Mercury Rising. Christine Rimmer

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       Chapter Three

       J ane had picked the ripest tomatoes. They waited in a basket on the porch steps. She’d pulled up a bucketful of carrots, shaking the fragrant black soil off of them and sticking them just inside the back door, ready to clean up later, when she was done outside for the day.

      For about thirty-five minutes, she’d been squatting among the rows, digging up persistent dandelions and other irritating weeds. Her back was feeling the strain.

      With a small groan, she stood, pulling off her grimy gardening gloves, dropping them at her feet. Sweat had collected under her straw hat, so she skimmed it off and raked her hand back through her unruly hair, letting the slight afternoon breeze cool her off a little. She grabbed the boat neckline of her old shirt and fanned it. It felt wonderful, that cool air flowing down her shirt. Then she put her hand at the base of her spine and rubbed a little.

      Oh, yes. Much better….

      “Jane.”

      She froze. She didn’t have to turn and look to know who it was. She knew his voice, would have known it anywhere. Deep and soft and rough, all at the same time, the voice she sometimes heard calling her in her dreams.

      In her dreams, she always called back, Yes, oh yes! And sometimes, in her dreams, he found her and took her in his arms. Just before he kissed her, the dream would fade. And then, usually, she would wake. She would stare at the ceiling and fight the urge to go to the window, to see if the lights were on at his house.

      She hadn’t heard him come through the back gate. How long had he watched her?

      Her legs felt kind of shaky. And a flush crept up her cheeks. But she couldn’t stand there, looking off toward the back fence forever.

      He had to be faced.

      She turned. He was waiting maybe fifteen feet away, not far from her back porch. In those wonderful, deliciously frightening silver eyes of his, she could see what he planned to say to her.

      She supposed she had known it was coming. She opened her mouth, to get it over with, to tell him no before he even got a chance to ask the question. But she shut it without speaking.

      Something had happened in his face. Something tender and vulnerable, something that yearned as she yearned.

      All right, whatever he felt for her deep in his secret heart, he was going to have to get over it. Just as she fully intended to get over him. Cade Bravo was not Rusty Jenkins—thank God. But he was close enough. A wild-hearted Bravo man, a lady-killer who lived the gambler’s life, dangerous to love for any woman.

      But especially for a woman like Jane who’d let love—or desire, or lust or whatever you wanted to call it—almost annihilate her once and had sworn never to let anything like that happen again, a woman who had a nice, stable life now and was not in the market for anything even remotely resembling a tumultuous affair.

      What Jane sought in a man, Cade Bravo didn’t have.

      And yet, to be fair to him, she had to admit he’d handled himself with courtesy and tact. For months, he had kept his distance. Yes, she’d known he watched her. But how could she blame him for that, when she was doing the same thing herself? Watching him right back, wishing it might be different…

      He’d done all the right things whenever they ended up at the same party or get-together. He’d let her know he was interested. But he hadn’t pushed her. The minute she’d made her reluctance clear, he had backed off.

      And now, when he was finally making a real move, he had a right to a little courtesy from her. He deserved to be treated with respect.

      Nervously she fingered the brim of her straw hat, aware of the moisture between her breasts and beneath her arms, of the way her hair clung to the back of her neck, of the bead of sweat that was sliding down her temple, almost to her cheekbone now. “Listen.” She lifted one hand, carefully, and wiped away that bead of sweat. “Would you like to go inside? I’ve got some iced tea in the fridge. I could maybe even dig up a beer, if you’d prefer that.”

      Those silver eyes regarded her. They saw down into the depths of her. They saw things she wished they didn’t.

      “Inside?” he asked softly. The one word meant a hundred things, most of them sexual, all of them dangerous.

      Too late to back out now. She bent, picked up her dirty gloves. “Yes. What do you say?”

      He took a moment to answer. She found herself watching his mouth—the mouth she never quite got to kiss in her dreams. The mouth, she reminded herself sternly, that she had better start forgetting about. And soon.

      “Yeah,” he said at last. “Iced tea sounds great.”

      Another silence, between them. A silence that felt like a standoff. She wanted him to just turn and go up the three steps to her back porch, go on in ahead of her. She didn’t want to have to approach him, to move past him, to lead the way, with him at her back, watching.

      But of course, he wouldn’t go ahead of her. It was her house, her responsibility to show a first-time guest inside.

      “Well,” she said, and forced her feet to move.

      Neither of them seemed capable of looking away. She advanced and he just stood there. And then, when she came even with him, she closed her eyes, briefly, breaking the hold of his gaze. She moved by, went up the steps. He followed. His tread was light, but she felt every footfall, pressing on her, in some deep, private place. She paused to pick up her basket of tomatoes, to drop her gloves at the edge of the step. Then she went on, pulling open the door and standing back.

      He went in, and she followed, onto the service porch where her washer and dryer and laundry supplies lined one wall and her bucket of dirty carrots waited on the edge of the doormat to be cleaned.

      The porch half bath was through the door to her right. She wanted to go in there, rinse off her sweating face, run a comb through her hair. But no. Not right now, not with him standing here, waiting. Better to show him on in first.

      She had dirt on her shoes. “Hold on a second…”

      He said nothing, just stood to the side a little and watched as she set down the tomatoes, shucked off her gardening clogs, got rid of her slightly grimy socks, tossing them in the wicker laundry basket on top of the dryer. Her pale feet seemed very bare—defenseless, without her socks. A few evenings ago, she’d given herself a long, lovely pedicure, buffing and pumicing and stroking clear polish on her toenails at the end.

      She despised herself right now because she was glad that she had.

      Swiftly she slipped on a pair of sandals and picked up the basket again. “Okay.” Her voice was absurdly breathy and urgent. “This way.” She moved ahead again, opened the inner door and went through. He followed.

      They entered what she thought of as the family room. Bookshelves lined the walls, the blind eye of a television stared from a corner and the furniture was a little bit worn and very comfortable. She took him through the open doorway to the kitchen and gestured at the bay window and the round oak table in front of it. “Make yourself comfortable.” She set the tomatoes on the counter. “And if you’d give me one minute?”

      “Sure.”

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