.

  “You could say he looks like you instead.”

  He opened his mouth, then closed it.

  “What were you thinking?”

  Reid grunted. “I was going to ask if that was any better.”

  “You look so confident,” she said after a minute. “I’d never have guessed...”

  His fingers flexed on the steering wheel. “That I’m a mess, like anyone else?”

  “No, I knew that.” The words out, she heard herself in horror. Dear lord. Had she actually said that? “I mean—”

  To her astonishment, he was laughing. “No, don’t spoil it. I like knowing you stick your foot in it sometimes like the rest of us mortals.”

  “Thanks,” she mumbled, cheeks burning.

  “Although I have to ask.” A smile still played at his mouth, but he sounded thoughtful. “How did you guess?”

  Did he really want to know? But Anna suspected it was too late to be mealymouthed. “You’re so good at suppressing emotion,” she said straight out. “Too good. Most of the time, when you smile, it’s only your mouth smiling, not you. It’s like...you’re faking it.”

  He wasn’t smiling anymore. In fact, his expression was so unreadable—no, his face was so lacking expression—that she thought she’d offended him.

  “I am,” he said abruptly. “I thought I was damn good at it.”

  “You are. I’ve had a lot of practice.”

  He made a sound she couldn’t quite interpret.

  They were only a couple of blocks from her town house, and she didn’t know whether to be relieved she’d be able to escape, or to wish she had longer to somehow redeem herself.

  Neither of them said another word until he turned into the alley that ran behind the block of town houses where he’d picked her up. The garages were accessed from the alley rather than the street, and she kept her ski equipment on a rack on one wall of the garage.

  When he braked, she reached for the door handle, but paused. “I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry?” He looked at her, his eyes darker than usual. “You don’t have any reason to be. I prefer hearing the truth. I’ve known since I met you I was risking having you see right through me.”

  “Is that why—” Oh, ulp. There she went again, not stopping to think before she opened her mouth. It wasn’t like her.

  His eyebrows climbed. “Why what?”

  “Um. That time we had coffee. I don’t know what I said, but you just...turned off.”

  “Ah.” It was obvious he was debating how much to say. “I guess it was something like that. You sent up a flare for me.”

  Her heart beat so fast she felt a little light-headed. “But you keep coming back.”

  “Yeah.” Slow and husky, his voice made her tingle. “I...can’t seem to help myself.”

  Her lips parted, but she didn’t know what to say.

  He never looked away from her when he unfastened first his seat belt, then hers. Finally, he leaned toward her, his mouth catching hers in a quick kiss that seemed almost angry.

  Before she could know what expression was on his face, he’d presented her with his back as he opened his door and climbed out. Anna’s fingernails bit into her palms as she closed her eyes for a moment before getting out, too.

  After she used the remote to open the garage, Reid carried in her skis and poles and hung them in place.

  Whatever he’d been feeling, he had succeeded in pushing it down out of sight. “I enjoyed today,” he said.

  “I did, too.”

  This smile was one he didn’t mean. She wondered how exposed he felt, knowing she could tell.

  He kissed her cheek lightly, said, “Hope your afternoon goes well,” and left.

  She stood in the garage, waiting for the door to roll down, as she heard the sound of his SUV receding.

  At least he hadn’t lied and said he’d call.

  * * *

  FEELING RESTLESS AND claustrophobic in the small cabin at the old resort, Reid decided to take a walk around. He’d been in place out here at the youth shelter since a little after ten, once darkness had fallen. His watch told him midnight neared. The witching hour, time for him to be out and about.

  He’d lied to Anna this afternoon; after leaving her, he’d gone straight home. Usually he didn’t have much trouble falling asleep on demand; over the years, he’d worked erratic enough hours, and he’d learned to sleep when he could. This was an exception. Unsettled from talking to her and from thinking about that kiss—no, damn it, those kisses—it took him longer than usual to force himself to let go enough to drop off.

  He’d gotten enough sleep, though, to be fine through the night. Since he’d slipped into the vacant cabin, boredom and cold had been more of an issue than drowsiness. This was the third night in the past week he’d managed to spend staking out the place, and he hadn’t been spotted yet by any of the boys. Tonight, as usual, he had parked in the driveway of a neighboring house, currently unoccupied and for sale, and slipped through the woods to the cabin he and Roger had decided offered the best view of the old resort. By the time he got here, most of the boys had already been in their cabins, although they did some hooting and calling to each other from porch to porch. A couple of them didn’t leave the lodge until after midnight, letting themselves out the back door. He hadn’t needed the porch light to identify the two he knew were roommates. Apollo was black, and Isaac’s beaky nose was distinctive when seen in silhouette. They talked as they walked past the cabin where Reid sat hidden, but their voices were quiet and he couldn’t make out anything they said.

  Roger, he knew, considered Apollo and Issac to be the least likely to be responsible for setting the fires. Isaac had been here for three years an
d would be turning eighteen in June, at which point he’d take his GED, then the SAT or ACT, and start applying to colleges. He was the math genius, Reid recalled. Apollo had been here for two years and was a steady, mature kid who’d stayed in touch with an older sister who hadn’t been able to protect him from their father but had tried. Their longevity was a good argument in favor of both.

  Problem was, most of the other boys had also lived here for a year or longer. Palmer and Diego had been here ten months, TJ five and Caleb just over three months.

  “TJ’s attitude is the worst,” Paula had admitted, but reluctantly. She didn’t like to say anything bad about any of “her” kids.

  He thought he had to be the one to say this. “Caleb isn’t going out of his way to make himself liked, either.”

  “No, he isn’t,” she agreed, “but that’s normal under the circumstances.” She’d given him a wry smile. “You weren’t loaded with charm your first few months here, either.”

  Reid had allowed himself a smile. “Was I ever loaded with charm?”

  “I suspect most women would say you are.” With a laugh, Paula had kissed his cheek. “You have your moments.”

  He had thought about Anna immediately. Reid doubted she would describe him as charming. Even now that she had been frank about seeing beneath his surface, he had no idea what she thought of him. Of how much she actually did see.

  Obviously, a whole lot more than he’d have liked her to. All he could hope was that it wasn’t as much as he feared. The truth was, he sometimes wondered who he really was, deep down. He’d hate to have to ask someone else to find out.

  While he waited for all the lights to go off, he jiggled in place to keep warm. He forced himself back to business and mulled over what he knew about the boys who lived here.

  Diego sounded like another good kid, always friendly and welcoming to newcomers. His roommate, Trevor, was a little more of an enigma, according to Paula. Reading between the lines of what she would and wouldn’t say, Reid guessed Trevor might have been sexually molested, which could screw a kid up even more than physical brutality did.