His blood leapt in his veins and roared in the ear she was tormenting. "When do we get started?"
"Well." She rubbed against him, tilting her head back just enough to look into his eyes. "Why waste time?"
"God, I love an aggressive woman."
"Good. Because I've got big plans for you-" She caught from now. Ten years. And still setting off that stirring in his blood.
My God. His hand slid bonelessly from the dog's head. He was in love with her. Really in love. Totally caught in the big, scary L word.
And what the hell was he going to do about it?
In control? he thought, dazed. Able to back off anytime? What a crock.
He rose on unsteady legs. The clutching in his stomach was plain fear. And it was for both of them. She glanced over, tipping the cap down so that the brim shaded her eyes.
"Something wrong?"
"No. No, I- I was going to go in and get us something cold."
He all but ran into the house, leaving Morgana staring after him.
Coward. Wimp. Idiot. All the way into the kitchen, he cursed himself. After filling a glass with water, he gulped it down. Maybe it was a touch of sun. A lack of sleep. An overactive libido.
Slowly he set the glass aside. Like hell. It was love.
Step right up, ladies and gentlemen. Step right up and see an average man transformed into a puddle of nerves and terror by the love of a good woman.
He bent over the sink and splashed water on his face. He didn't know how it had happened, but he was going to have to deal with it. As far as he could see, there was no place to run. He was a grown man, Nash reminded himself. So he would do the adult thing and face it.
Maybe he should just tell her. Straight out.
Morgana, I'm crazy about you.
Blowing out a breath, he dashed more water onto his face. Too weak. Too ambivalent.
Morgana, I've come to realize that what I feel for you is more than attraction. Even more than affection.
This time his breath hissed out. Too wordy. Too damn stupid.
Morgana, I love you.
Simple. To the point. And scary as hell.
He majored in scary, he reminded himself. He ought to be able to pull this off. Straightening his shoulders, bracing his system, he started out of the kitchen.
The wall phone shrilled and nearly had him jumping out of his shoes.
"Easy, boy," he muttered.
"Nash?" Morgana stood in the kitchen doorway, eyes full of curiosity and concern. "Are you all right?"
"Me? Yeah, yeah, I'm great." He dragged a nervous hand through his hair. "How about you?"
"Fine," she said slowly. "Are you going to answer the phone?"
"The phone?" While his mind scattered in a thousand directions, he glanced at the ringing phone. "Sure."
"Good. I'll fix us that cold drink while you do." Still frowning at him, she walked to the refrigerator.
Nash didn't notice that his palms were wet until he picked up the receiver. Forcing a grin, he wiped his free hand on his jeans.
"Hello." The excuse for a smile faded instantly. Stunned, Morgana paused with one hand on a soft-drink bottle and the other on the refrigerator door.
She'd never seen him look like this. Cold. His eyes had frosted over. Ice over velvet. Even as he leaned back against the counter, there was tension in every line of his body.
Morgana felt a shudder rush down her spine. She'd known he could be dangerous, and the man she was staring at now had stripped off all the easygoing charm and good-natured humor. Like one of the characters Nash might have conjured out of his imagination, this man was capable of quick and bloodless violence.
Whoever was on the other end of the telephone should have been grateful for the distance between them.
"Leeanne." He said the name in a flat, gelid tone. The voice rattling brightly in his ear set his teeth on edge. Old memories, old wounds, swam to the surface. He let her ramble for a moment, until he was sure he had himself under control. "Just cut to the chase, Leeanne. How much?"
He listened to the wheedling, the whining, the recriminations. His responsibilities, he was reminded. His obligations. His family.
"No, I don't give a damn. It's not my fault you got hung up with another loser." His lips curved in a humorless smile. "Yeah, right. Bad luck. How much?" he repeated, barely lifting a brow at the requested amount. Resigned, he pulled open a drawer and rummaged until he found a tattered scrap of paper and the stub of an old pencil. "Where do I send it?" He scribbled. "Yes, I've got it. Tomorrow." He tossed the paper onto the counter. "I said I would, didn't I? Just drop it. I've got things to do. Sure. You bet."
He hung up and started to let loose with a stream of oaths. Then he focused on Morgana. He'd forgotten she was there. When she started to speak, he shook his head.
"I'm going for a walk," he said abruptly, and slammed out of the screen door.
Carefully Morgana set the bottle she still held on the counter. Whoever had called had done more than anger him, she realized. She had seen more than anger in his eyes. She had seen grief, too. One had been as vicious as the other.
Because of it, she blocked her first inclination, to go after him. She would give him a few minutes alone first.
His long strides ate up the ground quickly. He stalked over the grass that had given him so much pleasure when he had mowed it only an hour before, passed without noticing the flowers that were already lapping up the sun now that they were free of choking weeds. Automatically he headed for the tumble of rocks at the edge of his property that separated his land from the bay.
This was another reason he'd been drawn to this place. The combination of wildness and serenity.
It suited him, he supposed as he dug his hands deep in his pockets. On the surface he was a relaxed, contented man. Those qualities usually extended deeper. But often, maybe too often, there was a recklessness swarming inside him.
Now he dropped down on a rock and stared out over the water. He would watch the gulls, the waves, the boats. And he would wait until he felt that contentment again.
He drew a deep breath, cleansing. Thank God was all he could think. Thank God he hadn't spoken of his feelings to Morgana.
All it had taken was one phone call from the past to remind him that there was no place for love in his life.
He would have told her, he realized. He would have gone with the impulse of the moment, and told her he loved her. Maybe-probably-he would have started to make plans.
Then he would have messed it up. No doubt he would have messed it up. Sabotaging relationships was in his blood.
His hands curled and uncurled as he struggled to level again. Leeanne, he thought with a short, bitter bark of laughter. Well, he would send her the money, and she would fade out of his life. Again. Until the money ran out.
And that pattern would repeat itself over and over again. For the rest of his life.
"It's beautiful here," Morgana said quietly from behind him.
He didn't jolt. He just sighed. Nash supposed he should have expected her to follow him. And he supposed she would expect some sort of explanation.
He wondered how creative he might be. Should he tell her Leeanne was an old lover, someone he'd pushed aside who wouldn't stay aside? Or maybe he'd weave some amusing tale about being blackmailed by the wife of a Mafia don, with whom he'd had a brief, torrid affair. That had a nice ring.
Or he could work on her sympathies and tell her Leeanne was a destitute widow-his best friend's widow-who tapped him for cash now and again.
Hell, he could tell her it had been a call for the policemen's fund. Anything. Anything but the bitter truth.
Her hand brushed his shoulder as she settled on the rock beside him. And demanded nothing. Said nothing. She only looked out over the bay, as he did. Waiting. Smelling of night. Of smoke and roses.
He had a terrible urge to simply turn and bury his face at her breast. Just to hold her and be held until all this helpless anger faded away.<
br />
And he knew that, no matter how clever he was, how glib, she would believe nothing but the truth.
"I like it here," he said, as if several long, silent minutes hadn't passed between her observation and his response. "In
L.A. I looked out of my condo and saw another condo. I guess I didn't realize I was feeling hemmed in until I moved here."
"Everyone feels hemmed in from time to time, no matter where they live." She laid a hand on his thigh. "When I'm feeling that way, I go to Ireland. Walk along an empty beach. When I do, I think of all the people who have walked there before, and will walk there again. Then it occurs to me that nothing is forever. No matter how bad, or how good, everything passes and moves on to another level."
"'All things change; nothing perishes,' " he mumbled.
She smiled. "Yes, I'd say that sums it up perfectly." Reaching over, she cupped his face in her hands. Her eyes were soft and clear, and her voice was full of comfort ready to be offered. "Talk to me, Nash. I may not be able to help, but I can listen."
"There's nothing to say."
Something else flicked into her eyes. Nash cursed himself when he recognized it as hurt. "So, I'm welcome in your bed, but not into your mind."
"Damn it, one has nothing to do with the other." He wouldn't be pushed, wouldn't be prodded or maneuvered into revealing parts of himself he chose to keep hidden.
"I see." Her hands dropped away from his face. For a moment she was tempted to help him, to spin a simple charm that would give him peace of mind. But it wasn't right; it wouldn't be real. And she knew using magic to change his feelings would only hurt them both. "All right, then. I'm going to go finish the marigolds."
She rose. No recriminations, no heated words. He would have preferred them to this cool acceptance. As she took a step away, he grabbed her hand. She saw the war on his face, but offered nothing but silence.
"Leeanne's my mother."
CHAPTER 10
His mother.
It was the anguish in his eyes that had Morgana masking her shock. She remembered how cold his voice had been when he spoke to Leeanne, how his face had fallen into hard, rigid lines. Yet the woman on the other end of the telephone line had been his mother.
What could make a man feel such distaste and dislike for the woman he owed his life to?
But the man was Nash. Because of that, she worked past her own deeply ingrained loyalty to family as she studied him.
Hurt, she realized. There had been as much hurt as anger in his voice, in his face, then. And now. She could see it plainly now that all the layers of arrogance, confidence and ease had been stripped away. Her heart ached for him, but she knew mat wouldn't lessen his hurt. She wished she had Anastasia's talent and could take on some of his pain.
Instead, she kept his hand in hers and sat beside him again. No, she was not an empath, but she could offer support, and love.
"Tell me."
Where did he begin? Nash wondered. How could he explain to her what he had never been able to explain to himself?
He looked down at their joined hands, at the way her strong fingers entwined with his. She was offering support, understanding, when he hadn't thought he needed any.
The feelings he'd always been reluctant to voice, refused to share, flowed out.
"I guess you'd have to know my grandmother. She was-" he searched for a polite way of putting it "-a straight arrow. And she expected everyone to fly that same narrow course. If I had to choose one adjective, I'd go with intolerant. She'd been widowed when Leeanne was about ten. My grandfather'd had this insurance business, so she'd been left pretty well off. But she liked to scrape pennies. She was one of those people who didn't have it in her to enjoy life."
He fell silent, watching the gulls sweep over the water. When his hand moved restlessly in hers, Morgana said nothing, and waited.
"Anyway, it might sound kind of sad and poignant. The widow with two young girls to raise alone. Until you understand that she liked being in charge. Being the widow Kirkland and having no one to answer to but herself. I have to figure she was pretty rough on her daughters, holding holiness and sex over their heads like lightning bolts. It didn't work very well with Leeanne. At seventeen she was pregnant and didn't have a clue who the father might have been."
He said it with a shrug in his voice, but Morgana saw beneath it. "You blame her for that?"
"For that?" He looked at her, his eyes dark. "No. Not for that. The old lady must have made her life hell for the best part of nine months. Depending on who you get it from, Leeanne was a poor, lonely girl punished ruthlessly for one little slip. Or my grandmother was this long-suffering saint who took her sinful daughter in. My own personal opinion is that we had two selfish women who didn't give a damn about anyone but themselves."
"She was only seventeen, Nash," Morgana said quietly.
Anger carved his face into hard, unyielding lines. "That's supposed to make it okay? She was only seventeen, so it's okay that she bounced around so many guys she didn't know who got her pregnant. She was only seventeen, so it's okay that two days after she had me she took off, left me with that bitter old woman without a word, without a call or even a thought, for twenty-six years."
The raw emotion in his voice squeezed her heart. She wanted to gather him close, hold him until the worst of it passed. But when she reached out, he jerked away, then stood.
"I need to walk."
She made her decision quickly. She could either leave him to work off his pain alone, or she could share it with him. Before he could take three strides, she was beside him, taking his hand again.
"I'm sorry, Nash."
He shook his head violently. The air he gulped in was as sweet as spring, and yet it burned like bile in his throat. "I'm sorry. No reason to take it out on you."
She touched his cheek. "I can handle it."
But he wasn't sure he could. He'd never talked the whole business through before, not with anyone. Saying it all out loud left an ugly taste in his mouth, one he was afraid he'd never be rid of. He took another careful breath and started again.
"I stayed with my grandmother until I was five. My aunt, Carolyn, had married. He was in the army, a lifer. For the next few years I moved around with them, from base to base. He was a hard-nosed bastard-only tolerated me because Carolyn would cry and carry on when he got drunk and threatened to send me back."
Morgana could imagine it all too clearly. The little boy in the empty middle, controlled by everyone, belonging to no one. "You hated it."
"Yeah, I guess that hits the center. I didn't know why, exactly, but I hated it. Looking back, I realize that Carolyn was as unstable as Leeanne, in her own way. One minute she'd fawn all over me, the next she'd ignore me. She wasn't having any luck getting pregnant herself. Then, when I was about eight or nine, she found out she was going to have a kid of her own. So I got shipped back to my grandmother. Carolyn didn't need a substitute anymore."
Morgana felt her eyes fill with angry tears at the image of the child, helpless, innocent, being shuffled back and forth between people who knew nothing of love.
"She never looked at me like a person, you know? I was a mistake. That was the worst of it," he said, as if to himself. "The way she drummed that point home. That every breath I took, every beat of my heart was only possible because some careless, rebellious girl had made a mistake."
"No," Morgana said, appalled. "She was wrong."
"Yeah, maybe. But things like that stick with you. I heard a lot about the sins of the father, the evils of the flesh. I was lazy, intractable and wicked-one of her favorite words." He sent Morgana a grim little smile. "But that was no more than she expected, seeing as how I'd been conceived."
"She was a horrible woman," Morgana bit out. "She didn't deserve you."
"Well, she'd have agreed with you on the second part. And she made me understand just how grateful I should be that she put food in my belly and a roof over my head. But I wasn't feeling very grateful, and I r
an away a lot. By the time I was twelve, I got slipped into the system. Foster homes."
His shoulders moved restlessly, in a small outward showing of the turmoil within. He was pacing back and forth over the grounds, his stride lengthening as the memories worked on him.
"Some of them were okay. The ones that really wanted you. Others just wanted the check you brought in every month, but sometimes you got lucky and ended up in a real home. I spent one Christmas with this family, the Hendersons." His voice changed, took on a hint of wonder. "They were great-treated me just like they treated their own kids. You could always smell cookies baking. They had the tree, the presents under it. All that colored paper and ribbon. Stockings hanging from the mantel. It really blew me away to see one with my name on it.
"They gave me a bike," he said quietly. "Mr. Henderson bought it secondhand and took it down to the basement to fix it up. He painted it red. Bug-eyed, fire-engine red, and he'd polished all the chrome. He put a lot of time into making that bike something special. He showed me how to hook baseball cards on the spokes."
He sent her a sheepish look that had Morgana tilting her head. "What?"
"Well, it was a really great bike, but I didn't know how to ride. I'd never had a bike. Here I was, nearly twelve years old, and that bike might as well have been a Harley hog for all I knew."
Morgana came staunchly to his defense. "That's nothing to be ashamed of."
Nash sent her an arch look. "Obviously you've never been an eleven-year-old boy. It's pretty tough to handle the passage into manhood when you can't handle a two-wheeler. So, I mooned over it, made excuses not to ride it. I had homework, I'd twisted my ankle, it looked like rain. Thought I was pretty clever, but she-Mrs. Henderson-saw right through me. One day she got me up early, before anyone else was awake, and took me out. She taught me. Held the back of the seat, "ran along beside me. Made me laugh when I took a spill. And when I managed to wobble down the sidewalk on my own, she cried. Nobody'd ever-" He let his words trail off, embarrassed by the scope of emotion that memory evoked.
Tears burned the back of her throat. "They must have been wonderful people."
Books by Nora Roberts Page 247