Juxtapositioned over these searing memories was the hazy face of the hollow-cheeked attendant who’d pumped gas into her pickup a week ago.
She was only vaguely aware of Evan poking around the trailer’s tiny kitchen. Hardly registered the bump of his knee against hers as he plunked a glass of iced tea down in front of her. He took the other chair, not crowding her, not pressing her for the chaotic thoughts that slowly sorted themselves out in her confused brain…until finally she was left with only one.
It didn’t matter. Whether or not the man at the convenience store was her father made no difference at this point in her life. Robert James had abandoned her as a child, when she’d needed him most. As a result, she’d made her own way in the world. A rocky way for the past few years, but her own way nevertheless. She’d known love and joy with the McNabbs, and found happiness in her music. That was all she needed. All she wanted.
Or all she had wanted until a stupid, silly kiss beside a dam had started her thinking about what she was missing.
Resentment fluttered in her chest. Blast Evan Henderson! Since he’d barged into her life, he’d taken her on a wild, roller-coaster ride from wary distrust to shaken wonder to fury. She’d almost convinced herself she was well rid of him when he roared up the hill with this piece of shattering news and started the cycle all over again.
He caught the look she flashed him and interpreted it as a signal she was ready to break the charged silence.
“Do you remember your father?”
Lissa didn’t want to answer, but she supposed she owed him something for coming all this way to deliver the news personally.
“All I remember is watching him drive away.”
“Did you ever discover why he left?”
“Reverend McNabb told me he sorrowed so much over my mother’s death that he couldn’t give me the joy and happiness a child needs.” Her fingers curled around the dew-streaked glass. “Or the love, apparently.”
She lifted the tea, needing something to ease a throat suddenly gone tight and dry. Behind a thick screen of sun-tipped brown lashes, Evan’s blue eyes followed her every movement.
“We have to assume he knows who you are,” he said when she’d gulped down a long, soothing swallow. “The odds that he’d turn up practically on your doorstep by chance must hover right around a couple of billion to one. My bet is he tracked you to Paradise.”
“By opening the mail that went to the McNabbs.”
“It makes sense. He of all people would know about your connection to them.”
The tea puddled in Lissa’s stomach. Quite a man, her father. He dumped his only child in the road and drove off without a backward glance, spent the next twenty or so years in a drunken haze and apparently didn’t blink at rifling through other people’s mail.
“I’m surprised he’s waited so long since spotting me in LaGrange to try to hit me up for money.”
She winced inwardly at the bitterness coating her comment, but the naive girl who once sang for the sheer joy of it had learned her lesson all too well.
“You think that’s why he’s tracked you down?”
“Why else?”
“I guess we won’t know until we talk to him.”
“We’re not going to talk to him,” Lissa shot back. “Either separately or collectively. This isn’t any of your business, Evan.”
“Right,” he drawled. “That’s what I kept telling myself during the three-hour ride back to Paradise.”
She had the grace to flush. “I told you, I appreciate that you made the long trip to tell me about my father. Now…”
“Now I can just climb back on my bike and head home again, is that it?”
Her chin came up. “Yes.”
“Not this time, Lissa.”
“Excuse me?”
“I left the last time with things unsettled between us. I’m not going to make that mistake again.”
Coming on top of the emotional bomb he’d just detonated, his calm assumption that there was anything between them to settle fired her fuse all over again.
“Back up a minute, fella! There is no ‘us.’”
“Don’t you think that verdict is a bit premature? I haven’t presented all my arguments in the case yet.”
“I don’t believe you!” Lissa exploded out of her chair. “You show up out of the blue and inform me that the father I haven’t seen or heard from in more than twenty years now lives just ten miles away. Then, before I can take a breath, you start playing lawyer games with me. Is this what they teach you in law school? Always keep your witnesses off balance? Is that the only way you can get past their defenses?”
“I figured out the day I met you, it’s the only way I can get past yours.” Unabashed and completely unrepentant, he came to his feet and smiled down at her. “You’re as prickly as a cholla, sweetheart, and twice as sharp.”
The smile infuriated Lissa almost as much as the tenderness behind it. She couldn’t handle either right now. Maybe not ever.
He must have seen that her frazzled nerves were about to shred apart. “Don’t look so panicked,” he said gently. “We’ll sort everything out.”
Feeling absurdly cornered by his gentleness, Lissa scrubbed the heel of her hand across her forehead. She needed to think, needed to work through her confusion and the stabbing hurt that refused to go away at the thought of her father. Most of all, she needed Evan out of her trailer before she did something absolutely insane. Like yield to the idiotic urge to take him up on that “we.” Or plant herself against his solid chest and bawl her eyes out.
“I think you’d better go.”
“You sure? I’m a good listener. We can talk. Or not talk, if that’s what you want.”
She shook her head, fighting the lump that insisted on forming in her throat. Evan grinning down at her with that maddening glint in his eyes she could resist…barely! Evan quiet and gentle and offering to share her burdens she couldn’t handle. She wouldn’t…couldn’t…trust another man with her fears and feelings. Wrapping her arms around her waist, she waited for him to leave.
Evan reined in the need that gnawed at his gut. With everything in him, he ached to take Lissa in his arms. He could see the hairline cracks in her brittle shell, see the hurt she tried so hard to disguise. She was going to hold it all in, every emotion, every pain, the way she had for the past three years. And there wasn’t a damned thing Evan could do about it until she lowered her barriers enough to let him inside.
“I called ahead to ask Josephine to put me up,” he told her. “You can reach me at her place if you need me tonight. Otherwise, I’ll see you in the morning.”
She didn’t argue, which should have raised Evan’s suspicions right then and there. But it wasn’t until he’d forced himself to the door and hit the first step that his instincts grabbed hold. He turned back, his boot scraping on the metal step, and felt his lungs shut down.
Lissa was slumped against the trailer’s frowzy pecan paneling. Eyes closed, palms braced against the wall, she waged a silent battle to keep from admitting her defenses had been breached. The single, silvery tear that traced a path down her cheek told Evan she’d lost the battle.
Brutal need slammed into him. He could no more stop to analyze its intensity than he could force his lungs to function. His chest aching, he crossed the shag carpet in two strides and gathered her in his arms.
“It’s okay, Lissa. It’s okay. We’ll work out whatever needs working.”
She resisted, or tried to. Evan wasn’t letting her push him away again. He stroked her hair, felt her tremble as the barriers crumpled, one after the other. Warm dampness seeped through his shirt and burned his into skin. The ache that had wrapped around his heart squeezed tight.
“Shh, sweetheart. Don’t cry. We can…”
“I’m not crying,” she wailed against his shirtfront. “I never cry.”
Evan was no stranger to women’s tears. Men’s, either, for that matter. He’d cracked too many witnesses on th
e stand and watched in satisfaction as juries pronounced too many sentences to suffer any remorse for having caused a grown man or woman to weep.
The ridiculous helplessness he felt at this moment was new to him, however. His hand maintained its steady stroke. His arm kept its hold around Lissa’s waist. Yet every sob, every desperate attempt to choke back her tears, tore at his soul.
He was floundering in a totally unfamiliar sea of incompetence when a low, dangerous growl lifted the hairs on the back of his neck. He shot a look over one shoulder, bracing for what he’d find. Wolf crouched half in, half out of the open trailer door, his eyes slitted and his gums quivering above yellowed fangs. Whatever temporary truce Evan might have won with that T-bone had evaporated. The dog’s shaggy ruff stood straight up, his ears pointed straight back.
Evan formed the unmistakable impression he’d forfeit a chunk of his backside if he didn’t loosen his hold on Lissa in the next two and a half seconds. His muscles tightened in anticipation, particularly those within lunging distance of the half-wild creature. Yet he was damned if he could let go of the woman whose rasping sobs were only now starting to lessen.
“Easy, boy. I’m not hurting her.”
Either the quiet warning in his voice or Wolf’s answering snarl pierced Lissa’s misery. She lifted her head and peered around Evan’s shoulder.
“It’s okay.” She got out the words on a watery sniffle, unconsciously echoing Evan’s assurances of a moment ago. “It’s okay, Wolf.”
The issue remained in doubt for another few seconds, and wasn’t decided until Lissa pushed out of Evan’s arms and regained command of her voice.
“It’s okay, boy. Go outside. Go on outside.”
With a final look at Evan that promised violent retribution if he crossed the line again, the dog backed down the steps.
His potential victim unclenched his buttocks and turned back to Lissa. She was struggling valiantly to recover from her brief lapse into what he guessed she’d construe as weakness.
Sure enough, she swiped the back of a hand across a nose red from embarrassment as much as from her crying jag. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why…I’ve never…” She took another determined swipe. “I’m not usually such a ninny.”
“Neither am I,” Evan admitted. “I figured my news would hit you hard. I should have given you more time to absorb the shock before I laid the next one on you.”
“The next one being the fact that you want to take up where we left off at the dam?”
“That’s the one.” Despite himself, he had to smile as he reached out to thumb teary residue from her cheek. “It doesn’t take you long to recover, does it?”
A sigh slipped through her lips. “Seems like it’s taking longer and longer these days.”
She nibbled on her lower lip for a moment, studying him through spiked lashes. Evan wasn’t sure what was coming next, and realized he was holding his breath.
“Did you mean what you said earlier?”
He searched his memory. “About that kiss at the dam snapping the last thread? It’s true, Lissa. There really wasn’t anything between Carrie and me when I drove my Harley into a ditch.”
“I believe you,” she conceded after a long moment. “But that’s not what I was asking.”
“What then?”
She worried her lower lip again, looked away, brought her tear-washed eyes back to his.
“Did you mean it when you said we could just talk?”
“Absolutely,” he lied.
“Or…” She drew in a shuddering breath, met his gaze with a hesitancy that kicked him right in his libidinous middle. “Not talk?”
“That depends on what you mean by not talking,” he replied cautiously, ordering his stomach not to tighten and his glands not to produce a sudden sweat. After feeling her body trembling against his, he’d cut off his right arm before he pushed her too hard, too fast, again.
Lissa shuddered again. The struggle on her face hurt to watch.
“Hold me, Evan. Please. Just hold me. It’s been so long since I… Since anyone…”
He whirled and stomped away while she was still stammering out her request. His palm cracked against the door and slammed it into place. For good measure, he twisted the old-fashioned lock before he strode back to her, smiling at her startled expression.
“Just making sure I don’t lose a piece of my tail to your shaggy protector,” he said as he scooped her into his arms.
He sank into the trailer’s only armchair, taking her with him. Legs out, body angled, he settled her weight against his own. She held herself stiff and awkward for a few moments, as if already regretting her impulsive request, then slowly, so slowly, relaxed.
Evan only wished he could do the same. He willed his muscles not to respond to the feel of her hips nestling into his, but there wasn’t much he could do about his senses. With every breath, he drew in her sun-washed scent. With every knock of his heart, he felt an answering beat through the soft breast pressed against his chest. He could taste desire hot and metallic on his tongue, hear his pulse hammering in his ears. But the hand that tunneled under her hair to massage her knotted neck muscles was slow and sure and gentle.
He had no idea how many minutes or hours passed before she sighed and curled her head into the hollow between his shoulder and neck. No idea how long he held her, getting hotter by degrees with each moist breath that washed against his skin. His watch was buried under her hair, and his mind had shut down to everything but the absolute, iron-willed determination not to acknowledge the growing ache in his groin.
That ache didn’t compare to the agony that exploded when she shifted a little in his lap. His back teeth ground together. Despite his best efforts, he couldn’t hold back a little grunt. At the sound, she tipped her head back, adding another electric jolt.
“Am I too heavy?”
He unlocked his jaw to give her what he hoped was a smile. “No.”
“Are you sure?”
Sweat pooled at the base of his spine. “Yes. I just need to shift my legs a little.”
Remorse chased across her face as he flexed his thigh muscles to lift her an inch or two.
“I didn’t think. I bet your legs have gone to sleep.”
He wished! The needles shooting through his lower body had nothing to do with sleep. Not the kind she referred to, anyway.
“I’ll get off.” She wiggled upright. “I didn’t mean to…”
“Don’t move!”
He tried to soften the terse order with one of his cocky grins, but suspected it came up considerably short of his usual standards.
“You’re okay right there, Lissa.”
He wished to hell he could say the same for himself. But if she moved another inch, he’d be in serious trouble here. Very serious trouble.
Evan couldn’t believe he was so close to losing control. He hadn’t felt this kind of cramping ache since he’d developed a consuming passion for Mary Alice Janecke in the fifth grade. As he recalled, his smirking older brother had found him trying to hide the embarrassing results of that passion from their mother’s eagle eye. Jake had taken him into town the very next day to buy his first package of condoms.
Evan had carried that foil pack in his wallet for years. Fortunately, by the time he got around to needing it, he’d figured out that dry, cracked rubber wouldn’t do the trick. Now he replaced his supplies regularly. Just the thought of the emergency stash tucked into the wallet in his back pocket knotted his gut.
The sudden comprehension in Lissa’s eyes knotted it even more. She didn’t breathe, didn’t move, thank God, except to suck in a gulp of air.
“Evan, I’m not sure…”
“I know.”
“I mean, I’m not ready….”
“I know.” His grin came a little easier this time. “I won’t make the same claim myself, but that doesn’t mean I can’t hold you. Just hold you,” he added as a protest formed in her eyes.
She trembled, like a bird gat
hering its strength to take wing.
“You can trust me, Lissa,” Evan said softly. “Put your head on my shoulder.”
Chapter 11
A series of sharp raps against the trailer door dragged Lissa from a deep, dreamless sleep. She mumbled a protest, squeezing her eyes tight as she burrowed her face into the pillow.
The rapper hit the door again, louder and irritatingly insistent. She had just opened her mouth to tell whoever was making the racket to go away when her pillow moved under her cheek.
Her head jerked up. Her lids popped open. Two sleepy blue eyes smiled into hers.
“’Mornin’, sweetheart.”
Morning?
She fired a disbelieving glance at the sunlight streaming through the blinds. A groan started deep in her belly. It was halfway to her throat when another series of whacks assaulted her ears.
“It’s me,” a voice called impatiently. “Josephine. Open the door, you two. This dish is heavy.”
It took some doing, but Lissa resisted the urge to bury her face in Evan’s wrinkled denim shirt once more. She’d never run from a mess of her own making in her life. She wasn’t about to start now.
That firm resolution didn’t keep her face from flaming as she scooted off Evan’s lap. Or heating a dozen more degrees when she opened the door and Josephine’s rhinestone-ringed eyes zipped right past her to the man sprawled in the easy chair, one arm raised to rub his stiff neck. Glee sparkled in the gaze Josephine turned on Lissa.
“I took this cornflakes and pork chop hash out of the freezer when Evan called last night to say he was on his way back to Paradise. It’s just as good for breakfast as it is for dinner.”
Brushing by Lissa, the Widow Jenks marched into the trailer on zebra-striped mules topped with bright red powder puffs and deposited her burden on the kitchen table. Hands mittened by hot pads went to her ample hips, covered by tight leggings patterned in the same, eye-opening white-and-black stripes as her mules.
The Harder They Fall (Intimate Moments) Page 11