BREAKING THE RULES

by Ruth Wind

  "No way, sweetheart," he said gruffly, and put the pot on the stove, willing himself to look away from that hunger in her face. She'd fall in love. No way he could bear that – some long-twisted thing in his soul wasn't capable of accepting it. Just as soon as he thought he could, he'd end up stomping all over her.

  "I told you before I'm not your kind of man. You don't need to get all torn up in addition to everything else that's going on in your life right now."

  "You're a big, mean bear, all right," she said and he heard the amusement in her tone with surprise. "You think you are, Zeke, but you aren't."

  "I mean it, Mattie," he said and faced her squarely. Come hell or high water, he found ways to drive women away once they proved themselves fool enough to fall in love with him. He liked Mattie too much as a friend to let that happen.

  To emphasize his point, he put his coffee cup aside and settled his hands on her shoulders. Pretty, slim shoulders, fragile beneath his palms. "You're real vulnerable right now. Your fiancé betrayed you, you almost got killed and now you've had a little adventure."

  She waited, her coffee cup between her palms, her eyes as calm as a summer morning. He could smell the faint scent of soap and motel shampoo around her, and felt the heat of her skin against his hands.

  "Once you get back to normal life, you'll wonder what the hell you could have been thinking."

  "Will I?" Her voice held a seductive, whispery note.

  Zeke forgot what he meant to say, falling adrift in the seductively gentle liquid of her eyes. In their depths he saw something of himself, but stronger, all the things he might have been if only he'd had one person—

  He kissed her before he knew he would do it. Cupped her small head against his hand and bent to touch her lips with his own, lightly tasting that sensuous mouth. He closed his eyes to feel it better – the moist plumpness of unseasoned lips, flavored with coffee and sugar and something that belonged only to her. And like an exhausted man sinking with gratitude into the down of a pillow, he sank into the softness, losing himself as he explored the edges and corners, the sensitive inner edge. He suckled gently and heard her sigh as she inclined her head to take him more fully.

  A kiss. It was only a kiss. But he couldn't seem to surface, couldn't remember what urgent reason he had for not doing it. When she parted her lips, ever so slightly, he opened his mouth and found her tongue ready to dance with his own.

  And it was right, by damn. The taste of her and the easy mesh of their ways, the fit of his lips against hers and the mingling of their tongues. He held her loosely, and kissed her. And kissed her. And once again.

  A booming crack of thunder shattered the moment and Zeke jerked away. Her eyes had gone sultry, the hungriness in them a notch higher, a hunger reflected in the labored sound of his breath in his ears. "That wasn't–"

  He swore. It had been a mistake to bring her here. No way on God's green earth he could resist her for days on end. No way.

  He gritted his teeth. "I've got rules, Mattie. It's the only way I can keep things even. One of those rules is that I don't mess with good girls like you." He shook his head. "It just isn't a good idea for us."

  She nodded, her eyes wide and sad. "I understand."

  "I want you," he said, and there was relief in putting it into words. "But it would be wrong."

  "Okay."

  He backed away, unable to manage the simple acceptance in her face and what that told him about her. Life had taught her not to want things she couldn't have.

  Hating himself, he grabbed the door handle. "I've got some things to take care of outside. Make yourself at home."

  He fled, into the rain.

  * * *

  Chapter 8

  «^»

  Mattie watched him go. Left alone in the cabin, she stirred sugar carefully into her cup and sipped the painfully hot coffee, trying to burn away the trembling need he'd awakened in her. Everything shook with an infinitesimal trembling she couldn't control, didn't understand. Her spine felt like rubber, her limbs like cooked spaghetti. Elsewhere, in her breasts and low in her belly and in dark places she'd rarely named, he'd awakened a deep ache. Her skin felt too sensitive, irritated by the cloth over it. She pressed a palm against her chest, trying to ease the feeling.

  Turning, she saw Zeke through the window, heedlessly striding on those long legs through the rain and lightning, his hair darkening as it got wet, the shoulders of his white shirt soaked and showing the skin beneath. Her only comfort was that he obviously needed to work off the same restless burning that consumed her.

  I want you.

  As she watched, he picked up a fist-size rock and pitched it hard. It landed on the roof of the stable.

  Mattie sighed. It could get a bit tense if this was what they had to face while they were here.

  Then again, maybe both of them were just reacting to the intensity of the past twenty-four hours. Now it was raining, which to Mattie always seemed an emotional sort of weather. Once the sun came out, it would be easier.

  A little desire was natural under the circumstances. He worried a little too much about her fragility, but if it kept him at arm's length, maybe that was for the best. The kinds of things he stirred in her were probably better left unexamined.

  He had warned her that once she got her life back together, she would wonder what she'd ever seen in him. The truth was, she had no idea who he was, really. Not intellectually. She reacted to him in purely instinctive ways, trusting him not because of what she knew, but what she felt to be true.

  What if her instincts were wrong?

  Absently, she touched the spines of his books. This was not the collection of a casual reader, whatever he wanted her to believe. The well-read volumes covered the childhood favorites she'd teased him about, but also included classics by writers such as Shakespeare and Dante and Dickens. One whole shelf was devoted to philosophy, and another held thrillers and mysteries. Spencer was a favorite, which somehow didn't surprise her. She pulled one book out at random and flipped through the pages.

  But they didn't hold her attention. Again and again, her gaze was drawn to the man beyond the window. A man who seemed to have no job, but had managed to buy land and build a cabin on it. A man who rode a motorcycle and had a tattoo and wore to-hell-with-you hair, but read Shakespeare and Plato. A man with scars that suggested a kind of brutality most ordinary people could barely admit existed.

  Secret sorrows of all sorts lurked in those pale green eyes. Mattie wanted to free them, let them out of the darkness where they moldered and into the sun, where they'd die a natural death.

  But she knew even as she thought it, the wish was futile. If ever a man had built walls, Zeke had. She knew herself well enough to know she didn't have the kind of tools she needed to knock the walls down.

  With a sigh, she put the book back and set about making something for their dinner. The least she could do was make herself useful.

  * * *

  Dinner was a quiet affair. Mattie had managed to put together a fairly decent offering of soup and canned fruit and crackers, and they ate it silently before the fire Zeke built.

  She hadn't thought it was possible to be in the same room with someone for hours on end without speaking, but she'd never had to deal with a brooding man like Zeke before, either. Even when supper was finished and they'd cleaned up the dishes, he disappeared outside and didn't come back for quite a while, then making no comment or apology for it.

  She tried to amuse herself with a novel, but reading seemed too tame. The rain fell steadily outside, making her restless. Annoyed with Zeke for his silly brooding, restless with nothing to do, she took an oversize jacket from a hook by the door and stepped out to the porch. Steaming cup of coffee in hand, she settled in one of the chairs and gazed out at the night.

  The clouds had moved off, leaving behind a breathlessly black night. All the overused, overworked metaphors applied: it looked like black velvet studded with diamonds; like a movie star's dress; like magi
c and sequins and hope.

  An ease passed through her. The silence was unbroken by even the scurry of animals or the call of a bird. The wind whispered, water trickled from some high place, and dripped into an unseen pool.

  She smiled to herself. Kansas City, with its traffic and noise and thick air seemed a million miles away, and she was glad of it. All her life, she'd dreamed of places like this. She'd read of the English countryside or quiet groves in the mountains, or wilderness retreats, and a soft bloom of curious longing would fill her. To sit in silence like that!

  And here she was, after the strangest series of events she could imagine. A month ago, she'd been planning her wedding.

  That woman, the one who'd spent her days typing memos to department heads, her evenings tracing Byronic influences in Regency era poetry, and her weekends choosing silver patterns, seemed like a stranger. What Mattie saw about herself when she looked back from this vantage point was that she'd been sound asleep. Not living at all, just going through the motions.

  She sipped her sweet, hot coffee. Brian. Why was it so easy to see now what she should have seen then? She had never been in love with him. He'd dazzled her and charmed her; they had a good time when they went places, shared a common interest in some things. What she saw in retrospect was that their dealings with each other had always been unfailingly polite. Even the few times they'd actually made love had been neat and orderly, with the proper preparations and the lights turned low. Even the right music on in the background.

  Mattie bit her lip. It was Zeke that made her old life seem so vapid. It was as if she'd been walking around in a black-and-white world until he walked into the café that morning and shown her Technicolor. The sound track of her old life was a careful minuet. Zeke brought with him some roaring, loud rock and roll.

  How could a person ever go back?

  She wouldn't. Whatever happened after all of this, she wouldn't return to Kansas City. The sleepwalker had awakened, and as painful as it had been to cut her hair, the symbolic shearing away somehow made her feel freer to choose a new life when—

  When what? When Brian was safely in jail? Maybe. When this was all over. That was as much as she could manage for now.

  A light shone in the darkness – a flashlight Zeke carried from the small shed he said contained a sauna. He took his time, the ease of his attitude evident in the lazy, long-legged way he crossed the clearing. "Hey, Strider," she said when he gained the porch steps.

  "Strider?"

  "Lord of the Rings," she said. "Surely you've read Tolkien."

  He clicked off the flashlight and smiled. "Sure."

  Seeing that smile, Mattie felt her breath leave her on a sigh of relief. "Does the sauna always improve your mood that much?"

  "I reckon it does."

  "You might have invited your guest along," she said lightly.

  "Sorry, Miss Mary," he drawled. "But it was you I had to get away from."

  The words stung, though she tried not to let them. "I didn't ask to come here," she said quietly. "You insisted."

  "I know, and I don't regret it." He leaned on the rail nearby her; she could feel his extraordinary warmth along her knee. "But the whole point is to keep you safe until we figure out what to do, and the way I was feeling this afternoon wasn't going to get that done. You understand?"

  She glared at him through the darkness. "I'm not nearly as fragile as you think I am, Zeke."

  He shook his head, and reached into his shirt pocket for a cigarette. "I never said you were fragile. Matter of fact, I think you're damned brave." He bent over his lighter and a flare of orange cast deep shadows over the angles of his face. "You're also a good girl and I'm willing to respect that."

  He had so dazzled her at first, she'd been unable to respond to these comments in the past. "I'm not a girl," she said, standing. "And I almost out-hustled you at pool, so I can't be that sweet."

  "I don't mean anything bad by it, Miss Mary," he said, and there was amusement in his voice. "You're honest and nice and trustworthy."

  She cocked her head. "Does that mean you're mean and crooked and untrustworthy?"

  "Maybe."

  "Then what the hell am I doing here at all?"

  He laughed. "Okay, sometimes I'm a good guy."

  "And sometimes," she said with narrowed eyes, "I'm not such a nice girl."

  "Don't tempt me," he said, going still. "Me on a good day and you on a bad one still adds up to a bear and a mouse."

  The growl in those words, the danger in that promise finally brought her to her senses. "You're right," she said. "If we're through parrying, I'd like to get some sleep."

  * * *

  He insisted she take the bed. He'd make a pallet on the floor. Mattie protested, vehemently. And Zeke steadfastly ignored her.

  It panicked her just a little. She didn't want to sleep in his bed, on his pillow, with the smell of him, the imprint of his body all around her, when he'd made it very, very plain there would be nothing between them. It would drive her crazy.

  But she lost the fight. He was simply, calmly, cheerfully immovable. She picked up the sleeping bag and threw it at him. "Fine, then," she said, taking pleasure in the solid thunk of the bag against his head.

  He laughed. "Chill out, girl."

  "Woman," she muttered, turning back to the bed. Under where the sleeping bag had been was a thick blanket, printed with horses. She chuckled, touching a rearing stallion that had obviously provided the model for his tattoo. "Sure you don't want your horse blankie?" she asked over her shoulder.

  He was tugging off his boots, but spared a grin in her direction. "It was a present." The way he said it, she knew it was a woman. Some other woman that had lost out in the struggle for Zeke Shephard's heart. There were probably dozens of them, Mattie thought with a scowl, shedding her own shoes.

  "Which came first, the tattoo or the blanket?"

  "Tattoo. I got it when I was fifteen. Got drunk with my friends and went into Jackson. One of the many times I ran away from home." He spread the couch cushions on the braided rug in front of the fireplace and shook the sleeping bag out over it. "Lasted two months, that time, though."

  Mattie sat on the bed, watching him. Firelight caught in the waves of his hair as he unbuttoned his shirt. "You want to give me a minute of privacy here, Miss Mary? I'm not gonna make a habit of sleeping in my jeans."

  Dutifully, she turned away, only now becoming aware of the intimacy of these surroundings when it came to things like dressing and undressing. She could wear her tank top and jeans to bed, she supposed, but getting in and out of them might prove a bit troublesome.

  She heard a rustle, the clink of something in his pockets as his jeans hit the floor. "All right," he said after another minute. "I'm decent."

  Mattie turned back to find him safely ensconced in the sleeping bag before the fire, his chest bare, his arms comfortably tucked under his head. A bright shock of need rippled through her – and the hunger was back, wild and hot.

  Irritably, she dug through her tote and dragged out her tank top and shorts. For an instant, she considered slipping outside to change, but it was too cold. "Now if you'll afford me some privacy, Mr. Shephard?"

  It was his turn to shift. Hastily, Mattie shed her jeans, all too aware of the sound the zipper made as it slid down, and shimmied into her shorts. Turning her back to Zeke, she yanked off her T-shirt, shivering a little at the wash of cool air on her skin. For one long, agonizing minute, she wondered if she ought to keep her bra on, just for the sake of modesty, but it would be miserably uncomfortable. What woman didn't take off a bra with a sigh of relief at the end of a day?

  It felt as if it took forever, felt as if it took her a hundred minutes to undo the clasp, another fifty to slip it from her shoulders and discard it, another four hundred years that she stood there naked to the waist with a half-naked Zeke behind her. She peeked over her shoulder.

  He had shifted to the way he was before, his hands clasped behind his head, the g
reen eyes glittering with something dangerous and dark. Lazily, he smiled. "Told you I'm no nice guy."

  Mattie clasped her arms over her breasts and glared at him. "Turn over right now or I swear I'll—"

  He lifted up on one elbow, his pagan hair falling around his smoothly rounded shoulders, his expression even darker. "Or you'll what?"

  She spun around and grabbed her shirt, her spine rippling with the caress of his eyes. With a yank, she tugged the shirt over her head and turned around. "You're a real son of a bitch," she said.

  "Miss Mary!" he said mockingly. "I had no idea you could talk like that."

  Furiously, she picked up her clothes, bending to retrieve her jeans and stuff them into the tote. "If the shoe fits…"

  "I told you," he said, the teasing dropping away. "I told you."

  "So you did." She scrambled under the horse blanket and leaned over to blow out the candle. "Good night, Zeke."

  His voice was a slow, dark drawl. "'Night, Miss Mary."

  * * *

  Zeke woke just before dawn to a chorus of bird song. He heard the birds before he opened his eyes and knew instantly where he was.

  Home.

  Slowly, he stretched in his cocoon of a sleeping bag, feeling the deep relaxed pull of his muscles after a good sauna and a good night's sleep.

  As was his habit here, he opened his eyes and looked around slowly, thankful for each tiny thing illuminated by the gold bar of early-morning sun that broke through the windows. Grateful for the pine walls and floor, for the good propane stove in the corner, for the fireplace that had given him such fits as he built it, but that now worked like a dream. Yeah, whatever they took, this was home. He left it often, but always came back.

  From his vantage point on the floor, all he could see was the top of Mattie's glossy head, pointing at him at an angle. A spray of hair fanned over the edge of the mattress. A restless sleeper.