here, Tye. I’m not partial to having a man in the way when I’m cooking.”
She started to move past him toward the stove, her posture rigid, but even as she took a second step he was in front of her, barring her way.
“Okay, so tell me, Suze,” he said, his tone edged. “How do you know him when you see him? What exactly does he look like, your Mr. Scratch?”
His hands were on her shoulders, and suddenly the worn cotton of her dress felt as insubstantial as shattered silk. He tightened his grip by a fraction, and at the barely noticeable adjustment she felt the fabric of her bodice tautening against the swell of her breasts. Instant heat suffused her, and this time when she tried to breathe she found she couldn’t. She stared up at him, her gaze painfully wide.
Steal the blue from the most perfect summer sky on the most perfect summer’s day and you’d have his eyes, she told herself. A woman could fall into that blue—fall straight in and never want to come out again. What would it be like to let those eyes see every inch of you, to feel that mouth everywhere on your skin, to forget everything you’d ever been taught and give yourself for just one sinful night to the de—
The breath she’d been trying to take slammed into her with the force of an arctic gale, sweeping away all heat and replacing the lassitude that had gripped her with cold awareness. She swallowed past the dryness in her throat, and he released his grip on her.
“I—I think he looks just like you, Tye,” she said unevenly. “That’s why he’s so dangerous.”
Just for a moment she would have sworn she saw something flash behind those eyes—something that could have been pain. Before she could identify the emotion it was gone.
Or maybe it hadn’t been there in the first place. A crooked smile lifted a corner of his mouth.
“What’s that expression about giving a dog a bad name?” This time it wasn’t her imagination. Without seeming to move at all, suddenly he’d lessened the distance between them to no more than a few inches. Behind her she felt the hard edge of the counter pressing into her back.
“Give a dog a bad name and he’ll bite?” she ventured. “Tye, I—”
“That’s it.” He bent his head, obliterating the last of her precious buffer zone. “You can call me off anytime, Suze,” he said, his tone velvety. “But maybe you don’t want to. Maybe after a lifetime of putting the devil behind you, just this once you’d like to be tempted.”
His last words were murmured against her lips. For the space of a heartbeat his gaze held hers, and during that heartbeat Susannah knew she should step away from him.
Her lips parted. Her veins felt suddenly as if they were filled with something much thicker than blood, something so heavy and hot she found it impossible to move her limbs. An identical heat pooled in the pit of her stomach and seemed to spill downward toward her thighs.
She heard herself sigh, the sound so light and insubstantial it was barely audible. His mouth came down onto hers before the soft exhalation was completed.
Tye’s tongue moved past her lips, past her teeth, and without conscious volition she felt herself opening up to him, her startled reaction based on instinct rather than experience. The next moment his palms were on either side of her face, pulling her closer to him and steadying her. His tongue went a little deeper, as if it were trying to coax her very soul from her, and some last spark of self-preservation flared desperately inside her.
With the half-formed intention of pushing him away she brought her hands up, but even as her fingers spread against the solidity of his chest he lifted his head.
“You don’t have to do that. I said you could call me off anytime.” His whisper was hoarse, his breath warm on her lips. “But you don’t trust the devil, do you? Is that why you ran from me the day you disappeared, Suze—because you were afraid of what I was?”
Dazedly she shook her head, her gaze locked on his. “I don’t think so.” The heat that had been spreading through her was now a searing ache. Her throat felt scratchy and raw as she forced the words out. “I don’t think that was it at all. I think I ran because I was afraid of what I was, Tye. Or of what I wanted to be, from the first moment I saw you,” she ended, her voice low.
His gaze darkened to indigo. “I don’t get it. What did you want to be?”
She didn’t reply immediately. Instead she allowed herself to drink in the sight of him, needing every detail her gaze lingered on to be imprinted in her mind—the tanned cheekbones, the thick and incongruously dark lashes half veiling his eyes, the chiselled cut of his mouth. A muscle moved at the side of his jaw. She attempted a smile, and knew her attempt had failed.
“Why, everything I wasn’t, of course,” she said softly. “Beautiful and sophisticated and—and sexy, the kind of woman a man like you would be used to.”
She stepped away from him, staring down at the tea towel around her waist. She blinked, and tightened the loosened knot. Although this time her lips curved as she wanted them to, she felt a stinging moisture behind her eyes.
“When I looked at you I didn’t want to be me. And I knew that was wrong.”
Susannah glanced toward the table, where Danny was still fast asleep in his carry-cot. She took a deep breath. “He’s my world, Tye. I can’t let anything get in the way of keeping him safe, and no matter what Sheriff Bannerman thinks, those men showed up tonight looking to find me. So even if you’re right and I knew I wasn’t going to forget you when Greta stopped to help me that day, I couldn’t let myself think about that. I still can’t.”
Tye held her gaze for a second longer. Then he looked away, his shoulders lifting again in that half shrug she’d seen him give before, as if he were unconsciously trying to adjust the weight of a burden he couldn’t rid himself of. When he spoke there was a harsh edge to his voice.
“Want to hear something funny, Suze? When I looked at you I didn’t want to be me, either. And just for a while I persuaded myself there was a chance I could change.”
He exhaled tightly. “Bannerman might have taken your disappearance more seriously if anyone but me had reported it. I should have known I couldn’t wipe the past out by coming back here. Like Greta, I’ve never believed in miracles, so I don’t know why I let myself hope I’d been handed one.”
“I don’t understand,” she said, troubled by the bleakness in his words. A moment ago the man in front of her had been holding her so closely she’d been afraid she was in danger of losing herself in him. Now he seemed once again to be separated from her by an insurmountable wall—a wall not only isolating him from her, but from everything else around him. He turned to face her, his smile humorless.
“You don’t have to understand. All you have to know is that what just happened between us was a one-time only thing. For what it’s worth, you’ve got my word I won’t cross the line again.” He scrubbed his jaw with a weary hand. “I think it’s time you filled me in on the details. Do you have any idea who those men were or what they wanted from you?”
His change of subject was briskly abrupt, but probably that was for the best, she thought. Out of some sense of responsibility for her and the baby he’d helped deliver, Tye Adams had appointed himself her temporary protector, but that was as far as their relationship could go. From the start she’d known they came from two different worlds and although
