by Tami Hoag
“I wish he were here,” she said wistfully, her voice huskier than usual. She tried for a smile, but it trembled on her lips and she turned away from him and went into the house.
Dane followed at a distance. The kitchen had been partially dismantled. Not that it seemed any more a mess than it had been before the upper cupboards had been ripped from the wall. Elizabeth moved around the rubble, oblivious to it. She dropped her purse on a piece of plywood that formed a makeshift table over a pair of sawhorses and went to the counter, where a half-dozen bottles of scotch stood nestled out of harm's way. She selected one that was about half empty and poured two fingers' worth into a glass with a picture of Speedy Gonzales on it. She didn't turn back to face him until she had swallowed half of it.
“Scotland forever,” she said, raising the glass in salute. “Best malt whiskey money can buy. Distilled in the Highlands and strained through the Stuart plaid. Costs enough to raise Bonnie Prince Charlie from the dead. 'Course, in the Highland tradition, I stole it,” she admitted audaciously. “Want some?”
“No.”
“No drinking on duty? Too bad.” She drained the glass, then stood for a long moment staring at the smiling Mexican mouse on the side, tracing a forefinger across his sombrero. “I didn't know he was running around with Carney Fox,” she said at last.
“Has he been in trouble before?”
Her gaze darted to his. “Is he in trouble now?”
“He's on the ragged edge of it. I think Fox killed Jarvis. Trace says he and Carney were together, here, shooting baskets out back. I think he's lying.”
Elizabeth gave a sad little laugh. “He's not very good at it, is he? Not like his daddy was. By golly, Bobby Lee could smear shit on toast, tell you it was honey, and you'd eat it and thank him after. Not Trace. He can't skip brushing his teeth without looking guilty about it.” She set her glass aside and rubbed her upper arms as if she were chilled. Her expression turned from reflective to earnest. “He's not a bad kid. Really, he's not. He's just got problems.”
“Such as?”
“Such as a daddy he hasn't seen since before he can remember and a stepdaddy who thought adopting him would be politically correct and good publicity, then discovered raising a boy was more trouble and mess than he wanted to bother with.”
“You make it sound like you didn't have anything to do with it.” The sarcasm was a defense. Dane didn't want to feel sorry for her or empathize with her as a parent. He was too fresh from his encounter with Amy, had spent too much time afterward dwelling on thoughts of Tricia. “Where were you while he was getting screwed up by the men in his life? Out on a date?”
Elizabeth flinched as if he'd reached out and cut her. “You bastard,” she whispered, raw fury seeping through her like blood from the wound. It was bad enough to have him strike like that when she was ready for it. This was a sucker punch below the belt, hitting her when her guard was down, when she was letting him see something of herself. Her hands curled into fists at her sides as she moved across the room toward him. “You son of a bitch.”
Dane arched a brow. “The truth hurts, Liz?”
“The truth.” She sneered the word. “You wouldn't know the truth if it kicked you in the teeth. You don't know anything about me. How dare you judge me? You weren't there.”
“No,” he said, unmoved. “I was on the sidelines with the rest of America, getting the play-by-play on the news.”
Elizabeth glared up at him. They were standing nearly toe to toe. Her body was rigid and trembling with righteous indignation. He stood there, calm as you please, looking down at her with disdain, as if he thought he was so much better than she was, chaste of mind and pure of heart.
“And you swallowed up every word of it, didn't you?” she said, furious as she thought back on the conversation they'd had in the judge's chambers just the day before. “You went through it too—the hounding, the half truths, the outright lies. But you believed every bit of it about me, didn't you?”
He didn't say a word, but the answer was plain on his face. Elizabeth shook her head in disgust. “Hypocrite.
“Well, I don't care what you heard,” she said contemptuously. “I don't care what the press said. You want the truth? Well, here it is: I never, never cheated on Brock Stuart. Not once. Not even when he flaunted his little girlfriends in front of me. Not even when he told me to leave. I was stupid enough to think at least one of us should live by the vows we'd taken. Stupid enough to think I'd get justice in the end, if nothing else.”
She went on with her testimony even though her voice sounded ready to fail her, reedy and hoarse, catching on the emotion that clogged her throat and hardened in her chest like cement.
“I gave that man everything I had, everything I was. I gave him myself. I gave him my son. And all I ever asked for was that he love me. Do you understand me?” she asked, looking as bewildered and hurt as she had when she had first seen the truth herself. “That's the one big sin I committed. I was naïve enough to think a man like Brock Stuart could love me. But he didn't. Brock Stuart doesn't love anybody but Brock Stuart, and God save the poor fool who thinks otherwise.
“He married me because he thought it would be good for his image—the boss marries his poor but pretty underling. A Cinderella story for the press. He singled me out and swept me off my feet with a determination that seemed ruthless even then, but poor, besotted little me, I was too busy falling in love to think about it. I was too busy thinking that maybe, for once in my whole miserable life, a man might actually love me and be decent to me.
“I'm sure he thought it was pretty hilarious, that he could blind me with a little kindness and dazzle me with diamonds. I bought the whole routine, hook, line, and sinker—flying to Paris for dinner, weekends in Monte Carlo, trinkets from Cartier. Turns a girl's head, you know, especially when the best gift she ever got from a man before that was a divorce.
“Yep,” she said with a bitter smile. “He had me believing in fairy tales, then he found himself a real princess and Cinderella went out on her ear. But that wasn't good for his image—throwing a woman and child into the streets—so he changed the story to suit him. He gave me a reputation, bought me some lovers I hadn't even had the satisfaction of meeting let alone screwing. And it was a real multimedia slam campaign, let me tell you. Surveillance photos, grainy videotapes of a woman who looked like me doing things Masters and Johnson never even dreamed of.”
She paused and tried to steady herself against the onslaught of ugly memories, ugly accusations, but they pounded in on her along with the faces of Atlanta's upper crust, looking at her as if she were something they should have a servant scrape off their shoe, calling her names under their breath. Slut. Whore. We knew she was nothing but trash. Poor Brock. Poor Brock.
She pressed her fists against her temples and sucked in a breath around the lump in her throat. “Brock Stuart took the truth and he bent it and twisted it and handed it down to the press like Moses on the goddamn mountain,” she said, glaring up at Dane. “And they kissed his ass and told him it smelled like a rose because he owns them. That's the truth, Sheriff Jantzen,” she said bitterly as tears spilled down her cheeks. “Believe it or don't. I don't give a damn.”
But she did. She cared what he thought and it made her so damn mad she could hardly see straight. With a tormented cry she struck out at him, her fists drumming against his chest, pounding at him. She shoved him, moving him not one inch—which only made her angrier.
“Get out!” she shouted, her eyes burning and her mouth twisting. “Damn you, just get out!”
Dane stood there openmouthed as she turned abruptly away from him and went back to the counter, where she stood with her shoulders rigid and her head down, hands braced against the ledge. His chest hurt where she'd hit him. He deserved worse.
Christ, she was telling the truth. He'd seen it in her eyes, heard it in her voice. The sound of it hung in the still air of the shabby little kitchen.
He should have just le
ft. He should have obeyed her order and walked out the door. The cynic in him told him that was what a smart man would do—walk away. Walk away from Elizabeth Stuart and every dangerous thing she awakened inside him. But his conscience wouldn't let him.
He crossed the room slowly, like a man going to his doom, stopping just behind her. She didn't turn to face him, didn't acknowledge his presence in any way. She just stood there, staring out the window as day softened into dusk over the rolling pastureland.
“Elizabeth.” He murmured her name, realizing with some surprise that it was the first time he'd said it aloud. He had called her Miss Stuart for the most part, Liz when he was feeling especially sarcastic. Never Elizabeth, never anything so soft and feminine. It suited her. Beneath the tough-cookie act lay a tender heart, feminine hopes, delicate dreams—to be loved, to be cherished instead of used and derided.
She was right. He was a hypocrite, and for the most selfish of reasons—to protect himself. His sense of honor labeled him contemptible. He liked to think he was a better man than that, but the proof of the truth stood before him now, trembling as she tried to shoulder the burden.
“Elizabeth,” he murmured again, stepping closer, catching the faintest hint of her perfume—elusive, sweet, sad. “I'm sorry.”
“Oh, yeah?” she whispered derisively. “Tell someone who cares.”
“I care.”
She made a little sound of disbelief and reached for the scotch bottle. Dane caught her hand before she could wrap her fingers around its neck. They curled into a fist, and she tried to pull away from him, but he held fast.
Elizabeth glared at him over her shoulder. She didn't want his sympathy or his contrition. She didn't want him saying he cared. He wasn't the kind of man who gave himself to a woman in anything but the physical sense, and as much as her body might have wanted that, she didn't think her heart could stand it.
“I don't need your pity,” she said, lifting her chin. “I don't want anything from you.”
Christ, she was beautiful. Dane had never denied that, but it had never taken hold of him in quite the same way either. She looked up at him, defiant and stubborn and proud. Something shifted inside him as he stared down at her, and he suddenly wanted to be the one protecting her from hurt instead of dealing it out.
Dangeorus thinking. Guilty or innocent, she still wasn't the woman for him. She would take too much—too much energy, too much effort. She would want things he couldn't give her. Once a woman developed a taste for champagne, she wouldn't go back to a beer budget for long. Guilty or innocent, she was still expensive, still ambitious.
Guilty or innocent, he still wanted her. He couldn't get this close without wanting her. He damn well couldn't touch her without wanting her.
“I don't want you,” she whispered. There was no conviction in her voice. Lip service to her pride, nothing more.
“Liar.” The word slipped from him on a breath as he leaned closer. “You don't want to want me.”
“Same thing.”
“The hell it is. Believe me. I know.”
For one long moment everything caught and held—words, breaths, gazes were suspended as the truth of the matter hung in the charged air between them. Silence rang in Elizabeth's ears, then the old Frigidaire kicked in with a thump and a hum, and, outside, the wind hurled the door against the barn again—thwak! thump, thump, thump . . . The sound did nothing to break the tension in the room.
Slowly, he reached up with his free hand and slid his fingers into her hair, turning her face as he lowered his. She shuddered as his lips claimed hers and all pretense of resistance melted away. She wanted him. She was too tired to deny the need to be held and touched. She'd been alone so very long.
“I'm sorry,” he whispered again, each syllable a caress against her lips.
Elizabeth stared up at him. She wasn't sure what he was apologizing for—being a bastard, making her want him, giving in to that need himself. She didn't ask. For someone so keen on knowing the truth, she was inclined toward ignorance now. This truth wasn't liable to be anything she wanted to hear. It wasn't liable to matter. It wouldn't change what was about to pass between them.
She stretched up toward him, and he brought his mouth down on hers. Elizabeth welcomed him, welcomed the sensual fog that was filling her mind.
Her left hand was still entwined with his right, arms were trapped between their bodies. He turned her hand and brought it against him, molding her fingers along his erection. Then he turned her hand and pressed it to her own body, wringing a gasp from her. The sense of doing something forbidden only added fuel to the fire inside her.
“Want me,” Dane whispered. “Say you want me.”
Elizabeth panted, her lungs grabbing air and puffing it out between swollen, parted lips. “I . . . want . . . you . . .”
Power surged through him. And passion. And something he wouldn't put a name to. Everything else in the world ceased to exist, leaving just the two of them and desire. She was the only woman in the world, and she was going to be his.
He let go of her hand and caught her skirt, crushing the fabric in his fists as he raised the hem. Elizabeth arched into his touch, helpless to do anything else but gasp for breath. The edge of the counter was biting into her back, but she was only dimly aware of the discomfort. Her focus was on the hunger that was threatening to devour them both.
She gave herself over completely. And when the end came in an explosion of sensation and desperation, she sobbed, frightened by the intensity of it.
The idea terrified her. He couldn't mean that much to her. He couldn't mean anything because she was pretty sure she didn't mean anything to him.
She turned away from his gaze, not wanting him to see the bleakness she was certain he would find in her eyes. Hiding from him. She focused her attention on mundane things—the way the last of the daylight fell in through the window in a dusty gold column, a gold that almost matched the color of the stolen scotch that sat on the counter. God Almighty, they were in the kitchen. She felt stupid as the realization struck her. She hadn't even noticed. She'd been so caught up in need that their surroundings had receded into oblivion. Not once had it entered her mind that they were making love in the kitchen.
No. Not making love, Elizabeth. Having sex. Love wasn't going to enter into this partnership. She wouldn't delude herself into thinking otherwise. Dane Jantzen didn't love her. Why that fact should have made her feel all hollow and achy inside, she couldn't imagine. She should have been used to being used by now.
Dane eased himself away from her, hating leaving the warmth of her body, hating more breaking the deeper connection between them—the one he wouldn't have admitted to feeling even to himself. He arranged himself and zipped his jeans automatically as his mind puzzled over what they had just done. What he had just done.
Christ, he'd taken her in the damn kitchen. Standing up. He hadn't even given her the courtesy of comfort. He hadn't even undressed her. What a bastard he was, accusing her of being a whore, then taking her while the truth of her innocence was still hanging in the air around them like the scent of fresh spring rain.
The cynic in him tried to remind him that she had allowed it. But she didn't look happy about it. She looked embarrassed and ashamed.
He lifted a hand to touch her hair and she moved a step away, just out of reach. “Elizabeth—”
“Maybe you should go now,” she murmured. “Like I asked you to before.”
Dane slicked his hands back over his hair and sighed. He didn't need more complications in his life right now. He didn't need a woman like Elizabeth. But he'd sure as hell had her, and he couldn't just walk away.
“That didn't go quite the way I thought it would,” he said softly.
Her eyes widened, and anger flared in them. “Are you saying you came here expecting to—?”
“No. I'm saying I've been thinking about it since the moment I first saw you,” Dane admitted candidly. He brushed back her hair, dropped his hand, and car
efully touched his thumb to the scar at the corner of her mouth, wondering how long it would be before she told him how she came by it.
“Isn't that just like a man?” she complained.
“I wanted it,” he said bluntly. “You wanted it.” When she started to protest, he pressed a finger to her lips. “Don't say you didn't, Elizabeth. Your panties will tell a different tale.”
She narrowed her eyes and fumed, and Dane thought of how bleak those eyes had looked a minute earlier. “I didn't mean for it to happen this way.”
“I don't think it should have happened at all.”
“Hush,” he whispered, bending his head to kiss her cheek. “Don't say that.”
He told himself he didn't want her to regret their intimacy because he didn't want this to be his only taste of her. That was the truth. Part of it.
“There's no reason we shouldn't be lovers,” he said.
The words came as a surprise to him, but not the logic behind them. If they set the ground rules now, if they both knew what they were getting, then they could both walk away unscathed in the end. It was simple, neat, the way he liked things.
“Well, for starters, I hate you,” Elizabeth said matter-of-factly.
Dane gave her a grin. “You'll get over it.”
She shook her head, thinking of the bigger issue. “I don't think so. I don't need the trouble. Besides, I've sworn off men.” She backed away a step and lifted her shoulders in an apologetic shrug. “Sorry.”
Dane took a step back too, his expression closed. Elizabeth figured he wasn't used to ladies saying no, and he probably didn't like it, but that was tough. He stood there for a moment, a gleam of speculation in his eyes. But he doused it and took another step toward the door, and Elizabeth caught herself wishing he would try a little harder to change her mind.
“You know where to find me,” he said as if it didn't matter much to him one way or the other.