Off Kilter (20 page)

He kept kissing her. Softly, so tenderly. Not only was it decimating any defenses she might have put up, it was also the most erotic seduction she’d ever been the focus of. How was that possible? He wasn’t heated, or groping, or taunting her in any of the ways they’d taunted each other the last time. Sweet seduction was far more lethal. It was about more than simple—or even complex—lust. Sweet and gentle implied affection.

She wasn’t sure she could handle being the object of anyone’s
affection. Had, in fact, spent most of the past two years—consciously or not—making sure no one would view her affectionately. It would undo the hard edge she’d worked so hard … so very, very hard, to build. It was survival mode. She couldn’t be soft and pliant, needy or wanting … not if she had any hope of maintaining the solid, objective front necessary for her job.

A job you don’t have any more.

Or rather, one she could no longer perform. And that wasn’t Roan McAuley’s doing.

But shouldn’t she be more sorted out before letting herself go … and definitely before involving anyone else in the equation? Wasn’t that why she’d stepped back after their last interlude? Clearly he hadn’t gotten the message. Just because she’d talked to him at the wedding, didn’t give him the right to—

“Stop,” he told her, his lips still on the side of her neck.

“Stop what?” she said, surprised to hear how breathless she was. All she was doing was allowing him the most wicked access to the side of her neck and the curve of her shoulder. Maybe his hands had ridden up the sides of her waist a little. And maybe, just maybe, she was aching for him to cup them over her breasts.

“Trying to build up that wall. Brick by mental brick,” he said.

“What?” She blinked her eyes open, which was when she realized she’d let them flutter shut at some point.

“I can hear the battle raging in there,” he said, lifting one hand to trace a small circle on her temple. Then he drew it down along the side of her face, over her neck, and along her collar bone.

She wanted to sigh. She wanted to moan. “It’s not that simple,” she said, closing her eyes again.

“It’s exactly that simple,” he said, then tipped her chin down, so their faces were nose to nose. “Tessa.”

She opened her eyes. “For you it’s simple. Not for me. You’ll
have to take my word on that. I can’t afford to get all tangled up.”

“It’s a simple kiss.”

“Not with you. Last time I tried to make it just a kiss, you made it clear you were looking for more than a roll in the heather. And that’s fine. But then it can’t be with me. That’s why I stepped back and put some distance between us.”

“Until the wedding.”

“It was a simple conversation.”

“That you started.”

She sighed. “Fine. But for me, it was just conversation. You can want what you want, but I don’t have time or room in my life for more. I don’t. I’ve tried to make that clear. By not encouraging more of … this.”

He stroked his fingertips along her cheekbone, along her jaw, then slid them back into her hair. The tingling sensation his touch sent skittering over her skin was entrancing.

“Have ye given thought to the photos we’re to take, then?”

She blinked again. “What?”

“The photos. For the calendar. Business, no’ pleasure.”

She tried to swat at his hand. “The calendar? Is that why you’re here? What’s all this then?” She shoved at him.

“We need to discuss the calendar, so if you’re not willing to discuss … this, then we can talk business instead.”

She scowled at him. “Right. Easy come, easy go. So much for sticking with it.”

“Hardly easy.” He let go and stepped back. “I’m not going anywhere. I’m still standing right here.” He slid his hands in his trouser pockets and rocked back on his heels. His expression was still open, the knowing twinkle in his eye still on full display. “You’re a tough woman, Tessa, but you know that. You’re also a tender, soft, sweet, and incredibly delicious woman.”

He said things that were so unexpected. He’d caught her off guard again and she said the first thing that came to her. “I
don’t know what on earth gave you that idea.” But, rather than a dismissive comeback, it almost came out as a question.

He smiled and the dimple flashed. “Well, I have firsthand experience on the last part. If you were really as hard as you want people to believe, you wouldn’t be so worried about my feelings. And you definitely wouldn’t be at all concerned about your own.”

“Who says I have feelings?”

“You just said you can’t afford to get all tangled up. I dinnae think ye were talking about our legs.” He slid his hands from his pockets. “What would be so tragic about havin’ feelings anyway, is what I want to know?”

“I’ve got bigger things to worry about right now.”

“Two heads are better than one. You don’t have to solve everything by yourself.”

“I’m not staying on Kinloch,” she said, all but daring him to have a snappy comeback for that one.

“When are you leaving?”

She stumbled. “I-I’m not staying,” she reiterated. That much was true.

“How long before you have to go back?”

“Why does that matter? All that matters is that, at some point in the not too distant future, I won’t be here. And this is where you’ll stay.”

“Answer me one thing.”

She wished she felt more confident about agreeing, but she honestly had no idea what he was going to ask. “What?” she said instead, remaining noncommittal.

“If the job wasn’t an issue, and whatever these things you have that are distracting you from having a life—”

“I have a life.”

“You have a career.”

She faltered on that, and looked down to avoid him seeing anything she couldn’t afford for him to see. She
had
a career. She didn’t know what else she had.

“Tessa.” Just her name, spoken so sincerely, so … quietly. “If you had a life, you wouldn’t be here, trying to find one.”

“I can’t stay here.”

He shifted his weight forward, but didn’t crowd her. When he lifted his hand and lightly touched her jaw, she didn’t move away. “Where do you have to go?”

“Wherever the next story takes me.”

“You’re going back to it then.”

“What would make you think I wouldn’t? It’s what I do.”

“So, the burnout you were talking about—a few weeks on a remote Scottish isle, and you’re good as new? If it’s nothing more than that, then why all the drama?”

She was suddenly tired, so very tired—of defending herself, of arguing, of trying to make him believe … something she already knew wasn’t true. “I just want to be left alone to figure it out. Is that too much to ask?”

“No, no, it’s not.” He moved the smallest fraction of an inch, the way one might when dealing with a cornered tiger. No sudden moves. “But Tessa, you’ve been alone for a long time. You said as much yourself. You haven’t figured it out so far. Maybe if you want a different result, you need to change the formula.”

“Why are you doing this?” she asked quite seriously.

“Doing what, exactly?”

“Prodding me, provoking me, not leaving me the hell alone? It can’t be a roundabout way to get me into bed, because you know you could have had that without any of the work. You want more, you say, though God knows why. I say I can’t. And you … you just don’t leave.”

“Have you ever had someone want to be a friend to ye?”

She snorted. “We’re hardly capable of friendship. Not by itself, anyway. We’re … combustible.”

“Okay,” he said, with a shameless grin, “best friends, then. Best kind I know.”

She shook her head and turned around, determined to go
back inside the croft. He could find someone else to take his stupid Santa pictures. No more talking in circles with him. No more talking, period. It was confusing her. He was confusing her. She didn’t need confusion, she needed clarity.

He didn’t stop her, but he did step up close behind her as she put her hand on the doorknob. He wasn’t touching her, but she could feel the warmth of his breath right beside her ear. “You make it damn hard for anyone to get close enough to be anything to you. Everyone needs people.”

“I have people. I have Kira.”

She heard him sigh. A sigh of defeat? Why was it that her instantaneous reaction was disappointment? What the hell kind of perverse game was she playing with him? And worse, with herself? She prided herself on being direct, and she’d have sworn that was exactly what she was being with him.

But was she being direct with herself?

“Do you want to go back?” he asked. “To the job you left behind?”

“More than anything in the world,” she answered, as fervently as she’d said anything. As she said it, she realized it was a different truth from before. She wanted to go back to her old life, meaning the life she had when she could handle the life she had. But did she
really
want to go back? To what that life truly was?

“Okay, then,” he said. “I willnae bother you. No’ like this anyway.”

“Like this what?”

“This is selfish. Because I want you. I don’t even know why, exactly, but I do, Tessa. You completely and utterly command my full attention. Without even trying. Clearly,” he added with a harsh laugh, “you’ve done everything but shoot at me.”

Her heart was pounding Why was he saying those things? Why couldn’t he just go away? And stop confusing her? Making her feel things and think about things she didn’t want to know, feel, or think about.

“So I’ll stop beggin’ ye. I’d like to think I have some pride,” he said, the wry note tempered by true disappointment. “But that doesnae mean I canno’ be your friend. I know, I know, ye have Kira, and shouldn’t we all be so lucky as that? Ye could have no one better in your corner. No’ even me. But, Tessa …”

She could have gone inside the house at any time. He wouldn’t have stopped her. “What?”

“As ye go forward, back to your world, your job, your stories … ye’ll burn out again unless you make changes.”

She wanted to snort. If he only knew.

“You need friends. More than one. And no’ just to lean on in the tough times. You need to be a friend. You need to expand beyond being an observer only. It’ll ruin ye, ye have to know that, to sense that, ye ken?”

She turned to face him, and he was deep inside her personal space. Again. That time she wanted him there. Wanted to understand him, like she would try to understand the enemy … and the target. In all of her stories she worked to understand both sides, then conclude the most honest way to portray that view to the world.

“What makes you think you know anything? About me? About what I do, about how it affects me?”

“I’ve spent some time, looking at your work, reading your words. I know we’re all built differently, but I don’t know how anyone but the hardest of souls could subject themselves to recording what you do, with as much heart and sensitivity as you show—” He broke off, his expression changed.

She didn’t know what she’d just revealed, but clearly something.

“You don’t think you’re sensitive? Tessa no one—
no one—
could see what you see when you look through your lens to the world, without caring. Without feeling. Like in Phuket, after the tsunami. The devastation was … beyond comprehension. There was that shot you took of the mother standing at the edge of what had been her home, her village, holding the hand
of her child. All you saw was the back of them, their bare legs, bare feet, ragged clothes, no facial expression to move you, just the grip she had on that little boy’s hand. His grip on the beaten up photo of his brothers and sisters. All of them gone. A sea of ruin in front of them … and all of it framed by the larger picture of what can only be described as paradise. You can’t no’ feel, no’ have a knot in your belly, lookin’ at that. The personal pain, the national tragedy, the stunning beauty.”

He swallowed and she could see the emotions on his face waging war. “That was early on, when you’d just begun. You were so young, to have such a deep focus, such instincts. Those instincts remained clear and true as you grew. Your article on the human trafficking of Mongol women … the photos, how stark their lives were, why they were so susceptible to the head-hunters, and the unspeakable things that happened to them. The young son—seven years old—of the woman whose story was the framework of your piece … his was the purest face of innocence I’ve ever seen, then watching the change in him, in his eyes, as he’s finally shown, unflinchingly, what had happened to his mother …” Roan closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them again. “How do you look into that face and not feel?”

He held her gaze then and there was something so stark there, she couldn’t look away.

“So, no, I dinnae know you well, but I’m human. I know how just seeing those few shots affected me, photos of places I’ve never been to, never seen, of people I don’t know and will never know. I’m no’ the one there, seeing it unfold live, making the choices you’re making, which means having a much deeper level of understanding of what’s going on. And what will continue to go on long after you put that camera away.”

She looked away, because he was taking her to places, mentally, that she’d been working hard to steer clear of.

Gently, very gently, he tipped her chin up. “I see you here, working to find your way back. To what, I don’t know. I don’t
know that you do, either. But the bottom line is, I don’t have to know. I can see, with my own eyes, where you are now. This isn’t just a break, or a little burnout, is it, Tessa?”

“It’s not your business, Roan,” she said roughly.

“Then let me make it my business. Even if your time here is short, if you do find your way back let me help you with that. Let me be a friend. That can’t be a bad thing, even for a short time.”

“You don’t get it all. I can’t let myself feel. Anything. And friends demand feelings.” She cupped his cheek when he would have spoken, for once surprising him into silence. “I’ve been a bitch to you. Because you scare me. You challenge me and I can’t handle it. I can’t. Or I won’t. But I appreciate that you chose me to befriend, chose me to concern yourself with, though I’ll likely never understand why. If it’s not just about the sex, then—”