One Night At A Time Page 14

  She looked at him, wanting to see into his past again.

  Kids like Doug might have been?

  “What do you see, Doc?”

  His voice had dropped to a dangerous level, as if he knew exactly where her mind had wandered. She trod delicately. “I told you I’m not a psychologist.”

  “But that hasn’t stopped you from psychoanalyzing me. Repeatedly.”

  She shifted in her seat. Doug saw more than she wanted him to, digging deep and trying to expose her innermost thoughts. “I deal with numerous pupils every day.”

  He picked up his spoon, but didn’t stick it in the steaming stew.

  “I see a lot in their eyes.”

  “You teach gifted students.”

  “Doesn’t matter. People are people, no matter the age. And all of them—us—face problems. It’s in their eyes.

  “Mirror to the soul,” she added softly.

  “And your point is?”

  “Sometimes it’s there, Doug, in your eyes. The pain, the past, the guilt.”

  Metal clattered against stoneware. “Are you sure you don’t have a license?”

  “The bell rings at three, some kids jump up and head out the door, laughing, so excited to go home they’re barely able to remember their backpacks and jackets.”

  She saw that she had his complete attention, so she continued, “A couple reach for their pencils and slip them into the spiral of their notebooks, then they zipper the notebook into the backpack. They put on their jackets a sleeve at a time. By this time, half the class is already gone. They give me a last, longing look, then slowly open the door.” She paused. “Which were you, Doug?”

  A long minute of tension uncurled. She began to think he’d change the subject, laugh it off, treat it as a game, when it was anything but.

  Finally, he said, “If you were a betting woman...”

  Her heart thundered. He’d left her an opening, as well as an invitation to walk through it. She only hoped there was solid ground on the other side, not a crumbling precipice. “If I were a betting woman...”

  “Go on.”

  She drew a breath. “You cleaned chalkboards for your teacher.”

  Doug swore. He stood abruptly, toppling his chair. His eyes darkened as he glared in her direction. Then he turned and stalked to the far side of the room, leaving behind a wake of anger and frustration.

  She’d shoved too hard in trying to topple that barrier. Why hadn’t she realized that if she pushed at bricks, some might fall on her?

  He stood with his back to her, staring soundlessly out the window.

  She speared a piece of potato with a fork and realized she had no appetite. “I did it again,” she said with a sigh, lowering the fork. “Spoke without thinking. I’m sorry.”

  Slowly he turned. “I asked.”

  “But I have no right to pry.”

  “Are you telling me I can’t bluff when I play against you?”

  She carefully entered into her answer, determined to undo what she’d already done. “You can bluff anytime you want, Doug. You’re able to hide what you don’t want anyone to see.”

  “But you see.”

  “Only when you’re not aware of it.”

  “Some things are better locked up.”

  She nodded. “And some things are better unbottled.”

  “And what if the stopper won’t go back in?”

  “Is that what you’re afraid of?”

  “I’m not afraid of anything, Arielle. Especially something that isn’t real.”

  The words fell with finality. Only she knew better, knew that he’d voiced a lingering fear, even if he wouldn’t admit to it. “Things that aren’t real,” she asked, “like your feelings, your emotions?” Things like cleaning the chalkboard because it was better than facing reality at the front door to your home?

  Her heart ached for him. No matter how she told herself it wasn’t any of her business, she couldn’t make herself not care. That thought crashed on the heels of another. Caring for him might be more dangerous than facing an assassin’s bullet, because living with emotional loss was often the toughest endeavor of all.

  “When we get back,” he said, “I’ll have a shingle made for your office.”

  Effectively, he’d changed the subject, keeping his answers under lock and key, the way he said was safest. “I keep telling you, I’m not a psychologist.”

  “Yet.”

  The storm had passed, but she would now be able to recognize the warning sounds. Maybe in future she’d stay out of its way. If she was smart, she would. “Bet I can win at cards tonight.”

  “Bet you won’t,” he said, crossing back to the table.

  “I teach math.”

  “Are you confessing to counting cards?”

  “You might have won once, but it won’t happen again,” she answered, hedging.

  “I bluff.”

  “I have an excellent memory.”

  He sat across from her, and she gently exhaled. Walking over cut glass would be easier than getting Doug to reveal facts he wanted hidden. She managed to eat a few bites while Doug finished off his bowl.

  It didn’t matter how many times she told herself not to pry, she couldn’t help it. Betrayal had made her swear off men...all men. So why did nothing tempt more than the forbidden?

  After dinner, they washed dishes together, their conversation light, if they spoke at all. The silence in between was a comfortable bonus. Then, in the living room, Doug struck a match to the dried timber in the fireplace and found a deck of cards.

  Two hours later, she won her first game of cribbage. Gleefully she stabbed the peg into the final hole. “Skill beats treachery.”

  “Sometimes,” he conceded, reaching into the popcorn bowl. “And sometimes I let someone win, just to throw them off balance.”

  “You didn’t let me win. I beat you fair and square.”

  “Did you?”

  She frowned.

  “You’ll never know, Doc.”

  She intended to prove it. “Shuffle the cards, Doug.”

  “So you do like to play.”

  “I like to win,” she countered.

  “That makes two of us. Winning isn’t everything—”

  “Yeah, I know. It’s the only thing. So let’s make it interesting.”

  “A wager?” he asked. “Like strip poker? I’ll show you mine if you’ll show me yours?”

  Her mouth dropped open.

  “Cards, Arielle, I’ll show you my cards if you show me yours—at the end of each hand, of course. You didn’t think I meant anything else, did you?”

  Doug offered her a piece of popcorn. She held out her hand to accept it, but he shook his head. “Open your mouth,” he said. “Like you did when you made a faulty assumption about what I meant.”

  “Faulty assumption?”

  “Open your mouth, Arielle. For me.”

  She sucked in her breath. With patience, he waited. Time dragged on in miserly moments. He didn’t blink, remaining focused on her as if she were the only woman in the world. Finally, sanity battling invitation, she did as he asked.

  He leaned toward her, cards sliding across the coffee table. She closed her mouth around the popcorn, as well as his finger. The taste of salt and butter mingled as the popcorn melted in her mouth. Suddenly she realized that he hadn’t moved away.

  Intimacy crackled along with the burning pine in the fireplace. Embarrassed, she parted her lips and pulled away from him. Her face felt as warm as the sparks shooting across the logs, and her insides became molten.

  It had been so long since she felt desire for a man, longer since she contemplated doing anything about it. What was it about Doug that made her want to wrap caution in kindling and hold it to the flickering flames?

  Idiocy, it had to be. And maybe a need to really live. Being on the edge mentally and emotionally threw her off kilter. The knowledge that someone was out there, watching her, wanting her dead.

  The illusion of saf
ety shattered. But Doug hadn’t sensed it.

  “Good?” he asked, easing back his finger.

  Popcorn had never tasted like that. And neither had temptation.

  “Everything okay? You look like you’re suddenly miles away.”

  She’d never been with a perceptive man before. She knew he saw through things, noticed things no other man would. And he called her a psychologist? “Fine,” she said, curling her palms around her shoulders.

  She trusted Doug, she really did. But that didn’t stop fear from creeping in when she least expected it, leaving behind a trail of vulnerability.

  Fear changed her, she realized, changed who she was as a person. When she looked in the mirror each morning, someone different stared back. Things she had once taken for granted no longer seemed so easy. She’d assumed she’d be going to school every morning, assumed she’d have dinner with friends once a week, assumed she’d make it to exercise class on Saturday. Now nothing was sacred, not even the next moment.

  But it had another side, too. One that made her appreciate each and every thing she had. She marveled in the morning’s sunrise, in the way the branches of an aspen swayed in the afternoon wind. And she thrilled to Doug’s touch. Her senses seemed heightened, every event a sensory onslaught. She’d never surrendered in a man’s arms the way she had in Doug’s. She’d never responded to a man’s kiss the way she did to Doug’s. She’d never offered herself to a man the way she did to Doug.

  When you wondered if each second was your last, each was special.

  “Where did you go?” he asked.

  “Go?”

  “Your eyes went on a journey. One second you were here, the next you were gone. You need to take me with you. That’s my job.”

  “I’m okay.”

  “Scared?”

  “No.” The lie nearly choked her.

  “You’re shivering.”

  How did she explain that her cold came from the inside, from a place that couldn’t be warmed with blankets?

  Without saying another word, he added another log to the fire, sending sparks shooting up the chimney. He crossed the room, but didn’t sit across from her. Instead, he settled on the couch next to her. As close as they might be if they were—

  She ruthlessly cut off the thought. She wasn’t intimate with Doug, and certainly didn’t plan on becoming intimate with him. Normally, she wasn’t given to flights of fancy. But since she contacted that nameless man, nothing had been normal.

  “Come here,” Doug said, placing his arm across her shoulders.

  She wiggled closer to him, tamping down the warning from deep inside.

  Against her better judgment, when he urged her closer, she went, resting her head on his chest. His body radiated heat, as well as power. It blended into a heady combination that appealed to her on a basic, womanly level.

  “I’ve seen cold like this before,” he said softly.

  She waited for him to continue, wondering if he’d reveal another facet of his complex personality.

  “In the jungle.”

  “The jungle?”

  “Fear doesn’t care about the outside temperature.”

  A breath froze in her throat. Instead of revealing himself, he’d cut through the part of her that she’d been trying hardest to protect. “You’re ruthless, you know that?”

  “Truthful,” he countered.

  “About everyone except yourself.”

  Beneath her ear, his heart missed a beat, then continued on.

  “You want to hear about the jungle?” he asked, his tone raw and hurt.

  She didn’t answer, didn’t know what he expected her to say.

  “Rhone was there,” he said. “Being held prisoner in a hole in the ground.”

  She gasped.

  “They’d had him so long, he didn’t know what month it was, barely remembered his own name. When I found him...” Doug paused. “When I found him it was eighty degrees and ninety-percent humidity. He was shivering so hard he couldn’t stand up. And when I cut him free, I was shivering, too.

  “There were gunshots and shouting, the stench of gunpowder and sweat and terror. We lost a couple of men, and Rhone and I barely made it out alive. The knowledge of what they’d done to him, what they’d do to me if we didn’t get the hell out of there... My blood ran cold. Until then, I didn’t know it could. But it does.”

  She remained silent, her heart aching for him. When he continued, she feared her heart would surely break in two.

  “I know what it’s like to be cold inside, Arielle, because I’ve taken the trip myself.

  “I know what it’s like to fear life more than I fear death.”

  Chapter 11

  “No!”

  “Arielle,” Doug said softly, soothing a hand down her back. “Wake up.”

  She thrashed in her sleep, kicking, barely missing Doug’s groin. He winced. Her aim had been a little too close for comfort.

  She cried out again, twisting in the sheets, pulling them off him. Frigid air snapped at him, and her hand caught him across the face. Blood rushed to his cheek where she’d smacked him.

  Not his lucky night.

  Figured—he was in bed with a very desirable woman, and she’d finally reached out to him. Maybe he should have been more specific about how he wanted her touching him. “Wake up,” he said again, surrounding her wrist on her second attempt to backhand him.

  In the moonlight that spilled through the bedroom window, he saw her blink. “You’re having a nightmare. Maybe about Rocky Balboa?”

  Her teeth chattered and Doug knew he was going to get another wish. He was going to hold her. Unfortunately, he was no longer sure that was a good wish. Certainly, it wasn’t a smart one. Keeping his hands to himself meant a chance for a better grip on reality. But that didn’t stop him. He’d never been much for reality, anyway.

  Doug closed his arms around her and pulled her against him.

  “I’m okay,” she whispered, keeping herself rigid and holding her head an inch or so above his arm.

  “Sure you are. A regular one-man army.” Confounded woman even lied in her sleep. She’d lied to him earlier, when she said she was okay, and she’d lied to him again just now.

  Doug had a lot of useless skills, and a couple of useful ones. Recognizing lies was a specialty he particularly relished. It had saved his butt. And it had gotten his arm around a beautiful woman earlier, in front of the fire. Not that he’d minded. If circumstances were different, if he actually wanted a relationship, if she was anyone but a client....

  “I was dreaming,” she said softly into the anonymity of night.

  He stroked a hand down her back, feeling the soft slide of satin beneath his fingertips. Slippery material snagged on the roughness of his skin. Another contradiction. As if there weren’t enough.

  “You’re safe, Arielle.”

  “He was going to get me. He had a knife. I couldn’t see his face, but I felt his hatred and resolve. A stench surrounded him and gagged me.” Her voice choked on a sob. “I don’t want to die that way.”

  Doug’s jaw clenched. Who had she seen? The assassin she’d hired, or Pickins? The question stuck in Doug’s craw. Pickins wouldn’t have wanted a piece of her if she hadn’t walked through the doors of the Masterson Agency.

  Doug’s motions stilled, and she rested her cheek against his bare chest. She wiggled once or twice, trying to get comfortable, ending up with her hair fanning beneath his chin and down his arm. Her left leg crossed his knee—an intimacy he hadn’t shared with anyone, not since Kerry.

  The thought of Kerry made his back teeth gnash together. She’d been young and unsuspecting. Worse, she’d been trusting, offering so guilessly what he demanded from Arielle. The thought of failure slunk insidiously into his mind, gathering force as it lingered.

  Determinedly he banished the possibility. He wouldn’t fail. He would keep Arielle safe. Rhone was in on the case, Brian had been on it since the beginning. The safe house was remote and d
idn’t have easy access. Doug had alerted the local sheriff to be on the lookout for unusual visitors to the area, and had given the man a full description of Pickins.

  And if Pickins got past all the safety measures, Doug had a score to settle. If he had wanted to be used for target practice, he’d have painted a bull’s-eye on his chest.

  “Don’t leave me.”

  “Wouldn’t think of it.”

  Within a minute, he felt, rather than heard, a change in Arielle’s breathing. She’d found sleep. He knew he wouldn’t even be able to hunt it down. She shifted slightly, her hair tickling his chin. He moved his hand in rhythmic motions across her shoulders, offering comfort, offering a promise.

  He marveled at the feel of her womanly softness pressed against his harder contours. Man and woman. The way he’d once believed it should be.

  He stayed like that for a long time, holding her, caressing her, inhaling the scent of freshness and vulnerability. Vulnerable wasn’t a word that came to mind in the daytime hours when he thought of Arielle. She was strong, masking any weakness with determination.

  The thought of her life ending, before it really had a chance to begin, before she had children of her own—Doug chopped the forming image in half. She’d live to a ripe old age, if he had anything to say about it.

  The moon dropped lower in the sky, yielding to day. He realized she hadn’t moved in the past hour or so, and his muscles had started to tense. Rest, evidently, was for the innocent. Which meant he might as well brew some coffee.

  Knowing she’d never know if he succumbed just once, he didn’t resist temptation. Instead, he dropped a light kiss on her forehead. A smile ghosted across her lips, and then she snuggled closer into him.

  If he gave in a second time, kept her cradled against him, he’d be a goner, drowning in the very emotions he wanted to avoid. He refused to allow that to happen.

  She murmured in protest when he moved away. Truth to tell, he wanted to. A long-denied part of him wanted to lie there with her snuggled against him. Her hand had curved around his shoulder, and it wasn’t until he headed for the shower that he realized he craved the touch.

  Beyond caffeine, Doug hadn’t craved anything in years. So why now? More, why her?