Maybe he'd planned to knock her off guard by using the old nickname in such a gruffly intimate tone, or maybe it just slipped out. Habit was a powerful thing after all, she told herself as she found her gaze locked with his.
The smile in his eyes died, replaced by a raw hunger that took her breath. He wasn't moving. Neither was she. He was barely breathing.
"You've made a nice life here," he said. "I wondered, sometimes, if you would stay."
"I thought about leaving after college, maybe taking the job as a family counselor that I was offered in Seattle after I got my master's."
"Why didn't you?"
She shrugged. "I came home for the summer to think about it, met Steve, who had just been hired as head coach at Grantley High, and…" She shrugged again.
"And fell in love?" His gaze dropped to the partially completed form on the clipboard and stayed there.
"Yes, fell in love."
Longings she had suppressed for years suddenly welled inside her. For the caress of a big hand. For the warmth of a man's body curved around hers in the darkest hours of the night. For a quick, welcoming smile at the end of a hard day.
It was Steve's smile she remembered, but it was Judd's rugged profile she saw now. And Judd's warmth that would envelop her if she was to step into his arms and press her cheek against his wide, strong shoulder.
The need to be close to him grew stronger and then more physical. Loneliness, worry, a woman's need to be held—those were the things that were tugging at her. It wasn't personal. It couldn't be personal. She wouldn't let it.
She shifted her gaze. To the rumpled twin beds. To the branches outside the window. Anywhere but those dark as death, haunted eyes.
"Do you see any problems here? Other than the mess, I mean?" Her tone was formal, shutting the door on the rare moment of intimacy.
There was a beat of hard, cold silence.
"You need a sticker on all of the bedroom windows to indicate the number of children sleeping in each room. I'm surprised a fireman's niece didn't know that."
He turned and was out of the room before she could answer. As though by some kind of unspoken agreement, the rest of the inspection was done in virtual silence.
A dusty pickup filled with shouting teenagers was just pulling away from the end of the lane when Judd followed Darcy out of the back door and into the sunshine. A young woman toting a load of textbooks above her swelling belly was trudging up the lane.
"I got an A in algebra," she shouted as soon as she spied Darcy standing next to Judd on the sidewalk.
"Terrific! That calls for a celebration."
"Double banana splits at Groler's?" the girl said as she drew closer.
"It's a deal. But no chocolate sprinkles, remember? The little guys don't like chocolate."
"Oh yeah, I forgot." Prudy turned to Judd before Darcy could introduce them and stuck out her hand.
"My name's Prudy, and you're the new fire chief."
"Yeah, does it show?" he asked, shaking her hand.
Prudy's chin angled and her expression turned sprightly. "No, but it's all over school and some of the people I baby-sit for are talking, you know? About how you've been gone for ages and now, all of a sudden, you're back and making all kinds of changes to the fire department, like making them train all the time instead of just playing checkers like they did before when they weren't out putting out fires and stuff like that. I've been making notes."
"Notes?" His gaze sliced to Darcy, who grinned.
"Prudy is going to be a famous writer someday."
"Why do I think I should leave right now?"
"You're on your own here, Chief. I have to check with Sean-O about tomorrow's schedule. I'll be over by the fence if you need me."
Turning, she headed toward the section of trees closest to the house where an ancient tractor was just chugging into view, driven by a plump white-haired man who looked up and waved.
"That's Sean-O," Prudy explained with a fond grin. "He's sorta like Darcy's father, only he's not really related. I like him. He makes me laugh."
"He used to make me laugh, too."
"You know Sean-O?"
Sean-O had been there the night Patrick had died, too. Judd could still see the tears streaming down Sean-O's seamed face and realized that he wasn't ready to face the old man again.
"We were friends once."
Prudy nodded, then frowned impatiently. "Now where was I? Oh yeah, about taking notes. I have it all planned out. First I have the babies, and then I finish school and find a job while I go to college and learn all about people, you know, psychology and stuff like that."
"I thought you planned to be a writer," Judd managed to say when she paused for a breath.
"Sure, but I'm going to write about people. I'm already collecting faces. For characters, you know?"
"Not exactly."
"Well, yours is definitely interesting, mostly because you have this funny stillness about you that hides your thoughts. Like now."
He found himself smiling. Someday Prudy would run some lucky guy a merry chase until she caught him—and then he'd spend the rest of his life trying to keep up with her.
"So are you here to ask Darcy for a date or what?"
"I thought you were going to be a writer, not a matchmaker."
"Well it's pretty obvious that you're interested in her—sexually, anyway. I could tell because I saw the way your jaw got all tight like you were clenching your teeth when you were watching her walk over to the fence."
"And that told you that I'm interested in her?"
"Sexually. Sure." She turned to see if anyone was in earshot, then leaned closer. "Only I have to tell you you're wasting your time. Darcy doesn't sleep around. Not like me."
The girl patted her tummy and grinned, but her eyes dared him to find fault. "Only it was just one time, you know? I was so dumb I didn't think I could get pregnant the first time, but I found out it happens that way sometimes."
And sometimes it doesn't, he thought. If it had, his life might have been different.
"So where's the father?" he asked.
"Gone, split as soon as he found out." She shrugged. "Who could blame him, though? I mean, he was livin' on the streets, same as me. The last thing a guy like that needs is a kid to take care of, right?"
"Depends on the guy."
"Yeah, that's what Darcy said. She helped me plan things out, the way she planned her life when she was my age."
"Uh, just how old are you again?"
"Sixteen. Darcy said that she was in love when she was sixteen and wanted to get married, only the guy up and left her, just like Arturo left me. Broke her heart, you know, only she got over it and fell in love with a really neat guy the next time."
Her eyes turned sad. "Only he died a few years ago, drowned in the Rogue River. Darcy was supposed to go with him, only the twins came down with chicken pox and so she stayed home to nurse them."
She sighed, then perked up again. Obviously nothing got Prudy down long. "Makes a great story, doesn't it? Beautiful young girl loses the only two men she's ever slept with, then swears she'll never let herself fall in love again."
Judd fisted the pencil in his hand so tightly it snapped. "Sounds melodramatic to me."
The look she shot him dripped with exasperation. "Hey, what are you, anyway? One of those guys who doesn't believe in love?"
Judd glanced past the roof of the house and the trees to the sky. The leaves fluttered in the slight wind, and to the east, a pair of Canada geese were flying in a loose formation. Geese mated for life, often dying of a broken heart after the loss of a mate.
"You know what, Prudy? You ask too many questions."
"Yeah, that's what everyone says."
Excusing himself, he headed toward the barn. It was the last thing he needed to check, and then he'd be done with the Kerrigan House—done with the noise and confusion and the redheaded den mother who had made a home out of a darn circus.
Laughing at s
omething Sean-O had just said, Darcy watched Judd turn abruptly and head toward the rebuilt barn with the impatient stride of a man with something on his mind. What had Prudy said now? she thought with an inner groan.
As soon as she could, she broke free and followed. Inside the barn she paused to let her eyes adjust to the perpetual twilight. The air was at least ten degrees cooler here and carried the rich odor of alfalfa and manure. She loved the smell. It reminded her of her mother and the time when she was the same age as the twins, sneaking from her bed in the middle of the night to watch her mother and father deliver the foal that turned out to be Berry's mother.
Hearing a familiar step, Berry stuck her head over the bar of her stall and nickered a greeting, along with a plea for a treat. Sorry, baby, Darcy told her silently. I hadn't planned on seeing you quite yet.
"Judd? Are you in here?"
He didn't answer, but he was there, standing in front of one of the empty stalls, his hand braced on one of the support pillars.
She waited until she was a few feet away before calling his name, softer this time. "Judd?"
"I told myself it was all right to sneak a cigarette now and then."
"I know. So did Papa, I think."
He didn't acknowledge her presence or her words. "That night … Jeff Rivers had raided his old man's liquor store. Bourbon, Scotch, tequila—anything anyone wanted." His jaw tightened. "I remember finishing the best part of a fifth of tequila and then going outside to throw up."
Darcy forgot to breathe. Judd was raw and hurting, the way he'd been that night. She wanted to go to him, to wrap her arms around him and hold him tight until the pain eased, but she found herself rooted to the barn floor.
Slowly he turned his head and looked at her. Torment was a mild word to describe the pain she saw etched in the lines of his face, but it was the only one she had.
"Don't," she whispered as she took a step forward, but the swift warning that came into his eyes stopped her. Is that why he'd come in here alone? she wondered. To put his demons to rest? If so, she felt for him. She'd done some of that herself.
"I remember slinking home with a storm in my belly and a load of guilt that got worse the closer I got to the house. I had one foot on the front steps when I knew I didn't have the guts to face Pat while I was stinking drunk. So I came in here to sleep it off."
Not in here, she almost blurted out but managed to catch herself. The new barn, the one he remembered—it didn't matter at the moment. He had a need to face the past and deal with it.
"Why did you get drunk, Judd? Was it because of what happened between us at the river?"
"Does it matter? I broke my promise to a man I damn near idolized. No smoking in the outbuildings. He thought he could trust me to keep that promise. When … when he died, it was knowing that I let him down."
Judd had never said those words to anyone before. Probably because it scalded his soul to admit them to himself.
"When I was about three or four I got a white baby rabbit for Easter," Darcy said softly. "I named him Snowball. He had pink eyes and the cutest little tail. Papa said it was my job to take care of him, and if I didn't, no one else would. So I used to clean his cage and collect grass clippings for him, and once a day, in nice weather, I'd let him out to run around in the yard."
Darcy paused, dreading the rest. The old memory hurt enough to make her cringe inside.
"One day I was in a hurry to go somewhere or do something. I don't remember what, exactly. Anyway, Snowball was outside his cage and wasn't ready to go in. Usually I would wait, but this time I didn't. I started to pick him up too quickly and he panicked. Took off running—right into the path of a picker's truck."
She hugged herself, shuddering inside even now. "His eyes just stared up at me like two dull marbles, and his … his beautiful white fur was covered with blood. So much blood for so tiny a rabbit. I didn't want to believe that he was dead. But he was, and it had been my fault."
Judd's expression was stone, but his eyes were unguarded, exposing an uncharacteristic vulnerability. Whatever she said now would stay with him forever, just as her words that night had stayed with them both.
"I expected Papa to be furious, maybe even hate me as much as I was hating myself."
Pain flickered across his face like the wince from a slap, more revealing than the words he rationed so carefully.
"All the time he was helping me clean Snowball's fur and wrap him in a towel, I was waiting for him to yell at me. But he just kept wiping the tears from my face and giving me little hugs. When we came back from the old burying ground where we'd taken Snowy, he took me on his lap and told me that he loved me. That he would always love me, no matter what I did. That … that I had done a bad thing, but that didn't make me a bad person. And that he never expected me to make that same mistake again."
She moved closer until she was trapped in the heat of Judd's rigid body. "That's what he would have said to you that night, Judd. What I should have said. I'm sorry I didn't."
Judd felt the tightness crowd his chest the way it always did when he allowed himself to remember. Maybe if she'd looked at him now the way she had that night, he would be handling it better.
But she was just standing there in those impossible ragamuffin clothes, her soft blue eyes resting intently on his face, her expression accepting, as though she were taking on some of his pain the way she'd taken on a couple of kids no one else wanted.
If she'd shown any signs of blaming him or judging him, he would have walked out. Instead, helpless to stop himself, he flattened his hand against the fragile bones of her throat and used his thumb to tip her head back to just the right angle to receive a kiss.
"You're trouble, Red. The kind I've spent my life avoiding."
"So are you."
She gulped air, then parted her lips, waiting, her eyes soft and questioning on his. His mouth touched hers with great care, as though she were very fragile and very dear to him.
"You have such a sweet mouth, just made for kissing."
"That's not what you said when I was twelve. As I recall, you thought I had a smart-aleck mouth that needed a good smack."
"That, too." He ran his mouth over hers and she shivered at the sensual tickle of his mustache.
"Judd, Rosie and the twins will be back soon."
"Is that your way of saying you don't want me to kiss you?"
"No, it's my way of saying you're wasting time." Letting her lashes drift closed, Darcy told herself that she was offering the only kind of human comfort a man like Judd would accept.
Words had rarely swayed him, even when he'd been a wild kid. Even then he'd been suspicious of kindness, of affection. More than anyone she'd ever met, he needed the very things he had so fiercely rejected, was still rejecting, even though she tasted hunger in his kiss, the kind that had been building for a long, long time.
Still, he was treating her as though she were very breakable. Or terribly, terribly precious.
Her arms slipped around his neck, and she balanced on her toes, her body instinctively seeking the friction of his.
He groaned, a strangled painful sound in the dense silence of the barn, then slowly, like a man in deep pain, lifted his head.
His mouth stretched a crooked smile but she sensed the control he was exerting and she saw the stark, aching loneliness in his eyes.
"I'm sorry," she whispered. "So terribly sorry."
His smile froze, and his body turned stone rigid. He would have dropped his hands from her shoulders but she covered them with hers.
"At sixteen I was too young to understand how much you were suffering. I thought, because you never cried, never said you were sorry, that you didn't care." Her fingers lightly stroked the puckered skin covering one big hand. "I know now I was very, very wrong."
"Don't…" Even as his words turned to a groan, he was taking her mouth again. His tongue teased hers, then caressed her lower lip with slow, lazy strokes. Like a shot of adrenaline, desire flooded her
body, warming her skin and bringing a wild happiness to her already fuzzy brain.
Her fingers clenched his wide strong wrists before sliding down the angle of his forearms. Sweat-tempered muscle and toughened sinew rippled into hardness under her touch, and then he was dragging her against him like a man driven beyond his will.
Desperation fired his kisses now, the kind that gets in a man when he glimpses warmth and light after a long, long winter in the dark cold.
His hands weren't absolutely rock steady as they skimmed down her sides, nor did he have his breathing under total control. When his fingers slipped beneath the bunched hem of her shirt to flatten against her midriff, her own breathing took off like a rocket, coming in quick moaning gasps.
His touch was slow, deliberate, and yet the very roughness of his fingers stroking her skin was drawing tiny shivers of pleasure across her ribs.
At the same time his mouth was making a leisurely journey down the curve of her neck. When he reached the unprotected hollow where her pulse pounded, he paused to test each beat with his tongue. Heat spread up her throat and radiated down between her breasts.
His skills as a lover had improved in twenty years, but it was the hammering of his pulse and the unschooled, nearly palpable need she felt in his powerful, tightly drawn muscles that tapped some deep, dark wellspring of passion inside her.
"Definitely trouble," he murmured before swirling his tongue lower and lower. Darcy tried to answer but discovered that she was beyond rational speech, perhaps even beyond rational thought.
Her body was no longer under her control but his. Each stroke of his hand, each suckling kiss of his mouth was tempting her deeper and deeper into dangerous waters.
A part of her knew with irrefutable certainty that Judd would never let things go beyond the bounds of common sense. After all, they were in an open barn with no privacy, no locks on the doors.
A part of her didn't care. Not as long as his arms wrapped her in warmth and his mouth took her higher and higher.
Judd fought to regain the control he'd fashioned so painfully over the thoughtless recklessness that had taken another man's life.
But his need was a raging tide, overwhelming even his considerable strength of will. With each small purring moan she made, he lost a little more of himself.
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