just want to ask for another chance. For Raina,” he said. “Accept our apologies for thinking you might be here for whatever handout she could give you.”
“I don’t see how you stay in business. The other attorneys must rake you over in court if you’re this articulate.”
“I hardly ever make a fool of myself like this.” He stepped out of her way. She could have left.
“Why should I stay? Raina didn’t care enough to come downstairs to insult me, herself. None of what you or I say matters because this is between me and her.”
She got as far as the revolving door.
“Raina’s still mourning her mother. Her father died when she was in college. She has no one else.”
Daphne was already reaching for the door, but she thought of Raina, braced behind the big table, her arms wrapped around her waist. His shot hit Daphne right where she was weakest.
“No one,” he said again.
Maybe he wasn’t that bad in court. “You know things about me. Have you investigated me?”
“No,” he said. He was a good liar, but she’d been a jury consultant. She’d made her living sitting in on voir dire to assess which jurors would vote her client’s way in a court case. She understood psychology and body language, and she was hard to fool. She eyed him steadily until he continued. “I looked. Aside from the financials, I found stuff on your track-and-field results.”
She almost told him he hadn’t dug deep enough, but why send him straight to the truth about her past? He and Raina would think even less of her.
“She’s alone. You could help her. She might help you, too.”
“Alone’s a bad place to be.”
A man in a business suit burst through the door from outside, shaking rain off his umbrella. Patrick pulled her away from the door.
“People have already tried to take advantage of Raina.”
“I don’t doubt that.” It was the way of the world. “But I didn’t, and I wouldn’t have. I shouldn’t have come here. This place…It makes me think of families and old-fashioned closeness. I’m used to bad guys who wear their evil on their sleeves.” She couldn’t articulate her experience of the town thus far. Of course, her exposure had been limited, so maybe she should see more before passing judgment. “My sister is content in a world I’m not sure I could live in even if I wanted to. I’m used to larger, more anonymous cities.”
“How do you know until you try?”
“It might be pointless, Patrick.”
She hadn’t meant to say his name. It was too personal. It invited proximity. As if acting on that invitation, he stepped closer. Her awareness of her surroundings narrowed until she saw—felt—only Patrick.
Each breath pressed his chest against her shoulder. The situation grew personal in the extreme.
“You don’t know this place. Raina’s been lost since her mother died. You could help her life make sense again. I can’t do any more for her.”
He wasn’t acting the part of a knight in a business suit. He truly cared about Raina. His love for her dragged Daphne back to earth with a thump.
She twisted away. “I don’t understand what goes on between you two, but you make me feel claustrophobic.”
“I don’t understand.”
Maybe he’d never longed for that one person who made him feel he had a place, a love stronger than anything else he’d ever known—a love to fill the gaps created by years without affection or concern. But Daphne had. And she began to suspect that Patrick loved Raina that much.
Daphne hadn’t resented Raina’s luckier ticket in the adoption lottery, and she’d been glad her sister had never been forced to fend off unwanted male attention. Right now Daphne envied the connection between Raina and this man.
“I’m sorry.” Daphne held out her hand. “You’re my sister’s answer. She doesn’t want love from me. You matter to her. Goodbye, Mr. Gannon.”
He stared at her for a moment, the look in his eyes confused as his hand clasped hers. Her palm disappeared in his. Her fingers felt crushed and her arm grew heavy from her wrist to her shoulder. Heavy with awareness.
“I didn’t expect you to be like this,” Patrick said. “You’re strong enough to walk away.”
She retreated, fighting her attraction. A woman who’d grown up with inappropriate men, Daphne recognized the danger of being vulnerable to a man like Patrick—one who got through her defenses, one who was committed elsewhere. Affairs always started this way. Sexual longing. Looking too deeply into his eyes. Him holding her hand too long, drawing out perfectly natural physical contact, making it something more. That path, however tempting, led to heartache. It led away from the real, safe love she deserved.
She should run, if only because of Patrick and the threat of a relationship that had nothing to do with her reasons for coming to Honesty.
But there was Raina. Suppose he was right. Suppose she really wanted to know Daphne, but she didn’t know how to say so.
Wasn’t it worth another day or two in this little town to have the chance to know her sister?
“I’ll stay.”
Instead of sagging with relief, he seemed to grow larger. His shoulders went back as he took a deep breath.
“But she has to call me. She has to make the next move.” Daphne had a right to make demands after the way they’d treated her. “And next time we meet on neutral ground.”
Before he could counter or touch her again in a way that would persuade her to linger, she left. She walked to where she’d parked, ignoring the rain. She tried to look purposeful, as if she weren’t trembling from scalp to toe with unexpected, totally illogical need of a man who loved her sister.
Chapter Two
“DID YOU CATCH HER?”
“I caught her.” Patrick pressed his tingling palm to the side of his jacket.
What was his problem? Daphne was his client’s sister. Besides, he wasn’t interested in a relationship right now. There’d been plenty of women who’d offered to comfort the poor, divorced single dad whose ex-wife had loved pills better than their family.
He’d turned down those women because his son needed him and he couldn’t afford to complicate his life any further. But something about Daphne had almost made him forget.
With ridiculous weakness, he’d basked in her scent, eased closer so that the dark tendrils of her hair had curled against his shoulder, while he’d kept her talking, not only to persuade her to give Raina a second chance, but to prolong the pleasure of drowning in the whiskey-honey tones of her voice.
He’d been too long on his own with his son,
