Everything but the marriage (7 page)

"Is there anything I can do to help?" The question made Devlin realize that he'd been staring at her.

"You can finish setting the table." His tone was abrupt, made more so by the realization that it wasn't as hard as he would have liked to picture Annalise's hair spread across a pillow—his pillow specifically.

They worked in silence broken only by Devlin pointing out the location of plates and silverware. The last of the sunlight disappeared just as they were sitting down to eat. The kitchen was an oasis of light, tucked between the twilight outside and the rest of the house, which was all in darkness.

Devlin cut off a slice of steak and put it into his mouth, chewing slowly. He didn't think he'd ever be able to take good food for granted. A year on the outside and he was still deriving enormous pleasure from something as simple as a well-cooked steak.

"It's very good." Annalise's comment drew his attention to her. "Thank you," she added shyly.

"You're welcome."

She took a few small bites and set her fork down.

"I don't think I thanked you for getting me out of the river," she said slowly.

"You thanked me. Don't let your dinner get cold."

She picked up her fork and ate a little more, but he didn't need to be a mind reader to know her thoughts weren't on her meal.

"I didn't jump," she said abruptly. He shot her a quick glance, but she wasn't looking at him. There didn't seem to be much he could say in reply, so he said nothing, letting her work out her thoughts.

"At least, I don't think I did," she added, as if she felt she should be scrupulously honest.

"You don't owe me any explanations."

"Don't I?" She eyed him uncertainly. "It seems to me that you ought to know, one way or another. The thing is, I'm not a hundred percent certain myself." She toyed with her fork. "I wish I were," she said, her voice hardly more than a whisper.

He was just going to let the subject drop, Devlin thought. He didn't want to get into an emotionally loaded conversation. Whether or not she'd tried to kill herself was a matter of almost complete indifference to him.

"Were you thinking about killing yourself?"

The abrupt question seemed to startle her. She looked at him, her eyes uncertain.

"I don't know." The promptness of the answer made it clear that it was no more or less than the truth.

She really didn't know what had been on her mind, in her heart.

"Does it really matter at all that much, one way or the other?"

"I should know, shouldn't I?"

"Why?"

She stared at him, groping for an answer to the simple question. Of course, it was important for hCT to know what had really happened. After all, you couldn't attempt to kill yourself and not know it. Could you? She frowned and looked away from that cool blue gaze. What did he know, anyway?

"It's just important. That's all." Her answer carried a hint of peevishness that almost made Devlin smile.

"Do you want to die, now?"

"No." Her eyes swept to his again.

"Then does it really matter all that much what you did yesterday? Knowing isn't going to change what happened, whether you fell or jumped. And it isn't going to change how you feel now."

"No, but I'd stiU like to know."

Devlin took his time chewing and swallowing his last bite of steak and then pushed the plate away. Crossing his forearms on the table in front of him, he looked at her, his eyes unreadable.

"That riverbank isn't all that stable at the best of times. In the midst of a heavy rain, it's even more prone to crumble. You were standing close to the edge. In fact, I was just about to call over to you and warn you when you slipped."

Annalise digested this, feeling a burden lift from her shoulders. '*Then you don't think I jumped?"

He shrugged. "I think it's pretty likely that the bank crumbled under you."

"Thank you." Her smile was wider this time, a bit uncertain, as if it had been a long time since she'd used it.

Devlin didn't like the odd little pain that smile caused in his chest. "Your dinner's getting cold," he said brusquely.

Annalise picked up her fork, more to be polite, he suspected, than because she was interested in the food. Whatever the reason, it wouldn't hurt her to eat a bit more.

God, listen to him. He was beginning to sound like a mother hen. He'd never thought of himself as a particularly paternal type, but something about Annalise brought out a long-buried urge to fuss. He'd just as soon bury it again, he thought sourly.

"Where do you live?"

Annalise's fork hit the plate with a snap.

"Live?" She repeated the word as if unsure of its meaning.

"I was just wondering if there was someone who'd be worried about you."

He was watching her face carefully and he thought he saw a tinge of relief, as if the second question was easier to answer than the first.

"No, there's no one." She hesitated but seemed to feel the need to add something. "I've been traveling for a while, actually. I don't really have a permanent address."

Or a temporary one, either, he'd be wilUng to bet. It would have been cruel to ask her why she'd been traveling or what she'd been doing. He might be many things, but cruel was not one of them.

"Do you have a car?" She blinked at him, as if the question was a difficult one.

"Yes," she said slowly, frowning as if the memory were vague. "It died. I didn't know what to do. So far from town and all."

He didn't believe for one minute that she had any idea of how far she was from Remembrance. He doubted she even knew where the nearest town was. But he didn't pursue the question. He neither expected nor wanted her to spill her guts to him. She was welcome to her secrets, whatever they were.

"Oh!" The sudden exclamation brought Devlin's eyes to her.

"What's wrong?"

"It just occurred to me that I haven't even asked you if you'll let me spend the night here again."

The anbarrassed color that flooded her cheeks was really rather attractive, he decided. It made her eyes seem darker, wider.

"You're welcome to stay the night."

"You must think I'm a dreadful person." She pushed her half-eaten dinner away, her distress obvious. "I've barely thanked you for saving my life. I hardly even acknowledge your kindness and then I presume on your hospitality. You should have gotten rid of me hours ago.''

*'Don't worry about it/* Devlin ignored the fact that, hours ago, he'd been thinking exactly the same thing. "Everybody needs a little help now and then."

"But I shouldn't have just assumed I could stay here."

"I don't mind." He reached across the table, closing his hand over the fingers she was twisting together. The impact of the small touch was more than he'd expected. Her hands felt so delicate beneath his, as fragile and vulnerable as a child's.

He was torn between conflicting urges. He wanted to put his arms around her and tell her everything would be all right, that he'd keep the world from hurting her again. And he wanted to carry her into the bedroom and see just exactly what that heavy length of hair looked like spread across his pillow.

"You're welcome to stay the night," he said again. He drew his hand away casually. Annalise didn't seem to have noticed anything unusual about the moment.

"I can't offer to pay you," she said with difficulty.

"Good. Because I wouldn't accept it." He pushed back from the table and stacked their plates. He felt her eyes following him as he moved to the counter. After a moment, she stood up and cleared the table of their glasses. Devlin took them from her and placed them in the dishwasher.

"I really do appreciate everything you've done for me," she said.

"I haven't done all that much." He snapped shut the latch on the dishwasher and turned to look back at her. He really wished she didn't look so vulnerable

and so uncertain. The protective shell she'd locked herself inside of was breaking up around her.

"Tomorrow, Fll get myself out of your hair," she said.

"We'll worry about it tomorrow." Devlin pretended not to see the uncertainty in her eyes. He knew as well as she did that getting her out of his hair was going to be more than a matter of simply waving goodbye as she disappeared into the sunset.

Hours later, hands beneath his head, Devlin stared up at the ceiling. The exposed beams were nothing more than deeper shadows in the darkness above him. He'd considered, briefly, putting in a ceiling, but he liked the feeling of spaciousness that the open beams gave.

But his thoughts weren't on the architecture. And they weren't on the next day's tasks. Since the day he'd decided to build a home, the house had occupied most of his waking hours, either thinking about it or working on it.

Tonight his thoughts weren't on plaster versus dry-wall or whether to build a deck or pour a patio. Instead, he was thinking about the woman who now occupied his bed—his comfortable bed, he amended, taking note of just how hard the floor was, even with an air mattress beneath him.

It didn't take a genius to guess that Annalise had hit rock bottom. The emptiness that had been in her eyes this morning had told of someone who no longer cared what became of them. She hadn't reacted when he'd

asked her if she'd tried to commit suicide, because it really hadn't mattered to her.

When she awakened to find herself alone with a strange man, she hadn't shown any of the normal concern a woman might have been expected to feel. And he didn't believe it was because he had a particularly winning smile. She hadn't been worried about what he might do to her, because nothing could be worse than whatever she'd already experienced.

What had happened to her to drive her so low? Rape? The thought brought a slow flush of anger to his face. He'd long believed that a man who'd force a woman was something less than human. But the thought that someone might have raped Annalise brought that contempt into focus, sharpened it with a more personal rage.

He forced his tight muscles to relax. He didn't know that that was what had happened to drive all the life from her. Time enough to find the son of a bitch and castrate him if he found out that was the case.

Odd how she'd literally dropped into his life less than twenty-four hours ago, and here he was lying awake wondering about her. He frowned into the darkness. He had the feeling that he should have let Ben take her to the hospital the night before. Already he was getting involved. No matter how tenuous that involvement, it wasn't for him.

But he couldn't just walk away from her. His mouth twisted in rueful acceptance. Like it or not, he cared what happened to Annalise. She'd brought out feelings he'd thought only Kelly could stir in him. Feel-

ings of protectiveness and concern, things he didn't particularly want to feel.

Maybe it was the fact that he'd saved her life. Maybe you couldn't save someone's life without them becoming real to you. Perhaps it was the vulnerability in her eyes. He couldn't ignore that look, the fragility of her. Physically she looked as if a stiff breeze could carry her away. But it was the uncertainty in her eyes that spoke to him.

Finding the cat seemed to have cracked her shell. Beauty. He grinned into the darkness. The name was pure wishful thinking. The cat looked like a scruffy, furry gray basketball. But Annalise had looked at her and called her Beauty. There was something ineffably poignant about that.

Thirty-six hours ago, he'd had nothing more on his mind than what color to paint the window trim. Now he had a woman who needed a lot of careful handling if she wasn't to retreat back into whatever hell she'd been hiding in when he foimd her; and a cat who looked as if she were about to deliver a litter of fifty any minute and in the meantime was threatening to eat him out of house and home.

Devlin shook his head and closed his eyes. Time enough to worry about both of them in the morning.

He might have been more concerned if he could have seen the half smile that softened his mouth as he drifted off to sle^. He didn't look at all like a man who'd taken on unsolicited burdens.

Chapters

>Ar hen Annalise awoke, the first thing she was aware of was that she didn't feel as if a heavy weight were sitting on her chest, making every breath almost more of an effort than it was worth. She snuggled her head deeper into the pillow, keeping her eyes closed as she took a mental inventory.

She sensed that it was still early, probably not much past dawn. But she didn't feel like going back to sleep. She was awake and she wanted to stay awake. For the first time in months, she felt a sense of anticipation for the coming day.

A small movement alerted her to the fact that she wasn't the bed's only occupant. She opened her eyes, her mouth curving in a soft smile when she saw Beauty stretched out beside her. Annalise stroked her fingers over the little cat's head. Beauty opened her eyes, giv-

ing her an unreadable look before closing them again. The rumble of her purr made it clear that Annalise's attentions were acceptable.

Annalise's smile widened. The cat felt full of life, content with her lot. Of course, her lot was pretty darned good at the moment. She had tuna for breakfast, lunch and dinner and a comfortable bed to spend her nights in. Much the same as her own lot, Annalise thought, her smile fading.

Maybe it was time to look ahead, to try to put some order into her life. These past few months were little more than a smoky blur. She'd probably never remember all the places she'd been. But as Devlin had said, the past was past. She couldn't go back and change things. She could only move on from here.

Devlin. She'd known him only a day and still knew virtually nothing about him; yet she had the feeling that she knew him well. Something deep inside her responded to him, telling her this was a man she could trust, not just with her life, which he'd already saved, but with her soul.

Odd, for the past year, she hadn't been entirely sure she still had a soul. She'd more than half believed it had died when she'd lost the only person in the world who meant anything to her. But it seemed it had just retreated away from the black pain that had gripped her for so long.