Authors: Blush
"Could you put that away, Bridget,
please, "
she implored. "I can't think straight with it jangling. "
"Oh, ohhhhhkay, " the little girl said, sighing. The box landed on the floor with a plunk, went blessedly silent, and was summarily forgotten as Bridget laid claim to the stuffed animal. "I just wish he'd come back so I could tell him how much I like my hippo. "
"Feel free to tell me, Bridge. I'm right here. "
Gus's head came up with a snap that made the room spin. She nearly lost her grip on her papers and had to squish them in her lap to keep from dropping them. Jack Culhane was standing in the doorway to her bedroom, big as life and looking infuriatingly healthy, a bemused smile on his face.
His color had returned, she noted rather cynically, taking in the deep golden tones of his skin and the flush that rose from his throat and ruddied his jaw. The cast was off his shoulder, but his forehead was still bandaged. Other than that, he didn't look like a man who'd had a recent brush with death. And was due for another one, if she had her way.
The sight of him brought Bridget's entire body off the ground. The hippo went flying. "Jack!" she squealed, jack-knifing to her feet and making a run for him.
"Hey, wait a minute!" He tried to hold her off, but couldn't. Grunting loudly, he lifted her into his arms as she flung herself at him.
Gus sprang up too, horrified. "Bridget! He has a dislocated shoulder. You're hurting him!"
"No, I'm not! Am I, Jack?"
The little girl clung to him, but Jack set her down gingerly, sweat dripping from his brow. "You're killing me, kid, " he said, his laughter punctuated by genuine pain.
"Look, I saved the hippo!" She ran to get it, but by the time she'd picked it up and turned around, Jack's attention was riveted elsewhere. He was staring at Gus and the piercing intensity in his blue-black eyes told her that he'd come here for something that was going to change her life. Not that he hadn't already. God!
Bridget hesitated, looking from one of them to the other. "Jack?" she tried once more, softly. "Geez... what is this? Are you guys falling in love or something?"
Jack smiled. "Doesn't miss much, does she," he said to Gus, wiping the dampness from his brow with the sleeve of his black fleece workout jacket.
Still watching them both, Bridget clutched the hippo close to her cheek and nuzzled her chin in the fur. "Are we fighting?" she asked, clearly mesmerized. "Or are we making up?"
"That depends on your aunt," Jack said.
Gus tilted at him, her chin lifting rebelliously.
Bridget made a
whoops
face. "Maybe I should go?"
"Thanks, Bridge," Jack said. "It looks like your aunt and I need to talk."
"Sure does—" The little girl bit her lip, trying to hide a nervous smile, then hesitated in her dash to the door. "And while you're at it, could you please explain to her that I am
not
too young to read Sweet Valley Highs? You can't shield a child from life, you know. Better I learn in a book than on the streets, right?"
"I'll see what I can do, " Jack promised. "But you've got to do me a favor, okay? Don't tell anybody I'm here. "
Once Bridget was gone, and the door was closed, Gus released the breath she'd been holding. It only trembled a little, nowhere near as much as she was shaking inside. He was clearly in pain, but that didn't stop him from being one of the most irresistibly sexy men she'd ever seen, which only made her hate him more. She'd never been so reluctant and yet so frantic to see anyone in her life. Or so furious at herself for feeling that way. How could she abide the sight of him after what he'd done? How could she allow him in her room, her sanctuary,
her shrine to Cinderella?
She knew why he was here, and it wasn't because of her. Webb Calderon had insinuated that Jack was on a single-minded quest for justice, which was just another word for vengeance. Whatever he'd gone through, Jack held the
Featherstones responsible, and he was bent on proving that. She'd hoped her news of the baby might soften him in some way, even stave him off, but she'd been wrong. It had only made things worse.
"Are you all right?" he asked.
Before she could answer, he'd begun visually searching the walls of her room. He spotted what he was looking for almost immediately, pulled a tiny can from the pocket of his sweat pants, walked to the far wall, and reached up to the wallpaper panel that abutted the ceiling.
Gus peered at his back. "What are you doing?"
"Making sure we have some privacy." He sprayed one of the wallpaper roses with what looked like water from the pressurized can. "Your stepbrother's a freak, Gus. He likes to watch people, and that includes you. "
"Lake has this room monitored?" Gus's mind flashed back over all the times she'd run around naked, and her reaction was as much surprise as a sense of violation. Why hadn't it ever occurred to her? she wondered. Howard, the security guard, was the one who'd told her about Lake's roomful of monitors. Fortunately it had been well past her stepbrother's bedtime the night Rob had sneaked into her room.
Jack had turned back by then. "I asked you how you were."
"I'm fine," she snapped. "And you?"
"I'm not the one who's pregnant."
The catch of husky emotion in his voice made her hesitate on the sharp retort she had ready. He was searching her with eyes that were as dark as pitch, eyes that had narrowed with obvious concern. He almost looked as if he cared, and Gus's throat tugged as if it wanted to close off. She could have read all kinds of wonderful things into that expression, and she wanted to. She could feel a tiny shudder of rising hope, along with her fears. The thoughts running through her mind astonished her.
Don't make me believe in you, Jack Culhane. I've never believed in anyone but myself. It was safer that way with a mother like mine. I can't deal with any more heartbreak, any more disappointment. Both
my parents deserted me, and no one I've loved ever kept their promises, so why should you?
"Gus... "
He walked toward her as he said her name and something in the sound of it, just the sound of her name on his lips brought a stinging sensation to her jaw. The muscles constricted so sharply that her vision went blurry with tears.
By the time he reached her, he'd seen it all, the salty flood she was trying to blink away, her awkward attempt to adjust her tank top so that it didn't cling.
"Gus, I'm sorry," he said.
She ducked her head. "Sorry about what? I'm fine. Really. It's just... something. Suicidal hormones... or something, I don't know. "
"Gus, what you heard was me thinking out loud—about the wretched state of my life and about how insane it is that you should be pregnant now, with my child. It had nothing to do with my feelings for you or the baby. It's the timing, the perverse irony that this is happening now. That's the sick joke. Can you understand that?"
She bit her lip hard, desperate to hold back the tears.
"It was clumsy of me, clumsy and stupid. I never should have said it, okay?" He touched one of the droplets that was clinging to her lower lash and caught it just before it fell off. "You've got to admit, you did catch me off guard. I was run down by a red Mercedes with your license plate one night, and the next morning you're in my hospital room, telling me you're pregnant. "
His sigh held as much sadness as laughter. "I wasn't sure what hit me. Literally. "
"Put that way it does sound pretty boggling," she admitted. "But you were so quick to believe it was me. You did, you know. You believed it was me. "
"At first, yes. But you have to understand why." He was feathering her cheek now, with fingertips moist from her tears. "I wasn't in shock and I wasn't hallucinating when that car hit me. It was a red convertible with your plates. I don't know how to explain that now. I didn't want to believe it then, but nothing else made sense. You had the motive, and you'd already tried your damndest to bump me off. So here I am, thinking you're a killer, and you're trying to tell me you're pregnant. "
"I had the feeling you would have preferred me as killer to mother."
His hesitation told her she might be right. "You scared the hell out of me," he admitted. "But I think I know why. Gus, I—"
"No," she said instantly, startled as she realized that she didn't want to know. She was actually afraid he'd say something that meant he did care, something that would tug at her nicked and bleeding heart and make her have to care back. And she couldn't. She just couldn't open herself to that kind of pain. It would kill her to love someone,
him.
She wouldn't survive. Everyone she'd loved had abandoned her, even Jillian.
She turned away, but he was there, his hands on her arms.
"I need to tell you this," he urged, his voice low and thrillingly harsh. "You already know that my wife died several years ago. What I didn't tell you is that I lost a child, too, a baby daughter. She was just six months old, and when I sat through her memorial service, I thought I was dying, too. I felt as if someone had doused me with gasoline and held a torch to me. I felt as if I were being burnt alive. I wished I had been. "
His hands dropped away, and the hoarseness rising in his voice wouldn't let him talk for a moment. "It was my fault. Both of their deaths probably could have been prevented if I hadn't been trying to be a hero. They might be alive—"
He went silent again, and Gus sensed that he was struggling. There was so much she wanted to know—how the tragedies had happened, how he could be to blame. She also needed to understand if this had anything to do with his vendetta against her family. But more than any of that she wanted to turn into the warmth of his body and comfort him... only she didn't trust herself. It would take so little for her to fall apart,
to fall in love.
"I see now why you wouldn't want more children, " she said.
"Do you? Can you understand why even the thought of having another family paralyzes me?"
Yes, she did understand. She understood perfectly. He felt exactly the way she did. It meant he would have something to lose, that he would have to go through that pain again. And he didn't think he could do it. He was afraid to let himself love anything or anyone.
"Gus... do you want this baby?"
She didn't answer. She couldn't. Something in the way he spoke touched her on so many levels. Low and reverberant, it whispered to her dreams. This wasn't the burnt-out, toneless rasp she was used to. He was here now, emotionally involved with the question and her answer, whatever that would be. He wanted to know. Her response was important to him.
"You've got Bridget," he said, "and somehow I couldn't imagine you wanting a kid of your own, especially with the magazine." He touched her, a light brush of his hand down her arm. "Do you want it, Gus?"
She didn't know what she wanted, except the one thing that would make her life impossible... him. She wanted him, his arms, his mouth. It had to be the perverse side of her nature that always went after what it couldn't have, the side that set her up for failure. "I don't know," she said honestly.
She heard him sigh, felt his hand fall away, and a shock of awareness went through her. "Do you?" She spun around, unable to believe, not willing to believe that he could possibly... "Do you want this baby?"
His lips parted as if he wanted to say something, and there was this pained, crooked smile on his face. For a moment she thought he'd nodded his head yes, but the words that came out were achingly soft, achingly sad. "God, Gus, what would I do with a baby?"
Her heart twisted. "Yeah... that's what I thought."
They were silent for seconds, and finally she walked to the window. He didn't follow her this time, and the quiet was so pervasive, she imagined that he had left.
"But if I did want..." He hesitated and her heart became a hammer. "If I did want it, what would you have said?"
The music box began to play softly, startling Gus as the melody from the Disney movie sang out like a choir of bells. An image of Cinderella singing wistfully shimmered in Gus's mind, and it took her a moment to realize that this wasn't a sign from the heavens. Jack was crossing the room toward her and his foot must have brushed the box.
"What would I have said?" she whispered, more to herself than him. "I'd have said that Bridget was right the first time."
"What do you mean?"
She could feel heat creeping up the back of her neck and flaring around to her throat. By the time she looked up at him, it had stormed her face clear to her hairline and her scalp was prickling with it, too—deep, rosy heat. She was blushing wildly, hotly. "That I'm falling in love... with you."
He touched the warmth of her cheeks as if he knew it was for him. "That's the prettiest sight I think I've ever seen, " he said.
She shuddered at the contact. The caress of his fingers touched nerves that reached to her core. Lots of men had called her beautiful. She'd been described by the media with so many glowing superlatives that the words had become meaningless. She'd never believed them anyway, never believed any of the flattering things people had said about her. But pretty? That her blushing face was a pretty thing? That she believed. Because no one had ever used the word in the way he had, or meant it the way he did. He was seeing beyond the physical beauty to the miracle that was stirring in her heart.
She'd never felt so awkward in her life. Or so pretty.
Chimes filled the silence that fell between them.
"I guess Bridget left her toy," he said at last. "She is a romantic kid."
Gus glanced at the twirling figure of Cinderella and nodded, unwilling to admit who the romantic kid really was. The song was making her ache, and it had become impossible to avoid his gaze any longer. She sighed and looked up with some reluctance, not wanting him to see what she knew must be in her eyes and afraid what she might find in his.
What she feared was there, everything she feared.
She saw desire so strong and fierce it hurt her to witness it. She saw traces of rage and the unrequited need for his enemy's blood. But the tenderness and wanting that washed over her made her heart rise and tilt. The love she saw made her senses sing like the music box.