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Protectively she placed her palm across her abdomen.
Nothing and no one would stand in her way.
With resolution, she squared her shoulders and crossed into the bedroom. But the instant she unfastened the top button of her shirt, memories flooded her.
It had been so long since she’d been touched. The feel of Kurt’s work-roughened skin against her smooth skin had sent shivers of something she didn’t dare name skating down her spine to settle near her womb.
For a moment, if she closed her eyes and imagined, she might believe that he’d actually wanted to touch her....
But he hadn’t.
He’d simply been trying to drive home his angry point. As she’d learned, wanting and being wanted were for other women.
Jessie finished undressing and pulled on a flannel nightdress. Last week, at the women’s clothing store in town, she’d passed satin and lace teddies on the way to the dressing room. She’d stopped, looking longingly at the material while wondering how it might feel against her skin.
Since it didn’t really matter anyway, she’d settled for flannel. No one would see her in lingerie. Besides, a long gown was warmer, especially when there was no one to share the bed with.
After combing her hair its customary one hundred strokes, she turned off the lights and slipped beneath cold blankets, curling into a ball, seeking protection from the rejection still searing her heart.
Seconds later, the insistent thud of a fist on her front door made her sit upright.
“Open up, Jessie!”
Kurt.
She dragged a pillow against her chest and hugged it tight. Maybe if she ignored him...
“I’ll get Sheriff McCall, say we’ve got an emergency.”
He wouldn’t.
“I will, Jessie. Try me.”
Her heart pounded.
“Neighbors just turned on their porch light.”
Jessie groaned. Maybe when she went to Denver in the morning, she wouldn’t come back.
“No, Mrs. Johnson, Jessie’s not answering. I’m starting to worry. Yes, her car’s here.”
Silence hung as cold as a newborn snow.
“Sure...thanks. I’ll wait here for the sheriff.”
“Wait!” Galvanized by the threat, Jessie tossed back the covers and pillow, then ran toward the front door. She’d never be able to show her face in Columbine Crossing again if anyone else witnessed her private torment. “Don’t you dare call Spencer,” she called, twisting the bolt.
Before she had a chance to open the door, Kurt did.
She gasped.
He stood there, wearing no jacket, his cheeks bitten by the frost. His breath clung frigidly to the night air, air that still felt more like winter than spring.
“Invite me in.”
“But the neighbors—”
“Are asleep. Invite me in, Jessie.”
There were no lights on across the street. There was only Kurt, all six feet of him, masculine determination written in the set of his jaw and shoulders.
Jessie had never felt more helpless. “You lied.”
“I accomplished my goal.” When she said nothing more, he added, “Fine. We’ll talk here.”
In the years she’d known him, she’d learned to tell when he was joking. He wasn’t. “Kurt...”
“Decision’s yours, Jessie. We’re going to talk. Now. We can do it inside or out here, where the neighbors might overhear. Unless you want what I have to say printed in Miss Starr’s column?”
The threat chilled as much as the weather. For protection against both, she dragged the neckline of her nightie tighter around her throat. The subzero wind nipped at her toes and ankles. But even that didn’t freeze as much as the ice in Kurt’s green eyes.
“Okay,” he said. “We’ll play it your way. First of all—”
“Stop!” Her insides reeled and she felt as though the world had started spinning backward. “You can come in.” The invitation contained only the barest hint of civility.
He didn’t hesitate.
With the door closed and both of them standing in the tiny foyer, she suddenly felt very small, very feminine. Her skin tingled where he’d touched her earlier, and sanity demanded that she get him out of here immediately. “Go ahead, Kurt. Say what you need to so you can leave.”
“I’m wondering,” he said, taking a step toward her, filling her senses and indicating her suitcase with his thumb. “Where the hell you think you’re going.”
The question was delivered quietly, but whipped by the lash of anger.
Jessie took another step away from him, then stopped. She reminded herself he was her best friend’s brother, nothing more. She was a grown woman and answered only to herself.
Straightening her spine, she pretended an indifference she didn’t feel. “It’s none of your business.”
“You made it my business.”
She shook her head, her hair falling forward to frame her face and allowing her to hide. “Look, Kurt, I presented you with a business arrangement, but you didn’t like the terms. End of discussion.”
“It would be, if you weren’t planning a trip.”
Frustration began as a small knot in her stomach. “It’s late, and I have to get up early.”
“So you can go to Denver.”
“Yes.”
“And get inseminated.”
The knot became tighter. She hated the emphasis he put on the words, as though she was doing something repulsive. Tipping back her head, she gave him a falsely sweet smile. “Good night, Kurt.”
He turned and she experienced a flash of triumph.
Then he clicked the dead bolt into place with a threatening thud.
Her heart momentarily stopped. “What are you doing?”
“Stopping you from doing something you’ll regret.”
Two
Until that moment, Kurt hadn’t realized how deadly serious he was.
He knew Jessie, better than she realized. Mary, his sister, had spent many evenings telling him about her friend. He knew about Jessie’s broken engagement and the time she was stood-up for the prom.
And because he and Jessie volunteered together at the local children’s center, he knew how much having a real family meant to her. But this wasn’t the way to accomplish that, no matter what she thought.
“You can’t stop me from going to Denver.”
“Yes,” he said. “I can. And I will. I’ll save you from yourself, Jessie.”
Slowly she shook her head, loose hair framing her face and so very nearly distracting him.
“Thanks for the offer, but I don’t want a knight in shining armor.”
“Tough. You’ve got one.”
Her eyes, columbine blue and frosted by icy resolve, seemed to challenge him. “Heroes are for fairy tales, Kurt, just like happily ever afters.”
“You don’t believe in them.”
“No...I never did.”
“Never?” he asked. Her eyes told a different story, though. They revealed what she never willingly would.
He took a single step toward her and watched her retreat. It wasn’t much, just a fraction of an inch. But her toes, with an intriguing brush of pink across the nails, had peeked out from beneath her nightclothes.
The flannel gown, severe, prim and proper, swooshed around her ankles. More than that, however, it was her eyes that still riveted his attention. They hinted at the secrets in her soul. “Never, not even once? In all your childhood years, you never wanted to be rescued?”
She opened her mouth, then closed it again.
“You were content with what you had, being shuffled from family to family?”
“Get out.” She pointed to the door.
“A little close to the truth?” he asked with coiled quietness. Her ridiculous proposal had angered him, the fact that she wanted only his sperm infuriated him and now her determination to go to Denver fanned a flame of frustration in him.
“Truth?” she repeated. “You want the truth, Kurt? Well, how’s this?” Her voice quivered, betraying the emotions that Kurt knew she was trying to hide. “I’m going to have a baby—if not yours, then someone else’s. So save us both the aggravation of misplaced chivalry.”
He shook his head and advanced again. “Sorry, sweetheart. You brought this to me and you made it my concern.”
“So what are you going to do, physically stop me from leaving in the morning?”
“If I have to.”
She shivered.
He took another, measured step toward her.
“You can’t be serious.”
“Try me.”
She sucked in a breath, her breasts rising beneath the cotton of her gown. Her nipples strained against the fabric and something deep inside him wrenched. For the first time since he’d first met her—when she wore a braid and knee-high white socks with a skirt—she affected him in a way that had nothing to do with friendship.
His instincts warned of danger while his body urged him toward it.
He reminded himself that Jessie was his sister’s friend.
Yeah. Right Too bad he wasn’t buying what his mind was selling.
“This is crazy, impossible.”
For a second, he had no idea what she was talking about.
“If you stop me in the morning, I’ll go later, after you leave. You can’t hold me prisoner in my own home forever.”
“Is that a challenge?”
“Kurt, stop this ridiculousness.”
“Sure.” He folded his arms. Better than touching her. “As soon as you agree to cancel your appointment.”
“If it’ll get you out of here, I promise I’ll call the clinic first thing in the morning.”
“Not good enough.”
Her eyelids squeezed shut for a fraction of a second.
“I’ll cancel it for you.”
“Cancel it for me? You’re out of your ever-loving mind.”
“That makes two of us. Give me the number of the doctor’s office, Jessie. Then I’ll leave you alone to your sweet dreams.”
“And an empty house,” she said quietly, the words more of a confession than a statement.
She winced, obviously having disclosed more than she wanted. He should pretend he hadn’t heard, and more, hadn’t seen the painful display of honesty in her eyes.
But right now, Kurt wasn’t feeling like much of a gentleman. He’d capitalize on her weakness, get her to see things his way, the right way. “That’s what this is all about, isn’t it?” he asked quietly. “An empty house.”
She didn’t answer him.
“If you don’t like being alone, get married.”
“Sure. Which of my many suitors should I choose?”
Bitterness tainted her question. Pain lay there in her voice, raw and exposed. Before he reacted to it, she rushed away from him toward the back of the house, leaving him alone. He knew he’d said something wrong, but exactly what, he wasn’t sure.
Women. What did he know about them anyway? Not enough, if his divorce was anything to judge by.
Still, Jessie was hurting and remnants of her earlier pain lingered in her gaze. He was on the right track.
Kurt hadn’t been much interested in the fairy tales his mother had read to him and Mary. He, too, believed that chivalry had died an untimely death, if it had ever existed outside of books.
But that didn’t give him the power to leave Jessie alone. Something had brought her to him, in the cold, dark hours of an early April evening. Like it or not, as he’d told her earlier, when she reached out to him, she’d involved him.
Jessie had crossed into the kitchen. She stared out the window, into the desolate expanse of a still-dormant yard, her back to him in a sign of dismissal.
He ignored it.
In the entryway, he propped a shoulder against the doorjamb.
Even though he didn’t speak, she asked, “Are you still here?”
He’d had more promising beginnings with women. Somehow, though, nothing else had ever seemed this important. “Tell me about it, Jessie. Talk to me.”
Slowly, oh so slowly, the gown swishing, she turned around. Silence, unbroken by anything except their breathing, seemed to simmer.
“What do you want to hear? About the loneliness? Or the way my arms ache to hold a baby? The way I dream, every night, of having a child of my own?”
“How about the way you want to make up for what you didn’t have?”
She flinched, as if he’d slapped her.
“I’ve seen you with the kids at the center. You love them,” he said by way of an apology. “Most of us volunteer once a week, but you’re there almost every day, aren’t you?”
“They need the help.”
He nodded. “What about Jessie?” Closing in, he added, “What do you need?”
“I already told you. I need a child of my own.”
“Not this way.”
She looked up at him, layers of dark blond falling away from her face and revealing a side of her he’d never imagined until tonight. She’d always been tough, never vulnerable; independent, never needy. It was all there, though. It compelled him, made him want to protect her.
“What do you care, Kurt?”
Once, maybe, he might not have. Now, hearing the edge of pain in her tone, watching the shadows beneath her eyes and seeing the defeat in the curve of her shoulders, he cared.
He moved into the warmth of the room, realizing Jessie didn’t radiate the same welcome. With the toe of his boot, he hooked a chair leg and dragged it toward him. He sat on the chair backward, arms folded across the top. Whether she knew it or not, it promised to be a long night.
He didn’t intend to leave until he got what he wanted: answers, a telephone number and her sworn promise.
If there was one thing that took equal importance with his ranch and his family, it was winning.
“Mary always said you were stubborn.”
He looked at her. “She said the same thing about you.”
“Me?” Her eyes widened. “I’m not stubborn.”
He didn’t respond.
“I’m not,” she insisted.
“Give me the phone number, Jessie. Get this over with.”
“You know I can’t do that.”
“Then tell me where a husband fits into this picture.”
She shook her head and her hair once again fell in gentle disarray around her face. Kurt had to resist the inclination to run his fingers through the tousled strands, discovering for himself if it was as soft as it looked.
“I don’t need a man, any man.”
“That’s harsh.”
“Maybe,” she conceded. “But so is reality.”
She hadn’t come any closer to him, but unlike at his house and in her foyer, here she couldn’t escape except by getting past him. That wasn’t likely to happen. “A broken engagement isn’t a good reason to swear off men.”
“Yes, it is.”
It was back, that ghost of pain in her eyes. He wanted to vanquish it. “Samuel Bucket was a jerk.”
“You’re not going to get an argument from me.”
“Not all men are.”
“Really?”
He expected to hear sarcasm in the word. It wasn’t there. Instead it was a simple, honest question. “Take me, for example.”
“Okay,” she said. “Let’s take you. You barge into my house when I’m already in bed, lie about the neighbors watching us, lie about calling Sheriff McCall.”
Kurt raised a brow.
“Not only that, but you’ve made something that’s none of your concern into some sort of personal quest. And you refuse to leave.” Then quietly, she added, “How do you define the word jerk?”
He winced, the barb finding its mark. “Not by your standards.”
“Obviously.”
Kurt gave thanks for the distance between them. The sides of the chair back carved into his thighs. He liked the dig of pain. It distracted him, prevented him from ending this conversation in a way she wouldn’t like.
“I’m your sister’s friend,” she said. “Nothing more. Please, just let it go.”
He’d given himself the same argument earlier, telling himself he had no right to get involved. Hadn’t washed any better then than it did now. “By default, Jessie, that makes you my friend. You do my books, making you my employee, and we volunteer together at the center. Add in the fact you asked for a personal donation for your cause, and I say I’ve got more than a casual interest.”
“All that’s true, so you of all people should understand why this is important to me.”
“And you of all people should see why this is insane,” he countered.
“I don’t.”
“Kids need two parents.”
Her chin was set at a defiant tilt, another side he’d never seen from her. “They need someone to love them.”
“Feed that line to someone else, not to me. I don’t buy it. If kids only needed one person, they wouldn’t be at the center looking for something they could get at home.”
“Problem is, Kurt, those kids don’t have parents like I would be. Those parents are often overworked, stressed and burned-out. They have nothing left to give.”
“And you’re different?”
“I am. I’ve got a lot of experience from being at the center. You know as well as I do that I work from home. I’ll be there all day, every day. There won’t be day care or a lot of baby-sitters. A lot of two-parent families aren’t that lucky. My schedule can fit my baby’s.”
In her hands, conviction was a powerful weapon.
“I will be a great mother, give my child all he needs.” She paused, a small, private smile playing at the corner of her lips. “Or all she needs.”
Breath escaped his lungs. He’d hoped to see that expression—one of softness and maternal expectation—on Belinda’s face. The opposite had occurred when he’d broached the subject of starting their family.
She’d frowned, pursing her lips and stating, quite frankly, that she had no intention of ever sharing her body with another human being.
That had been the beginning of the end.
The rest had come when he found out that her assertion hadn’t been exactly accurate. She might not have wanted to share her body with a baby, but she’d had no compunction about sharing her intimacies with a man other than her husband.
Kurt was a fast learner and he’d sure as hell learned from the mistake of marriage.
“I can be a good parent, can’t you see, Kurt?”
He regarded Jessie, missing nothing. The fire in her eyes had replaced despair. Again, something new. Passion. Amazing. He’d seen Samuel Bucket in a bar the night he and Jessie broke up. Bucket had called her the Ice Princess.
No way. Fire and ice didn’t mix. And tonight Kurt had been singed by the fire in her eyes.
“Things will be perfect,” she said.
“One person can’t be all things to another human being.”
“I can and will.”
Kurt forced himself to stay in his chair. The urging to get up, grab hold of her and shake some sense into her ran rampant through him, demanding action.
Unconsciously his hands formed fists. “Wait a while. Wait until you find a man.”
“I’ve already tried.”
Her lids shuttered her eyes temporarily, and when she opened them again, the transformation stunned him. He’d been right earlier, fire and ice didn’t mix. Ice extinguished fire. It also dimmed her blue eyes, clouding them like the leading edge of a storm obscured a mountain peak.
“You rejected me.”
Shrapnel landed in his heart. “You can’t think—”
“I offered myself to you.” She gulped at a breath of air. “You turned me down.”
Good God. She thought it was personal. “Look, Jess—”
“It’s okay, Kurt. I shouldn’t have expected you to put yourself out for me. You were right, I wasn’t thinking straight. Why do you think I made an appointment at a clinic?”
He inhaled sharply. “Because you can’t get a man?”
“Because no man wants me.” Tears once again welled in her eyes. “And because I don’t need a man to be whole and complete.”
Beneath her bravado, he heard the woven strands of uncertainty and disbelief.
He stood, shoving aside the chair. “You’re a desirable woman.”
“Of course I am. Hollywood calls at least once a week.”
If he was on the wrong end of a branding iron, he’d be a whole lot more sure what to do than he was right now.
“Now if you’ll excuse me, it’s obvious I need my beauty sleep.”
He reached out and clamped his hand around her upper arm when she tried to brush past him. “I’m not leaving.”
“The couch is lumpy.”
It was back...the fire he’d glimpsed earlier. She was a paradox and that intrigued him. He wouldn’t leave now, no matter what common sense encouraged.
“Good night, Kurt.”
Reluctantly he released her.
Gathering the hem of her gown, she hurried away. The slam of her bedroom door echoed through the small house and all the way down into his gut.
He’d run headlong into a situation he didn’t begin to comprehend. He disliked the feeling, and that left him only one option—he had to work the puzzle, look at all the pieces from each angle. He had to figure out what the hell had gotten into Jessie. Then he had to figure out how to get her out of it.
Yeah. It promised to be a long night. Even longer, he realized when he glanced at the couch. She hadn’t lied. It was lumpy. Too short, understuffed and lumpy. And she hadn’t gotten him a blanket.
Served him right.
His mother often warned him of the penalties for trying to run someone else’s life.
Kurt pulled off his boots and dropped them near the end of the couch. He stretched out, tucked his hands behind his neck and stared at the ceiling.
Jessie needed him, even if she didn’t know it.
She moved around in the bedroom, the whispers of her actions carrying in the stillness. Deprived of the sight of her, his memory seeped in to fill the void.
He saw Jessie, beseeching him to agree to her crazy idea, the way she dipped her head when he turned her down and the way her lips curled when she argued with him.
Superimposed over the top were images of her looking at him, her smile secretly sensual, her fingers feathering into silky strands of hair and a spark of passion in her eyes that made his insides constrict.
She was rich and complex, desirable, vulnerable, feminine and in need of a protector.
In need of him.
Kurt shifted.
He hadn’t thought of himself as anyone’s protector, particularly a woman who wouldn’t welcome it.
Adjusting his jeans, he wondered why the hell a man who didn’t believe in chivalry was being driven by exactly that.
“Going somewhere?”
Jessie froze, her hand curved around the handle of her suitcase. With her heart hammering in her throat, speech was out of the question. Reluctantly releasing her hold, she slowly turned toward him.
He stood in the entry to the kitchen, looking disturbingly refreshed and determined. The scent of alpine air seemed to brand him. Kurt Majors was every inch a male. A determined, impossible male, her mind added.
Thoughts jumbled and tumbled, making the formation of a complete sentence all but impossible. “I thought you were—”
“Gone?” Kurt shook his head. “Told you I intended to stop you from going sperm hunting.”
His voice slid through her, the masculine cadence both a promise and a threat.
“By the way, I emptied your suitcase. Coffee?”
“Coffee?” she asked, mentally stumbling as she tried to keep up with his conversation.
“Made a fresh pot.”
Fuming, she leaned down to unzip her suitcase. As he’d said, it was empty. “You have no right.” She swung around. “This is my life, my choice. Mind your own business.”
“Always this cranky before your first cup?”
How was it possible she hadn’t heard him moving around? She’d lain in bed, listening for any sound. When she was convinced he was still asleep, or better yet, that he’d left her house, she’d crept from bed and cracked open her bedroom door. The pillows on the couch were strewn haphazardly across the cushions, but there had been no sign of Kurt.
While she had showered, a mixture of emotions had cascaded over her the same way the water did. Time hadn’t helped; his rejection still rankled. More, her own foolishness stung. She wasn’t normally impulsive and now wished to heaven she hadn’t deviated from that routine.
With a sigh, Jessie had pushed away the pain and regret, letting them wash down the drain.
In their place excitement had slowly started to build as realization dawned. Today she was supposed to drive to Denver. With luck, by this time next year she’d have her own child to nurture.