Christmas Passions. Catherine Spencer
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that, as well.”
Her eyes, big and beautiful and grey as summer thunderclouds, all at once had such a bereft look to them that he knew a crazy urge to fold her in his arms and tell her she was special, too, and that she shouldn’t assume what he’d said about Deenie was necessarily a compliment.
Leaping up to turn off the overhead light before he did or said something really stupid, he felt his way back to the makeshift bed and made a point of stuffing a wad of blanket between him and her. “I think anyone who meets her recognizes she’s different and always has been. According to her mother, she was still in diapers when she decided she was going to be a prima ballerina, and she’s never once deviated from the path of that ambition which, by itself, makes her something of a rarity.”
“Exactly,” Ava said, her voice flowing over him in the dark like sweet, heavy ice wine. “So tell me, Leo, how is it that two months around you was enough to persuade her to give up the adulation of sold-out audiences in Europe and settle down in sleepy old Owen’s Lake?”
CHAPTER TWO
SNOW batting against the paned window marked the silence ticking by as he tried to come up with an answer. “I guess,” he finally said, “it began with our both being sidelined by injuries that kept us away from our regular routines. We were housebound former neighbors who met at the physiotherapy clinic one morning, gravitated towards each other by mutual sympathy and boredom, and…one thing led to another.”
“You make it sound as if you drifted together by default,” Ava accused.
“Don’t get me wrong,” he said, wishing she hadn’t managed to pinpoint matters quite so accurately. “Deenie’s a lovely, intelligent woman and I’d have gone stir crazy if she hadn’t been around to keep me entertained. But I’d be lying if I said our…relationship left me deafened by violins or dazzled by stars. I’m not programmed to react like that. I don’t know any lawyers who are.”
The hay rustled softly as she shifted to a more comfortable position. Or was it her silky underwear sighing against her skin—a possibility which sent heat prickling down his torso to threaten areas best left undisturbed.
“You might not be a romantic, Leo,” Ava said, “but Deenie is, which brings me back to my original question. What made her decide to stay in Owen’s Lake?”
“I think,” he said, striving to maintain a lofty perspective despite the lecherous urgings of his body, “her injuries made her face up to the fact that her performing career isn’t going to last indefinitely. You were a dancer yourself when you were younger, Ava, albeit an amateur. You know how much punishment your body took. Multiply that a thousand times and you get a pretty good idea of the wear and tear on Deenie, both physically and emotionally. She knows that although she’ll probably make a full recovery this time, she’ll be forced into retirement much sooner than most women—probably within the next five years. So she’s trying to compromise.”
“That doesn’t sound like the Deenie I know.”
“What can I say? People change. Maybe being a prima ballerina isn’t enough to satisfy her anymore. Maybe she wants to have something else to turn to when her dancing days are over.”
“And she’s convinced she’ll find that ‘something’ with you?”
Cripes, the question suggested the notion that he and Deenie were on the brink of marriage had spread farther than he feared! “I certainly wouldn’t go that far,” he said neutrally, “even though her family does seem to think we’re a match made in heaven.”
Ava turned toward him. He could tell because her breath sifted over his face, fragrant as sun-warmed peaches. It brought to mind the lush, smooth texture of her lips and left him wondering if she’d taste as sweet as she smelled. Even as a teenager, she’d had a mouth that begged to be kissed and from the little he’d seen, time had only added to its appeal.
“From everything she’s told me, Deenie seems to think so, too.”
“Don’t read too much into what she’s told you, then,” he replied, irritated as much by his reaction to her proximity as by her probing questions. “I’m a thirty-seven-year-old lawyer who’s handled enough divorce cases to know that if people were more realistic about what makes a relationship work, and less prone to fantasizing, I might not have quite such a fat bank account but I’d have a hell of a lot more free time to devote to other pursuits.”
Ava, dogged to a fault, wasn’t about to get sidetracked. “I’m not interested in a run-down of your financial assets, Leo. Deenie and I are as close as sisters and I don’t want to see her hurt. So what I’m waiting to hear you say is that you’re not leading her on, and that you share a clear understanding of how things really stand between you. Can you give me those assurances?”
A hollow gloom descended on him, one with which he’d become all too familiar in recent weeks. Usually it attacked first thing in the morning, filling him with a sense of foreboding before he was awake enough to wrestle it into submission with pragmatic reason.
It stemmed, he’d told himself, from the frustration of enforced idleness; to the knowledge that while he followed doctor’s orders, his partners in the Skellington law firm were doing double duty picking up the slack created by his putting in half days only at the office. But Ava’s continued cross-examination bared a truth he’d been unwilling to face. The real cause of his discontent sprang not from professional frustration, but from the uneasy suspicion that he’d somehow lost control of his private life.
“Well, Leo? That wasn’t such a difficult question surely, so what’s taking you so long to answer?”
“If you must know,” he snapped, feeling like the cornered rat he undoubtedly was, “I’m tired of other people assuming they have the right to poke their noses into matters which are none of their concern.”
“I see. Well now that you’ve got that off your chest, let me ask you this. What do you want from the immediate future, Leo?”
“To get back to work full time. To be on top of my case load. To return to normal, for Pete’s sake!”
“Does ‘normal’ include making time for Deenie?”
“Cripes, Ava!” he exploded. “You never used to be such a pain in the butt, so where’s all this coming from now? Are you jealous because she’s got a man to keep her company, and you haven’t?”
The question sliced through the night like a blade and he knew from the utter silence which greeted it that he’d drawn blood. “Oh, jeez!” he muttered. “Ava, I’m sorry. I had no right to say that.”
Her breathing flitted across to him, jerky and uneven. “No, you hadn’t.”
“Are you crying?”
“No,” she said, her voice swimming in tears.
Awkwardly, he reached for her, planning to give her shoulder a comforting, brotherly pat. But he misjudged the distance between them and instead made contact with her hair. It looped around his fingers like damp strands of silk and snagged in the metal band of his watch.
“Oh, hell,” he said softly. “Don’t try to pull away, Ava. We’re all knotted up.”
It should have been a non-incident; would have been if she hadn’t ignored his request and, in trying to disentangle herself, moved her head in such a way that her mouth blundered against his.
He didn’t exactly kiss her. He just sort of…let his lips rest against hers while he worked with his free hand to unsnarl her hair.
She’d spent the better part of two days in a plane. She should have reeked of stale aircraft food and recycled air. Instead, she tasted delicious. Peaches again.
“Your perfume is driving me wild,” he said against her mouth.
A tremor raced over her. She brought her hand up to cover his, to push it and him away. “Please