Dangerous (12 page)

“Oh, no. I have all these deep questions about how it feels and what happens,” she confided. “I did almost find out, once, but my brother Boone walked in and knocked the boy down the front steps into a mud puddle.” She sighed. “I was fifteen. Boone felt I was too young to be the target of a twentysomething cowboy. So the cowboy went to work for somebody else and I went back into cold storage, and so did my physical education.”

He burst out laughing. “Good for Boone.”

“He’s always looked out for me. So has Clark, in his way.” She sighed. “Neither of them knew what it was like at home when they were gone, and I couldn’t tell. My father hated my mother, hated her more than ever after they met and talked a few weeks after she left. He came home cursing her. We weren’t told what happened.”

“Sad that they couldn’t work it out.”

“I would have liked having a mother,” she agreed. She looked up at him. “I was horrible to her when she showed up at the house. I guess I could have been more forgiving.”

“It’s hard to forgive people who sell us out,” he said.

She nodded. She drew in a long breath. “All of this is very interesting, but it doesn’t have much to do with why you came looking for me. Does it?”

He framed her face in his hands and lifted it. “Maybe it does.” He looked at her mouth for a long time, so long that her heart raced. “Sorry,” he murmured as he bent his head, “but I’m having withdrawal symptoms…”

His mouth hit hers like a wall, opening and twisting, hungry and insistent, warm against the cold that whirled around them on the bank of the stream. She melted into him, sliding her arms around his broad chest. Her fingers dug into his back, feeling the solid muscle there, drowning in the hunger he raised in her so effortlessly.

He liked her response. It was immediate, unaffected, totally yielding. He loved the way she felt in his arms. He drew her closer, feeling the sudden, familiar surge of desire that corded his powerful body, no longer hidden from her.

She gasped as she felt it. She tried to draw back, but his hands went lower and pressed her hips into his.

He lifted his head and stared into her wide, shocked eyes. He didn’t say a word. But he wouldn’t let her step back, either.

“You mustn’t…!” she whispered.

“What happened to all that talk about wanting to know how it felt?” he asked, pursing his lips. He wasn’t smiling, but his eyes were.

“Well, I do,” she stammered. “But not right now.”

“Not right now.”

She nodded. She flushed.

He chuckled wickedly and let her move away a discreet distance. He liked her high color. He liked a lot of things about her. “Chicken,” he teased.

“Chook, chook, chook.” She imitated a hen and grinned up at him.

“Actually,” he said, looping his arms around her waist, “I was thinking of a way for you to indulge some of that curiosity.”

“You were?”

“Not to excess,” he said then, feeling cautious. It would be too easy to go in headfirst, and have to repair the damage later. “You have a summer house in Nassau.”

The sudden shift in subject matter hit her like a brick in the head. “Uh, yes.”

“It borders on property owned by the junior senator from Texas.”

“Yes, it does.”

“His wife doesn’t like him. He plays around with very young girls and it hurts her pride, so she goes to the summer home to escape the media spotlight. And the senator.”

“That’s what I’ve heard.”

“Have you ever met her?” he asked suddenly, hopefully.

“Actually, I have,” she replied. “We were at a party once, thrown by the American embassy, and I’ve gone to parties at her house, before her husband was a senator. She’s very nice.”

He smiled. “How would you like to go down to Nassau with me and stay in the summer home while we see if she might be even more talkative about her brother-in-law?”

She cooled down at once and pulled away. “I’m not like that.”

“Excuse me?” he asked, disconcerted.

“I mean, I flirt a little too hard with you, and maybe it looks like I’m worldly and I’m leading you on. But I’m not. I can’t, I mean, I won’t… My brother would kill you,” she added, blushing.

He understood at once and burst out laughing.

“It’s not funny,” she muttered, glowering at him.

“That’s not why I’m laughing. I don’t have an illicit weekend in mind,” he assured her. His eyes smiled, too. “I’m pretty conservative myself, in case you haven’t noticed. I don’t have women. In fact,” he said with a sigh, “I’ve only ever had one woman and I was married to her.”

She really blushed then. “Oh.”

“So I think as much of my reputation as I think of yours,” he added. “I was considering that we might get married in the probate judge’s office. Just for the trip,” he said emphatically. “I’m not in the market for a long-term wife or a new family. I can’t… I won’t risk that again. But we can be married long enough to do some investigating.”

She was gaping at him. “We’d get married so that you could ask a senator’s wife a few questions in the Bahamas?” she asked blankly.

He laughed. “It sounds bad, when you put it that way.”

“But it’s what you want to do.”

“No, it isn’t.” He gave her a considering look. “I won’t mention what I’d like to do. But it’s why I think we should get married. Just in case.”

Her eyebrows arched. Her eyes began to twinkle. “Just in case what?”

“In case I can’t resist the temptation to do what I’d like to do,” he said wryly. “In which case, it wouldn’t be an annulment, it would be a divorce.”

She cocked her head up at him. “You might like me.”

“I’m sure I would. But I’m not getting married again.”

“You just said you wanted to,” she pointed out.

“Temporarily,” he emphasized.

“You’re afraid I’d get temporarily pregnant if we went down there as an unmarried couple,” she mused.

He glared at her. “I don’t get women temporarily pregnant.”

“You sure wouldn’t get me that way, because I believe very strongly that if babies get made, they should get born,” she said firmly.

He sighed. “Winnie, I’ve had a traumatic seven years,” he said. “Right now, the only thing I want to do is find out who killed my wife and child. I’m not emotionally sound enough for a new relationship of any kind.”

She felt doors closing. He was brutal. But perhaps he felt he needed to be. He didn’t want to give her any false hope.

His silver eyes narrowed. “This is how you looked that morning when you found me and Sheriff Hayes in bed with your brother and Keely,” he said.

“Excuse me?”

“You stopped playing with me,” he said somberly. “You stopped looking at me with those big, soft brown eyes as if you’d die to have me.”

“I never looked at you that way,” she defended herself. “I thought you were dishy. So have a lot of other women, I’ll bet.”

“I minded when other women did it,” he said surprisingly.

“You did?”

“You’re just a little violet, blooming under a stair,” he said softly, touching her face with the tips of his fingers as he looked down at her intently. “Twenty-two to my thirty-two, Winnie. That’s almost a generation.”

“It’s ten years and I’m old for my age.”

He pursed his lips. “Not old in the right way, kid,” he insinuated.

She glared at him. “Nobody learns things without somebody teaching them,” she said flatly. “My father and my big brother made sure nobody got close enough.”

“Good for them,” he repeated.

“Listen, I have the makings of a femme fatale if I could just learn the basics,” she told him. “Books don’t tell you anything. They assume you already know.”

“What sort of books have you been reading?” he asked in mock surprise.

“The same sort boys hide under their mattresses, I imagine, but I need more than just pictures! You’re changing the subject.” She pushed against his chest. “I’m not marrying you temporarily. You can find some other woman to go with you to the Bahamas and I’ll loan you our vacation home.”

“I’m not shacking up with a total stranger,” he said curtly.

“Well, you’re not shacking up with me, either, Kilraven,” she told him.

“That’s why I’m trying to get you to marry me!”

She pulled away and walked closer to the stream. She felt sick to her stomach. He wanted a no-strings marriage so that he could help solve the case. She was a means to an end for him. He didn’t feel anything for her, really. He never would. He lived with ghosts. She felt more chilled by that realization than from the cold weather. She wrapped her arms around her chest.

He watched her with growing irritation. It was just like a woman to start fishing for emotional involvement. All he needed was her company so that he could get to the senator’s wife. Why was she making it so hard? It was because she had feelings for him, he thought irritably. As if he could see a future with a woman only a few years out of high school. He didn’t want children, so there was no point in staying married.

“You’re making this complicated,” he said shortly, ramming his hands into his pockets. “Why can’t we just look on it as a lark? We get married, have a holiday on the beach, and build some memories that don’t require anything heavy.”

She turned and looked at him, horrified.

“We could enjoy each other,” he said, losing ground.

“We can have separate bedrooms and behave like unmarried people,” she said. “Or I’m not going.”

“What the hell sort of vacation is that?”

“The only sort you’re getting with me,” she returned, coloring. “You think you can have fun with me and just walk away. I’m not built like that. I can’t…damn it, I won’t!” She turned away. “You can take me back to the café, right now!” She started walking toward the car.

He just stared after her. “What the hell did I say?” he asked the tree beside him.

“That’s it, talk to the trees,” she muttered when she was out of earshot of him. “Look out. They may start answering you!”

7

Kilraven thought about her reactions. Maybe she was right. If they could go together to Nassau and just have a few days of sun and sand and ocean, and he didn’t pressure her into something she didn’t want, it might pay off in a better working relationship. Working, as in courting the senator’s wife. Because whatever he said, his only intent was to find out if there was a skeleton in the closet of the senator’s brother. He wanted the people who killed his family. That was more important than the future, or Winnie’s feelings or any other consideration. Maybe he was using her, but he didn’t care. It was an obsession, just as his brother had said. He was going to catch the killer, no matter who he had to hurt to do it.

He walked behind her to the car. “Okay,” he said as he unlocked the car and helped her inside. “We’ll do it your way. But if I jump off the roof of your summer home in frustration and die, it will be on your conscience.”

“It won’t,” she returned.

“Heartless girl.”

She glanced at him. “And I’m not wearing anything provocative the whole time.”

“Amazing willpower,” he murmured. “Good for you.”

She sighed. “And I’m not telling Boone. You’ll have to.”

His face froze. That was not a prospect he was looking forward to. He knew Boone, and that Boone had been in the military. It was going to be tricky telling him why he was marrying his baby sister. He didn’t need to be told that Boone was going to be angry.

“Surely, you’re not afraid of him,” she said with faint malice.

He drew in a breath. “No, not afraid,” he replied.

“You can tell him how you want to marry me so that we can frolic from bedroom to bedroom in the Bahamas and you can use me to dig information out of the senator’s wife,” she continued.

He glared at her. “You’re twisting it,” he muttered.

“I’m twisting it?” she exclaimed. “You want me to marry you for a few days so that you can get information that will lead you to whoever killed your family.” She sobered. “I don’t blame you. If it were me, I’d do anything to find out, too. But I’m the one being used. It feels dirty.”

He really glared now. “Dirty.”

She grimaced. “That was a poor choice of words,” she said slowly.

He closed the passenger door without another word. He went around, got in under the wheel and shot the car out onto the highway. His face might have been carved from stone.

Winnie felt tears threatening. She wasn’t used to confrontations since the death of her father. She didn’t fight with her brothers. She was a little afraid of Boone, but she didn’t advertise it. Men were frightening in a temper. She glanced at Kilraven and thought of glaciers. She knew so little about him. Most of what she’d learned was from other people, although he’d been forthcoming with her on some level. But he kept his true feelings to himself. He seemed happy to be a loner.

She looked out the window uncomfortably as he sped down the road toward Barbara’s Café, where her car was parked. She was already regretting her hasty words. What would it hurt to marry him, even if it was temporary? She was crazy about him. Maybe she could store up enough memories to get her through the rest of her life, because she knew she’d never love another man like this.

But he didn’t look like he was contemplating a second proposal. In fact, he looked as if he wished he’d never met her.

She wanted to apologize. She knew it was useless. She’d offended him. Not that he hadn’t offended her first. What sort of woman did he think she was?

Her lips made a thin line. She knew that he’d never have mentioned a holiday with her if it hadn’t been for the senator’s wife living near the Sinclair beach house. She was a means to an end, and it was impersonal. He liked her. Maybe he liked kissing her. But there was no feeling behind it, except maybe a physical one. The chemistry was definitely there. He felt it, as surely as she did. But he didn’t love her. Perhaps he couldn’t love anyone again. The trauma of his loss had turned him cold, made him afraid to try again. He didn’t want another child. He didn’t want another wife, either. Winnie was a tool. He’d use her to get the information he needed, then he’d put her back on the shelf and forget her very existence. It hurt, knowing that.