Off Kilter

by Donna Kauffman

  She nodded, but appeared lost in thought.

  He battled the urge to blurt out the question, to know for himself and as further insight into her. In the face of her contemplative withdrawal, he opted to let it drop. For now. Pacing was everything.

  They traveled on in silence for a few more minutes. The track became narrower and the curves tight as the incline grew ever steeper. Just before the peak, he turned off on an unpaved lane that was barely more than two grooved ruts, and littered with more jutting rocks than grass or dirt.

  “Where are we going?”

  “A potential calendar shot spot. Trust me.”

  She nodded, and appeared more alert and interested in the change in direction, but she still seemed distracted to him. His curiosity about her grew stronger. She was so strong, and at the same time, so vulnerable. She’d seen things that would level battle-tough soldiers. He believed she was just as tough, just as strong—even with her vulnerabilities clawing at her.

  “Here,” he said, as he slowed to take the last hairpin turn through some very narrow, deep ruts.

  “These look like they were made over a long time,” she remarked. “The ruts, I mean.” She pointed. “They’ve even been worn into the rock in some places.”

  “Aye,” he said, coming to a stop as the track abruptly came to an end. An outcropping of rock in front of them, taller than the lorry, blocked the view of what lay beyond. “Come on,” he said, and climbed out.

  He came around to her side as she was sliding out. “You don’t have to get my door,” she said, as he held it for her, then closed it after helping her down.

  “I don’t have to do anything,” he said. “I’m fully aware you can do everything for yourself.” He kept his hand under her elbow, holding her between him and the truck. “I admire that, I do. But you don’t have to do everything all the time, Tessa. Let me enjoy pretending I can be a gentleman.”

  Her lips twisted the tiniest bit. “Why? You don’t have to put on any act for me. You definitely don’t need to try and impress me.”

  “It’s no’ an act. Nor about impressin’ ye. I like getting your door. I like helping you up into your seat and out of it again. It’s part of the dance. A good part.”

  “I don’t dance. And I’m especially not good at that kind. Strikes me as more of a game.”

  “It’s a courtship,” he said.

  Her gaze narrowed. “I thought you were content with trying to be a friend.”

  “Even friends can do courtly things,” he said. “What is so wrong about enjoying a friendly gesture? Can you no’ allow yourself that much? Think of it as a guilty pleasure, not an admission of weakness.”

  She started to say something then stopped. After a short sigh and what appeared to be a brief internal struggle, she met his gaze directly. “I’m sorry. You’re right. I shouldn’t be so touchy. Maybe it’s because I’m not used to that part. The touchy part.” She dipped her chin, but he gave her time, wanting to know what she was struggling so hard not to say, not to reveal … wanting, more than anything, for her to give him entrée to that part of her. The most private part. She was the only one who could do that. He couldn’t force his way there.

  He rubbed his fingers on her elbow, comforting her, but otherwise did nothing to alter their positions, or encourage her to do … anything.

  Finally she looked at him again. “In the places where I spend most of my time, I try very hard to be invisible. It’s better for an observer to not be observed. But to gain entrée into some of the places I most need to see, I need help to get there. I need to make my presence known to someone. In almost all cases, every single thing I do or say, every expression, every minute body motion, can be examined, analyzed for any possibility of deceit or impropriety. That I’m a woman makes it all so much more complicated.”

  She sighed just a little. “I’m hyper aware of where I am at all times, what I’m doing, how I look, what my expression is, what it should be, what I can’t reveal on my face, and what could cost me my life if I do. I know—always—what those around me are doing. Every flinch, every blink, every sideways glance. And things like this”—she gently removed her elbow from his hand—“casual touching. It doesn’t happen. It just doesn’t. Nothing is casual in my world. If I touch, or am touched, it’s with a purpose. Otherwise, I stay back, I stay hidden, I—” She broke off and shook her head.

  He waited. He was humbled that she was sharing confidences with him, opening up in a way that couldn’t be easy for her. That she wanted him to understand her made him very, very glad he’d gone to Kira’s croft that morning.

  He wished he felt better equipped. She was the most complicated person he’d ever met. And by far, the most compelling. The very last thing she’d ever say she needed was a protector or a partner. Yet she made him want to be both of those things.

  He took her elbow again, very gently, but with purpose. She lifted her gaze to his … but didn’t tug it away.

  “I’m touching you because I like to feel connected. Aye, it’s an ego thing, wanting to be the man to escort you, as it were. Any man would be honored—and very likely gobsmacked—to have you at his elbow. I know this man would. Beyond that, Tessa … it’s about being connected.

  “Touching in these little inconsequential ways is a form of courtship and connectivity that is its own reward. The little touches to the small of your back, the hand at your waist or elbow to help you into your seat, the pulling out of your chair. All of those things aren’t because you need them, but because I do. It’s supposed to make you feel good, smug even, that your man wants to have his hands on you at all times, and is finding socially acceptable ways to do that in public, because all he can think about is stripping that lovely suit or dress you’re wearing from your impeccable body and delighting in touching you in all the ways he can’t when the eyes of the world are on you.”

  Her eyebrows lifted … and her throat worked. She didn’t pull away. Or step back.

  “So it’s courtship. And seduction. And ego. It’s also just being there—so you know I have your back—I am always right there. It’s a good feeling, to know that you’re there, too … right within reach. I pay attention to those myriad little things … but for entirely different reasons. My attention comes from a place of comfort, of titillation, and of wanting to provide security. And no’ just for you. It secures me, too. Grounds me. What you can always count on is that every single time I touch you, in whatever capacity, it will never be motivated by deceit, anger, or malevolence.”

  “Roan—”

  “It’s a lot, Tessa, I know. But you make me feel a lot. You make me think a lot. I would be a true and loyal friend to you. But it would be a lie to stand here and tell you that I don’t also want you in every way a man could ever want a woman. I’d honor those feelings, and be loyal to them, too. Because it’s who I am. I know you dinnae have much experience with loyalty and honor in your world. But this is my world. And in my world, Tessa, you’re safe. In my world, you can just be yourself … whoever that might be. Might be interesting, fun even, to find out. It doesnae matter what comes next and it can’t matter why here, why now, or even why me. If you want to find out, if you want to figure it out, then just reach for it. You’ve done far scarier things, I’d imagine—”

  “You’d imagine wrong, then.” Her voice was a choked whisper.

  He went completely still, because her throat was still working, and there was definite emotion in her voice, if not her eyes. Her gaze was probing, serious, and almost laser-like as she looked at him, into him.

  “I reach because those whose stories I’m telling can’t. I reach for the story. If there is anything personal or selfish, it’s reaching for things that will enable me to keep reaching for more. I don’t … I don’t reach for me. Personally. I … I just don’t.”

  “You can reach here,” he said, continually humbled by her. He felt deeply inadequate at a time when he wanted most to be what she needed. “You can reach for me. I’m no’
going anywhere. Not now. No’ ever.”

  She looked down, her shoulders tensing, her jaw rigid.

  He stopped thinking, stopped analyzing, and went with his gut. He lifted her chin, then cupped her face with a gentle hand. “I lied about one thing,” he told her. “You do scare me. No’ your anger, no’ your pushiness, or your tougher than nails exterior. Your pain scares me. Your fear. Your past scares me. Mostly though, it’s not knowing how to be your friend that scares me. Because you do need one. I want to find a way to earn that friendship. I think it could be the most rewarding thing I’ve ever had in my life.”

  “Why,” she choked out. “Why me? I’m a lousy friend, I’m—”

  “Beautiful, smart, sharp, caring, giving, with a heart bigger than the world, which you’ve given completely to the world. You’re selfless, and you’re brave.”

  “I’m smart-mouthed, and impatient, and bitchy, and—”

  “Scared, and hurt, and human.” He looked into those eyes that had seen so much, wondering what could she see in his. What had he been thinking, to fool himself into believing that he, of all people, was going to have the magic elixir to make someone like her sit up and pay attention. To him. Of all the arrogance and—

  “You see me,” she said, her tone one of awe.

  His thoughts broke off right there, all but stuttering to a stop.

  “Truly see me. Past all the bullshit, past all the”—she waved her hand—“and you just come out and say the most amazing things. The most blunt and direct things. You’re not afraid of me. You’re … I don’t know what you are, Roan McAuley. Savior, saint, or the devil come to take me.” She took a breath. “I do know you’re the one man I can’t get out of my mind.”

  His heart stuttered along with his thoughts. Then started up again—in double time. “Probably because I dinnae leave ye be.”

  “Precisely because you can’t leave me be. No one else would keep at it, keep at me. But you do. I don’t know if that makes you brave or a sadist.”

  “I wouldn’t if I didn’t think there was something there,” he said. “I guess I was arrogant enough to think that my seeing past the hard front you put up was what set me apart. Was what you would notice. I couldn’t stop noticing you. But I wondered what someone like you could really see in someone like me. I’m—”

  “Caring, and beautiful, sharp and smart, with a heart as big as this island, a loyal heart, and a strong mind, with a caring soul that would work till its last moment on earth to make the world around him a better place for the ones he cares about. And who so clearly care for him. You’re a very wealthy man, Roan. Rich in ways I don’t know if I’ll ever be. You do scare me. Because I look at you, and I want what you have. So easily, so effortlessly. I feel … it makes me feel … broken. More than I already am. Like I can’t ever hope to get that, to have that, because it’s too sane and normal and nice. I’ve traveled too far, seen too much, to ever be able to have sane and normal and nice. People will look at me and know, somehow, that I’m none of those things, and so … I can’t let myself want you. That would be admitting I want it all. And I can’t have it. That’s not going to work for me. I don’t think I have it in me to reach and fail. I need to find a way to reach for the thing I know I won’t fail at, that I know how to do. And I only know how to do one thing. This is not it. It’s the opposite of this. Do you understand? Do you? I can’t reach, Roan. I can’t.”

  She took his face in her hands and she kissed him. But it wasn’t a conquering kiss, a dominant seduction, or a wrestling power play. It wasn’t even a submission, or a reaching for what could be. It was … a cry for help.

  A cry for him.

  Chapter 13

  If he would just kiss her back, she could lose herself in it, in the swamping waves of lust and want and need that he so effortlessly aroused in her with a mere wink of a dimple. If he would just kiss her back, she could shove away the terror of wanting and needing things she could never hope to achieve, never hope to own.

  If he would just kiss her back.

  Roan lifted his head, held her face to keep her from reaching for him again. “Tessa,” he said quietly, calmly. “Look at me.”

  She opened her eyes. Expecting to see him all serious and kind, she was surprised to find him smiling, his eyes twinkling with something that looked a lot like affection. She knew what that looked like, she’d taken pictures of a seemingly endless variety of it recently. At a wedding. She wondered what Roan would say if he knew she’d burned entire rolls of precious film on him and him alone. Painstakingly developed … then stared at for far longer than could be healthy. She’d captured a wide range of expressions on his face that day. But not one quite like the one she was looking at.

  “Just kiss me,” she said with a plaintive note in her voice that she would beat herself up over later.

  “I want to. More than you can possibly know. But you’re still just trying to drown yourself in it. Or maybe both of us. I could drown in you. I just … I want you to kiss me, Tessa. Me.”

  “Who the hell else do you think I’m kissing?” she said, not wanting any more of his armchair psychology at the moment. No matter that he’d been dead on—far too dead on—with each thing that he’d said. No one, not even Kira, understood her as that man seemingly did. How it was, she had no idea. But he did. And she was drawn to him like the proverbial moth to the flame.

  The moth didn’t usually fare too well in that particular confluence of events, did it?

  “You’re kissing me to not feel anything,” he said. “I want you to feel everything.”

  “Oh, I’m feeling, trust me.” She was tempted to slide his hand down to the front of her shirt, so he could touch for himself just how much she was feeling him. Her nipples were like hard pebbles, rubbing against the silk of her bra. Instead she shrugged out of his warm embrace and the shelter of his arms and stepped back. Immediately she felt far more bereft than she’d ever felt before. If that didn’t scare her, nothing should. All the walls, all the defenses, all the shoving him away had been in vain. He’d slipped through to her most vulnerable places no matter what protective measures she employed. How did she defend against that?

  “You just like to fix things, broken things,” she said, trying to make sense of it as much for herself as to push him away. “You’re compelled because you want to fix me.”

  “If that was true then why didn’t I try to fix Kira?”

  Tessa had turned away from him, her arms wrapped protectively about her waist. She whipped back around to look at him. “Don’t you dare say anything against—”

  “I’m not going to say anything against her, far from it. It’s no secret that she was definitely not whole and happy when she came back, and yet I did with her what I am trying to find enough patience to do with you. I became her friend. Not to fix her, but because she could use one. I told myself that when the time was right, I’d let her know I was interested in maybe finding out if there could be more. It was just a normal attraction where the timing wasn’t the greatest. I didn’t befriend her to fix her, or to up my ante with her. I’m not calculating, Tessa.”

  “So why can’t you just be a friend to me, then?”

  “I thought I could, but I canno’ separate one from the other, no’ with you. It’s so glaringly clear to me now, that whatever attraction I had for Kira wasn’t … enough.” He took a step closer and for the first time, she saw a bit of temper and impatience come into his eyes. “I sat back for a year, Tessa, more than a year … and did nothing.”

  “You befriended her. Hardly nothing.”

  “I was content with that, content with biding my time. I can’t do that with you. I can’t last a single day just being your friend. I want more, I want everything. I can’t help it, I can’t stop it, and I can’t want our relationship to be anything less than everything it can be—whatever that is or might be. I’m compelled to do something about it, find out if I can make it happen, so I can get on with it, or get busy getting over it. Bu
t sitting around and doing nothing, sitting by and just holding your hand and being there for you? No. I can’t do just that.

  “I’d want to. For you. If I could, I’d be that, hell, I’d be anything, if it would be good enough for you. But the fact is, it’s not near good enough for me. I’ve gotten a taste of you, not just in my mouth, on my tongue, but in my head, in my thoughts. You’ve infiltrated me. So no, I was wrong about what I said before. I can’t just be your friend. I will be the best, most trusted, most loyal, and most dedicated friend you’ve ever had, along with your lover, your partner, your mate in every sense of the word. I’m no’ saying we’d achieve it, we can’t know that, but that is the goal, that is where I want to go. Anything less … I’d just be pretending I’m okay with that.”

  He walked up to her, and tugged her arms from her waist, then slid them around his. “So, when you kiss me … you need to be able to kiss me. You’re too caught up in trying not to kiss me. Not for real. Not openly, honestly, with hope in your heart. Right now, I am still your friend. But I have every intention of getting us to a place where you can kiss me back.”

  “Roan, you make this so complicated when it doesn’t have to be. If you’d just—”

  “Am I really saying anything that’s no’ true?”

  She glared at him, so frustrated she wanted to lash out at him, physically, verbally. “Why can’t you just be like everyone else and take what you can get?”

  “Because I won’t settle for that. Kinloch would be doomed if I did that in my professional life. I find I won’t settle for less in my personal life, either.” He tugged her closer, wrapped her arms more tightly around him, and held her snugly in the circle of his own arms.

  She fit him well. Perfectly, in fact. Legs, hips, shoulders. He was just that perfect bit taller than her, so she had to tip her face up to look into his eyes. It made her feel good, it made her feel … like the girl. She liked being the girl. Feminine, protected, maybe even a bit coddled. As he held her in the security of his arms, nestled up against him as she was, she couldn’t help thinking if he would just lower his mouth, that same tiny bit, it would fit perfectly on hers. And there might be nothing more naturally right than that.