Kisses From Heaven (16 page)

She put the coffee down, leaned forward and pressed her palms to her temples. There was a raised spot on her forehead, hidden by a wave of russet hair. Irritably, she moved her fingers over so that she could at least press out the tension in the rest of her temples.

There was a sharp rap on her half-opened door, and she glanced up. A tall, intimidating frame suddenly filled the doorway. She had never seen Buck’s eyes loaded with such desperate tension before. She swallowed and blinked rapidly, perhaps not quite fast enough to totally erase the glaze of moisture in her eyes.

“Why the hell didn’t you call me, Loren?”

She shook her head and put her hand out to stop him from coming any closer. If he touched her, she knew darn well she was going to be folded in that strength of shoulder and tears would follow. “Just…don’t.”

“Don’t be silly, Loren—” He came a few steps closer, and she shook her head more wildly.

“It matters to
me,
Buck. I
hate
women who fall apart. Just don’t touch me for a minute. Please!”

His whole face seemed to tighten for an instant, and there was a flare of something stark and lonely in his eyes. Then he turned, and his eyes fixed on her raincoat hanging from the back of the door

“No,” she said simply.

“You look as though you used bleach for makeup today.” His voice was so normal, that Loren thought she’d imagined the anguished look in his eyes.

“Thanks,” she said, with a monumental effort to sound normal herself.

“I’m starving. I shrivel up to five foot one if not fed lunch on time.” He lifted the raincoat, a stubborn glint in his eyes. Arguing would have as much effect as trying to scale a brick wall barefoot. She sighed. “Think of the fat little brandy I’m going to order for you,” he coaxed. “Think of the beating I’ll give you if you don’t come. Think of—”

“All right,” Loren said with exasperation. She put on the coat and then turned back to him, trying to smile. “But I’m only coming for the beating. If I drink anything at lunch, I’ll float all afternoon.”

“Coming up, one beating, after we let them know you’re leaving,” he said gravely. But as she made to move past him, his hands suddenly laced across her shoulders. Her startled protest didn’t stop his determined inspection of her arms to test for bruises. In a remarkably small number of seconds, he’d discovered the swelling blotch on her forehead. “Head hurt?”

“No.”
She had the horrible feeling he might just have stripped her to the buff to check for injuries if she hadn’t pulled away and darted into the hall. “Buck, I’m
all right,
” she hissed furiously up at him.

Yet it was the first time she’d felt steady all morning, when he tugged her close to his side walking out to the parking lot. He smelled fresh and warm and familiar, and the feel of him was like coming home. But those feelings warred with others. It was all…off balance again. She was needy once again—needing him. It never seemed to work the other way around. She knew she was still shaken up, that there wasn’t a rational thought in her head, but she resented needing him. Terribly.

The restaurant was quiet and dark and nearly empty. The “fat little brandy” rested beside Loren, sipped once. Buck, for all his claim to hunger, had ordered coffee for himself. In front of her was a clear consommé and a double order of plain, ordinary toast, all of which she was pushing around in haphazard fashion. “I don’t understand how you knew,” she said absently. “Did Janey call you?”

“Frank called. Which he should have done several hours before,” Buck said gruffly, taking another sip of coffee. He hadn’t taken his eyes off her from the time they entered the restaurant. “I didn’t ferret out a thirty-thousand-dollar savings for him in raw materials from the goodness of my heart. I’ve got empathy for any man in the top chair, and a fool could tell he was a genius in the engineering line, but he lets his purchasing agent sit around on a constant coffee break.”

“John is rather that way,” Loren admitted vaguely and then suddenly raised startled eyes to him.

“What’s wrong?”

She just looked at him, feeling a helpless welling of confusion inside. Anger, hurt, and that something shaky that had haunted her all morning even before the accident. “How could you?” she demanded.

“How could I what?” He looked bewildered.

“
Interfere,
Buck. You’re the reason Frank gave me the part-time assistant, aren’t you? You’re the reason that I’m suddenly no longer taking home reams of work. That day you were in the office…”

Buck’s eyes shifted to the coffee cup. “Don’t be ridiculous, Loren. I never told him to hire an extra person in your office. I never
told
him to do anything.”

She set down her cup, glaring speechlessly at him. No, he’d never
told
Frank anything. It wouldn’t have happened that way. He just did Frank a major and very expensive favor and dropped her name and the connection. And Frank had suddenly scrambled to treat her like a favorite niece.

Buck was glaring back at her, his features just as strained as her own. Quite obviously, he’d never really intended to tell her; it had just slipped out. “It’s not the time to discuss it,” he said shortly. “Another time, Loren, you can set up the boxing ring. Right now you’re going home.”

“I am
not
going home. I am going car shopping.”

He took a look at her pale complexion, at the dark gray eyes glowing like coals, at the determined set to her jaw that, in spite of its minute size, was really remarkably like his own. He sighed and leaned back to finish the last of his coffee. “There are times,” he said mildly, “when the Detroit Lions could probably hire you as a fullback, as is. They’d probably even manage to win a few games in the season.”

She didn’t smile. “I
have
to have transportation.”

His own smile faded. They stood up, and he nudged at the small of her back to urge her toward his car. “What you
have to have
is some emotional letdown.” His tone was a deep-throated growl. “You’re as strung out as a whip, just waiting to lash back.” He closed the door with a little clip in her ear. When he got in his side, there was controlled patience in his voice. “Just let me take you home, Loren. You can use the Town Car until you really feel up to looking for another car. I can handle—”

“No,”
Loren interrupted furiously. He was right in everything he said. She was an emotional mess; she couldn’t even hold a coherent thought in her head; she belonged home, and there was no horror of a hurry over some ridiculous car. She wanted to obey, to let him take charge. But irrationally all she could think of was that she was turning into a doormat. “Look. I don’t expect you to waste a whole afternoon. I’m more than capable of shopping for a car on my own. It’s not your problem—”

The look he shot her was deadly. She knew immediately that she had stepped over a forbidden line and had a startling vision of Buck virulent in anger. Worse, she glimpsed the fleeting bleakness in his eyes again and knew she’d hurt him, terribly.

“It’s not
my
problem?” he echoed. “You’re not
my
concern, Loren, particularly when something’s happened to you?”

“Buck, I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.”

“I think you did.” He stabbed the key in the ignition, and the engine roared to life.

They drove in silence. Loren’s head ached from the swelling bruise on her forehead. She felt exhausted and strung out and confused.

She glanced at Buck as he drove, at his craggy features, the deep-set green eyes, the jutting jaw and the sensual mouth now firmly compressed. His suit was Italian; she’d just noticed. The economy of line emphasized his broad shoulders, and he was a powerfully forbidding man when his jaw was set just so.

She longed to reach out and touch him. Desperately, she craved the protective embrace he had offered her so often, and just as desperately she wanted to erase her rashly spoken words. She hadn’t meant to shut him out by implying her life was none of his business, and she hated herself for hurting him.

Yet she didn’t touch him. He had hurt her as well. He had no right to interfere in her workplace, and the blow to her pride was sharp and unbearable. It wasn’t just that…it was everything. Frank, Angela, Gramps; he’d stepped in and taken over. All of his actions were done for her; she knew that. It was just that in his view, she must seem like a puppet, as he capably moved the strings that affected her life. It wasn’t how she wanted him to see her. A very capable, confident, bright, even rather successful young woman—that was how she wanted him to see her because it was what she was…at least until she’d met him.

Buck turned into a car dealership, and Loren tried to refocus on the more immediate problem at hand. She frowned; a Volvo dealer wasn’t anywhere near what she had in mind. “Buck,” she said quietly. “I can’t afford this. There’s no point in my even looking here.”

His green eyes pinned hers. “We’re going to leave money out of this one,” he warned her. “I’m not suggesting the top-of-the-line gas guzzler or an engine with more power than you can handle. I
am
suggesting transportation that doesn’t crumple at the first minor bump in a parking lot. Now are you really going to argue with that?”

She felt she was on a downhill toboggan run and couldn’t get off. She got out of his car, looked around and had only to read the first sticker prices to know there wasn’t a car in the lot in her price range. She knew Buck had every intention of buying the car for her, just as she understood that the taut nerves were not all on her own side. She’d seen the way he looked at her when he first arrived in the office and knew he’d suffered a frantic drive to her plant when he’d discovered she’d been in an accident, but she could not seem to grapple with anything beyond a head that kept pounding with increasing anxiety. And she simply could not let him pay for the car.

“I really think I would like to look at something less expensive,” she said finally.

Buck drove her where she wanted to go in complete silence. A bright rainbow of compact cars were all lined up, bug-sized, and Loren walked a little ahead of him in the drizzle, with a salesman trailing after Buck. She peered into several cars, finally finding one that had none of the gadgets that brought up the sticker price.

“Would you like to try it out?” the young salesman asked hopefully.

“Yes.” She glanced back at Buck for the first time in the past fifteen minutes. Her effort to smile died. His face was granite. Turning back to the salesman with a stubborn look, she repeated, “Yes. I would like to drive it, if you wouldn’t mind.”

Yet when she slid behind the steering wheel, the pounding in her head tripled; she felt suddenly cold all over, and her hands turned clammy. This was exactly what she wanted, exactly what she could afford, and the car was really an attractive little runabout. But then so was the little lemon VW the mother had been driving that morning…the one that had crushed like paper even in a slow-speed accident. She had a sudden vision of herself zigzagging around semi trucks on the expressway in this little red car, and somehow her palms were so damp she couldn’t make the ignition key turn. In fact, suddenly she couldn’t seem to move at all.

The driver’s door opened abruptly. Buck didn’t even look at Loren’s suddenly white face. His arms reached in, and though for a moment her legs argued with the steering wheel, her face was buried in Buck’s chest a moment later. He just held her, rocking her back and forth in the middle of that crazy parking lot until the shuddering stopped.

“Is there anything wrong?” the salesman asked uncertainly. But his voice was muffled; one of Buck’s hands was at the back of her head, stroking her hair, over and over.

“Nothing,” Buck said pleasantly. “We just decided we were only in the market for Mack trucks today. Thanks for your time.”

“I…pardon?”

“You can take the keys out of it,” Buck said flatly. As in take a hike, mister.

The footsteps clapped on pavement and then faded. Buck sighed and pressed his hands very gently on either side of Loren’s face to lift her eyes to his. His mouth rubbed fleetingly on hers, as if touching base. She felt a rush of comfort.

“I keep living it over and over in my head,” Loren whispered wrenchingly. “I’m not a good driver. A thousand times I’ve been too distracted. But not this morning, Buck.
This
time there was just nothing I could have done, and she…had a baby. The baby kept crying, and I kept thinking that I could have killed that baby…”

He folded her close again. Her eyes were filled with stinging tears, and desperately she swallowed and reswallowed the lump in her throat. He didn’t seem to care, but she did. She was not going to come apart at the seams in the middle of a car dealership. She touched aching fingers to her temples, drawing away from him. “Dammit. I
have
to have a car,” she said distractedly. “I can’t just keep thinking about it. I
have
to be at work tomorrow—”

“And you will be.” Buck steered her gently back to his Town Car. “I’ll take care of it, Loren, I promise you. But for right now, I’m taking you home.”

She rocked against the car seat as though it were a cradle, closing her eyes as Buck drove. Those few minutes when he had held her were over. Her head was pounding again, the same disturbing refrains. It had happened again; he had taken charge, and somehow she was doing things his way. And it was wrong. Everything was all wrong. Old ghosts haunted her, and she couldn’t seem to dismiss them.

He stopped the car in front of her house, and she looked outside. Sunshine was glistening on rain-drenched grass, the trees were whispering in the warm, drying breeze. Flowers were blooming, and the birds were going mad with spring fever. All she could feel was despair. She turned to Buck with agony in her eyes. “Buck, I don’t want you to take care of the car.”

He sighed with exasperation. “Loren, we’ve been through that. I refuse to discuss money with you when you’re upset.”

“You don’t see, Buck.” Tears suddenly glistened in her eyes. “You never will. It’s just not going to work.” His expression went stark and cold, as if he suddenly understood she was not talking about cars, but about the two of them. He opened his mouth to talk, and she shook her head wildly. “I feel…drowned. Before I met you, I felt reasonably good about myself, can you believe that? Then you came into my life, solving problems in short order that I’d been trying to work through for years. Angela and Gramps. A thousand things I thought were monumental. I met you, and in a few hours I was crying all over you. I actually went chasing after you in that bar. I behaved like an absolute fool at that party. And then you give and give and give, Buck. What do I have to give you back? I feel like less than what I was, as though I have less to offer. Suddenly, I’m nothing and have nothing to give. I can’t handle it! I don’t want it!”

He drew back as if she had hit him, pain echoing in his rugged features. “Loren,” he said quietly, “I can’t believe you really feel that way. Listen to me—”

But she wrenched at the car door to get out. “I
do
really feel that way. I wish I didn’t. I tried a long time ago to tell you. About owning people, about being bought. That love changes color when it’s all cluttered up with obligations and mismatched give-and-take.”

“Loren—”

“I’m sorry. God, I’m sorry.” She would have stumbled out if his hands hadn’t clutched at her, jerking her around to face him. For a moment, they just stared at each other, Loren with tear-filled, desperately determined eyes. Through that blur, it seemed that Buck’s face was magnified, and he was very, very still. In his eyes, she could read shock and anguish and love and anger but also a sudden cold finality, as if he finally understood that she had meant what she said.

“I’ve battled through those brick walls of yours before, Loren. If I haven’t gotten through to you by now, I never will,” he snapped curtly with a flatness that frightened her. “If that’s how you see my actions, as buying you…if, dammit, that’s really how you feel when you’re around me—”

“It is.”

He let her go. She watched him put his car in gear and drive out. She stood there, swallowed a thousand tears and turned away when he was completely out of sight, completely out of her life. She walked into the house, fielded shocked questions from Gramps and Rayburn about the accident, mounted the stairs to her room and collapsed on the bed. She felt weak, ill, drained. She was afraid of crying for fear her grandfather or Rayburn would hear her. She had to concentrate so hard to keep from sobbing that at last sleep stole on her, and she fell into an exhausted, restless, empty oblivion.

Loren opened sleep-scratchy eyes to ribbons of sunlight slanting on the bed. Sitting up, she glanced at the clock, and thought dizzily that it was impossible to sleep for better than sixteen hours and wake up still feeling totally exhausted.
What have you done?

She forced herself up, took one disastrous look in the mirror and headed for the shower. A few minutes later, she was dressed in a lilac linen suit, very crisp and fresh, that cinched in her waist to Scarlett O’Hara standards. Makeup masked her pallor, and a brush restored life and vibrancy to her hair. She studied the mirror again. There was really nothing she could do to alter the agonized look in her eyes.

Downstairs, Gramps, Rayburn and Angela were all at the kitchen table. Usually, she was already at work before the group gathered for morning conversations. They greeted her smiling, and Angela impatiently motioned her to the window while the others exchanged silent glances. All she could think of was that at least her makeup had worked; no one was looking at her as if she resembled a mummy. She reached in the cupboard for a cup. She badly needed some coffee.

“Aren’t you going to look?” Angela demanded excitedly.

“Look at what?” She turned back with a puzzled frown and finally glanced out the window at Angela’s insistence.

The car was a silvery mauve, shining in the morning sunlight. The upholstery appeared to be a pearly gray. The color was feminine, and the look was plush, without being oversized. Loren stared, as still as a statue.

“
Say
something,” Angela said exuberantly. “God in heaven, it’s not every morning you wake up to find a fairy godmother’s been there in the middle of the night. The keys are in it. Whoever your guardian angel is, Loren, I’d like to have a little discussion with her—”

“Loren?” Gramps had been studying her; his voice was suddenly laced with concern. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” She drew a ragged breath, picked up the phone and dialed work. Janey was predictably frantic; Loren had never been late for work before. The secretary was considerably taken aback to discover Loren was taking the day off. Her boss hadn’t even taken her vacation days in the past two years, had only missed four days in four years because of illness. When Loren hung up the phone, the family were all staring at her. “Would it be so terrible if I just took off for the day?” she asked brightly, with a little defensiveness.

“You don’t mean you’re actually going to play hookey?” Angela teased.

“Loren, what is
wrong?
” Gramps demanded, getting out of his chair.

“Nothing.” She smiled, radiating cheerfulness. “I would just like to be by myself for a few hours. Does anyone mind?”

Gramps sucked in his breath. “No, of course not. But—”

“Fine.” Her purse was on the counter. It was so easy. She just walked out the door, down the steps, got into the horrible, horrible car and started the engine. It purred. She had never had an engine that purred. Of course she didn’t now; it would have to go back to him. He was crazy. He had promised he would take care of her transportation, but of course that was before the argument. He wasn’t liable for that promise. A very long time ago, she had stopped believing in promises anyone made her; they were never kept. What was he trying to do?

Obviously, she had to get the car back to him. But not now. Soon. In an hour. Just this minute the car was her only means of privacy, and she was desperate for privacy. The first miles slipped away while she tried to convince herself that she wasn’t terrified of driving after yesterday, and also that she hated Buck for putting the damned thing in her driveway.

Quiet roads led to more quiet roads. In an hour, she found herself on the tree-lined streets of Ann Arbor. The sidewalks were full of jeaned coeds. Carting armloads of books, the boys next to them looked just as terribly young, just as serious… Loren got out of the car and walked. At some point, she stopped to find something to eat, and then she walked again; later in the afternoon she stopped at a motel. She couldn’t bring herself to go home, and for some unforgivable reason she was putting mileage on that car that wasn’t hers. The motel manager looked at her as if she were a bit crazy; she didn’t discover why until she’d locked herself in the motel room. Tears had made a mess of her mascara; her makeup was blotched; the linen suit looked like accordion pleats.

What have you done?
She slipped off her shoes, folded down the blue bedspread and leaned back against the rock-hard mattress, staring at a print on the wall that looked remarkably like a Rorschach ink blot in blue and gold. She saw Buck’s face in it and looked away. She bunched her hands into fists and rubbed them hard into her eyes, like a child angrily forcing back tears.