Shadows At Sunset - Anne Stuart [63]
He’d never expected it to go that far. She was calling his bluff when she climbed on top of him, but he hadn’t been bluffing. He’d intended just to take her for a little ride, get her hot and bothered and leave it at that. But things had spiraled out of control so quickly he hadn’t been able to stop. Hadn’t wanted to.
He found himself grinning wryly in the shadowy kitchen. He needed to learn not to underestimate Jilly Meyer. Even more particularly, not to underestimate the effect she had on him.
He was on his second cup of coffee, sitting in the peaceful stillness of the kitchen, when Rachel-Ann walked in, looking a hell of a lot livelier than he’d ever seen her. She halted in the doorway when she saw him sitting there, and he suspected that if she’d known he was there she would have gone in the opposite direction.
“There’s coffee,” he said.
“I’ve already had two cups.” She stayed in the doorway, frozen.
“Have another.”
“It’ll make me too nervous.”
Good point, he thought. She was already a visible bundle of nerves. “Suit yourself,” he said.
It was the first time he’d ever been alone with her, and it was oddly unsettling.
“Nervous has its uses,” she said, coming into the room and pouring herself a mug of coffee. She sat down opposite him and he watched in fascination as she emptied huge amounts of sugar into the mug so that it must have been a thick, sweet sludge. “Anyway, I wanted to talk to you.”
“Okay.” He leaned back in the kitchen chair, waiting.
“What did you do to my sister?”
It was the last thing he expected her to ask. “What do you mean?”
“I saw her driving away from here when I came home this morning and she didn’t even see me. She had Roofus with her and she was crying.”
“When was this? I thought she was still asleep.”
“Not more than five minutes ago. What did you do to her?”
“Not a damned thing,” he said, unblinking. He wasn’t about to tell his little sister what he’d been up to on the living room sofa. “Besides, do you really think she needs you looking out after her? She’s an adult—she can make her own choices.”
“She’s not as invulnerable as she likes to think she is. She’s strong, but she can be wounded. Probably because she makes the mistake of caring too much about people.”
“Maybe you should have taken that into account before you slept with her husband,” he drawled.
Not the way to endear himself to his long-lost sister, he thought belatedly as her green eyes turned hard with anger. “I forgot,” she said, “you’re privy to everyone’s little escapades, aren’t you?”
“Is that what you call it? An escapade?”
“She already knows all about it. She’s forgiven me.”
“Of course she has. Didn’t you just define her problem? She cares too much. It doesn’t matter that you betrayed her on one of the most elemental levels—she still loves you and wants to protect you. Even when you’re intent on killing yourself as speedily as possible and there’s not a damned thing she can do to save you.” His voice was surprisingly bitter, and he picked up his coffee cup, waiting for her inevitable explosion.
She didn’t explode. In fact, the anger seemed to have left her, and she was staring at him in a kind of wonder. “Interesting,” she murmured. “Who would have thought it?”
“Who would have thought what?” He was sounding more and more irritated, and he didn’t care. Jilly irritated him, with her bleeding heart and her vulnerability. Rachel-Ann irritated him with her death wish.
And most of all, he irritated himself for even giving a damn what happened to either of them.
“You care about her,” Rachel-Ann said. “Better not let Jackson know. He wouldn’t like having his chief henchman having feelings about Jilly. He considers his children completely expendable.”
“I’m his legal advisor, not his henchman.”
“Same thing,” she interrupted airily.
“And I don’t care about her any more than I care about her damned dog. I just don’t like to see people betrayed by people they care about. And, for that matter,