Morgan's Son (11 page)

Sabra straightened, her pulse bounding. She hadn't been wrong about Craig Talbot looking dangerous. His chest was covered with a mat of dark hair, emphasizing his primal, animal side. His shoulders were thrown back with natural pride and grace. Her mouth went dry as she realized that the stark whiteness of the terry-cloth towel dipped provocatively below his navel, hugging his narrow hips. In a physical sense, he was beautiful, lean and very fit. Her gaze went to his arms. The pink burn scars were not only on the backs of his hands, but claimed at least half the skin up to each elbow. She wondered what terrible fire he'd been in and somehow survived. If he realized she was staring at him, he didn't show it as he rubbed at his dripping hair with another, smaller towel.

"Those are my brothers," Craig said, walking toward her. He told himself to stop—to turn around and leave. Sabra stood like a tall, graceful willow in his apartment—so wonderfully alive. He couldn't decide whether it was her exotic beauty, the sudden flush on her cheeks or the shyness in her eyes that drew him. As he realized she was blushing over his dress code—or lack of it—he smiled to himself. Should he tell her he walked around draped in a towel after every shower? That it was one of his many eccentricities?

The look in Sabra's eyes spoke of more than shyness; he saw a pleasure in them, that made him feel powerful and good. It was nice to be admired—especially by her. Still, he was touched by that shyness. Despite her many strengths, Sabra was vulnerable, he discovered. How did she balance that against the cruel realities of their work? A desire to sit down and talk with her at length overcame him as he walked toward her. She was the kind of woman he usually liked—intelligent and her own person, with a good sense about herself as a human being.

Sabra tore her gaze from Craig's beautifully sculpted form. The ache to reach out and touch him, to see if he was real—if he was as dangerous as her spinning senses told her he was—was almost her undoing. Gripping her hands together in front of her, she forced herself to turn back to the photos. She could literally feel him coming toward her as a strange, flooding warmth enveloped her like a blanket, triggering her senses. Merely standing and waiting for his approach was excruciating.

Craig draped the smaller towel around his shoulders and picked up one of the gold-framed photos. "This is my older brother, Dan, and his new wife, Libby."

He handed the picture to Sabra, and as their fingers touched, she inhaled sharply. If Craig noticed her reaction, he didn't show it. Holding the photo, she tried to concentrate on it. Dan Talbot wore his Marine Corps dress summer uniform; his beautiful bride was dressed in a pale blue suit. "They look very happy," she murmured.

Craig managed a nod of his head, wildly aware of her closeness. He picked up the faint, lingering scent of her perfume—spicy and tantalizing, like her. "Dan deserves some happiness. He went through hell with his first wife, who turned out to be a closet cocaine user for seven years of their marriage."

"Oh, no…" Sabra spun toward him and was caught by his blue eyes, which were banked with some unknown emotion as he studied her. A wild sensation bolted through her and she momentarily lost her train of thought at his smoldering inspection. How close she was to him. She merely had to lift her hand and reach out a few scant inches to tangle her fingertips in the dark mat of hair on his chest. She exhaled shakily. This man was virile in a way she'd rarely encountered.

Craig forced himself to talk. If he didn't, he was going to reach out and stroke that wonderfully rich black hair tumbling across Sabra's proud shoulders. Would it feel silky? Warm, like her? "Dan didn't know it when he married her," he said stiffly instead. "He discovered it after they'd been married a year. He went through hell and back for her. I told him there was nothing he could do to change her if she didn't want to quit. He got pretty angry with me when I advised him that the only recourse was to divorce her. But eventually he was forced to see I was right."

Sabra fingered the gold frame, trying to concentrate on the photo. She could smell the fresh pine fragrance of the soap he'd used and feel the natural warmth of his body because he was standing so close. Her voice went unintentially husky as she said, "A dose of your usual blunt realism?"

He slid his fingers through several damp strands of hair plastered to his brow. "You could say that, I guess." Craig saw unexpected panic in her eyes. Over him? Was he too close? Consciously, he stepped back, creating a safer distance between them. He longed to study her face as minutely as a scientist looking through a microscope, but didn't dare.

"Have you always had this hard sort of realistic take on life?"

"Yes." He stared down at her clean profile. Sabra had the most beautiful lips he'd ever seen. They were soft, slightly full and gently curved at the corners—and he had this wild desire to touch them with his own, to explore and savor the taste of them. Would she be pliable and as hot as he suspected? The insane urge to find out nearly unstrung him. Craig took another step back, pretending to dry his hair some more, desperate to keep his hands busy—and away from Sabra.

He cleared his throat. "My brothers are idealists, like you," he said dryly. When Sabra snapped a look in his direction, he smiled a little. "It's only a comment."

"You make it sound like a disease."

Shrugging, he said, "Sometimes it is."

She turned, holding his still-amused gaze. "I couldn't live the way you do," she said honestly. "If I didn't have some hope, some idealism, I don't think I'd survive."

"The world is made up of realists and idealists." He poked a finger at the photo. "My brother's idealism made him hang on to that marriage and suffer for nearly seven years before he got a reality check."

"He must have loved her," Sabra said simply. "That's different from idealism. You don't just bolt and run when your partner has a problem."

"I won't argue with that. But Dan's idealism prevented him from forcing her to get help or do something that could have saved the marriage. He dragged his feet, hoping that talking with her would help. It didn't, of course."

"It sounds as if, in his place, you'd have dropped the marriage in a heartbeat."

With a shrug, Craig said, "I don't believe in wasting time where I'm not wanted. His ex-wife wanted her habit more than she did him. Dan didn't want to believe that. His idealism got in the way of reality."

Sabra set the photo down and picked up the other one. "So who's this? Your younger brother?"

"Yeah, that's Joe. Our folks retired to a small place called
Cottonwood
,
Arizona
, and he stayed on to run the family trading post and grocery store at
Fort
Wingate
. It's on the Navajo reservation in
New Mexico
."

"You two look a lot alike," Sabra said, studying the man dressed in a pair of well-worn jeans and a blue-and-white-checked cowboy shirt, a black felt cowboy hat pushed back on his dark brown hair. He stood by the store, smiling broadly, a border collie at his feet. But despite his similar features and coloring, Sabra realized Joe actually looked very different from Craig—both brothers did. What was the difference?

It took her a moment to realize that Craig looked battered in comparison to his siblings, as if he'd been beaten down by life more brutally. It was only conjecture, but Sabra instinctively felt she'd hit upon the truth.

"Joe's the joker of us," Craig said as she placed the photo back on the top of the television. "He's the wild cowboy from
New Mexico
."

"And he never went into the military?"

"No, not him. He doesn't do well with too much discipline and organization around him. I think he inherited our mother's love of the land and earth. The Navajo people love him, and he's worked hard to see they have a better quality of life."

"He sounds very humanitarian."

"As opposed to me?" He saw her flush at his insight.

"Well…I meant—'

"It's okay," he told her, turning away. "I'm used to being the heavy in the family. Once, Joe was engaged to an Anglo." He stopped and twisted to look at her. "Anglo is how the Navajo describe a white person. Anyway, Joe fell head over heels with this Anglo teacher, Rebecca, on the res. He fell for her hook, line and sinker. When she told him she was pregnant, I laughed."

"Why?"

"Because the woman was pregnant when she met him, just looking for some idealistic jerk to marry her so she could have security and money. I happened to be home on leave, and I saw her coming a country mile away."

"Did Joe?"

"No." His mouth twisted. "She turned on her arsenal of charm, and he fell for it. I asked him if it was possible to really fall in love that fast. He said he thought so, but I warned him she wanted something from him. Something she wasn't telling him."

"So what happened?"

"I was around for thirty days, so I did a little investigating. I knew all the locals, since I'd been born and raised there. Old Doc Conner, an obstetrician from
Gallup
, came out to the res to see someone. On a hunch, I asked him if Rebecca was one of his patients. He said he'd been seeing her for three months, so I told Joe. He might be blind when he's in love, but he's not stupid."

"How did he take it?"

"At first he was angry with me for suggesting she was pregnant with some other man's child. We got in a fist-fight over it and both ended up with broken noses. But eventually, he went to her and she spilled the truth. He broke their engagement."

"He must have been devastated," Sabra murmured.

"Yeah, he was. He really thought he was in love with Rebecca." Shaking his head, Craig said, "Love doesn't happen overnight. It takes time."

"Not always," Sabra challenged.

His eyes glittered. "There you go again—your idealism is showing. You think love is that easy?"

"I didn't say it was easy," Sabra retorted. "But my folks fell in love the moment they set eyes on each other. They've been married over forty years now, and they're still happy."

His smile was cutting. "Don't pitch one experience against the statistics, Ms. Jacobs. One out of every two marriages fails within a couple of years of tying the knot."

"Well," she said tightly, "that doesn't mean people can't fall in love quickly."

"That's romantic love, not the real thing," he drawled. Stopping in the doorway, he said, "As soon as I shave, I'll pack some clothes and we'll leave."

Sabra stood in the middle of the room feeling angry and cheated. Craig was so sure of himself when it came to love. Well, what the hell did he know about it? Very little, she was sure. With his kind of attitude, he'd probably never been involved with a woman beyond an occasional one-night stand when it suited his needs.

Sabra shook her head. That wasn't fair of her and she knew it. Wandering around the living room, she finally sat on the overstuffed couch and crossed her legs. She felt bothered by Craig's harsh view of the world. Yet his vision had helped his younger brother avoid entering a marriage based on a lie—and helped his older brother get out of one.

Maybe she was too used to Terry's easygoing ways. Terry was a realist, too, but he didn't rub his viewpoint like salt into an open wound. Talbot had so many hard edges to him. She wondered if they were edges life had placed there through experience, or ones that life hadn't yet knocked off. Either way, she felt under fire from his unyielding view. But somehow she was going to have to deal with it—and him. She rested her head in her hands. On a purely physical level, Talbot was incredibly male, a teasing masculine to her feminine desires. Yet on an emotional level, he was abrasive. Complex. Craig Talbot was highly complex, and she hadn't a clue how to handle him—or how to adequately defend her vulnerable emotions against him. What was she going to do?

Sabra got up and wandered nervously around Craig's apartment. Shaken by the masculine power he exuded, she wondered if she'd assessed him correctly. Even nearly naked, he was a man no one would trifle with willingly. She shook her head, mystified by his many contradictions.