Cutting Loose

CHAPTER FIVE

Turns out Devlin isn’t a complete ass after all. Why does that seem worse somehow?

O KAY, THIS IS AWKWARD . Jane didn’t know about Devlin, but the laden silence as they removed their cartons from the take-home sacks and peeled wooden chopsticks out of their paper wrappings was uncomfortable as all get-out to her. She snapped the joint connecting the two sticks and opened her container, taking a peek at him. God knew she didn’t know what to say and he either suffered from the same problem or felt no need to fill the void, because several long, prickly minutes passed without either of them uttering a word.

She ate a few bites to give herself a reason for not talking. But the weighted silence gnawed at her. “Great dish, huh?”

Oh, brilliant, Kaplinski. She wanted to smack herself. Could she be more inane?

Devlin surprised her with a grin, however. “Yeah,” he agreed. “I love this stuff. I could eat it three times a day, four days running.” Shifting in his chair, he was all muscle in motion, his wide shoulders straining the seams of his black tee and the unbuttoned green-and-black flannel shirt he wore over it, the sinews of his forearms beneath his rolled-up sleeves bunching and releasing with the subtlest movement of his wrists. He settled in his seat and scooped up a couple more bites of his dinner.

A moment later he planted his chopsticks in his still half-full container and dabbed his mouth with a paper napkin. Then he caught her in the crosshairs of a seriously intense hazel-eyed gaze. “It must be pretty cool working in a museum. I’m sort of a museum junkie myself.”

A snort escaped her. “Sure you are.” Immediately, she wished the words unspoken. Oh, nicely done, Jane. Way to keep the truce going. But, c’mon. One look at that build, those reckless eyes, and she was pretty sure most people would excuse her for doubting museums were the kind of entertainment to draw a guy like this.

Particularly if they were the female half of the human race.

“No, I’m serious. It started years ago when I went to the Viking Ship Museum in Oslo.” Sliding his carton to one side and the salt and pepper shakers to the other, he leaned on his forearms, his long fingers splayed out on the tabletop and his eyes alight. “Have you ever been there? Seen the Gokstad and Oseberg ships?”

She shook her head, fascinated by the enthusiasm in his voice and the way his dark eyes lit up with it.

“They’re clinker-built oak Viking boats that were found in burial mounds on farms in Norway in the late eighteen and early nineteen hundreds. Both were built in the ninth century. Eight hundred thirty-something and eight-ninety I think it was, which just blows me away. If I could have, I’d have crawled over those babies from stem to stern to check out their construction up close. Because they may be more than eleven hundred years old, Jane, but the craftsmanship still rocks.”

He pushed back, shooting her a lightning-quick self-deprecating smile. “Anyhow, for a while after I discovered them, it was all boat museums all the time. Then I started branching out. I admit the kind of museums that mostly host paintings aren’t my thing.” The brawny shoulders she couldn’t seem to peel her gaze away from lifted in a careless shrug beneath worn flannel. “But show me stuff made by some highly skilled craftsman, and I’m all over it. Those ancient boats? Most of them were built by guys who had to make their own tools first. And the end product is a ship that’s still standing today. How cool is that?”

“Very cool.”

“Yeah. Now that’s an artist.” Pulling his container back in front of him, he scooped up another bite, chowed it down, then gave her a sheepish smile. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to go on. So, how about you? I’m guessing those painting-type museums are right up your alley, huh?”

“Oh, I like paintings well enough, especially if it’s a Renoir or something by one of the Pre-Raphaelite artists. But my true love will always be iconic objets d’art. ” Seeing his eyes go blank, she laughed. “Stuff,” she clarified. “Along the lines of what I’m cataloging now. Like you, I get off on the artistry of the craftsmen. Even the mass-produced items were made better back in the day.”

He was staring at her mouth with a sudden intentness, the chopsticks he’d been bringing to his lips suspended midair, and she faltered for a moment, wondering if a piece of bok choy had lodged between her teeth. Then she gave herself a mental shake. Short of fleeing to the restroom to check, there wasn’t a lot she could do about it if it had. So, drawing a quiet breath, she soldiered on.

“That’s how I ended up at the Met,” she said, and was relieved when he lifted his gaze and resumed eating. “It’s definitely my kind of museum. We host our share of shows featuring paintings, but most of our permanent collection falls under the history and culture umbrella, which tends to reflect areas of the human experience. Of our eleven permanent exhibits, only two are paintings. And if I ever get my act together and sort out all Miss Agnes’s stuff I’ll be adding exhibits twelve and thirteen to the nonpainting side.”

“I’ve never been to the Metropolitan. But it sounds more like a Smithsonian-type museum or something?”

“We definitely lean more in that direction than we do, say, toward the Louvre.” She grinned again. “Which, I gotta be honest, I’d kill to see in person.”

He shoved back from the table suddenly, his chair screeching across the linoleum as he surged to his feet. “I’m gonna go get a glass of water. You want a refill on your Diet Coke?”

Smile fading, she blinked up at him, thrown by the abruptness of his action. “Um, okay. Sure.” She handed him her glass but her brows knit over her nose as she watched him weave through the crowded tables and chairs. Am I boring you, bub?

Okay, so that wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. Not that anybody wanted to be considered boring, but, really, the guy was turning out to be not nearly the ass she’d expected him to be-and, face it, when she’d agreed to let him join her for dinner she had sort of been counting on that aspect of his personality to help keep him at arm’s length. Because she couldn’t lie; he seriously lit her fire.

She sure didn’t need that. It was atypical as hell, and she didn’t get it. But she was nobody’s fool-and while having the hots for a man might be a rare phenomenon for her, she couldn’t ignore how she felt.

She merely needed to find a way to work around it.

Past it.

Through it.

Whatever it took to put it behind her. It was just…

She hadn’t been prepared for him to be so likeable, hadn’t anticipated they might actually have anything in common. And learning differently was sure not helping to tamp down this fire.

She snapped erect. So, what the hey-all the more reason to embrace your blandness in his eyes. Hey, it wouldn’t be the first time she’d used her ability to blend into the woodwork to her advantage. It wouldn’t even be the tenth. Growing up all but invisible in her own home and lacking the curb appeal of her best friends, she had learned young to employ her over-lookability-particularly when it came to the opposite sex.

And if she’d sometimes gone beyond merely making use of it, and had, in fact, actively courted it? Well, big deal. Because except for that brief romance with Eric Lestat during her junior year in college, her chameleon-blending-into-its-environment factor had stood her in good stead. If she’d been half as smart at the time as she’d thought she was, in fact, she would have clung to it then, too. But she’d been enamored of Eric’s pale poet’s hands, dazzled by his high, intelligent forehead.

It was an established fact in her family that the passion gene had passed her by-and in truth she gave thanks for it. As the unwilling observer of her parents’ near-daily passion play, she’d known young that it was a dangerous, twisted emotion she would do well to eschew. So her relationship with Eric had been longer on the cerebral than it’d been on the sexual. And for a short while she’d been happy.

Until Eric had gone and changed the rules on her.

But that was all water over the dam and irrelevant to today. Except perhaps to note that she didn’t give a good G-D what Devlin thought of her.

She picked up her purse. It was time to call it a night.

But before she could close the take-home carton containing her remaining dinner, Devlin returned. And if he did find her boring, he sure had a funny way of showing it. Because the first thing he said as he handed her the refilled glass was, “So, how did you get interested in the curator business?” Setting his water glass down, he hooked his chair with his foot and scooted it back up to the table. Then he seated himself and gazed at her with bright interest.

She studied him for a second, trying to judge his sincerity and wondering in a fit of unwelcome honesty how, if she lacked the lust gene, he was able to make her feel so damn…warm.

So edgy.

Itchy.

Then, shrugging the question aside, she said slowly, “I was twelve when I started spending time with Miss Agnes. She was different from any other adult I’d ever met.”

The corner of Devlin’s mouth ticked up in a slightly cynical half smile. “How’s that?” he asked dryly. “Did she call you Grasshopper and pepper you with wise advice? Give you long, profound pep talks?”

Her own lips curled up at the memory of the woman she’d come to love so dearly. “No, that wasn’t her style-her influence was a more subtle thing. I think it was the way she turned up at all the events that were important to us and how she made her faith in us clear. Poppy was the only one used to that sort of attention from a grown-up. It’s funny that she and Ava and I have never really discussed this-” since they talked about everything else under the sun “-but I think we each got something different from her. Something that was geared to our individual needs.”

Planting his chin in his palm, he looked at her. “And what was it for you?”

“The fact that she really listened when I had something to say. That she looked at me and saw me. She was a refuge from my home life. I could breathe around her.”

He gazed at her thoughtfully and she went very still. Had she said too much? Revealed something she shouldn’t? She didn’t usually mention that refuge thing, not being a spill-your-guts kinda woman. Well, she talked to Ava and Poppy, of course. But she wasn’t exactly known for telling all to a man she hardly knew and wasn’t even sure she liked, and she scrambled to cover her tracks.

“Agnes taught me an appreciation for her treasures. And the fact that she never minded me messing around with them was just the mustard on my bologna. She encouraged me to lose myself for hours on end, simply enjoying their beauty and the skill with which they were constructed.”

Of course he had to home right in on the part she’d just as soon he ignore. “Babe,” he said, giving her a single nod. “Trust me, I get the need to escape from home.”

“You do?” She braced herself.

“Sure. You’ve met some of my family. Multiply that by about twenty, because the little you’ve seen so far is just the tip of the iceberg. There’s an entire platoon of Kavanaghs, and growing up everyone from the checkers at the local Safeway to every teacher I ever had knew them. They knew my brothers and sisters, both those who had come before me and those who came after. They knew my parents-knew my aunts, my uncles and my cousins. You couldn’t get away with a damn thing in the neighborhood because everyone saw you coming, they saw you going and they knew exactly who to report you to. There wasn’t a lick of privacy to be had.”

She stared at him. “And that was a bad thing?” It sounded comforting to her, all those people concerned about your welfare, interested in what was going on in your day.

“Hell, yeah. I was smothered. You must have suffered something similar yourself.”

“Huh?”

“Being an only child. Tell me that wasn’t constant attention of another sort.”

She stopped herself from laughing in his face, but just barely. Aside from when her folks had felt the need of an audience for their theatrics, parental attention had been in short supply in her house. Mike and Dorrie had a passion for each other that was always front and center. They fought hugely and made up extravagantly. Rarely, however, had that ardor spilled over onto her. Devlin had felt smothered by all the attention he’d received? She’d been so lonesome sometimes she’d just wanted to curl up and cry.

Luckily, she’d had Poppy and Ava to keep her from diving head-first into the pity pool. Over and over again they’d saved her from her parents’ lunacy, from being the odd one out in her own home, and Jane considered them her true family. So had Miss Agnes been.

“So am I right?” he inquired, cutting into her thoughts.

She gazed at him across the table. His bright hair glinted with exotic fire beneath the lights and his eyes were narrowed with amusement as he looked back at her.

“I’m right, aren’t I?” he demanded. “Your folks probably saw your potential early and hounded you to death to live up to their idea of it.”

Not. Oh, man, so not. But she wasn’t about to admit the way it really was-not to someone who’d had an army of people doting on his every move.

Instead she gave him a small smile.

“Wow. That’s downright uncanny. You’re obviously a student of human nature. But hey, you don’t need me to tell you that. I bet you hear it all the time.” She looked at her watch. “Oh, man, look at the time. I’m sorry, I’ve gotta run.” She had to get out of here, had to get out of here, had to-

She closed up her carton and stuffed it in its sack. Pulled on her coat.

Then met his gaze once more. “Well. This has been, um, nice. We’ll have to do it again sometime.”

Like when hell froze over.

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