Christine Rimmer - Mercury Rising

“You’re purposely misconstruing what I’m saying.”

“You’re not saying what you really mean.”

“I am. Yes. I’m not going to go out with you. Nothing is going to happen between us. You’d better forget me. And I’ll forget you.”

He shook his head. That smile that wasn’t quite a smile was back on his sinfully beautiful face. “How long’s it been, since this started, this thing between us, this thing that you keep telling yourself is going to just fade away? Months, anyway, right?”

“What does it matter? I want you to go now.”

He didn’t budge from that chair. “It matters because you’ve been fighting it, right? And don’t think I haven’t been fighting it, too. I have. I mean, come on, I got your messages. Loud and clear. You know the ones. Get back. Keep away. Don’t come near.”

“But here you are, anyway.” She was sneering. She couldn’t seem to stop herself. “Sitting in my kitchen.”

“You invited me in.”

“And I also asked you to leave, not two minutes ago.”

He chuckled then. “Jane, Jane, Jane…”

“Stop that!” She realized she’d shouted, brought the volume down to a whisper of rage. “Don’t you laugh at me.”

His face had gone dead serious. “I’m not. You know I’m not. I’m just telling you the truth. Being honest, the way you say you want it. I don’t think this is funny at all. The truth is, I want you. You want me. You deny it. I deny it. But it keeps on. It’s kept on for months. Ignoring it is not going to make it go away.”

She had no reply for that. He was right. They both knew it. “Look. I mean it. I’d like you to leave now.”

“Fine.” He gathered those long legs up and stood.

She stepped back, clear of him. His body could not be allowed to touch hers—even accidentally, in passing.

He gave her a look that burned and chilled at the same time. “I suppose you want me to go out like I came in. Through the back. That way, there’s less chance someone might see that I was in here, less chance your mother might hear about it.”

She drew herself up. “The implication being that my mother somehow runs my life?”

“Admit it.” His voice was way too soft. “You don’t want her to know I was here.”

It was Jane’s turn to shrug. “Okay. It would make it easier on me if she didn’t know—which is a very good reason for you to go out the front.”

He frowned. “I don’t get it.”

“I invited you in here. I’m not ashamed that I did. If my mother finds out, well, okay. She finds out.”

“She hates me—hates all us bad Bravos. You know that, don’t you?”

She did. “My mother is difficult. Her life didn’t work out the way she would have liked it to. She has a tendency to take out her disappointments on others. It’s sad, really. She needs love so much, yet she’s always pushing people away.”

He wore a musing look. “You surprise me.”

“Because I know my own mother?”

“I guess. I had you pegged differently, when it came to her.”

“Maybe you had me pegged wrong.”

“Maybe so.”

“The point is, I’m a grown woman. I’ve done nothing wrong here. Neither of us has. And I won’t live like a guilty child.”

He studied her for a moment, then he let out a hard breath. “Whatever. But I still think it’s best if I just leave through the back.” He started to move past her.

“Wait.” She reached out. He froze, his eyes daring her. She continued the movement, lifting her reaching hand to smooth her hair. The gesture didn’t fool either of them. She had almost touched him, had stopped herself just in time.

She dropped her hand. “This way.”

“Hey. Relax.”

“You’ll go out the front.”

He seemed amused. “Is that an order?”

“Just a statement of fact.”

“Okay, no problem. I can find the door myself.”

“No. I will see you out.”

He looked her up and down, his gaze sparking heat everywhere it touched. “So damn well brought up, aren’t you, Jane?”

Was that supposed to be an insult? “Yes, I am.”

She turned for the open doorway, but instead of going straight, into the family room, she went left, entering the central hall. He came along behind. It seemed to take a very long time to reach the front door.

But at last, they were there. She grabbed the door handle and pulled the door wide, unlatching the screen, pushing it open. He went through, out onto her porch, down the steps, into the sun that found the gold in his silky hair and reflected off his white T-shirt, so that she blinked against the sudden blinding brightness of just looking at him.

At the bottom of the steps, he paused and turned to her. “Thanks. For the iced tea.”

He hadn’t taken so much as a sip. “You’re welcome.”

“I’ll have to think about this. What you said. What you meant.”

“Don’t. Please. Just let it go.”

He looked her up and down again, as he had done back in the kitchen, slowly, assessingly, causing heat to flare and flash and pop along the surface of her skin, making that heaviness down in the center of her, that willingness in spite of her wiser self.

“You probably shouldn’t have invited me in.”

It had seemed the decent thing to do. “Maybe not,” she confessed.

He turned, took a few more steps, then turned again, so he was walking backward away from her, not quite smiling, in that way of his. Her heart lifted. For a fraction of a second, he was only a man she found attractive, walking away from her, but reluctant to go.

“Pretty,” he said, reaching out his left hand, brushing the surface of one of the gleaming glass spheres tucked among the cosmos. The gold bracelet he always wore caught the sunlight and winked at her.

She smiled at him.

He saluted her, the way he had that morning, two fingers briefly touching his forehead. Then he turned toward the street again and continued down the walk.

She closed the screen and shut the door and told herself that whatever he hinted at, nothing would happen. She’d ended it before it had a chance to begin.

C ade left town sometime the next day.

When Jane got home from the bookstore Monday night, his house was dark. The green Porsche was nowhere in sight. At a little after noon, on Tuesday, Jane spotted Caitlin on Cade’s porch, picking up the mail and papers as she always did whenever he went away.

Wednesday, at a little before five, Gary Nevis dropped in at her store. He bought a book on western wildflowers and asked her to have dinner with him Saturday night.

She looked into his handsome, friendly face and felt like crying. He was just what she was looking for. Except for one little problem. He didn’t fill her fan tasies.

And he never would. That thing, that spark, that whatever-it-was. With Gary, well, it just wasn’t there.

In the back of her mind, Cade’s taunts echoed, You run into any steady men, any true, good men? You dated a few of them, those good guys, those solid guys? So what happened? How come you’re not with one of them now?

She turned Gary down, softly and firmly. She could see in his eyes that he understood the extent of her refusal. He wouldn’t be asking again.

She’d already been feeling low. After that, she felt lower still.

She arrived home at a little after nine that night. The house next door remained dark. No green Porsche crouched at the curb.

Jane went to bed around ten, drifted off to sleep and then woke at a little after three. She lay there, staring into the darkness, until she couldn’t bear it for another second. Finally she gave in. She got up and looked out the window.

Big surprise. His house was dark. She went back to her bed and turned her pillow over to the cool side. She punched it to fluff it a little. Then she resolutely closed her eyes.