Loving Jack Read online

  Now it was he who’d lost his rhythm. Again. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “The wedding.”

  “What wedding?”

  “Ours.” She picked up her glass and sipped, smiling at him over the rim. “What do you think of the wine?”

  “Back up. What do you mean, our wedding?”

  “Well, I don’t mean it, and you don’t mean it. But Aunt Adele will mean it. Twenty minutes after you spoke with her she’d have been chirping happily about our romance to anyone who’d listen. People do listen to Aunt Adele. I’ve never understood why. You’re letting that chicken get cold, Nathan,”

  He set his fork down, keeping his voice even and his eyes steady. “I never gave her any reason to think we were involved.”

  “Of course you didn’t.” Obviously on his side, Jackie squeezed his arm. “All you did was tell Aunt Adele I was living here.” The timer buzzed, so Jackie scooted up to pull the cake out of the oven. Wanting a moment to think, Nathan waited until she’d set it out to cool and joined him again.

  “I explained there’d been a misunderstanding.”

  “She has a very selective memory.” Jackie took another generous bite. “Don’t worry, I won’t hold you to it. Do you think there’s enough ginger in this?”

  “There’s nothing to hold me to.”

  “Not between us.” She sent him a sympathetic glance. “Don’t let it ruin your appetite. I can handle the family. Can I ask you a personal question?”

  Nathan picked up his fork again. Somehow he’d opened the door to his own house and fallen down the rabbit hole. “Why not?”

  “Are you involved with anyone? It doesn’t have to be particularly serious.”

  She liked the way his eyes narrowed. There was something about gray eyes, really gray eyes that could cut right through you.

  He debated half a dozen answers before settling on the truth. “No.”

  “That’s too bad.” Her forehead wrinkled briefly before smoothing out again. “It would have helped if you were, but I’ll just make something up. Would you mind very much if I threw you over, maybe for a marine biologist?”

  He was laughing. He didn’t know why, but when he reached for his wine, his lips were still curved. “Not at all.”

  She hadn’t counted on that—that his laugh would be so appealing. The little flutter came. Jackie acknowledged it, savored it briefly, then banked it down. It wouldn’t do. No, it wouldn’t do at all. “You’re a good sport, Nathan. Not everyone would think so, but they don’t know you like I do. Let me get you some more chicken.”

  “No, I’ll get it.”

  It was a small mistake, the kind people make every day when they step into a doorway at the same time or bump elbows in a crowded elevator. The kind of small mistake that is rarely recognized and soon forgotten.

  They rose simultaneously, both reaching for his plate. Their hands closed over it, and each other’s. Their bodies bumped. He took her arm to steady her. The usual quick smile and the automatic apology didn’t come from either of them.

  Jackie felt her breath snag and her heart stumble. The feeling didn’t surprise her. She was too much in tune with her emotions, too comfortable with them, to be surprised. It was the depth of them that caught at her. The contact was casual, more funny than romantic, but she felt as though she’d been waiting all her life for it.

  She’d remember the feel of his hand, and the china, and the heat of his body as it barely brushed hers. She’d remember the look of surprised suspicion in his eyes, and the scent of spices and wine. She’d remember the quiet, the absolute and sudden quiet. As if the world had held its breath for a moment. For just a moment.

  What the hell was this? That was his first and only coherent thought. He was gripping her harder than he should have, as if he were holding on—but that was absurd. However absurd it was, he couldn’t quite make himself let go. Her eyes were so big, so soft. Was it foolish to believe he saw absolute honesty in them? That scent, her scent, was there, the one he’d first come across in his own bedroom. The one, Nathan thought now, that still lingered, ridiculously, after she’d moved into a guest room. He heard her breath suck in, then shudder out. Or maybe it was his own.

  And he wanted her, as clearly and as logically as he’d ever wanted anything. It lasted only a moment, but the desire was strong.

  They moved away together, with the quick, almost jerky motion one uses when one steps back from an unexpected flame. Jackie cleared her throat. Nathan let out a long, quiet breath.

  “It’s no trouble,” she said.

  “Thanks.”

  She moved to the stove before she thought she could breathe easily. As she scooped up chicken and vegetables, she wondered if this was one adventure she should have passed on.

  Chapter Three

  When he looked at her something happened, something frantic, something she’d never experienced before. Her heart beat just a little too fast, and dampness sprang out on the palms of her hands. A look was all that was necessary. His eyes were so dark, so penetrating. When he looked at her it was as if he could see everything she was, or could be, or wanted to be.

  It was absurd. He was a man who lived by the gun, who took what he wanted without regret or compassion. All of her life she’d been taught that the line between right and wrong was clear and wide, and couldn’t be crossed.

  To kill was the greatest sin, the most unforgivable. Yet he had killed, and would surely kill again. Knowing it, she couldn’t care for him. But care she did. And want she did. And need.

  Sitting back, Jackie reviewed Sarah’s confused and contrasting feelings for Jake. How would a sheltered young woman, barely eighteen, respond to a man who had lived all his life by rules she couldn’t possibly understand or approve of? And how would a man who had seen and done all that Jake Redman had seen and done react to an innocent, convent-bred woman?

  There was no way their dealings with each other could run smoothly. Their coming together and its resolution couldn’t be impossible, it just had to be difficult. Two different worlds, she thought. Two sets of values, two opposing ambitions. Those would be difficult conflicts to overcome. Then you added gunfighting, betrayal, kidnapping and revenge. Just to keep things interesting. Still, for all the action and adventure, Jackie had come to think that the love story was really the heart of her book. How these two people were going to change and complement each other, how they would compromise, adjust and stand firm.

  She didn’t think Sarah or Jake would understand about emotional commitment or mutually supportive relationships. Those were twentieth-century terms. Her psychology course on modern marriage had given Jackie a basketful of catchphrases. The words might change, but love was love. As far as she was concerned, Sarah and Jake had a good chance. That was more than a great many people could say.

  It occurred to her that that was all she wanted for herself. A good chance. Someone to love who would love her back, someone to make adjustments for, to make long-range plans with. Wasn’t it strange that in making a relationship on paper she had begun to fantasize about making one for herself?

  She wouldn’t ask for perfection, not only because it would be boring but because she would never be able to achieve perfection herself. It wouldn’t be necessary, or even appealing, to settle down with a man who agreed with her on every point.

  Would she like dashing? Probably. It might be fun to have someone flash in and out of her life, dropping off dew-kissed roses and magnums of champagne. It would be a nice interlude, but she was dead certain she couldn’t live with dashing. Dashing would never take out the trash or unclog a drain.

  Sensitive. Jackie rolled the word around in her mind, coming up with a picture of a sweet, caring man who wrote bad poetry. Horn-rimmed glasses and a voice like cream. Sensitive would always understand a woman’s needs and a wom
an’s moods. She could be very fond of sensitive. Until sensitive began to drive her crazy.

  Passionate would be nice, as well. Someone who would toss her over his shoulder and make mad love in sun-drenched fields. But it might get a bit tough to do that sort of thing once they hit eighty.

  Funny, intelligent, reckless and dependable.

  That was the trouble, she supposed. She could think of a dozen different qualities she would enjoy in a man, but not of a combination that would pull her in for the long haul. With a sigh, she cupped her chin in her hand and stared over the typewriter through the window. Maybe she just wasn’t ready to think about wedding rings and picket fences. Maybe she’d never be ready.

  It wasn’t easy to accept, but if it was true, she could see herself living in some quaint little house near the water and writing about other people’s love affairs. She could spend her days dreaming up characters and places, puttering around in a garden and playing aunt to all the little MacNamaras. It wouldn’t be so bad.

  She wouldn’t be a hermit, of course. And it wasn’t as though she didn’t appreciate men. Any man she’d ever been close to had possessed at least one of the qualities she admired. She’d cared for and about them, even loved them a little. But then, love was easy for her, falling in and falling out of it without bruises or scars. That wasn’t real romance, she thought as she looked at the words she’d written. Real romance scraped off a little skin. It had to if love was going to bloom out of it and heal.

  Lord, she was getting philosophical since she’d started putting words on paper. Maybe that explained her reaction to Nathan.

  The problem was, though she was clever with words and always had been, she couldn’t quite come up with the right ones to describe that one brief moment of contact.

  Intense, confusing, illuminating, scary. It had been all of those, yet she wasn’t sure what the sum of the parts equaled.

  Attraction, certainly. But then, she’d found him attractive even when she’d thought she was hallucinating. Most women found dark, brooding types with aloof qualities attractive. God knew why. Yet that one moment, that quick link, had been more than simple attraction. The fact was, it hadn’t been simple anything. She’d wanted him in the strong, vital way that usually came only with understanding and time.

  I know you, something had seemed to say inside her. And I’ve been waiting.

  He’d felt something, too. She was certain of that. Maybe it had been that same kind of instant knowledge and instant desire. Whatever he’d felt hadn’t pleased him, because he’d been very careful to avoid her for the better part of two days. Not an easy trick, since they were living in the same house, but he’d managed.

  She still thought it had been rather rude of him to go out on his boat for an entire day and not ask her along.

  Maybe he had to think things through. Jackie gauged him as the type of man who would have to compute and analyze and reason out every area of his life, including the emotional. That was too bad, but she’d have been the first to say that everyone was entitled to their own quirks.

  He didn’t have to worry about her, she decided as she dipped into a bowl of cheese curls. She wasn’t interested in flirting with a relationship, and certainly not one with a man as buttoned-down as Nathan Powell. If she were, then he’d have reason to worry. Jackie chuckled to herself as she nibbled. She could be very tenacious and very persuasive when her mind was set. Fortunately for him, and perhaps for both of them, she was much too involved with writing to give him more than a passing thought.

  Still, she checked her watch and noticed that it was nearly dinnertime and he wasn’t back. His problem, she thought as she took another handful of cheese curls. She’d agreed to cook, but not to cater. When he came home he could make himself a sandwich. It certainly didn’t matter to her.

  She peered out her window at the sound of a boat, then settled back with the smallest of sighs when it passed by.

  She wasn’t really thinking of him, she told herself. She was just . . . passing the time. She didn’t really wish he’d asked her to join him today so that they could have spent some time alone together, getting to know each other better. She wasn’t really wondering what kind of man he was—except in the most intellectual terms.

  What did it matter that she liked the way he laughed when he briefly let his guard down? It certainly wasn’t important that his eyes were dark and dangerous one minute and quietly sensitive another. He was just a man, bound up in his work and his self-image in the same way she was bound up in her work and her future. It wasn’t any of her business that he seemed more tense than he should be, and more solitary. It wasn’t her goal in life to draw him out and urge him to relax and enjoy.

  Her goal in life, Jackie reminded herself, was to finish the story, sell it and reap the benefits of being a published novelist. Whatever they might be. Straightening in her seat, she pushed Nathan Powell aside and went back to work.

  ***

  This was what he’d come home for, Nathan told himself as he cruised down one of the narrow, deserted channels. Peace and quiet. There were no deadlines, no contract dates to worry about, no supply shortages to work around or inspectors to answer to. Sun and water. He didn’t want to think beyond them.

  He was beginning to feel almost like himself again. It was odd that he hadn’t thought of this before—taking the boat out and disappearing for the day. He might have agreed to have a boarder for a couple of weeks, but that didn’t mean he had to chain himself to the house. Or to her.

  He couldn’t say that it was entirely unpleasant having her there. She was keeping her end of the bargain. Most days passed without him seeing her at all except in the kitchen. Somehow he’d even gotten used to hearing her pounding away at the keys of her typewriter for hours on end. She might have been writing nursery rhymes for all he knew, but he couldn’t say she wasn’t keeping at it.

  Actually, there were a lot of things he couldn’t say about her. The problem started with the things he could say.

  She talked too fast. It might have seemed an odd complaint, but not for a man who preferred quiet and structured conversations. If they talked about the weather she’d mention her brief career as a meteorologist and end by saying she liked rain because it smelled nice. Who could keep up with that sort of thought pattern?

  She anticipated him. He might just begin to think he could use a cold drink and he’d find her in the kitchen making iced tea or pouring him a beer. Though she hadn’t yet indicated that she’d trained as a psychic, he found it disconcerting.

  She always looked at ease. It was a difficult thing to fault her for, but he found himself growing tenser the more casual she became. Invariably she was dressed in shorts and some breezy top with no makeup and her hair curling as it chose. She stopped just short of being sloppy, and he shouldn’t have found it alluring. He preferred well-groomed, polished women—women with a little gloss and style. So why couldn’t he keep his mind off one coltish, unpainted throwback who didn’t do anything more to attract him than scrub her face and grin?

  Because she was different? Nathan could easily reject that notion. He was a man who preferred the comfortable, and the comfortable usually meant the familiar. There was certainly nothing remotely familiar about Jackie. Some might accuse him of being in a rut, but he thought himself entitled. When your career took you to different cities and different countries and involved different people and problems on a regular basis, you deserved a nice comfortable rut in your personal life.

  Solitude, quiet, a good book, an occasional congenial companion over drinks or dinner. It didn’t seem like too much to ask. Jacqueline MacNamara had thrown a wrench in the works.

  He didn’t like to admit it, but he was getting used to her. After only a few days, he was used to her company. That, in itself, for a loner, was a shattering discovery.

  Nathan opened the throttle to let his
boat race. He might have been more comfortable if she’d been dull or drab. For social purposes he preferred refined and composed, but for a housemate—boarder, he reminded himself firmly—for a boarder he’d have been happy with dull.

  The trouble was, no matter how quiet or unobtrusive she was for most of the day, she was impossible to ignore with her rapid-fire conversations, her dazzling smiles and her bright clothes. Especially since she never seemed to dress in anything that covered more than ten percent of her.

  Maybe he could admit it now, alone, with the wind breezing through his hair and over his face, that as annoying and inconvenient as it was to have his sanctuary invaded, she was, well . . . fun.

  He hadn’t allowed himself a great deal of fun in the past few years. Work had been and still was his first priority. Building, the creative process and the actual nuts and bolts, absorbed his time. He’d never resented the responsibility. If anyone had asked him if he enjoyed his work, he would have given them a peculiar look and answered, “Of course.” Why else would he do it?

  He would have accepted the term dedicated but would have knit his brows at the word obsessed, though obsessed was exactly what he was. He could picture a building in his mind, complete, down to the smallest detail, but he didn’t consider himself an artist when he drew up the blueprints. He was a professional, educated and trained, nothing more or less.

  He loved his work and considered himself lucky to have found a profession for which he had both skill and affection. There were moments of sweaty, gritty work, head-throbbing concentration and absolute pride. Nothing, absolutely nothing, had ever given him the same thrill of accomplishment as seeing one of his buildings completed.

  If he absorbed himself in his work, it wasn’t that his life was lacking in other areas. It was simply that no other area had the same appeal or excitement for him. He enjoyed the company of women, but had never met one who could keep him awake at night the way an engineering problem with a building could.