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“Sure. Which of my many suitors should I choose?”
Bitterness tainted her question. Pain lay there in her voice, raw and exposed. Before he reacted to it, she rushed away from him toward the back of the house, leaving him alone. He knew he’d said something wrong, but exactly what, he wasn’t sure.
Women. What did he know about them anyway? Not enough, if his divorce was anything to judge by.
Still, Jessie was hurting and remnants of her earlier pain lingered in her gaze. He was on the right track.
Kurt hadn’t been much interested in the fairy tales his mother had read to him and Mary. He, too, believed that chivalry had died an untimely death, if it had ever existed outside of books.
But that didn’t give him the power to leave Jessie alone. Something had brought her to him, in the cold, dark hours of an early April evening. Like it or not, as he’d told her earlier, when she reached out to him, she’d involved him.
Jessie had crossed into the kitchen. She stared out the window, into the desolate expanse of a still-dormant yard, her back to him in a sign of dismissal.
He ignored it.
In the entryway, he propped a shoulder against the doorjamb.
Even though he didn’t speak, she asked, “Are you still here?”
He’d had more promising beginnings with women. Somehow, though, nothing else had ever seemed this important. “Tell me about it, Jessie. Talk to me.”
Slowly, oh so slowly, the gown swishing, she turned around. Silence, unbroken by anything except their breathing, seemed to simmer.
“What do you want to hear? About the loneliness? Or the way my arms ache to hold a baby? The way I dream, every night, of having a child of my own?”
“How about the way you want to make up for what you didn’t have?”
She flinched, as if he’d slapped her.
“I’ve seen you with the kids at the center. You love them,” he said by way of an apology. “Most of us volunteer once a week, but you’re there almost every day, aren’t you?”
“They need the help.”
He nodded. “What about Jessie?” Closing in, he added, “What do you need?”
“I already told you. I need a child of my own.”
“Not this way.”
She looked up at him, layers of dark blond falling away from her face and revealing a side of her he’d never imagined until tonight. She’d always been tough, never vulnerable; independent, never needy. It was all there, though. It compelled him, made him want to protect her.
“What do you care, Kurt?”
Once, maybe, he might not have. Now, hearing the edge of pain in her tone, watching the shadows beneath her eyes and seeing the defeat in the curve of her shoulders, he cared.
He moved into the warmth of the room, realizing Jessie didn’t radiate the same welcome. With the toe of his boot, he hooked a chair leg and dragged it toward him. He sat on the chair backward, arms folded across the top. Whether she knew it or not, it promised to be a long night.
He didn’t intend to leave until he got what he wanted: answers, a telephone number and her sworn promise.
If there was one thing that took equal importance with his ranch and his family, it was winning.
“Mary always said you were stubborn.”
He looked at her. “She said the same thing about you.”
“Me?” Her eyes widened. “I’m not stubborn.”
He didn’t respond.
“I’m not,” she insisted.
“Give me the phone number, Jessie. Get this over with.”
“You know I can’t do that.”
“Then tell me where a husband fits into this picture.”
She shook her head and her hair once again fell in gentle disarray around her face. Kurt had to resist the inclination to run his fingers through the tousled strands, discovering for himself if it was as soft as it looked.
“I don’t need a man, any man.”
“That’s harsh.”
“Maybe,” she conceded. “But so is reality.”
She hadn’t come any closer to him, but unlike at his house and in her foyer, here she couldn’t escape except by getting past him. That wasn’t likely to happen. “A broken engagement isn’t a good reason to swear off men.”
“Yes, it is.”
It was back, that ghost of pain in her eyes. He wanted to vanquish it. “Samuel Bucket was a jerk.”
“You’re not going to get an argument from me.”
“Not all men are.”
“Really?”
He expected to hear sarcasm in the word. It wasn’t there. Instead it was a simple, honest question. “Take me, for example.”
“Okay,” she said. “Let’s take you. You barge into my house when I’m already in bed, lie about the neighbors watching us, lie about calling Sheriff McCall.”
Kurt raised a brow.
“Not only that, but you’ve made something that’s none of your concern into some sort of personal quest. And you refuse to leave.” Then quietly, she added, “How do you define the word jerk?”
He winced, the barb finding its mark. “Not by your standards.”
“Obviously.”
Kurt gave thanks for the distance between them. The sides of the chair back carved into his thighs. He liked the dig of pain. It distracted him, prevented him from ending this conversation in a way she wouldn’t like.
“I’m your sister’s friend,” she said. “Nothing more. Please, just let it go.”
He’d given himself the same argument earlier, telling himself he had no right to get involved. Hadn’t washed any better then than it did now. “By default, Jessie, that makes you my friend. You do my books, making you my employee, and we volunteer together at the center. Add in the fact you asked for a personal donation for your cause, and I say I’ve got more than a casual interest.”
“All that’s true, so you of all people should understand why this is important to me.”
“And you of all people should see why this is insane,” he countered.
“I don’t.”
“Kids need two parents.”
Her chin was set at a defiant tilt, another side he’d never seen from her. “They need someone to love them.”
“Feed that line to someone else, not to me. I don’t buy it. If kids only needed one person, they wouldn’t be at the center looking for something they could get at home.”
“Problem is, Kurt, those kids don’t have parents like I would be. Those parents are often overworked, stressed and burned-out. They have nothing left to give.”
“And you’re different?”
“I am. I’ve got a lot of experience from being at the center. You know as well as I do that I work from home. I’ll be there all day, every day. There won’t be day care or a lot of baby-sitters. A lot of two-parent families aren’t that lucky. My schedule can fit my baby’s.”
In her hands, conviction was a powerful weapon.
“I will be a great mother, give my child all he needs.” She paused, a small, private smile playing at the corner of her lips. “Or all she needs.”
Breath escaped his lungs. He’d hoped to see that expression—one of softness and maternal expectation—on Belinda’s face. The opposite had occurred when he’d broached the subject of starting their family.
She’d frowned, pursing her lips and stating, quite frankly, that she had no intention of ever sharing her body with another human being.
That had been the beginning of the end.
The rest had come when he found out that her assertion hadn’t been exactly accurate. She might not have wanted to share her body with a baby, but she’d had no compunction about sharing her intimacies with a man other than her husband.
Kurt was a fast learner and he’d sure as hell learned from the mistake of marriage.
“I can be a good parent, can’t you see, Kurt?”
He regarded Jessie, missing nothing. The fire in her eyes had replaced despair. Again, something new. Passion. Amazing. He’d seen Samuel Bucket in a bar the night he and Jessie broke up. Bucket had called her the Ice Princess.
No way. Fire and ice didn’t mix. And tonight Kurt had been singed by the fire in her eyes.
“Things will be perfect,” she said.
“One person can’t be all things to another human being.”
“I can and will.”
Kurt forced himself to stay in his chair. The urging to get up, grab hold of her and shake some sense into her ran rampant through him, demanding action.
Unconsciously his hands formed fists. “Wait a while. Wait until you find a man.”
“I’ve already tried.”
Her lids shuttered her eyes temporarily, and when she opened them again, the transformation stunned him. He’d been right earlier, fire and ice didn’t mix. Ice extinguished fire. It also dimmed her blue eyes, clouding them like the leading edge of a storm obscured a mountain peak.
“You rejected me.”
Shrapnel landed in his heart. “You can’t think—”
“I offered myself to you.” She gulped at a breath of air. “You turned me down.”
Good God. She thought it was personal. “Look, Jess—”
“It’s okay, Kurt. I shouldn’t have expected you to put yourself out for me. You were right, I wasn’t thinking straight. Why do you think I made an appointment at a clinic?”
He inhaled sharply. “Because you can’t get a man?”
“Because no man wants me.” Tears once again welled in her eyes. “And because I don’t need a man to be whole and complete.”
Beneath her bravado, he heard the woven strands of uncertainty and disbelief.
He stood, shoving aside the chair. “You’re a desirable woman.”
“Of course I am. Hollywood calls at least once a week.”
If he was on the wrong end of a branding iron, he’d be a whole lot more sure what to do than he was right now.
“Now if you’ll excuse me, it’s obvious I need my beauty sleep.”
He reached out and clamped his hand around her upper arm when she tried to brush past him. “I’m not leaving.”
“The couch is lumpy.”
It was back...the fire he’d glimpsed earlier. She was a paradox and that intrigued him. He wouldn’t leave now, no matter what common sense encouraged.
“Good night, Kurt.”
Reluctantly he released her.
Gathering the hem of her gown, she hurried away. The slam of her bedroom door echoed through the small house and all the way down into his gut.
He’d run headlong into a situation he didn’t begin to comprehend. He disliked the feeling, and that left him only one option—he had to work the puzzle, look at all the pieces from each angle. He had to figure out what the hell had gotten into Jessie. Then he had to figure out how to get her out of it.
Yeah. It promised to be a long night. Even longer, he realized when he glanced at the couch. She hadn’t lied. It was lumpy. Too short, understuffed and lumpy. And she hadn’t gotten him a blanket.
Served him right.
