Forbidden (Southern Comfort) by O'Neill, Clark (free ebook reader txt) 📗

A day, he mused, that had turned singularly ugly.

He’d tried, several times, to talk Tate into allowing one of the deputies to see her home, but the damn fool woman had insisted on waiting for him.  He saw the strain of that etched in the line between her eyes, but her determination hadn’t faltered.  Ridiculous as it was, he got the impression she was worried about him.

Like he’d never seen a teenage corpse.

And that concern, combined with the stench of senseless death and his own reservations about just what, exactly, he was doing, served to provide a fairly uncomfortable silence on the ride home.

He could tell Tate wanted to talk. But not about her feelings regarding what happened.  Uh-uh.  Oh no.

She wanted to talk about him.  She’d been looking at him funny ever since he’d told her about Topeka.

Which one of them, exactly, held the degree in this relationship?

Relationship.

There was that freaking word again.

Somehow this entire thing had gone way off track.

When had he gone from pursuing this woman with the single-minded but reasonable goal of mutual pleasure, to worrying about her being offended if he didn’t open up and spill his guts?   He’d told her about what happened, game over, enough said.  Being with Tate was supposed to be a no-strings-attached vacation from reality, and he damn well didn’t need to be bringing along a luggage cart full of baggage.

And why the hell was she looking at him like that, all sweet and quietly supportive, when what she should have been doing was high-tailing it the other way?

He was no good for her; she deserved so much better.  Better than a man who could maybe schedule a few days for her a couple of times a year.

She’d been right.  There was no way they could do this.  He’d end up hurting her, and Max, and … hell, probably himself in the long run.  He should make the break now, while it could still be clean and painless, and leave someone like Deputy Harding free to fill the vacancy he left behind.

Tate needed a good man, one who’d be there to hold her at night, and though Harding was a cop – not the easiest career for a relationship – he at least had the benefit of being local.

Shit.

Who the hell was he kidding?  He’d sooner cut off his own hands than push her toward Josh Harding.  And wasn’t that just ridiculous?  The desire to rip out the throat of any male who even sneezed in her direction?

Clay tried not to glance toward Tate as they drove past the old market, stopping to allow a group of tourists clutching sweetgrass baskets to shuffle across the street.  “What’s so funny?” she asked when he laughed.

“Life,” he answered, knee-jerk.  “I figure it’s better to laugh than to cry.”

It was the completely wrong thing to say.  “I didn’t mean –” he tried to backpedal, but she was already speaking over him.

“I’ve noticed that,” she said.  “You use humor as an anesthetic.”

“Yes, well why do you think they call the stuff the dentist gives you laughing gas?”

He pulled into the parking lot behind the B&B, and left the engine idling.

“Do you want to come in?” Tate offered hesitantly, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “Grab some dinner?  Talk?”

Well, well, well. Clay cocked a brow in her direction. Just what he’d been waiting to hear all day.  Because underneath all of those polite dinner and conversation noises, Tate’s body language suggested that wasn’t all she had on her mind.

And for the past several hours, he hadn’t even been trying to herd her in that direction.

After that attack of guilt at lunchtime, he’d simply been playing the whole thing straight.

And now that she was offering…

Well hell, he just couldn’t do it.

He liked this woman too much to take her to bed.

Uncharted territory, to be sure.

And now came the tricky part.  Did he fudge the truth, say that he had some calls to make, that he was tired, busy, or otherwise occupied in some legitimate way?

Past experience – both on the giving and the receiving end – led him to believe that such bullshit could be smelled from a mile away.  And because he liked Tate too much to sleep with her, it should follow that he liked her too much to bullshit her.  Therefore, he played the honesty card, laying it face up between them.

“I want to come in,” he admitted, looking her squarely in the eye.  “And while dinner sounds nice, it’s secondary to the fact that I want to be inside you.  Crude, but it’s the truth.  And while you’ve done the whole resistance thing very well, I’m sensing that that particular little wall might be crumbling.”

He reached over, took her hand.  “I’m not going to lie to you, Tate.  I can’t think of anything I’d rather do than spend the next, oh, say… twelve hours making love until neither one of us can walk. But crazy as it may seem, I think you were right in what you said last night.  Taking this any further is too much like skating on thin ice – chances are one or both of us would end up falling through.  You…” He looked out the window, sought the right words, “deserve a lot better than what I’d be able to give you.  Not in bed,” he clarified, lightening the moment with a wicked grin.  “You and me together… well, let’s just say we’d set a whole new standard for copulation.”

Tate laughed, a small sound that faded quickly.  “So what you’re saying is that you’re taking the high road and turning me down?”

Ignoring his penis as a navigational tool, Clay nodded, taking the high-road’s first available on-ramp. “I like you, Tate.  Very much.  You’re beautiful and special and good.  And I don’t want to be the next blond to let you down.  Yeah, I remember what you said – I’m the latest in a line.  You know,