No, he’d done the right thing, he assured himself, and ran the cold glass over his forehead because he suddenly felt viciously hot inside and out. She would have set him aside eventually and left him slackjawed and shot in the knees.
Women like Kirby Fitzsimmons didn’t stay. Not that he wanted any woman to stay, but if a man was going to start fantasizing, if he was going to start believing in marriage and family, she was just the type to draw him in, then leave him twisting in the wind.
She had too much fuel, too much nerve to stay on Desire. The right offer from the right hospital or medical institute or whatever, and she’d be gone before the sand settled back in her footprints.
God, he’d never seen anything like the way she’d handled Susan Peters’s body. The way she’d turned from woman to rock, clipping out orders in that cool, steady voice, her eyes flat, her hands without the slightest tremor.
It had been an eye-opener for him, all right. This wasn’t some fragile little flower who would be content to treat poison ivy and sunburn on a nowhere dot in the ocean for long. Hook herself up with an innkeeper who made the best part of his living whipping up soufflés and frying chicken? Not in this lifetime, he told himself.
So it was done, and over, and his life would settle back quietly into the routine he preferred.
Fucking rut, he thought on a sudden surge of fury. He nearly hurled the glass into the sink when he spotted her medical bag on the table. She’d left her bag, he mused, opening it and idly poking through the contents.
She could just come back and get it herself, he decided. He had things to do. He couldn’t be chasing after her just because she’d been in a snit and left it behind.
Of course, she might need it. You couldn’t be sure when some medical emergency would come along. It would be his fault, wouldn’t it, if she didn’t have her needles and prodding things. Someone could up and die, couldn’t they?
He didn’t want that on his conscience. With a shrug, he picked the bag up, found it heavier than he’d imagined. He thought he’d just run it over to her, drop it off, and that would be that.
He decided to take the car rather than cut through the forest. It was too damn hot to walk. And besides, if she’d dawdled at all he might beat her there. He could just leave the bag inside her door and drive off before she even got home.
When he pulled up in her drive, he thought he had accomplished just that and was disgusted with himself for being disappointed. He didn’t want to see her again. That was the whole point.
But when he was halfway up the steps, he realized she’d beaten him back after all. He could hear her crying.
It stopped him in his tracks, the sound of it. Hard, passionate sobs, raw gulps of air. It shook him right to the bone, left him dry-mouthed and loose at the knees. He wondered if there was anything more fearful a man could face than a weeping woman.
He opened the door quietly, eased it shut. His nerves were shot as he started back to her bedroom, shifting her bag from hand to hand.
She was curled up on the bed, a tight ball of misery with her hair curtaining her face. He’d dealt with wild female tears before. A man couldn’t live with Lexy half his life and avoid that. But he’d never expected such unrestrained weeping from Kirby. Not the woman who had challenged him to resist her, not the woman who had faced the result of murder without a quiver. Not the woman who had just walked out of his kitchen with her head high and her eyes cold as the North Atlantic.
With Lexy it was either get the hell out and bar the door or gather her up close and hold on until the storm passed. He decided to hold on and, sitting on the side of the bed, he reached out to bundle her to him.
She shot up straight as an arrow, slapping out sharply at the hands that reached for her. Patiently, he persisted—and found himself holding on to a hundred pounds of furious woman.
“Get out of here! Don’t you touch me.” The humiliation on top of the hurt was more than she could stand. She kicked, shoved, then scrambled off the far side of the bed. Standing there, she glared at him through puffy eyes even as fresh sobs choked her.
“How dare you come in here? Get the hell out!”
“You left your doctor’s bag.” Because he felt foolish half sprawled over her bed, he straightened up and faced her across it. “I heard you crying. I didn’t mean to make you cry. I didn’t know I could.”
She pulled tissues out of the box on the bedside table and mopped at her face. “What makes you think I’m crying over you?”
“Since I don’t expect you ran into anyone else in the last five minutes who would set you off like this, it’s a reasonable assumption.”
“And you’re so reasonable, aren’t you, Brian?” She yanked out more tissues, littering the floor with them. “I was indulging myself. I’m entitled to that. Now I’d like you to leave me alone.”
“If I hurt you—”
“Ifyou hurt me?” Out of desperation she grabbed the box of tissues and threw it at him. “If you hurt me, you son of a bitch. What am I, rubber, that you can slap at me and it bounces off? You say you’re falling in love with me, then you turn around and calmly tell me that it’s over.”
“I said I thought I was falling in love with you.” It was vital, he thought with a little squirm of panic, to make that distinction. “I stopped it.”
“You—” Rage really did make you see red, she realized. Her vision was lurid with it as she grabbed the closest thing at hand and heaved it.
“Jesus, woman!” Brian jerked as the small crystal vase whizzed by his head like a glittering bullet. “You break open my face, you’re just going to have to stitch it up again.”
“The hell I will.” She grabbed a favorite perfume atomizer from her dresser and let it fly. “You can bleed to death and I won’t lift a finger. To fucking death, you bastard.”
