Stars of Mithra Box Set: Captive Star\Hidden Star\Secret Star (13 page)

“Just leave me alone,” she said, and her voice broke on a muffled sob. “Just go away.”

“That's just what I'm going to do. You keep that up, and I'm walking. I mean it. I'm not standing around and watching you blubber. Get a grip on yourself. Haven't you got any pride?”

At the moment, pride was low on her list. Giv
ing up, she pressed her brow to the window glass and let the tears fall.

“I'm walking, M.J.” He snarled at her and turned for the door. “I'm getting a drink and a shower. So when you've got yourself in order, we'll figure out what to do next.”

“Then go. Just go.”

He made it as far as the threshold, then, swearing ripely, whirled back. “I don't need this,” he muttered.

He hadn't a clue how to handle a woman's tears, particularly those from a strong woman who was obviously at the end of her endurance. He cursed her again as he turned her into his arms, folded her into them. He continued to swear at her as he picked her up, sat with her in a wide-backed chair.

He rocked and cursed and stroked.

“Get it over with, then.” Kissed her temple. “Please. You're killing me.”

“I'm afraid.” Her breath hitched as she turned her face into his shoulder. His strong, broad shoulder. “I'm so tired and afraid.”

“I know.” He kissed her hair, held her closer. “I know.”

“I couldn't stand for anything to happen to them. I just can't bear it.”

“Don't.” He tightened his grip, as if he could strangle off those hot, terrifying tears. But his mouth skimmed up her cheek, found hers, and was tender. “It's going to be all right. Everything's going to be all right.” He brushed at her tears clumsily with his thumbs. “I promise.”

Eyes brimming, she stared into his. “I was just so sure they'd be here.”

“I know.” He brushed the hair back from her face. “You've got a right to break down. I don't know anyone else who'd have made it this far without a blowout. But don't cry anymore, M.J. It rips me up.”

“I hate to cry.” She sniffled, knuckled tears away. “I'm glad to hear it.” He took her hands, kissed them both this time, without that moment of surprise. “Think about this. She was here to day, maybe as little as an hour ago. She's tidied up, locked up. Which means she was just fine when she left.”

She let out an unsteady breath, drew in another. “You're right. I'm not thinking straight.”

“That's because you need a break. A decent meal, a little rest.”

“Yeah.” But she laid her head against his
shoulder again. “Can we just sit here for a little while. Just sit like this?”

“Sure.” It was easy to wrap his arms around her, hold her close. And just sit.

H
e told her it didn't make sense to drive back to the city, fight the traffic generated by fireworks fans. Not when they had a perfectly good place to stay the night.

The fact was, he thought, if she'd broken down once, she could easily do so again. And a decent meal, along with a decent night's sleep, might shore up some holes in her composure.

In any case, they'd been in the car for more than five hours that day already, after little more than an hour's sleep. Driving straight back was bound to make them both feel as though the effort to find Grace's house had been wasted.

And he wanted time to work on a plan that was beginning to form in his mind.

“Take a shower,” he told her. “Borrow a shirt or something from your pal. You'll feel better.”

“It couldn't hurt.” She managed a smile. “I thought you wanted a shower? Don't you want to conserve water?”

“Well…” It was tempting. He could envision himself getting under a cool spray with her, lathering up—lathering her up—and letting nature take its very interesting course.

And it also occurred to him that she hadn't had five full minutes of privacy in hours. It was about all he had the power to give her at the moment.

“I'm going to hunt up a drink. See if your friend has some cans around here I can open.” He kissed the tip of her nose affectionately. “Go ahead and get started without me.”

“Okay, you can hunt me up a drink while you're at it, but you're not going to find any beer in the fridge. And God knows what she's got in cans around here.”

M.J. headed for the bath, stopped, turned. “Jack? Thanks for letting me get it out.”

He tucked his hands in his pockets. Her eyes, those exotically tilted cat's eyes, were still swol
len from weeping, and her cheeks were pale with fatigue. “I guess you needed to.”

“I did, and you didn't make me feel like too much of a jerk. So thanks,” she said again, and stepped into the bath.

She stripped gratefully, all put peeling cotton and denim away from her clammy, overheated skin. The simple style Grace had chosen for the rest of the house didn't follow through to the master bath. This was pure self-indulgence.

The tiles were soft blue and misty green, so that it was like stepping into a cool seaside glade. The tub was an oversize lake of white, fueled with water jets and framed by a wide lip where more ferns grew lushly in biscuit-toned pots.

The acre of counter boasted a cutout for a vanity stool and held a brass makeup mirror. Overhead was a garden of tulip-shaped lights of frosted glass. Doors holding linens and sheet-size towels were mirrored, tossing the room back and giving the illusion of enormous, luxurious space.

Though M.J. briefly considered the tub, and the bubbling jets, she stepped instead toward the wavy glass block of the shower enclosure. Her showerheads were set in three sides at varying levels. With a need for pampering, M.J. turned them all on full, then, after one enormous sigh,
helped herself to some of Grace's pricey soap and shampoo.

And the fragrance made her weepy again. It was so Grace.

But she refused to cry, already regretted her earlier tears. They helped nothing. Practicalities did, she reminded herself. A shower, a meal, a respite from activity for a brief time, would all serve to clear the brain. Undoubtedly, she needed a few hours' sleep to recharge. It wasn't just the crying jag that made her feel woozy and weak, she imagined.

Something had to be done, some move had to be made, and quickly. To make it, she needed to be sharp and to be ready.

It hardly mattered that it hadn't been much more than a day that had passed. Every hour she lived through without being able to contact either Bailey or Grace was one short, tense lifetime.

Things had to be settled, her world had to be set right again. And then she would have to face whatever was happening, and whatever would happen, between her and Jack.

She was in love with him, there was no doubt of that. The speed with which she'd fallen only increased the intensity of the emotion. She'd never felt for any man what she felt for him—this
emotion that cut clean through the bone. And melded with the feeling of passion, which she could have dismissed, was a sense of absolute trust, an odd and deep affection, a prideful respect, and the certainty that she could pass the years of her life with him—if not in harmony, in contentment.

She understood him, she realized as she held her face under the highest spray. She doubted he knew that, but it was absolutely true. She understood his loneliness, his scarred-over pain, and his pride in his own skills.

He had kindness and cynicism, patience and impulse. He had a questing intellect, a touch of the poet—and more than a touch of the nonconformist. He lived his own way, making his own rules and breaking them when he chose.

She would have wanted no less in a life partner.

And that was what worried her. Finding herself thinking of marriage, permanence and making a family with a man who so obviously ran from all three, and had run from them most of his life.

But perhaps, since those concepts had bloomed so recently in her, she could nip them in the bud. She had a business of her own, a life of her own. Wanting Jack to be a part of that didn't have to change the basic order of things.

She hoped.

She switched off the showerheads, toweled off and, because it was there, slathered on some of Grace's silky body cream. And felt nearly human again. Rubbing a towel over her hair, she padded naked into the bedroom to raid the closet.

At least in the country Grace's choice of attire ran toward the simple. M.J. slipped on a short-sleeved shirt of minute white-and-blue checks and found a pair of cotton shorts in the bureau. They bagged a little. Grace was still built like the centerfold she'd once been, and M.J. had no hips to speak of. They also ran short, as M.J. had several inches more leg than her friend.

But they were cool, and when she slid them on she stopped feeling like a woman who'd been living in her clothes for two days.

She started to toss the towel aside, then rolled her eyes when she thought of how Grace would react to that. Fastidiously she went back to the bath and draped it over the shower. Then, in bare feet, her hair still damp and curling around her face, she went in search of Jack.

“I not only started without you,” she said when she found him in the kitchen, “I finished without you. You're slow, Dakota.”

Still frowning at the small jar in his hand, he
turned. “All I found was…” And trailed off, staggered.

He'd told himself she wasn't beautiful, and that was true. But she was striking. The impact of her slammed into him anew, those sharp, sexy looks, the long, long legs set off by tiny blue shorts. She had her thumbs tucked in the front pockets of them, a half-cocked grin on her face, and her hair was dark and damp and curling foolishly over her ears.

His mouth simply watered.

“You clean up good, sugar.”

“It's hard not to, in that fancy shower of Grace's. Wait till you get a load of it.” She angled her head as a nice flush of heat began to work up from her toes. “I don't know why you're looking at me like that, Jack. You've seen me naked.”

“Yeah. Maybe I've got a weakness for long women in little shorts.” He lifted a brow. “Did you borrow any of her underwear?”

“No. Some things even close friends don't share. Men and underwear being the top two.”

He set the jar down. “In that case—”

She shot a hand up, slapped in on his chest. “I don't think so, pal. You don't exactly smell like roses at the moment. And besides, I'm hungry.”

“The woman gets cleaned up, she gets picky.” But he ran a hand over his chin again, reminded himself to get his shaving kit out of the trunk this time. “There's not a hell of a lot to choose from around here. She's got fancy French bubbly in the fridge, more fancy French wine in a rack in the closet over there. Some crackers in tins, some pasta in glass jars. I found some tomato paste, which I guess is embryonic spaghetti sauce.”

“Does that mean one of us has to cook?”

“I'm afraid it does.”

They considered each other for ten full seconds.

“Okay,” he decided. “We flip for it.”

“Fair enough. Heads, you cook,” she said as he dug out a quarter. “Tails, I cook. Either way, I have a feeling we'll be looking for her antacid.”

She hissed when the quarter turned up tails. “Isn't there anything else? Something we can just eat out of a can or jar?”

“You cook,” he said, but held out a jar. “And there's fish eggs.”

She blew out a breath as she studied the jar of beluga. “You don't like caviar?”

“Give me a trout, fry it up, and that's dandy. What the hell do I want to eat eggs that some fish has laid?” But he tossed her the jar. “Help your
self. I'll go clean up while you do something with that tomato paste.”

“You probably won't like it,” she said darkly, but dug out a pan as he wandered off.

Thirty minutes later, he wandered in again. His hair was slicked back, his face clean-shaven. The smells coming from the simmering pan weren't half-bad, he decided. The kitchen door was open, and there was M.J., sitting out on the patio, cramming a caviar-loaded cracker in her mouth.

“Not too bad,” she said over it when she saw him. “You just pretend it's something else, then wash it down with this.” She sipped champagne, shrugged. “Grace goes for this stuff. Always did. It was the way she was raised.”

“Environment can twist a person,” he agreed, then opened his mouth and let M.J. ram a cracker in. He grimaced, snagged her glass and downed it. “A hot dog and a nice dark beer.”

She sighed, perfectly in tune with him. “Yeah, well, beggars can't be choosers, pal. It's nice out here. Cooled off some. But you know the trouble? You just can't hear anything. No traffic, no voices, no movement. It kind of creeps me out.”

“People that live in places like this don't really like being around other people.” He was hungry enough to load up a cracker for himself. “You
and me, M.J., we're social animals. We're at our best in a crowded room.”

“Yeah, that's why I work the pub most nights. I like the busy hours.” She brooded, looking off to where the sun was sinking fast behind the trees.

“Tonight would be slow. Sunday, holiday. Everybody'll be wondering where I am. I've got a good head waitress, though. She'll handle it.”

She shifted restlessly, reached for her glass. “I guess the cops have gone by, talked to her and my bartenders, some of the regulars. They'll be worried.”

“It won't take much longer.” He'd been working on refining his plan, looking for the pitfalls. “Your pub'll run a few days without you. You take vacations, right?”

“A couple weeks here and there.”

“It's supposed to be Paris next.”

She was surprised he remembered. “That's the plan. Have you ever been there?”

“No, have you?

“Nope. We went to Ireland when I was a kid, and my father got all misty-eyed and sentimental. He grew up on the West Side of Manhattan, but you'd have thought he'd been born and bred in Dublin and had been wrenched away by Gypsies.
Other than that, I've never been out of the States.”

“I've been up to Canada, down to Mexico, but I've never flown over the ocean.” He smiled and took the glass from her again. “I think your sauce is burning, sugar.”

She swore, shot up and scrambled inside. While she muttered, he eyed the level of the bottle. Normally he wouldn't have recommended alcohol as a tranquilizer, but these were desperate times. He'd seen that misery come into her eyes when he mentioned Paris—and reminded her of her friends.

For a few hours, for this one night, he was going to make her forget.

“I caught it in time,” she told him, dragging her hair back as she stepped out again. “And I put on the water for the pasta. I don't know how long that sauce is supposed to cook—probably for three days, but we're eating it rare.”

He grinned, handed her the glass he'd just topped off. “Fine with me. There was another bottle of this chilling, right?”

“Yeah, I get it for her by the case. My distributor just loves it.” She knocked some back, chuckled into the exquisite bubbles. “I can imag
ine what my customers would say if I put Brother Dom on the menu.”

“I'm getting used to it.” He rose, skimmed a hand over her hair. “I'm going to put some music on. Too damn quiet around here.”

“Good idea.” With a considering look, she glanced over her shoulder. “You know, I think Grace said they have, like, bears and things up here.”

He looked dubiously into the woods. “Guess I'll get my gun, too.”

He got more than that. To her surprise, he brought candles into the kitchen, turned the stereo on low and found a station that played blues. He stuck a pink flower that more or less resembled a carnation to him behind her ear.

“Yeah, I guess redheads can wear pink,” he decided after a smiling study. “You look cute.”

Blowing her hair out of her eyes, she drained the pasta. “What's this? A romantic streak?”

“I've got one I keep in reserve.” And while her hands were full, he leaned in and nuzzled the back of her neck. “Does that bother you?”

“No.” She angled her head, enjoying the leaping thrill up her spine. “But to complete the mood, you're going to have to eat this and pretend it's good.” She frowned a little when he retrieved
another bottle of champagne from the refrigerator. “Do you know what that costs a bottle, ace? Even wholesale?”

“Beggars can't be choosers,” he reminded her, and popped the cork.

As meals went, they'd both had better—and worse. The pasta was only slightly overdone, the sauce was bland but inoffensive. And, being ravenous, they dipped into second helpings without complaint.