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But all that was past. He needed help now, and she was the only one around.
She stepped forward. “I’m sorry, Jim.” The words sounded stilted, even to her.
Using only one shoulder, he shrugged. Was he blocking her off, or unable to speak about it? She didn’t know. She didn’t know him well enough to judge.
What an ironic commentary on my life, considering I’ve known the man, been in the same circle of friends with him ten years.
“Your real mother called?” She wanted to hit herself for the stupid question, but she had to start somewhere, and she had no idea of how to reach out to him.
Still leaning against the tree with a balled fist, he nodded.
What did she say from here? More inane questions to force him to talk—or did she give him the peace and space to think?
To grieve, you mean.
Yes, she understood that—from personal experience.
“Um, do you want me to get Laila?” I’m no good here. I shouldn’t be involved in this.
He didn’t answer; but in his stillness and silence, his stiff stance, she still felt the waves of need coming from him. He didn’t want to be alone; but being Jim, he didn’t know how to ask for help.
What could she do?
Forcing her feet to move, she walked to him, doing what Laila would have done. Reaching out to him, lifting her hand to touch his shoulder, hoping it was enough. That she was enough, because no one else had bothered to come out to see if he was all right, if he needed anything.
Not one of Jim’s many friends had come to him.
She frowned. Why hadn’t they come out? Jim would have done so for them—he had done it, whenever any of them needed him. Laila was the only one with a valid excuse—and she was the only one fretting over his welfare, or had even noticed his pain.
At the touch, he turned his face and looked down at her. His eyes were shattered.
“Oh, Jim,” she breathed. Though she was wading waist-deep in a stormy ocean of the things she’d always avoided before—vulnerability, emotional attachment to a man—she worked on an instinct she didn’t know she had, tugging him toward her.
Wanting to comfort him.
With a muffled sound, the tortured moan of an animal caught in a trap, he grabbed her and hauled her hard against him, dragging in ragged breaths.
A drowning man holding onto a leaky life preserver. Wishing she knew how to help, she sighed and gave up, wrapped her arms around him and let him be.
Six foot four of raw masculinity surrounding her had a swallowed-alive feel to it. The hot, sweet tenderness so foreign to her two years before when he’d held her returned in a rush. The jumble of changes in her life in a single hour left her humbled, confused and wanting all at once. She didn’t know what to do with the inner whisper telling her she was in the right place at the right time.
Yet somehow, her silence wasn’t wrong or pitiful. Maybe quiet was what he needed far more than her imperfect words. After all, words had just torn his life apart.
They stood locked together for a long time. The quiet shimmered with peace, like sunlight on a winter pond, gentle and beautiful. Though she’d never done this with a man before, standing in Jim’s arms, holding him close and giving him comfort felt so natural she almost forgot to question it, to remember the differences between them.
Perhaps that was the reason: the biggest differences between them had been removed. The rug of secure family had been pulled out from beneath his feet, while she’d never had a rug. Suddenly opposites had become two of a kind—but the welter of confusion, fury and unexpected grief had blinded him. He’d need a guide to walk him through the darkness.
And she knew that darkness well: the parental lies and omission; feeling as if you don’t belong anywhere; feeling lost and alone. She’d walked in that darkness ever since the day she’d realised other kids’ mummies and daddies actually liked each other. They didn’t all buy separate groceries, use the kitchen at different times and sleep in separate bedrooms. They didn’t all stay together for the sake of the child, living in a trap of semi-polite hatred and needle-fine insults.
Some parents loved each other.
Some parents didn’t lie to their kids—and gentle, honest Jim had just discovered, at age thirty, that he’d lived a lie all his life. He’d been a lie all his life.
Slowly, the stiffness in him softened. He still clung to her, but it felt more relaxed, sharing rather than the drowning man’s hold. She could breathe again.
“Thank you,” he murmured against her hair.
“You’re welcome,” she murmured back, feeling her hair move, and his breath touch her skin. She shivered.
He lifted his face and looked at her, those dark eyes filled with turbulence; and yes, the wanting she couldn’t help feeling for him, even here and now, it was there in his eyes, too. Even though she knew Jim was an expert in playing the game—he’d had girls hanging off him for as long as she’d known him—in the reflection of the deep blackness of his eyes, she still felt beautiful, truly desired as a woman for the first time.
And she felt—vulnerable. Feminine. Lost, but happy to be so…and her lips parted…
“I don’t know who I am anymore.”
Danni blinked, trying to reorient herself. The kiss they hadn’t shared had seemed so real, she felt as if he’d wrenched it from her—just as she’d felt it two years before when he’d turned her down and walked away without looking back.
Tonight had been a terrible shock for him, she admonished herself. He needed time to adjust, not kisses, biting wit or sharp-tongued defences: he needed a friend. She couldn’t leave him alone with this.
As alone as I’ve been all my life…and I survived it, didn’t I?
Yeah, you’re a regular poster girl for personal growth.
After long moments, she said tentatively, “You should go home, talk to your—” She stopped there, uncertain what to call them now, the people who’d raised him and loved him.
His smile was a grim travesty of the open, cheerful, I know who I am and where I belong smile that had ticked her off all these years…and yet now, it hurt that he wasn’t the same man he’d been an hour ago. “It’s okay to call them my family. Apparently I’m still related.”
Wondering how he fit in now, she smiled back at him. “That’s good.”
“Half nephew,” he said, reading her thoughts without difficulty. “If there’s such a thing as a half nephew.”
“Well, that’s good…isn’t it? I mean, you still belong with them.” She closed her mouth, cursing her stupid tongue—and her body. His touch, the depth of his gaze on her was stirring her senses so much she couldn’t think. She’d been thrown without warning into a world where she wanted so much more than to best a man at the game he played, a world without superficial rules.
Maybe it was because Jim was incapable of playing games tonight; he was in too much pain to handle it. She had to ignore her pathetic wish that she could have been in his arms an hour before the phone call had rocked his life off its secure foundations.
“I suppose I do still belong.” He kept looking at her. His hands, at her back, moved a little. The most tentative caress she’d ever known.
She felt her breath catch again. Looking at him became dangerous, yet she couldn’t stop. What was he doing? What did he want from her: a friend to understand his pain, or a lover to help him forget for a while? The thought sent a shudder of longing through her.
Did she follow his lead, or ignore it? She didn’t know; all she knew was she couldn’t breathe again, and her gaze clung to his.
“I have to go,” he whispered, but held her still.
Without breath or balance, she nodded again, not trusting her voice. Wanting too much. Craving. She rested her hands against his chest, trying to find the strength to move.
“I want you, too, Danni,” he said quietly, giving her the words she didn’t know she was aching to hear until they came. “Right now I don’t think I’ve ever wanted a woman more. But until I know who I am, I can’t give you what you need.”
From another man, the words would have brought out her fighting spirit. She didn’t need anything from a man. She would make her way alone, and succeed.
From Jim, it was raw truth, he was hurting too much to tell her anything else.
She didn’t want to think about whether he was right or not. “So you can’t give your usual one hundred and fifty percent. Maybe it’s time someone gave to you, Haskell,” she said, hearing the huskiness of desire in her voice. “I don’t think you should go home alone.”
He tipped up her chin, his gaze searching her face, so taken aback by her words, his brows met in a frown. “Are you offering to come with me?”
Amazed that she actually was, she nodded…and made a soft, purring sound when his hand caressed her back, and the other moved beneath the sensitive skin at her chin.
He made a helpless gesture, a little shrug that conveyed his confusion. “Why?”
How to answer that, when she didn’t know herself? “I owe you for saving my butt two years ago. And I’ve been where you are, in a way,” she said, hearing the soft breathlessness thrumming through each word. “I might not be adopted, but I’ve spent my life wishing I was.” She looked up at him, half-defiant. “You know my story. I suppose everyone does. I’ve been navigating the waters of parental lies and self-delusion all my life. You can’t let them to fluff you off with their version of the story—and believe me, they’ll try. Even the best parents hate being caught out lying or being in the wrong. They should have told you years ago, and given you the chance to find your real parents.” She drew a deep breath after saying more in one go than she had for years. “You shouldn’t be left alone with this.”
“What about your job?”
She shrugged. “I quit three weeks ago. I’ve only been doing locum work until I find the right practice. So I’m free to come with you.”
“How about where you live? Laila said you signed a lease on a place in Sydney?”
She shrugged. “My stuff’s there. A week’s rent’s no big deal.” She frowned as he began to find another objection. “Look, I’ll come if you want me to. I may not be Laila,” she added tartly, “but I’m free for another week or two. I don’t see anyone else offering to be your support person.”
Why on earth am I pushing this?
As if he’d heard her thought, a brow lifted. “And…? Come on, Danni, say it.”
She bit her lip over a crazy urge to smile. She ought to have known he wasn’t going to let her leave it unsaid, or let her hide behind her sarcasm. Typical of Jim—but she knew whatever she gave to him now he’d give back tenfold, because he always did.
The thought of what he’d give her, what she’d been wanting from him from the first moment he’d touched her at graduation two years ago, made the sweet wanting bloom into a hot ache in every part of her body.
Wrong time, wrong place, probably the wrong people as well…But she didn’t care.
“And because…” She lifted her chin and said it outright, “I don’t want you to walk away again and leave whatever this is between us hanging for another two years.”
He laughed then—not with his whole heart, not as cheerful as the past—but still he’d laughed, and she’d done it for him. She felt a little glow of pride. This reaching out and doing things for people actually felt pretty good—at least, it felt good with Jim.
When he spoke, the warm laughter was still there…but so was the desire. “Spoken like the straight-from-the-hip woman you are.”
“Is that bad?” She moved her hands on his chest.
His eyes darkened. “It’s good, Danni. It’s damn good. I didn’t think you’d ever admit to it.” He pulled her closer. “Come on, little fighter. Make it real.”
Maybe he wanted her; maybe he just wanted one piece of good news tonight, or a distraction from the knock he’d suffered. Maybe he was lying to himself—but he was too honest to do that. And he’d been looking at her like that before the call.
She didn’t question why, after a lifetime of denial with men, she wanted to say this, and now; she only knew she must, or he wouldn’t kiss her. Her hands caressed up his chest to his shoulders; then, the ache of her yearning made truth imperative. She pulled at him, trying to bring him down to her. “I want you, Haskell, all right? I want to be with you.”
That gorgeous, big-as-the-Outback grin she’d always hungered to see even as she’d pretended to hate it, spread across his face. “Now say the rest of it,” he whispered, resisting her pull, forcing her out of all hiding. Making the thing between them as honest as it was inevitable.
“All right. I’ve wanted you for two years.” She sighed impatiently, tugging harder. “And waiting for you to touch me again is making me crazy. So shut up and kiss me. Then maybe we can get back to being friends.”
He leaned down into her and nuzzled her hair. “We’ve never been friends, Danni. You never let me in,” he murmured in a warm, blurry voice, thick with desire.
Why did he think she hadn’t? She’d wanted this for so many years, ached for it, and getting close to him wasn’t an option when he was never close enough.
Need was pain now. She couldn’t think beyond him, his touch, his closeness that wasn’t close enough. “Now, Haskell, or I might have to kill you.”
With a low chuckle he turned his face, trailing his lips over her ear, her cheek and jaw…and she purred in the purest pleasure she’d ever known.
Hearing Danni making the little, feminine sounds of desire—how the hell has she wanted me for so long?—drove Jim almost out of his head; yet still he took his time, keeping his kisses slow, gentle and arousing. He tasted the silky skin of her jaw down to her throat. So soft and sweet…she tasted like rich, creamy ice cream.
He’d always had an unquenchable greed when it came to ice cream.
Did her mouth taste the same? He had to know—and she was turning her face, seeking his mouth in blind want. With a groan, he lifted her up against him—so small and sweet, this Danni; how could he ever have compared her to a Sherman tank?—and let it happen.
Bam.
He’d known for years he had the hots for Danni—what guy wouldn’t, given her delicate loveliness, the challenge of her defences and battleground intellect?—but he’d dismissed it as an inconvenient desire that would never stack up against his love for Laila. But man, with that first touch on his shoulder, meant only in comfort, Danni had knocked him for six in a way Laila never had.
Was it possible that, blinded by what he’d thought was real love for Laila, he’d been ignoring something incredible he could have had with Danni? All these years, thinking something was wrong with him, that only lightweight girls returned his desire, while the kind of woman he really wanted—intelligent, sensitive, focussed and strong, never wanted him…
Now his desire was being fulfilled by a woman who not only had all those qualities in spades, but was returning kiss for kiss. Her delicate roundness was lying flush against him, her throat made eager sounds…and he felt as if he were flying. The simple act of kissing—and he’d done a lot of it in the past three years, among other things—had never felt so amazing, so intense.
Why that suddenly brought everything back to him, he didn’t know. One moment he felt as if he were captain of Starship Danielle, the next he was putting her down, staggering back and staring at her as if—as if—
Damned if he knew what. Damned if he knew anything at this point.
Within a moment, he regretted his panic-inspired reaction, because Danni had gone from soft, flushed and starry-eyed to having more defences than a hedgehog. Her mouth, dark in the night but he knew was rosy and flushed from his kiss, opened to say something stinging—and he couldn’t think of a thing to say to stop her this time.
“Don’t tell me—‘it’s not you, it’s me,’” she said, her tone flippant. Her hands were on her hips, her chin up, ready to do battle.
The trouble was he’d dumped himself on earth from the stratosphere too fast; he couldn’t think beyond what had made him panic in the first place. “I don’t know who I am.” He half turned from her. “My father isn’t my father, either. Nobody is who I thought they were—and I’m not anything I thought I was. I have to know the truth.”
The sarcasm wiped from her face. When she spoke, the warm, half-laughing ruefulness reached inside his soul, into the pain and softening it. “That’s just typical of you, Haskell, you know that? You can put me in the wrong so fast my head spins.”
Ridiculously relieved that he’d somehow said the right thing with her for once, he grinned. “Well, you just made my head spin, so we’re even.”
In the moonlight, he could see her blush.
“I still want you, Danni.” He could hear the huskiness in his voice. “But I’ve got no idea where even I’m going from here, so I can’t say where we would go.”
“I know where you’re going. To your parents’ house,” she said, taking his hand. Her face was very gentle now. “From there—” she shrugged “—I never expected promises. We indulged ourselves for a few minutes, and it was pretty nice. But you have things you have to sort out, and I’m along for the ride while I work out my future. So let’s get back to…no, let’s become friends, Jim Haskell.” With a lifted chin and a smile of promised camaraderie, she shook the hand she held.
Not for long, though. Jim released her hand so fast she stumbled back over one of the tree roots, staring at him in shock.
No way!
He could see the danger signs plastered, posted and splashed all over whatever this was with Danni. After that life-changing kiss, she was saying she hadn’t wanted anything from him beyond the moment.
Liar. Liar!
Danni Morrison was not about to become another woman in the life of Jim Haskell, Woman’s Best Friend!
