SEAN STARED AT LAUREL and asked himself who in the hell he thought he was to come barging back in here like the light brigade or something. Whatever her problems were, she’d made it clear they didn’t involve him. And that she didn’t want them to involve him.
It was that latter thought, underscored by the white-faced fear he’d witnessed when he’d stepped back into the room, that kept him where he sat. “What has you so afraid?” he asked. “And don’t tell me you’re not. I didn’t hear the conversation, but I saw your face. Who’s after you?”
It was a guess, but the look of panic that flashed across her face told him he’d gotten it in one.
“It really doesn’t concern—”
“I know. And I know you want me out of here in some misguided attempt to protect me. Except if this isn’t about me, then I don’t know why you’d be worried about that. You know, I do have some background in taking care of myself.” He looked her in the eye. “You can trust me on that.”
She opened her mouth, as if to argue her point further, then shut it again and slumped back in her seat. “I don’t want to fight with you.”
“I didn’t come here to fight, either.”
She looked at him then. “Why did you come back?”
“To help you.” He lifted a hand to stop her reply. “Not to interfere. Even if it’s just to give you an unbiased ear, a shoulder.”
She gave him a look.
He felt a tug at the corners of his mouth. “Okay, so maybe I want to be a bit more involved than that. Sue me. I’m worried about you.”
He looked at her then, past the weariness, past the armor she’d probably learned to throw on somewhere back in law school. Sitting on the bench could only have strengthened that instinctive reaction. But behind all of that, he knew there was a woman with a heart, a woman with passion. And that passion had to extend beyond the physical attraction they’d shared. He couldn’t say if she had that passion about her work. They’d talked about it, but he hadn’t sensed the same fervor in her for her vocation as he had for his. Which begged the question…what did she care enough about to be this afraid of losing?
One thing came to mind. Her father. When she’d spoken of him, of her family legacy, she’d been passionate, she’d been proud.
“I appreciate that,” she said quietly. “But I don’t need you to worry.”
He changed tactics. She did need someone to care—it was clear no one else was stepping up for the duty. And here he was, ready and willing to take on the job. “Laurel, tell me one thing. And be honest. If you weren’t caught up in the middle of…whatever it is that’s eating you up like this…would you be so quick to run me out the door?” He leaned forward, fingers digging into his thighs. “If it makes it easier, I’ll be honest first. I’ve never chased after anyone, and I don’t want you to think I’m dogging you because we…because of what we—” He broke off, shook his head, swore under his breath.
“Because we had mind-blowing sex for one night in the islands?” she said, and for the first time he saw a hint of that smile, a hint of that attitude that had so attracted him.
He felt the color rise in his cheeks, but his grin was easy…and made him feel more relieved than he’d thought possible. “Well, since we’re being honest, I can’t lie and say that didn’t have some impact on my feelings about you.” His grin faded and her expression sobered, as well. “What I was trying to say was that this isn’t something I make a habit of doing. In fact, it’s something I never do. I don’t have the time or the inclination to chase women down.” His lips twitched. “No matter how hot the sex.”
She gave him that look, a little eye roll. And he finally started to settle down. This was what he’d come looking to find. That rapport they shared, both spoken and unspoken. So easily, so naturally.
“I came here,” he told her, “because I couldn’t stop thinking about you. I meant what I said earlier. I missed you. Really missed you. And, yes, I know we haven’t known each other all that long, but that didn’t seem to matter to us then. That didn’t change for me, even after I came back home. There are things I want to share with you, things I find myself wanting to say to you, just to get your reaction. We’d only just begun and, as hard as I tried to forget about it, let it go…I just couldn’t.” He looked at her, expression as open as he knew how to make it, heart right out there on his sleeve where it had never once been before. “So I’m asking you, when you left, was it easy to forget? Was I easy to forget?”
She shook her head. “No,” she said softly.
“Would you have walked away if not for this crisis?”
She looked at him for so long, he didn’t know what to think. Then her lips twitched. “Well, maybe at some point I would have, it’s hard to tell. Maybe you’d have turned out to have some obnoxious character trait that I simply couldn’t handle.”
He fought to keep from smiling. “You think?”
He watched her fight to keep the humor in their banter, but the toll suddenly became too great. She shook her head and her bottom lip trembled. Ever so slightly, but visible nonetheless.
He was out of the chair like a bullet and around the desk she’d kept between them. Barricades be damned. He pulled her up from the chair by her shoulders, turned her to face him. “Do you feel this,” he asked her, trying like hell not to sound as desperate as he felt, “between us, this…this—”
“Yes,” she breathed. “But, Sean, I can’t—”
“You can. Let me help you, Laurel. Let me be there for you.” He leaned down, brushed his lips over hers. She didn’t return the kiss, but her shuddering response told him enough. He looked back into her eyes. “Do you have anybody there for you? Anyone you’re turning to?”
She simply stared at him and that was answer enough.
“Let me. I’m a big boy, I can handle the consequences.”
Her breath came out in a little laugh, then hitched. “That’s just it, I’m not sure I can.”
He tilted her chin up. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“It’s going to get—I couldn’t guarantee—” She turned her head aside. “I’d disappoint you, Sean. If you knew what’s going on—”
He turned her face back to his. “Let me be the judge of that, okay?” he said softly. Now that she was here, in his hands, so close he could breathe in her scent, just dip his head and taste her…he knew he wasn’t going to let her go. Unless she asked him to.
“Tell me you don’t want me here, Laurel. Problems be damned. Tell me you don’t want me in your life.”
She stared into his eyes, and the yearning he saw there almost undid him completely. What was he doing? What exactly was he offering? He realized he honestly had no idea. And yet the thought of walking away was simply untenable.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” she said.
“Don’t ask me to stay because you’re worried about my feelings. But don’t tell me to leave for that reason, either.”
“I don’t mean now.”
“Fine. We can worry about later…later.” He closed the remaining distance between them.
AS DEEPLY AS SHE ACHED for his kiss, the instant his lips brushed hers, Laurel knew she couldn’t do this. Not now. She pulled back, out of his arms completely.
He masked his surprise quickly, but remained where he stood as she crossed the room toward the floor-to-ceiling bookcase that filled the entire left wall of her office.
“I’m not…we shouldn’t—” She stopped, gathered herself, willed her heart to slow down long enough for her to get her head on straight. She turned, faced him. Steadier, but not as steady as she’d have liked. Just looking at him did funny things to the pit of her stomach. He’d come for her, like a shining knight. She knew better than to trust white knights, which should have made her feel twice the fool for trusting him. It didn’t. Not yet, anyway.
“I appreciate that you want to help me,” she said carefully. “And I don’t want you to walk away. I am glad you found me. But I need a clear head to handle…what needs handling. And I don’t know if I can have you around and not want—”
“No one walks through life alone, Laurel. We all need help from time to time. Sometimes it’s the stronger person who knows when to ask for it.”
She stared at him. “You speak from personal experience, do you?”
He stared back, then finally relented. “From observation of others.”
“Ah.”
Then his lips curved. “How is it you know me so well, Laurel?” he asked softly. “Ask yourself that.”
She had, a million times since she’d left St. Thomas. Had almost convinced herself their time together had all been a dream. But the man standing in front of her was no fantasy. Or maybe he was, and that was the problem. He was the perfect knight, in the perfect dream. And her life was anything but perfect at the moment. Made it kind of hard to trust in dreams.
“Well, I understand the notion,” she told him. “And you might be surprised to learn I’ve even been known to ask for assistance from time to time.” He looked so earnest, she thought, so steadfast, standing there offering himself up to her for whatever she needed to take from him. The hunger that ignited inside her was surprisingly powerful. Yet the enormity of what hung in the balance once again descended upon her shoulders like a too big cloak that might suffocate her if she wasn’t careful. Very, very careful.
She’d become mixed up in something that fell well outside of the law she’d sworn to uphold. She would not drag him, a man who was also sworn to uphold and protect, into the middle of this. It would be putting him in the same predicament Alan had put her in. Asking him to ignore his duty, his moral—and possibly even legal—obligation because of whatever feelings he might have for her.
“Are you so certain this isn’t one of those times?” he asked quietly.
“It’s not the help I’m rejecting. And it’s not that I don’t want—”
His eyes flashed and she thought for a moment he was going to come to her desk. But he remained where he stood. “That you don’t want me? We’re past claiming we don’t want each other. Neither of us is going to buy that one.”
Her body vibrated, the look he sent her was so potent. “No, I don’t suppose so. But what I’m trying to say is that I can’t…act on that. Not now. Not here. What we had, that was a thousand miles from here, in a place where no one—”
“Where no one cared what you did…or who you did it with?” he supplied mildly. The tone was very deceptive, until she noted the look in his eyes.
And she noted every detail where he was concerned. As if she was tuned into some private frequency that was theirs and theirs alone. “Yes. I’m home now, and while I’d like nothing more than for those things not to matter…they do matter.”
“We’re both home now,” he reminded her. “And what does it matter if people know about me? About us?”
“Us?” It took her breath away, that tiny little word. Amazed her with the impact of it, of how badly she wanted it to apply to her, to them. So much so that she almost missed the tiny flash of hurt that crossed his face at her surprised response.
“Well, I guess that answers that question,” he said flatly.
She shook her head. “We can’t always have what we want, Sean.” Or who we want, she thought, hating Alan more than she’d thought possible, for taking even more from her than he realized. “I’m glad you came here, that you want to be here, and I don’t want you to leave. But I can’t have you in my life—in that way—not right now. Things are…complicated.”
“Because of your recent relationship with Alan Bentley?”
She felt as if she’d been sucker-punched, though in retrospect she didn’t know why she was surprised that he knew about Alan. God knows it was almost impossible not to know with the media breathing down her neck. “It wasn’t recent. And it wasn’t a relationship. It takes two people to make one of those.”
“A fact I’m well aware of at the moment.”
She stopped, caught up in the intensity of his gaze, wishing he couldn’t entrap her like that so easily…yet tantalized by the reality that he could. Almost effortlessly. What she wouldn’t have given at the moment to be free to walk right up to him, into those strong arms, into all that promise she saw in his eyes. How badly she wished it could be that simple. Even if it just ended up being some hot, torrid affair that burned out almost as quickly as it caught flame. It would be worth the scorch marks, she thought.
Even as she thought it, she knew it wouldn’t be like that at all. Sean Gannon’s appeal was hot and torrid, all right, but what they had between them was also a banked, slow-burning thing. If she let herself get tangled up with him, it would be a whole lot more than her libido that would suffer the scorch marks. Her heart would come away branded, as well.
Maybe she should be thankful the situation she was in wouldn’t permit her to take that risk, but she wasn’t. She wanted it—him—badly. Too badly, which was exactly why she had to push him away.
“Maybe the public needs to see you’ve moved on,” Sean suggested. “That would end the speculation of just how Bentley plans to win this case.”
Except he doesn’t plan on winning it, she thought, the anxiety squeezing her gut. “I’d be insulted, but—”
“I know you have integrity.”
Her stomach clenched harder. As did a part of her heart. If he only knew. Knew what she was contemplating doing…She did her best to stem the flush of shame that crept into her cheeks. But she couldn’t do that and look at him at the same time. She glanced down, hating herself almost as much as she hated Alan. “I can’t discuss this here.”
“Then tell me where you can and we’ll go there.”
Six o’clock. Our place. It took considerable will not to shudder with the unwanted reminder of where she had to go…and who she had to see. “Not…not now. Today, I mean.” She sighed, swore under her breath.
She glanced up when he made a tsking sound. His smile returned. Only this time it didn’t reach his eyes. “Such language, Judge Patrick.”
She wanted badly to have that rapport back with him, the light banter, the give-and-take that came so easily to them. That is, when stress didn’t threaten to eat its way right through her stomach lining. She ached for the flirtation they’d been so quick to indulge in when they’d met, where anything was possible and boundaries didn’t hamper everything she said, everything she did. She tried for that smile anyway, failing miserably. “In chambers I can say anything I want.”
“Except what I need to hear.” He turned and abruptly walked to the door. He stopped just as abruptly and looked back at her. “Did you tell anyone about us? Scratch that. About me?”
She flinched slightly at that, surprised he was allowing her to see how affected he was by her rejection of them as a couple. He struck her as being more contained than that. But then, where she was concerned, it appeared he didn’t have the usual controls in place. She didn’t know how she was supposed to feel about that, but probably not intrigued, secretly delighted. Not considering she was basically asking him to walk away from whatever it was they could have had. She refused to even think about it.
“Did you tell anyone about me?” he repeated. “Meeting me on vacation? Did you mention my name, my occupation? Even just that you met a stranger who played Good Samaritan?”
From the look on his face—all business now—she didn’t think it was his ego needing a boost. No, Sean Gannon’s ego didn’t drive him. “No, I didn’t. Why do you ask?”
“Not to anyone,” he repeated, ignoring her question. “Your father? Bentley? A girlfriend?”
Now she frowned. “No.”
“Good.” He turned then, opened the door.
Ouch? But just as his proclamation stung, it occurred to her that he might have asked because—“Wait a minute,” she blurted.
She didn’t think he was going to stop, but he did. He glanced back, expression implacable.
“What’s going on?” she demanded, studying his eyes for a clue, any clue, to validate her growing suspicion. “You’re planning something.” His expression didn’t even flicker. She should have realized. I don’t walk away. His words echoed in her ears as she said, “Sean, you can’t just—”
“Maybe you don’t know me as well as I thought. Because I can just. And I will just.” He stalked across the room. She couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. He took her face in his hands, surprisingly gentle in spite of the fierceness of his expression. He crushed his mouth to hers in a kiss that was both hot and unbearably tender. The combination undid her, had her responding before she could think things out, decide what to do, tell herself to pull away.
Then he was pulling away. He grinned, and her knees felt a bit woozy. “And I’ll do whatever it takes to earn the right to do that anytime I want. Wherever I want.”
He made it impossible to think clearly. And clear thinking, she was beginning to realize, was a must where Sean Gannon was concerned. Good luck with that. Maybe if she went to bed with him another, oh, half dozen times, she could look at him, let him look at her that way, without her body reacting like a volcano set to erupt. Okay, make that a couple of dozen times.
She struggled to regain the ground she’d so quickly lost. “I can’t have you—”
“Oh, but you can. And the sooner you realize that, the better off we’ll both be.” He walked back to the door and opened it.
“That’s not what I meant and you know it.” Her pulse was pounding and her skin all but twitching. “You have no idea what you’re getting into.”
His grin only widened. “I’m becoming more aware of that with every passing second. But did I ever mention that I love a challenge?” he asked. Then he was gone.
Laurel slumped back against the bookcase, catching a large volume on torts as it threatened to slide out and hit her on the head. “Maybe I should have let it,” she muttered. “It might have knocked some sense into me.”
She clutched the book to her chest, running her fingertips over lips that still tingled, still tasted of him. And while she was worried, about Sean’s plans, about Alan, about her father, about how in the hell she was going to get herself out of this mess…she couldn’t quite seem to get all that upset about the fact that she wasn’t going to have to do it alone.
Maybe it was because he’d taken that choice away from her. Made it not about her being vulnerable or weak. Not even about her wanting to protect him. He’d made it about caring, about refusing to leave when someone he cared about needed his help, no matter the trouble he might bring down on his head. He’d taken that responsibility on himself. And off of her.
“Blockhead,” she murmured…but she couldn’t help smiling when she said it.