Conspiracy Game (29 page)

Hand to her throat, she walked softly along the wraparound porch, keeping pace with the herd, following them around the large house, determined to think of something other than Jack—other than her situation. The covered porch was wide and the railing high enough that, holding on to one of the support columns, she was certain she could push off, swing up to the roof, and get an even better view, without disturbing anyone. She climbed up on the railing, keeping one eye on the huge animals, afraid they’d retreat farther into the forest before she could get a good look at them.

She wrapped her arm around the pole and judged the distance to the roof. It wasn’t very far for someone as enhanced as she was, but she’d have to swing out and flip her body up to get above the overhang. She leapt and caught the edge of the roof.

Two hands bit into her waist and yanked her back down, pulling her tight against one very hard body. Jack’s eyes glittered like twin diamonds, slashing at her angrily. “Just what the hell do you think you’re doing?”

The man was built of iron, no give in his body, and where she was cold, he was hot, heat radiating off his skin. Her heart immediately went into overdrive. Worse, her body reacted, breasts full and aching and her womb clenching. She tasted him in her mouth, felt him in her body. The memory was instantly vivid and alive. Just like that—so simple for him to reduce her to nothing but need. Desperate to escape her own reaction to his scent, Briony struggled to break his grip, but even with her enhanced strength, he didn’t budge.

“I wanted to see the herd of elk—at least I think they were elk. Thanks to you, I didn’t get a good look at them. Let go, Jack.” He was the last person she wanted to see. She needed to be alone—and she wasn’t sleeping in his room—or in his bed, where his scent was everywhere. She wanted to weep with frustration. She wanted to strike out at someone. This was a totally impossible situation. She wasn’t strong enough to be around him and not want him.
And why was he always touching her?

“Anyone creeping around my house is liable to be killed.”

“I’m not a prisoner, am I? If I want to look at some animals in the forest, I don’t think that’s a killing offense. Go back to bed. I’m fine out here alone.” Because she couldn’t lie in that bed and not want him with every cell of her body.
If you came to challenge me to a duel because I fucked your sister…
 Deliberately she repeated the words in her mind, needing something to keep her from being an even bigger fool than she already was.

“It’s cold, Briony, go in the house.”

She pressed two fingers just above her eyes, feeling humiliation that she couldn’t control her own physical needs. He
had
to get away from her, had to stop touching her body. “Go to hell. I have every right to be out here if I prefer it.”

He tipped his head to one side to study her furious expression. “Why are you trying to pick a fight with me?”

“I don’t like being told what to do.”
Because he was all she thought about, and he had already made it clear he didn’t want her.
Because he’d said…
fucked your sister
. She shouldn’t want a man who’d been
programmed
to sleep with her. It was utterly humiliating. A man who wanted nothing but a cheap, mindless
fuck
.

Damn it all to hell. That’s not true. That was never true.
Jack stepped close, and Briony backed away from him, throwing up one hand to ward him off.

“Don’t!” She said it sharply, terrified she’d burst into tears. Already her eyes were burning and she felt a lump rising in her throat. “Just don’t say anything more about it.”

Jack reached for her anyway, not giving her personal space, but crowding her body so that the heat of his skin seeped into the ice of hers. “You’re shaking like a leaf.” He ran his hands up and down her arms in an effort to warm her. He forced gentleness into his voice. Why the hell had he ever said such a stupid thing to her brother? “Your body is freezing and you aren’t even aware of it. What were you going to do? Get up on the roof?”

“As a matter of fact, yes.”

“And did it occur to you that you might slip and fall and hurt the baby?”

“I’m a flyer. I do stunts for a living. I think I can manage to climb up on a roof.”

“Well, don’t. I thought you were tired.” Jack wanted to comfort her, but she was too far away from him emotionally, trying to distance herself, and he wasn’t good at this sort of thing.

She reached up to her earlobe, needing the comfort of touching her mother’s earring, found bare skin and dropped her hand. “I am. I just need space. I can’t do this.”

“Yes, you can.”

“Well, maybe I don’t want to do this.” She backed away from him until she was up against the railing. He couldn’t touch her again. Every brush of his fingers brought acute awareness of his body and the desperate needs of her own. She’d come outside to escape him, yet there seemed to be no escape.

“You should have thought of that before you came to me.”

Briony clenched her fists. “At the time, I didn’t feel I had a choice.” Her chin went up. “Look. Obviously this isn’t going to work. I can leave. There are other ways to disappear, and there’s always Kadan Montague. He offered his protection.”

Jack’s jaw tightened, the gray eyes suddenly turning a peculiar silver—ice cold—frightening. “Kadan Montague is not going to be protecting my child or its mother. That’s my job, not his. Don’t try bringing another man into this mess, Briony. We have enough to worry about without that.”

“Oh really?” Furious, not even knowing why, she turned and in one smooth move leapt over the railing onto the ground below. “This
mess
? My being pregnant is such a mess, isn’t it? I don’t need your help and, quite frankly, I don’t want it.”

Jack swore and leapt after her. So much for tact—he didn’t have it, never would. He shackled her wrist in a viselike grip and she whirled, throwing a punch at his face. He caught her fist in midair. “Keep it up and I’m going to turn you over my knee. What the hell is wrong with you? You should know better than to pick a fight you can’t win.” She looked wild, angry, and embarrassed. She looked vulnerable, young, and all too fragile. She
felt
alone and frightened. The fear moved in his mind—not of him, but of the situation. Of him callously saying he’d fucked her. Of expecting a baby and having no one to turn to. She was terrified Whitney would find her and take her baby from her. Jack glimpsed the roller coaster of emotions jumbled in her mind.

He gentled his voice in spite of his exasperation. “I didn’t say the mess was your being pregnant. Stop putting words in my mouth. And, baby, you know damned well I wasn’t fucking you. Not like that. Not how I made it sound to your brother.”

She shook her head. “I can’t breathe here. I can’t. I’m just going to go.”

Jack’s expression hardened. His jaw flexed and the gray eyes glittered silver. “You’re going to calm down and go into the house and get some sleep.” He made another effort to gentle his voice. “You’ve been under a tremendous strain. Once you get a good night’s rest, you’ll see things differently.”

“Stop talking to me in that superior tone. Do you think it was easy to come here and ask for help after the things you said to me?” She shoved at his chest, barely rocking him when she put all her strength behind it. “I left everyone I love. My child’s in danger. I’m sick. I have no clothes or money, and I’m at the mercy of a man who doesn’t want me around.” She pushed at him again. “Get away from me. I was going to sit on the roof, not wander around like an idiot when you have the property booby-trapped.”

“What are you thinking of doing now? It’s the middle of the night. You know I have traps set up.”

“I have a very good sense of smell. I can track my way back out of here the same way I came in.”

She probably could too, but she was making him crazy, and his calm was going to disintegrate very soon. “Stop crying. I mean it, Briony, you have to stop.”

“Or what?” She was angry that she was crying. Once she’d started, she couldn’t seem to stop. Maybe she was hysterical, but if she wanted to sit out in the middle of the night and cry her eyes out, it was her business. “You’re going to beat me? Someone else already did that. I’m not intimidated by you.”

Jack dragged her close, holding her tightly against his body in spite of her struggles, one hand cupping the back of her head to press her face against his chest. He bent his head to find her bruised cheek, his mouth feathering kisses over the swollen side of her face. “Shh,” he said to soothe her, closing his eyes against the pain in her mind. She radiated sorrow—grief—and he couldn’t bear it. “I’m not the enemy.”

“I know. I know. I’m sorry.” But she couldn’t stop. Her world was gone and her hormones were running wild and there was nowhere to go to escape him.

“It’s going to be all right. Everything will be fine. You’re overtired and you need to sleep.” His fingers began a slow massage of her neck, then slowly crept into her hair to massage her scalp, tunneling deep, moving with sure, circular strokes.

“I don’t want to go in the house, Jack. I can’t go into that room.” How could she make him understand? At least outside, the wind and forest helped to dissipate his scent—give her a breathing space from her need of him.

Jack had never had a weeping woman in his arms before. He stood quietly, just holding her while her body shook with the force of her sobs. His chin nuzzled the top of her head. Soft strands of her hair caught in the shadow along his chin. He didn’t try to stop the flood of tears—she had enough to cry about—he simply reached down, positioning his arm beneath her knees, and lifted her, cradling her against him.

“All right. We’ll stay out here. Shh, Briony. You’re going to make yourself ill.” She was light, easy enough to lift, and Jack simply jumped with her, landing back on his porch, Briony cradled in his arms. He settled on the front porch rocker, the one he’d built with his own two hands. They fit comfortably, and he rocked gently, rubbing her hair with his chin, hands gently massaging her neck.

He should have felt like a damn fool, but he didn’t. She felt right in his arms. He sat in the night, rocking on his porch, watching the trees swaying and listening to the night sounds of the forest. She wept silently, her tears soaking his shirt as she slowly struggled to regain control.

“It’s strange with you,” he said aloud. “When I’m with you, I feel like an ordinary man. Everything else falls away, and I can see how beautiful things around me really are. I’ve sat on this porch hundreds of times, and the night has never looked like this. I’ve stared into the forest, and I saw a million places to hide, to set up an ambush, to find food. I didn’t see the way the leaves look silver in the moonlight, or the way the trees seem to dance and lift up their branches to the stars. Why do you suppose that is?”

Briony swallowed hard and turned her tear-wet face up to him, her dark, liquid gaze searching his face.

Jack wiped the tears away with his fingertips, hands gentle, almost reverent. “It’s the truth, Briony. I see the world differently when you’re around me.”

“Don’t, Jack. I’m very susceptible to you, and right now I’m pregnant so it’s probably worse. Don’t say things like that to me.” Briony tried to look away from him, but he held her chin.

“I want you here,” he admitted gruffly.

“But you said… ”

“I know what I said. That doesn’t matter now. We’ll have plenty of time to sort it all out. I can feel your headache, and you aren’t making it any better by crying. Just listen to the night and relax, go to sleep. One of the reasons we chose to build up here is the quiet, the peace.”

Briony closed her eyes and fit her body more comfortably into his. As a rule she didn’t cry in front of anyone, and she was embarrassed that she was still sniffing. He held her like she mattered to him, and she didn’t know if that made it better or worse.

“Just over there, through those trees and down a little slope, is my shop. I thought I’d add onto it and give you a place to make your stained glass.”

“I didn’t bring my sketchbook.”

“I’ll get you a new one. You’ll have plenty of time to draw.”

Briony’s lashes lifted. He was looking down at her, and there was something in his eyes, something close to admiration, when she didn’t feel she was at all acting in an admirable way. Her heart responded in spite of her determination to remain at an emotional distance from him. She lifted her hand to his face, traced the hard lines with her fingertips. “I missed your face, Jack.”

He turned his head enough to brush kisses over her hand. “I’m sorry for the things I said to you that night. I know I hurt you.”

“You did hurt me. I knew you had to go, but you didn’t have to do it that way. Why did you?” The pads of her fingers smoothed over his lips.

“I have some things to sort out, Briony, but it isn’t about you—or the baby. It’s about me and my character and who and what I am. Never you.” He caught her hand and held it against his throat.

“I swear I was on birth control pills, Jack. I didn’t get pregnant on purpose. I wouldn’t do that to a man. And I’m capable of raising a child on my own. You won’t have to worry about me asking for money or anything. I need survival skills… ”

“Briony, stop,” Jack ordered. His hand curved around her neck, fingers working to massage the tension out of her. “It’s my child too. I want you here. I want the baby here. I’ll teach you the things you need, and after the baby is born, we’ll both protect him together.”

Her heart jumped, but she wasn’t ready to hope again. “Why do you think it’s a boy?”

“Because my heart couldn’t take a girl. Can you imagine some boy trying to date my daughter? I’d be sharpening my knives when he came calling.”

Briony’s soft laughter was muffled against his chest, but the sound played through his body with the strength of a tidal wave. He’d expected the rising, urgent need, but not the contentment, the joy. He didn’t know joy, didn’t understand it, was even wary of the emotion. It crept over him, stealing into his heart whether he wanted it or not—brought by a woman, by the sound of her laughter.