to do it. Anyway…that was three years ago. And you know something?”
Mitch’s thumbs slowly traced the line of her cheekbones. “Tell me.”
“You have to make a choice,” she said simply. “You can choose to be defensive, to protect yourself against all the people-users, to guard yourself against feeling too much. That’s the safe way. I’ve
They’re missing it all…and you’d think I’d had four glasses of wine, the way I’ve been rambling on.” She cocked her head back at him with an impish grin. “
He hesitated. “Actually, none of the above,” he said curtly.
“Not even the coffee?” She arched a teasing eyebrow.
He placed a swift, firm kiss on her mouth. His forefinger followed, tracing the shape of her lower lip, then the upper one. Abruptly, she forgot the thread of their conversation.
“Don’t you change,” he said roughly. “You’re real. Real, Kay. Honest, giving, soft. You don’t seem to realize how easy it would be for a man to love you. Really love you.”
And with that, he was gone.
Mitch got out of the car at his house, glanced at the dark, unwelcoming windows and decided to take a walk. A bitter wind nipped at his face and throat.
The streets were deserted. Cars were parked and windows were lamp-less at the late hour. Shadows shifted in the wind.
With his head bent low, Mitch jammed his hands in his pockets and just kept going. Kay had loved two men. Two was not an unmanageable number. He was surprised there hadn’t been more. Maybe there had been. In this day and age, she could well have had a dozen lovers.
Every damn man at the table could have been one of them. They all loved her. And she didn’t even seem to
Mitch felt like a fool. It wasn’t a sensation he’d felt often, and he definitely didn’t enjoy it. She’d had, and still had, her choice of lovers. For that matter, he knew exactly what she needed in a lover. A giver. A man who ever so carefully nurtured that sensual sweetness of hers. A man who would protect and treasure her vulnerable heart. A man experienced in pleasure, who’d take her fast past anything she’d felt with those fiances of hers. A man who knew just what flesh to touch, what words to say, what timing would send her so high…
He walked. And kept on walking. Frustration lay like a dead weight inside him. He resented those lost thirteen years as he’d never resented anything before.
Kay stood in the open doorway a long time, even after Mitch’s car had disappeared from sight. Finally, shivering, she closed the door.
Talk about bewitched, bothered and bewildered… She could have written the song.
Trying to convince herself she was exhausted, she changed into a lavender-and-white striped nightgown, washed her face, brushed her teeth and turned off the light a few minutes later.
Sleep was the last thing on her mind.
He’d gone to a lot of trouble to find her-only to leave without even mentioning that he wanted to see her again.
He stole kisses in very odd places. Like hospital parking lots in the rain. Like fire towers. She had no question in her mind that he’d been as turned on as she’d been each time they touched. Only he’d left without the least attempt to press for more.
She’d told him practically her entire life story, and he hadn’t even told her his last name. Or what he did for a living. Or where he lived. Or why those wonderful smiles of his were so few and far between…
There was so darned much experience in his eyes-life experience, and not the easy kind. Every time she was around him, she had an urge to cuddle him. Hold him tight, coax out more of those smiles of his, make him laugh, razzle-dazzle him with…what? Brown hair and brown eyes and an average figure?
She thumped the pillow with her fist. Just what is going on here, Kay Sanders? she scolded herself roundly. Mitch had the look of a man who’d known plenty of women. Undoubtedly more attractive, sexier, smarter, more creative types, she added glumly. Maybe he was between women just now. Maybe he’d simply happened to have a free afternoon and evening today.
She told herself firmly that she had more sense than to make too much of it. Yet her dreams were haunted by a pair of dark eyes and a lazy, disarming smile.
“Mitch?”
“Back here, Dad,” Mitch called out. Removing the magnifying loupe from his eye, he strode briskly across the small octagonal room to greet his father-but Aaron Cochran was already in the doorway.
Aaron clapped a hand on his son’s shoulder affectionately. “I thought you must be back from Spokane by now. You know, I could have picked you up, if I’d known what time your plane was coming in.”
“I left my car at the airport. No problem.”
“So how’d it go?”
Mitch gave his father an amused glance. Amazing, how he’d misjudged his dad once upon a time. The Cochrans came from a long line of rough-and-ready lumberjacks. If these days Aaron spent most of his time overseeing his timber empire from an office, Mitch still suspected that his father valued physical rather than mental prowess in a man. Way back, when Mitch had been forced into a sedentary lifestyle, the transition had been that much tougher because he couldn’t help feeling that he was failing his father along with everything else.
But it was Aaron who’d nudged Mitch into minerals, gruffly challenging his son out of his depression, filling the library with books, bringing in tutors so Mitch would have the education he certainly never thought he wanted at fifteen.
And at the moment, his father was impatiently surveying the octagonal room, with its sheets draped as curtains and its bare floors and spectroscopes and balancing scales, with Mitch’s own feeling of possessiveness. “Are you going to keep me in suspense for the next year?” his father demanded. “Was the meeting worth it or not?”
“Well worth it. He jumped for the tourmalines, but more important-” Mitch handed his father the loupe. Silently, Aaron fitted it to his eye and bent over the table. The single stone, on white velvet, had the dazzling brilliance of an emerald. Its fire caught every ray of light as Aaron slowly shifted it in his fingertips.
“Tsavorite,” Aaron identified it. “Dammit, I’ve never seen one this large before.”
“Flawless,” Mitch affirmed. He leaned a shoulder against the wall, enjoying his father’s pleasure. Neither said anything for a minute.
“How much did you have to pay?” Aaron demanded finally, but his eyes were still on the stone. Perching on the stool, he adjusted the lamp and then bent over the tsavorite again.
Mitch answered his question.
“You know, with a little more training, you could have been a thief,” Aaron complimented him wryly.
“Hell, he tried to pawn a tray of smoked opals off on me first.” Mitch took the stone and wrapped it carefully before locking it in the trunk chest against the far wall. “You want a cup of coffee?”
“No time. Was that the only stone you bought?”
Mitch shook his head. “A few others,” he said as they wandered back toward the front of the house. “He didn’t really have the quality I wanted. Frankly, I don’t know how he got his hands on that one.”
A barren hall with a swinging lightbulb led to the living room, where Aaron paused, giving his son a wry smile.
