Into the Fire - Anne Stuart [63]
Her face was pale, and she had circles under her beautiful gray eyes. And she was looking at him as if he were a cross between the devil incarnate and Prince Charming. He could have told her which one he was. He’d tried to convince her what a monster he was. For some reason he didn’t want to try anymore.
The garage was warm—heat blasting from the corner fans. He still didn’t know why he’d ended up sabotaging her car at the last minute. If she wanted to go he should let her. Let her get on with her life. Let them both get on with life. But in the end he couldn’t do it. Maybe because it wasn’t the end.
She was still looking at him, both hopeful and frightened. Those wide gray eyes of hers were absurd—no grown woman should look quite so vulnerable. She was a little too thin, but he could feed her up. She was a little too nervous, and he’d done everything he could to perpetuate that.
And she was a little too irresistible. He should have been doing everything he could to scare her away, push her away, drive her away. Instead he’d done just the opposite.
He walked past her, careful not to touch her, and headed toward the front wall of the garage. He knew exactly what he had in the CD changer, and he punched a couple of buttons. A second later music filled the room, like a blanket of sound that drowned out any possibility of conversation, and he turned back to her.
She’d turned even paler in the harsh light of the garage. It was a cheap shot, and he knew it, and he should have been ashamed of himself. But he wasn’t.
U2 filled the room, and suddenly he was back twelve years ago, on a one-way path to disaster, with a trembling virgin in his arms. And that trembling virgin was looking at him right now, remembering that song.
He moved slowly, so as not to scare her, but she’d gotten brave in the last few hours. When he reached out for her she didn’t flinch away, and when he pulled her into his arms she went without hesitation, putting her arms around his neck, resting her head against his shoulder, as they moved to the music.
He closed his eyes and danced with her, and he could see the old gym at the Marshfield School, tarted up with crepe paper and black lights. He should have taken her to that dance, should have had the balls to ask her. But then she’d been dating some purebred jock, a clone to Paul, and she never would have gone.
But right now she settled her body against his like a lazy kitten, and she let him move her to the music, slowly, rocking, barely dancing in the dimly lit garage.
He wanted her, craved her, more than coffee and cigarettes, more than the last drink he’d had five years ago, more than a free conscience. He needed her, and the more he fought it the stronger that need grew, until it threatened to destroy him.
He could drive her away from him—it would be easy enough. The song was almost over, another CD would flip onto the changer, and then he’d tell her he loved her, and his life would be over.
He had one chance to save himself. One chance to drive her away before it was too late for him.
He stopped moving and put his hand under her chin, tilting her face up to his. Her eyes were bright in the darkness, and she had a soft, blissed-out look on her face. And he could come just from looking down at her.
But he had to get her out of there. Last-minute sanity reared its ugly head. So he said the one thing he knew would drive her away.
“Get in the back of the car.”
He waited for her outrage, for her to shove him away and run off. It would take him five minutes to put the air back in her tires, and then he’d take off, so he wouldn’t have to see her again, and he’d be safe.
She looked up at him, her face pale, her mouth, her gorgeous mouth, tremulous. She stepped back from him, out of his arms.
“Yes,” she said.
15
Dillon couldn’t believe his ears. But she turned and walked away from him, walked over to the old Cadillac, and she looked like she had when she was sixteen and he’d wanted her badly enough to risk going to jail. Wanted her badly enough to almost kill someone who hurt