to hell.” Janina barely moved her lips but the barmaid eyed her askance. Janina tried a grimace, winced when the stitches pulled and shook her head. “You don’t want to know.”
The barmaid grinned. “Bet I do.”
Janina shook her head. “Trust me.”
“You got it for that one?” The woman lifted her chin in Russ’s direction while she pulled Janina’s beers.
“Mmm.” Janina sighed. “Obvious?”
“Only to someone who reads the signs.” Another flashing grin from the woman tending bar. “Good luck. He’s waitin’ on something. Though he doesn’t seem to know what. Won’t cotton to anybody here, fact. Most of the girls have tried.”
“They have? He won’t?” Hope soared. She gave the barmaid a crooked smile. “Thanks. I feel like I’m in seventh grade asking for info on the varsity quarterback.”
“Eh, s’okay.” The other woman shrugged and winked. “I was in seventh grade myself last night. Good to know I’m not there alone.” She nodded at Janina’s hands and face. “Wasn’t him did that to you, was it.” Not a question exactly.
Janina’s smile tumbled in her belly, felt tremulous on her mouth. “No. He saved me.”
The barmaid grinned happily, as though Janina had confirmed something she’d long thought—and hoped. “Don’t look like you can manage these. Why don’t you go sit. I’ll bring ’em over. I’m Shelley, by the way.”
“Janina.”
Sending Shelley a grateful smile, Janina did as she’d been told, preceding the woman across the room to slide onto the bench beside Russ even as the beers were placed on the table in front of him. He didn’t even glance up.
“Thanks, but I’m still not goin’ home with you, Marg,” Russ said slowly but firmly. His words didn’t slur, but he definitely sounded too comfortable to either be the real Russ Levoie or to be Russ Levoie sober. “Doesn’t matter how many drinks I have. Told you it wouldn’t be fair to either of us, I got somebody else on my mind.”
“And I’ll bet she said it didn’t matter to her whether you’ve got someone else on your mind or not, didn’t she?” Janina asked. She thought she heard a tinge of that green-eyed thing in her voice but she couldn’t be sure. If Maddie was the other person he had on his mind what the hell was she doing here?
“Janie?” Russ cocked his head and looked at her. “What’re you doin’ here? You’re supposed to be home takin’ care of yourself. I knew I should’ve come back and made sure you did.”
Damn straight, Janina agreed silently. Saved me a trip out.
“Couldn’t sit still,” she said aloud. “Needed company. Wish you had come back. I wanted to say thank-you. Anyway, I went out looking for you, and Jonah told me you might be here, so here I am.”
Russ smiled. “That’s good,” he said simply. “I’m glad. I wanted to see you, too, but I didn’t know how to ask and I didn’t want to wake you if you were sleepin’.”
Janie’s heart flipped, and knocked aside any common sense she might still have possessed. “Really?” she whispered, as shy as she would have been if he’d noticed her way back when, hero to her hero worshipper.
Inhibitions lowered by the amount of alcohol he’d consumed, Russ turned to look at her full on. His eyes were dark, smiling, full of promise. He reached up to trace the uninjured right side of her mouth with the tip of a forefinger in the lightest of caresses. “Oh, yeah,” he whispered, so close she could taste his breath on her lips, feel the heat of him on her skin, know the touch of him throughout her body by the single contact the pad of his finger made at the edge of her mouth. “Very much. Definitely.”
Janina’s eyes drifted closed. Opened. She had to watch him. She swallowed and her own mouth seemed to float gently closer to his yet not close enough. He played with her mouth without touching it, moving as though to nuzzle her smile, teasingly pulling his own mouth back until she thought she’d go mad, until she was breathless with laughter.
“Russ,” she murmured, “what are you doing?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve never done this before. What am I doing?”
“What do you mean?” She couldn’t think. She didn’t want to think. She’d known being with Russ would be special and this was only a kiss, not even a kiss. “Please, Russ. You’re making me crazy. Are you going to kiss me? Please, Russ, kiss me.”
“Might.” His mouth came closer to hers and withdrew slightly. The tip of his forefinger drifted across her mouth, barely tracing the outer edge of her lips, finding the bruises, investigating more gently and carefully than she’d known it was possible for a man to touch a woman. “Don’t want to hurt you. You’ve been hurt too much. Never want it to be me who hurts you.”
The simplicity of libido fled in the face of something else entirely.
Startled senseless by the tenderness of touch and statement, Janina blinked. Her eyes burned with sudden emotion and a lump lodged tightly in her throat. The butterflies and moths that had been churning up her stomach suddenly fuzzed into warmth at the same time that the rest of her body became suffused with the loveliest sense of chills and confusion and warmth and safety and…
And a whole lot of something more. She blinked again. The world, made up of Russ’s face, swam before her eyes. The lump in her throat dissolved, and whatever toughness she’d developed through the years puddled in Russ Levoie’s hands. Tears ran down her face and collected along the lump at her lip.
“Oh, Russ.”
“What?” His surprise was the genuine surprise of a drunken man. The distress was a drunken man’s distress, too. Normally Russ knew exactly what to do with crying women—or seemed to. “Janie, don’t cry. I don’t know what to do.”
“Oh, Russ.” Laughter and wry despair mixed with the tears this time. Janina placed her less injured left hand against Russ’s chest. “You always know what to do.”
“Don’t.” He was thoroughly helpless.
She lifted her face, smiling, and snuggled into him because it seemed like the natural place to be. “Do.”
He turned toward her. His arms pulled her close, instinctively seemed to claim her, the same way he’d wrapped her up and taken her in earlier at the diner. “No, I don’t.” He bent his head to rub his cheek against hers. “Doesn’t matter though. I can learn. Just don’t let me hurt you.”
“You won’t hurt me, Russ,” Janina whispered against his throat. “You can’t. It’s not in you.”
“I could,” Russ warned her honestly, enunciating each word with care. “If I wasn’t drunk I probably wouldn’t even be able to talk to you.”
Janina lifted her chin to look at him, gave him a slow, woman-for-her-man-only smile and nuzzled his jaw. “Then drink your beer,” she murmured suggestively, sliding the two not-taped fingers on her left hand inside between the buttons of his shirt. “And let’s go back to my place ’n see what we can do about making
