“Can’t believe I did that. Here-put ‘em in here.” He held his handkerchief like a basket and watched her while she carefully deposited the larger shards in it.

“It’s okay-really. I told you, we’re a casual household.”

“I’ll replace it. Just tell me-”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I don’t think I have a complete set of dishes in the entire house. There, I guess that’s most of it.”

He rose to his feet, cradling the broken china in his hands. “Trash?”

“Under the sink. Here, let me-”

“‘S’okay, I got it.” He kept his back to her as he dumped the shards into the trash, so she couldn’t see him fold two of the largest pieces into his handkerchief and tuck them away in his pocket.

He was smiling lopsidedly as he turned back to her, saying, “Listen, I sure am sorry…” It was only when he saw her swiping blindly at the floor with a paper towel that he realized she was crying.

Like most people in law enforcement, Hawk had long ago become inured to women’s tears. Not only was it a matter of self-preservation; it was also his experience with both sexes that tears usually tended to flow in amounts directly proportional to the degree of guilt of the weeper.

But this woman? Crying?

He couldn’t believe it. This was Jane, the woman who’d confronted an intruder in her hotel room with a Roy Rogers cap pistol and brought an experienced FBI agent to his knees. She’d been knocked out, chased through the streets of the nation’s capital and endured six hours locked in a moving truck without food, water or toilet facilities, had even braved seasickness, all without so much as a sniffle. This he couldn’t understand at all. This he couldn’t tolerate.

“Hey, Carlysle, what is it? What’s wrong?” he growled, awed and fearful, thinking maybe, possibly, even hoping she’d cut herself. Hoping it was something so simple. He squatted in front of her, balancing on the balls of his feet, and gently touched her beneath the chin, trying to get her to look at him. But she turned her face away from him so abruptly he felt the cool splash of her tears on the back of his hand.

She rose, eluding him, and threw the balled-up paper towel into the sink with an angry, jerky motion.

“Why are you here?” she asked suddenly, in a voice like the cry of some small, hurt animal. “What do you want with me?” She’d asked him the very same things once before, he remembered, but with different inflections. It was amazing what a difference those inflections made. This time he felt her words like arrows in his heart.

He hesitated, thinking of the pieces of broken china in his pocket, wondering if there was some way she could have seen him put them there, some way she could know. “What do you mean?” he asked warily as he stood, moving slowly and with great caution, the way he would in the presence of a cornered and unpredictable suspect.

She kept her face averted and didn’t answer. He studied her, the curve of her ear, the side of her neck and the damp hair curling there. He remembered how soft her skin was, and the way she smelled. And he told her the simple truth: “I came because I needed to see you again.”

She laughed. Not a comfortable, gently mocking chuckle, like the last time she’d skewered him so deftly with that particular weapon. This was a high, sharp bark of sheer disbelief, and he thought about the irony of being rejected for telling the God’s-honest truth, when he was accustomed to having his glibbest lies taken as gospel.

“Why is that so hard to believe?” he asked, approaching her cautiously. He put his hands on her shoulders, and his jaw clenched involuntarily when she flinched. He turned her toward him, his hands firm but gentle when she resisted. Still she kept her face lowered, hidden from him, and he understood finally that she was distressed and humiliated by her tears.

Since he couldn’t very well offer her his handkerchief, he reached for the roll of paper towels she’d left on the counter, tore one sheet off and then, instead of handing it to her, began oh so gently to mop her cheeks with it. He was probably clumsy-tenderness didn’t exactly come naturally to him-but in any case, she gave a funny little sniffle, sort of a half laugh, and finally looked up. Her eyes were open, and gazing straight into his.

And once again he thought of the sea, and of dolphins, and of rain, and sunshine breaking through clouds, and rainbows over gray water. But now, for some reason, there was a poignancy in her gaze that touched him deep inside. The towel he was holding brushed the tear-filled creases at the corner of her eye and then was still. And he lowered his head and kissed her.

At first he thought it was going to be all right. He felt her breath sigh through her body, and her lips begin to soften as he touched them. It felt to him as though he were kissing her for the very first time. So sweet, so sweet, he thought, although it was salt he tasted, and he wondered why he suddenly ached so much inside.

Until he realized he was remembering the first time he’d ever kissed Jenny…

He thought it must have been autumn, following the spring he’d turned sixteen. Grief-stricken and rebellious, he’d fled his house, heading straight and true across the backyard to Jen’s house, as usual. Meeting at the boundary between their two properties, they’d gone for a walk in the woods nearby. He’d been hurrying, furious. He remembered the swish and crunch of leaves underfoot, and the squirrels that fled, scolding, before them. Don’t cry, Jen had said, reaching for his hand. And she’d leaned over-he’d had several more years of growing to do, and she’d been as tall as he was then-and she’d kissed him. He’d stopped and faced her, daring her to run away. But she’d just looked solemnly back at him, never blinking, never wavering. He’d never kissed anyone before. He’d thought his heart might punch a hole in his chest. He’d tasted salt then, too, he remembered. Only then, the tears had been his…

He felt her lips-Jane’s lips-quiver, and almost groaned aloud when she turned her face aside. He held himself still, except for his jackhammer heart, and whispered, “What’s the matter?”

He could feel her trembling. She said in a cracked and testy voice, “Please don’t do this.”

He felt as if he were balanced precariously on the edge of a chasm, afraid even to breathe. “Why not?” She shook her head desperately. He gave a short huff of puzzled laughter. “We’ve done it before.”

“Yes.”

“I thought it was…” Phenomenal was the word that came immediately to mind, but he settled instead for “good.”

She gave a little gulp that was more like a whimper than a laugh. “Oh, yes.”

“Well, then…”

She drew away enough so that she could look at him, and he was left tensely stroking her shoulders, simply to keep himself from pulling her against him. She whispered, “But it’s different now.”

“Yeah, it is.” God, he wished his heart wouldn’t beat so hard. His lips quirked wryly. “We’re not in a truck anymore. Looks to me like we’ve got all the time, space and privacy we need for what comes-” He stopped suddenly, thinking he understood. That unaccustomed tenderness assailed him.

Thoroughly ashamed of himself, he rubbed his hands up and down her arms, drawing her cold hands into his and cradling them both against his chest. “Hey,” he said gruffly, “is that what’s bothering you? The ‘what comes after’? Look, we don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do. Far as I’m concerned, ‘what comes after’ is always a mutual decision. Hell, I’m no Neanderthal.”

Her eyes stabbed at him like darts when he said that, and she muttered almost angrily, “Don’t be ridiculous-I know that.” Then her lashes dropped like curtains, and she gave a small, helpless sigh. “It isn’t that.”

“Then…”

She shook her head, drew breath for another sigh, and he could see her struggling with it, working toward a decision of some sort. Part of him-the heated and lusty, eternally adolescent part-waited, panting and confident, for the moment when he could pull her back into his embrace, knowing that it would be only one endless kiss from there to her bedroom. The other, the wounded and wary adult part of him, knew that nothing would ever be so simple for him again.

“It’s different,” she said, so carefully he wondered what it must have cost her to keep her voice steady. “Because I care about you.”

A chuckle rattled around inside his chest. “I care about you, too.” But it was the kind of thing he’d said many times before. It was too glib and came too easily, and he could tell by the bottomless look she gave him as she pulled her hands from his that she knew it.

She shook her head and turned away, rubbing her arms as if she was cold. “Hey, what’s wrong?” he said, reaching for her again, still half laughing, “That’s supposed to make things better, not worse.”

He was completely unprepared when she rounded on him, flinching angrily from his outstretched hand. “I care about you…too much,” she said as her eyes leaked liquid fire. “Too much. Do you understand?” He waited, dumbstruck and scarcely breathing, for her to finish. “And you’re still grieving for your wife!”

Chapter 14

It was the last thing she’d ever wanted to say to him. She regretted the words the minute they were out of her mouth, but of course there was nothing she could do about it then. She knew all too well that words once spoken can never be taken back.

With a furious, choked-off sob, she turned her back on Tom’s stricken face and tried her best to erase from her heart and soul the memory of the pain she’d glimpsed in his eyes. And she waited, breath held and trembling, the way one waits after the lightning flash for the thunder.