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Warm. Confident. Secure.
She mustered a smile, despite her jumpy nerves, but when she tried to pull her hand back, Jack held tight, giving her fingers another squeeze. The strength of his grip sent wings of ill-ease fluttering through her.
Her attacker pinned her wrists above her head, immobilizing her.
Megan gasped as the full-color memory flashed in her mind. She yanked her hand free from Jack’s and clasped it over her galloping heart.
“Ginny West.” Quickly Ginny sidled in front of Megan and grabbed Jack’s hand, giving Megan the moment she needed to catch her breath.
Good ol’ Gin. So often, she seemed to be one step ahead of Megan, anticipating every emotional swing, every need.
Jack greeted the blonde politely then turned his gaze back to Megan. Shoving his hands in his pockets, he cocked his head and tugged his mouth in a crooked but disarming grin. “What are you doing at the police station? No trouble, I hope.”
Megan swallowed hard, fumbling for an answer. He couldn’t know the truth. If her neighbor found out, how long would it be before the whole street knew her past? She’d worked so hard to protect her secret and rebuild her life.
When she met his inquisitive expression, a sinking sensation swamped her. She’d struggled for five years to conquer her past, to regain control. But in the hazel warmth of Jack Calhoun’s incisive gaze, Megan felt exposed, lost.
And vulnerable.
The intelligence and concern in his green-brown gaze seemed to cut through pretenses and see straight to her soul.
“She came with me to pay my parking ticket,” Ginny said smoothly.
Megan didn’t deny her friend’s white lie, but she didn’t like starting her relationship with Jack with a deception.
“Pesky things, parking tickets. Huh?” When Jack grinned, a dimple pocked his cheek, and Megan’s stomach did a little flip-flop.
Steeling herself, she raised her chin and pulled in a cleansing breath. “Yeah. Pesky’s a good word for them.” She adjusted the strap of her purse on her shoulder. “Speaking of pesky, I’m, um…sorry if I came off as nosy or bossy yesterday. It’s just seeing Caitlyn alone like that, running across the street…well, it scared me. For her. I’m a first-grade teacher, see, and I guess I’m a bit sensitive about kids—”
Jack placed a warm hand on her arm to halt her argument. “No apology needed.”
Startled by his touch, Megan darted her gaze up to his. Just as it had yesterday, the heat in his mossy brown eyes burrowed to her core, nudging a purely feminine response…and a quiver of reciprocal apprehension.
“In fact,” Jack said, “I should be thanking you again. My daughter has boundless energy which she uses for getting in to rather…creative mischief. I appreciate your interest in her.”
Megan nodded. “I know her creative mischief is a challenge now, but it also shows her natural intelligence and curiosity. She seems like a very bright little girl.”
“Thanks.” Jack’s grin spoke for his fatherly love and pride.
“Well, I need to run. I’m already late for work.” Mustering another smile for her neighbor, she sidestepped toward the door, only to bump in to Ginny.
“Yeah, I’m running a little late myself.” He inclined his head toward the back halls of the police department.
Megan’s breath stilled. “You’re a cop?”
“No,” he replied, chuckling. “I’m a reporter for the Lagniappe Daily Journal. I’m following up on a story.”
A reporter. Not a cop. But almost as bad.
No doubt he was a pro at asking questions, digging up information. A reporter was not the kind of person she needed to spend much time around if she wanted to keep certain aspects of her past a secret.
Megan felt the blood drain from her cheeks, and she swayed woozily.
Jack’s brow furrowed. “Megan, you okay? You look sort of pale.”
“Yeah. I, uh—”
Again Ginny rose to the occasion. “Well, it was nice meeting you. Tell Caitlyn ‘hi’ for us.”
She took Megan’s arm and pulled her toward the front door.
Jack’s puzzled gaze followed them.
As Megan stepped outside, the Louisiana humidity slammed into her as if she’d walked into a wall. The heat sapped what little energy she had left after rehashing painful details of her assault for the police then losing her breakfast in the ladies’ room.
Ginny gave her curious sidelong glances as they made their way to Ginny’s Jeep Cherokee.
“My, my, my.” Ginny shook her head and clucked her tongue like a mother scolding an errant child.
“What?” Megan drilled her friend with an exasperated glare.
“You’ve been holding out on me.” Ginny colored her tone with an exaggerated note of disappointment.
“Come again?”
“If you want to give that gorgeous hunk of man the cold shoulder, that’s your business. But I thought we were friends. Couldn’t you have sent him in my direction if you didn’t want him? Is that too much to ask?” Ginny gave her a teasing grin and pulled out into the flow of downtown Lagniappe traffic. “How long have you been hiding Mr. Tall, Dark and Dimpled from me?”
Megan gaped at Ginny in disbelief before sighing. Ginny’s teasing normally lifted her spirits. She realized that must have been Ginny’s aim, but the attempt at levity chafed at the moment.
Troubling thoughts about the man sitting behind bars at the police station made joking about anything else difficult. “I’m not hiding him or anyone else from you, Gin. He’s my new neighbor, and I only met him last night.”
“Your neighbor, eh? How convenient.” Ginny’s eyes lit with humor. “So are you blind or did you notice that he’s as attractive as sin?”
Not wanting to encourage her friend on this track, she shrugged. “Yeah, maybe.”
“He sure was checking you out.” Ginny cut her glance from the road to give Megan a calculating grin. “I didn’t see a ring. I think you should—”
“Not interested.”
“Megan, he’s gorgeous. And employed! That’s more than I can say for the last bum I dated.”
Huffing her impatience with the direction of the conversation, Megan turned toward the passenger-side window and tried to forget the pathetic impression she must have made on Jack Calhoun this morning. If her bleak appearance wasn’t bad enough, she’d stuttered and jumped at his touch like an idiot.
She studied the buildings as they passed, remnants of a once-thriving downtown. The empty shells of restaurants and banks lined the narrow streets, harkening to a pre-mall era.
On some level, Megan empathized with those dilapidated buildings. Before her attack, she had flourished. But the self-assured graduate student, engaged to her boyfriend of four years and ready to take on the world, crumbled that horrible night.
The trauma left her a ghost of her former self. Graduate school took more effort than she could give while nursing her broken spirit, and she’d dropped out. Like the shoppers who fled downtown for the suburban mall, her fiancé had abandoned her, unable to cope with her withdrawal and impatient with her lengthy recovery. The outgoing, undaunted young woman she’d been now lived behind locked doors and slept with a dog who’d been trained to attack on command.
“May I ask why not?” Ginny’s question intruded on her thoughts, and Megan turned back toward her friend.
“Why not what?”
“Why aren’t you interested in a charming, gorgeous, employed, interested man? Are you planning on living like a hermit the rest of your life?”
Though delivered in Ginny’s typical get-off-your-butt-and-stop-feeling-sorry-for-yourself manner, Megan understood the loving concern behind the sarcastic question.
“I’m not opposed to dating someone. I do want to get some semblance of a normal life back, but…” She paused and chewed her lower lip. An image of Jack Calhoun as he’d looked yesterday, wearing only a towel, filtered through her mind.
Square jaw. Hard chest. Broad shoulders.
Testosterone personified. A tremor raced through her.
“But?”
“But not him.” Megan wrapped her arms around her middle to calm the uneasy quiver.
Ginny frowned and shook her head. “Why not him? He seemed pretty nice, and he’s totally gorgeous. What’s the problem?”
While she tried to verbalize her reluctance, Megan stared down at her shoes. “He’s too…male.”
“Meaning?”
The car bounced over a set of defunct railroad tracks, and she grabbed the armrest for balance. If only she had something comparable to an armrest in her life, something she could cling to for balance and security. From the day she’d met Ginny down at the women’s counseling center, her mentor and friend had told her that “something” had to come from inside her. Things, even other people, made nice security blankets, but real, lasting peace-of-mind and self-assurance came from deep within oneself. Though she’d made significant progress in reclaiming her life, Megan hadn’t yet rediscovered the spring of pure self-confidence she’d lost. But she kept hoping, kept searching.
“What do you mean, ‘he’s too male’?”
With a sigh, and knowing how pitifully weak and irrational her reason made her sound, she expounded. “When I met him yesterday, he was wearing a towel. Only a towel.”
Ginny arched a well-manicured eyebrow. “Oh, yeah? And?”
“And he’s…all muscled and toned and…male!”
“Sounds good to me.”
Her friend’s glib response belied the woman’s insight into what bothered Megan, she knew. Ginny was prodding her, trying to make her vocalize her fears. The first step to conquering the demons was naming them, bringing them into the light for scrutiny. Only then could she begin tearing those little devils apart, piece by piece.
“Look, you know I’m not afraid of men,” Megan argued. “It’s not as bad as that!”
“Then how did you feel when you met him?”
Shutting her eyes, Megan pictured Jack Calhoun in her mind again. “Vulnerable.”
“Why?”
“Because he…could overpower me.” She scowled. That excuse fell short, and she knew it as well as Ginny did.
“So could most men, but you aren’t afraid of other men. Not even Billy. And he bench-presses two hundred and fifty pounds.” Ginny sent her a skeptical glance.
“Billy’s different. He’s your brother. He’s in high school. He—”
“Doesn’t get you hot and bothered like Mr. Neighbor does?”
Megan jerked her gaze to Ginny’s smug expression. “What?”
“That’s it, isn’t it?” Ginny stopped for a red light and turned to face her passenger. Her knowing eyes, honed like razors, cut through Megan’s defenses and denials. “You’re attracted to him, and it scares you. Because attraction could lead to a date, and a date to a relationship and a relationship to intimacy.”
The light changed, but Ginny didn’t move, not even when the car behind them blasted its horn. The piercing intensity in her eyes softened when Megan’s silence confirmed her assertions.
“I’m not ready.” Megan whispered her admission, yet it seemed to reverberate in the quiet car. Swallowing past the knot forming in her throat, she allowed the rest of her fears to float to the surface. She had to face them in order to move past them. “What happens if I get involved with someone, someone I really like, and when the time comes to…be intimate, I freeze.”
“If he’s got any kind of decency at all, he’ll understand and be patient with you, support you and—”
“Greg didn’t.” The icy memory of her fiancé’s desertion due to her inability to make love to him stabbed her heart.
Ginny huffed and shook her head. “Greg was a self-centered ass. We’ve been over this before. There are men out there who can be gentle and understanding and supportive. The ones who aren’t simply aren’t worth your time.”
Megan looked away, unable to stand Ginny’s unrelenting stare any longer. That gaze saw too much. As much as she loved Ginny’s insightfulness and friendship, she hated those qualities, too. Sometimes she wished Ginny would leave her alone, let her hide behind her locked doors and lick her wounds. Instead, Ginny pushed her, probed her, gave her little leeway for excuses. She demanded so much from Megan because she cared that much, too.
“The light’s green,” she told Ginny, hoping her nonresponse would make the point that she hadn’t the energy for any more questions.
She knew Ginny didn’t consider the topic of Jack Calhoun closed. What’s more, since Jack was her neighbor, she knew she’d have to face the reporter—and her disturbing attraction to him—again.
And again.
Somehow she’d have to come to terms with her confusing feelings for Jack Calhoun.
Chapter 4
One evening later that week, Megan sat at her computer reviewing the lesson plan she’d drawn up for the upcoming week, but Sam’s restless barking filtered in from the backyard, making it difficult to concentrate. Grumbling over the interruption, she walked to the window and opened it.
“Sam!” she called through the screen, “Pipe down, would ya? I’m trying to work.”
Sam’s barks softened to a whimper at the sound of his master’s voice.
“Thank you!” Leaving the window open, she strolled back to her computer, stretching the kinks from her shoulders. No doubt her well-trained guard dog was protecting her house from a vicious squirrel again.
Although Sam had been through training similar to a police dog’s, he was first and foremost a dog. A dog who hated squirrels. But for Megan, Sam’s foibles made him that much more lovable.
She’d never regretted the decision to get Sam for protection. His gentle disposition and loyalty made him a trusted companion, as well as her guardian. His presence in the house at night, and most often sharing her double bed, gave her a reassurance she needed. Experience had taught her that danger could find you even in the sanctity of your home.
Ginny called Sam a crutch, but even if Megan didn’t rely on the German shepherd for added protection, she’d keep him for the unconditional affection and companionship he offered. Her self-imposed isolation over the last five years made for a lonely existence.
Returning to her lesson plan, she scanned the calendar for a day when one of the girls in her class could bring her puppy for show and tell. Megan decided to tie in the puppy’s visit to a lesson on responsibilities to pets or similarities between animals or—
Sam’s barking intruded on her thoughts again. But now the timbre of Sam’s bark had become dark and ominous. His snarling and growling sent a chill creeping over her skin. Apprehension accelerated her pulse. Surely a squirrel wouldn’t set Sam off like this. Did she have a prowler?
Megan froze…until the wail of a child’s terrified scream rent the air.
