She looked flustered. “I don’t know. Second date, then. What would you call it?”
He drummed his fingers on the wheel. “I’d call it a cup of tea.”
Nancy wrapped her arms around herself. “I don’t think breakfast counts. It wasn’t premeditated. And a first date—that is, um, any first encounter—should take place on a mutually agreed-upon neutral ground,” she told him. “A public place, like a bar, or a restaurant. And just a drink, not dinner. Just to see how it goes.”
“Oh. Is that how it’s done?” He pressed a kiss against her fingers. “Tea’s a drink, right? And I really think breakfast counts as a date.”
“No,” she said, sounding slightly breathless. “No way. We’re nowhere yet. Breakfast doesn’t count. Intention is everything.”
“Now that is the God’s own truth.” He reached out and stroked her cheek. It was as soft as he had imagined.
She made a low, inarticulate sound. He was dazed by the warmth of her, the downy softness. The delicate details.
He leaned forward, in tiny increments, until their faces nearly touched, and commenced a slow, careful dance of advance, retreat. Feeling her breath against his cheek, stroking her jaw. Tracing that elegant jut of delicately sculpted cheekbone beneath her smooth skin.
He waited, sensing her caution and her longing. Waiting patiently until the two found their perfect balancing point, and…ah.
Her eyes shut as he tasted her lips. So lightly. So carefully.
He gasped at the contact. Oh, Jesus, she tasted like light. Incredible, electrifying. Her lips, so soft and shy beneath his.
He explored her face with his fingertips, stroking her jaw, her pale throat. She dragged in a sharp breath as he slid his hand down her back, settling on the curve of her hip. Her nipples poked against her blouse. His fingers ached to caress them. He touched the first button, tugged it. It came loose, revealing the hollow of her throat, a warm cloud of some exotic, woodsy scent. He wanted to gulp it in. Lick it up.
He pulled her closer, kissed her jaw, then her throat. His lips brushed the warm gold of the little pendant Lucia had given her. His hand brushed down over her breast, just close enough that the nipple barely brushed his palm. The little nub was hard, tight.
His arm tightened. He felt it, the second that it happened. A door, slamming down between them in her mind. One moment she was melting in his arms, fingernails digging into his shirt. Out of nowhere, tension gripped her, and she arched away, stiff and brittle as a stick of balsa wood. He was so in tune with her, he actually felt alarm jangling through her, like warning bells clanging. As if the fear were his own.
He forced himself to let go. It was as hard as bending metal.
He eased back, hands clenched. Giving her the space she needed. He was doing it again. Pushing her. It was a piss-poor time for this. She was a complicated woman, grief stricken, stressed out, and he was a jerk-off for forcing the issue. Out of his fucking head. He struggled not to pant. Fists clenched. Slow breathing. Don’t even look at her. Don’t.
He looked away. Minutes ticked by, measured by drops of water making their meandering way down the window of the truck, by ragged, labored breaths that he struggled to keep silent.
At length, he heard her rustling, the soft sounds of fabric shushing together. Buttoning her blouse, getting herself in order. A cough. Clearing her throat. “Ah…um, Liam? That was, ah—”
“Amazing.” He stared fixedly at the lean-to, the pattern of the carefully stacked wood for his fireplace. “But you choked.”
She looked at her lap. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to lead you on. Look, I need to get back. I need to talk to the cops about that letter, and the jeweler, and clue my sisters in, and you’ve been really great, and I appreciate the company, but I…but I’m, ah—”
“Scared,” he said.
She sighed. “Not of you.” Her voice was muted. “You’re a really good guy. I know that. It’s just…well, everything.”
“Yeah?” Anger twisted in him, hard to wrestle down. “Everything’s not here in the cab of this truck, Nancy. It’s just me in here with you.”
She looked at him with big, beseeching eyes. He stared back, unrelenting. “It’s just a cup of tea. It’s not the end of the world.”
She made a sniffing sound. “Right. You know exactly what would happen if I went into your house, Liam.”
“Do I? Yes, actually,” he said reflectively. “I can see it. I’d pull up a chair for you. Put the kettle on the stove. Rummage around in the pantry for that tin of ginger butter crisps. Ask if you take milk or lemon. Ask leading questions about your childhood. Say nice things about your eyes, your hair, your earrings. Try my best to be witty and charming.”
“Really?” A smile flickered on her face. “Is that what you’d do?”
He nodded, willing it to be true.
“It sounds nice,” she said demurely. “But I…oh, never mind.”
Yeah, she didn’t have to say it. He saw that alternative scenario, too. The one where he ripped the clothes off that slim, lusciously curved body, pinned her up against the wall and nailed her, deep and hard, until they both exploded. His heart thudded. His ears roared.
Cool it, bonehead. The moment was so fragile, so uncertain. She was intensely sensitive to his every word, his every goddamn thought.
He caught her eye flicking to his lap and darting nervously away. Yeah, the boner of the century, trying to rip the seams of his jeans loose. Aching with each heavy thud of his heart for the soft touch of that cool hand. Heat burned into his cheekbones. He gave her a shrug that said, yeah, and so? He couldn’t control his physiological responses, but he could, by God, control his behavior. He wanted her to know that, but there was no good way to say it. Better to keep his mouth shut.
“I just need for things to be…under control,” she whispered. “I have enough to be scared of right now, without piling it on, you know?”
He rubbed his hand against his face, feeling around instinctively with his senses for a way through this labyrinth. He did not want to turn around and go back. No. He could not. That wasn’t even an option.
He flung the door of the truck open. The rain on the earth had released a deep, sweet, spicy perfume, and drops pattered heavily down onto him. He circled the truck, and stood outside the passenger-side door, staring at Nancy’s huge eyes through the rain-spotted glass. He mimed rolling down the window. She did so, frowning in perplexity.
“What the hell are you doing out there in the rain?”
“Continuing our conversation. You need control. Control it, then. The car door’s the limit. I won’t violate it. I swear upon my sacred honor that I will not touch any part of you that’s inside that door.”
She looked away, embarrassed. “Oh, God, Liam. You don’t have to play elaborate games like that with me. You’re getting soaked.”
Like he gave a shit. “That’s my problem, not yours,” he said.
“But it makes me feel guilty!” she protested.
Ah. Yes. This was progress. “The guilt is your problem,” he informed her. “I can’t help you with that. Sorry.”
She laughed at him. Something primitive inside him capered with glee. Yes. It was working. She was lightening up. Praise God.
“So?” Her eyes sparkled. “You’re just going to stand out there and get drenched, then? That’s silly.”
“It’s a crafty attempt to disarm you with my gallantry,” he told her. “Is it working? Are you charmed?”
She wrinkled her nose at him, leaned out the window a little. “I think you’re out of your mind.”
His grin stretched all the way around his head. “You’re charmed,” he said. “And you’re outside the limit. Any part of you outside the plane of the window is fair game, remember? The tip of your nose and your forehead are at serious risk. This is by way of a courtesy warning.”
“Very gentlemanly of you,” she said demurely.
“I’m trying like hell,” he said, with stark sincerity.
And she didn’t pull back. In fact, she leaned a tiny bit farther out. And her fingers were curled over the side of the door.
He jerked his chin toward her hands. “Outside the limit.”
Her lips formed words that didn’t quite make it out of her mouth, so she swallowed, and tried again. “I…I know.”
His heart started to thud again. The rain was increasing, its soft, patter beading his face, and hers, as well.
Over the limit. Fair game. She’d been warned. She knew.
He reached out, as slowly as if she were a bird that would take flight at any sudden movement, and touched the backs of her cool, slender fingers. So pale. Wet with rain. Unexpectedly, her hands turned beneath his. Excitement jolted through his chest. Palm up, like flowers, blooming beneath his hands. Opening, offering. Yes.
He leaned closer. The rain whispered, murmuring, pattering tenderly against every new leaf. She glowed like a South Sea pearl, that faint blush of pink, barely a hint of color in her pale cheeks. Her huge eyes were wide open and luminous. Greenish brown. Leaves in the water. Dilated pupils, deep and endless. A sprinkle of ruddy freckles on her nose, now that he was close enough to see. A frivolous detail that made her beauty more believable, more approachable. More kissable.
He studied every drop of water beading her forehead. Followed the grain of her eyebrows, the jut of her cheekbone. Perfect. Radiant. He was dazzled. Lost. His wits gone. Like they’d never been.
She extricated her hand, and touched his face from cheekbone to jaw. The trail of her finger was a path of light, moonlight on water, a beckoning shimmer. Rain dripped into his collar, soaking his shoulders. Rain defined the dimensions of this sensual liquid otherworld. Pearly gray, green, silvery, glittering cool. And beneath it, secret hidden heat. The blush in her cheeks, the warmth of her lips. Wet with rain, sweet with rain. Her scent, escaping him every time he tried to inhale it. Elusive, alluring. Driving him mad. He swayed. Their lips touched.
The kiss pierced through him, broke something open. He started to shake and clutched the edge of the door to steady himself. Moved, by a shy, cautious, trembling kiss. Tears started into his eyes. Luckily, his face was already wet. He closed his eyes, tasted her, felt her. The delicate texture of the inside skin of her lips, the flick of her shy tongue. He drank it up. Like fine liquor. So sweet, for being given, and not taken.
The cell phone could have been ringing for hours by the time he registered it. He never wanted to come back, but the sound was a grappling hook that dragged her away from him. He begged her, in his mind, to turn the goddamn thing off. Stay with him. Let this magic go on.
She pulled away, groped for her purse. Avoiding his gaze. “Hello?”
She listened to a loud burst of talking on the other side, and her eyes flicked up to him. “Just a sec, Eugene. Um, Liam? This is going to take a few minutes. You might as well get back into the truck.”
Yes, it was definitely over. Fuck. He stood there, fists clenched.
She was paying no attention. She was all business now.
He got into the truck, feeling stupid and dismissed. Chump asshole. Winding himself up into thinking he was on the verge of something important.
But not more important than a fucking phone call.
“Thank God you picked up. We’ve got a disaster on our hands!”
Eugene was the fiddler from Mandrake, her Afro-Celt fusion band. She avoided looking at Liam as he got back into the truck. “What’s the matter?”
“It’s Dennis! He’s deserting! The stinking rat bastard!”
“Calm down, and let’s take this step by step.”
“He just got a gig with a touring show of Riverdance! He’s blowing us off, a week before the tour! The gigs in Boston and Albany and Atlanta all specified Uilleann pipes in the contract! We can’t show up without a piper!” Eugene’s voice cracked.
“Calm down,” she said again. “This is bad, but we’ll fix it.”
“How, Nance? Every piper we know is booked solid those weeks! I’ve already made seven phone calls! We’re completely screwed!”
“We’ll fix it!” she insisted. “I’ll be back tonight. When I get home, I’ll call you and we’ll work something out. Don’t panic.”
She listened with half an ear to Eugene’s carrying-on, her body still quivering. After all her resolutions to be tough. Making out madly with a stranger in his truck. Getting swept away, too, toward God alone knew what. His house, his couch, his rug, his bed. She hadn’t been swept away since…well, never. Swept away was not in her repertoire.
She’d never known anyone that good. She’d never known that good existed. She was squirming, hot. Practically desperate for it, and after some gallant moves, a light kiss, one single collar button undone.
He’d barely touched her. How had he done that?
She jerked her attention back to Eugene before she lost the thread. “All this work for nothing,” he moaned. “I can’t take it. I’m going back to school. I’m going to be an accountant, like Mom wanted.”
“You’re not going to be an accountant,” Nancy soothed with practiced ease. “It’s too late for that. You’re not fit for any work but being a fiddler now, so get yourself a cup of tea, and calm down.”
“Where the hell are you, anyway?” Eugene demanded.
Nancy’s eyes flicked up to Liam’s impassive face. “Later,” she said, clicking “stop.” She dropped the phone back into her purse.
The rain was slanting in her open window. She rolled it up.
“I’ll take you back to your car,” he said. The warmth was gone from his voice. She missed it.
They were silent for the twenty minutes it took to get back to Lucia’s house, and every minute that passed, she felt like she shrank further into herself against his quiet reproach.
When they arrived, he parked behind her car. So much had happened since she’d been there last, though it had been less than two hours. The whole gamut of human emotions blazing through her. She was wrung out, hollowed. Practically transparent.
She stared up at the shabby old house, bright yellow crime scene tape festooned across the door, and started rummaging for her car keys.
“Thanks for the ride,” she said. “And for keeping me company when we went to Baruchin’s.” And for the most mind-blowing sexual arousal I ever felt. She wanted to say something else, after having been so altered by that amazing intimacy, but his face looked closed, and the words stopped in her throat before she figured out what they were.
She flung the door open and slid out of the truck. Her legs almost buckled. She steadied herself on the door and hurried over to her own car. She tried to unlock it, but the key fell from her stiff, cold fingers, splashing into a small clear puddle in the cracked old sidewalk.
Suddenly, he was beside her, fishing the keys out of the water, wiping them on his jeans. He opened the door and helped her inside. She sat down heavily in the driver’s seat, glad to be off her feet.
“You need protection,” he said. “Twenty-four seven.”
She made a derisive sound to mask her nervousness. “Isn’t that a shame. In a perfect world, I might agree. But I live alone, and I work.”
“You could stay with me,” he said.
She gaped at him, speechless. “I…what?”
He shrugged, looking vaguely abashed. “It’s a solution.”
“But I…but what about your own work?” she demanded.
“I cleared my schedule for three weeks for Lucia’s house,” he said. “I’m overdue a vacation. I’d take some time for this. Just say the word.”
“But your assistant—”
“I can find Eoin work on someone else’s crew in five minutes,” he said brusquely. “Don’t worry about Eoin. He’s covered.”
That finished all the obvious objections to the outrageous proposal. Now, she had to get down to the truth. “Liam. We don’t have the kind of relationship where I could move in with you. Not even close.”
“You need prot
ection,” he repeated. “Something bad’s happening.”
She shivered. “Well, maybe so, but that’s not the point. I just met you yesterday. All we have is…well, I don’t even know what we have.”
“We had breakfast,” he offered.
“Do not make fun of me,” she flared. “This is not a joke.” She groped for something else to say, but she was lost. The silence was fraught with exquisite tension.
“It wouldn’t be much of a leap,” he said.
“What leap? What are you talking about?” she asked crabbily.
“From where we are to the kind of relationship where I could offer for you to stay with me. There’s a gap of”—he held up his thumb and forefinger with barely any space between them—“about that much.”
Oh. Whoa. Shivery tingles chased themselves across the entire surface of her body. “I’ve known you for one day.”
“Time is an illusion,” he said.
“Don’t give me that lofty metaphysical crap. It just pisses me off.”
“Okay. Just the facts, ma’am.”
She grunted, unwilling to be cajoled. “So is this an exchange of goods and services? I shack up with you, in return for what?”
“No! Do I strike you as such an opportunistic pig, then?”
“Whoa!” His anger gave her something to push against. “Excuse me! Maybe it’s just me, but I couldn’t help noticing a certain wave of hurricane-force sexual energy coming off you, Liam!”
He wiped rain off his face, frowning. “Sorry. It’s been a strange day.”
“Tell me about it,” she agreed fervently.
He crossed his arms over his chest. Big arms. A lot of chest.
She hadn’t touched his body yet. And he was being so careful with her. Like she was made of glass. Which was exactly how she felt. Fragile, brittle. On the edge of disaster, poised to fall. No need to go take a running leap for it. “Things are strange right now, and it’s a bad—”
“Strange times call for bold gestures. Brave risks.”
She snorted. “I’m actually not that brave.”
“Bullshit. You have stainless steel for a spine. Like your mother.”
Tasting Fear Page 7