“You can’t stop me from going to Denver.”
“Yes,” he said. “I can. And I will. I’ll save you from yourself, Jessie.”
Slowly she shook her head, loose hair framing her face and so very nearly distracting him.
“Thanks for the offer, but I don’t want a knight in shining armor.”
“Tough. You’ve got one.”
Her eyes, columbine blue and frosted by icy resolve, seemed to challenge him. “Heroes are for fairy tales, Kurt, just like happily ever afters.”
“You don’t believe in them.”
“No...I never did.”
“Never?” he asked. Her eyes told a different story, though. They revealed what she never willingly would.
He took a single step toward her and watched her retreat. It wasn’t much, just a fraction of an inch. But her toes, with an intriguing brush of pink across the nails, had peeked out from beneath her nightclothes.
The flannel gown, severe, prim and proper, swooshed around her ankles. More than that, however, it was her eyes that still riveted his attention. They hinted at the secrets in her soul. “Never, not even once? In all your childhood years, you never wanted to be rescued?”
She opened her mouth, then closed it again.
“You were content with what you had, being shuffled from family to family?”
“Get out.” She pointed to the door.
“A little close to the truth?” he asked with coiled quietness. Her ridiculous proposal had angered him, the fact that she wanted only his sperm infuriated him and now her determination to go to Denver fanned a flame of frustration in him.
“Truth?” she repeated. “You want the truth, Kurt? Well, how’s this?” Her voice quivered, betraying the emotions that Kurt knew she was trying to hide. “I’m going to have a baby—if not yours, then someone else’s. So save us both the aggravation of misplaced chivalry.”
He shook his head and advanced again. “Sorry, sweetheart. You brought this to me and you made it my concern.”
“So what are you going to do, physically stop me from leaving in the morning?”
“If I have to.”
She shivered.
He took another, measured step toward her.
“You can’t be serious.”
“Try me.”
She sucked in a breath, her breasts rising beneath the cotton of her gown. Her nipples strained against the fabric and something deep inside him wrenched. For the first time since he’d first met her—when she wore a braid and knee-high white socks with a skirt—she affected him in a way that had nothing to do with friendship.
His instincts warned of danger while his body urged him toward it.
He reminded himself that Jessie was his sister’s friend.
Yeah. Right Too bad he wasn’t buying what his mind was selling.
“This is crazy, impossible.”
For a second, he had no idea what she was talking about.
“If you stop me in the morning, I’ll go later, after you leave. You can’t hold me prisoner in my own home forever.”
“Is that a challenge?”
“Kurt, stop this ridiculousness.”
“Sure.” He folded his arms. Better than touching her. “As soon as you agree to cancel your appointment.”
“If it’ll get you out of here, I promise I’ll call the clinic first thing in the morning.”
“Not good enough.”
Her eyelids squeezed shut for a fraction of a second.
“I’ll cancel it for you.”
“Cancel it for me? You’re out of your ever-loving mind.”
“That makes two of us. Give me the number of the doctor’s office, Jessie. Then I’ll leave you alone to your sweet dreams.”
“And an empty house,” she said quietly, the words more of a confession than a statement.
She winced, obviously having disclosed more than she wanted. He should pretend he hadn’t heard, and more, hadn’t seen the painful display of honesty in her eyes.
But right now, Kurt wasn’t feeling like much of a gentleman. He’d capitalize on her weakness, get her to see things his way, the right way. “That’s what this is all about, isn’t it?” he asked quietly. “An empty house.”
She didn’t answer him.
“If you don’t like being alone, get married.”
“Sure. Which of my many suitors should I choose?”
Bitterness tainted her question. Pain lay there in her voice, raw and exposed. Before he reacted to it, she rushed away from him toward the back of the house, leaving him alone. He knew he’d said something wrong, but exactly what, he wasn’t sure.
Women. What did he know about them anyway? Not enough, if his divorce was anything to judge by.
Still, Jessie was hurting and remnants of her earlier pain lingered in her gaze. He was on the right track.
Kurt hadn’t been much interested in the fairy tales his mother had read to him and Mary. He, too, believed that chivalry had died an untimely death, if it had ever existed outside of books.
But that didn’t give him the power to leave Jessie alone. Something had brought her to him, in the cold, dark hours of an early April evening. Like it or not, as he’d told her earlier, when she reached out to him, she’d involved him.
Jessie had crossed into the kitchen. She stared out the window, into the desolate expanse of a still-dormant yard, her back to him in a sign of dismissal.
He ignored it.
In the entryway, he propped a shoulder against the doorjamb.
Even though he didn’t speak, she asked, “Are you still here?”
He’d had more promising beginnings with women. Somehow, though, nothing else had ever seemed this important. “Tell me about it, Jessie. Talk to me.”
Slowly, oh so slowly, the gown swishing, she turned around. Silence, unbroken by anything except their breathing, seemed to simmer.
“What do you want to hear? About the loneliness? Or the way my arms ache to hold a baby? The way I dream, every night, of having a child of my own?”
