Sheriff’s Runaway Witness

Chapter 11

She was prepared for him, that night.

She’d brushed her hair, for one thing, and made sure to put on a clean shirt and pants, the cotton knit ones with the elastic waistband Katie had given her to wear while she was getting her figure back. And how long was that supposed to take, she wondered as she surveyed herself in the mirrored closet doors in her room, standing sideways and trying very hard to suck in her stomach. Granted, it hadn’t even been a week, yet, but still…

Who am I kidding? And why should I care? With a sigh, Rachel let her cotton knit tunic top fall back into place, covering her billowing breasts and stomach bulges. Not a chance in hell any man was going to find that attractive, which was probably for the best, anyway. Sure, Sheriff Jethro Fox was attractive, and given that he’d saved her life and Sean’s, too, it was understandable that she might develop some feelings for him. But the timing was all wrong. And, she devoutly hoped, she’d learned a few lessons from past experiences about following where her emotions led too impulsively.

With those emotions firmly in hand, she turned to the bed where Sean lay kicking, squirming, snuffling and gnawing on his fist, not yet worked up to full cry. Murmuring soothing promises, she picked him up and tucked him in the crook of her arm, then opened the door and stepped into the hallway. In the soft glow of the sconces high on the wall she could see J.J.’s door was closed. She hadn’t meant to look but couldn’t help it as she turned the other way and headed for the kitchen. Just as well, she reminded herself. Remember?

In the softly lit kitchen, she marched with confidence to the refrigerator and took out the package of disposable formula bottles. It was much easier to get one out of the package now that it had been opened.

However, opening the bottle, she found, still took two hands. She struggled with it while Sean worked his way from snuffling to fussing to wailing, coming dangerously close to wailing herself, then thought, Enough of this. She plunked the unopened bottle in the sink, sniffed, wiped her eyes and marched out of the kitchen and down the hallway. At J.J.’s door she paused, but Sean’s insistent wailing made it easy to summon the courage to raise her hand and knock.

“Jethro,” she called moistly, “are you awake? I need you.”

He’d been listening for her. He hadn’t been sleeping, and with his French doors open to the courtyard, he’d heard every restless movement she’d made, and most of Sean’s, too. When he’d heard her door open and her bare footsteps retreat down the hallway toward the kitchen, he’d almost gotten up and followed her. Almost. Until he’d reminded himself of all the good reasons why it was a bad idea being alone with a beautiful woman wearing very few clothes in the wee lonely hours of the night.

Particularly when she was a potential witness, one he was starting to have some decidedly unprofessional feelings about.

So now here she was, knocking on his door. Telling him she needed him. What was he supposed to do about that? Pretend to be asleep and ignore her? No way in hell.

He got up, pulled on the same pair of sweatpants he’d worn the night before, raked back his hair with his fingers and opened the door.

She glared up at him, the tears in her eyes shining golden in the light from the hall sconces. “You said I shouldn’t have to do this alone. I’m sorry to wake you, but I tried, and I can’t.”

“Shh,” he said, only because he was pretty sure his voice would be too growly for real words. Then, because the need to take her in his arms and comfort her was too great to ignore, he took the baby from her and cuddled him instead.

She gave him a fierce, almost accusing look, muttered, “Thanks…” and turned and marched off toward the kitchen, head down, every step, every line of her body proclaiming wounded pride.

Watching her as he followed, J.J. would have smiled, except the knot of emotions in his chest didn’t make him feel much like smiling. What they did make him feel was light-headed and a little scared.

In the kitchen, he made himself comfortable in a chair beside the island as he had the previous night, with Sean in the crook of one elbow, and watched Rachel while she got out the formula bottle and warmed it. Evidently though, for Sean the novelty of staring at J.J.’s face had worn off, because after staring at it for a couple of seconds, the kid went back to snorting and squirming and making unhappy faces. So, J.J. gave him the tip of his little finger to suck on.

“What?” he said when he saw Rachel looking at him openmouthed-with alarm, maybe, or horror. “Never hurt my sister’s kids any.” He looked down at Sean, now sucking greedily on the finger. “Maybe you ought to get him a pacifier.”

“I’ll put it on the list,” she said absently, apparently unable to take her eyes off the awful sight of her child sucking away on his pinky finger. But after a moment she gave herself a little shake and turned back to the sink, picked up the bottle, tested it on her arm then brought it over and handed it to him.

Sean wasn’t any too happy about losing the “pacifier” he’d been sucking on, and for a moment or two didn’t seem to know what to do with the nipple it was being replaced with. Which prompted J.J. to growl at him in what probably qualified as baby talk. “Yeah…you kinda liked ol’ Jethro’s finger, didn’t you, little guy?”

Rachel gave a liquid-sounding laugh. She pulled out the chair next to him and hitched herself onto it, somewhat gingerly, he noticed.

“Sore?” he asked, without thinking. Then, having bitten down on his tongue in remorse, muttered, “Sorry.”

How is this possible? Rachel thought. Shouldn’t there be hormones of some kind that would block feelings like these? It can’t be normal, can it, to be so attracted to a man, when my body is still battered and bleeding from giving birth? When at this point, I’m not even sure I could stand to have a man touch me?

A moot question, she reminded herself, considering in her present shape she couldn’t imagine any man wanting to touch her.

She cleared her throat. “It’s okay. I don’t think my body has any secrets from you, anyway.”

His gaze was sleepy, heavy-lidded. And for some reason her heart responded by beating faster. “Oh, I don’t know about that,” he said, in a voice like a tiger’s purr. “I think there are all sorts of secrets that body of yours has…”

Her cheeks burned. Did she imagine it, the unspoken finish: …I’d like to explore…?

She stared back at him, unable to speak or move, the silence in the kitchen broken only by the squeaky sounds Sean made, nursing greedily at the bottle. J.J.’s gray-green eyes seemed almost smoky, and she kept looking into them, desperately afraid if she stopped, her eyes might just travel anywhere they pleased…to his lips, maybe, and then on down to his neck…his throat…his chest. And she would think about…wonder about what it would feel like, touching him.

She leaned her elbow on the island top and propped her cheek in her hand. Feigning a yawn, she murmured, “Jethro, are you ever going to tell me what the other J stands for?”

He dropped his gaze to the baby in his lap, and she saw a smile-a small one-touch his lips. “No big secret,” he drawled. After a pause, he came out with it, elongating it into a kind of growl. “Jefferson.”

“Jefferson. Huh. Well, that’s not so bad. You had me thinking it was something awful.”

He gave a dry laugh. “Yeah, well, Jethro Jefferson-that’s bad enough when you’re a little kid.”

“Why didn’t you go by Jeff?”

“Seems my dad had that one spoken for.”

“Ah. So you’re a junior?”

“Worse than that. I’m a third.” He set the formula bottle on the island top, shifted Sean to his shoulder and began to pat his back.

Lord help me, she thought. I could easily fall in love with this guy.

“Wow,” she said faintly, “Jethro Jefferson Fox, the Third.”

“They do things like that in the South.” His grin was wry. “So, my mom called me Jethro when I was a kid. Then for a while I got nicknamed Jet-that was when I was playing football in high school. I was a running back, and had some speed in those days, so…I guess it seemed kind of appropriate.”

“Jet’s kind of cool. So why didn’t you keep that nickname?”

He hitched a shoulder, the one not supporting Sean’s lolling head. “I don’t know, when I got to L.A. it seemed a little bit too…you know, Southern. Too…Tennessee Williams.”

Rachel raised her eyebrows at the literary reference, but didn’t comment. After a moment, she shook her head and murmured, “James Dean.”

“What?”

“Not Tennessee Williams-James Dean. He was Jett Rink in the movie, Giant. You know-Texas? Oil millionaire? Rock Hudson…Elizabeth Taylor…”

“That’s an old one.” His eyes twinkled with teasing lights.

She found herself smiling back at him. “What can I say? I saw it with my grandmother.”

“But that wasn’t a John Wayne movie.”

“We didn’t just watch John Wayne movies.” The kitchen was warm and quiet and filled with soft golden light and the smells that lingered from dinner the evening before. She felt secure and comfortable in a way she hadn’t felt since she was a child, and the anxieties of her adult life seemed far, far away, only a distant murmur like the sounds of surf outside the windows of a well-built house. She stifled a yawn and mumbled, “Anyway, you don’t remind me of him anymore, now that I met someone who really does-”

A loud burp interrupted her. J.J. came bolt upright in his chair, one hand going to support Sean’s head. He was swearing under his breath.

Rachel lurched to her feet. “Oh, no. Did he-”

“Yeah, he did. Get a towel. Something.”

She was already at the sink, running warm water over a dish towel. She squeezed most of the water out and thrust the towel at J.J., who shrugged it off with a jerk of his head as he balanced a now-somnolent and very satisfied-looking infant in both hands.

“It’s all down my back. See if you can-”

“Oh, God-I’m so sorry. Let me see-”

“What are you sorry for? You didn’t upchuck all over me.”

She made an ambiguous sound, part laugh and part moan. He shifted in the chair and dipped one shoulder obligingly, and she stepped closer so she could see where the splotch of curdled formula had splattered down his back. His well-muscled, nicely sculpted, lightly tanned back. She reached awkwardly to dab at the spit-up with the wet towel, and her breast bumped against his arm. His well-muscled, nicely sculpted…

She gasped and whispered, “Sorry.”

He turned his head and from inches away his eyes burned into hers. “What for?”

“I, um…didn’t mean to bump you.”

His lips moved. At such close quarters she couldn’t be sure, since they were just beyond her field of vision, but she thought they formed a smile. “I don’t think you did any permanent damage.”

She laughed, a tiny whimper of sound her fingers tried to stifle. Then she needed to speak, and there seemed to be no place to put that hand that wasn’t a part of him. It fluttered between them like a drunken moth as she fumbled for words. “I’m not used to such-they’re so much bigger now…”

“I guess that’s pretty normal. What with nursing, and uh…you know.”

His voice was a rocky rumble she could feel, and she realized her hand, the one holding the towel, was resting, idle, on his back. And that his skin was warm and smooth beneath her fingers, and that she could feel the thumping of his heart. The heat from his body was like a fur wrap, enveloping her…drawing her closer. But she was already too close…so close, she knew it would take very little-almost nothing-to touch her lips to his.

I want to kiss him. What would happen if I did?

She wondered…and was afraid to take the risk. Until it occurred to her that seconds had ticked by-and seconds were eons long in that time-and he hadn’t moved. His eyes still blazed into hers, and his heartbeat…

His heartbeat was a tattoo against her palm, hard and fast, as fast as hers.

Is it possible? Can it be he finds me attractive, even the way I look now, even after all he’s seen?

Get real, the voice of reason said inside her head. And another voice answered, Why not find out? Are you brave enough to take the chance?

Between the thought and the action there was no time at all. Space, perhaps, for one almost indistinguishable catch in her breathing…and then her lips were touching his, and the shape of his mouth, its texture and warmth, were an anticipated delight-like opening a birthday present and finding within the very thing most desired.

He didn’t pull away, and joy surged inside her; her lips curved tremulously into a smile. The unoccupied hand that had wanted so badly to touch him now did so, coming to rest along the side of his face. The roughness of his beard seemed familiar to her, somehow, as if touching him like this was something she’d imagined doing for a long, long time.

Time.

Seconds, she discovered, could last for eons, but they could also be the briefest of moments. For just such a flash of time, she felt his mouth soften…cling to hers…breath whisper from parted lips. Then…she was left trembling, with nothing but space and coldness where the warmth had been.

He cleared his throat, muttered something she couldn’t hear. She jerked back, the towel, smelling of baby formula, pressed to her lips.

“Sorry,” he said in his gravel-filled voice.

What for? I don’t think you did any permanent damage. Did I damage you? She wanted to hurl that at him. Mocking him. Instead, she let him place her baby in her arms. And didn’t say a word, not even to ask him something as adult and reasonable as, What’s with the mixed signals, you…jerk?

“Really,” he said, his eyes locking onto hers, narrowed and glittering so that whatever emotions might have been behind them were hidden from her. “I’m sorry-won’t happen again.” He paused, seemed to collect himself, grunted, “See you in the morning,” and left her standing there, rigid, with her cheeks burning and her body cold as ice.

“I’d like to go riding today,” Rachel announced at breakfast.

J.J. set his coffee cup down-carefully. Josie, having just refilled his cup, paused with the coffeepot in one hand to give her a look-not of doubt, exactly, but certainly of some concern.

“I feel fine,” Rachel said to Josie, well aware she was avoiding looking at J.J. directly. “It’s been almost a week, and I didn’t have any stitches or tearing.” She didn’t falter when she saw J.J. wince. Quite clearly. “And I don’t plan on running any races or jumping over fences. I seriously doubt Sage would put me on a bucking bronco, so…if you wouldn’t mind looking after Sean for an hour or so this morning…”

“Of course, I don’t mind. And all of our horses are gentle. And very well trained,” Josie said with a smile and a glance at J.J. “Sage trained them himself. He has a ‘way’ with horses. I’ll call him and tell him to saddle one for you.”

“Tell him to make that two,” J.J. said.

“There’s no need for you to go,” Rachel said, as Josie’s smile brightened. She picked up her cup of Ovaltine and drank, lashes lowered. “If you really don’t trust me to go alone, Sage can come with me.”

“Oh, but I think-” Josie began.

“J.J. is afraid of horses,” Rachel solemnly explained. J.J.’s coffee cup hit the table with a metallic clang. “Just because I don’t like to ride doesn’t mean I’m afraid of horses. I can ride a damn horse.” He shoved back his chair and stood up. At the door to the kitchen he paused to fire a parting shot over his shoulder. “I’ll be ready whenever you are. And don’t even think about going without me.”

Josie stared after him, started to follow, then came back to the table. Rachel picked up her cup and drank more Ovaltine to hide the fact that she was shaking inside.

“I think you hurt his feelings,” Josie said.

Rachel licked her lips and cleared her throat. “I don’t think he has feelings,” she said carefully.

Josie set the coffeepot on the table. “What makes you say that?”

“If he does, I have no idea what they are. He sure doesn’t show any to me.”

“Well, of course he doesn’t.”

Rachel shot Josie a look. “What do you mean by that?”

Josie folded her arms across her waist and fingered a button on the front of her blouse. She closed her eyes for a moment, then said, “Okay, I wasn’t going to say anything, especially after you told me-I thought you would…I don’t know, figure things out for yourself, but maybe…” She took a breath. “You really don’t know?”

“Know what?”

“He’s in love with you,” Josie said.

Rachel felt as if she’d been struck. Then she had an absurd impulse to laugh. Her mouth was dry, and her pulse was jumping in surprising places. She said faintly, “What makes you say a thing like that? We hardly know each other.”

Josie pulled out a chair and perched on the edge of it. “It’s obvious. The way he looks at you-” Her mouth tilted wryly in what wasn’t quite a smile. “I know what a man in love looks like, and trust me-he is in love with you.”

For a moment-just a moment-she let herself believe in the possibility. If-and it was a huge if-he could find her attractive, then why not? But how could he? He’d been in love many times, he’d said so himself. What on earth would make him even consider a woman with giant seeping breasts and a flabby stomach?

“How could he be?” she said to Josie, in a hard, flat voice. She swept a hand downward across herself. “Look at me. My body is completely unappealing. And even if I looked like…like something else, clearly-there’s not going to be any possibility of sex, not in the immediate future, anyway. What man would bother?”

“Oh, my.” Josie closed her eyes briefly, then smiled. “But, isn’t that every woman’s fantasy, to have a man love her for reasons that don’t involve sex? I’ll bet that if you were to ask almost any woman what she wants most from a man, it would be that he will love her for who she is, as she is, not for what she looks like, and how available the sex is.”

Rachel was silent, thinking of Nicholas, who had almost certainly loved her for her looks and for the sex.

She tried to swallow around the ache in her throat, and it made a sticky sound. “He sure doesn’t act like it,” she muttered.

Josie waved her hand impatiently. “Of course he doesn’t. I’m sure he thinks it’s the last thing you would want-or need. You lost your husband not so long ago, and you just had his baby. You’re a new mother and a grieving widow.” She paused to give Rachel a searching look. “You are, aren’t you?”

Rachel swallowed again, but the ache in her throat stayed the same. To her dismay, she heard herself mumble, “I thought I was. Lately I haven’t been so sure-”

“Sure of what, dear?”

She took a breath. “Sure that what I had is worth grieving for. I mean, I thought I loved my husband.” She glared fiercely at Josie, then covered her eyes with her hand. “I did. But lately, especially since-”

“Since…?” Josie prompted again.

“Since I’ve been around J.J.,” Rachel said, her voice barely audible, “and the way he treats me…the way I feel.” She looked up, her eyes burning with misery. “Now, I’m wondering if I ever even knew what love is.”

Josie made a scoffing sound. “Who does? Some people are lucky, maybe, and get it right the first try. Some of us have to make a few mistakes before we figure it out. But when you do…” Josie’s smile was gentle. And enigmatic. “I think you’ll know. I know I did.”

Rachel stared at her and touched away a tear from her own cheek while her mind swirled with questions. But before she could put one into words, the cell phone in Josie’s pocket played a sweet, minor tune.

“That’s Sage now,” Josie said, reaching for it. “I’ll ask him about the horses.”

Murmuring into the phone, she rose, picked up the coffeepot and disappeared into the kitchen, leaving Rachel to wonder if this was how it felt to be blindsided by a truck.

“You really don’t have to do this, you know,” Rachel said.

It wasn’t the first time she’d said it, so J.J. didn’t bother to reply. He did look over at her though, because he couldn’t help it. It wasn’t the first time he’d done that, either, and he still thought she looked so damn cute on the back of that horse, a black appaloosa with a spotted white rump and a glossy black mane and tail. She was wearing a pink ball cap Josie had loaned her, and her hair was pulled up in a ponytail that stuck out through the hole in the back of the cap and cascaded down her back in a pretty close match to the horse’s tail. She had on jeans and a top made of some flowery silky material that gathered in under her breasts and hung loosely down past her waist and left her arms and a good bit of her chest and back bare. Her skin was flawless, and the color of vanilla ice cream.

“I hope you remembered to put on sunblock,” he said.

She smiled at him, showing her dimple. “I did. Did you?”

“Got my hat,” he said, giving her a smile back, one a good bit darker than her own. “And my shades. That’s all I need.”

“You should be careful, you know,” she replied, drifting closer to him to give him a critical once-over. “Out in the desert, with your blond hair and fair skin…”

He snorted. “What are you, my mother?” Then he felt like the jerk he was when she just gazed at him with those inscrutable eyes of hers, and he saw just hint of a blush come into her cheeks.

He was glad the aviator shades he was wearing covered his own eyes, because he wasn’t sure what she might have been able to read in them. Hunger, maybe? Something for sure that would give away what he was thinking…remembering.

The full, warm weight of your breast pressing against my arm…your hand on my back, fingers moving as if you didn’t even know they were…your lips touching mine…your mouth, sweet and soft and deep, there for the taking… If it hadn’t been for the baby in my arms, how would I have stopped myself from taking what you offered, even knowing you didn’t mean it?

“I’m careful enough,” he said gruffly, and added, “Just another reason why I need to get the hell out of the damn desert.”

She looked away and didn’t answer. They rode along in silence for a while, and J.J. could hear quail calling somewhere off in the hills. Overhead in the cloudless blue, a hawk circled lazily, and closer by, a yellow-and-brown bird flushed out of hiding by Moonshine fluttered up out of the grass and glided away, skimming the tops of the meadow flowers.

He had to admit it wasn’t too bad. Not here, not like this. With her.

“It’s not so bad, is it?” she asked, as if she’d followed his thoughts.

“What, this? This isn’t desert, this is mountains. Sort of.”

“No,” she said, “I mean the horse. Riding.”

He thought about it, flexing his legs in the stirrups to ease the unaccustomed pressure on his backside and eying the view between the horse’s two pointy ears down there at the end of its long, long neck. The ears twitched now and then, pointing this way and that, speaking a language all their own, Rachel had told him. He had to admit his horse-a brown one named Misty-had been behaving pretty well, plodding along keeping pace with Rachel’s, not showing any inclination to sudden and unexplained leaps or bursts of speed. Hadn’t seemed to object to having a strange man on her back. Hadn’t tried to throw, kick, trample or bite him, anyway. So far, so good.

“No,” he said, “it’s not so bad.”

He saw her draw a breath and her shoulders relax just a little, and wished he could give her more.

They were riding in an arm of the meadow that extended north beyond the old adobe ranch house and barns, following the creek higher and deeper into the canyon. Where the meadow ended, Sage had told them, a trail continued on into the High Sierras-the part known as the Kern Plateau. There had once been cow camps in those high meadows, accessible only by horseback and pack mule; now there were vacation cabins in some of them, and you could drive there on well-maintained roads. But higher still, only the hiking trails traversed the Sierra Nevada range, past Mt. Whitney, the highest point in the lower forty-eight states, past the groves of Giant Sequoias, all the way to the Cascades and the Oregon border.

Here, as the meadow narrowed down to a ribbon of green, J.J. could smell the sun-warmed pines and feel the cool breezes blowing off of melting snow, and he felt himself growing tense and stubborn, fighting the peace and beauty and grandeur of it. Fighting against the call of the wild, maybe? He didn’t know. He only knew he felt angry, and frustrated because he didn’t know who or what he was mad it.

I’m a city boy, dammit! I don’t care how nice or pretty it is here, it’s not where I belong. I belong in the screwed-up, messed-up city, doing what I can to make it a little bit less messed up by rounding up bad people and putting them away. It’s what I do, it’s who I am. And I want-I need-to get back to it.

“Would you like to stop for a while?”

She was looking at him, a little pleat of concern between her eyebrows. Evidently the shades weren’t hiding his thoughts as well as he’d hoped.

“Sure,” he said.

Her horse angled off toward the creek without any noticeable instruction from her, and his horse followed along, naturally, without any guidance whatsoever from him. Moonshine, too, appeared ready to take a break from meadow recon, and flopped down in a drift of lupines and stretched out on her side to bask in the sun.

In the shade of the willows along the creek bank, Rachel halted and dismounted with what he thought was amazing grace, given the fact that she was less than a week away from having given birth. She dropped her horse’s reins to the ground-Sage had explained the horses were trained to “ground tie,” which he gathered meant that as long as the ends of the reins were touching the ground the horse wouldn’t run off and leave him stranded. Then she took hold of J.J.’s horse’s bridal while he dismounted with something considerably less than grace.

While he was doing stretches and deep-knee bends and trying to work the saddle stiffness out of his legs, Rachel walked both horses down to the creek to let them drink. Then she rubbed them down with a cloth she’d tied onto the back of her saddle, crooning to them in the same tone he’d heard her use with her baby, which gave J.J. an itchy feeling he couldn’t find a reason for. He just knew he found it irritating as hell, all that affection and attention being bestowed on a couple of horses, for God’s sake.

When he thought he could walk without looking like a bow-legged cartoon version of a city slicker, he made his way down to the creek bank, knelt on one knee-trying not to groan audibly-and scooped up some water to wash his face. It was cold as ice. Or melted snow, which it was. When he straightened up, Rachel was standing with one hand on her horse’s neck, gazing at him. That same little frown hovered between her eyebrows.

“What?” he said, wiping ice water from his numb face.

She shrugged, but didn’t look away. “I was going to ask you the same thing.” She took a breath, closed her eyes, then blurted out, “Jethro, what’s wrong?”

He could have blustered his way out of it, of course he could have. But something inside him was going still and calm, telling him the moment had come. So he didn’t say anything, just looked at her and waited.

She took off her hat, so she wouldn’t have to look up at him from under the brim, he supposed. But for him, it just made it harder to look at her; she seemed more vulnerable, somehow, without it.

Holding the hat clutched in one hand, she gave it a little wave and said in a rush, “Is it about last night? The fact that I kissed you? And I know you said sorry, but I’m the one that kissed you. So I don’t know what you had to be sorry about, unless it’s because you didn’t kiss me back. Is that what you were apologizing for? ‘Sorry, but I just don’t find you appealing enough to kiss.’ Was that it?”

He muttered, “For God’s sake, Rachel.” But she wasn’t through.

“Not that I blame you. I know I’m a fat, flabby mess, and you haven’t exactly seen me at my best, and I wouldn’t blame you for being completely turned off. So if you don’t want to kiss me, or…anything else, I completely-”

He hadn’t been aware of moving toward her, but suddenly there he was, close enough to her to take the ball cap from her hand and hook it over the horn of the saddle right behind her. He put his hands on her arms and heard a faint gasp escape her lips.

“You want me to kiss you?” he growled, from deep down in his chest where the emotions lay hidden. “Is that what you want? Because let me tell you, lady, I find you incredibly appealing. More appealing than you can possibly imagine. I can’t think of anything I’d like to do more than kiss you-among other things. You understand?”

She just looked at him. He gave her a little shake, and her lips parted. She whispered, “Then why don’t you?”

He groaned and looked up into a canopy of pine branches. “Why don’t I? Because you have enough crap to deal with, that’s why. You’re vulnerable and confused. And because you don’t know me. You don’t know who I am, or what I want from you.”

He could hear the faint sound of her swallow. Then her chin lifted and she looked straight into his eyes. “I know you care about me. You care enough to get on a horse for me. Which I think is huge. And maybe I’m not as confused as you think I am. Not anymore. Because I know Nicky would never have done such a thing for me. Never.”

For a long moment he stared down at her, hating what had to happen, knowing it had to be now, and that it had to be final. Then he muttered, “Remember, you asked for this.” Then he lowered his head and kissed her.

Kissed her. He had in mind something quick and hard, when he started it-something that would send her a message, clear and simple: Beware of me, little girl, because I’m only going to hurt you. But then he felt her mouth tremble and soften and open to him, and he knew the only message was the one he was getting, which was that kissing her was what he wanted more than his next breath, and the person most likely to wind up hurt was Jethro Jefferson Fox, the Third.

He hadn’t meant to fold her into his arms, which meant raising her up so that her legs just naturally came around him and her arms lifted to twine around his neck. He felt her fingers in the damp hair on the back of his neck, then a rush of coolness as she took off his hat, and somewhere in the back of his mind was an awareness that losing the hat was something like losing a bit of his own armor.

And for that moment, at least, he didn’t care. The thinking part of his brain had gone silent, overwhelmed by the part that only felt. Felt and wanted more. Felt the firm, full press of her breasts against his thumping heart and wanted her skin touching his skin. Tasted the sweet, hot wine of her mouth and longed to taste every inch of her with his mouth. Felt the most tender and womanly part of her body nestled against the hardest and most manly part of his and yearned for the barriers of denim and zippers and buttons that separated them to be gone.

It was that yearning that brought him back from the brink. When the swelling of his body became agony, the desire fogging his brain thinned just enough so he could hear the thinking part shrieking at him: What the hell do you think you’re doing? Are you crazy?

He tried to ignore it for another moment or two, knowing it was going to hurt like bloody hell to tear himself away from her. And it was knowing how he was hurting her that made it possible for him, finally, to let her go. He eased her down until her feet were on solid ground again, then took hold of her arms and pulled them away from his neck. Then, he lifted his mouth from hers. Still holding her arms, he gave her a little shake, breathing like a marathon runner. “There-is that what you wanted?”

Her eyes, luminous and wounded, stared up at him. He forced himself to look at her, to see the effects of what he was doing to her-the panting, whimpering breaths, the bruised lips and tear-shimmer-remembering how he’d once wanted to kill the person who’d left bruises on her face, knowing the ones he was leaving were far worse because they were the kind that don’t fade.

“You think that’s what you want?” He caught several rasping breaths of his own. “Then let me tell you about me. Let me tell you who I am.”