Kate Hewitt - Mills & Boon Christmas Set

But now comprehension was dawning in her own features.

“Of course, you’re not,” she said. “I know who you are now. I thought you were...” She dropped her head into her hands. Her whole body shuddered.

“Are you crying?” he asked. It was the first time since this whole thing had started that he felt panic.

“N-n-no.”

Clearly she was lying. Sheesh. She was the world’s worst liar.

Jefferson hesitated in the doorway. What he wanted to do was run from the sheer need in her. She was about to hit emotional meltdown.

“I’m practically a hermit,” he told her. “I don’t know how to help you.”

“I—I—I don’t need any h-h-help from you.”

But she did. She needed, obviously, to be comforted.

He was in no way qualified to do that. His every inclination was to keep backing up until he was all the way down the stairs.

But what he wanted to do, and what he did, were two separate things.

“Has anyone ever told you that you are the world’s worst liar?” he asked.

CHAPTER SIX

“THAT WOULD BE a good thing, wouldn’t it?” Brook sniveled. “Being a bad liar?”

In any other circumstances, Jefferson would have agreed with her. But at the moment? He would have liked to believe her. That she did not need any help from him.

Jefferson told himself that rap on the head with her bedside lamp was preventing him from thinking rationally. He was shocked at himself when he did not retreat from Brook’s naked need but, instead, dropped his arms to his sides and moved with measured steps into the room, around the shattered lamp and across to the bed.

She looked very vulnerable, still in the blouse and shorts she had arrived in, though now her outfit was quite crumpled. He was ready to stop the second she indicated he should, but she never did. He arrived at the bed, and felt large and oafish, towering over her. She peeked through the fingers that covered her face. She drew in a long, shuddering breath.

She was trembling. It reminded him of aspen leaves in a breeze. Given how frightened she had been, he was sure his very size intimidated.

“I’m sorry,” he said softly. “I feel like an ogre in a fairy tale.”

She hiccuped, glanced at him through her fingers again and tried for a wobbly smile. “Then I hope it’s Wreck.”

“I don’t have a clue who that is,” he admitted.

“ Wreck and Me ? It’s a kid’s movie about an ogre.”

“I’m not up on my kids’ movies.”

“Wreck turns out to be the good guy, despite appearances.” She wasn’t sobbing uncontrollably anymore, so he was making progress. Maybe. Did he want her to think he was a good guy? Not really.

Women like her pinned their hopes and dreams on men they perceived to be good guys. Like most, he would eventually let her down.

But not tonight. Tonight he could be a good guy. He hesitated, looking for a way to not be quite so big against her tininess. And then, seeing nothing else to do, so he was not hovering over her from a great height, he sat down on the edge of the bed. The mattress gave under his weight, and she slid toward him. Their thighs touched. Hers were bare.

A truly good guy would not be so suddenly and painfully aware of her.

She did not try to scoot right through the wall, but regarded him with wide eyes studded with tears.

“So, Brook, who did you think I was?” he asked.

For a moment, she didn’t comprehend the name, confirming that she was just about the world’s worst liar and that she had lied about who she was. But that lie was somehow connected to this terror and to the tears trickling down her cheeks. Now was not the time to press her for the truth.

“I—I—I thought you were someone else,” she managed to stammer.

“That’s reassuring.” He deliberately kept his voice flat and calm. “I can be grumpy, yes. But I don’t think terrifying enough to deserve a lamp over the head.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“I’ve certainly never had a woman react to me like that before.”

He saw the faintest glimmer of a smile and was encouraged by it. It was like trying to win the trust of a wary deer in a meadow.

“No, I don’t suppose you have,” she said.

This was going from bad to worse. She was blushing delicately. She probably would have liked to lie about the fact she thought he was attractive. There was no need for him to preen. He needed to recognize the danger. His housekeeper thought he was attractive. And a good guy.

She was obviously going to survive. He ordered himself to get up and leave.

The stupid good guy vetoed him.

“Who?” he asked. “Who the hell is scaring you like this?”

His tone was all wrong, he realized, the fury at whoever it was having crept, entirely unbidden, into his voice. She seemed to shrink in on herself, as if being terrified was an indictment of her, as if somehow her being terrified was her own fault, an unforgivable weakness.

“It was just a bad dream,” she said, her voice muffled.

She was lying again. It had not been just a bad dream. But he let it go. He shouldn’t have pursued it in the first place. It fell strongly into the none of his business category. It was time to extricate himself from this situation.

The good guy was not ready to go. The good guy was struggling to find words to bring her comfort. Of course the colossally self-centered guy had been in charge so long, he could find none. The analyst had long ago banished sensitivity as a weakness that could not be tolerated.

The good guy could not fail to notice she was still trembling, that tears were still slithering out between the fingers that covered her face.

The bad guy in him sighed with resignation and went, somewhat unwillingly, where the good guy told him to go. It was not a place of numbers. Or words. Or equations. Or analysis.

The good guy in Jefferson Stone went to the place where his grandmother had gone when a frightened and heartbroken waif had been delivered to her.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“Yes.”

But she wasn’t. Her voice was wobbling as if she was running a jackhammer. She scrubbed furiously at her tears with the palm of one hand.

Some instinct or memory of the little boy he had once been, some primal recognition of what goodness was and what was required of him made Jefferson slide his arms under her and tug her over onto his lap. Her hesitation—a sudden stiffening, a small resistance—did not even last a breath. And then she was snuggled into his chest, her curls tickling his chin, her tears washing through his shirt, her warm weight a puddle against him.

“It’s okay,” he said. His voice was rusty, unaccustomed to reaching for that gentle note. “It’s okay, sweetheart. You’re safe.”

Sweetheart? Desperation to make her feel better was obviously making him crazy. What was he doing calling her sweetheart ? But somehow he didn’t want to call her Brook, to invest in the obvious lie she had told him about her name.

It added to his sense of craziness that making physical contact with his new housekeeper seemed to be becoming a regular event!

But, at that moment, the good did shine through. Because despite the sweetness of her curves, despite her warmth pooling against him, despite her designated role in his life, despite the lie of her name between them, she felt not like the beautiful woman that she was. She felt only like a frightened child, as he had once been. And he felt only like a person reaching deeply and desperately within himself for the decency to comfort her, as his grandmother had once done.

And so he stroked her hair and told her over and over again, in a crooning voice that he did not recognize as his own, that she was safe. He could feel the tension draining out of her, her muscles relaxing, her breathing becoming more regular, the hard pulsing of her heart slowing.