Diana Palmer Collected 1-6: Soldier of Fortune / Tender Stranger / Enamored / Mystery Man / Rawhide and Lace / Unlikely Lover
“Don’t make it harder for me,” she said.
“Is it hard, to walk out that door and never see me again?” he asked bluntly.
Her chin trembled just a little. “You’ve got nothing to give—you told me so. You’ve left me no choice but to leave.”
“Yes, that was what I said,” he agreed. “I went to impossible lengths to show you just how uncommitted I was, to make sure that you didn’t try to cling too closely.” He sighed heavily and his hands moved restlessly on the desk. “And now I can’t look myself in the mirror, thinking about the way you cringe every time I come near you.” He got up from the desk and stared out of the window, stretching as if he were stiff all over. “I’ve never needed anyone,” he said after a minute, without turning. “Not even when I was a boy. I was always looking out for Martina and Mama. There was never anyone who gave a damn about me except them. I’ve been alone all my life. I’ve wanted it that way.”
“I’ve told you until I’m blue in the face, I’m not trying to trap you!”
He lifted his head and looked at her. “Yes, I realize that now. I want you to try to understand something,” he said after a minute. “I spent a lot of my life in the military. I got used to a certain way of doing things, a certain way of life. I thought it had stopped being important to me. And then Martina was kidnapped.”
“And you got a taste of it again,” she said quietly, searching his face. “And now you’re not sure you can be just a lawyer for the rest of your life.”
“You read me very well.”
“We’ve worked together for a long time.” She stared down at the pad and pen in her hands, glad that he couldn’t see her heart breaking. “I’ll miss you from time to time, J.D. Whatever else this job was, it was never dull.”
“If you stay,” he said quietly, “I might be able to stay, too.”
“What do I have to do with it?” she asked with a nervous laugh. “My goodness, the world is full of competent paralegals. You might like your next one a lot better than you like me. I have a nasty temper and I talk back, remember?”
“I remember so much about you,” he said surprisingly. “When I started trying to tear you out of my life, I discovered just how deep the taproot went. You’ve become a habit with me, Gabby, like early-morning coffee and my newspaper. I can’t get up in the morning without thinking about coming to work and finding you here.”
“You’ll find new habits,” she said. Was that all she was, a habit?
“I’m trying to make you understand that I don’t want to acquire any new habits,” he growled. “I like things the way they are, I like the routine of them.”
“No, you don’t,” she told him, glaring. “You just said so. You want to go back to all the uncertainties of being a mercenary, and risking your life day after day. You want to go adventuring.”
“You make it sound like a disease,” he said shortly.
“Isn’t it? You’re afraid to feel anything. Shirt, Apollo, Semson, all of them are men who’ve lost something they can’t live without. So they’re looking for an end, not a beginning. They don’t have anything to lose, and nothing to go back to. I learned so much in those three days, J.D. I learned most of all that I have everything to live for. I don’t want that kind of freedom.”
“You’ve never had it,” he reminded her.
“That’s true,” she agreed. “But you’ve spent five years working to build a life for yourself, and you’ve made a huge success of it. Several people owe their lives, and their freedom, to you. Are you really crazy enough to throw all that away on a pipe dream?”
“Freedom isn’t always won in a court of law,” he growled.
“How then—with an Uzi and a few blocks of C-4?” she asked. “There are other ways to promote change than with bombs and bullets!”
He drew in a short breath. “You don’t understand.”
“That’s right, I don’t. And for your information, I’ve lost all my illusions about the exciting life of a soldier of fortune.” She stood up with her pad in hand. “I’ll go and transcribe this.”
He watched her walk to the door. “Wait a minute,” he said.
She paused with her hand on the doorknob and watched him come around the desk. She felt a twinge of fear as he came close to her. He towered over her, his blue pin-striped suit emphasizing the strength of his muscular body.
She opened the door and moved through it, trying not to show fear, but he saw right through her.
“No,” he said softly, shaking his head. “No, don’t run. I won’t hurt you.”
“You used to say that a lot, and I listened one time too many,” she said with a nervous laugh. She backed up until she got the width of her desk between them. “I have to get these typed,” she added, lifting the pad.
His dark eyes had an oddly bleak look in them. “It’s real, isn’t it, that fear?” he asked.
She sat down in her chair, avoiding his piercing gaze. “I have work to do, J.D.”
He propped himself on the corner of the desk with a graceful, fluid movement.
“Don’t panic,” he said quietly. “I’m not coming any closer than this.”
She stiffened. She couldn’t help it.
“I should never have hurt you that way,” he said, staring down at her clenched fingers. “I overreacted. Someday I’ll try to explain it to you.”
“There won’t be any ‘someday,’” she said tersely. “You’ll be off blowing things up and I’ll be programming computers.”
“Will you stop that?” he growled. He fumbled for a cigarette.
“There’s no smoking in the office,” she said coldly.
He glared at her and draped an arm over her monitor.
“I can’t transcribe your letters until I can use the computer,” she said matter-of-factly.
“So the letters can wait,” he said. “Gabby, I swear to God I didn’t mean to frighten you that much. I was shaken by what we’d been through, I was half-crazy…” He ran a hand through his hair. “I forgot how innocent you were, too. I want you to know that under ordinary circumstances it wouldn’t be like that for you with a man.”
“With another man, perhaps not.” She bit off the words.
“Gabby, what happened the morning before the mission didn’t frighten you.”
She felt herself go hot all over at the reminder, at the memories that flooded her mind. She remembered the touch of his hard mouth, the feel of his body, the tenderness of the fingers that searched over her soft, aching flesh….
“You were a different man then,” she shot back. “You wouldn’t even speak to me when we got back to the finca, you wouldn’t look at me. You acted like a stranger, and then you attacked me!”
He removed his arm from the monitor and stared down at his hands. “Yes, I know. I’ve hardly slept since.”
His chest rose and fell slowly. He was so close, she could see the harsh shadows under his eyes.
“Would you consider having supper with me?” he asked.
Her heart jumped, but she didn’t take time to decide whether it was from anticipation or fear. “No,” she said bluntly, before she had time to change her mind.
He sighed. “No.” His broad, hard mouth twisted into a rueful smile. He let his eyes wander slowly over her face. “Somehow, storming that terrorist camp seems like kid stuff compared to getting past your defenses, Gabby.”
“Why bother?” she asked quietly. “I’ll be here only another week.”
The light went out of his eyes. He got to his feet and turned back toward his office. He paused at the doorway with his broad back to her. He seemed about to say something, about to turn. Then he straightened, went on into his office, and closed the door quietly behind him. Gabby hesitated just for a minute; then she turned to the computer again and concentrated on typing the business letters he’d dictated.
Saturday morning arrived sunny and with the promise of budding flowers. Gabby hated the city on such delightfully springlike days. She was brooding in her apartment, in the midst of doing her laundry, when a knock sounded at the door.
She couldn’t imagine who might be visiting, unless her mother had gotten worried and had come all the way from Lytle to see her. That thought bothered her, and she went rushing to open the door.
J.D. lifted a heavy eyebrow. “Were you expecting me?” he asked with a faint grin.
She faltered, trying to think of a graceful way to ask him to leave. While she was debating, he walked into the apartment and sat down on her sofa.
“I thought you might like to have lunch with me,” he said out of the blue, studying her slender figure in faded jeans and a striped pullover shirt.
She realized as she stared down at him that he looked different, and then she noticed what he was wearing. She’d never seen J.D. in anything but neat suits or jungle fatigues. But now he was wearing blue jeans as worn and faded as her own, with a Western-style blue chambray shirt and boots. She stood there staring at him because she couldn’t help it. He was so devastatingly handsome and masculine that he made her feel weak-kneed—from a distance, at least. She was still a little uneasy being alone with him.
“I won’t pounce,” he said softly. “I won’t make a single move that you don’t want. I won’t even touch you, if that’s what it takes. Spend the day with me, though, Gabby.”
“Why should I?” she asked curtly.
He smiled wistfully. “Because I’m lonely.”
Something in the region of her heart gave way. It must have been her soft brain, she told herself, because there was no logic in giving in to him. It would only make it harder to leave. And she had to leave. She couldn’t bear staying around him, feeling the way she felt.
“You’ve got friends,” she said evasively.
“Sure,” he said, standing. He stuck his hands into his pockets, stretching the jeans flat across his muscular stomach and powerful thighs. “Sure, I’ve got friends. There’s Shirt, and Apollo…”
“I mean…friends here in the city,” she said hesitantly.
He was silent for a moment. “I’ve got you. No one else.”
She gave in. Without another argument. How did you fight a flat statement like that, especially when you knew it was true? He’d said himself that he trusted no one except her. Friendship naturally involved trust.
“Okay,” she said after a minute. “But just lunch.”
“Just lunch,” he agreed. And he didn’t come close to her, or pressure her, or do anything to make her wary of him. He waited patiently while she closed the apartment door and locked it, and he walked beside her like a graceful giant as they left the building and got into his car.
Chapter Nine
It was an odd kind of day for Gabby. She thought she knew every one of J.D.’s moods, but that day he was different, in a way that she couldn’t quite define.
He strolled beside her through the trees in the nearby park, then along the beach that edged the lake, watching birds rise and soar, watching boats sail and putter by. The wind tossed his dark hair and the sun made it glint blue-black. And Gabby thought she’d never felt like this in her life, free and yet protected and wildly excited, all at the same time. It was hard to remember that this was more of an end than a beginning. J.D. had a guilty conscience about the way he’d treated her and was trying to make amends before she left. That was all. She had to stop trying to make more out of it.
His fingers brushed hers as they walked, and he glanced down, watching her carefully.
“Looking for warts?” she asked, attempting to lessen the tension between them.
“Not really,” he murmured. “I’m trying to decide what you’d do if I made a grab for your hand.”
That irrepressible honesty again. She smiled and gave him her slender fingers, feeling trembly as he slowly locked them into his own. She was remembering that flight to Mexico and how he’d caressed her fingers with his own, and the remark he’d made about bodies fitting together that way. Her face burned.
He chuckled softly. “I wonder if you could possibly be thinking about the same thing I am, Gabby?” he murmured.
“I wish you’d mind your own business,” she told him.
“I’m trying, but you’re pretty transparent, honey. You still blush delightfully.”
She tugged her fingers away and, to her disappointment, he let them go.
“No pressure,” he said when she gave him a puzzled glance. “None at all. I’ll take only what you give me.”
She stopped, facing him. Nearby, the lake lapped softly at the shore and some children made wild sounds down the beach as they chased each other.
“What are you trying to do?” she asked.
He sighed. “Show you that I’m not a monster,” he said.
“I never thought you were,” she replied.
“Then why does this happen every time I come close to you?” he asked. His big hands shot out and caught her by the waist, dragging her against him.
She panicked. Her body twisted violently, her hands fought him. It was all over in seconds, but his face had gone white, and her own was flushed with exertion and anger.
She drew her lower lip between her teeth and bit it. J.D. looked…odd.
He gave a hard laugh and turned away. With unsteady fingers, he managed to light a cigarette despite the breeze. He took a long, steadying draw from it.
“Oh, God.” He laughed bitterly. “I did a job on you, didn’t I?”
Her legs were none too steady, but she managed to calm her voice enough to trust it with speech. “I’d never been handled roughly by a man before, J.D.,” she told him. “And you said some pretty harsh things.”
He turned, staring down at her. “Yes, I did.” His dark eyes wandered slowly down her body, lingering on the soft curves as he lifted the cigarette to his mouth. “By the time I got around to that, I’d long forgotten my motives.”
She blinked. “I don’t understand.”
His eyes found the horizon across the lake, and he smoked his cigarette quietly. “It doesn’t matter,” he said vaguely. He finished the cigarette and ground it out under his boot.
“You’ve gone back to smoking,” she said.
His shoulders rose and fell. “There doesn’t seem much point in quitting now.”
She wrapped her arms tightly across her breasts as she watched him walk down the beach. She followed him, searching for words.
“If you hadn’t grabbed me like that, I wouldn’t have fought you,” she said curtly. She hadn’t wanted to tell him that, but he looked as if her reaction to him had devastated him. Her marshmallow heart was going to do her in, she told herself when he stopped in his tracks and gaped at her.
“What?” he burst out.
She turned away, letting the wind blow her long, dark hair around. She couldn’t manage another word.
He moved closer, but slowly this time. His hands came up to her face, hesitantly cupping it. Her heart pounded, but she didn’t pull away.
His chiseled mouth parted as he looked deeply into her eyes. His face was rigid with control. She could feel the warm threat of his body against her, smell the musky scent of his cologne.
“Half of what I told you in that room was true,” he said in a husky whisper. “In my younger days, I never gave a damn about the woman I took. But now, it matters. What I did to you, the things I said…I can’t sleep, I can’t eat. It haunts me.”
“Why?” She, too, whispered.
His thumbs edged toward her mouth. “I…cared.”
Her pupils dilated, darkening the green of her eyes. “Cared?”
He bent, and his hands were unsteady as they cupped her face. “I kept thinking about how close I came to losing you out there in the jungle,” he whispered against her lips. “I wanted to purge myself of the memory and the emotion. So I hurt you.” His face hardened, his heavy brows drew together. “But what I did…hurt me more.” His hard lips brushed hers, nibbled at them. “You’ve seen me at my worst. Trust me now, Gabby. Let me show you…how tender I can be.”
She wanted it almost frantically. She wanted a memory to take down the long, lonely years with her. So she let him have her mouth, as he wanted it. And his lips taught hers new sensations, new ways of touching and exploring.
He moaned softly, and his hands contracted, but his mouth was still tender even though she could feel his big body going rigid against her.
Her eyes opened and found his watching her, passion blazing out of them, a hunger like nothing she’d ever seen in him.
He lifted his head, his breath unsteady on her moist, parted lips. “Don’t be afraid of me,” he whispered. “Please.”
She swallowed, and her breasts lifted and fell with her breath. “Jacob…”
His eyes closed as though he were in pain. “I thought I’d never hear you say my name like that again,” he said harshly.
Her hands were against the front of his shirt, and she didn’t even know how they’d landed there. She was all too aware of what was under it, of how it felt to bury her fingers in that thick, cool mat of curling hair.
“Don’t make things difficult for me,” she whispered helplessly.
His hands slid around to the back of her head, tilting her face upward. “Do you think it’s easy for me, letting you go?”
“Yes,” she said with a trembling smile. “You said yourself that you didn’t want any ties.”
“Then why in God’s name do I die a little every time I walk away from you?” he asked curtly. “Why do I wake up with your name on my lips?”
“I can’t be your lover!” she whispered. “I can’t!”
His nose brushed against hers, his lips hovered above her mouth, teasing it, coaxing it to follow his. “It would be so easy,” he said softly, in a voice like dark velvet. “So easy. All it would take is ten minutes alone together with my mouth on yours and my hands under your blouse, and you’d give yourself with glorious abandon, the way you wanted to before I went to rescue Martina. Remember?” he breathed against her lips. “Remember, Gabby? You stood in my arms and let me touch you, and we rocked together and moaned…”
“Jacob.” She hid her hot face against him. “Jacob, don’t, please!”
His hands slid slowly down her back until they reached her hips and brought them into the curve of his, holding her there, pressing her there, so that she knew all too well what he wanted of her.
“This is a public place,” she managed to say weakly, clinging to him.
“Where you’re safe,” he replied thickly. “Because if I did this anywhere else, I couldn’t help what would happen. I want you so much.”
“This is only making it worse,” she told him. She leaned her forehead against his chest. She could smell the tangy soap he used, the clean scent of the shirt he wore. Her hands spread over his hard muscles.
His breath quickened at the almost imperceptible movement. “Unbutton it.” He breathed roughly. “Touch me there.”
“There are people…!”
“Yes.” His lips touched her closed eyelids, her forehead. “Touch me.”
She could hardly breathe at all. He was drowning her in sensation, and she loved him so much it was torture. It was just going to be harder to leave him, but how could she fight this? Part of her was frightened of his strength, but a larger part remembered how it had felt when he was tender, when he’d been so careful not to hurt her.
“I won’t ever hurt you again,” he whispered, lifting her fingers to the top button. “Not ever. I won’t overpower you, or make crude remarks to you. I’ll teach you to trust me, if it takes the rest of my life. Gabby…”
She closed her eyes. Tentatively her fingers fumbled the first button free. He tensed as she found the second, and the third. She stopped there, resting against him, and eased her fingers just inside. They tingled as they came in contact with firm muscle and curling hair.
He caught his breath, shifting his chest so that her fingers slid farther under the fabric.
“You did that,” he reminded her in a sensuous undertone, “when I started to touch you under your nightgown, at the finca. Remember? You shifted and moved so that I could touch you more easily.”
What she remembered most was the way it had felt when he’d touched her. Her eyes slowly opened, and he turned her face so that he could look into them.
His own eyes were black with desire; his face was hard and drawn, his lips were parted. “Yes, I like that,” he whispered as she curled her nails against him and dragged them softly over his skin. “I like that.” His chest rose and fell heavily and still his eyes held hers. “If we made love, you could do that to every inch of me. And I could do it to you, with my mouth.”
She trembled. He felt it and drew her slowly into his arms. He stood like that, just holding her, in a strangely passionless embrace while the world became calm.
“Words,” he said over her head, his tone light and solemn at the same time. “So potent…Until you came along, I’d never made love to a woman with my mind.”
She stared out at the sailboats on the lake and involuntarily one hand pressed closer against him. “We’re at an impasse,” she said after a minute.
His cheek nudged her dark hair. “How?”
She laughed bitterly. “J.D., I’m leaving next Friday.”
“Maybe,” he said, and his arms tightened.
“Definitely.” She pulled away from him, and he let her go immediately. She looked up. “Nothing has changed.”
He let his eyes roam over her soft body. “At least you’ve stopped cringing.”
“Thank you,” she replied. “For removing the scars. Now I can go on to a lasting relationship.”
“Why not have it with me?” he asked. “I’m well-off. I’m sexy—”
“You’re unreliable,” she said, interrupting him. “I want someone who doesn’t know an Uzi from a blender!”
He sighed heavily, and his dark eyes were thoughtful. “I need a little time.”
“Time won’t help,” she said. “You’re hooked again. It’s like the cigarettes, only worse. I can’t live my life standing at windows and waiting for telephones to ring.”
“You’ll do that regardless.”
She stopped dead and turned around, gaping at him. “What?”
“You’ll do that anyway,” he said matter-of-factly, watching her. He pulled a cigarette from his pocket with a what-the-hell smile and lit it. “You’ll miss me. You’ll want me. You’re leaving the office, but the memories are portable and indestructible. You won’t forget me any more than I’ll forget you. We started something we haven’t finished, and it’s going to be between us all our lives.”
“It’s just sex!” she yelled at him.
Two young men walked past, grinned at J.D., and winked at Gabby, who was wishing she could sink into the sand. She hadn’t even heard them approach.
She turned and fled back down the beach at a trot. J.D. was right beside her, effortlessly matching her steps and still smoking his cigarette. He finished it just as they reached the car, and he crushed it out before he joined her in the luxurious interior.
“It isn’t just sex,” he said, turning to face her, one arm across the back of the seat and an odd expression on his face. He smiled slowly. “But sex is going to be one big part of our relationship in the not-too-distant future.”
She glared at him. “You’d be lucky!”
“No, you would,” he said, cocking an eyebrow. “When I mind my manners, I’m a force to be reckoned with. What I did to you in that bed was all bad temper and irritation. What I did to you the morning before was what it’s really like.”
She couldn’t control her heated response to that intimate remark. Her breasts tingled at the memory. His eyes dropped slowly to her breasts, and he smiled wickedly. Following his gaze, she saw why and crossed her arms over her chest.
“Too late,” he murmured. “Your body will give you away every time. You haven’t forgotten what we did together.”
Her nostrils flared. “There are other men in the world.”
“Sure,” he agreed pleasantly. “But you don’t want other men. You want me.”
“Conceited ass,” she enunciated clearly.
His fingers touched her mouth and parted her lips, as if their texture fascinated him. “You risked your life for me,” he said absently. “Why?”
She laughed nervously. “Maybe I just wanted to try out the gun.”
He tilted her face up and leaned over to brush his mouth tenderly across her trembling lips. “Maybe there was a reason you don’t want me to know,” he murmured. He drew back and looked at her. “Hungry?”