Since Kansas—typically—had stopped dead in the thick of traffic, he steered her to a corner out of harm’s way. “We have a saying in the South-west. Buenas son mis vecinas, perio me faltan tres gallinas. My neighbors are nice, but I’m still missing three chickens.”
“Chickens?”
“If you want a more literal translation—maybe it’s not always wise to judge a person by their looks. Even if they look nice.”
Kansas chuckled, clearly amused. “I’m beginning to fall in love with some of your sayings around here.”
Pax was beginning to fall in love—in a figurative sense, of course—with watching her operate. As soon as the crowd thinned out, Kansas ordered him to stay put while she approached the girl alone. Her reasoning was that Serena might open up more easily in a one-on-one conversation with another woman.
Pax had no argument with that idea, but he thought Kansas had a lot of future on the stage—or as a politician. She’d put on quite a dog-and-pony show for the man in the bookstore—thrusting her chest out, dampening her lips, teasing poor George so mercilessly that he blurted out an answer to anything she asked.
There was none of that nonsense with Serena. It was other nonsense. The shy, reserved woman who walked up to the counter had little in common with Kansas. Her hands were clasped modestly together, her shoulders rounded, and her expression appealingly apologetic as she phrased her first question to Serena.
Pax recognized it was her wimp routine, just in another form. But it was still like trying to understand the intricacies of an alien from another planet. She was unquestionably shook up about her brother. When he was shook up about something, he shut down and got tough. He approached any difficult problem coming from strength—the instinct to protect himself so automatic that he never had to think about it.
Kansas approached a problem as if she was wearing a neon sign: This Is Where I’m Vulnerable. The act with George had never been entirely a lie, and this stage play with Serena had the same elements of truth—Kansas was dealing the other person a hand of cards faceup, revealing exactly where she could be hurt.
She kissed the same way.
Pax was trying damn hard to forget how she kissed—but the limitless ways that redhead set herself up to be crushed still had a disastrous effect on his blood pressure. Until he met Kansas, he’d barely been aware he even had blood pressure.
Her encounter with Serena only lasted twenty minutes. More Wyatt Earp and gunfight fans started wandering in; Serena had a job to do, and Kansas stepped away and flew back to his side.
There was none of that endearing shy action for him, he noticed. Her eyes were ablaze with frustration. “She’s a sweetie and a darling, but she hasn’t seen Case in two weeks herself. She lives with her parents, works on their ranch weekends and here during the week. Three younger sisters. When she gets enough money together, she wants to take some college courses, probably in accounting—”
He pushed open the door. “You got her entire life history in less than twenty minutes?”
“A woman knows how to talk to another woman. You fellas just wouldn’t understand.” She ducked under his arm and zoomed outside. If they were headed to the truck at the same pace her mind was racing, it was going to be one fast jog. “She’s a real serious girl. Good kid. She met my brother at some barn dance thing. She liked him from the start—they’d been seeing quite a bit of each other—but she was pretty wary in the beginning, because he didn’t have a job, didn’t seem to be serious about his future—”
From nowhere she suddenly stumbled. Instinctively Pax hooked an arm around her shoulder so she couldn’t fall. As if his hormones had been laying in ambush for the first excuse to touch her, fire stoked and stroked through his veins. Memories of last night rushed through his mind—unwanted—and especially not now. In that flash of a second before she caught her balance, he saw her wince, saw her face turn stark white with pain. “Are you okay? What happened?”
Her eyes averted from his faster than a skittery filly, and she took off again—leaving his arm hanging in midair. “Serena said he was changing. She said they spent hours talking, just talking—no matter what her parents believed they were doing. She thought Case was really changing his life around. He’d gotten a real job, was serious about keeping it—”
“Kansas, stop trying to walk so fast. What’s wrong with your knee?”
“Nothing. I just tripped because I’m a clumsy klutz…she went on and on about my brother, about the kinds of things they talked about, dreams, ideals they both believed in, spiritual things, communing with nature—”
“What’s wrong with your knee?” Pax repeated.
“She said everyone else thought he was a ne’er-do-well who was never going to take anything seriously, but it wasn’t true. He’d just never taken the time to think about goals before, and she’d been real hurt when he stopped calling two weeks ago—thought he’d dropped her. She’s not part of any witch nonsense, Pax. Or any religious cult, either. She’s just a girl, a nice girl—”
“Just so we’re real clear on this, you are not going to continue walking on a limp like that. Either you start talking fast about what kind of injury you’re dealing with, or you’re gonna get picked up and carried the rest of the way to the truck.”
“Oh, for pete’s sake,” Kansas said crossly. She stopped dead with her hands on her hips.
For a quarter, Pax bet, she’d box his ears—even if she had to reach up a half foot to do it. Maybe he should have guessed from that flame and fiery tumble of red hair that Kansas had a flash temper. No way, no how, was the lady going to take a threat lying down—no matter how kindly that threat was intended. Her lips were parted, and he braced, expecting to hear a lecture designed to put him in his place—which was conceivably lower than a worm hole at that moment.
But then she abruptly closed her mouth. Her forehead creased in a considering frown, and her eyes searched his intently. Pax had no clue what was suddenly so important to her, or what she was trying to make up her mind about. But in the turnaround of a minute, she apparently forgot about being ticked off with him.
“If you want to hear it, I’ll tell you the story about how I got this limp—but right now I’m dying of thirst,” she said swiftly. “How about if we find someplace where we can sit down and buy a pop?”
The Crystal Palace was open for business. Dusty sunlight fell on the long polished bar and plank wooden floor. Pax could easily picture cowboys playing poker while ladies of ill repute served drinks in days of yore, but days of yore couldn’t have interested him less right then.
He steered Kansas to a table under the window, as far away from the noise as possible, then hustled to the bar. By the time he brought back two sweating mugs of old-fashioned root beer, he saw Kansas was not only sitting down, but no longer trying to hide how badly her right leg was hurting her. She’d perched her ankle on the leg of a chair, and was using both hands to massage her right knee cap.
She quit that, though, as soon as she spotted the mugs of root beer. “I take back every terrible thing I ever said about you. You’re my hero for life. I’m so thirsty I could die.”
He ignored the dramatic avowal—the damn woman was always making dramatic avowals—and he waited patiently until she’d swallowed a long, greedy throatful of the root beer. “Taste good?”
“Like nectar and heaven.”
“Good. That’s good.” Because her thirst was obviously sincere, he waited until she gulped down another fizzy slug. But that was about as long as he could stand waiting. “So tell me what happened to your leg.”
“I will…but if it’s all right, I’d like to ask you something first.” She grabbed a napkin to wrap around her sweating glass. “From the first time I met you, you struck me as being a loner. Not that you aren’t wonderful with people—the whole town seems to know you. But on the inside, you seem to be an independent, self-reliant kind of person…I’d guess it would really bother you if you were stuck depending on others?”
“Kansas, what the Sam Hill does my being a loner have anything to do with your leg?” he asked impatiently.
She took another sip of root beer. “I didn’t mean to pry. You certainly don’t have to answer that question if you don’t want to.”
Fathoming Kansas’s mind was like trying to tiptoe through quicksand, but Pax figured he wasn’t going to get anywhere unless he catered to her.
“No reason not to answer you. My background’s no secret. Yeah, I’ve been an independent cuss from the get-go, came by that attitude pretty naturally. My mom died young, and my dad took off while I was still in high school—I was about seventeen, and he left me without a penny in the till or a can in the larder.” Pax shrugged. “It wasn’t as rough as it sounds. I learned how to take care of myself, and did just fine. And yeah, I like people and I’ve made good friends, but when push comes down to shove, I depend on myself, no one else. Does that answer your question?”
“Oh, yes,” she said softly.
Pax didn’t like the way she was looking at him, as if that convoluted feminine mind were clicking puzzle pieces into place that only she could see. It made him feel uneasy. It made him feel…nervous. Which was ridiculous. Pax knew damn well he didn’t have a nervous bone in his entire body. “Kansas, what possible relationship could there be between my background and your limp?”
“Everything,” she said simply. “It shows how differently we learned to relate to people, because of the different experiences we had. I never had a chance to learn self-reliance—nor did I have any choice about depending on other people.”
“No choice?”
“I was in a car accident when I was fourteen. Broke some ribs, my right knee, did a little pretzel routine on my spine,” she said lightly and guzzled another sip of root beer. “There was some question whether I’d walk again. Took almost a year before I could—even a few steps. For a real long time, I was stuck being a pain-in-the-behind invalid. I just had no way to do anything for myself.”
Pax expected to hear about an accident or injury, but nothing this bad. The waitresses sashaying around, the tourists scrabbling for tables, the bartender’s booming laugh all faded to another place. All he saw was Kansas’s eyes, bluer and clearer than the sky. He thought of that irrepressible and indomitable spirit cooped up in a hospital bed, and a fist of emotion squeezed around his heart. “I’m sorry, red,” he said awkwardly. “That’s real rough. I didn’t know. I had a feeling there was something in your background, because every time you talked about your brother—”
“Yeah. I know you think I’m blind-loyal to Case, but that’s the reason—because once upon a time, he gave me that same kind of blind loyalty. He was just a little squirt then, but he spent hours with me, cheering me on every time I wanted to give up. I’m not deserting him now, Pax. He was just a snot-nosed, freckled kid, but he was the one who taught me that’s what love is—being there when someone needs you. However…”
He watched her cross her arms on the table, and hunch forward as if she wanted to be sure she had his attention. She had his attention. The wayward strand of hair curling at her throat, the butter-soft mouth, the spray of freckles on the bridge of her nose, those eyes so rich and deep with emotion that a man could drown in them. Oh, yeah. She had his attention. “However?” he echoed vaguely.
“However…I wanted you to know I’d been honest with you. I told you I was a wimp and a weakling, and that was always true. Basically I couldn’t be healthier now, but physically—I’ll never be as strong as an Amazon. I’m short on stamina, and if I do something stupid, my right knee can give out on me faster than spit.”
Essentially, Pax thought, she was telling him that she’d always, honestly, needed his help. Her wuss routine might have been occasionally put-on, but taking off cross country to find her brother alone was no simple task for her.
He had a sudden doomed feeling, like an avalanche was about to spill on his head. He already had honed masculine instincts to warn him away from certain kinds of trouble. Any woman who swept the rug out from under his self-control was on that list. A woman who was disastrously his opposite in life-styles, who did nothing he could comprehend, who galloped toward problems with no logic or common sense, who was diametrically different from any female he’d been attracted to—all those things were on his list. A grown man simply knew better than to ask for heartache.
But if he’d felt protective before, her whole story about that accident made him feel blindsided by the power of protective feelings for her now.
There was no way he could desert her.
Six
Two days later Kansas pulled into Pax’s driveway. As she climbed from the rental car, the contrast between the Civic’s exuberant air-conditioning to the sudden blast of heat stole her breath. Even this early in the day, the desert sun could bake an icicle before it had a chance to melt. Still, her gaze riveted on the look of Pax’s place. It was the first time she’d seen it.
Driving here had been an impulse. She had news she wanted to share with him, but telephoning had only connected her with his answering machine and a message about his being in surgery all morning. From that she’d concluded that he was here, for sure, and although she felt guilty for intruding on his workday, she only wanted a few seconds of his time.
As Kansas slowly looked around, she forgot the blistering heat and mentally tossed that guilt in a trash heap.
Pax, she mused, badly needed someone to intrude in his life, because it was increasingly clear that no one else had.
He’d never mentioned that his vet office was connected to his home. The white adobe house sprawled, ranch style, with a orange-tiled roof that glinted in the sun. Although the property was located way out of town, Pax had further secluded the grounds by bordering the place with a white stone privacy wall. She could see a barn-type building in back with a fenced-in area that she assumed was for animals. The vet sign in the yard was sun bleached and faded. A couple of century plants and cacti comprised the whole landscaping, and they looked scrubby. The house was nice—beyond nice—but the dusty windows and lack of curtains indicated that no woman had been around long enough to fuss with the place.
Three cats shot from nowhere and swarmed around her legs as she reached the front door. The trio could have competed in a homeliness contest. The striped tiger was missing an ear; the tortoiseshell had a clipped tail; and a black-and-white spotted waif had a naked side stripped of fur. Kansas instinctively crouched down to pet the attention-beggars, and was immediately caught in a jealous meow fest over who got stroked first.
Eventually—it took some time—she stood up and knocked on the door. No answer. She poked her head in. “Pax?”
His voice came from some room down a hallway to the right. “I’m back here in the surgery. It’ll be a few minutes. Kansas, is that you?”
“Yeah, it’s me.”
“Are you okay? Is something wrong?”
“I’m fine and nothing’s wrong. I just had something I needed to tell you.”
“Well, I’ll be out as soon as I can. There’s coffee in the kitchen, if you can find yourself a mug.”
She didn’t want coffee, but she definitely didn’t mind a few minutes alone to roam around. Another cat—even more beat-up than the ones outside—blinked at her from the depths of an old easy chair. Pax’s office was apparently his living room. A desk and file cabinets took up a third of the space. A computer, fax and answering machine made his setup self-sufficient—no reason for a receptionist—but the splashes of high-tech equipment jarred with the rest of his decor.
Indian molas hung from the walls, framing an old fashioned kiva fireplace in the corner. Barrister-style bookshelves were sardine-packed with medical texts. The rust-colored couch was long enough for Lincoln to sleep on, but could have used recovering a decade ago. The whole room looked as dusty as the sleepy cat.
A rounded doorway led into a virgin white kitchen. In a glance she took in the table heaped with mail and magazines
and work—no space for a plate, much less food. The counters and sink were spit-shine clean, but there wasn’t a curtain or rug, no feminine touch to soften the austerity. Sun blazed hot through the windows. A chambray shirt hung abandoned on a chair.
Sliding glass doors opened onto a shaded patio, but Kansas didn’t waste time looking outside. Who knew how long Pax would be occupied? If she only had a few minutes to seriously snoop and pry, the inside had to be the best source of secrets.
Unconsciously tiptoeing, she found a mudroom with jackets and outdoor gear, and across from that, she poked her head into the bathroom for a quick study. Dark green towels hung neatly, but the walls were an unadorned white. Around the sink counter were a straight razor, no nonsense soap and shaving cream—no luxury items for Pax.
At the end of that hall was his bedroom. It should have been a sybaritic paradise. The room was long enough to skate in, with a skylight and slanted ceiling and the space for all kinds of interesting activities. Instead there was a plain double bed, no headboard, the white sheets rumpled and unmade, no rug, no warmth, no trace that a woman had ever slept here.
Kansas leaned against the doorjamb, catching the loneliness implicit in that empty rumpled bed, sensing the barren solitude in every corner of the house she’d seen so far.
Two days before in Tombstone, she’d hesitated hard before confessing her invalid childhood. Men invariably responded with pity and sympathy and all that protective nonsense that drove her bananas, but it was different with Pax. Sharing a personal secret led him to share his. She had no way to know that he’d been deserted and abandoned by his father, left to fend for himself, but suddenly it was much easier to understand why Pax stiffened up when people got close.
She wondered if he’d ever allowed a woman to spoil or pamper him or if any woman had stayed long enough to do so. She wondered if he’d even experienced the simple luxury of being cared for—and suspected not. Once he revealed his background, Kansas understood that he equated depending on other people with root canals, taxes, brussels sprouts. Alone was easier. Alone was safer.
Men Made in America Mega-Bundle Page 52