by Diana Palmer
“I’ll take care of it,” he said carelessly.
She looked at him. “No, you won’t,” she said quietly. “I pay my own way. Always.”
She got up and paid the old man behind the counter, and walked out of the concession ahead of McCallum.
She was already unlocking her pickup truck when he got outside. Even if it wouldn’t start, she needed her sweater. She got it out and locked it up again.
“You actually lock that thing?” he asked sarcastically. “My God, anyone who stole it would be doing you a favor.”
“I can’t afford theft insurance,” she said simply. “Keeping my family home takes all my spare cash.”
He remembered where she lived, across the creek on the outskirts of town, with a huge tract of land—hundreds of acres. She played at raising cattle on it, and she had a hired hand who looked after things for her. Jessica loved cattle, although she knew nothing about raising them. But prices were down and it wasn’t easy. He knew that she was fighting a losing battle, trying to keep the place.
“Why not just sell out and move into one of the new apartment complexes?”
She turned and looked up at him. He was taller up close. “Why, because it’s my home. My heritage,” she said. “It was one of the first homes built in Whitehorn, over a hundred years ago. I can’t sell it.”
“Heritage is right here,” he said abruptly, placing his hand against her shoulder and collarbone, in the general area of her heart.
The contact shocked her. She moved back, but the truck was in the way.
He smiled quizzically. “What are you so nervous about?” he asked lazily. “This isn’t intimate.”
She was flushed. The dark eyes that looked up into his were a little frightened.
He stared at her until images began to suggest themselves, and still he didn’t move his hand. “You’ve had to go a lot of places alone, to interview people who wanted assistance,” he began. “At least one or two of those places must have had men very much like Ellen’s husband—men who were drunk or who thought that a woman coming into a house alone must be asking for it. And when you were younger, you wouldn’t have expected…” She caught her breath and his chin lifted. “Yes,” he said slowly, almost to himself. “That’s it. That’s why you’re so jumpy around men. I noticed it at Ellen’s house. You were concerned for her, but that wasn’t altogether why you kept staring so nervously toward the bedroom.”
She bit her lower lip and looked at his chest instead of his eyes. His pearl-button shirt was open down past his collarbone, and she could see a thick, black mat of curling hair inside. He was the most aggressively masculine man she’d ever known, and God only knew why she wasn’t afraid of him when most men frightened her.
“You won’t talk, will you?” he asked above her head.
“McCallum…” She caught his big hand, feeling its strength and warmth. She told herself to push it away, but her fingers couldn’t seem to do what her brain was telling them.
His breathing changed, suddenly and audibly. His warm breath stirred the hair at her temple. “But despite whatever happened to you,” he continued as if she hadn’t spoken, “you’re not afraid of me.”
“You must let me go now.” She spoke quietly. Her hand went flat against his shirtfront. She knew at once that it was a mistake when she felt the warm strength of his body and the cushy softness of the thick hair under the shirt. The feel of him shocked her. “My…goodness, you’re—you’re furry,” she said with a nervous laugh.
“Furry.” He deliberately unsnapped two pearly buttons and drew the fabric from under her flattened hand. He guided her cold fingers over the thick pelt that covered him from his collarbone down, and pressed them over the hard nipple.
She opened her mouth to protest, but his body fascinated her. She’d never seen a man like this at close range, much less touched one. He smelled of soap and faint cologne. He drowned her in images, in sensations, in smells. Her fascinated eyes widened as she gave way to her curiosity and began to stroke him hesitantly.
He shivered. Her gaze shot up to his hard face, but his expression was unreadable—except for the faint, unnerving glitter of his eyes.
“A man’s nipple is as sensitive as a woman’s,” he explained quietly. “It excites me when you trace it like that.”
The soft words brought her abruptly to her senses. She was making love to a man on a public street in front of the bus depot. With a soft groan, she dragged her hand away from him and bit her lower lip until she tasted blood.
“What a horrified expression,” he murmured as he refastened his shirt. “Does it shock you that you can feel like a woman? Or don’t you think I know that you hide your own emotions in the job? All this empathy you pour out on your clients is no more than a shield behind which you hide your own needs, your own desires.”
Her face tightened. “Don’t you psychoanalyze me!” she gasped, throwing his earlier words right back at him.
“If I’m locked up inside, so are you, honey,” he drawled, watching her react to the blunt remark.
“My personal life is my own business, and don’t you call me honey!”
She started to turn, but he caught her by the upper arms and turned her back around. His eyes were merciless, predatory.
“Were you raped?” he asked bluntly.
“No!” she said angrily, glaring at him. “And that’s all you need to know, McCallum!”
His hands on her arms relaxed, became caressing. He scowled down at her, searching for the right words.
“Let me go!”
“No.”
He reached around her and relocked the truck. He helped her into his car without asking if she was ready to come with him, started it and drove straight to his house.
She was numb with surprise. But she came out of her stupor when he pulled the car into his driveway and turned off the engine and lights. “Oh, I can’t,” she began quickly. “I have to go home!”
Ignoring her protest, he got out and opened the door for her. She let him extricate her and lead her up onto his porch. Mack barked from inside, but once Sterling let them in and turned on the lights, he calmed the big dog easily.
“You know Mack,” he told Jessica. “While you’re getting reacquainted, I’ll make another pot of coffee. If you need to wash your face, bathroom’s there,” he added, gesturing toward a room between the living room and the kitchen.
Mack growled at Jessica. She would try becoming his friend later, but right now she wanted to bathe her hot face. She couldn’t really imagine why she’d allowed McCallum to bring her here, when it was certainly going to destroy her reputation if anyone saw her alone with him after midnight.
By the time she got back to the living room, he had hot coffee on the coffee table, in fairly disreputable black mugs with faded emblems on them.
“I don’t have china,” he said when she tried to read the writing on hers.
“Neither do I,” she confessed. “Except, I do have two place settings of Havilland, but it’s cracked. It was my great-aunt’s.” She looked at him over her coffee cup. “I shouldn’t be here.”
“Because it’s late and we’re alone?”
She nodded.
“I’m a cop.”
“Well…yes.”
“Your reputation won’t suffer,” he said, leaning back to cross his long legs. “If there’s one thing I’m not, it’s a womanizer, and everyone knows it. I don’t have women.”
“You said you did,” she muttered.
He looked toward her with wise, amused eyes. “Did, yes. Not since I came back here. Small towns are hotbeds of gossip, and I’ve been the subject of it enough in my life. I won’t risk becoming a household word again just to satisfy an infrequent ache.”
She drank her coffee quickly, trying to hide how much his words embarrassed her, as well as the reference to gossip. She had her own skeletons, about which he apparently knew nothing. It had been a long time ago, after all, and most of the people who knew
about Jessica’s past had moved away or died. Sheriff Judd Hensley knew, but he wasn’t likely to volunteer information to McCallum. Judd was tight-lipped, and he’d been Jessica’s foremost ally at a time when she’d needed one desperately.
After a minute, Sterling put down his coffee cup and took hers away from her, setting it neatly in line with his. He leaned back on the sofa, his body turned toward hers.
“Tell me.”
She clasped her hands tightly in her lap. “I’ve never talked about it,” she said shortly. “He’s dead, anyway, so what good would it do now?”
“I want to know.”
“Why?”
His broad shoulders rose and fell. “Who else is there? You don’t have any family, Jessica, and I know for a fact you don’t have even one friend. Who do you talk to?”
“I talk to God!”
He smiled. “Well, He’s probably pretty busy right now, so why don’t you tell me?”
She pushed back her long hair. Her eyes sought the framed print of a stag in an autumn forest on the opposite wall. “I can’t.”
“Have you told anyone?”
Her slender shoulders hunched forward and she dropped her face into her hands with a heavy sigh. “I told my supervisor. My parents were dead by then, and I was living alone.”
“Come on,” he coaxed. “I may not be your idea of the perfect confidant, but I’ll never repeat a word of it. Talking is therapeutic, or so they tell me.”
His tone was unexpectedly tender. She glanced at him, grimaced at the patience she saw there—as if he were willing to wait all night if he had to. She might as well tell him a little of what had happened, she supposed.
“I was twenty,” she said. “Grass green and sheltered. I knew nothing about men. I was sent out as a caseworker to a house where a man had badly beaten his wife and little daughter. I was going to question his wife one more time after she suddenly withdrew the charges. I went there to find out why, but she wasn’t at home and he blamed me for his having been accused. I’d encouraged his wife and daughter to report what happened. He hit me until I couldn’t stand up, and then he stripped me….” She paused, then forced the rest of it out. “He didn’t rape me, although I suppose he would have if his brother-in-law hadn’t driven up. He was arrested and charged, but he plea-bargained his way to a reduced sentence.”
“He wasn’t charged with attempted rape?”
“One of the more powerful city councilmen was his brother,” she told him. She left out the black torment of those weeks. “He was killed in a car wreck after being parolled, and the councilman moved away.”
“So he got away with it,” McCallum murmured angrily. He smoothed his hand over his hair and stared out the dark window. “I thought you’d led a sheltered, pampered life.”
“I did. Up to a point. My best friend had parents who drank too much. There were never any charges, and she hid her bruises really well. She’s the reason I went into social work.” She smiled bitterly. “It’s amazing how much damage liquor does in our society, isn’t it?”
He couldn’t deny that. “Does your friend live here?”
She shook her head. “She lives in England with her husband. We lost touch years ago.”
“Why in God’s name didn’t you give up your job when you were attacked?”
“Because I do a lot of good,” she replied quietly. “After it happened, I thought about quitting. It was only when the man’s wife came to me and apologized for what he’d done, and thanked me for trying to help, that I realized I had at least accomplished something. She took her daughter and went to live with her mother.
“I cared too much about the children to quit. I still do. It taught me a lesson. Now, when I send caseworkers out, I always send them in pairs, even if it takes more time to work cases. Some children have no advocates except us.”
“God knows, someone needs to care about them,” he replied quietly. “Kids get a rough shake in this world.”
She nodded and finished her coffee. Her eyes were curious, roaming around the room. There were hunting prints on the walls, but no photographs, no mementos. Everything that was personal had something military or work-related stamped on it. Like the mugs with the police insignias.
“What are you looking for? Sentiment?” he chided. “You won’t find it here. I’m not a sentimental man.”
“You’re a caring one, in your way,” she returned. “You were kind to Ellen and Chad.”
“Taking care of emotionally wounded people goes with the job,” he reminded her. He picked up his coffee cup and sipped the black liquid. His dark eyes searched hers. “I’ll remind you again that I don’t need hero worship from a social worker with a stunted libido.”
“Why, McCallum, I didn’t know you knew such big words,” she murmured demurely. “Do you read dictionaries in your spare time? I thought you spent it polishing your pistol.”
He chuckled with reserved pleasure. His deep voice sounded different when he laughed, probably because the sound was so rare, she mused.
“What do you do with yours?” he asked.
“I do housework,” she said. “And read over case files. I can’t sit around and do nothing. I have to stay busy.”
He finished his coffee and got up. “Want another cup?” he asked.
She shook her head and stood up, too. “I have to get home. Tomorrow’s another workday.”
“Let me open the latch for Mack so that he has access to the backyard and I’ll take you over there.”
“Won’t he run off?” she asked.
“He’s got a fenced-in area and his own entrance,” he replied. “I keep it latched to make sure the neighbor’s damned cat stays out of the house. It walks in and helps itself to his dog food when I’m not home. It climbs right over the fence!”
Jessica had to smother a laugh, he sounded so disgusted. She moved toward the dog, who suddenly growled up at her.
She stopped dead. He was a big dog, and pretty menacing at close range.
“Sorry,” McCallum said, tugging Mack toward his exit in the door. “He’s not used to women.”
“He’s big, isn’t he?” she asked, avoiding any further comment.
“Big enough. He eats like a horse.” He took his car keys out of his pocket and locked up behind her while she got into the car.
They drove back toward her place. The night sky was dark, but full of stars. The sky went on forever in this part of the country, and Jessica could understand how McCallum would return here. She herself could never really leave. Her heart would always yearn for home in Montana.
When they got to her cabin, there was a single lighted window, and her big tomcat was outlined in it.
“That’s Meriwether,” she told him. “He wandered up here a couple of years ago and I let him stay. He’s an orange tabby with battle-scarred ears.”
“I hate cats,” he murmured as he stopped the car at her front door.
“That doesn’t surprise me, McCallum. What surprises me is that you have a pet at all—and that you even allow a stray cat on your property.”
“Sarcasm is not your style, Miss Larson,” he chided.
“How do you know? Other than the time you were sick, you only see me at work.”
He pursed his lips and smiled faintly. “It’s safer that way. You lonely spinsters are dangerous.”
“Not me. I intend to be a lonely spinster for life,” she said firmly. “Marriage isn’t in my plans.”
He scowled. “Don’t you want kids?”
She opened her purse and took out her house key. “I like my life exactly as it is. Thanks for the lift. And the shoulder.” She glanced at him a little self-consciously.
“I’m a clam,” he said. “I don’t broadcast secrets; my own or anyone else’s.”
“That must be why you’re still working for Judd Hensley. He’s the same way.”
“He knew about your problem, I gather?”
She nodded. “He’s been sheriff here for a long time. He and h
is wife were good friends of my parents. I’m sorry about their divorce. He’s a lonely man these days.”
“Loneliness isn’t a disease,” he muttered. “Despite the fact that you women like to treat it like one.”
“Still upset about my bringing you that pot of soup, aren’t you?” she asked him. “Well, you were sick and nobody else was going to feed and look after you. I’m a social worker. I like taking care of the underprivileged.”
“I am not underprivileged.”
“You were sick and alone.”
“I wouldn’t have starved.”
“You didn’t have any food in the house,” she countered. “What did you plan to do, eat your dog?”
He made a face. “Considering some of the things he eats, God forbid!”
“Well, I wouldn’t eat Meriwether even if I really were starving.”
He glanced at the cat in the window. “I don’t blame you. Anything that ugly should be buried, not eaten.”
She made a sound deep in her throat and opened the car door.
“Go ahead,” he invited. “Tell me he’s not ugly.”
“I wouldn’t give you the satisfaction of arguing,” she said smugly. “Good night.”
“Lock that door.”
She glowered at him. “I’m twenty-five years old.” She pointed at her head. “This works.”
“No kidding!”
She made a dismissive gesture with her hand and walked up onto the porch. She didn’t look back, even when he beeped the horn as he drove away.
Three
Jessica unlocked her front door and walked into the familiar confines of the big cabin. A long hall led to the kitchen, past a spare bedroom. The floor, heart of pine, was scattered with worn throw rugs. The living and dining areas were in one room at the front. At the end of the hall near the kitchen was an elegant old bathroom. The plumbing drove her crazy in the winters—which were almost unsurvivable in this house—and the summers were hotter than blazes. She had no air-conditioning and the heating system was unreliable. She had to supplement it with fireplaces and scattered kerosene heaters. Probably one day she’d burn the whole place down around her ears trying to keep warm, but except for the infrequent cold, she remained healthy. She dreamed of a house that was livable year-round.