Midnight Promises

Jack’s eyebrows went up quizzically. “And that is…?”

“Have you been faithful to Annie?”

Jack straightened. “I think that’s something to be discussed between Annie and me. So—do you want to arm wrestle? Bloody my nose? Or can I go inside now and talk to Annie?”

Ben’s hands closed into fists. “You can damned well answer me first.”

If anyone was going to hit Jack, it would be her. She stepped outside and put her hand on Ben’s arm. “No. This is between me and Jack.”

It wasn’t easy for her brother to back down. She knew that. Ben needed to fix things. It might drive her crazy when he tried to fix her, but he also wanted to fix things for her. She knew that his instinct now was to shake the truth out of Jack.

For the first time, she wondered if her brothers had spoiled her. Oh, not in a material sense. After her parents died there had been money enough for the necessities and an occasional treat, but that was about it. But Ben and Duncan and Charlie had always been there for her. Their love was a constant in her life, something she could depend on, no matter what. Maybe that had made her expect too much. Maybe no man would ever love her the way she wanted to be loved.

After a moment she felt the tension ease in her brother’s arm. “All right. I don’t like it, but all right. I need to get to work. Annie, I need you on the site at eight. We’ll talk more about you moving out when I get home.”

Jack’s eyebrows went up again, but he didn’t speak until he’d followed her into the house, closing the door behind him. “You’re moving out?”

She shrugged. “Ben’s suffering from one of his attacks of uprightness. You want some coffee?”

“Well, I’ll be damned.” Jack shook his head. “Uprightness? Ben thinks you should be living with me, doesn’t he?”

She felt her face heat and spun around, starting for the kitchen. “I want coffee, whether you do or not.”

He followed her, still marveling. “Who would have thought that Ben McClain would turn out to be on my side?”

“Remember that he also threatened to break various parts of your body,” she said as she grabbed a mug from the cupboard.

“Only if I screw up. I don’t intend to do that. Annie?”

Something about the way he said her name made her turn, the empty mug in one hand, her back against the counter.

He was too close. He came even closer, stopping a hand’s breadth away and trapping her by leaning in, his hands braced on the counter on either side of her. “Why did Ben ask if I’d been faithful? Were you afraid to ask me yourself? Or do you just not care?”

Her heart made a nuisance of itself, pounding out a quick distress signal against the skin of her throat. “Back off, Jack. If you want to talk, you need to give me some space.”

“It is hard to talk when we’re this close,” he agreed, and lifted one of his hands from the counter. But that gave her no relief, since he used it to play with her hair. He didn’t touch her. He just sifted his fingers through her hair, holding it slightly away from her head, studying it as if there were something fascinating about hair that was as straightforward and lacking in mystery as the rest of her.

It shouldn’t have made her knees weak. It shouldn’t have made desire coil low in her belly, an electric snake pulsing its neon message throughout the rest of her body.

His gaze slid back to hers. “So—are you going to ask? Do you want to know?”

She tipped her chin up. “Have you been with another woman?”

“I haven’t been with any women since we flew to Las Vegas, Annie.” That slow, wicked smile dawned. “Not even you, unfortunately.”

Relief hit her hard, getting tangled up in her brain with hope and colliding in her middle with the pulse of that hungry snake. “Why are you smiling? You were furious before.”

He shrugged and gave her hair a tug. “It’s hard to seduce a woman when I’m yelling at her.”

“I—” She stopped and cleared her throat. “I don’t want you to seduce me.”

“Don’t you? I thought you liked it pretty well.”

Annie hadn’t known that heat could raise goose bumps the way cold did. That it could make her shiver. “What I like and what’s good for me aren’t always the same thing.”

“You want me, Annie. Don’t try to convince either of us otherwise.”

“And what do you want—a wedding night, or a real marriage?”

“If I married every woman I’d ever wanted for one night, I’d be in deep trouble. I want you, Annie.”

Oh, damn. How could he twist her heart into a knot and make it sing at the same time? She put her hands on his chest and pushed, and he let her shift him back a step. “Don’t pretend you can’t keep your hands off me. You managed to do that for years with no trouble.”

He smiled and shifted to lean against the counter, all lazy good nature once more. “Weird how things change, isn’t it?”

She carried his mug over to the coffeepot, which put her back to him. It was easier to talk to him that way. “Look, this is how we got into trouble before. We let ourselves get all hot and hasty and didn’t talk about what we wanted from marriage. From each other. Then, when our expectations had a head-on collision, we hurt each other. I don’t want to do that again.”

“Okay. Move in with me, and we’ll talk about our expectations.”

She froze with the coffeepot in midair. After a second, she poured his coffee. Her hand was admirably steady. “Now, that’s a sensible solution. I can move in with you for a couple weeks, we can have lots of hot sex, and by the time you have to leave the country again you ought to have worked me out of your system. You know how quickly you lose interest, Jack.” She turned around and held out his coffee. “Thanks, but no thanks.”

“Annie.” He took the mug in one hand—and lifted the other to touch her cheek. “I like the part about lots of hot sex, but I don’t want to get you out of my system. I do want to make sure nothing happens to you.”

“You aren’t talking about that stupid anonymous letter again, are you?”

“Sort of.” He ran a hand over the top of his head. “Look, there are some things I haven’t told you.”

She looked at him in disbelief. “You really do have a crazy ex-girlfriend.”

“I don’t know. Someone sent you that letter. Someone who knew we were married, and you didn’t tell anyone. There’s a chance that it’s connected to…some things that happened on my last job. So I really need to know exactly what the letter said.”

“I don’t remember word for word.” Distracted, she went over to the table and sat down. It seemed like a good idea to have plenty of solid oak between her and Jack. “Something about how I’d be sorry for taking you away from her, and you’d be sorry for treating her so badly. It was childish—the phrasing, the sentiments, even the spelling. Whoever wrote it didn’t bother with a spell checker.”

“So it was either typed or done on a computer.” He frowned and brought his mug over to the table, sitting beside her. “How about the envelope? Was it hand-addressed?”

“No, it was done with a printer on one of those white labels. I noticed because I was curious and I was mad, and that’s why I sent you that note about it. I thought she must be someone you knew pretty well, well enough that you had to break the news of our marriage to her yourself. She had my address.”

“Annie, I haven’t been in touch with anyone I used to date—not in person, not by mail, not at all. And there’s no reason for any of them to have your address.”

“Well.” She cleared her throat. “There wasn’t any return address on the envelope, so I tried to read the postmark, but it was smeared. It had U.S. postage, though. It didn’t come from Borneo or Paraguay or wherever.” She put her cup down. “Jack, what’s going on?”

“Unlike you, I did tell people about our marriage. But not my old girlfriends. I notified ICA headquarters. You’re covered by my insurance now.”