Passion's Baby

“And it ended before the strain began to tell.”

“Why, you…you…unfeeling brute!”

“That’s me, all right,” he said, supremely unmoved by her distress. “Stroking fragile egos isn’t one of my talents. I prefer to deal with reality.”

“Oh, who do you think you’re kidding?” she snorted. “You’re so busy trying to ignore the fact that you’re handicapped that you can’t even accept a little help without getting all bent out of shape. You could give lessons on stroking the fragile ego, as long as it’s yours that’s getting stroked!”

He bent to scratch Bounder’s ear and she heard the laughter in his voice when he said, “That’s women for you, Blunder, old pal! Going straight for the jugular. Take my advice and steer clear of the lot of them.”

Bounder reared up, placed a paw on Liam’s lap, and gazed at him adoringly. Talk about male bonding! The whole performance was enough to turn Jane’s stomach. “I’m beginning to wonder why I ever agreed to come here this evening,” she said.

Liam gave another of those annoyingly self-satisfied chortles, as though, having his vented his disillusionment with women in general, he could now afford to take a warped kind of pleasure in her company. “Well, it’s too late to back out now, sweetheart. The water’s boiling and the crabs need to be thrown in the pot.”

“I’d offer to help,” she said sourly, “but I’m afraid I might give in to the urge to shove you in, as well.”

He laughed outright at that, and rolled the wheelchair dangerously close to the fire. “Watch it, Janie! Your halo’s slipping—though I have to admit, I like you better this way. Keep it up and you just might get asked back again. In fact, if things were different, I might have tried to put the moves on you.”

His arrogance, she decided balefully, was exceeded only by her foolishness. She had no business feeling all warm and fuzzy inside at his backhanded compliment, and no business at all wondering what it would take to change his views on love and marriage. He was a confirmed bachelor, and just as well because he’d make a lousy husband. Not that she was interested in finding one. She was perfectly content to be remain single, despite what her friends thought.

Two years is long enough to put the grieving behind you and get on with your life, Jane, they’d scolded kindly, and she’d have agreed with them if it weren’t for the fact that, to them, “getting on” with her life meant finding a new man. They hadn’t understood that she needed time for herself.

“In case you didn’t realize, I just paid you a compliment,” Liam said, flinging the last of the crabs into the pot. “So why the grim expression?”