To the Edge (31 page)

But because he was everything she didn't need he made himself set her away.

The only light may have been the wash of moonlight and the slant of lamplight shining on the deck from the cabin, but he read the look in her eyes for what it was.

Disappointment.

Christ. Did every flicking moment have to be a test? Hadn't he served? Hadn't he defended? Did he have to keep the vigil and protect her... even from himself when she didn't have the good sense to protect herself from him?

Yeah. He did, because she sure as the world didn't have it in her tonight. She'd been through too much. Her defenses were at rock bottom if she was looking to him for those kinds of answers.

"Come on," he said in a weary voice. "What you need is sleep."

And a lock on her stateroom door.

It was sometime after three in the morning. The
EDEN,
snug in her quiet water mooring, rocked just enough to lull Jillian into a suspended sort of relaxation. The distant creak and groan of the pilings blended with the water sounds and the silence to encourage sleep.

If only she could.

The bed was soft and roomy and the sheets smelled of fresh air and sea breeze. The port stateroom was smaller than the starboard one, and while Nolan had insisted she take the bigger berth, she'd
insisted he needed the bigger bed. She could be stubborn, too.

After a quick shower and a change into an extra-large white T-shirt that fell all the way to her knees and smelled like the sheets and like him, she'd shut herself into the smaller bedroom and honestly tried to sleep.

But she could hear him moving quietly about in the cabin. She heard the pump kick on when he took his shower, and imagined him standing under the spray. All wet, naked male. All dark, muscled perfection but for the scars he carried on his body ... and the scars inside his soul.

He'd revealed some of those to her tonight. So instead of sleeping, she lay there and thought about what it had taken for him to open up to her that way. She thought about how it had felt to be kissed by him, how wonderful he'd felt pressed against her on the dance floor, how he'd looked in the moonlight with his guard down and his expression wistful as he talked about his family. How that same face had hardened with both misery and pain when he'd told her of war and death and all the things that made up the life of a soldier.

When the boat became midnight quiet and she knew he was finally settled in his own berth, she wondered if he was lying in the dark thinking about all of those things he'd told her, too. Of all the things he hadn't.

He had told her that he wondered at the mind-set of a nation that had taken a horrible event like 9/11 to inspire a renewed sense of patriotism when patriotism had almost been lost in complacency. He hadn't told her that at thirty-two he was world-weary, that he'd left the Rangers in the midst of some sort of crisis of conviction. That he was a man now searching for his niche. That he was as vulnerable as she'd thought he was that first night when he stood in her kitchen bleeding.

No, he hadn't told her those things in the words he'd said, but he'd told her in the ones he hadn't. She'd seen it in his eyes. Heard it all in his voice. In the tension in his throat when he'd swallowed, caught himself, and changed tack.

Who were you protecting, Nolan? Who did you think would have difficulty with the truth? You? Or me?
Just as she wondered when, exactly, she'd fallen in love with him.

She stared into the night, wanting to believe it was the tension, the danger, the uncertainty, that had led her down that path. That when this was over, if it was ever over, she'd come back to her senses, see him for what he was, and wonder at the workings of the human mind that had caused this momentary lapse in sanity.

She wanted to believe that. But the truth was, there was only one absolute in this entire muddled mess. She
had
fallen in love with him. Completely. Irrevocably. Scars and all. Scars most of all.

So where was the sense of euphoria she'd always thought would accompany that life-altering four-letter word? Where were the fireworks? Where was the elation?

Like some of his secrets, it was all buried. It was all buried beneath the reality that he most likely didn't feel the same way and, even if he did, he'd be self-sacrificing and stubborn and insist he wasn't the man she needed. And it was buried under the very real possibility that she would not live to see tomorrow. A quick mental trip back to her penthouse was all it took to remind her of that

It was also all the impetus she needed to toss back the covers and sit up. She looked through the darkness toward the stateroom door with a sense of urgency. Heart pounding. Breath short.

All her life, she'd done things the right way. She wasn't going to change her methods now. It was right to go to him... no matter that she already knew he was going to fight to the end to convince her it was wrong.

20

It was dead of night now. Nolan was
alone in his bed. Remembering something he'd read several years ago—probably in a book about war and the men who waged it.

As a man grows older, he sometimes goes dead inside.

He'd known some of those men, had sworn then that he would never become one. Yet somewhere along the line, he had. Somewhere along the line, he'd even started wanting to be one. In the dead of night, with the sky lit by mortar rounds and the bodies of Iraqi soldiers scattered like broken dolls in the bloodied desert sand, shutting down had been the only way to keep his sanity.

Not more than an hour ago he'd told Jillian some of the events in his life that had led him to this point. This point where he'd become one of those men he'd once sworn he would never become.

Restless, he shoved the sheet down to his waist. A soft breeze drifted through the open porthole and cooled his bare skin. He crossed his arms behind his head on the pillow and stared into the night. It had taken Afghanistan and Iraq and Will to get him to this emotional shutdown. It had taken seeing Sara in ICU struggling for her life and knowing there was nothing he could do to help her. It had taken the looks on her boys' faces—lost, confused—and feeling helpless and responsible. It had taken years of conditioning, gallons of booze, to successfully shut the systems down.

Dead inside.
Yeah. He'd thought he finally made it.

Only it seemed he wasn't quite dead after all. Jillian Kincaid wasn't going to allow it.

Christ. How did it happen that in less than a week one small, stubborn redhead had managed to scrape away his insulating calluses, set his lifeblood flowing again, and force him to feel something other than numb?

He'd come into this job feeling indifferent, immune. The most he'd ever thought he'd feel for Jillian Kincaid was contempt. For who she was, for what she represented, for the queen bitch he'd expected her to be. But contempt had given way to respect. Respect to grudging admiration until she'd gotten him to the point where he actually liked her.

Then along came this schoolboy infatuation—and he'd be damned if he'd cop to anything more than that. Infatuation and a hard-core case of lust. Lust, not love. He wasn't going anywhere near that word again. It was too damn scary.

And she was too damn,.. vital.

He let out a resigned breath.

Hell, even when she was pissing him off, she made him feel alive. And he goddamn didn't like it. She'd dragged him right back among the living... right back to wanting, needing, wishing for something he couldn't have.

He stared toward his closed stateroom door. Jillian wasn't more than ten feet away.

And he wanted her.

Like some snot-nosed kid, staring through a candy store I window, he wanted everything in sight, but he knew he couldn't have it. She was every piece of candy in the freaking store. She was the dream—his life was the reality. And there was no place for her and these feelings she'd resurrected in it.

When he heard her stateroom door open, then close, heard her footsteps fall, then stop just outside his door, his heart kicked the hell out of him.

Anticipation.

Need.

That's what she made him feel. Feel it with a force that made him weary. Of the wanting. Of the fight to keep from taking it.

Yeah. He was weary. And when he was weary, he got angry—and then he felt nothing but mean.

Why not take it all out on her? It would be so easy to use her. Hell, she was making it easy. So why not?

Because buried somewhere in the depths of his worthless soul a kernel of integrity was determined to make her understand he wasn't anything she needed in her life.

When his stateroom door opened, he leaned up on an elbow and glared at her—at least he tried to. The moonlight reflected off the water and danced in through the window. It made more than a dent in the darkness. He could see her face where she watched him from the doorway, see that his T-shirt had slipped off her shoulder, make out the softness of her breasts beneath it.

She wouldn't make much of a poker player. The look in her eyes was as easy to read as a comic book, but nothing about it made him feel like laughing. She'd come to him for one reason; it could garner only one result. They'd both end up bleeding. They'd both end up with more scars. He had just about all the scars he could handle. And he wasn't going to be responsible for putting any more on her.

He dragged a hand through his hair, made a production out of a yawn, and hoped to hell she didn't see through his act "What are you doing here, princess?"

Silence. A hesitant step toward his bed. And panic more than honor had him groping for ways to stop her.

"Oh ... I get it," he said, shooting for bored amusement that he hoped would tick her off enough to send her hiking.

"Still a little keyed up, are you? Figure a roll in the sack with a big bad bodyguard type might take the edge off?"

Her eyes narrowed.

He pushed out a snort. "Sorry, babe. That particular duty isn't in my contract. So you just tippy-toe on back to your own bed, OK? I'm too tired to work up the energy for that kind of action. And for the record, I'm really not all that interested."

It wasn't exactly surprise he saw on her face. He wasn't even sure it was shock. If he were a betting man, he'd wager that she'd been expecting him to try to brush her off and wasn't buying a single line of his bullshit. Her next words confirmed it.

"You're a lousy liar,
babe,"
she said, and stepped farther into his stateroom. "Contract clause or not, I think maybe you need me as much as I need you right now."

She did need someone. That much he could see. She'd been through hell the past few days and he wanted nothing more than to invite her to his bed, be that someone for her, and make everything all right. But he had nothing to give her but grief.

Resolve made his voice hard. "If you haven't figured it out by now, I don't need anyone. And if you're thinking this is going to play out something like 'you use, me, I use you, and everybody walks away with happy hormones,' you're dead wrong."

She smiled. She
actually
smiled, and damn her, it was not an
I'm laughing with you, not at you
smile. "That's not exactly the way I see it, but if it helps you to think of it that way—"

"I don't want to think of it at all," he lied, cutting her off. "Since you're not getting the message, let me make it a little clearer. I want you out of here."

She took another step toward the bed. Her beautiful face was limned in moonlight. The scent of his shampoo in her hair was as intoxicating as any scotch. He felt his blood go south.

"So, you're trying to scare me away, is that it?"

Yeah. Hell yeah, that's what he was trying to do. But she didn't look scared. She looked amused, damn her. And he felt hot. And cornered.

"One of us needs to be scared, and it sure as hell isn't me," his big bad self lied, then compounded it with another. "Go away. I told you, I'm not interested."

Her knee hit the bed, dug into the mattress, and tugged the sheet tight over his hips, making them both achingly aware of the tenting action going on beneath it.

She looked from his lap to his face. "Your nose is growing, too."

He could only take so much. And he'd just reached his limit. He reared up, grabbed her by the shoulders. Shook her. Shook her again. "Goddamn it! You think this is funny? You think this is just another game? Well, it's not."

Nose to nose with her, he gave her his best bad dog snarl. "You've forgotten who and what you're dealing with here, princess. So let me jar your memory. I'm not on your father's short list of men you can bring home to dinner. I'm not a nice man. So if all you're looking for is sex... just keep this up and you're liable to get it. And don't expect some polite little in-and-out and 'oh, darling, that was lovely.' You come to my bed, I'm going to fuck you, and there won't be anything polite about it."

He shoved her away, breathing hard with the effort to keep from tumbling her beneath him right there, right then. Ignoring the stunned look on her face, he grabbed a handful of sheet and rolled onto his side, away from her. "Now get the hell out of here before we both do something
you're
gonna regret in the morning."