Heartbeat

by Joan Johnston

  “I won’t go there,” he said.

  She was lying sprawled across the man in a way that made her aware of the size of him, of the contrast of his hardness and her softness. It felt way too good. “Jack,” she said. “You’re tearing my clothes off. Let go.”

  “No hospital,” he repeated, tightening his grasp.

  Her other breast fell free and plopped onto his chest. He made a surprised sound in his throat.

  Maggie felt the bubble of hysterical laughter building and tried to quash it. But the irony, the total ridiculousness of the situation, tickled her funny bone, and a cascade of laughter escaped.

  Kittrick’s eyes popped open, and their gazes met.

  Jack’s gray eyes appeared unfocused at first, but Maggie had to concentrate to keep from gasping at the sheer magnetism he exuded. She felt the feral danger of a man willing to fight for what he wanted—Homo sapiens at its most primal level and, some would say, its best. Maggie wasn’t inclined to agree. She preferred a thinking man who calculated his moves, rather than a savage acting on instinct. Of course, she wouldn’t object if her thinking man had a body like Jack Kittrick’s.

  Jack’s size probably helped the overall impression of strength. He was easily six-three and had the kind of rangy body she saw on the cowboys who showed up in town each spring for Fiesta San Antonio, the celebration of the Battle of San Jacinto held at La Villita along the River Walk—long-legged, limber, not much more than sinew and bone.

  Over the past few minutes she had gotten pretty well acquainted with Jack’s broad shoulders, narrow hips, and rock-hard thighs. A woman would have to be downright picky to complain. Not that she was interested. Or cared one way or the other.

  It took her a moment to realize Jack was trying to lift his head. And another moment to realize why.

  She pressed herself flatter against his chest, to conceal her nipples from view. “Yes, I’m lying practically naked on top of you,” she said, “and yes, it’s your fault.”

  Jack’s head fell back, and he groaned.

  “Mr. Kittrick.”

  “What?”

  “Let go.”

  His hand relaxed, and she pulled the T-shirt through his fingers. Which was when she realized she still had one hand caught beneath his waist and needed both hands to get back into her bra.

  “Can you lift up?” she said.

  His eyes opened, and one black eyebrow rose.

  “My arm’s caught underneath you.”

  He grunted and arched his back, which caused her hips to slide between his legs as she pulled her arm free. The situation had gone from awkward to impossible. Maggie pushed herself upright and realized Kittrick was not politely averting his eyes.

  “Enjoying the view?” she demanded. “Sure am,” he replied. “All four of them look just fine to me.”

  A laugh escaped before she could stop it, but really, this wasn’t funny. Though she was embarrassed, Maggie refused to play the flustered virgin. She stared right back into Kittrick’s eyes as she reached up under the T-shirt, straightened out her elastic lace bra, and leaned over to let the weight of her breasts slip back into place.

  “It’s a real shame,” he said.

  “What?” she snapped, her nerves getting the better of her.

  “That I have this godawful headache. Otherwise—”

  “Otherwise we would never be in this ridiculous situation in the first place,” Maggie interrupted. “I felt an obligation to you at the ballfield, Mr. Kittrick, and I’m trying to up-hold it. I’ll get you home, like I promised, but cut the crap.”

  “Crap?” he said, as though he couldn’t believe such a vulgar word had come from her genteel Southern mouth.

  “You heard me.” For a moment Maggie’s dirt-poor East Texas roots had showed. Then she was once again the professional.

  “Are we clear on what is going to happen from here on out?” she said.

  “Yes, ma’am, Ms. Wainwright,” he said. “Just get me home. We can worry about the rest of it later.”

  “Rest of what?” she asked irritably.

  “This thing between us.”

  “There is no thing—nothing—” she emphasized, in case he had missed the point, “between us, Mr. Kittrick.”

  He reached out to brush her flesh along the rip at the top of her T-shirt, and her body quivered like a plucked bowstring.

  Maggie stared at him with stricken eyes. She had been so successful keeping her sexual feelings at bay over the years, she was unprepared for how quickly Jack Kittrick was able to make her respond. Maggie hissed out a breath and conceded this just wasn’t her day.

  This morning, when Victoria had phoned to remind her not to show up at the firm picnic looking like she came from poor white trash, something inside Maggie had snapped. She had ruined her most comfortable Levi’s to make the butt-baring cut-offs, and she was going to miss the hacked-up T-shirt, which had been washed enough times to make it truly comfortable. Enough was enough.

  “Get up!” she said, grabbing Jack’s hand and yanking hard. “Let’s get this over with.”

  He came up slow, but really, it wasn’t fair how supple he looked, how graceful and powerful, coming off the ground.

  “Here’s your hat,” she said, snagging it from the ground and thrusting it brim down against Jack’s chest. “See if you can keep it on your head until we get you home.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said.

  Maggie stalked off, then realized he wasn’t following her. She turned with her fists on her hips and said, her voice as perturbed as she felt, “Do you need help? What’s the problem?”

  “I was just admiring the view.”

  Maggie said something Victoria wouldn’t have approved of.

  Jack winced as he eased his hat down onto his head, but whether from the profanity or the pain, she wasn’t sure.

  “I think I can walk on my own if we take it slow and easy,” he said.

  Maggie realized she was staring at him, at all of him, and imagining something that she hadn’t even allowed to cross her mind in years. Herself in bed with a man. In bed with Jack Kittrick.

  She turned her back on him, because she was afraid he would see too much in her eyes, and said, “Come on. Let’s get this over with.”

  Maggie could feel him behind her the whole way to the parking lot, moving with long, easy strides. Another man might have tried making conversation. He was quiet. Probably his head hurt too much for him to talk, but she could feel his eyes on her. She was aware of him in a way she hadn’t been aware of a man in a long, long time.

  Jack led her to a black Chevy pickup with two empty rifle racks in the back window. It wasn’t a designer truck, and from the looks of the pickup bed, it had seen some hard use.

  “You drive,” he said, handing her his key ring. It held two keys—one for the truck and one for something else. He wasn’t attached to much, Maggie decided. Probably a loner.

  She had to step up to get into the driver’s seat, and to her surprise, she felt Jack give her a little lift at the elbow. It was the sort of courtesy men didn’t offer in these liberated days. “Thanks,” she said.

  “You’re welcome, ma’am.” He tipped his hat by touching the brim, the way cowboys did in the movies. She found the old-fashioned gesture charming. She warned herself that Kittrick probably knew the effect he was having on her, and that a smart woman would keep her mouth shut and her eyes open until she was shed of him.

  “I was prepared to sacrifice my gears,” he said after she was out of the park and headed down East Mulberry toward the Monte Vista neighborhood, “but I see you’ve had some experience with a standard shift.”

  “I drove a truck on my grandmother’s farm in East Texas,” she said. “Old Ellie Mae had a few years on her, and she could get persnickety at times, but she taught me how to drive.”

  “I didn’t figure you for a farm girl, Ms. Wainwright. Especially not one who gets sentimental over a truck.”

  “I was speaking of my grandmo
ther,” she said, straight-faced.

  His jaw dropped.

  She laughed. “Gotcha.”

  His lips curved, and he chuckled. “I take it your grandmother and the truck were equally durable.”

  “Gram lived a good, long life. I miss her.” Maggie refused to acknowledge the rush of nostalgia she felt for the days when it had been just her and Gram on the farm at Ash Hollow. She hadn’t understood what being poor meant then. She had loved running bare-foot all day in the soft red dirt that bordered the piney woods. It wasn’t until much later that she realized nobody ran barefoot unless they couldn’t afford shoes.

  “My grandparents were gone before I got old enough to really know them,” Jack said.

  “Too bad,” Maggie said. “I wouldn’t have missed being raised by Gram for anything.”

  “What happened to your parents?”

  Maggie hesitated, then said, “They died.” It wasn’t really a lie. They might very well be dead by now. According to Gram, her father had run off when he found out her mother was pregnant, and her mother had been a bare nine months behind him. Maggie-girl was a gift, Gram had always said, a precious treasure her mother had left for Gram to discover. Gram had taught her to believe all children were treasures. But she had not. . . . A chill ran down Maggie’s spine.

  “How did we get on such a maudlin subject?” she asked brusquely.

  “You were avoiding the attraction between us,” Jack said.

  Maggie turned to stare at him and nearly rear-ended a car that had stopped abruptly at a yellow light. “You don’t give up, do you?”

  “Not when I see something I want,” Jack said. “I was disappointed when I found out you’re a Wainwright, but the more I get to know you, Maggie, the more certain I am you’re not one of them.”

  “One of them?”

  “You know, stuffy rich folks, full of themselves, hoity-toity.”

  She laughed. “Hoity-toity? I don’t think I’ve seen that word outside a book. What does it mean?”

  “My mother used it to describe people who act like they’re better than other people.”

  “And I’m not ’hoity-toity?’ ”

  He grinned. “Nope.”

  “I don’t date,” Maggie said flatly.

  “I’m not much for dating myself. I think we’re beyond that anyway, don’t you?”

  “Once I drop you off, we aren’t going to be seeing each other except across a conference table,” Maggie said firmly.

  “Dr. Hollander said I shouldn’t be alone. I have a concussion, remember? I could go into a coma and need medical attention.”

  Maggie made a disgusted sound. She knew Kittrick was manipulating her, that if he had thought he was really in any kind of danger he would have gone to the hospital on his own. But maybe not. She’d seen guys like Jack before, grown men who’d rather die than cross the threshold of a hospital as a patient.

  “Don’t you have someone who could stay with you besides me?” she asked. “A neighbor? A friend? A co-worker?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know my neighbors, and I travel so much in my work I don’t have time for friends. You’re the one I’m going to be working with. How about you?”

  “Surely there’s some woman—”

  “I’m not involved with anyone right now.”

  “Oh.”

  “You’re all I’ve got, Maggie.”

  “You don’t have me, Mr. Kittrick,” she protested.

  “Call me Jack,” he said with a smile. “I figure after spending the night together, you and me are going to be pretty good friends.”

  Maggie concentrated on the page in front of her, but the words kept blurring. She heard something, a strange sound, and froze. Somebody . . . or something . . . was at the back door of Jack’s house. Her heart beat a heavy tattoo. Slowly, silently, she uncurled her legs from the padded wooden rocking chair and set her sock-covered feet flat on the hardwood floor so she could run if she had to.

  She headed to the kitchen, flipped on the back porch light, and peered out one of the glass panes in the top half of the back door. She saw a wooden handicapped ramp beside the stairs and a half-empty bowl of cat or dog food. So Jack had a pet. Or at least, an animal he fed. Maggie wondered if the animal was what she’d just heard.

  Maggie listened, but except for the hum of the refrigerator, she heard nothing. Jack’s small, wood-frame house was a far cry from the high-rise condominium she had lived in for the past three years, where she could always hear someone beyond the walls and floor and ceiling. Here everything was so quiet.

  So maybe there wasn’t a man-eating dog at the back door. That’s what she got for reading Stephen King in a shadowy room in the middle of the night.

  Maggie rubbed her eyes and wandered back into the living room. As she settled into the rocker again, she glanced at the Cinderella watch Woody had bought her as a present their first Christmas together, when they were both still in college. She had been the poor but beautiful dreamer, Cinderella, and he had been the handsome prince who would take her away from her difficult life to live in his castle.

  It hadn’t turned out quite that way. When she and Woody had eloped during their last semester of college, his parents had cut off their son without a penny. Maggie hadn’t cared. She didn’t miss what she’d never had.

  Woody had been determined to strike it rich on his own, to prove to his parents he could manage without their money. Maggie had been equally determined to become the best, the most well-known and well-respected lawyer in the state. But they could only afford for one of them to go to law school.

  It had seemed more important that Woody make a living for them than for her to fulfill some childish dream of being so successful that her long-lost parents would be sorry they had abandoned her and come looking for her. Besides, her need-her lifelong secret wish—to prove she was someone worth knowing wasn’t fair to Gram, who had been the best mother any child could have.

  Maggie’s resentment over being left behind as Woody’s career took off had built so gradually, had sneaked up on her so stealthily, that Maggie wasn’t even aware of it. Until one day it exploded . . . with devastating consequences.

  Oh God, Maggie. You fool. You fool. You should have been grateful for what you had!

  Maggie closed her eyes. A moment later she opened them again and was back in the present. It was a trick she had learned to stave off the dark memories that always lay in wait, ready to consume her.

  Maggie traced Cinderella’s gloved hands. 1:58 A.M. Time to wake Jack again, as she had at intervals over the past twelve hours. She rose from the rocking chair in his living room and padded carefully in her stockinged feet along the slippery, polished hardwood floor to his bedroom. She was wearing one of Jack’s chambray shirts over her T-shirt and shorts to keep off the evening chill, since she hadn’t wanted to leave Jack alone long enough to go home and get what she needed to spend the night.

  She had cleared a path for herself from his living room to his bedroom through the clutter of single male paraphernalia. You could supposedly tell a lot about a person by what they surrounded themselves with, but so far all Maggie saw was a mass of contradictions.

  The saddle leather couch would have been an easy guess, but she had been surprised by the home-made wooden rocker. She had been drawn to it from the first moment she laid eyes on it.

  “My father made it,” he said. But he didn’t offer any more information, just made sure she knew where the kitchen and bathroom were and retired to his bedroom.

  His place was neater than she’d expected, but plenty dusty. Jack obviously read books, but just as obviously got distracted easily, because he had a lot of them scattered around the living room, all of which seemed to have places marked. By now she could find her way around his place in the dark, but he’d insisted she leave the hall light on so she wouldn’t run into something.

  Maggie eased Jack’s bedroom door open and let the light from the hall spill inside. The bedroom had been a sur
prise, too, since it was filled with more hand-made oak furniture like the rocker. Maggie wondered if Jack always slept as restlessly as he had for the past twelve hours. He had stripped down to a pair of gray sweatpants, and tangled up half naked in the plain white sheet, one pillow tucked under his head and the other at his feet, he looked both imposing and approachable.

  As Maggie watched, she realized the noise she had heard before, the one that had scared her, had been Jack, muttering in his sleep. She crossed to the bed and carefully sat down beside him.

  “Shh. It’s all right, Jack. You’re home. Nobody’s going to take you to the hospital.” She didn’t resist the urge to brush the damp black curls from his forehead or to soothe the racing pulse at his throat with her thumb. “Everything’s going to be all right,” she crooned.

  “Don’t shoot,” he said.

  At first, Maggie thought she’d misunderstood him. Nobody at the picnic had threatened to shoot Jack or anybody else.

  “I’ll put down my gun. Just don’t shoot,” Jack muttered.

  When he cried out in agony, Maggie jerked her hand away and leapt to her feet, staring at Jack as though she’d just discovered she’d been caressing Stephen King’s man-eating dog.

  When he began muttering again, she leaned down and heard him whisper, “Jesus. She killed the kid. I made her kill the kid.”

  Alarmed, Maggie shook him hard. “Jack! Wake up! Wake up!”

  Jack sat bolt upright, chest heaving, eyes wild. “What the hell are you doing in here?”

  “You were having a nightmare,” Maggie said.

  “I wish the hell it were!”

  Her eyes went wide with horror.

  He saw the look on her face and snarled, “Get the hell out of here! Get out! Leave me alone!”

  Maggie backed away, then turned and ran.

  Chapter 4

  Jack stayed where he was until he could get the trembling under control. When he tried to stand, his knees threatened to buckle, and he slumped back down on the edge of the bed.

  “Maggie!” he yelled at the top of his lungs. Too late he realized his headache wasn’t gone yet. He heard the ringer clang as the phone hit the floor in the living room, along with several books. “Don’t leave,” he called out. “I can explain.”