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“He’s far from awful, and Kathleen has never been in love in her life,” Gladdy insisted. “You know that. You know what the women in our family are like.”
“Yes, but she told me that she loves him. I’ve never heard her sound this way, and if she knew what the two of you were doing behind her back. Not even behind her back,” Jane remembered. “The other night, at dinner?”
“We were holding hands. It’s hardly a crime, hardly anything at all. What a prude you can be sometimes, Jane. I just hate that for you. I want you to be happy in every way, including having a man in your life.”
“Prude?” Jane was so hurt, she could hardly speak.
Frustrated, infuriating tears filled her eyes. Prude? “I am not!”
“You’re objecting to hand-holding, my darling. If that isn’t prudish, I don’t know what is. I was holding hands with boys in first grade.”
Jane gasped, hurt. Prude? She opened her mouth to object again, and then realized if she didn’t get out of there right that minute, she was going to cry. And Jane Carlton never cried, especially in front of anyone!
“I…I…I have to go. I can’t talk to you about this right now,” she said, then got up and fled.
She was outside, hurrying down the walkway toward her car, not really watching as carefully as she should have been, when she literally ran right into Leo Gray.
“You,” she said, “Necking with my aunt? Behind my grandmother’s back! My grandmother who thinks she’s in love with you? You rat!”
He didn’t crumple or anything from the impact of their collision. The man was solid for his age. But then he grabbed her by the arms. She hated grabby men.
“Get your hands off me this instant!” she yelled.
“Calm down, girly,” he said, having the nerve to seem amused. “I’m just trying to make sure you don’t fall down.”
“I don’t need any help to keep from falling down. Let go of me this instant!”
She jerked herself away with everything she had, but he was stronger than he looked, and he didn’t let go. A haze of red came over Jane’s vision. She was so mad now, she couldn’t even see, couldn’t remember ever being this mad in her life.
It was all his fault!
Every bit of it!
Her grandmother would be brokenhearted. He’d been necking with Gladdy, Gladdy who’d called Jane a prude! And this awful man had the nerve to tell her she needed to relax?
Before she truly thought of what she was about to do, Jane pulled back the hand with her briefcase and got ready to whack him with it. She got the backswing in and was bringing her hand forward when, only then, her mind cleared just a bit so she could actually see what she was doing.
She was about to hit an old man.
A nearly ninety-year-old man!
“Oh, my God!” she cried, changing her mind right at the end of her backswing, as she started swinging her arm forward.
Could she stop it now? Was it too late?
And then she gasped as she was lifted off her feet—literally—and hauled around in the other direction.
Wyatt saw Jane and Leo having what looked like angry words, but he wasn’t really worried at first.
Then Leo put his hands on Jane, holding on to her.
Not the smartest thing to do, Wyatt was sure.
Then he saw Jane wind up to take a swing at Leo with her briefcase.
“Good God! Jane!” he yelled, barely getting to her in time.
He was in the wrong place to get between her and Leo. He was behind Jane. So he just put an armaround her waist, hauled her back against him and swung her around the other way.
Leo ducked and her briefcase went flying, landing harmlessly in the petunias in the flower bed to the right.
She screamed in pure outrage, like she was being mugged in a dark alley, kicking her feet in the air, her arms coming back to grab him. She hit him in the eye, then grabbed and thankfully got nothing but his hair. Afterward she took that handful of hair and yanked hard.
“Jane,” he hollered at first, because she wouldn’t have heard him over the racket she was making otherwise. “It’s Wyatt. Shhhh. I’m not going to hurt you. I would never hurt you.”
He got another arm around her, this one across her hips, her body completely plastered against his as he spoke softly into her right ear. “Shhh. It’s all right.”
She stopped kicking out with her feet, stopped squirming and went still. Maybe that was even worse, because then her hips were pressed against his abdomen—sweet, curvy Jane hips. She was breathing hard, and as he lowered her to her feet, her whole body rubbed along his.
Damn, Jane.
She really would be outraged if she knew the direction of his thoughts at the moment.
He put her down and she turned around, right there in front of him, looking shocked, still more than a little mad, and all rumpled and…sexy.
Very, very sexy.
Her hair had come tumbling down from that well-disciplined knot she’d had it in yesterday. It tumbled about her shoulders and her face. Her cheeks were flushed, eyes glistening with unshed tears.
A look of horror came over her face as she glanced from him to Leo to the crowd of retirees Wyatt now realized had come to watch this scene.
“Oh, my God!” she said, like she’d just woken up from a nightmare.
He took her carefully by the arms, to steady her and nothing more, not because he just needed to have his hands on her. “It’s okay,” he promised quietly, then turned and addressed the crowd. “Everybody’s fine here. Just a slight misunderstanding. Let’s all move along now. Nothing to see.”
Jane’s mouth fell open, and for a moment, it looked like she was going to hide her face against Wyatt’s chest to keep from having to see anyone. Not that he had any objections.
He had the feeling Jane Carlton very seldom, if ever, let herself really lose it like that, and while he wasn’t a man to condone violence, he had to admit, if any man could push a woman over the edge, it would be one of the Gray men. Leo probably deserved to be whacked with much more than the briefcase.
His mouth twitched. He was aching to grin, but tried to maintain his stern facade as Leo came cautiously closer. Wyatt eased Jane’s face against him in a loose embrace, while she hid for a moment.
Over the top of her head, he mouthed to Leo, “What the hell did you do now?”
Leo shook his head, pretending an innocence Wyatt was sure was completely fake.
“Get out of here,” he mouthed.
Before he turned Jane loose on the man.
Wyatt waited until Leo was far enough away. He felt fairly certain Jane wouldn’t chase after him, if she saw him, and then reluctantly stepped away from her.
She was shaking and felt so tiny in his arms. “You okay now?” he asked.
When she finally lifted her head, she looked a bit dazed and still horrified. “I can’t believe I did that.”
Again, Wyatt had to fight not to grin, because she looked like she was confessing to mass murder.
“Leo’s fine,” he said. “Not a scratch on him.”
“I almost hit another person!” she cried. “An old man!”
“Now that would offend him terribly. Calling him an old man and thinking he was too frail to take you on in a fight.”
“I don’t fight!” Jane cried. “I can’t. I would never. I’ve always been devoted to nonviolent ways of settling disagreements. I abhor violence in any form.”
“An admirable principle,” Wyatt assured her.
“But I could have really hurt him. I mean, I take kickboxing and self-defense classes.”
Wyatt couldn’t help it. He chuckled at that.
Jane, kickboxing? It was laughable, given her size. If her little suits weren’t so severely cut, he’d swear she had to shop in the girl’s department.
“I could have hurt him,” she insisted. “I’ve had abused women go through my seminars. And every now and then, a man gets mad at the things I’ve taught a woman and shows up at the office. I thought it was important to learn to protect myself, that every woman should.”
“Of course,” Wyatt agreed. Mad men came looking for her? Pint-size Jane? He didn’t like the sound of that at all.
“But I never believed I could resort to anything like that myself. Wyatt, this is horrible. This is completely unacceptable. One minute, I was fine, and the next, I just saw red, literally, and I was taking a swing at him.”
“Jane, I’ve nearly decked him a time or two myself, and I assure you that I too abhor violence. I’ve had abused women in my office, as well, trying to work up the courage to divorce their abusers.”
“I’m so sorry,” she said, still aghast at her own behavior, standing on the walkway at the retirement park, looking around like she’d just found herself on another planet.
“It’s all right. I promise. And I’m sorry I grabbed you like that. I was just trying to keep you from hitting him.”
“And I’m so glad you did.”
“What did he do to make you so mad?”
“I went to talk to Gladdy about him, and I caught them necking in her room! And he was so awful! He called me names and said I just needed to learn to have some fun. Fun! He’s going to hurt my grandmother and Gladdy’s feelings terribly, and he thinks it’s fun!”
Jane realized she’d said it like fun was a dirty word, which she didn’t believe, and she wasn’t really a prude, was she?
“But I wasn’t really going to hit him, Wyatt, I swear! I changed my mind. Midway through that swing, I realized what I was doing and changed my mind. I just wasn’t sure if I could stop in time. My briefcase was already headed for him, and I just…I don’t…This is sooo awful!”
“Jane, it’s fine. Everyone’s fine.”
“And then you grabbed me, and I didn’t know it was you, and I—”
“I know. I didn’t mean to manhandle you. I just had to act fast, and…well, I’m sorry.”
And then she looked horrified again, raised her hand to the side of his face and said, “I hit you!”
His right eye throbbed a bit. “It’s nothing,” he insisted.
“No. It’s turning red and a little puffy.” She touched it, with her fingertips, featherlight, trying to find the extent of the blow. “Oh, my God, Wyatt! I could have put your eye out!”
“I seriously doubt that.”
“No, I’ve been trained to do that.” She seemed absolutely convinced that she could. “A man attacks you, you go for the eyes. It’s one of the most vulnerable spots on the body. Eyes, nose with the heel of your hand, groin—”
“Okay, thankfully, I came out of this unscathed.”
“No, we have to get something on that eye. Ohhh,” she fretted. “I feel awful about this. You have to let me help you.”
“Well, if you insist,” he said, turning himself over to her tender care.
Gladdy, Leo and Kathleen watched from the cover of the rhododendrons fifteen feet away.
“Ladies, I’m afraid I overplayed the scene,” Leo said.
“Nonsense. Jane overreacted,” Gram stated. “Gladdy and I should have warned you about that. Poor Jane does tend to overreact.”
“She’s got some fire in her, all right. I like that in a woman,” Leo admitted. “Couldn’t believe she actually took a swing at me. Didn’t think she had it in her.”
“It was the ‘girly’ remark,” Gladdy said. “And I may have overplayed things a bit myself with her.”
“Of course not. It worked perfectly,” Kathleen insisted. “Look at them. Jane feels terrible about what she did and Wyatt’s comforting her. It’s so sweet. They’ve known each other for less than three days and there they are. I’d say our plan to get them together is a rousing success.”
“Well, in that case, ladies,” Leo said, “would you care to join me for a celebratory drink? I have champagne chilling in the minifridge in my room. We can decide on our next move and commemorate the success of this one.”
Wyatt took Jane back to his apartment, which was a mere four blocks away—a sleek, shiny, modern, expensive loft in a high-rise on the edge of town.
Jane taking charge was something to behold. She pushed him down to sit in the middle of the big, cushy sofa the minute they had walked in the door, and told him not to move. He complied.
She got ice from the kitchen, lectured him mildly about the need to take care of himself properly once she found out he didn’t even have an ice pack, explained that one should always be prepared for life’s emergencies, then said they’d make do with a ziplock bag wrapped in a hand towel.
She came to stand behind him, took his head in her hands and eased it back against the sofa cushions. Then she placed the makeshift ice pack on his right eye.
“Keep that there while I search your bathroom. You must have some ointment and bandages somewhere.”
He sprawled on the couch, leaning back as instructed and holding the ice to his eye. He never imagined a woman giving orders to him would be so sexy. Normally, he was a take-charge kind of guy. Not that he ordered women around, either. Just that…well, he couldn’t help but wonder now exactly how Jane would be in bed.
Would all those spitfire tendencies come out? That take-charge attitude, demanding what she wanted from him?
Wyatt had a hard time imagining Jane knowing what she truly wanted in bed, much less demanding it. She was cute, but didn’t seem to have much use for men, and any woman who’d been truly satisfied in bed would have at least one use for a man, he reasoned. He suspected she was very good at pushing men away, at keeping them at arm’s length, and not that good at really letting herself go in any situation.
Not that he thought he’d see her in his bed anytime soon.
