much!”
“-but you gotta do it anyway. You need to tell him what you just told me, about what happened, how you felt. Give him some time to think about it, and he’s gonna come around. Believe me.”
She swiveled her head toward him, compelled by something in his voice, something she’d been too caught up in her own pain to notice until that moment. The cracking, breaking sounds of a strong man’s emotion. As she stared at him, at his recruiting-poster face, his beautiful, compassionate eyes, a new and formless panic began to creep over her, jangled and raw as she already was. Who in the world is this man? she wondered. How was it she was sitting here telling him things she’d told no one else in twenty years? How could she feel so safe with him, when he was everything she’d been running away from her entire adult life? What was happening to her?
And another, even more frightening thought-could it be, that this was what Mirabella had felt like, that long dark night with Jimmy Joe in his truck?
No! something in her protested desperately. No, no, no.
“How the hell do you know?” she demanded in self-defensive anger. “You don’t know anything about it!”
He scrubbed a hand across his face, making a faint scritching sound, then turned his head slowly toward her. And she noticed with another pang of panic, and an indefinable sorrow, that his normally clean-cut face was all shadows-shadows of whiskers on his cheeks and jaws, shadows of fatigue around his eyes. He’d had as little sleep as she had, she realized. And it wasn’t even his trouble.
The ever lurking tears welled up again in the back of her throat. To contain them, she drew a breath and held it the way a stubborn child does, containing at the same time a powerful urge to reach out and touch his face, to smooth away the shadows with her fingertips.
“Maybe I don’t,” he said softly. “But I do know this-I know what’s important. And I know how to fight And I know that if something’s important enough to you, you fight for it even if it hurts.”
She couldn’t answer him. He held her eyes for a long moment, then turned abruptly and reached for the ignition key, started up the Cherokee’s engine and threw it in reverse.
“Where are we going?” Charly demanded with a gasp, letting go of the breath she’d been holding. Her voice thickened with suppressed sobs. “Aren’t we going in?”
“Uh-uh,” Troy muttered as they bumped out onto the highway, “I’m gonna feed you first. And don’t tell me you’re not hungry, either,” he added as she was opening her mouth to do just that. “It’s been a long time since that b-u-r-g-e-r this afternoon. You’re gonna feel a whole lot better once you get somethin’ in your stomach.”
Somewhat to her surprise, the mention of hamburgers made the ache in her throat ease a little. Her mouth even started to water as she conceded grudgingly, “Well, okay, I guess we can go to the drive-through.”
“Uh-uh. No way. No drive-throughs. For a change you’re gonna eat some real food.”
“I’m not going in any place! Not looking like this!”
“Fine. You can wait in the car.”
She sulked in silence for a minute or two, then turned to glare at the implacable profile of the man who had somehow taken charge of her life. Why, she wondered, didn’t it anger her, worry her, frighten her more than it did?
And again the thought crept around the edges of her consciousness like an unwelcome pest-like a mouse in the kitchen: Mirabella, was it like this for you? Is this how it happens?
“What are you,” she said in a surly tone, “the food police? What do you care what I put in my stomach?”
He lifted one shoulder in an easygoing shrug that made her want to yell like a shrew and punch him. “Hey-you are what you eat. Hell, it’s no wonder you’re havin’ a hard time coping with everything. When was the last time you put a vegetable in your mouth?”
“This afternoon,” she said promptly.
He snorted. “French fries don’t count.”
“I was referring,” she replied in a haughty tone, “to the ketchup.”
There was soft laughter from him then, and a subtle easing, like the wafting of fresh breezes through the air between them. Charly felt her face muscles relaxing as she leaned back against the headrest, perhaps even wanting to smile. She felt battered, drained, exhausted, but-and when she tried to come up with a word for it, the best she could do was…
And even though she had always taken pride in her aloneness, coming so close to foundering, she realized, had been somewhat of a chastening experience for her. She was far too relieved to have been rescued to mind that she wasn’t alone anymore.
Troy managed to find his way to the supermarket he’d noticed yesterday on his way into town without asking Charly for directions. He was glad of that, since she finally seemed to be relaxing a little, and he hadn’t wanted to rile her if he could avoid it. She sat up when he pulled off into the parking lot, though, roused and suspicious.
“What’s this?” she demanded to know, in her edgy, camouflage tone.
“Like I said-real food.” He rolled the windows down and pocketed the keys. “Sit tight-keep Bubba company. Be right back.”
“I swear, if you bring back yogurt,” she said darkly, glaring at him through the window, “you’d better be prepared to wear it.
“Yes, ma’am.” He gave her a mock salute and went off smiling to himself.
It took him longer in the store than he expected. When he came out, when he first walked up to the Cherokee, his heart did a hard flip-flop, because he couldn’t see either Charly or Bubba inside. But when he got closer, he could see that what she’d done was recline her seat all the way down, and it looked like she and Bubba were pretty much sharing it. She had her arm around the pup’s neck, and he had his big ol’ head tucked in underneath her chin and both of ’em were snoring away like babies.
Troy stood there for a minute just looking at the two of them, the woman he’d only known for a day, and his very own dog. His heart was still doing flip-flops, and there was a wicked little pulse going like a hammer in his belly.
Oh, Lord, he thought. Oh, dear Lord. What am I gonna do about this?
Charly and Bubba both woke up when he opened the door, jumping apart like a couple of kids caught kissing in the closet. The dog, who had the better sense of smell, started whining and drooling, while Charly righted her seat and raked her fingers through her hair and generally tried to look as if she hadn’t really been napping, just resting her eyes for a minute.
Troy plunked the sackful of groceries on her lap and climbed in behind the wheel while she was poking through it, looking for something she could object to.
“What’s this?” she asked, holding up the first thing she came to, which was a foil sack, warm to the touch and fragrant enough to drive poor ol’ Bubba half-crazy.
Troy gave her a smile. “Rotisserie chicken. Lemon pepper.”
She sniffed. “Barbecue’s better.” And a moment later, “Whole-grain bread? Didn’t they have any sourdough?” And finally, “
“That’s right,” said Troy placidly. “Low fat.”
She did some of that swearing under her breath he hadn’t heard for quite a while, then said in a suspicious tone, “Okay, where are the vegetables?”
“They’re in there.”
“Where? What kind? I don’t see any-hey,” she exclaimed as he made a left at the main road instead of turning right, “where are we going? The motel’s back that way.”
“Yeah,” he said, “I know.” And then he took a breath and let it out slowly while he thought about how he was going to explain to this beautiful, sexy, incredibly desirable woman why he didn’t care to be alone with her in a motel room.
As galling as it was to have to admit it, the truth was, he just couldn’t trust himself with the woman in a situation that afforded him both the means and the opportunity to take her to bed. He’d always considered himself a man of fairly good character where women were concerned. and with strong enough willpower to keep himself within the boundaries he’d set for himself. But for some reason, with this woman, all bets were off. God help him, every time he got close to her, he found himself doing things he had no business doing, and wanting to do things he
