Diana Palmer Collected 1-6: Soldier of Fortune / Tender Stranger / Enamored / Mystery Man / Rawhide and Lace / Unlikely Lover

“Make me stay,” he repeated. His eyes caught hers briefly. “You can give me something that all the unholy little wars on earth couldn’t. If you want me, show me. Give me a reason, half a reason, to settle down. And I might surprise you.”

She stared out through the windshield and felt as if she were floating. It was a beginning that she wasn’t sure she wanted. She might hold his interest briefly, until he tired of her body. But what then? He was offering nothing more than a liaison. He wasn’t talking about permanent things like a house and children. Her eyes darkened with pain. Perhaps it would have been better if he hadn’t gotten rid of her fear of him.

Her troubled eyes sought his profile, but it was as unreadable as ever. The only thing that gave her hope was the visible throbbing of his pulse and the searing desire in his eyes. He wanted her so desperately that she couldn’t help wondering whether he didn’t feel something for her, too. But it would take time to find out, and she wasn’t going to withdraw her resignation. As much as it might hurt, in the long run it would be saner to leave him than to try to hold him. Gabby wasn’t built for an affair. And she wasn’t going to let him drag her into one, just to occupy himself while he decided between practicing law and soldiering.

Chapter Ten (#ulink_c20a182b-c03b-52a0-97cf-e2ca46a8a925)

They sat in a booth at a nearby fast-food restaurant, where J.D. put away three cheeseburgers, a large order of French fries and two cups of coffee before Gabby’s fascinated eyes.

“I’m a big man,” he reminded her as he was finishing the third one.

“Yes, you are,” she agreed with a smile, running her eyes over the spread of muscle under his chambray shirt.

His eyes narrowed with amusement. “Remembering what’s under it?” he said softly, teasing her.

She flushed and grabbed her coffee cup, holding it like a weapon. “I thought this was a truce,” she muttered.

“It is. But I fight dirty, remember?”

She looked, studying his hard face. “What was it like, those four years when you were a mercenary?” she asked.

He finished the cheeseburger and sipped his coffee, leaning back with a heavy sigh. “It was hard,” he said. “Exciting. Rewarding, in more ways than just financial.” He shrugged. “I suppose I was caught up in the romance of it at first, until I saw what I was getting into. One of the men I joined with was captured and thrown into jail the minute we landed in one African country. He hadn’t fired a shot, but he was executed just like the men who had.”

She caught her breath. “But why?” she asked. “He was just…”

“We were interfering with the regime,” he told her. “Despite all our noble reasons, we were breaking whatever law existed at that time. Shirt and I managed to get away. I owe him my life for his quick thinking. I was pretty new to the profession back then. I learned.”

“He told me his name was Matthew,” she remarked with a smile.

He cocked an eyebrow. “Be flattered. It was three years before I found that out.”

She toyed with her crumpled napkin. “I liked him. I liked all of them.”

“Shirt’s quite a guy. He was the one who pushed me into law,” he said with a laugh. “He thought I needed a better future than rushing around the world with a weapon.”

“You think a lot of him,” she observed.

He shrugged. “I never knew my father,” he said after a minute. “Shirt looked out for me when we served in the military together. I don’t know—maybe he needed somebody, too. His wife had died of cancer, and he didn’t have anybody else except a brother in Milwaukee who still doesn’t speak to him. I had Martina. I suppose Shirt became my father, in a sense.”

She cupped her hands around her coffee mug and wondered what he’d say if she told him that Shirt had said the door to the past was closed for J.D. Probably he’d laugh it off, but she decided she didn’t want to find out.

He looked up. “How about your family? Any sisters, brothers?”

She laughed softly. “No. I was an only child. My father owned a ranch, and my mother and grandfather and grandmother had gone to San Antonio on vacation. Mother met Dad then and ran away to marry him over the weekend.” She grinned. “My grandparents were furious.”

“I can imagine.” He searched her face. “You look like your mother. How about him? Was he big?”

She shook her head. “My father was small and wiry and tough. He had to be, you see, to put up with Mama. She’d have killed a lesser man, but Dad didn’t take orders. There were some great fights during my childhood.”

He cocked an eyebrow. “Did they make up eventually?”

She sighed. “He’d send her roses, or bring her pretty things from town. And she’d kiss him and they’d go off alone and I’d go see Miss Patty who lived in a line cabin on the ranch.” She grinned. “I visited Miss Patty a lot.”

He chuckled. “They say the making up can be pretty sweet.”

She studied his hard face. “Yes, so I hear.”

He lifted his eyes to hers. “We’ve had a royal falling out. Want to make up?”

She hesitated, and he concentrated on finishing his coffee.

“Sorry,” he said quietly. “I’m rushing things.”

Hesitantly, she reached across the table and touched the back of the big hand resting there. It jerked. Then it turned and captured hers in its rough warmth.

“J.D., what do you want from me?” she asked.

“What do you think I want, Gabby?’ he asked in turn.

She gathered all her courage and put her worst fears into words. “I think you want to make amends for what happened in Guatemala, before you fly off into the sun. I think you want to have an affair with me.”

“That’s honest, at least,” he said. His eyes fell to their clasped hands, and he watched his thumb rub softly against her slender fingers. “You want something more permanent, I gather.”

She couldn’t answer that without giving herself away. She drew her hand away from his with a light laugh. “Aren’t we getting serious, though?” she asked. “I need to go home, J.D. I left the laundry in the washing machine, and I’ve got a week’s cleaning to do.”

His face hardened. “Can’t it wait until tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow’s Sunday.”

“So?”

She lifted her eyes to his. “I go to church on Sunday.”

He frowned slightly. “I haven’t been to church since I was a boy,” he said after a minute. “I don’t know what I believe in these days.”

It was a reminder of the big differences between them. She frowned, too, and got to her feet slowly.

“It would bother you,” he murmured, watching her. “Yes, I suppose it would.”

She half turned. “What would?”

“Never mind.” He sighed as he put the remains of their meal into the trash can and replaced the tray in the rack on their way out. “Just a few adjustments that have to be made, that’s all.”

That didn’t make sense, but she didn’t pressure him. He didn’t pressure her, either, leaving her outside her apartment building with a rueful smile.

“I hate being stood up for the damned laundry,” he muttered, hands in his pockets.

“New experiences teach new things,” she murmured dryly. “Besides, I can’t finish out the week in dirty clothes.”