He ducked, dodged, and was just fast enough to tackle her before she cracked him over the head with a silver-backed mirror. “I can hold you down as long as it takes,” he panted out as he used his weight to press her into the mattress. “Damned if I’m going to let you take a chunk out of me because I bruised your pride.”
“My pride?” She stopped struggling and her eyes went from hot to overflowing. “You broke my heart.” She turned her head, closed her eyes, and let the tears slide free. “Now I don’t have any pride to bruise.”
Staggered, he leaned back. She simply turned on her side and curled up again. She didn’t sob now but lay silent with tears wet on her cheeks.
“Leave me alone, Brian.”
“I thought I could. I thought you’d want me to do just that sooner or later. So why not sooner? You won’t stay.” He spoke quietly, trailing a finger through her hair. “Not here, not with me. And if I don’t step back, it’ll kill me when you leave.”
She was too tired even to cry now. She slipped a hand under her cheek for comfort and opened her eyes. “Why won’t I stay?”
“Why would you? You can go anywhere you want. New York, Chicago, Los Angeles. You’re young, you’re beautiful, you’re smart. A doctor in any of those places is going to make piles of money, go to the country club every week, have a fancy office in some big, shiny building.”
“If I’d wanted those things, I would already have them. If I wanted to be in New York or Chicago or L.A., I’d be there.”
“Why aren’t you?”
“Because I love it here. I always have. Because I’m practicing the kind of medicine here that I want to practice and living my life the way I want to live it.”
“You come from a different place,” he insisted. “A different lifestyle. Your daddy’s rich—”
“And my ma is good-looking.” She sniffled and didn’t see the quick, involuntary quiver of his mouth.
“What I mean is—”
“I know what you mean.” Her head felt like an overblown balloon ready to burst. Idly, she told herself she’d take something for it. In just a minute. “I don’t care much for country clubs. They’re usually stuffy and burdened with rules. Why would I want that when I can sit on my deck and see the ocean every day of my life? I can walk in the forest and spot a deer, watch the mists rise off the river.”
She shifted just a little so she could see his face. “Tell me, Brian, why do you stay here? You could go to any of those places you named, run the kitchen in a fine hotel, or own your own restaurant. Why don’t you?”
“It’s not what I want. I have what I want here.”
“So do I.” She turned her cheek back against the bedspread. “Now go away and leave me alone.”
He got up and stood looking down at her. He felt big and awkward and out of his depth. Hooking his thumbs in his front pockets, he paced away, paced back, turned to stare out the window, to stare back at her. She didn’t move, didn’t speak. He cursed under his breath, hissed out a breath, and started for the door. Turned back.
“I wasn’t truthful with you before. I didn’t stop it, Kirby. I wanted to, but I couldn’t. And it wasn’t just thinking, it was ... being. I’d rather not be, I’ll tell you that straight out. I’d rather not be, because it’s bound to be a mess somewhere along the line. But there it is.”
She brushed a hand over her cheek and sat up. No, he did not have the look of a happy man, she decided. There was resentment in his eyes, stubbornness in his mouth, and annoyance in his stance. “Is this your charming way of telling me you’re in love with me?”
“That’s what I said. It so happens I’m not feeling very charming at the moment.”
“You boot me out of your life, you humiliate me by catching me at a weak moment, you insult me by denying my feelings and my character, then you tell me you love me.” She shook her head, pushed her damp hair back from her face. “Well, this is certainly the romantic moment every woman dreams of.”
“I’m just telling you the way it is, the way I feel.”
She let loose a sigh. If in a corner of her heart joy was blooming, she decided to hold it in check, just for a while. “Since for some reason that I can’t quite remember I seem to be in love with you too, I’m going to make a suggestion.”
“I’m listening.”
“Why don’t we take a walk on the beach, a nice long walk? The air might clear your brain enough for you to find a few drops of charm. Then you can try to tell me again, the way it is, and the way you feel.”
He considered her, discovered his head was already clearing. “I wouldn’t mind a walk,” he said and held out a hand for hers.
TWENTY-EIGHT
SOMETHING bad was in the air. Sam could sense it. It was more than the thick heat, more than the hard look to the sky. He had some worries about Hurricane Carla, which was currently kicking the stuffing out of the Bahamas. The forecasters claimed she was primed to dance her way out to sea, but Sam knew hurricanes were essentially female. And females were essentially unpredictable.
Odds were she’d give Desire a miss and take out her temper on Florida. But he didn’t like the feel to the air. It was too damn tight, he thought. Like it was ready to squeeze over your skin.
