Diana Palmer Collected 1-6: Soldier of Fortune / Tender Stranger / Enamored / Mystery Man / Rawhide and Lace / Unlikely Lover

The change of topic threw her. He had switched from lover to friendly companion in seconds. She managed a smile. “Yes. What did you have in mind?”

“Cheeseburgers, of course.” He chuckled and started the car.

“I like those myself.”

He glanced at her. “Let’s talk,” he said unexpectedly. “Really talk. I want to know everything about you. What you like to read, how it was to grow up in Texas, why you’ve never gotten involved with a man…everything.”

That sounded intriguing. It suddenly occurred to her that she knew very little about him. What he liked and disliked, what he felt. She tried to read his face.

“Curious about me, too?” he asked, glancing sideways. “I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”

She laughed uneasily. “‘Anything’ covers a lot of territory.”

“And requires a hell of a lot of trust on my part,” he added with a smile. “Anything, Gabby.”

Total honesty. She stared down at her hands and wondered why they were trembling. She wasn’t sure of his motives, of where this was leading. She looked up and all her uncertainty was on her face.

He reached over and caught one of her hands, lifting it to his thigh. Her palm tingled at the contact.

“Make me stay here,” he said unexpectedly.

“What?” she asked.

“Make me stay,” he repeated. His eyes caught hers briefly. “You can give me something that all the unholy little wars on earth couldn’t. If you want me, show me. Give me a reason, half a reason, to settle down. And I might surprise you.”

She stared out through the windshield and felt as if she were floating. It was a beginning that she wasn’t sure she wanted. She might hold his interest briefly, until he tired of her body. But what then? He was offering nothing more than a liaison. He wasn’t talking about permanent things like a house and children. Her eyes darkened with pain. Perhaps it would have been better if he hadn’t gotten rid of her fear of him.

Her troubled eyes sought his profile, but it was as unreadable as ever. The only thing that gave her hope was the visible throbbing of his pulse and the searing desire in his eyes. He wanted her so desperately that she couldn’t help wondering whether he didn’t feel something for her, too. But it would take time to find out, and she wasn’t going to withdraw her resignation. As much as it might hurt, in the long run it would be saner to leave him than to try to hold him. Gabby wasn’t built for an affair. And she wasn’t going to let him drag her into one, just to occupy himself while he decided between practicing law and soldiering.

Chapter Ten

They sat in a booth at a nearby fast-food restaurant, where J.D. put away three cheeseburgers, a large order of French fries and two cups of coffee before Gabby’s fascinated eyes.

“I’m a big man,” he reminded her as he was finishing the third one.

“Yes, you are,” she agreed with a smile, running her eyes over the spread of muscle under his chambray shirt.

His eyes narrowed with amusement. “Remembering what’s under it?” he said softly, teasing her.

She flushed and grabbed her coffee cup, holding it like a weapon. “I thought this was a truce,” she muttered.

“It is. But I fight dirty, remember?”

She looked, studying his hard face. “What was it like, those four years when you were a mercenary?” she asked.

He finished the cheeseburger and sipped his coffee, leaning back with a heavy sigh. “It was hard,” he said. “Exciting. Rewarding, in more ways than just financial.” He shrugged. “I suppose I was caught up in the romance of it at first, until I saw what I was getting into. One of the men I joined with was captured and thrown into jail the minute we landed in one African country. He hadn’t fired a shot, but he was executed just like the men who had.”

She caught her breath. “But why?” she asked. “He was just…”

“We were interfering with the regime,” he told her. “Despite all our noble reasons, we were breaking whatever law existed at that time. Shirt and I managed to get away. I owe him my life for his quick thinking. I was pretty new to the profession back then. I learned.”

“He told me his name was Matthew,” she remarked with a smile.

He cocked an eyebrow. “Be flattered. It was three years before I found that out.”

She toyed with her crumpled napkin. “I liked him. I liked all of them.”

“Shirt’s quite a guy. He was the one who pushed me into law,” he said with a laugh. “He thought I needed a better future than rushing around the world with a weapon.”

“You think a lot of him,” she observed.

He shrugged. “I never knew my father,” he said after a minute. “Shirt looked out for me when we served in the military together. I don’t know—maybe he needed somebody, too. His wife had died of cancer, and he didn’t have anybody else except a brother in Milwaukee who still doesn’t speak to him. I had Martina. I suppose Shirt became my father, in a sense.”

She cupped her hands around her coffee mug and wondered what he’d say if she told him that Shirt had said the door to the past was closed for J.D. Probably he’d laugh it off, but she decided she didn’t want to find out.

He looked up. “How about your family? Any sisters, brothers?”

She laughed softly. “No. I was an only child. My father owned a ranch, and my mother and grandfather and grandmother had gone to San Antonio on vacation. Mother met Dad then and ran away to marry him over the weekend.” She grinned. “My grandparents were furious.”

“I can imagine.” He searched her face. “You look like your mother. How about him? Was he big?”

She shook her head. “My father was small and wiry and tough. He had to be, you see, to put up with Mama. She’d have killed a lesser man, but Dad didn’t take orders. There were some great fights during my childhood.”

He cocked an eyebrow. “Did they make up eventually?”

She sighed. “He’d send her roses, or bring her pretty things from town. And she’d kiss him and they’d go off alone and I’d go see Miss Patty who lived in a line cabin on the ranch.” She grinned. “I visited Miss Patty a lot.”

He chuckled. “They say the making up can be pretty sweet.”

She studied his hard face. “Yes, so I hear.”

He lifted his eyes to hers. “We’ve had a royal falling out. Want to make up?”

She hesitated, and he concentrated on finishing his coffee.

“Sorry,” he said quietly. “I’m rushing things.”

Hesitantly, she reached across the table and touched the back of the big hand resting there. It jerked. Then it turned and captured hers in its rough warmth.

“J.D., what do you want from me?” she asked.

“What do you think I want, Gabby?’ he asked in turn.

She gathered all her courage and put her worst fears into words. “I think you want to make amends for what happened in Guatemala, before you fly off into the sun. I think you want to have an affair with me.”

“That’s honest, at least,” he said. His eyes fell to their clasped hands, and he watched his thumb rub softly against her slender fingers. “You want something more permanent, I gather.”

She couldn’t answer that without giving herself away. She drew her hand away from his with a light laugh. “Aren’t we getting serious, though?” she asked. “I need to go home, J.D. I left the laundry in the washing machine, and I’ve got a week’s cleaning to do.”

His face hardened. “Can’t it wait until tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow’s Sunday.”

“So?”

She lifted her eyes to his. “I go to church on Sunday.”

He frowned slightly. “I haven’t been to church since I was a boy,” he said after a minute. “I don’t know what I believe in these days.”

It was a reminder of the big differences between them. She frowned, too, and got to her feet slowly.

“It would bother you,” he murmured, watching her. “Yes, I suppose it would.”

She half turned. “What would?”

“Never mind.” He sighed as he put the remains of their meal into the trash can and replaced the tray in the rack on their way out. “Just a few adjustments that have to be made, that’s all.”

That didn’t make sense, but she didn’t pressure him. He didn’t pressure her, either, leaving her outside her apartment building with a rueful smile.

“I hate being stood up for the damned laundry,” he muttered, hands in his pockets.

“New experiences teach new things,” she murmured dryly. “Besides, I can’t finish out the week in dirty clothes.”

That put a damper on things. Her smile faded at the memory of how little time they had left together. His face grew harder.

“Well…thanks for lunch,” she said awkwardly.

“We could do it again tomorrow,” he said before she went inside.

Her eyes lifted. She wanted to. She wanted to, desperately. She tried to convince herself that it would be a mistake, but her body tingled and her heart surged at the idea.

“Yes,” she said under her breath.

His chest rose and fell, as if in relief. “Suppose I pick you up about ten-thirty?”

She hesitated. “Church is at eleven.”

“Yes, I figured it would be,” he said with a rueful smile. “I hope the angels won’t faint at having me in their midst.”

All the color drained out of her face as she stared up at him, and she couldn’t have said a word to save herself.

“Well, I won’t embarrass you,” he muttered curtly. “I do know not to stand up and yell ‘Hallelujah’ every five minutes or to snore in the front pew.”

“I didn’t say anything,” she said.

“I still have a soul, too, even if it has taken a few hard knocks over the years.” He lifted his shoulders and let them fall. “I…need to go back. All the way back.” His eyes held hers. “Gabby?”

“I’m Methodist,” she said.

He smiled. “I used to be Episcopalian. The denomination doesn’t matter so much, does it?”

She shook her head. “We can walk from my apartment.”

He nodded. “See you tomorrow.”

He turned to get back into the car, but she moved forward and touched his arm. The light contact of her fingers froze him. He looked down at her.

“Would you…bend down a minute?” she whispered.

Like a sleepwalker, he bent his tall frame and she stood on tiptoe to put her mouth warmly, hungrily to his.

He moaned, starting to reach for her, but she drew back with a wicked, warm smile.

“Try that again when we aren’t in a public place,” he said, challenging her.

Her heart jumped. “Dream on.”

He lifted an eyebrow. “I’ve done very little else this past week,” he said, letting his eyes roam over her slender body. “Gabby, have you ever thought about having children?”

She could hardly believe what she was hearing. Her face burned with pleasure, her heart sang with it. “Oh, yes,” she whispered huskily.

“So have I.” He started to speak, caught himself, and smiled hesitantly. “See you in the morning.”

“’Bye.” She stood there and watched him drive off. It was probably all some wild daydream and she’d wake up back in the office, typing. But when she pinched herself, it hurt. She went upstairs and put the clothes in the dryer and tried to convince herself that J.D. had actually said he was going to church with her.

But the next morning, she was sure she’d misunderstood him. She dressed in a pretty white dress with matching accessories and at precisely ten-thirty, she started out the door. Of course, J.D. wasn’t going to church, she told herself firmly. What a stupid thing to…

The doorbell rang as she was opening the door. And there he was. He was wearing the same vested gray suit she’d seen him in earlier that week, but he looked different now. More relaxed, more at ease, much less rigid.

“Shocked?” he asked wickedly. “Did you expect I’d changed my mind and gone fishing instead?”

She burst out laughing and her green eyes sparkled. With her long hair piled in an old-fashioned coiffure, she seemed part of another era.

“Little Miss Victorian,” he murmured, studying her. “How exciting you look. So demure and proper.”

He looked as if he’d give a lot to change that straightlaced image, and she dropped her eyes before he could see how willing she felt.

“We’d better get started,” she murmured, easing past him.

“I like that gauzy thing,” he remarked minutes later as they walked up the front steps of the gray fieldstone church.

“You can wear it sometimes, if you like,” she said teasingly.

His eyes promised retribution. She eased her hand into his, and all the fight went out of him. He smiled at her, and his eyes were warm and possessive.

J.D. paid a lot of attention to the sermon, which was about priorities and forgiveness and grace. He sang the hymns in a rich baritone, and he seemed thoughtful as the benediction was given.

“Mind waiting for me?” he asked as they rose to file out at the end of the service.

She searched his hard face and shook her head. “Not at all.”

He left her and went to speak to the minister who was waiting until the rest of the congregation had left. The two men stood talking behind the rows of pews, both solemn, their voices low. Then they shook hands and smiled at each other. J.D. came back and grasped Gabby’s hand warmly in his for a minute.

“I’m taking your minister to lunch instead of you,” he said with a mischievous smile. “How about getting into something casual and I’ll pick you up in a couple of hours?”

She looked hard at him. “Are you all right?” she asked. She was trying to see beyond the fixed smile to something deep and wounded inside him.

He drew in a slow breath and the smile faded. “You frighten me sometimes, Gabby,” he said softly. “You see too much.”

She couldn’t think of any response to that. She touched his hand briefly and watched him walk away. Something was in the wind, a change. She frowned as she turned toward her apartment, her steps slow and deliberate. She wondered why he was taking her minister to lunch, if he had something on his conscience.

She changed into jeans and a button-up blue cotton blouse and then paced the floor for the next two hours. Wild thoughts raced through her mind, the wildest one being that J.D. might decide to chuck it all and go in search of First Shirt and Apollo.

It was three hours before he showed up. By then Gabby had consumed half a pot of coffee and chewed two fingernails to the quick. Her nerves were raw, and she actually jumped when the knock came at the door.

She let him in, too shaken to disguise the frightened uncertainty in her wide eyes.

“I thought you’d stood me up.” She laughed nervously. “I was just about to give up and start watching a movie on TV. Do you want some coffee, or some cake…?”

He put a finger across her mouth to stop the wild words. His dark eyes looked into hers. “We have to learn to trust each other a little more,” he said softly. “And the first thing you need to know about me is that if I ever give my word, it’s good for life. I’m not going back to Shirt and the others, Gabby. That’s a promise.”

Tears burst from her eyes like rain from a storm cloud. She put her face in her hands and walked away.

“I’m sorry,” she choked out, hating the fact that she’d given her feelings away.

He didn’t say a word. He followed her, and when he caught up to her, he lifted her gently in his big arms and headed straight for the bedroom.

She had just enough sanity left to realize where they were going. She opened her mouth to protest, and his came down on it, open and moist and tenderly possessive.

“Jacob…” she whispered into his mouth.

He smiled against her trembling lips. “What?”

Her nails bit softly into his shoulders as he laid her down on the crisp white bedspread. “I can’t,” she whispered.

“Can’t what?” He sat down beside her and calmly removed his jacket, vest, and tie and then unbuttoned his shirt while she watched him, spellbound as the hard, heavy muscles came into view under that mat of crisp hair.

“I can’t have an affair with you,” she said.

He leaned over and began to unfasten the buttons on her blouse. “That’s nice.”

“Jacob, did you hear me? Will you stop that…!”

He ignored her protests and her frantic efforts to stop his fingers. “Stop what?”

“Undressing me!” she burst out with an hysterical laugh. “Jacob, I’m wearing nothing underneath, for heaven’s sake…!”

“So I see,” he murmured with a wicked smile, as he opened the blouse and revealed the pink and mauve rise of her breasts.

“Will you listen…” she began breathlessly.

“Shut up, darling.” He bent over her and put his open mouth against one breast, letting her feel the texture of his warm lips and his tongue before he moved closer and increased the ardent pressure.

She gasped and arched and then moaned sharply, a high-pitched sound that made him lift his head.

“Did I hurt you?” he asked. “I’m sorry, I thought I was being gentle.”

Her fists were clenched beside her head, and her eyes were wide with mingled fear and desire. “You know very well it didn’t hurt,” she whispered fiercely.

His eyes moved back down to her bareness and he smiled slowly, watching her breasts lift and fall with her quickened breathing. “Lovely, lovely creature,” he said under his breath. His fingers traced her rib cage and he held her eyes, watching the recklessness come into them, the deep passion.

Her breath was coming still quicker now, and the tracing of his fingers was driving her mad. She arched her head back into the pillow, lifting her body toward him in a slow, helpless movement.

“Want me to put my mouth there again and make it stop aching?” he whispered.

“Yes,” she moaned softly. “Please.”

She felt the whisper of his warm breath against her skin, felt his hands go under her to slide abrasively against her bare back. He lifted her, and his mouth moved with delicate precision from one taut breast to the other. His face nuzzled her, savored her softness.

Her fingers tangled in his thick, cool hair and worked at it like a cat kneading a blanket. Pleasure washed over her in waves, waves that lifted and twisted her body.

“Jacob,” she whispered as his mouth slid over hers and down to her ear, while his hands made magic on her upthrust breasts. “Jacob, teach me how to make you feel this way.”

“I already do,” he murmured at her ear. “Touching you like this, kissing you, makes me wild, didn’t you know?”

“Really?”

He lifted his head. “Really.” He rolled onto his back and eased her down over him, smiling lazily as he studied her rapt face, as his eyes wandered to where her breasts were crushed softly against his hard, hair-matted chest. His hands unfastened her hair and arranged it over her shoulders, his eyes heavy-lidded and steady as they wandered over her body.

She watched his face and moved. Just a little. Just enough to let him feel the texture of her body.

“Is that an invitation?” he asked quietly, watching her.

Her breath caught in her throat. Was it, indeed? She searched his hard face with awe and love in every line of her own. Her fingers twined in his thick hair, and she could feel his heartbeat under her.

His hands smoothed over her back. He shifted her body this time, softly rubbing her breasts against the mat of hair on his chest. He heard her catch her breath as she bent her forehead to rest it on his.

His hands shifted, so that his thumbs could tease the hard peaks of her breasts. “I ache with wanting you,” he said quietly. “Shall I let you feel how much?”

“You started it,” she reminded him, nuzzling her forehead against his. She moved suddenly, so that the whole soft length of her body pressed down over him, and she knew then that she wasn’t going to stop him.

“Hold me like this,” she whispered as she bent to put her mouth over his. “Hold me hard, Jacob.”

His big hands spread at the base of her spine, moving her in a sweet, tender rotation against his hips, and he moaned deeply.

“I won’t stop you this time,” she whispered over his mouth. “I won’t stop you, Jacob, I won’t…” Her hands slid between them, into the thick cloud of hair over his chest. “Jacob…!”

“Tell me…why,” he managed to say in a tortured voice.

“You know,” she breathed, crushing her mouth against his in a frenzy of hunger. Her body moved against him, she trembled with unleashed desire. And suddenly he rolled her over, covering her with his crushing weight, lifting her up to him while his mouth possessed hers absolutely. She felt the wild, demanding thrust of his tongue and met it with a wildness of her own, giving him everything he demanded of her.

“Tell me,” he insisted, lifting his head to let his wild eyes glitter down into her own. He shifted, grinding his hips into hers. “Tell me, Gabby!”

“I love you,” she said fiercely. Her voice was trembling, but she met his eyes unafraid. “I love you. I love you!”

He seemed to stop breathing. His body was rigid above her, but his eyes were alive, burning, blazing with emotion. His hands moved slowly up her body, over her breasts, to touch her face. His big body shuddered with the effort to control his passion.

“I’m going to die from this,” he told her with a faint, harsh smile. And all at once, he rolled away from her and lay on his stomach. He groaned once, as if he were hurting in unbearable ways. His body stiffened and he clenched the pillow so hard his fingers went white.

“Jacob?” she whispered, sitting up, frightened.

“Don’t touch me, baby,” he whispered back, his voice tormented.

She sat there watching him, a little nervous and uncertain. He’d forced that reckless admission from her, and then he’d stopped. Why? What did he want?

Slowly his body relaxed and he sighed wearily. “Oh, God, I never thought I’d be able to stop,” he murmured. “That was as close as I’ve ever come to losing control, except for that time at the finca.”

Her wide eyes studied the pale face he turned toward her. “That morning?” she murmured.

He laughed dryly. “That night,” he said. “Gabby, it wasn’t punishment, there at the last. It was loss of control. I very nearly took you.”

Her eyebrows went up. “But you let me think…!”

“I had to,” he said. “I was going out of my mind trying to decide how to handle it. In the beginning, I wanted an affair with you. But I couldn’t seem to get close enough, or make you see me as a man. Then, when we were in Rome, I’d had all I could stand and I forced the issue.” He laughed softly. “My God, it was the end of the rainbow, and I was floating. Until I realized you were a virgin, and I had to rethink it all. I’d decided that I’d have to fire you, and then we went into the jungle and I died a thousand deaths when that terrorist pointed his rifle at you.” He rolled over onto his back and caught her fingers in his, holding them to his mouth feverishly. “That was when I realized what had happened to me. I was like a boy, all raging desire and frustration and fear. I wanted to frighten you off before I was trapped by what I felt for you. Only it backfired. I started to hurt you and went crazy wanting you instead. I can’t wait anymore,” he added with an apologetic smile, “and after a week from Saturday I won’t have to.”

“A week from Saturday?” She frowned.

“There were two reasons I took your Reverend Boone to lunch,” he said. “The first was to discuss some things I had on my conscience. The second was to arrange a wedding.”

She froze; her face was flushed, and her eyes were disbelieving. It was like having every dream she had ever dreamed come true at once.

He sat up, taking both her hands in his. “Gabby, the one thing I can’t do is go on living without you,” he said matter-of-factly.

“But…but you said you didn’t know whether you could settle down.”

He rubbed his thumbs over the backs of her hands and sighed. “Yes, I know. And all the while I was wondering how I’d survive if you refused me. I was trying to get a reaction out of you, to see if I’d frightened you so badly that I’d chased you away.” His face hardened as he stared at her hands. “I told you once that I was used to taking what I wanted. That ended with you. I couldn’t take you. It had to be a mutual wanting.”