her toenails at the end.
She despised herself right now because she was glad that she had.
Swiftly she slipped on a pair of sandals and picked up the basket again. “Okay.” Her voice was absurdly breathy and urgent. “This way.” She moved ahead again, opened the inner door and went through. He followed.
They entered what she thought of as the family room. Bookshelves lined the walls, the blind eye of a television stared from a corner and the furniture was a little bit worn and very comfortable. She took him through the open doorway to the kitchen and gestured at the bay window and the round oak table in front of it. “Make yourself comfortable.” She set the tomatoes on the counter. “And if you’d give me one minute?”
“Sure.”
She retraced her steps, through the family room and out to the service porch, then on into the half bath at last. She shut the door, rested her head against the wood, closed her eyes and let out a long, shaky sigh. Then she drew herself up and turned to face the mirror above the sink.
Her eyes were wide, haunted-looking. Twin spots of hectic color stained her cheeks.
This was awful, impossible, wrong. Had she learned nothing from the mess she’d made of her life once? It certainly didn’t feel like it, not with the way her heart was pounding, the way she burned with hungry heat.
She might as well have been seventeen again, that first time she snuck Rusty into her parents’ house. Seventeen, with her parents gone—off somewhere. She couldn’t remember where, but it would have been two separate places. Her mom and dad didn’t go out together much. But wherever they were, neither of them had a clue what their bright, perfect, well-behaved daughter was up to. That she had Rusty in the house.
Yes. She had Rusty in the house and she knew that he was going to kiss her. And she knew that he wouldn’t stop with just kisses.
And she was glad.
“Oh, God,” she whispered low.
She flipped on the cold tap and splashed water on her face, grabbing the hand towel, scrubbing at her cheeks as if she could wipe away not only the water, but the heat in them, the evidence of her own insistent, self-destructive attraction to the wrong kind of man. She got a brush from the drawer and tugged it angrily through her hair, trying to tame it. Failing that, she found a scrunchy in the other drawer and anchored the mess in a ponytail, low on her neck.
“There,” she whispered to her reflection, “Better. Really. It’s really okay.” Swiftly she tucked her raggedy shirt more securely into the waistband of her baggy old jeans.
And then there was nothing else to do but get out there and deal with him.
He was sitting at the table when she reentered the kitchen, but he’d turned his chair out a little, so he could comfortably face the doorway to the family room. He wore faded denim and worn tan boots and his skin looked golden in contrast to his white T-shirt. He was Brad Pitt in Fight Club, Ben Affleck out of rehab. He was a young Paul Newman in that old Faulkner movie, The Long Hot Summer, the barn burner’s son looking for more than any woman ought to give him. He was sin just waiting to happen.
And why, she found herself wondering? Why me?
What did he see in her? Not that there was anything wrong with her, just that she simply was not his type. Not gorgeous, not glamorous, not a party animal.
And look at her wardrobe. Eddie Bauer and L.L. Bean—and, times like right now, when she’d been gardening, various little numbers one step away from the ragbag. Cade Bravo’s women wore DKNY and Versace. They probably all bought their underwear at Victoria’s Secret.
It made no sense. No sense at all.
But then, it had been the same with Rusty. Attraction of opposites. A good girl and a bad boy, tasting the forbidden, doing what they shouldn’t do.
And loving every minute of it.
At least, for a while.
“Iced tea, you said?”
“Great.”
“Sugar? Lemon?”
“Plain.”
Her refrigerator had an ice maker in the freezer door. She got a pair of glasses from the cupboard and stuck them under the ice dispenser, one and then the other. The cubes dropping into place sounded like gunshots in the too-quiet room.
She got out the tea, poured it over the ice, filling both glasses. Normally she liked sugar and lemon. But no way she was fooling with any of that right now.
She put the tea away, picked up the two glasses and carried them to the table, setting his in front of him, then sliding into a chair.
“Thanks,” he said.
She gave him a tight smile and a nod in response. Then, not knowing what else to do, she sipped from her tea—too bitter, not tart enough.
She set it down in front of her and looked at it. She was afraid to look anywhere else, and that was a plain fact.
“Jane.”
He was waiting, she knew. For her to look at him.
Better get it over with. She dragged her gaze upward, and she met those silver eyes again.
And he said it. “I want to go out with you. Dinner. A show. It doesn’t matter to me. Whatever you want, that’s what we’ll do.”
She looked at him, into those eyes. “Thank you. For asking me.” The words came out flat, without intonation. “I’m sorry. But no. I can’t go out with you.”
He didn’t look surprised. “Can’t?” He was mocking her.
She couldn’t blame him for his scorn. Can’t, in this case, was a coward’s word. And a lie. “I won’t. I won’t go out with you.”
“Why not?”
She shut her eyes, dragged in a long breath, then looked at him again. “Won’t you just take what I said? Take no thank you, and let it be?”
He smiled then, more or less. At least the corners of his mouth hitched upward. “I will, if that’s all I can get. It’s not like I really have a choice. But you’re honest, or you try to be, and—”
“How do you know that?”
“Does it matter?”
It did matter, a lot, for some reason. “I’d like to know how you know that about me, that’s all.”
“Jane. How could I not know?”
“You mean you’ve been watching me.”
“What? That’s news? It offends you, that I like to look at you, that I listen when people talk about you?”
“Who? Who talks about me?”
“Oh, come on. Your buddy Celia’s married to Aaron. It’s a story
