Swept Away

He stood several feet away looking at her. And saying nothing. She resisted crossing her knee, or swinging her foot, or pulling her hair. And she was damned if she’d rub her nose. When she could no longer stand this scrutiny, she blurted out, “Are you being rude deliberately?”

His shrug was slow, nonchalant. “If I were, you’d probably know it, considering what an expert you are at it.”

She knew she deserved the reprimand, for she’d hurt Richard Henderson when she didn’t return his warm greeting. But she couldn’t explain it to Schyler, couldn’t expose herself by telling him what her youth had been compared to his.

Instead, she defended herself. “I’m honest, Mr. Henderson, and I’m not good at pretense. I was as gracious as I could be.”

He dug the toe of his house shoe into the broadloom carpet. “Yes. I suppose you were. But that’s not saying much. Did you plan to hurt him? Did you come here to get revenge for something he doesn’t seem to remember?”

She could feel her shoulders sag with a heavy weight that seemed to shroud her body. Weary in spirit. She knew it wasn’t the kind of fatigue that a tub of hot water could soak away. It seeped into her marrow and nearly brought tears to her eyes.

“I don’t know,” she replied, trying honestly to understand her motive. “I don’t believe I planned anything. This is a trial for you and for him, but what do you think this visit is doing to me? I looked at him, and for the first time, I saw myself. My eyes, hair, coloring, face and height. It’s as though I didn’t know myself until now. Don’t you think this is a shock for me? That it hurts? No. You’re too busy judging me. Both of you.”

He stuffed his hands in the pockets of his trousers, sat down with his legs spread wide apart and gazed steadily at her. After what she figured was a full minute, he rested his left ankle on his right knee and leaned back in the chair.

“And how do you think I feel, Veronica? You’ve taken up permanent residence in my head. A woman who turned me around. A woman who detests my dad and with whom I’ve had a rough legal battle. A woman who probably blames me for having done my job as honestly and competently as I knew how. But the worst of it is the fire between us, a fire so hot not even our attitudes toward each other can put it out.”

She jerked forward, ready to deny it, even as the woman in her yearned to touch him and to feel his hands hot on her flesh.

He waved a disparaging hand. “I don’t need your agreement on this. I’m thirty-six years old, and I know when a woman is attracted to me. We both felt that…” He threw up his hands as if in surrender. “Chemistry or whatever the minute we met.”

She opened her mouth to disown it and to accuse him of arrogance, but dancing lights suddenly twinkled in his eyes and a smile played loosely around his mouth, knocking her off balance. Her heart shimmied, frenzied, like a demon possessed, and in spite of herself, her hand clutched at her chest.

“Don’t worry,” he soothed, “the way things are going, I expect fate intends to keep a lot of distance between us. A pity, though. We could have danced one hell of a dance.”

She leaned forward, disappointment chilling her to the bone, yet fascinated with his cool acceptance that he wanted what he wasn’t likely to get or even to pursue. “How can you say that when we’ve never even tried to be friends?”

He flexed his shoulders in a quick shrug and strummed his fingers on the wide arm of the recliner. “Certain people can’t begin with a friendship.” Shivers coursed through her as desire blazed briefly in his gray-eyed gaze.

He shrugged again, seeming to downplay the importance of what he said and of what he’d felt. “With us…too many obstacles. Too many and too big when we met and even stronger ones now.”

“Right. The main one being all that energy you expended trying to get me convicted of a crime I didn’t commit.”

He flinched, and a stricken expression flashed over his face. Then he laid back his shoulders and looked her in the eye. She had to hand it to him; the man ruled his emotions.

“Do you want to reopen that matter? The judge dismissed the case for lack of evidence, vindicating you. Let’s bury it, shall we?”

She couldn’t believe he’d said it. “Don’t you realize you torpedoed my career? Let’s bury it, you say.” She snapped her finger. “Simple as that.”

He leaned forward, his eyes beseeching her. “I’m not callous, Veronica. I just can’t see the use of continuing the argument. If I’ve caused you any damage, you know I’m sorry, and I’ll do anything I can to repair it.”

She gave him the benefit of her sweetest smile. “A guy thing, huh? If you don’t see a reason, there isn’t one.”

His gray eyes widened in surprise. “Good grief, is that the way I come across to you?”

Don’t let him snow you, girl, she told herself, when crinkles appeared at the corners of his eyes. “Just cut it right out.” She slammed her hand across her mouth when she realized she’d spoken those words aloud.

Caught out, she jumped to her feet. “I’ll…I think I’ll see what’s going on in the kitchen.” She didn’t know why she’d said that; she didn’t want to be alone with her father because she didn’t know what to say to him.

Schyler saved her. “Uh-uh. Dad hates to have anybody in that kitchen with him when he’s cooking.”

She sat down. Trapped. She had to get out of there. Away from him and his mesmeric eyes and seductive smile. “In that case, I think I’ll go for a walk. You must have something you’d rather be doing.”

His teasing grin and the sparkles in his eyes couldn’t be taken for anything but frank deviltry. “Not another single thing,” he said and placed his right hand over his heart. “Just keeping you company, and it’s my pleasure.”

No sooner had he said it than Richard appeared in the door of the living room. “There you two are. I know you wanted to finish that descrambler, Son. So I appreciate your taking the time to get to know Veronica, because that’s important to me.”

As Richard looked from one to the other, Schyler put up his hands, palms out, in surrender. “Okay, so I lied. Truce?”

“I won’t ask what that was about,” Richard said and left them alone.

She didn’t realize her demeanor had changed until Schyler frowned. “How can you dislike him so much when you don’t even know him?” he asked her. “Is he kind, warm, gracious, honest and decent? Is he? Does he pay his debts, and does he help people who can’t do for themselves? Does he? You can’t answer, and that means you can’t judge him.”

She wanted to erase the pain reflected in his eyes, to hold him and…For a quick moment, her gaze went toward the ceiling. A father she’d been taught to despise inextricably tied to a man whose smile made her head swim and whose every gesture made her long for the feel of his arms hard around her. A man who made her dream dreams that kept her blushing for days. If she was being punished, she’d like to know what she’d done to deserve it. She wished her ambiguous feelings toward him would sort themselves out, that she could either despise Schyler Henderson and dismiss him from her life or let herself feel what her heart and body longed to experience. And while her conflicting feelings battled with each other, she searched for a gentle reply. Truthful, yet without the verbal tentacles that could pierce the heart.

“It’s best not to pry, Schyler—if I may call you that. There’s a well of hurt and misery that you apparently know nothing about. I don’t know anything about it, either, only what I’ve been told, what I had drilled into me ever since I’ve known myself. You said you’re not callous. Neither am I. Don’t dig deep. It’s enough that one of us carries the burden.”

He reached across the three feet of space that separated them and grasped her hand. “Don’t make that mistake, Veronica. All three of us feel the pain. Tell me why you’ve taken a three-month leave from CPAA and why you’ve hinted you might not return to your job.”

She shared with him her reasons for downplaying the importance of a job that had consumed all of her energies, thought and passion for the previous five years. Her proving ground. The place where she’d taught herself that she could do whatever she set herself to do and do it well. Her chest went out and her shoulders back.

“I had to get away from there, to find myself. I’d done a lot of things, covered a lot of miles and garnered my share of laurels, but…” she faced him fully, wanting him to understand what she’d never told anyone “…but I’d never lived. Never wrestled with a relationship slipping through my fingers, never argued and gossiped with girlfriends, never opened my arms wide and let the breeze blow me wherever it would.”

“Back up a minute,” he said, and she had the impression that he was putting events into their proper perspective. “That case wasn’t the only reason why you decided your office can get along without you for three months?? Is that what you’re telling me?”

“Some of my reasoning was bound up with that, the fact that after so much acclaim, the community that I had served so selflessly could forget so quickly.”

“What do you mean, people forgot?”

She waved a hand in disdain. “Not one reporter asked me for an interview when that case was closed in my favor.”

His sharp whistle sliced through the room. “I never dreamed.”

“It’s okay now. I learned a lot from that.”

“So you went to Europe. Then what?” he asked.

“I think I’ve done more living in the weeks since I left CPAA than in the previous thirty-two years and five months of my life.”

He leaned toward her, an animated expression on his face, and squeezed her fingers. “You did something you always wanted to do?”

The mere memory of those few exhilarating days eased the harsh feelings that had beset her since she’d stepped across Richard Henderson’s threshold.

She nodded eagerly. “Yes. Oh, yes. I skied the slopes of the Jungfraujoch, hiked alone through the mountain terrain, spent the night with hospitable strangers and got a proposal of marriage from their six-foot-four-inch tall, blond and handsome elder son. Every single second of it exhilarated me. Free. Almost a part of nature. I’ll never forget it.”

Schyler felt her fingers soft and warm in his hand. He’d held them for all of five minutes, and she’d let him. He focused on her words. “A proposal? You sure you’re telling all of this?”

When had he last seen a woman wrinkle her nose in pure wickedness? He braced himself. Maybe she wasn’t as straitlaced as he’d thought.