Coming Home (16 page)

A vehicle door slammed outside and there was the stamping of feet and the next second the door to the restaurant flew open. Jeb Delaney, his black Stetson dripping water, his maroon leather bomber jacket speckled with rain, and his black western boots muddy, filled the doorway. The room seemed to compress; it was as if he were larger than life, and had brought the storm inside with him, the scent of cool wet weather, a hint of the winds of winter overpowering the warmth of the wood stove and the smell of cooking food.

A spoonful of Megan's thick, chunky soup half lifted to her lips, Roxanne froze, her eyes on Jeb. Oh, God! He looked so good, so virile and masculine that her heart pounded with excitement despite her best intentions. And he's still an arrogant obnoxious dick-head, she reminded herself. You don't like him. Remember? He doesn't like you. Remember that, too? OK. OK. We hate each other. But, why, oh, why, does he make me feel so alive? And why, dammit, can't I forget how great it was to make love with him? You had
sex
with him you did
not
make love. For that, she reminded herself grimly, you had to have respect, ad miration, liking, and love. … None of which you have for him. He's a creep. A bossy Neanderthal. The sort of man you can't stand. Remember? Right. I remember that.

It was a good thing she did, because Jeb's eyes unerringly met hers, and her silly little heart almost jumped right out of her chest. She wanted to look away but she couldn't and when he began to walk toward her with that sexy long-legged stride, tight black jeans molded to his muscular thighs, his dark face intent and those black eyes of his fixed on hers, she thought she'd have an orgasm right then and there. Uh-oh. I'm in trouble. There is something very strange going on. This is Jeb Delaney, not my favorite person. This is the man I've been avoiding for weeks, months. The man I always get into a fight with. So why am I tickled to death to see him? Boredom, she thought desperately. Yes. Yes. That's it. I'm bored. And he's here. Right here in front of me.

Jeb's face was expressionless as he nodded to Roxanne and slid easily into the seat across from her. He took off his hat and put it on the empty seat next to him. “Afternoon,” he said softly.

Angry at the jumble of emotions that just the sight of him created, she put down her spoon and said with saccharine sweetness, “Now why don't I remember inviting you to join me?”

Amusement glimmered in the depths of his dark eyes. “Now, Princess, why do you have to get allfrosty with me? Can't a fellow just sit down and have a chat with a pretty girl?”

Her chin lifted. “I was never just 'pretty' and I haven't been a 'girl' for a long time.”

“Yeah, you're right about that. Guess you are getting a little
long in
the tooth.” He cocked a brow. “That why you retired? Too many younger, prettier, ah, forgive me, more beautiful women climbing over your back?”

Roxanne waited for the surge of outrage to come, but it didn't. And surprising herself as much as him, she muttered, “Yes. That's exactly why I'm sort of retired. It was getting harder and harder to stay on top. And since I knew I was going to lose the battle and that I'd had a good long run, I abdicated while I still could.” She grinned. “Abdication is much easier on the ego than an overthrow.”

His eyes roamed over that lovely, untamed face of hers, the elegant cheekbones, eagle eyes, and
the
flyaway mane of black
hair.
He'd known she was in here. He'd recognized her Jeep and instead of continuing on his way home, like some poor, lovesick schmuck, he had pulled off and come inside to find her. And at the sight of her just sitting there at the table, something fierce and wild had happened in the region of his heart—that and the odd sensation that he'd found something he'd been looking for all his life. He wasn't exactly happy or thrilled about any of it and it proved that he'd been wise these past weeks to stay clear of her. The woman, he thought grimly, was just plain trouble. And he sure as hell didn't want her to be
his
trouble. Why in the devil couldn't she just have
stayed
in New York? Why did she have to come back here and mess up his perfectly nice life?

His mouth seemed to have a mind of its own, because he said none of those things. Instead to his horror he heard himself saying, “They're crazy to have let you go—at sixty you'd still be lovelier than any twenty-year-old … girl.”

Roxanne blinked. Her heart pounded. Her gaze dropped to her bowl of soup and for one of the first times in her life, she found herself speechless. Jeb Delaney thought her lovely. Now why did that warm her as nothing ever had in her life?

Jeb was wondering if he could rip his tongue out by the roots. A flush stained his cheeks and the collar of his shirt felt as if it would choke him. What a weapon he had just handed her. She'd stab him with it every chance she got. Why in the devil had he ever stopped? He took a deep breath. Of course, he remembered gratefully, he did sort of have a reason for seeking her out. And it wasn't just because he'd been hungering for the sight of her. It absolutely was
not
because of that!

The situation was saved by Hank. “Well, well, look what the storm blew in,” Hank said, brown eyes twinkling as he walked up to the table.

Jeb mumbled something about finishing up early and deciding to head home before the weather got any worse.

“Don't blame you,” Hank replied. “Supposed to be a big storm. Was the road bad when you came in?”

Recovering himself, Jeb shook his head. “Not yet. There were some rock slides along the river stretch, nothing very big, but come nightfall …”

Rock slides were a constant danger anytime on the winding, twisting road to Oak Valley, but they were much worse and more prevalent during stormy weather. The rain turned the steep ground to mud and the rocks and boulders buried within it tumbled regularly onto the road. During the day, it wasn't so bad, but at night, on wet slick pavement, the pavement shiny from headlights, a driver could come up on a slide in a heartbeat. Sometimes the slides were small, other times. …

“Remember that night, that big boulder came down? Big as a Volkswagen?” Hank asked.

“Yeah. Just glad that there was only pavement beneath it when it landed and not a car. Would have been nasty,” Jeb answered.

Hank agreed and then asked, “So what can I get you?”

“Just coffee and some of Megan's walnut cake.”

Roxanne and Jeb said nothing while Hank bustled around filling Jeb's order. By the time Jeb's coffee and a three-layered slice of cake exploding with walnuts was put in front of him, Roxanne had managed to regain some of her poise.

Pushing her spoon around in her bowl of soup she muttered, “Thank you for the compliment.” She risked a glance at his face. “It
was a
compliment, wasn't it?”

The suspicion in her voice made him smile. He nodded. “Yeah, it was a compliment. But don't let it go to your head—there are a lot of uncomplimentary things I could think to say about you instead.”

She smiled, but it looked more like a dog lifting its lips in a snarl. “And I about you.”

They ate and drank in silence for a moment. Then unable to stand it any longer, Roxanne demanded, “Why are you here? And don't try to tell me it's to pay me compliments.”

“OK, I won't,” Jeb replied equitably. He hesitated. Took a sip of his coffee. Fiddled with his fork. Finally when Roxanne was on the verge of smacking him, he looked at her and said, “It's about Ilka.”

Chapter
8

R
oxanne
frowned. Jeb and Ilka? Now that was a depressing thought and she didn't want to discover why either. “Ilka? What about her?”

Jeb smiled wryly. “I know it'll come as a shock to you but Ilka and I are good friends. She actually thinks I'm a nice guy and happens to like me—we enjoy each other's company.”

“Gee, I find that hard to believe,” Roxanne muttered, ignoring the cold creeping into her heart. If he told her that he and Ilka were lovers, she'd just die. Right here. Right now. “Beats me what she sees in you.”

“Maybe it's my kind nature,” Jeb drawled, enjoying the exchange, enjoying watching her lively features, the glint in her eyes, the ebb and flow of color in those elegantly sculpted cheeks. Yeah. He did enjoy watching her, no denying it. The only thing he'd enjoy more at the moment, he admitted, was kissing some of the sass off that smart mouth of hers.

“Kind? Doubt it. At least I've never seen any sign of your being kind.” She stopped, honesty forcing her to admit, “Well, that's not exactly true—it was kind of you to adopt Dawg and Boss, so I guess you do have
one
redeeming feature.”

“Thank you,” Jeb said dryly.

Roxanne fiddled with her soup spoon. “So what is it about llka that you want to talk about?”

His eyes dropped to his coffee cup and a mixture of sadness and anger crossed his dark face. Roxanne's heart stopped. Oh, God, she prayed more fervently than she ever had, please don't let him apologize again for what happened between us … but most of all, please don't let him tell me that he's in love with Ilka.

His eyes fixed on the cup, he said slowly, “Did you know that I was one of the first deputies on the scene the night that Delmer wrapped his truck around that tree?”

Roxanne started. “No. I didn't.” She swallowed. “It must have been terrible.”

“It was. I still have nightmares about it. Especially finding those two little babies. …” A shudder rolled through him and he looked across at her, a terrifyingly savage expression in those black eyes. “You know,” he said with an equally terrifying quiet, “I always thought that it was a good thing that Delmer died instantly. In my mind, I've killed him with my bare hands a dozen times … and I like to think that if he'd still been alive when I reached the wreck that my training and dutywould have held me back from breaking his miserable neck right then and there.”

Instinctively Roxanne reached over and laid her hand on his. Their eyes met and she said softly, confidently, “You would have done the right thing.” She smiled crookedly. “Your kind always does.” Her face grew grim. “Now if it had been me. …”

He smiled. “I know—you have all that outlaw blood in you, all the way back to old black-hearted York Ballinger himself.”

She cocked a slim brow. “Don't forget you have some, too. Isn't your mother part Ballinger and part Granger?”

“In this valley, I'm not allowed to forget it.”

“Probably not.” Her gaze fell on her hand still lying on his. She started to withdraw it, but he turned his hand and caught hers in strong fingers. Since it would be a useless struggle, she let her hand stay—or so she told herself.

Trying to ignore the pleasurable tingle it gave her to feel his warm hand around hers, she asked, “So tell me about you and Ilka.”

He sighed. “That night, the night of the tragedy, I was the one who got her out of the truck just before it exploded. And I was the one who had to tell her that Bram and Ruby were dead.” He looked away. “The ambulance had arrived, and they were trying to calm her down, trying to stop the bleeding, but she kept fighting them, kept screaming that she had to get her children. The only way we could stop her was to tell her the truth, that her babies were dead.” He shook his head. “That was back in the days before mandatory safety seats for kids. …”
He
swallowed. “They both went right through the windshield and looking for those little bodies was one of the worst, if not the worst thing, I've ever had to do in my life. I'll never forget it. Never.”

His words touched a cord inside of her and she absorbed the fact almost absently that there was a lot more to tall, arrogant, tough, good-looking Jeb Delaney than most people realized. He really was a cupcake. She scowled. Well, when he wasn't being an overbearing jerk.

Jeb took a drink of his coffee. “Anyway, the events of that night formed a bond between the pair of us—probably to do with the drama and tragedy of the moment. I was in to see her several times when she was in the hospital recovering and after she got out I don't know, the visits just continued. Your mom told me that Ma always seemed to cheer up after I'd been to see her. More importantly, I was one of the few people she would talk to about what had happened.” He looked embarrassed. “And somewhere along the way, we became friends. Good friends. I guess I consider her one of my best friends.”

Friends. Hmm, that didn't sound too bad. Even best friends. In fact, friends was a whole lot better than lovers, Roxanne thought, wondering why it should matter to her what the relationship was between Jeb and Rica. After all, she couldn't stand Jeb Delaney … right?

She cleared her throat. “Urn, so you two have been friends, best friends, since then?”

He nodded. “Yeah. And as best friends, we talk about a whole range of things.” He scratched his cheek with one hand. “And lately, she's been talking an awful lot about all these trips the two of you have been taking. …”

Roxanne stiffened. “Oh, really? And what has she told you about them?”

Jeb grinned. “Well, first of all, she says that she's enjoyed them tremendously, including the date with the handsome cover boy that you set up. Claims that it's been fun getting to know her famous big sister. She likes you, you know, admires you—apparently always has.” His eyes gleamed. “Although, I can't imagine why.”

Roxanne sniffed and Jeb laughed, adding, “She thinks that you have a lot more depth than most people realize. Of course lately, she's mentioned that she really hopes that you'll find someone else to save soon, so she can relax and get back to her normal life.” Humiliation at the idea of Jeb and Ilka having cozy little chats about her washed through Roxanne. Hurt and angry, she caught him by surprise, jerking her hand out of his. “Is that so?” she asked in frosty tones.

“Afraid so, Princess,” he said gently.

“Did she ask you to tell me this?” Roxanne demanded, her eyes fierce.

Jeb looked uncomfortable. It suddenly dawned on him that he might have opened his mouth when he should have kept it shut. He winced. Not only did it appear that he'd put his foot wrong with Roxanne, but he had a powerful hunch that Ilka was going to be livid when she learned what he'd done. I should have kept going. Never should have stopped, he thought uneasily. Certainly never should have mentioned a private conversation with Ilka. Oh, man, I'm in for it now. Both of them are going to be after my scalp. He winced again. What had he been thinking of? He knew better. He wasn't a blabbermouth. He could keep a secret. Hell, he kept them all the time. It was just that he'd seen Roxanne's Jeep parked out there and had wanted an excuse to see her. And that, he realized, was the scariest admission he'd ever made.