Fragile

by Shiloh Walker

  Damn, where in the hell is an interruption when you need one? she thought irritably. A sardonic little voice in her head said, Chicken. To that voice, Devon thought back, Damn right.

  She’d meant it when she told Luke Rafferty he was a complication she didn’t need in her life. She’d meant it, even though she wished she wasn’t such a fricking coward. Devon just didn’t know if she was ready to handle the ups and downs that came with anything more than a casual friendship. Casual friendships—that was all she had. And it was damn lonely, too.

  Then you need to do something about it.

  Before she could talk herself out of it, she looked Luke square in the eye and said, “Yeah, I’ve been dodging you.”

  He blinked, a little taken aback by her honest response. “Do I take that to mean you changed your mind?” he asked, his gray eyes narrowing on her face.

  “I don’t know. Yes. No—” Devon blew out a breath, feeling like a fool. And a coward. Damn it, she liked this guy. He was funny, he made her smile, and the way he was with kids just totally melted her heart. But she was too much of a coward to do anything about it. Shuffling her feet, she shoved her hands into the pockets of her blazer and said, “Yes, I’d changed my mind. Then I changed it back. Right now I’m kind of caught in the in-between.”

  Luke reached up, brushed a strand of her hair away from her face. His hand lingered, and Devon could have sworn electricity jumped between them, just from that simple touch. He felt it, too. She could see it in the way his eyes darkened, the way he hissed in a breath. His body changed, too, tensing, and from the corner of her eye, she could see his other hand close into a fist. The hand that had brushed her hair back from her face slid backward, curving around her neck. “We really shouldn’t keep ignoring this, Devon. It’s not going away.”

  She glanced up and down the hall, but it didn’t seem as though anybody had even noticed them. Softly, she said, “I don’t think I’m the type for anything casual, Luke. But I’m a mess. You need to know that. I can’t do casual, but I don’t know if I can handle not casual, either.”

  Reaching up with his free hand, he braced it on the vending machine at her back, leaning in. His long, rangy body seemed to surround her, and she waited for the panic to kick in. A guy couldn’t stand this close to her without making her freak out—at least on the inside. She’d learned how to bury that fear so it wasn’t so readily apparent. Weakness attracted predators, and Devon had learned how to hide her weaknesses.

  But the panic never really came. Her heart skipped a beat or two, and her breath seemed to lodge in her throat for just a second, but she didn’t feel the urge to tear away from him screaming, either.

  Big step for her.

  “You’re never going to know if you don’t give it a chance,” he murmured. “Give us a chance. But since we’re being honest here, you probably need to know I don’t think of casual when I see you.”

  A smile tugged at the edge of her lips. “So what do you think when you see me?” she asked curiously.

  “You. Just you.” His head dipped, his lips just a breath away.

  The sound of a crying baby intruded, and Luke stiffened, pulled back. A rueful grin curved his mouth, and he muttered, “Damn the timing.” He straightened and stood there, watching her with those intense, insightful eyes. “Have dinner with me tonight.”

  Bad idea! the cautious part of her brain screeched.

  But for once, the other voice was louder, and Devon found herself replying, “I’d love to.”

  FIVE

  LUKE knew he’d been this nervous before.

  Patching up a buddy under a hail of gunfire. Disarming a bomb. Carrying a crying, screaming hostage away from a building as it exploded behind them. Delivering a baby while the mother was in the middle of a heart attack—done that, too, and that kind of situation could get dicey fast. Yeah, he’d been nervous before. Intense situations weren’t anything new to him.

  But he was pretty damn sure he hadn’t ever been this nervous just about taking a woman out.

  Of course, Devon wasn’t just any woman. He’d known that the first time he’d seen her. The first time he’d met her had been after he’d been forced to call Social Services because a patient’s mom refused to stop breastfeeding her baby—and the mom had been doing some serious drugs. Devon had come in, two cops trailing along behind her, and she had taken the baby, gently but firmly telling the mom that unless she got clean, she wouldn’t get her baby back.

  The woman had lunged at Devon, and Devon hadn’t even blinked. The woman had nerves of steel. She was also soft and sweet, and she smelled better than he’d thought any woman could smell. And Luke was partial to the feminine, delicate scent of a lady. Those big, green gold eyes pulled him in every time, and he suspected he could get lost in them.

  Lost in her.

  “I don’t think I’m the type for anything casual, Luke.” Hell, if she had any inkling how decidedly not casual he felt about her, she just might run away screaming. She might end up doing that anyway.

  He knew he made her nervous and that wasn’t helping his state of mind, either.

  Another minute ticked by as he sat in her driveway, brooding and feeling like a fool. You going to go get her or just sit out here?

  “Sitting right here sounds pretty good,” he muttered.

  His cell phone started to vibrate, the sound of Don Henley crooning out the first words of “Hotel California” filling the air. He grabbed at the distraction with a rush of relief that left him feeling even more a coward.

  The number on the readout was a familiar one, and he flipped open the phone and said, “Hey, Quinn.”

  “Hey back. Might be coming into town in a day or two. You got room for me?”

  “Always.” He leaned his head back and wondered what his twin would think if he told Quinn he was sitting in the driveway of a woman and scared to death to go knock on her door.

  Apparently he didn’t need to say anything. “You’re off about something. What’s going on?” Quinn asked.

  “Off?” Luke laughed a little. Yeah. He was off, to put it mildly. “I’m getting ready to go out on a date. Sitting in the driveway of the lady’s house.”

  “Am I keeping you?”

  Luke shook his head. It never occurred to him to feel stupid doing that in a phone conversation, not with Quinn. Quinn would know.

  “Okay, so if it ain’t me, what’s the problem?”

  “The woman,” Luke replied, blowing out a harsh breath.

  “Well, I have to assume you like her, or you wouldn’t still be sitting in her driveway. So what’s the deal?”

  Still unable to figure out exactly how to explain that he was scared to death of a woman who stood five foot four and probably didn’t weigh 110 pounds soaking wet, Luke was quiet for so long Quinn ended up laughing on the other end of the line.

  “Get your ass out of the car, Luke. It ain’t like she’s going to bite—and if she does, you’d like it anyway. Seeing as how you’ve got your head in a mess about some lady, I might hold off coming in for a while.”

  “You don’t need to do that—”

  Quinn snorted. “Trust me, I don’t need to see you mooning over a woman, either. As entertaining as it might be for a few minutes, it would get old fast for me.” Then Quinn disconnected, and Luke threw the phone down on the console.

  “What in the hell am I getting into?” he muttered. But he turned off the car and climbed out, his long body unfolding. Rubbing a hand over his jaw, he grimaced as he felt the stubble. He’d shaved that morning, but maybe he should have shaved before he picked her up.

  At least his clothes were something other than worn, wrinkled, or bloodstained scrubs.

  He lingered by the car for another minute, ran his hand through his hair, and basically just tried to get a grip. Then he started thinking about just what he’d like to grip, and the need inside him boiled back up to the surface.

  One little slip of a woman, and she’d made him feel like an
awkward, gawky teenage boy. Blowing out a breath, he muttered, “Enough, already.”

  Resolute, he headed up the old-fashioned brick sidewalk. It was edged on either side by a narrow strip of flowers. They bloomed in a riot of colors, and beyond the flowers, the lawn was a rich, deep shade of green. She put a lot of time into the house; that was for certain.

  It was a pretty house, an old-fashioned stone cottage with a sloping roof, a porch about the size of a postage stamp, and stained glass windows on either side of the oak door. He rang the doorbell, and the door opened so fast, he had a feeling she must have seen him loitering out in the driveway like an idiot.

  Damn. Feeling a little dumbstruck, he stood on the tiny porch and stared. Once more, her hair was pulled up, but instead of a knot or spilling out from one of those clips, she had pulled it into a loose ponytail, leaving a riot of curls falling down her back. Skinny, almost nonexistent straps held up a filmy dress that seemed to change color between green and gold as she moved aside and gestured inside. “You want to come in for a little while?”

  Yeah. How about you show me your bedroom? he thought. It was a miracle he didn’t actually say it out loud, because his brain wasn’t functioning very well just then. No surprise, because it felt like all the blood had drained south. “Sure.” Good. You managed to say a word; now try a few more.

  “Nice house.” Oh, yeah. That’s going to impress her.

  But she smiled, a wide, happy smile that brought out a dimple just to the left of her mouth. Luke felt his knees go just a little weak. That smile could lay a strong man out, he thought.

  “Thanks. I love this place.”

  Dragging his attention away from her face took a lot of work, but he did. If he didn’t, he’d just grab her and kiss her senseless. All over.

  It was a cute house. He followed her into a living room painted a deep shade of red. It wasn’t a huge space, but the high ceiling helped. High on the left wall there was a weird little open-aired window, and through it, he could see what looked like an upstairs hallway. A fireplace, the real kind, not some gas deal, took up the eastern wall. She had bookshelves galore, a decent-sized TV, and a plush ivory leather couch with fat, comfy-looking cushions. Flanking the fireplace was a huge chair and a table-sized ottoman. There was a book resting on the ottoman.

  A smile curled his lips. He could picture her, real easy, sitting in that chair and reading while a fire blazed away next to her. Or better . . . forget the book, take her out of the chair, and lay her down on the floor in front of that fireplace. Not directly on the floor, though; the stones in front of the fireplace looked like slate, too damn hard for her pretty little body. A rug.

  A nice, warm bearskin rug type of thing. Luke wasn’t the bearskin-rug type, but he could see the appeal of that particular fantasy just then.

  Focus on something besides getting her naked, he thought sourly. He had to; otherwise, it was going to be a long, uncomfortable evening. He crossed over and studied the titles on her bookshelves.

  The Complete Encyclopedia of Serial Killers.

  The History of Our Nation.

  Lord of the Rings.

  A slew of what looked like romances. A few fantasy and sci-fi books he’d read himself. And some mysteries. There were books by Stephen King, two or three different versions of the Bible, ten different books from The Complete Idiot’s Guide series. He spied a couple of thinner books and started to laugh, reaching out to pull one off the shelves to stare at a familiar cover.

  “Bunnicula?” he asked, as he turned to grin at her.

  A smile teased the corners of her mouth, and she shrugged. “Hey, a vampire bunny has more appeal than you’d think.”

  Luke chuckled. “Yeah, I know. I had a copy of this when I was a kid. I read it to pieces.”

  “Then obviously, you have excellent taste.”

  “And you have very eclectic taste. You read all of these?”

  Devon rolled her eyes. “Yeah. And these are just my keepers.” She gestured to the hallway behind her. “I’ve got an office that has twice as many books in it, and most of those I haven’t read yet.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  Wrinkling her nose, she said, “No. I’m not. And that’s probably a conservative estimate.” An awkward silence fell. Devon broke it by giving him a rather forced-looking smile. “So, do you want a drink or should we just go?”

  Instead of answering her, he caught a handful of her hair, combing his fingers through the wild curls. “You ever wear your hair down?”

  “Ahhh . . . no. Not usually. Gets in the way.”

  “Way of what?”

  How in the hell could she get turned on just from him fiddling with her hair? Devon wondered. But there was no mistaking it. She was definitely getting turned on, and the only thing he was doing was winding a curl around his finger and staring at her hair. “Everything. Gets in my face, gets hot.” Grimacing, she added, “Plus I’ve had my share of parents or pissed-off kids pull my hair. Harder to do when I keep it put up.”

  “Hmmm.”

  He wasn’t staring at her hair anymore. Devon’s heart started to pound in her throat as his gaze fastened on her mouth. “I want to kiss you,” he said softly.

  A hot flush rushed to her cheeks. Staring into his sexy gray eyes, she murmured, “I’m fine with that.” More than fine, actually. By the time he pressed his lips to hers, she was ready to beg for him to do just that. His lips were warm and so much softer than they looked as he nibbled her lower lip and then slid his tongue along the curve. She opened for him and slid her arms up over his shoulders.

  But when she went to press against him, Luke eased back. Every instinct in his body was rumbling, and he was primed to take, take, take. If it wasn’t Devon, that’s exactly what he would have done. Staring at her, he cupped her cheek in his hand, swept his thumb across the satin-smooth skin. Her lips were swollen already, red from his, and as he stared at her, a soft, shaky little sigh drifted from her. In his arms, her body was hot and pliant, melting against his own, and there was no doubt he could have her.

  He’d been eying her for months, and the past few weeks, they’d been dancing around each other, wanting just this. She wanted it every bit as much as he did.

  But all those months of watching her, wanting her, Luke had come to know Devon Manning just enough to know he wanted to know more. A lot more. A few weeks, a few dates, a few rolls in the sheets, however much fun they’d be, it wasn’t going to be enough for him. This was going somewhere, and until he had a good idea of where, he wasn’t going to scare her off.

  So instead of lowering his lips to hers and figuring out how to convince her out of that sexy little dress, he brushed a kiss across one bare shoulder. The scent of her flooded his head, hot woman and honeysuckle—damn, what a potent combination. “We better go.”

  DEVON wasn’t a total incompetent when it came to men. Maybe a little inexperienced, but she was honest enough that she could admit she had more than a few personal hang-ups about sex. Considering what her aunt’s pedophile husband had done to her, it wasn’t a big surprise that she got a little wigged out when people intruded on her personal space.

  Still, she did like men. A lot. She just hadn’t found one she liked enough to consider trying to work past those hang-ups with sex, not until Luke.

  Emotionally, she was mostly okay, and she occasionally went out on a casual date. But the problem with Luke was that nothing about him seemed casual. Not even for a moment. Devon had spent most of the day worrying herself sick, convinced he was either going to realize what a basket case she was, or that she’d be too nervous to manage any kind of coherent conversation.

  But none of that happened.

  Being with Luke was amazingly easy. Part of her had been braced for the fact that tonight wouldn’t be much different from any other date, where she sat with a frozen smile and pretended she was enjoying herself—or maybe she would enjoy herself. Until he touched her. Then she’d freeze, panic, pull away, and totally f
reak him out.

  It had happened before, and she always ended up feeling so damned pathetic. She wasn’t looking forward to repeating the experience with Luke. But on a different level, she would have almost welcomed either of those happening. It would give her that much more reason to back away from him.

  Devon didn’t have to pretend to enjoy herself, and she didn’t have to force herself to smile at him even once. The smiles, the laughter, they came so easily, it was like she’d known him most of her life.

  When he touched her, she didn’t feel that instinctive need to flinch away, and she found herself relaxing around him in a manner that was just not normal for her.

  More than relaxing, she was enjoying herself. A lot. Devon hadn’t laughed so hard in years. Maybe never. “You’ve got to be making that up,” she accused.

  He followed her up the walkway to her house, and she turned to see him giving her a wounded look. “Now, would I make up something like that? Hell, you’ve seen some of the Einsteins in the world. Why is it so surprising a woman would give a kid a suppository by mouth instead of the right way?”

  She wrinkled her nose and shuddered. “Oh, gross.”

  Luke just shrugged. “Hey, you ought to hear some of the foreign-body stories I could tell you. And being in a college town? It’s even worse.”

  Her brow creased. Leery, she repeated, “Foreign bodies?”

  He grinned. “You probably don’t want to know. People can do very, very bizarre things—and they don’t even have the excuse of being a kid.”

  Now that, Devon understood. She’d had to go to many a home to speak with parents when their kids got hurt doing the normal kid thing. Kids did get hurt, and sometimes, kids hurt themselves in a purely innocent manner, but so often it made neighbors or teachers concerned. As unpleasant as it was, and as much as parents hated it, Devon would rather make those visits than visit the hospital because nobody reported the abuse.

  That sobering thought had the smile on her face dying. A hand touched her lightly on the shoulder, a quick, innocuous touch. She looked at Luke to find him studying her. “Where did you go?”