by Neesa Hart
“What?”
“Never mind.” He reached across her to push open her door. “I’ll walk you upstairs.”
“You don’t—”
He kissed her, quickly, to stop the protest. “I will walk you upstairs.” He pronounced each word deliberately. “Stop arguing with me.”
“It’s a habit.”
“Just for tonight, what do you say we break it?’’
She held his gaze for brief seconds more, then slipped from the car without comment. When he opened the door to her apartment, she seemed to float across the threshold on a wave of fatigue. He took one look at her weary face, then made a decision. He threw the dead bolt home and dropped her keys on the foyer table. No way was he leaving her again. “Why don’t you sit down?” He indicated the sofa with a wave of his hand. “I’ll get you something to drink.”
She stared at him. “You don’t have to stay with me. I’m going to be all right.”
“I know.” He walked toward the kitchen. “Do you want tea, or something else?”
“I’m really fine, Jackson. I’ve been through this before. I can take care of myself.”
He decided to ignore that. “Do you have tea in here?”
She’d followed him into the kitchen. “I don’t need you to do this.”
He flashed her a brief smile. “Humor me.” Turning his attention back to the open cabinet, he produced a bottle of brandy. “All you offered me was soda.”
“That’s new. I bought it the morning after you were here.”
“So I’ve driven you to drink,” he quipped.
“You have no idea.”
He gave her a sympathetic look. “Believe me, I know the feeling. Would you rather have tea or this?’’
“I’d rather you left.”
“Not going to happen, babe. Sorry.” He decided on the brandy. Lord, she looked tired. If he didn’t think her nerves were already stripped raw, he’d tell her that she looked like she was going to fall on the floor. “Have a seat. I’ll heat this up.”
“I don’t want you here.” Her voice had taken on an edge he’d never heard before.
Instinct told him they were reaching a turning point. She’d trusted him with so much at the hospital. He was willing to bet that she was still reeling from it, and she desperately wanted time to regain her equilibrium. Inclined as he was to give it to her, his gut told him to stay put. Too many people had left Cammy alone too many times. He wasn’t about to add his name to the list of deserters. “I’m not leaving, Cam. You’re stuck with me.”
“You don’t understand.” Her eyes had begun to glitter. He sensed the emotional storm cresting the horizon and schooled his expression to remain passive. “There are things that I do—ways I have of handling this. They don’t include you.”
If he had a brain in his head, he supposed, he’d run like hell. She’d given him the perfect excuse. She said she didn’t want him. But as he studied her drawn features, the slightly panicked look in her eyes, his heart got in the way. “They do now,” he said quietly.
He watched her hands fist at her side. “You can’t have this from me. I gave you the rest. You can’t have this.”
Drawing a deep breath, he plunged ahead. “You aren’t going to turn into her, Cammy. It’s not going to happen.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I know that you’re not the same person she is. You’re an incredibly passionate, caring, brilliant woman. I wish you could see what I see.”
The first tear scalded a path down her cheek. “Damn you,” she whispered.
“I don’t want you to be afraid of this, of who you are, Cammy. And if you are, I don’t want you to face that fear by yourself. Let me go there with you.”
“Damn you,” she said again, and this time, the storm overtook her. Her shoulders hunched as a soul-deep sob dragged from her body.
Jackson didn’t hesitate. He plunked the bottle down on the counter and crossed the room in three long strides. Scooping her into his arms, he carried her into the living room. He settled his large frame on the sofa as he cradled her against his chest. Carefully, he lifted her glasses from her nose, then disconnected her ear piece. Setting both aside, he eased her across his lap so she lay sobbing against him. His heart broke with each jerk of her shoulders. As her tears soaked his shirt, he smoothed a hand through her hair, feeling helpless and irrationally angry at her pain and its causes.
Without the benefit of her earpiece, she couldn’t hear him, he knew. He was spared the awkward task of offering meaningless words of comfort. Instead, he gently tendered the only things he knew to give: his presence and his companionship. Too many times, she’d faced this demon alone. She’d told him of escaping to the roof of her parents’ home where she’d wished on stars, like thousands of children before her. He had a mental picture of a lonely child, staring into the heavens, confused and hurting. The image struck deep, made his insides ache with the rhythm of her sobbing.
His arms tightened. He buried his lips in her hair. And for the first time in his adult life, he sent a silent plea of his own to the heavens. Please, his heart begged, please help me. I can’t lose her
eleven
“I can’t believe you’re canceling.” Mike stood at her desk, five days later, glaring at her. “What am I supposed to tell Chris Harris?”
She shrugged. Jackson had called that afternoon to ask her how much she would mind skipping their command performance dinner at the Harris home that evening. She’d assured him she could be talked into staying home for something as uncomplicated as nursing a hangnail. “I didn’t cancel. Jackson did.” “What am I supposed to tell Chris?” “He’s Jackson’s boss. Let him worry about it.” “You know that the whole point of this thing was so Chris’s wife could get the two of you together.”
There was that word again: together. When had that become such a complicated concept? Sometime, she imagined, between her trip to his parents’ home and waking up on her sofa with him. “Then she should be pleased. I’m seeing him tonight. We’re just not going to dinner at the Harrises’.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. He didn’t tell me.”
Mike’s eyes narrowed. “You’re doing something spontaneous?’’
“Don’t look so shocked. I am capable, you know.”
“Just not prone.” He pursed his lips for a moment. “Maybe this guy is better for you than I thought.”
She winced. For a week, she’d buried herself in enough work to keep her mind off Jackson Puller. At least, she’d tried. The fact that he’d called three or four times a day, attended both of her sessions with the children, turned up at lunch one day with Chinese takeout, and generally managed to edge his way into her thoughts whenever she lowered her guard had wreaked havoc with her well-planned strategy. As much as she wanted to deny it, he’d knocked her for a loop.
When he’d arrived at the hospital, she hadn’t been sure what to expect. Nothing could have prepared her for waking up, still wrapped in his embrace, stretched out on her couch. He hadn’t fled, or tried to extricate himself from the messier details of her life. He’d cushioned her head on his chest and stayed the night. When she thought about it, it made her head spin.
She’d hurried him out of her house, using some hastily concocted excuse about meeting with doctors and discussing her mother’s case. He’d looked doubtful, but he’d succumbed.
The respite from his probing gaze appeared to be short-lived.
By Tuesday morning, a knot of queasy anxiety had begun to form in the pit of her stomach. She’d entered her office to find him waiting with a bag of pastries and two cups of coffee. He didn’t give any indication that he’d given any deep thought to the other night. Instead, he’d inquired about her mother, then gracefully accepted her unsubtle change of subject. They’d discussed her morning session, talked about Jackson’s interview with Amy, and the progress he was making on his second column.
He told her his pare
nts had sent their regards and expressed their concern for her mother. She searched, hard, but found no signs of reticence or withdrawal in his expression or manner. She’d been sure she could show him the insurmountable odds they faced. He, however, refused to fall in line with her very sensible plan to convince him why he couldn’t afford to get involved with her. Instead, he’d brought her Szechwan Chicken for lunch the next day.
And she felt herself slipping into a warm, blanketing haze that the warning bells couldn’t penetrate.
“Cammy?” Mike’s voice pulled her from her reverie.
She gave him a sheepish look. “Sorry. I was lost in thought.”
“You were mooning.” He sounded amazed.
“I was not mooning. I never moon.”
“I know.”
“Don’t get carried away, Mike. Jackson and I are friends.” His eyebrows lifted. “Good friends,” she clarified.
“Are you going to tell me what’s in that shopping bag you have under your desk?”
“How do you know about that?”
“While you were out, I came in to steal chocolate. I saw the bag. Very swank place. Not your usual style.”
She folded her hands on top of her desk and tried not to think of the small fortune she’d spent on the black dress. “I needed something for the Wishing Star fund-raiser.”
“Which is two months away.”
“They were having a sale.”
“And it wouldn’t have anything to do with the fact that Puller called and asked you to wear black tonight?”
“How do you know that?”
“Stripped the message off the answering service. If you don’t want me to know stuff, we should get separate numbers.”
“Or you could have punched the button to skip it when you knew it was for me.”
“I’m getting old. My reflexes are slow.”
She rolled her eyes. “And I’m Marilyn Monroe.”
“You might be in that dress.”
“Did you look at it?”
He didn’t even have the grace to look repentant. “Absolutely. Bess is going to want a full report.”
Cammy laughed. “Mike, you’re hopeless. If your wife knew how much stuff you blame on her, she’d kill you.”
“I never pretended not to be curious.”
“Nosy.”
“Or nosy,” he agreed. “Besides, it’s a killer dress. Do I get to see what it looks like on?”
“No.”
“What if I tell you that you can have the rest of the afternoon off to go buy slinky lingerie?”
“I don’t need slinky lingerie. You don’t control my hours, and if you weren’t my very good friend, I’d warn you that you’re dancing very close to sexual harassment.”
“Hah. If anyone’s harassed in this office it’s me. My partner is snuggling with Super-Scoop and I have to cull the details from phone messages and credit card receipts.”
“Don’t feel left out. I think I’m in the dark as much as you are. He’s something of an enigma.”
“The two of you should be well-suited, then.”
“I guess.”
Mike’s expression turned suddenly serious. “Kidding aside, Cam, I know this has been a rough week for you. Try not to let fear get in the way of following your heart.”
“Sometimes my heart wants to go where it shouldn’t. That’s a lesson I’ve learned in life. It’s not always a bad idea to burn a bridge without crossing it first.”
“Your head doesn’t always know best, either,” he grumbled. “I’d give you a lecture about not allowing past experiences to dictate current responses, but you wouldn’t listen.”
“Probably not.”
“So will you at least promise me that you’ll try to enjoy the moment?”
The moment, she decided three hours later, would be easier to enjoy if she didn’t feel like she was about to fall off a cliff. She squinted at her reflection in the mirror in her office. Without the benefit of her glasses, her image was a bit blurry. Not blurry enough, however, to make her secure with the picture she presented. What in the world, she wondered, had possessed her to buy this dress? Tugging at the hem, which seemed a full three inches shorter than it had in the store dressing room, she turned to look at the back. Had she simply failed to notice the way the oval cutout in the back revealed such a generous expanse of skin, or had that been a trick of the light?
She’d fallen for it, she supposed, because the cowl neckline gave her a place to hide her cochlear transmitter. She’d been able to disguise it in the folds of the dress rather than clipping it to her waist. Consequently, the black crepe skimmed her figure in uninterrupted lines that displayed every curve to advantage.
As if the dress, which dipped too low in the back, showed too much of her legs, and fitted too closely in the front, wasn’t bad enough, she’d allowed Macon to talk her into a trip to the salon. While Macon’s hairdresser had used scissors and a comb to attack her very sensible haircut, Macon had distracted her by talking about her publicity plans for the Wishing Star fund-raiser. By the time Cammy knew what was happening, René was blowing her hair dry.
When he finished, he spun the chair with a flourish. Cammy had stared at the mirror with the same sense of unreality she felt now. She hardly recognized herself. René and Macon called the scrunched, windswept look “sexy modern chic.” As far as Cammy could tell, she looked like she’d spent four hours in a convertible. For the hundredth time that day, she resisted the compelling urge to take a brush to her hair. Besides, the dress seemed a more pressing problem.
The low whistle from the doorway clinched it. She was not going out like this. Gathering what she personally thought was admirable poise, she turned to face Jackson. He leaned against the door frame, looking positively devastating in a black suit and pristine white shirt. She was almost glad he was far enough away to look a little fuzzy. If he looked any better in focus, she might melt.
Jackson strode across the room in his characteristically long-limbed stride. The closer he got, the faster her pulse beat. By the time he stood a foot away, she was foundering about for something, anything, that might help her remember all the rules she kept firmly in place to keep her out of precisely this kind of trouble.
He didn’t give her a chance to find one. He cradled her face in his hands and bent his head for a long, thorough kiss. As his lips glided over hers, and his fingertips caressed her sensitive skin, she curled her hands around his wrists. She seriously feared her knees might buckle beneath the sensual onslaught. When his tongue darted out to trace the curve of her lips, she sighed softly. He muttered a soft oath that sounded an awful lot like a compliment, then tore his lips from hers to trail a delicate path along her jaw. When he finally reached the juncture of nerves at her collarbone, she was clinging to him. A soft moan escaped her. At the sound, Jackson lifted his head.
The gleam in his eyes sent a shiver down her nearly bare spine. Her gaze remained riveted to his warm, firmly chiseled mouth. “Hello.”
She wasn’t sure if he’d said the word, or if he’d simply mouthed it. The blood roared so loudly in her ears that she couldn’t hear. “Hi.”
His hand skimmed her arm, her rib cage, the underside of her breast, then settled firmly at her waist. “Can you hear me?” he asked.
She blinked. How had he known? “What?”
“Your transmitter,” he clarified. He touched the ear piece in her right ear. “You’re not wearing the receiving box.”
The fog finally lifted. “Oh.” She forced her fingers from his wrist to touch her neckline. “It’s in here.”
Something flared in his eyes. Even his temperature seemed to raise a notch. She had a sudden heightened awareness of his scent. Soap and cologne and printer’s ink mingled to intoxicate her. “Are you trying to kill me?” he rasped.
Her eyebrows lowered in confusion. “What?”
His gaze went meaningfully to her neckline. “First, there’s this dress.” His hand brushed her side as he moved i
t to the bare flesh of her back. “Which would have been a pretty solid line-drive double all on its own.” His other hand twined a tendril of hair on his index finger. “Then there’s your hair.” He shook his head slightly, “which could more or less guarantee the outfielder is going to juggle the catch, and you can make it to third without even sliding.”
Her lips twitched. “You really know how to charm a girl, don’t you? Sports talk always makes me swoon.”
He shifted his hips against hers, pressed her a little closer so his loose embrace turned intimate. “And then, just to make sure there’s no contest here, you tell me that little black box is buried somewhere,” his gaze shifted meaningfully, “down there. Which just about ensures that I’ll spend a good portion of the evening wondering what would happen if I went looking for it.”
A surge of pure feminine power raced through her. And she liked it, she realized. “Do I get a home run for that?”
“Honey,” his gaze lifted to hers, “you get me as your personal slave for the night for that.”
Despite his jesting tone, the remark sent sparks skittering through her blood. “Oh.”
Jackson laughed. “Never had one before, have you?”
“A what?”
“A slave?”
“Um, no. I had a dog once. And Charley Patterson had a crush on me in the third grade, which was somewhat slavish in nature, but this is a first.”
He ran one hand down her arm to lace her fingers with his. “Want an etiquette lesson?”
Her eyebrows lifted. “Exactly what do you know about having a slave?”
“I did a story, once, in Burma, where I enjoyed the attentions of a devoted personal servant.”
“Female, I presume?”
“Naturally.”
“That’s barbaric.”
“She didn’t think so.”
“I’ll bet.”
His lips twitched. She wished he’d stop doing that. Every time his mouth moved in that half-smile, her insides quaked. “Anyway, she taught me a few things.”