Cross My Heart (28 page)

Elyse's first impulse was to run to him and hold him, but
his grim expression didn't encourage such familiarity. Liz must have
been mistaken. He didn't want to see her, after all.

She stood rooted to the floor, drowning in his cool green
eyes. "Since you've finally decided to visit me, you might as well come
all the way in," he said, and beckoned her with his left hand, while
keeping the right one at his side.

He was angry. She'd hurt him—the last thing
she'd wanted to do.

She walked over to the bed and stood on the left side,
away from his injury. "Clint, I'm so sorry—"

Her voice broke, and she reached out and took his hand in
hers.

His fingers closed over hers in a firm grip. "Sorry about
what? That I've been injured? Or that you didn't come to me last night
when I needed you so?" There was bitterness in his tone.

Her knees gave way and she dropped down on the side of the
bed, careful not to jar him. "Oh, darling, what I'm sorry about are all
the misunderstandings that seem to plague us constantly," she wailed.
"If I'd known you wanted me with you, nothing could have kept me away."
Her voice shook and her features twisted with anguish.

With a groan Clint pulled her to him and cradled her
against the uninjured side of his chest. She put her hand to his neck
and caressed him.

"Why would you think I didn't want you?" he murmured, his
voice as shaky as hers.

"I—I knew how upset you'd be because Dinah
wasn't here. I guess I just couldn't face you, knowing I was second
choice."

"Second choice!" His arm tightened around her. "You mean
you didn't know? But I thought someone would have told you."

She raised her head to look at him. "Told me what?"

He uttered a low growl of regret as he kissed her on the
forehead. "That Dinah left yesterday morning to go back to France. I
was hurrying out of that luncheon on my way to you when some idiot took
a shot at me."

Elyse's eyes widened with surprise. "You mean she left
before
you were shot?"

Clint nodded. "She went back to a man she'd been seeing in
Paris, and I was trying to get to you. It's as I told you all along,
you little skeptic. It isn't Dinah I want—it's you."

Elyse collapsed against him, too relieved to argue. Dinah
was gone. She didn't even know of the assassination attempt, and Clint
didn't seem at all upset about her leaving.

He continued to speak. "I'm afraid it's my own damn fault
you weren't with me last night." There was strong self-disgust in his
tone. "I should have told you on Saturday that she was leaving."

This time Elyse sat up. "You had this all settled on
Saturday and you didn't tell me?"

He nodded, and in spite of her burgeoning anger she could
see the toll this discussion was taking on him. His face was drawn and
his eyes reflected the physical pain he wouldn't admit to. "I'd
intended to tell you at the cocktail party, and you'll never know how
eagerly I was looking forward to the big reconciliation scene that was
to follow. I was going to haul you off to my bedroom, lock the door and
keep you there all weekend."

Clint closed his eyes and shuddered. "Then you waltzed in
on the arm of another man, and I went crazy with jealousy."

The anger drained from her. "Jealousy? You were jealous of
Ferris?"

"Damn right I was. He had his hand on you, and he was
carrying
my
daughter. It was all I could do to
keep from throwing him out."

My daughter
! He was already thinking
of Janey as his.

Elyse couldn't help grinning. "But I told your mother I
was bringing an escort."

"Well, she didn't tell me," he grumbled, "and when you
walked in with him I lost all my celebrated cool. Then Janey turned
away from me, and the whole thing got nightmarish."

He reached for her and hugged her to him again. "I'm
ashamed to say it wasn't until then that I fully understood how you
felt about my relationship with Dinah. I'd never been jealous before,
not even when she and I were engaged. She had a lot of men friends, and sometimes
they'd take her to parties or receptions when I wasn't able to. It
never bothered me, but when you showed up at my house with another man
I felt as if I'd been stabbed in the gut."

She kissed the pulse that was hammering under his jaw.
"I'm glad. I like the idea of your being jealous of me, and besides, it
served you right."

He nibbled her earlobe. "You little devil. You're not
going to sympathize with me at all, are you?"

"No," she whispered, "not about that. And I still don't
know why you didn't tell me Dinah was leaving."

Clint sighed. "Because I was too bullheaded. Also, I was
so mad I couldn't think or reason. I decided that if you were going to
flaunt another man at me you could damn well wait a while longer before
I proposed to you again."

Elyse burrowed her face in his shoulder. "That wasn't very
nice," she chided. "I've been going through hell."

"So have I, my darling," he murmured as he nuzzled her
hair. "Unfortunately I'm only human, and there are a lot of things
about me that aren't very nice—I'm sure you'll discover all
of them during the next fifty or so years. But I love you with a
passion I never asked for, and sometimes it just plain scares the hell
out of me."

She couldn't very well argue with that. "Speaking of
scared," she said, "I hope you never have to feel what I did when I
heard on TV that you'd been shot. I didn't know if you were dead or
alive, and—" Her voice broke and she shivered and clung to
him.

Clint held her close. "Take off your shoes and lie on the
bed with me," he said.

There was nowhere she wanted to be more, but she
hesitated. "I might hurt you."

"Sweetheart, I already hurt. You take my mind off the
pain—and besides, I need you as close as I can get you. I've
spent too much time in bed alone these past few weeks, tormented with
dreams of holding you and loving you, only to wake and find the bed and
my arms empty."

She slipped out of her pumps and adjusted her position so
she was lying full length next to him on top of the sheet. He put his
arm around her and cuddled her against him. "Mmm, that's better," he
murmured. "Now raise up and give me a kiss. I can't move around much."

She leaned over him and stroked his temple. "You mean this
time you want me to take charge?"

He rubbed his cheek against the soft rise of her breast.
"Are you sure you know how?" There was amusement in his tone.

"I'll improvise," she whispered into his ear, then traced
the inside of it with the tip of her tongue.

"You're learning fast," he said approvingly as she kissed
first one side of his mouth, then the other.

She touched her lips to his fleetingly, then returned to
brush them again. The third time she settled her mouth squarely on his
and felt the blood pound through her veins at his quick, heated
response.

"Mmmmmm," she murmured, and ran her tongue around his
lips. He parted them, inviting her penetration as the hand that was
holding her searched for and found her bare thigh. She bent her leg and
brought it up to rest gently against his sheet-covered groin.

Unexpectedly her knee nestled beside the hard ridge of his
desire, and she quickly moved it. She hadn't meant to arouse him. "Oh,
my, I didn't mean to—"

He chuckled. "Honey, all you have to do is come into the
room to get that kind of response from me. Now come on, put your knee
back up. It feels so good."

"But you can't—"

"No, I can't. Not yet. But it's sure as hell reassuring to
know it's not because of any…uh…structural
damage. Meanwhile we can fool around a little. It'll just be that much
sweeter and more satisfying when we do make love completely. Besides,
this will relieve some of the frustration that's been driving me out of
my mind."

He tugged at her thigh, and she returned to the position
he wanted.

He sighed contentedly and moved his left arm to caress her
knee. The effort caused him to cringe and swear with pain.

Elyse raised herself on her elbow, frightened that he
might have injured himself. "Clint, be careful!"

He relaxed as the discomfort subsided. "It's all right.
The muscles in my chest are sore on that side, and moving my arm pulls
them. I'll just have to get used to it."

She snuggled closer against him and put her hand on his
stomach. "Can I see what they did to you?"

"If you want. There's not much to see."

She unfastened the buttons of his pajama top and pushed it
aside. There was a large dressing covering part of his chest, extending
around to his back. "The bullet must have hit you to one side," she
said as she carefully caressed the part of his shaved chest that wasn't
bandaged.

"Lucky for me it did. Otherwise it would have damaged my
lung and I'd have to stay here longer. I'm going home tomorrow."

"Oh? Isn't that awfully soon? Did the doctor say it was
all right?"

"I didn't ask him—I told him. I'm going to take
you and Janey home with me, and we're going to be a family. If you'd
rather get married first there's a chaplain here at the hospital who
will do the honors, but I'm not going to let you get away from me ever
again. There's been enough shilly-shallying about this. I love you.
You're the
only
woman I love, and I intend to
spend the rest of my life proving it to you."

He sounded so confident, but Elyse saw the cloud of
uncertainty on his face as he searched hers. "Will you marry me, love?
I really, truly can't live without you."

She raised herself up to once more cover his mouth with
hers, and their kiss was long and hot and wonderfully satisfying. "Of
course I'll marry you," she said when they'd finally pulled apart. "I
love you and I want you, and if you still have unresolved feelings for
Dinah I'll marry you anyway, because even second best is better than
not having you at all."

His good arm crushed her against him, and with a strangled
moan he lowered his head to bury his face in her hair. For a moment he
said nothing, but she could feel his muscles clench with the effort he
was making to control his runaway feelings.

She put her arm around his neck and nuzzled his shoulder.
"I don't deserve you," he murmured brokenly, "but you'll never ever be
second best with me. As I told you earlier, Dinah was a habit I had to
break. It wasn't hard. Actually, it happened fast once I knew I'd lose
you if I didn't. But then you flaunted another man at me, and I behaved
like a jealous teenager."

"We've both acted like spoiled brats," she said as she
continued the nuzzling, this time on his bare chest.

He pulled her loose-fitting dress up with his left hand
and rubbed his palm over the silky panties that covered her bottom. His
low sound of approval was almost a purr, and she arched against his
side and hoped it wouldn't be long before he could move around enough
to tend the fire he was building deep inside her.

It was time for a little distraction, and there was a
question that had to be asked. "Clint, are you going to tell me what
happened between you and Dinah?"

His hand stilled, but remained where it was. "The
conclusion was simple, actually, but it took us both years to arrive at
it. I'd always thought of love as eternal. But now I realize there are
different kinds of love. Romantic love, the passionate love of a man
for a woman, needs to be returned and nurtured in order to grow and
flourish. Like a flowering desert cactus it will survive a lot of
neglect and mistreatment, but eventually if it's not nourished it will
wither and die."

He rubbed his lips across her forehead. "That's what
happened to the love Dinah and I once shared. It died of neglect. But
it happened so gradually that neither of us noticed until we were
forced to."

Elyse thought for a moment before she spoke. "You may be
right. When Jerry died I was sure I'd never love again, but as the
shock wore off and the pain and loneliness lessened I was able to
accept dates with other men."

She tenderly ran her hand around the outside of his
bandage, wanting desperately either to take away his pain or share it.
"When you first came to the house I was surprised at the wallop my
emotions took. It caught me off guard, and from then on I didn't have a
prayer of resisting you. I think I fell in love with you before I even
knew you, and no matter how hard I tried to prevent it that love just
grew stronger and deeper."

Clint's fingers slid under the leg of her skimpy panties
and stroked her soft skin. "That's because it was returned. Even when I
thought you were Paul's girl, I wanted you, and I knew I was in trouble. Lust could have
been toned down or turned off, but I couldn't do anything about the
feelings I had for you except yearn."

His fingers crept closer to her heat and she squirmed. He
shivered and clutched the inside of her thigh.

She started to move away, but he protested. "I want you to
touch me. It's just that it's been far too long since we made love, and
when I hold you like this my whole body responds."

"I'm having the same problem," she confessed. "When I
crawl into bed with you all thought of sleep goes up in smoke."

His thumb explored upward, making her sigh with pleasure.
"There are ways, you know…"

She put her hand over his to stop its upward spiral. "I
know, darling, and tomorrow when you get home I'll let you teach me,
but for now we'd better not think about it. We'd not only shock the
nurse if she walked in, but you don't need that kind of excitement. We
don't want to take the chance of your tearing something loose and
having to stay here any longer—"

"I'm afraid you're probably right," he said regretfully,
moving his hand to her breast, "but keep your knee where it is. I
promise to behave."