Still Waters (22 page)

He looked down at her, at the honesty in her clear gray eyes, and something hit him in the chest with the same force as the old barn door banging against the side of the barn. Understanding, empathy, friendship. They were alike in some ways, he and this English woman with her accent and her strange ways that didn't fit in here. An odd thought, that one, that he would have anything in common with this decadent female. But the connection seemed real to him now, and he knew a powerful urge to reach out to her.

That need fought against everything Amish in him. To touch her would be a sin. Wanting her was just as bad. The tug-of-war inside him made him angry. There should have been no question of wanting. He should have been more steadfast to the
Ordnung
, more staunch, unswerving, incorruptible.

He jerked away from her abruptly, breaking the eye contact, breaking the spell. With remarkably steady hands he folded his paper in sharp, even sections and tucked it into the toolbox at his feet.

“I have to go now.”

Before Elizabeth could form any kind of comment, he was on his feet and halfway across the yard. She watched him go, a little baffled but not inclined to think on it overmuch. She had enough trouble figuring out the native Minnesotans. What went on in the minds of the Amish could remain beyond her ken.

There was no time to dwell on it anyway, she thought, tamping her cigarette out on the cement step. She pushed herself to her feet and smoothed her hands down the front of her skirt as Dane Jantzen's Bronco wheeled into the yard.

He climbed down out of the truck looking fit to kill somebody, brows ominously low, eyes blazing blue fire, granite jaw set. He stalked across the yard like a gunslinger fixing to draw his Colt and drop her where she stood. Elizabeth leaned a shoulder against the screen door too tired for dramatics, and waited until he was at the bottom of the steps to say a word.

“You got a mood on, sugar?”

Dane's jaw clenched as he looked up at her. She stood there leaning against the door as casual and calm as Scarlett on the steps of Tara, as if she weren't the bane of his existence, as if her son weren't tagging after the worst piece of dirt in six counties, taking lessons in comportment and how to lie to the authorities.

“Yeah, I've got a mood on,
sugar
,” he growled, climbing the steps.

She stood her ground and he pressed his luck, recklessness rising to surface above fatigue and frustration and everything else he was feeling. He moved to within an inch of her, trapping her between his body and the door, and heat flared up in the narrow space between them, adding fuel to the fire of his temper. He resented wanting her, resented that desire getting in the way of his job.

“Is your son here?” he asked.

“No,” she murmured. “No, he's not.”

The sass vanished before his eyes. She looked suddenly smaller, more fragile.
Fragile
. That word took precedence over the others. It reached out and struck a chord somewhere inside him, making him shift his weight back away from her, wary, not quite sure how to proceed. Dammit, he liked it so much better when she spit in his face. He could handle that Elizabeth. He could push her and spar with her and never forget to keep his distance emotionally. He wanted that tonight, wanted a fight to take his mind off Amy and the mess of things he'd made with her. But this Elizabeth was a whole different ball game, and Dane wasn't sure he knew the rules.

“I wish he were here,” she said wistfully, her voice huskier than usual. She tried for a smile, but it trembled on her lips and she turned away from him and went into the house.

Dane followed at a distance. The kitchen had been partially dismantled. Not that it seemed any more a mess than it had been before the upper cupboards had been ripped from the wall. Elizabeth moved around the rubble, oblivious to it. She dropped her purse on a piece of plywood that formed a makeshift table over a pair of sawhorses and went to the counter, where a half-dozen bottles of scotch stood nestled out of harm's way. She selected one that was about half empty and poured two fingers' worth into a glass with a picture of Speedy Gonzales on it. She didn't turn back to face him until she had swallowed half of it.

“Scotland forever,” she said, raising the glass in salute. “Best malt whiskey money can buy. Distilled in the Highlands and strained through the Stuart plaid. Costs enough to raise Bonnie Prince Charlie from the dead. 'Course, in the Highland tradition, I stole it,” she admitted audaciously. “Want some?”

“No.”

“No drinking on duty? Too bad.” She drained the glass, then stood for a long moment staring at the smiling Mexican mouse on the side, tracing a forefinger across his sombrero. “I didn't know he was running around with Carney Fox,” she said at last.

“Has he been in trouble before?”

Her gaze darted to his. “Is he in trouble now?”

“He's on the ragged edge of it. I think Fox killed Jarvis. Trace says he and Carney were together, here, shooting baskets out back. I think he's lying.”

Elizabeth gave a sad little laugh. “He's not very good at it, is he? Not like his daddy was. By golly, Bobby Lee could smear shit on toast, tell you it was honey, and you'd eat it and thank him after. Not Trace. He can't skip brushing his teeth without looking guilty about it.” She set her glass aside and rubbed her upper arms as if she were chilled. Her expression turned from reflective to earnest. “He's not a bad kid. Really, he's not. He's just got problems.”

“Such as?”

“Such as a daddy he hasn't seen since before he can remember and a stepdaddy who thought adopting him would be politically correct and good publicity, then discovered raising a boy was more trouble and mess than he wanted to bother with.”

“You make it sound like you didn't have anything to do with it.” The sarcasm was a defense. Dane didn't want to feel sorry for her or empathize with her as a parent. He was too fresh from his encounter with Amy, had spent too much time afterward dwelling on thoughts of Tricia. “Where were you while he was getting screwed up by the men in his life? Out on a date?”

Elizabeth flinched as if he'd reached out and cut her. “You bastard,” she whispered, raw fury seeping through her like blood from the wound. It was bad enough to have him strike like that when she was ready for it. This was a sucker punch below the belt, hitting her when her guard was down, when she was letting him see something of herself. Her hands curled into fists at her sides as she moved across the room toward him. “You son of a bitch.”

Dane arched a brow. “The truth hurts, Liz?”

“The truth.” She sneered the word. “You wouldn't know the truth if it kicked you in the teeth. You don't know anything about me. How dare you judge me? You weren't there.”

“No,” he said, unmoved. “I was on the sidelines with the rest of America, getting the play-by-play on the news.”

Elizabeth glared up at him. They were standing nearly toe to toe. Her body was rigid and trembling with righteous indignation. He stood there, calm as you please, looking down at her with disdain, as if he thought he was so much better than she was, chaste of mind and pure of heart.

“And you swallowed up every word of it, didn't you?” she said, furious as she thought back on the conversation they'd had in the judge's chambers just the day before. “You went through it too—the hounding, the half truths, the outright lies. But you believed every bit of it about me, didn't you?”

He didn't say a word, but the answer was plain on his face. Elizabeth shook her head in disgust. “Hypocrite.

“Well, I don't care what you heard,” she said contemptuously. “I don't care what the press said. You want the truth? Well, here it is: I never,
never
cheated on Brock Stuart. Not once. Not even when he flaunted his little girlfriends in front of me. Not even when he told me to leave. I was stupid enough to think at least one of us should live by the vows we'd taken. Stupid enough to think I'd get justice in the end, if nothing else.”

She went on with her testimony even though her voice sounded ready to fail her, reedy and hoarse, catching on the emotion that clogged her throat and hardened in her chest like cement.

“I gave that man everything I had, everything I was. I gave him myself. I gave him my son. And all I ever asked for was that he love me. Do you understand me?” she asked, looking as bewildered and hurt as she had when she had first seen the truth herself. “That's the one big sin I committed. I was naïve enough to think a man like Brock Stuart could love me. But he didn't. Brock Stuart doesn't love anybody but Brock Stuart, and God save the poor fool who thinks otherwise.

“He married me because he thought it would be good for his image—the boss marries his poor but pretty underling. A Cinderella story for the press. He singled me out and swept me off my feet with a determination that seemed ruthless even then, but poor, besotted little me, I was too busy falling in love to think about it. I was too busy thinking that maybe, for once in my whole miserable life, a man might actually love me and be decent to me.

“I'm sure he thought it was pretty hilarious, that he could blind me with a little kindness and dazzle me with diamonds. I bought the whole routine, hook, line, and sinker—flying to Paris for dinner, weekends in Monte Carlo, trinkets from Cartier. Turns a girl's head, you know, especially when the best gift she ever got from a man before that was a divorce.

“Yep,” she said with a bitter smile. “He had me believing in fairy tales, then he found himself a real princess and Cinderella went out on her ear. But that
wasn't
good for his image—throwing a woman and child into the streets—so he changed the story to suit him. He gave me a reputation, bought me some lovers I hadn't even had the satisfaction of meeting let alone screwing. And it was a real multimedia slam campaign, let me tell you. Surveillance photos, grainy videotapes of a woman who looked like me doing things Masters and Johnson never even dreamed of.”

She paused and tried to steady herself against the onslaught of ugly memories, ugly accusations, but they pounded in on her along with the faces of Atlanta's upper crust, looking at her as if she were something they should have a servant scrape off their shoe, calling her names under their breath.
Slut. Whore. We knew she was nothing but trash. Poor Brock. Poor Brock
.

She pressed her fists against her temples and sucked in a breath around the lump in her throat. “Brock Stuart took the truth and he bent it and twisted it and handed it down to the press like Moses on the goddamn mountain,” she said, glaring up at Dane. “And they kissed his ass and told him it smelled like a rose because he
owns
them.
That's
the truth, Sheriff Jantzen,” she said bitterly as tears spilled down her cheeks. “Believe it or don't. I don't give a damn.”

But she did. She cared what he thought and it made her so damn mad she could hardly see straight. With a tormented cry she struck out at him, her fists drumming against his chest, pounding at him. She shoved him, moving him not one inch—which only made her angrier.

“Get out!” she shouted, her eyes burning and her mouth twisting. “Damn you, just get out!”

Dane stood there openmouthed as she turned abruptly away from him and went back to the counter, where she stood with her shoulders rigid and her head down, hands braced against the ledge. His chest hurt where she'd hit him. He deserved worse.

Christ, she was telling the truth. He'd seen it in her eyes, heard it in her voice. The sound of it hung in the still air of the shabby little kitchen.

He should have just left. He should have obeyed her order and walked out the door. The cynic in him told him that was what a smart man would do—walk away. Walk away from Elizabeth Stuart and every dangerous thing she awakened inside him. But his conscience wouldn't let him.

He crossed the room slowly, like a man going to his doom, stopping just behind her. She didn't turn to face him, didn't acknowledge his presence in any way. She just stood there, staring out the window as day softened into dusk over the rolling pastureland.

“Elizabeth.” He murmured her name, realizing with some surprise that it was the first time he'd said it aloud. He had called her Miss Stuart for the most part, Liz when he was feeling especially sarcastic. Never Elizabeth, never anything so soft and feminine. It suited her. Beneath the tough-cookie act lay a tender heart, feminine hopes, delicate dreams—to be loved, to be cherished instead of used and derided.

She was right. He was a hypocrite, and for the most selfish of reasons—to protect himself. His sense of honor labeled him contemptible. He liked to think he was a better man than that, but the proof of the truth stood before him now, trembling as she tried to shoulder the burden.

“Elizabeth,” he murmured again, stepping closer, catching the faintest hint of her perfume—elusive, sweet, sad. “I'm sorry.”

“Oh, yeah?” she whispered derisively. “Tell someone who cares.”

“I care.”

She made a little sound of disbelief and reached for the scotch bottle. Dane caught her hand before she could wrap her fingers around its neck. They curled into a fist, and she tried to pull away from him, but he held fast.

Elizabeth glared at him over her shoulder. She didn't want his sympathy or his contrition. She didn't want him saying he cared. He wasn't the kind of man who gave himself to a woman in anything but the physical sense, and as much as her body might have wanted that, she didn't think her heart could stand it.

“I don't need your pity,” she said, lifting her chin. “I don't want anything from you.”

Christ, she was beautiful. Dane had never denied that, but it had never taken hold of him in quite the same way either. She looked up at him, defiant and stubborn and proud. Something shifted inside him as he stared down at her, and he suddenly wanted to be the one protecting her from hurt instead of dealing it out.

Dangeorus thinking. Guilty or innocent, she still wasn't the woman for him. She would take too much—too much energy, too much effort. She would want things he couldn't give her. Once a woman developed a taste for champagne, she wouldn't go back to a beer budget for long. Guilty or innocent, she was still expensive, still ambitious.