Never Trust A Lady

The steering wheel punched him in the vicinity of a kidney. A groan, more of frustration than pain, rumbled through his chest and into his throat. As far as he could figure, there was only one way to avoid that damn steering wheel, and if he did that he didn’t even want to think about where the gearshift was going to hit him.

Defeated, he let his hand relax so that it cradled her gently and he could feel her pulse throb against his fingers. He withdrew from her mouth with a long sigh and diminishing kisses touched with reluctance and apology to her lips, her cheeks, her throat, her eyelids. Pulling away at last, he looked down into her dazed and fathomless eyes and said thickly, “This is a ploy, isn’t it-to get me back into the house.”

She made a small, almost comically polite, throat-clearing sound and murmured, “Not at all. There’s always the back seat.”

Hawk snorted. “I thought we agreed we’re too old for that sort of nonsense.”

Her voice was hushed and shaken. “It’s been a long time, but I think I can still remember how…”

“Yeah?” Something dark and primitive jolted through him; he didn’t like to be reminded that any man besides himself had ever touched her. Ridiculous, he told himself. She was married for twenty-one years-almost half her life, for God’s sake. She’s divorced, has two children. And you have no claim on her whatsoever. Absurd.

She’d been young, she’d told him, when she’d met her husband. Still in her teens. He wondered if she’d lost her virginity in the back seat of a car. His own, he remembered…

That was when it hit him. That from the moment Jane had materialized outside his car window, he hadn’t once thought of Jenny.

“Seems to me,” Jane was saying, “it’s doable, if you don’t mind a complete loss of dignity.”

Shocked and frightened laughter shuddered through him. “Since when,” he croaked, “is sex ever dignified?”

“Well, since you put it that way…”

And there was her mouth again, calling to him like Temptation itself, and her feminine pulse beating against his fingers like a captive bird’s wings, and it was easy to close down his mind and his memory again, and hard…so hard to remember why it was he had to stop this, even for the few moments it would take to find them a better place. Hard to remember he’d ever been a separate being, capable of existing on his own. Parting from her at that moment seemed like an amputation.

“One of us has to be sensible,” he said at last under his breath, not knowing even as he was doing it where he’d found the strength to lift his mouth from hers, or pull his hand from between her legs. “For God’s sake, let’s go in the house.”

Chapter 15

“You okay?” Hawk asked as he waited for her to come around the car. She was moving slowly, he noticed, and wondered if she felt as shaky as he did, or if, perhaps, now that he’d given her breathing room, she was having second thoughts.

She shook her head and gave him a look that implied he’d said something incredibly stupid, but smiled a little, too, as if she’d already forgiven him for it.

Okay? Are you crazy? She wasn’t even sure her legs would carry her as far as the house.

She thought it would have been so much easier if they could have just stayed where they were. Or if, at least, he would sweep her up in his arms and charge boldly into the bedroom, like Rhett Butler carrying Scarlett up those stairs. The good old caveman fantasy-let him take the responsibility, and the decision out of her hands!

“Can you walk?”

She met his familiar black scowl with gently arched eyebrows and murmured. “I think so. Can you?”

He chuckled and reached for her hand, lifting it to his lips in an impulse that seemed both out of character, and at the same time oddly familiar. For some reason, maybe because of that, Jane felt as if her heart had jumped into her throat; she actually felt it would stop her breath.

It’s what I want, she thought, fighting panic. I’ve made my choice. I won’t regret it.

But still…it would have been so much easier if they could have stayed in the car like teenagers and let passion govern, and not have to think about it at all.

The kitchen was warm and light, and smelled of soup and, faintly, of cigarettes. Jane closed the door and made straight for the stove, picking up a spoon from the countertop with one hand and at the same time reaching efficiently for the burner knob with the other.

Hawk stood with his jacket draped over one shoulder, hooked on a finger, and watched her.

“What are you doing?” he asked after a moment.

Breathlessly, not looking at him, she said, “It just needs warming a little…it’ll only take a minute…”

Unnamed emotions, treacherous as rapids, tumbled inside him. “Jane, for God’s sake, turn off the stove.”

“I thought you were hungry.”

“Yeah, I am,” he growled, “but sure as hell not for soup.”

She had her back to him, her hands resting on the edge of the counter. He had a feeling if she lifted them from that support, they would tremble. He took a step closer to her and said softly, “Jane, look at me.” She lifted her head and gave him her profile, but didn’t turn. He raised a hand and almost-not quite-touched her. “Come on… please.”

And then she did finally face him, leaning against the counter with her arms folded across her middle. He noticed that she was still gripping the soup ladle, as if it were a weapon she might brandish in her defense, if necessary.

His voice was gruff when he said, “You can still call this off, you know. Now you’ve had a chance to think about it, if you’ve had second thoughts…”

“No,” she said softly. “It’s what I want.” But her eyes looked scared.

“You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

“After what-”

“Tom.” And now something-could it have been anger?- crossed her face like daytime lightning, barely discernible except as a flicker in the corner of an eye. But instead of thunder, her voice was a sultry rumble, humid and tense as a hot summer afternoon.

“Everything I told you was true. Including the part about it having been five years-more than five-since I’ve been with a man. If I’d never met you, if you hadn’t kissed me, if you hadn’t come here tonight, I’d have gone right on doing without one, and-” her voice rose slightly, a little lift of belligerence that touched him “-very nicely, too, believe me.” She paused, then said quietly, “But…I did, and you did, and here we are…and, I’d like you to stay.”

Again something darkened briefly in her eyes, but this time he had no trouble identifying it as uncertainty, and she added belatedly, over a choked little swallow, “If you want to.”

He frowned and muttered, “You know I do.” He felt wired and itchy, as if heat lightning crawled just beneath his skin.

Her eyes met and held his across the well-lit distance between them, and it seemed as though the lightning that was in both of them arced the chasm, as well, met and joined in a charge of electricity that was almost visible.

“Then,” she said, “I’d ask of you no more than that. And as for your…scruples-” her mouth tugged sideways in a smile as wry as his own “-you told me you’d been with other women since your wife died. Women you didn’t love. What’s one more? It’s just sex, Tom.”

He couldn’t account for the spasm of pain that sliced through him, and something he could have sworn was disappointment. But he growled. “Dammit, Jane, this is different.”

“Is it?” she said gently. “How?”

He couldn’t for the life of him think how to answer her. He only knew it was different.