Between Love and Duty (19 page)

He’d liked her damp and unfinished.

Duncan pushed his chair back and stood. He should head for the door, remind her to lock up behind him on her way to the garage—but he couldn’t seem to move that way. Or move at all. He couldn’t look away from her. This time, it wasn’t the curve of her mouth, the grace of her carriage, her glossy hair or vivid blue eyes that kept him staring and immobile. It was his painful awareness of her tension, her brittleness. A vulnerability she so rarely revealed.

“Oh, hell, Jane.” The words exploded from him. He took a step finally, but toward her instead of away. Their bodies smacked into each other, but comfort wasn’t the goal. Getting closer was. Melding their mouths was. The voice of reason lost to primal need.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

HIS FINGERS SANK INTO her hair, the thickest, most gloriously textured silk Duncan had ever touched. His hands were shaking. Jane wound her arms around his neck and rose on tiptoe, her head tipped so that her mouth could meet his.

He’d never kissed a woman like this. Everything he felt was in his touch: stunning physical hunger, tenderness that wrenched him inside out and fear. He was afraid for her, and—God—afraid
of
her. His mind never turned off. Never. But now it did. He was all feelings, sensation. The shape of her head, that hair slipping over his fingers, the shyness of her tongue and the cinnamon taste of her mouth. They were in contact, from thigh to breast. She was leaning as hard into him as he was into her. One of her hands gripped around his neck, while the other had grabbed onto his hair. She made little sounds he couldn’t even name, but they increased his desperate need of her.

The tumult wasn’t all physical, though. The best of it—the worst—was inside, where he wasn’t himself anymore, standing alone. He was melting down, heart and lungs and soul, like hot candle wax, and who knew what shape he would end up.

The kiss went on and on, broken by ragged gulps for air. Once he closed his teeth on her deliciously soft earlobe and the dainty earring that decorated it. One hand left her hair to lift her hips higher against his, tighter.

He needed to be inside her. He wanted to bear her to the floor, but a voice of reason suggested a sofa, a bed. Someplace soft. She deserved soft.

Duncan lifted his head, looked down at her face flushed with passion, mouth swollen, eyes the deepest blue he’d ever seen, and he thought,
Dear God, what am I doing?

She stared up at him. Her pupils flickered; dilated then contracted. She began to pant, then shuddered and pushed away from him.

“Oh, no,” she whispered.

No? Oh, no?
Was the idea of making love with him that horrifying? Stiff with affront, he let her go.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t intend…”

“No, I was practically climbing inside your skin.” Her teeth sank momentarily into her lower lip. “It’s…it’s got to be the adrenaline.”

She was probably right, the reasonable side of him concurred. No kiss could be the emotional conflagration that one had seemed to be.

Back off. Think about this. Don’t do anything stupid.

He grimaced.
More stupid than you already have.

“Are you all right?” he asked gruffly, seeing her grab one of the kitchen chairs as if for balance.

“Yes, of course.” She swallowed. “Um…I need to find my purse. And…” Her head turned; he had the sense that she was looking blindly. “Only my purse, I guess.”

She did find it. And then, as if nothing at all out of the ordinary had happened, Jane let him out the front door and locked it behind him. He waited in his SUV until she reversed her car out of the garage. They both watched until the garage door slid down. Then he followed her to the store, hovered in the alley while she parked beside the Dumpster and let herself in the back door.

She gave him a small, uncertain wave and disappeared inside.

Only then did Duncan let himself sag forward until his forehead bumped the steering wheel and his eyes squeezed closed.

He couldn’t afford to feel like this. Because she had looked so vulnerable, her innermost self unguarded, he had sprung himself wide, too, but he couldn’t do it again. He couldn’t. It was too dangerous. He couldn’t trust anyone, not that much. The panic somersaulted sickeningly in his belly. He hadn’t felt so exposed since his mother said the terrible words:
I’m leaving. You don’t need me anymore.

Had she really believed that?

Did it matter? What mattered was that she’d left him not only with the burden of his brothers, but with an achingly deep certainty that he never wanted to be stripped so bare again.

He would never fail a trust. Not the way
she
had. Not the way his father had. But the flip side was, he would never again depend on anyone else.

He was coming frighteningly close to letting himself do that.


Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Eventually he was able to loose his hands from their death grip on the steering wheel. Fortunately, the store had no windows to the alley. No one at all had seen him wrestle with his demons.

The ten-minute drive to the Sheriff’s Department where the meeting was to be held gave him time to lock himself down.

THAT HAD TO BE THE WORST start to a day ever. A personal best.

Find a beheaded rabbit on your doorstep. Dissolve into a puddle of terror. Oh, and then channel all your angst by throwing yourself at a man who is absolutely, one-hundred-percent
wrong
for you.

Not that the throwing part had been all one-sided. In her immediate, postkiss shock, she hadn’t let herself remember quite how not-one-sided it had been, but as the day went on and she opened herself to remembering, Jane could say with absolute assurance that Duncan had kissed her with equal enthusiasm.

So—why had she felt such a huge rush of shame when he’d ended the kiss? Why had she been so sure she’d made a fool out of herself? Or…was that it at all?

She didn’t know. Probably because she wasn’t thinking rationally. About anything.

Thoughts pinged around in her head like the ball in that pinball machine. She’d believe she was settling to some kind of conclusion and…whack! She was off again. Replaying every minute, in brief, jerky segments. Showering—she tried to rewind time and strain her ears for any unusual noise at all. Right before she turned on the water, had she heard…? And then, oh, God, there was the moment of opening the front door, lifting her foot to step out and seeing…
that.
Her pulse had zoomed, zero to sixty, in the one shocking second. Foot yanked back, door slammed, locked, her trembling on the inside for that paralyzed moment. Calling Duncan, that awful moment when she’d had the dry heaves after he said, “Fresh.” Falling against him the second he arrived, needing his strength, his heartbeat.
Him
.

She settled the best when she thought about Duncan. As if, even at this distance, he made her feel safe.

Why him? She didn’t know, only that from the first time she saw his picture in the newspaper, she’d felt unexpected things.

That’s only lust.

But it wasn’t. It never had been, not entirely. He wasn’t even handsome, not really. She thought it was the guarded way he’d looked at the camera, as if he’d rather its eye had never found him. She’d felt a kind of recognition. Except it wasn’t only that, either, because his brother had something of that same look, and she didn’t want to throw herself at him.

But then, he didn’t look at her the way Duncan did. Maybe, feelings like this had to be mutual.

He was as reluctant as she was, though. Maybe more so. He’d kissed her as if he was starving, not for any woman but for
her.
Only then his expression had gone almost entirely blank. She’d all but heard the steel reverberating when the barrier came down.

That might have been her fault, because she’d been so shocked at herself. Except it was just as well, wasn’t it?

Whack. Her brain bounced another way entirely.

How I dread having to go home.

And yes, Duncan would probably walk through her house again. She felt quite sure he wouldn’t kiss her again, though. And then he’d leave, and she’d be alone.

Growing up, what she’d wanted most was to live alone, to be subject to no one’s authority. Sometimes, still, she put on her leotard and danced in the middle of the night because she could. She had pizza for breakfast or ice cream for dinner or turned the music really, offensively loud. When she wore a dress that clung to her curves or bared a whole lot of skin, she smiled at herself in the mirror and thought,
Up yours, Dad.
Not healthy to still be rebelling at her age, but she had a lot of years to make up for. She was her own woman now; that’s what counted. She answered only to herself.

And now she had to fear going home to her own house, to her own solitary self.

She called the home security company Duncan had mentioned first, and the man agreed to meet her at home at five-thirty. If she was lucky, Duncan would stay to consult with him.

But, of course, there was no way any alarm system would be installed tonight, or probably even tomorrow or the next day.

She had friends with whom she could stay temporarily. But knowing
he
likely had followed her from work, first to McDonald’s and then home, reminded her that he could follow her again. It would be horrible if she brought her troubles with her and visited them on someone she cared about.

She could brace a chair under her bedroom doorknob. Sleep with a fireplace poker clutched in her hand.

Beg Duncan to stay?

That’s what she was afraid she would do. So afraid, Jane knew she wouldn’t.

Couldn’t.

NIALL SLAPPED HIS HAND on the table and roared, “For God’s sake, sit down!”

Duncan jerked, pulled out a chair then changed his mind. He didn’t even know what he was doing here, at his brother’s place. Place, not house, unless you were talking about a fairy-tale gingerbread house, or a child’s playhouse. Tucked neatly in behind a modest, 1940s-era bungalow, the cottage was small enough to give Duncan claustrophobia. He told himself that’s why he was pacing.

“I don’t plan to stay,” he said.

In complete exasperation, Niall said, “Tell me again why you’re here?”

Yeah, why are you?

“To light a fire under your ass, why else?” Except that wasn’t really why he was here and he knew it.

Because I need you to tell me what to do?

Niall growled. “Go home. Go for a run. Call that kid you like so much. He’d probably let you beat the crap out of him on the basketball court.”

The muscles in Duncan’s jaw flexed. “I have to stay available.”

“You could do that at home.”

He’d stayed home yesterday evening, after he followed Jane from work and walked through her house to reassure her. After he consulted with the security guy and overrode all Jane’s objections to his suggestions. Once home, he’d made himself some dinner, sat down with it, eventually scraped most of it in the trash.

Leaving her had been one of the hardest things he’d ever done.

“Will you be all right?” he’d asked, and, holding open the front door, she’d smiled and given a sturdy nod.

“Of course I will.” With an almost-mischievous grin, she had added, “I have you on speed dial now, you know.”

“Good,” he’d said hoarsely, and her smile had ended up dying in the face of his grimness.

If he’d seen the slightest sign she would welcome him he’d have offered to stay despite his own deep qualms. But he hadn’t mistaken the horror with which she’d jumped away from him after he kissed her, and she was working damn hard now to convince him she was relaxed and absolutely fine.
Nope, don’t need you,
her body language insisted.

So be it, he’d told himself, and gone home where he’d tried to eat, tried to watch TV, tried to read. Tried to sleep.

This afternoon he’d gotten hung up in some meetings and the best he could do was excuse himself for a minute in the early evening to call Jane to make sure she’d made it safely home.

She was apparently peachy fine. “Niall already checked in,” she told him.

When he got free, Duncan drove first by Jane’s house. There were lights on—in fact, so many her house shone like a beacon.
Here I am.
No, she was defying the darkness with light. He wondered if she would sleep with them on, too, or if she would convince herself that was silly.

He had actually gotten as far as his own house and slowed to pull into the driveway before his foot resettled on the gas and he kept going.

Tomorrow was Friday. He wished it was Saturday, when Hector was thinking maybe a movie again if it was raining, as the forecast promised. Tito liked going to the movies. This was ridiculous—Duncan couldn’t keep taking Saturdays off, but this one he would. To be with Jane.

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” he said.

“What?” His brother looked at him, startled.

This
was why he’d come.

His skin felt too tight, hot.
Hell.
This was worse than standing up in front of the class to give a presentation when you weren’t prepared. Worse than walking toward a crazy, armed man, your hands raised as you offered yourself in exchange for a sobbing hostage.