He stared at her as if he believed that she was a collection of non sequitur statements. “Excuse me?”
“Cole Porter,” she repeated. “They’re playing ‘When They Begin The Beguine.’ It’s a song by Cole Porter. At least I think it’s Cole Porter. Or maybe it’s by Jerome Kern. He did the music for Show Boat. It’s an old musical,” she added when he looked at her quizzically. “I have trouble remembering which was which.”
Blake laughed shortly. “I’m afraid I can’t help you there. All I know about music is whether or not I like it.”
“And do you?” she asked softly, turning her face up to his.
Blake felt a wave of heat that had nothing to do with the ballroom’s air-conditioning system. It accompanied the sudden, unexpected dryness in his mouth. “Do I what?”
“Like it?” Her voice was husky, barely above a whisper.
“Very much,” he replied. “Even if I have no idea what a ‘Beguine,’ is.”
“It’s a ballroom dance that was popular back then. I used to watch a lot of old movies on TV as a kid,” she explained in case he wondered why she’d know an obscure fact like that.
Her breath was backing up in her lungs. Dancing had nothing to do with it. The man with her did. There were all sorts of feelings skittering through her that left her in a tailspin.
There it was again, she thought helplessly, that feeling that had popped up when she’d thrown herself on top of Blake in the courtroom.
Except that this time, it was bigger, more defined and definitely more forceful.
The applause around them registered abruptly and he realized that couples were applauding because the music had stopped.
At least, the music that was coming from the band’s instruments had stopped. The other music, the melody that seemed to have materialized in his head, was still playing. It took effort not to move to it. Effort not to respond to the raw, unguarded look in Greer’s eyes when she slanted a look in his direction.
He had a feeling that she didn’t know he’d seen her expression and he was relieved that they were out in public. Because in a moment like this, if they were alone, he might have been tempted to do something completely against his nature. Something completely outside the box.
Clearing his throat, he looked for something to say. “I’ve been meaning to ask you…your brother said you saved your dog by chasing away a couple of coyotes. He was kidding, right?”
“No, he wasn’t,” she murmured.
“How?” was all he could ask.
“Coyotes don’t like loud, unexpected noises. I raised my hand over my head to seem bigger than I was and growled as loud as I could. They ran,” she concluded with a smile that dared him to contradict her.
“And you did this because it just came to you?” he asked skeptically.
She laughed then and he caught himself thinking again how much that sounded like music to him. “Because I watch the Discovery Channel,” she corrected. “You can pick up a lot of useful information there.”
He wondered if they had a program devoted to surviving exposure to seductive bodyguards.
The fundraiser lasted a total of five and a half hours. After about four and a half, the crowd began to slowly diminish as people started making their excuses and slipping away, either to go home, or to grab a nightcap with a few intimate friends.
The judge, Greer noted, looked as if he was prepared to remain to the bitter end. Curious, she still didn’t question him as to whether or not he was obligated to remain at the function, or if he merely wanted to. Hers wasn’t to ask why, hers was just to protect unconditionally.
Remaining constantly alert, even as she absorbed the exceedingly positive vibrations coming from the man she was guarding, was taking a toll on her. But she couldn’t put her guard down. Danger could come from any one of an endless number of directions.
There were a lot of people in here, people that someone on the fundraising committee could supposedly vouch for. However, the attending guests, not to mention the people catering the affair, were all scattered about like so many marbles. Rounding them all up to verify that they were exactly who they said they were and checking into their background would have taken far too much time. The fundraiser would long be over before she was even half finished.
She had to rely on her gut—and on luck.
When the judge finally shook his last hand and told her that they were going home, Greer could have cheered. Not that she minded being with him like this. Kincannon looked incredibly dynamic in his tuxedo. With hair the color of the inside of midnight and eyes a dark fathomless blue, he easily made her pulse accelerate. But keeping an eye out for anything out of the ordinary, any person who got too close to him, was exceedingly wearying.
Heading toward the door with the judge, she struggled to curb her enthusiasm. It took a great deal of effort not to just herd the man out of the building. As it was, she slipped her arm through his and walked faster. He had no choice but to keep up.
“I’ll let you drive,” Kincannon told her once the valet had brought up his new car and had hopped out of it. When she looked at him quizzically, he explained, “The last thing I want is to be pulled over by some overzealous motorcycle cop and wind up failing a breathalyzer test.” Drinking was something he always kept under control. The specter of what had happened to his wife was forever with him and he was determined that no other family would ever be put through that sort of pain because of him.
She had no problem driving them home. The only beverage she’d consumed all evening was ginger ale. But the fact that he thought he’d consumed more than the acceptable amount of alcohol bothered her. It meant that she’d slipped up in watching him.
“Just how many scotch on the rocks did you have?” she asked as she slid in behind the steering wheel of the silver two-seater.
Getting in on the passenger side, Blake buckled up. “Three.”
Three drinks over the space of the evening didn’t seem like much and he didn’t sound like a man who was even mildly inebriated. However she saw no reason to argue and she did like driving his vehicle. This was probably the closest she would ever come to driving a Mercedes sports car.
Still, she did want him to know that she thought he was perfectly fit. “You seem very sober to me.”
Kincannon chuckled. “Hence the saying.”
Greer glanced at him as she flew down the road. Traffic seemed to be nonexistent and the lights all seemed to be cooperating, turning green two beats before she reached the intersections.
“Saying?” she questioned.
“Sober as a judge,” he replied, an amused smile flirting with his lips.
Okay, maybe Kincannon was a wee bit tipsy, she thought, revising her assessment. It was better to be safe than sorry.
“Good saying,” she murmured, her mouth curving.
“I don’t know,” he countered slowly, as if he was rolling it over in his mind. “It brings an image of a dour-faced, stern individual to mind,” he confessed. “Not the professional image I’m going for.” He paused, thinking, then put the question to her. “What does fair and impartial look like?”
She slanted a glance at him. The moment he asked, the answer came to her. “Like you.”
Silence slipped in and accompanied them the rest of the short distance home. For once, she did nothing to break it. But she did notice that though he might have been embarrassed by her honesty, there still was the barest hint of a smile on his lips.
Detective Jeff Carson left the judge’s house less than five minutes after they arrived. The older Kincannon, her partner told them as he struggled to suppress a yawn, had gone to bed over an hour ago. Beyond that, he had nothing to report, other than Gunny had taken him in poker, winning eight hands out of ten.
“I should have warned you about that,” Blake confessed. “He’s practically a card shark, a side effect of being posted in out-of-the-way places where they roll the sidewalks up at night.” He reached for his wallet, obviously inten
ding to make up for what her partner had lost.
Greer put her hand on his, stopping him from taking the wallet out. “Carson’s a big boy, aren’t you, Carson? No one forced him to play poker with your father.”
“Big boy,” Jeff echoed none-too-happily as he left. “G’night.”
“Good night, Jeff.” Greer closed the door, securing it. Crossing back to the sofa, she sank down with a huge sigh. “I’m going to change—as soon as I get the energy to get up again.”
Blake looked at the sofa, shaking his head. He still didn’t like the idea of Greer sleeping on it. “You know, you can use one of the guest rooms,” he prompted.
She shrugged carelessly. Though she didn’t use a guest room at night, she still had her clothes stashed in the one closest to the staircase. “I’ve gotten to like sleeping on the sofa.”
He paused, scrutinizing her. “You lie as smoothly as you tell the truth.”
Greer grinned, not bothering to dispute his assessment. “You pick things up along the way. Good night, Judge,” she said, hoping that would send him on his way. It was late.
He needed to put distance between them. In his present state, she represented far too much temptation. Nodding, Blake murmured, “Good night.” He was on his way out of the room, heading toward the staircase, when he stopped.
He had no idea why he stopped.
Maybe it was a need to unburden himself to this woman who seemed to coax words out of him so easily. Maybe the memory of their one intimate dance was still fresh on his mind, threatening to forever imbed itself into his memory. He couldn’t be sure.
All he did know was that he remained standing where he was, staring at the staircase, telling Greer what he had never told anyone before.
“She wanted children, you know.” He turned around to face Greer. “Margaret, she wanted children.”
Greer stiffened ever so slightly, wondering if she should stop him right here before he wound up pouring out his heart. She instinctively knew he would regret that in the morning, regret telling her about his late wife’s dreams.
But maybe the man needed to talk and she was, after all, a relative stranger as far as he was concerned. Someone who would be out of his life soon enough. Until their paths crossed again.
Her heart ached for him as she looked at the pain in his eyes.
“No, I didn’t,” Greer finally replied in a low voice. “I didn’t know that.”
Blake nodded. Rounding the back of the sofa, he came and sat down beside her. “She did. I talked her into waiting.”
She heard the guilt, the sorrow, and knew exactly what he was thinking. He blamed himself that his wife had died never experiencing the love of a child. “You couldn’t have known that there was going to be an accident. Or that she would wind up dying. None of us gets to look into the future.”
He shook his head. She didn’t understand, he thought. Didn’t understand because he wasn’t clear, he was tripping over his own tongue.
“It wasn’t the future, it was the present.” Blake blew out a breath. He could see that he had managed to confuse her even more. “She was pregnant,” he said with feeling. “The night she was killed, Margaret was pregnant.”
Her eyes widened. No one had told her that. Granted she hadn’t been involved in the inquiry, or in trying to find the hit-and-run driver who had ultimately wound up running them off the road. She’d just happened to be the off-duty officer who had tried to save two people whose paths she’d crossed.
“Are you sure?” Greer pressed.
He nodded, numb. “That was her big news. She told me right in the middle of dinner, after I made some inane toast to our second anniversary. She almost burst, holding her secret in. It should have dawned on me when she refused to have a drink before dinner. Having a drink was always part of eating out for her,” he explained, remembering.
The judge’s face was drawn and Greer could literally see his pain. It was right there, in his eyes. He was struggling not to give in to it, not to let the tears that were shining in his eyes fall.
She was a firm believer in tears, in using them to cleanse away pain, to purge emotions. But men had their own set of codes. Greer had a hunch that shedding tears to relieve tension was just not part of it.
At least not for Blake Kincannon.
But code or no code, there couldn’t be anything in his credo that said he was against receiving comfort from another human being. There couldn’t be anything against having that other human being put her arms around him and offering him all the silent sympathy that she possibly could.
Which was exactly why Greer put her arms around the man she was supposed to be guarding. Why she held on to him even as Blake initially resisted the contact, trying to pull away. The sofa worked in her favor, foiling him because there was nothing he could do to make her physically back away.
“It takes a strong man to allow himself to be human,” she told him in a quiet, firm whisper against his ear. “I’m sorry I couldn’t do anything to save her that night,” she added.
He’d passed out toward the end, but he’d been there to watch Greer’s efforts in the first few minutes. He’d never seen anyone work so hard.
“It wasn’t your fault,” he told her. He raised his head to look at her. “I don’t blame you,” he added just in case Greer thought he did. If there was someone to blame, it would be the man driving the car that had hit them. Hit them and then disappeared into the fog that had spread out over the area like a huge cottony spider’s web.
“If it wasn’t for you, I would have died, too. I owe you my life,” he reminded her. His eyes held hers. The attraction he’d felt and fought from the start was all but overwhelming him, pressing against him so hard, he could hardly draw a breath. “I owe you,” he whispered, letting his voice faded away.
And then, the next moment, Blake wasn’t talking at all.
And neither was she.
A fire had leaped into their veins simultaneously, ignited by feelings too strong to suppress, or to remain dormant and unacknowledged.
Maybe it was the three drinks that eroded his defenses, or maybe they merely made him more in tune to what was happening here. Whatever the reason, Blake sealed his mouth to her lips at the same time that he sealed his soul to hers.
Chapter 12
Greer prided herself on not being the kind of person who ordinarily lost control, the kind who got carried away if the situation was right.
Labeled by those in authority as a hellion when she was in high school, even then she’d been very much in control of herself, no matter what situation she found herself in. Because she liked to live life fast and hard didn’t mean that she ever lost sight of end goals. Never before had she ever even entertained the idea and shouted, “The hell with consequences.”
In her mind, she was forever the daughter of an unattached woman who dedicated herself to doing her very best to provide and care for the three children she’d given birth to.
Deep down, Greer was the girl who had been left by her father. Not willingly—she’d believed for more than the first two decades of her life—but the end result was that he was still absent. When she’d heard her mother’s deathbed confession that she and her brothers were the product of an affair and that their biological father had deserted them, Greer had settled down and applied herself to becoming an upstanding member of society.
She became a rock.
And, within her heart of hearts, Greer trusted no man implicitly beyond her brothers. Because men left, men abandoned, and she saw the consequences of that. In the back of her mind, residing like an unwanted tenant, was the memory of her mother’s socially isolated life. Oh, her mother had been a loving, warm woman who did the best she could but Greer sensed that there was a ragged hole in her mother’s heart created by the man who wasn’t there. Who’d refused to be there all those years ago.
That was never going to be her, Greer had vowed. And, in order for that to be true, she couldn’t allow herself to fall in lov
e with anyone, couldn’t go so far into uncharted waters that she lost her way back.
It was a good, solid plan.
So what was she doing here, letting this man with his impossibly sensual mouth kiss her? What was she doing, kissing him back?
And wanting so much more.
Damn it, this wasn’t the route to self-preservation. This was the way to self-destruction, the way to lose not just the battle, but the war.
And yet, even though her mind fairly shouted for her to abort her present behavior, to get out now before she slipped any further into the emotional quicksand she was standing in, Greer couldn’t get herself to stop. Couldn’t get herself to respond and obey. Or even move an inch away.
All she wanted to do was fan the flames that were blazing within her. Wanted more than she’d ever wanted anything before to experience lovemaking with this man.
Every inch of her body yearned for it, begged for it.
She was crazy, absolutely crazy, Greer thought. Maybe it was the flu, maybe she’d caught a strain that short-circuited the brain, making a person behave completely out of character.
Maybe—
She sucked in her breath, startled, as Blake drew back, creating a space between them that felt as big as a chasm.
Greer pressed her lips together, tasting him. She looked at Blake, trying to focus her thoughts, trying to focus her resolve as well as her line of vision. Most of all, she was trying to squelch this bereft feeling that threatened to swallow her up whole and break her down into little pieces.
Blake was talking to her. His mouth was moving but she wasn’t absorbing what he was saying. She concentrated harder.
“We can’t do this here,” he was saying.
Well, thank God at least one of them had some common sense, she thought, breathing a sigh of both relief and huge, frustrated disappointment. The ache in her body felt almost unmanageable.
“You’re right,” she told him hoarsely.
Blake was rising to his feet. But rather than tell her good-night, he was taking her hand, coaxing her up off the sofa, as well. Why?
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