could land herself in a heap of trouble, if not downright danger.
She walked him to the front door with her arms wrapped around her chest and her mouth zipped in a firm line. No talking. She respected that it was late and he had to leave. Her gaze kept shooting to his face, though, and Pax had the uneasy feeling that she’d rope and hog-tie him if he dared try leaving without saying something else about Case.
When he pushed open the back door, she was as faithful as a dog on his heels. It had turned dark. The lights of Sierra Vista were a soft glow in the sky to the north, but this far out of town, there were no lights, no traffic, no people noise. The night came alive here. The air was impossibly clear and pure, the silence soothing on a man’s soul. So typically, the Arizona spring night was seeped in desert smells and sounds and a huge, ghost white full moon—his favorite kind.
Kansas’s gaze was still glued tightly on his face. Pax doubted she noticed the moon or the night—at that precise moment, he doubted she’d notice an earthquake—and mentally sighed. Yeah, he’d been thinking about the problem of her brother.
“My work schedule is pretty weird,” he told her. “I’m not an ‘office hours’ kind of vet. About the only thing I do in the office is surgery—most of my work is out in the field, and I use a cellular phone for people trying to track me down. My hours are always crazy, and like I said, I really don’t know where your brother is, Kansas. The best I could do—if you don’t mind working around my hit-or-miss schedule—is take you around, show you some places where Case used to go, that kind of thing.”
“That kind of thing would be wonderful,“ she said fervently, and smiled like he’d just turned on the switch for the sun. “That was all I was asking for—some help. I know it’s an imposition, and I really appreciate the offer. In fact I would be glad to pay you—”
“Around here, we haven’t caught up with big city values yet. A neighbor still helps a neighbor. Money has nothing to do with it.” Pax dug the truck key out of his jeans pocket. He doubted the wisdom of getting involved, but there was no help for it. Letting Kansas poke and pry on her own just wouldn’t sit on his conscience. “I won’t be free tomorrow until after three in the afternoon.”
“That’d be great.”
Pax wasn’t sure it’d be great. He wasn’t sure of anything except that he felt a whomp upside the head every time he looked at her.
Kansas moved aside so he could open the driver’s door to the Explorer. He opened the door, but he didn’t immediately climb in.
It had been a long time since anyone or anything confused him. His real name, Paxton, had been shortened to Pax because the Latin base for the nickname had always pegged his personality. He liked peace. He’d had enough turmoil in his childhood to last forever. Most things that mattered in life reduced to simple terms, if a man was determined to lead a simple life.
Nothing seemed simple about Kansas. Right then, she was standing in a shower of moonlight, her eyes softer than the big black sky. The filmy blouse she wore was no thicker than a veil, and never mind that it was sexier than a man’s midnight fantasies. The fabric was ethereal and fragile, and everything she wore, every damn thing she did, shouted loudly that she was a wimp and a wuss and a crushably vulnerable woman.
Yet she’d taken off cross-country without a qualm “to save” her brother. And he’d watched the confounded shrimp tackle the tarantula, when she had a rescuer right at her fingertips who could have handled it. It didn’t make sense. She didn’t make sense.
Kansas cocked her head. “I’m in no rush if you want to stand here all night,” she murmured humorously. “But you’re looking at me like there’s a bug on my nose.”
“There’s no bug on your nose.”
“Maybe you were thinking of something else having to do with my brother? Because if there’s anything else you could tell me about Case—”
“I wasn’t thinking about your brother.” Pax just kept thinking that somehow, someway, he had to figure out what kind of woman Kansas really was.
She could get hurt if he misjudged what she was capable of.
She could get into serious trouble unless he had a measure of what she could handle—and what she couldn’t.
All Pax wanted was some simple, clean-cut answers. In a dozen years, though—in a hundred years—he never planned on kissing her.
Three
Kansas didn’t move when he took a step toward her. And she saw his arm reach up, felt the knuckles of his hand brush her cheek. But Pax didn’t seem to even be thinking about her. There was a dark wedge of a frown grooved in his brow, as if some weighty problem was consuming his attention.
Even when he ducked his head, it just never occurred to her that he planned to kiss her. There’d been no come-on. No man-woman exchange of looks or body-language signals. If anything, Kansas sensed that Pax saw her as a pesky little sister—humorous and a little annoying, but as safe as a sibling to be with.
His lips touched hers, in a whispery-soft kiss. A safe kiss. A kiss swifter than the feather stroke of a spring wind.
Her heartbeat picked up a sudden, strange rhythm, but she still didn’t move. Even if the kiss was a surprise, no threat of danger crossed her mind. Heaven knew what motivated Pax to kiss her at all, but she had no fear of where it was going. Every man she’d ever known had treated her like breakable china. It wasn’t their fault; positively her delicate appearance provoked that attitude, but her looks were nothing she could change. Still, she was so experienced at handling careful, cautious, gentle kisses that she never anticipated any other kind.
His hands sieved into her hair and he tilted her face up. His black eyes burned on her face for all of a second, before his mouth dipped down again.
Holy kamoly. For damn sure he wasn’t kissing his sister this time.
Fire shot through her veins before she’d even smelled sulphur. The shock alone curled her toes. Pax wasn’t trapping her—except for his big hands framing her face, he wasn’t holding her at all. The only connection was his smooth, warm lips tasting hers, then taking hers, with a pressure that made her blood spin.
Reflexively her hands shot up. Her fingers closed around his wrists, not necessarily to stop him. Just to hold on. She sure as patooties needed something to hold onto, because an innocuously pale moonlit night had abruptly exploded with color.
He was supposed to treat her like a fragile cookie. Everyone else did. Every other man had always kissed her...respectfully. Pax kissed her like someone had accidentally opened the cage doors on a big, hungry bear—a bear who’d been contained and deprived of sustenance for just too long. She couldn’t catch her breath. He seemed to have the same problem.
His shadow covered her more completely than a sheet on a bed. She couldn’t see his face, but she could feel the harsh, beating pulse in his wrists, hear the raw, rough sound that came out of his throat. It was a lonely sound. Lonely and wild. And he sealed her mouth under his with the pressure of a brand. His brand.
He was a relative stranger, her mind recognized, and Kansas hadn’t survived to the vast age of twenty-nine without knowing the girls’ rule book. When a stranger came on to a woman with the intimidating force of a steamroller, she wasn’t supposed
