Hooper, Kay - [Hagen 09] (14 page)

"No. But they can be manufactured."

"The way yours was." It wasn't a question, and
Jennifer shook her head a little. "Are you doing it
deliberately, Dane?"

"Doing what?"

"Testing me. I suppose. You ask for my trust, yet
you're holding back something, keeping a vital piece of the puzzle to
yourself. So it must be a test, to see if I can trust you, and maybe
even love you."

"It isn't a test. Jenny. There are things I can't
tell you yet. Answers I'm not free to give you." He swore
softly, looking, in that moment, as if the wildness Inside him was
threatening to burst free of his careful restraint. "Why the
hell do you think I'm being such a bloody gentleman about this? The
minute I realized we had something special, I wasn't about to mess it
up by rushing you when I couldn't give you all the answers."

"You wanted my eyes wide open," she said
softly, because it was a confirmation of what she had only just
realized.

Dane didn't seem to hear the new note in her voice. He
was clearly struggling to leash what she had so nearly set free.
Hands jammed in his pockets, he was standing as if he didn't dare
move, as if he wanted badly to move. "I want to take you to bed
for a week," he said roughly. "A month. And then it'll be
too late for you, Jenny, too late for both of us. I wouldn't be able
to let you go after that. So you have to be sure, and you won't be
sure without all the answers."

She rose slowly and took a step toward him so that she
stood within arm's reach. She could hardly believe what she was
feeling, yet she no longer doubted it. And she couldn't take her eyes
off him. "It's already too late for me," she told him in a
voice she didn't recognize as her own.

Dane didn't move, but in his eyes there was a change,
light through a storm, the kind of light that made rainbows. In the
distance, the voices and laughter of people and children faded away,
put out of reach.

Jennifer could almost hear her heartbeat, and his, and
she could feel something inside her give way, all in a rush, as if a
wall had collapsed silently. The fears she had been conscious of
until then melted away. Into the taut silence, she said softly, "I
have all the answers I need. Dane. I think I did from the first. It's
just that the wrong questions kept getting in the way."

He half shook his head, an almost unconscious gesture
of reluctant negation. "You can't be sure."

"Can't I? These past days, I've been fighting
everything I felt, telling myself it couldn't be real. And there
were so many questions that it was easy to believe the answers had to
be important."

"They are important," he said huskily.

"No. The only Important answer is standing in front
of me. You. The man you are. All the questions in the world can't
keep me from knowing the truth of that answer. You're a man of
integrity." She drew a deep breath. "And I love you."

There was an instant of utter stillness, and then Dane
was holding her in his arms, tightly, his heart pounding against her.
"Thank you," he said quietly into her soft hair.

Jennifer pulled back just far enough to look up at him.
"For what?" she asked unsteadily. "For loving you?
That was easy. So easy I couldn't believe it."

"For trusting me," he murmured, kissing her
gently and then with building desire. "I wasn't sure you could
find anything in me to trust, much less – " His voice
deepened, as if it came from the core of himself. "I love you.
Jenny."

Her arms went up around his neck, and she lost herself
in the growing heat of their kiss, feeling a happiness she had
never expected to feel.
I
love you.
Casual words
to some, she knew. Words written in flowing script on greeting cards
and sent through the mail. But they weren't casual to her and
everything inside her told her they weren't casual to Dane either.

"Oh, damn this job," he muttered suddenly
against her lips, then lifted his head to gaze down at her with
bright, unshuttered eyes. "God, I'm half out of my mind wanting
you, and there Just isn't
time."
His voice was raspy.

Jennifer was staring up into his eyes, and the promises
were there again, wild and beckoning, trapped in violet. . .
convincing her he did believe there was something special
between them, something worth fighting for and preserving. He could
so easily have used his sexual power over her, as they both knew he
could, and he
hadn't.
He had clung to reason, using only the
weapons she could fight, shuttering the incredible force of his
remarkable eyes until the fighting was over.

Essences.

"How do you do that?" she asked, fascinated.

Dane seemed to find some faint control over the demands
of his body, and held on with iron will. He was smiling just a
little, something almost sheepish in the curve of his lips. "Do
what?" he asked innocently.

She ignored the attempt at ignorance. "You know,
dammit. You have to know. It's ... something I can almost
hear."

He pulled her arms gently from around his neck and took
her hand, beginning to lead her back toward his car with a resolve
that was obvious. "As much as I hate to do it, I'd better take
you home, and right now. There are some things I have to do before I
meet Kelly tonight."

"Dane, I'm not going to let you put me off this
time!" She was determined. "I have to know."

He refused to answer until they were in the car and
heading back toward her house and even then he seemed reluctant and
more than a bit discomfited. "It isn't magic, honey."

"It looks like it from where I'm standing,"
she told him ruefully. "Please, Dane, tell me."

After a moment, he said, "What did you see?"

"Promises," she answered instantly, half
turned in her seat so she could look at him. "Promises I could
feel, pulling at me, as if you – as if you knew exactly what I
wanted and needed."

Dane reached for her hand and carried it briefly to his
lips, then held it firmly on his thigh. "I should have asked you
sooner," he said huskily. "It would have been easier for
me, knowing that's what you felt. I wasn't sure."

"I don't understand."

"I don't myself, not really." He sent her a
quick smile. "I only know I've often been able to sway some
people, if I concentrated hard enough. But with you, it was . . .
There's so much I want to give you, so many feelings Inside wilder
than anything I've ever known – "

Jennifer felt her heart turn over when his voice broke
off roughly, and her hand tightened in his. "That's what I saw,"
she said softly. "What I wanted and needed."

Dane was silent for a moment, then said in a thickened
voice, "I swear I'll never drive a sports car again."

She thought she knew, but murmured, "Why?"

"Because I want you close beside me from now on,"
he told her, staring grimly through the windshield in an attempt to
keep at least part of his mind on driving. She didn't seem to fully
realize the effect she had on him, and he was beyond telling her at
the moment. What could he say? That only twenty years of disciplined
control over his body, necessary for a successful gambler, made it
possible for him to fight the desire to just grab her and carry her
off somewhere?

There was so much he wanted to tell her, show her, those
wild feelings inside him barely under control. And the ache of his
body, present for days now, was a need more powerful than anything
he'd ever felt before. The detachment that had for so long been an
advantage in his work was gone with her, far out of his reach.
He had never considered himself an unfeeling man, but he knew now
that he had never felt with the depth and power that loving her made
him capable of.

Dear Lord, he loved her. . . .

Sighing unsteadily, Jennifer said, "I'm glad I'm
not the only one going crazy."

His laugh was a breath of sound. "Jenny, I passed
crazy days ago."

"It doesn't show," she whispered.

He released her hand in the necessity of gearing down
and turning the car into her driveway. "Doesn't it?"

Very conscious of his hard thigh under her hand,
Jennifer realized that it
did
show. Beneath his composure
he was strained, his body tightly wound and feverish. But he was
stubbornly determined not to cheat either of them by stealing only a
few hours together.

"Damn Kelly!" she muttered with suppressed
violence.

Dane stopped the car and then leaned over to kiss her
with taut restraint. "I won't get out," he said huskily.
"If I put my arms around you one more time, all the good
Intentions in the world won't be able to stop me."

She fumbled for the door handle and got out of the car
slowly, feeling hot and restless and more than a little dazed.
"You're sure it'll be over tonight with Kelly?"

"I'll make sure of it."

Jennifer didn't question, but merely nodded and stepped
back, closing the Ferrari's door and drawing away from it. She
watched the car pull out of the driveway and start back toward Lake
Charles, watched until she could no longer see it. Then she went into
the house.

She found herself alone for the day, Francesca having
left a note to remind her of her weekly lunch-and-bridge arrangement
with old friends. Jennifer was relieved that her mother was gone; her
feelings for Dane were new and wondrous, and she wanted to hold them
close to herself for a while until they became more familiar.

If they ever did.

It wasn't only her love for him that was unfamiliar, but
herself as well. She felt curiously raw, sensitive to everything
around her as if her very flesh was new and tender. Butterflies, she
thought, must feel that way, wings unfurling and still damp from the
chrysalis, vulnerable, susceptible to untold damage in the first
vital moments after their transformation.

She felt like that, exposed in a new form she hardly
recognized. Some rigidity in herself she had barely been aware of
when it existed was gone now, leaving her softened, almost undefined.
All the emotions Dane had drawn to the surface remained there, and
she didn't feel the need to fight them any longer.

Jennifer tried to work in her study, but found it a
wasted effort. More than once, she caught herself gazing into
space, her mind filled with images having nothing to do with work.
Finally, abandoning the struggle, she left the room. It was
after two o'clock; she had skipped lunch, but wasn't hungry.

Nothing in the house could hold her attention for long,
and by three o'clock she was too restless to remain there. She
decided to walk to Belle Retour, nothing in mind but her need to
be active and her desire to look at the lost home that was still a
bittersweet ache inside her. She would merely look, she assured
herself, going no farther than the woods near the house. Just Stand
and look and, perhaps, this time manage to say good-bye.

She had forgotten Dane's promise.

The path she took, one she had made herself over the
years when the cottage had been her studio, cut the two-mile distance
to the house almost in half. Not yet overgrown. It wound through the
woods and along the edges of fields. She walked slowly, enjoying the
warm breeze, thinking vaguely that a storm was coming. After
growing up here in an area vulnerable to fierce gulf storms, she had
become like a cat in her sensitivity to the falling air pressure that
heralded a storm, and that Instinct told her now that the pressure
was low, and dropping.

Was a storm forecast, perhaps even a hurricane? This was
the season for them, but Jennifer hadn't paid attention to weather
reports on radio or television lately. Her pace quickened even as the
breeze died, and she knew without thinking about it that a storm was
no more than an hour away.

There was still time, she thought.

She found herself on the edge of the woods no more than
a hundred yards from the house, and stood gazing toward it,
conscious of a tangle of emotions. Odd, she thought, that this old
collection of bricks and wood could rouse such feelings, Inspire such
memories. . . .

Her mind snapped back to the present as she watched
Garrett Kelly emerge from a side door and start out through the
garden, and she frowned in puzzlement. He was carrying a small
satchel made of leather, and his step was brisk. And he didn't stop
when he got through the overgrown garden, but continued into the
woods to the south of the house.

Where was he going? she wondered uneasily. There was
nothing in that direction except –

Of course!
The realization was stark in her mind,
and she couldn't believe she hadn't thought of it sooner. Where else
could a man hope to hide a printing press – even an entire
counterfeiting operation – except in the depths of an almost
inaccessible cypress swamp?

Jennifer surveyed the house and grounds quickly, looking
around Intently, but saw no sign that Kelly was being followed. Where
was Dane's partner? This was what they'd been waiting for, what this
entire operation had come down to, and there was no one
following Kelly!

She hesitated, biting her bottom lip in indecision, then
swore softly and started out after him. She was hardly dressed for a
trek into the swamp, but there was no time to worry about that. She'd
just have to trust to her own surefootedness and keep a wary eye out
for snakes. In her tomboy days, she had practically lived in the
swamp – to the despair of Francesca – and there were few
who knew it as well as she did.

So Jennifer trusted herself to find out just where Kelly
was going; she thought she could even guess now. She didn't look back
as she vanished into the forest, which was a pity. If she had, she
would have seen a tall man step from the concealing shadows near the
house and stare after her, a frown on his face. She might even have
heard him utter a variation of her earlier cussword with a great deal
more force. But she didn't look back.