sighed heavily, and his dark eyes were thoughtful. “I need a little time.”
“Time won’t help,” she said. “You’re hooked again. It’s like the cigarettes, only worse. I can’t live my life standing at windows and waiting for telephones to ring.”
“You’ll do that regardless.”
She stopped dead and turned around, gaping at him. “What?”
“You’ll do that anyway,” he said matter-of-factly, watching her. He pulled a cigarette from his pocket with a what-the-hell smile and lit it. “You’ll miss me. You’ll want me. You’re leaving the office, but the memories are portable and indestructible. You won’t forget me any more than I’ll forget you. We started something we haven’t finished, and it’s going to be between us all our lives.”
“It’s just sex!” she yelled at him.
Two young men walked past, grinned at J.D., and winked at Gabby, who was wishing she could sink into the sand. She hadn’t even heard them approach.
She turned and fled back down the beach at a trot. J.D. was right beside her, effortlessly matching her steps and still smoking his cigarette. He finished it just as they reached the car, and he crushed it out before he joined her in the luxurious interior.
“It isn’t just sex,” he said, turning to face her, one arm across the back of the seat and an odd expression on his face. He smiled slowly. “But sex is going to be one big part of our relationship in the not-too-distant future.”
She glared at him. “You’d be lucky!”
“No, you would,” he said, cocking an eyebrow. “When I mind my manners, I’m a force to be reckoned with. What I did to you in that bed was all bad temper and irritation. What I did to you the morning before was what it’s really like.”
She couldn’t control her heated response to that intimate remark. Her breasts tingled at the memory. His eyes dropped slowly to her breasts, and he smiled wickedly. Following his gaze, she saw why and crossed her arms over her chest.
“Too late,” he murmured. “Your body will give you away every time. You haven’t forgotten what we did together.”
Her nostrils flared. “There are other men in the world.”
“Sure,” he agreed pleasantly. “But you don’t want other men. You want me.”
“Conceited ass,” she enunciated clearly.
His fingers touched her mouth and parted her lips, as if their texture fascinated him. “You risked your life for me,” he said absently. “Why?”
She laughed nervously. “Maybe I just wanted to try out the gun.”
He tilted her face up and leaned over to brush his mouth tenderly across her trembling lips. “Maybe there was a reason you don’t want me to know,” he murmured. He drew back and looked at her. “Hungry?”
The change of topic threw her. He had switched from lover to friendly companion in seconds. She managed a smile. “Yes. What did you have in mind?”
“Cheeseburgers, of course.” He chuckled and started the car.
“I like those myself.”
He glanced at her. “Let’s talk,” he said unexpectedly. “Really talk. I want to know everything about you. What you like to read, how it was to grow up in Texas, why you’ve never gotten involved with a man…everything.”
That sounded intriguing. It suddenly occurred to her that she knew very little about him. What he liked and disliked, what he felt. She tried to read his face.
“Curious about me, too?” he asked, glancing sideways. “I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”
She laughed uneasily. “‘Anything’ covers a lot of territory.”
“And requires a hell of a lot of trust on my part,” he added with a smile. “Anything, Gabby.”
Total honesty. She stared down at her hands and wondered why they were trembling. She wasn’t sure of his motives, of where this was leading. She looked up and all her uncertainty was on her face.
He reached over and caught one of her hands, lifting it to his thigh. Her palm tingled at the contact.
“Make me stay here,” he said unexpectedly.
“What?” she asked.
“Make me stay,” he repeated. His eyes caught hers briefly. “You can give me something that all the unholy little wars on earth couldn’t. If you want me, show me. Give me a reason, half a reason, to settle down. And I might surprise you.”
She stared out through the windshield and felt as if she were floating. It was a beginning that she wasn’t sure she wanted. She might hold his interest briefly, until he tired of her body. But what then? He was offering nothing more than a liaison. He wasn’t talking about permanent things like a house and children. Her eyes darkened with pain. Perhaps it would have been better if he hadn’t gotten rid of her fear of him.
Her troubled eyes sought his profile, but it was as unreadable as ever. The only thing that gave her hope was the visible throbbing of his pulse and the searing desire in his eyes. He wanted her so desperately that she couldn’t help wondering whether he didn’t feel something for her, too. But it would take time to find out, and she wasn’t going to withdraw her resignation. As much as it might hurt, in the long run it would be saner to leave him than to try to hold him. Gabby wasn’t built for an affair. And she wasn’t going to let him drag her into one, just to occupy himself while he decided between practicing law and soldiering.
They sat in a booth at a nearby fast-food restaurant, where J.D. put away three cheeseburgers, a large order of French fries and two cups of coffee before Gabby’s fascinated eyes.
“I’m a big man,” he reminded her as he was finishing the third one.
“Yes, you are,” she agreed with a smile, running her eyes over the spread of muscle under his chambray shirt.
His eyes narrowed with amusement. “Remembering what’s under it?” he said softly, teasing her.
She flushed and grabbed her coffee cup, holding it like a weapon. “I thought this was a truce,” she muttered.
“It is. But I fight dirty, remember?”
She looked, studying his hard face. “What was it like, those four years when you were a mercenary?” she asked.
He finished the cheeseburger and sipped his coffee, leaning back with a heavy sigh. “It was hard,” he said. “Exciting. Rewarding, in more ways than just financial.” He shrugged. “I suppose I was caught up in the romance of it at first, until I saw what I was getting into. One of the men I joined with was captured and thrown into jail the minute we landed in one African country. He hadn’t fired a shot, but
