Marian said quietly. “Go downstairs. I’ll handle this.”
“But…”
“She knows you didn’t mean anything by your remark. Go.”
Confused, embarrassed, and feeling like the biggest klutz in this or any other universe, Ben went. He took the stairs fast and turned not toward the living room, where he could still hear Brittany’s voice, but toward the kitchen, and then out the back door into the yard.
Without a conscious thought he grabbed the branch of the oak tree, planted his foot in the crotch and swung up and into the leaves. His hands and feet remembered as though he were still a boy of ten who hid out in his tree whenever he wanted to avoid chores or wanted to read a book. Then when he was 18—the summer after Judy died—he’d practically lived up here for a couple of months.
He covered his face with his hands and braced his back against the big limb twenty feet up. Thank God the tree had grown enough to support his weight. He hadn’t given that a thought.
He did not dare see Annabelle Langley again, that was for sure.
How could he go back in and charm Brittany when, as of ten minutes earlier, she had ceased to be an important part of his world? It wasn’t her fault. It was his mother’s.
Cupid must be laughing his head off, the sadistic little bastard. How could Ben Jackson, the rational, left-brain, goal-oriented young law-and-order assistant district attorney on the rise, fall head over heels in love at first sight? And with a woman who had killed her mother?
BEN WAS STILL PROPPED along the branch of the tree fifteen minutes later when the back door burst open and Annabelle Langley, her face as cheerful as an executioner’s, stalked down the back steps and stood staring out at the backyard.
The effect she had on him hadn’t changed.
He tried to look at her critically, compare her to Brittany in hopes that his rational mind would kick in before it was too late. Hadn’t his mother accused him of being a robot? Robots didn’t fall in love.
Yet something in Annabelle ripped through his defenses.
He did not like it, didn’t want it, didn’t approve of it. Passion hurt, feeling hurt. Love meant loss. Hideous, horrible loss that came with pictures that exploded inside his brain without warning, even now.
He couldn’t afford empathy. He could not be open to emotion and do his job properly. He owed his entire focus to the people he was sworn to protect. One less criminal on the street meant one less victim—one less Judy.
Annabelle couldn’t see him, didn’t know he was there. He might have said something the instant she came out that door, but the opportunity had already passed.
So he studied her dispassionately. What was the big deal?
She was at least three inches shorter than Brittany. Brittany was model slim. Annabelle had curves; she wouldn’t fit into chic clothes nearly as well, assuming she ever wore anything more chic than the leggings and baggy shirt she had on at the moment. He didn’t care. Naked she’d be gorgeous, and naked was how he wanted her.
Brittany’s straight, blond hair fell with flawless precision around her face.
Annabelle’s hair looked as though it had escaped from an unclipped standard poodle, taken root on her head, and kept growing until it reached her shoulder blades. He longed to run his fingers into it and feel it curl, bury his face in all that extravagance.
This wasn’t love. It was lust. Lust he could handle.
Annabelle didn’t seem to care much about her looks. At the moment she’d eaten off her lipstick, her nose was shiny, and she had a smudge of blue pattern pencil along her jaw. But then, she’d been working all day. Hard, physical labor. Ben remembered that much. Sewing might look easy, but it knotted the shoulders and wounded the hands. As he had wounded her hand—and more. God, how could he have been so stupid and clumsy! His remark must have cut her deeply.
Now, Brittany was something else. She was in public relations. She never met a stranger. She smiled easily. She could schmooze anyone.
So how come Brittany suddenly seemed to him as unformed as a lump of Play-Doh? How come her blond good looks now seemed as bland as cornstarch? And this wild woman made him want to leap on her out of his tree and drag her off to his lair to be his mate for life?
He groaned, threw up his hand to hit himself in the forehead, and overbalanced.
“Hey!” he yelped as his feet lost their purchase. He grabbed for the limb over his head just as the one he sat on gave way under his weight.
He fell. He grabbed at a couple of branches to slow his progress, wrenched his shoulder, and managed to catch himself eight feet from the ground, where he hung for a moment before he dropped ingloriously onto the grass.
Annabelle stared at him openmouthed.
“I can explain.” He stood up and held his hands in front of him, palms up.
She took a deep breath. “Are you all right? You look a mess.”
“I’m fine.”
“What on earth were you doing in that tree?”
She took a few steps toward him, and reached out to brush the lapel of his jacket.
“I can explain,” he said again.
It took all his willpower not to grab her wrist and drag her into his arms. The touch of her fingertips raised the hair at the nape of his neck, and several other portions of his anatomy that hadn’t been this out of control since he’d turned thirteen.
“So?” she said with her eyes on the shoulder of his jacket where she brushed off leaves and twigs.
“So what?” He stared down at her. That blue smudge was adorable.
“You said you could explain.”
“Oh.”
He closed his eyes as she continued her progress around his body, brushing him off lightly. She grabbed the shoulders of his jacket and wrenched it back into place, then walked around in front of him again with her eyes just above his belt buckle.
“You can take care of the rest of you.”
Thank God. If she’d tried to brush off his chinos, she’d have been in for one hell of a surprise.
“And your hair. You’re wearing a crown of leaves like Pan.”
He swept his hair back from his forehead and brushed down the front of his trousers.
“Well? I’m waiting.” She stepped away from him with her hands on his hips. Now, finally, she looked into his eyes.
“I, uh. Look, come sit in the gazebo a minute.”
She shook her head. “I’ve still got an hour’s work to do cleaning up the mess upstairs.”
“You came outside.”
