Born in Shame

  "I don't."

  "There you are." He lifted a hand, smiling still, as if she'd made his point for him. "And my courting you has nothing to do with rights or equality, doesn't make you less or me more. It's just that I've the initiative, so to speak. You're the most beautiful thing I've seen in my life. And I've been fortunate enough to see a great deal of beauty."

  Flummoxed by the quick spurt of pleasure, she looked down at her plate. There was a way to handle this, to handle him, she was certain. She just had to find it.

  "Murphy, I'm flattered. Anyone would be."

  "You're more than flattered when I kiss you, Shannon. We both know what happens then."

  She jabbed a piece of chicken. "All right, I'm attracted. You're an attractive man, with some charm. But if I'd been considering taking it any further, I wouldn't now."

  "Wouldn't you?" Christ, but she was a pleasure to converse with, he thought. "And why would that be, when you want me as much as I want you?"

  She had to rub her dampening palms on her napkin. "Because it's an obvious mistake. We're looking at this from two different angles, and they're never going to come together. I like you. You're an interesting man. But I'm simply not looking for a relationship. Damn it, I ended one only weeks ago. I was practically engaged." Inspiration struck. She leaned forward, her smile smug. "I was sleeping with him."

  Murphy's brows quirked. "Was seems to be the key. You must have cared for him."

  "Of course I cared for him. I don't jump into bed with strangers." Hearing herself, she hissed out a breath. How had he managed to turn that around on her?

  "It's past tense as I see it. I've cared enough about a woman or two to lie with her. But I never loved one before you."

  Panic had the color draining out of her face. "You're not in love with me."

  "I loved you from the moment I set eyes on you." He said it so quietly, so simply, that she believed-for a moment completely believed. "Before that, somehow. I've waited for you, Shannon. And here you are."

  "This isn't happening," she said shakily and pushed away from the table. "Now, you listen to me, you put this whole insane business out of your mind. It's not going to work. You're romanticizing the situation. Hallucinating. All you're going to accomplish is to embarrass both of us."

  His eyes narrowed, but she was too busy fuming to notice the change, or the danger in it. "My loving you is an embarrassment to you."

  "Don't twist my words around," she said furiously. "And don't try to make me seem small and shallow because I'm not interested in being courted. Jesus, courted. Even the word's ridiculous."

  "There's another you'd prefer?"

  "No, there's not another I'd prefer. What I prefer, and expect, is for you to drop it."

  He sat quietly a moment, dealing with a slowly building anger. "Because you have no feelings for me?"

  "That's right." And because it was a lie, her voice sharpened. "Do you really have some deluded idea that I'd just fall in meekly with whatever absurd plans you're cooking up? Marry you, live here? A farmer's wife, for God's sake. Do I look like a farmer's wife? I've got a career, a life."

  He moved so quickly she only had time to suck in one shocked breath. His hands were on her arms, fingers dug in. His face was a study of the pale and dark of fury.

  "And my life's beneath you?" he demanded. "What I have, what I've worked for, even what I am is something less? Something to be scorned?"

  Her heart was beating like a rabbit's, in quick bumpy

  jerks. She could only shake her head. Who could have guessed he had such temper in him?

  "I'll accept that you don't know you love me, won't clear your eyes to see that we're meant. But I won't have you disparage what I am and spurn everything I and my family for generations has struggled for."

  "That's not what I meant-"

  "You think the land just sits, pretty as a picture, and waits to be reaped?" The candlelight threw shadows over his face, making it as fascinating as it was dangerous. "There's blood spilled for it, and more sweat than can be weighed. Keeping it's hard, and keeping it's not enough. If you're too proud to accept it as yours, then you shame yourself."

  Her breath was shuddering out. She had to force herself to draw it in slowly. "You're hurting me, Murphy."

  He dropped his hands as if her flesh had burned them. He stepped back, his movements jerky for the first time since she'd known him. "I beg your pardon."

  It was his turn for shame. He knew his hands were large, and knew their strength. It appalled him that he would have used them, even in blind fury, to put a mark on her.

  The selfdisgust on his face kept her from giving in to the urge to rub at the soreness on her arms. However huge her lack of understanding of him, she knew instinctively he was a gentle man who would consider hurting a woman the lowest form of sin.

  "I didn't mean to offend you," she said slowly. "I was angry and upset, and trying to make the point that we're different. Who we are, what we want."

  He slipped his hands into his pockets. "What do you want?"

  She opened her mouth, then shut it on the shock of finding the answer wasn't there. "I've had a number of

  major changes in my life over the past couple of months, so I still need to think about that. But a relationship isn't one of them."

  "Are you afraid of me?" His voice was carefully neutral. "I didn't mean to hurt you."

  "No, I'm not afraid of you." She couldn't help herself. She stepped forward, laid a hand on his cheek. "Temper understands temper, Murphy." Almost certain the crisis had passed, she smiled. "Let's forget all of this, and be friends."

  Instead he stopped her heart by taking her hand, sliding it around until his lips pressed tenderly into the palm. "'My bounty is as boundless as the sea, my love as deep; the more I give to thee the more I have, for both are infinite.' "

  Shakespeare, she thought as her body softened. He would quote Shakespeare in that gorgeous voice. "Don't say things like that to me, Murphy. It's not playing fair."

  "We're past games, Shannon. We're neither of us children, or fools. Here now, I won't hurt you." His voice was soothing, as it was when he gentled a horse. For she'd gone skittish when he'd slipped his arms around her. "Tell me what you felt when I kissed you the first time."

  It wasn't a difficult question to answer, as she was feeling it again. "Tempted."

  He smiled, pressed his curved lips to her temple. "That's not all of it. There was more, wasn't there? A kind of remembering."

  Her body was refusing her very sensible order to stay rigid and aloof. "I don't believe in those things."

  "I didn't ask what you believed." His lips cruised from temple to jaw, patient. "But what you felt." Through the thin barrier of silk her skin was wanning. He thought he might go mad holding himself from stripping that barrier away and finding all of her. "It wasn't just now." He indulged himself a few miserly degrees, sliding into the kiss, savoring the way her mouth yielded for his. "It was again."

  "That's nonsense." But her own voice seemed to come from a long way off. "And this is crazy." Even as she spoke, her hands were fisting in his hair to hold him close, closer, until the pleasure bounded past reason. "We can't do this." The purr of delight sounded in her throat, rippled wonderfully into his mouth. "It's just chemistry."

  "God bless science." Nearly as breathless as she, he dragged her to her toes and tortured himself. Only for a moment, he vowed. And plundered.

  Explosions burst inside of her, one after another until her system was battered by color and light. On a wild spurt of greed, she all but clawed at him in a fight for more.

  Touch me, damn you. The order erupted in her head. But his hands did no more than hold while her body ached to be possessed. She knew how his hand would feel. She knew, and could have wept from the power of the knowledge. Hard palm, gentle strokes that would build and build into brands.

  With a feral instinct she hadn't known lurked inside her, she dug her teeth into his lip, baiting him, daring him. At
his violent oath, she flung her head back, her face glowing with triumph.

  Then she paled, degree by degree. For his eyes were warrior's eyes, dark, deadly, and terrifyingly familiar.

  "God." The word burst out of her as she struggled away. Fighting for air, for balance, she pressed her hands to her breast. "Stop. God, this has to stop."

  Teetering on the thin edge of control, Murphy fisted his hands at his sides. "I want you more than I want to take the next breath. It's killing me, Shannon, this wanting."

  "I made a mistake." She dragged her trembling hands through her hair. "I made a mistake here. I'm sorry. I'm not going to let this go any further." She could feel herself being pulled toward him-negative to positive. Power to power. "Stay away from me, Murphy."

  "I can't. You know I can't."

  "We have a problem." Determined to calm down, she walked unsteadily to the table and picked up her wineglass. "We can solve it," she said to herself and sipped. "There's always a way to solve a problem. Don't talk to me," she ordered, holding up a hand like a traffic cop. "Let me think."

  The oddest thing was she never considered herself a very sexual creature. There had been a few pleasant moments now and again with men she cared for, had respect for. "Pleasant" was a ridiculously pale description of what had erupted in her with Murphy.

  That was sex, she thought, nodding. That was allowed, that was all right. They were both adults, both unencumbered. She certainly cared for him, and respected him, even admired him on a great many levels. What was wrong with one wild fling before she settled down and decided what to do with the rest of her life?

  Nothing, she decided, except that foolish courting business. So, she sipped her wine again, set it down. They'd just have to get rid of the obstacle.

  "We want to sleep together," she began.

  "Well, I'd find sleeping with you a pleasant thing, but I'd prefer making love with you a few dozen times first."

  "Don't play semantic games, Murphy." But she smiled, relieved that the humor was back in his eyes. "I think we can resolve this in a reasonable and mutually satisfying manner."

  "You've a wonderful way of speaking sometimes." His voice was full of admiration and delight. "Even when what you say is senseless. It's so dignified, you know. And classy."

  "Shut up, Murphy. Now if you'll just agree that the idea of a long-term commitment isn't feasible." When he only continued to smile at her, she huffed out a breath. "Okay, I'll put it simply. No courting."

  "I knew what you meant, darling. I just like listening to you. I've no problem with the feasibility of living the rest of my life with you. And I've hardly begun courting you. I haven't even danced with you yet."

  At her wit's end she rubbed her hands over her face. "Are you really that thick-headed?"

  "So my mother always said. 'Murphy,' she'd say, 'once you get an idea in that brain of yours, nothing knocks it loose.' " He grinned at her. "You'll like my mother."

  "I'm never going to meet your mother."

  "Oh, you will. I'm working that out. But as you were saying?"

  "As I was saying," she repeated, baffled. "How can I remember what I was saying when you keep throwing these curves? You do it on purpose, just to cloud things up when they should be perfectly simple."

  "I love you, Shannon," he said and stopped her dead. "That's simple. I want to marry you and raise a family with you. But that's getting ahead of things."

  "I'll say. I'm going to be as clear and concise about this as I can. I don't love you, Murphy, and I don't want to marry you." Her eyes went to slits. "And if you keep grinning at me, I'm going to belt you."

  "You can take a swing at me, and we can wrestle a bit, but then we're likely to resolve the first part of this right here on the kitchen floor." He stepped closer, delighted when she jerked up her chin. "Because, darling, once I get me hands on you again, I can't promise to take them off till I'm finished."

  "I'm through trying to be reasonable. Thanks for dinner. It was interesting."

  "You'll want a jacket against the rain."

  "I don't-"

  "Don't be foolish." He'd already taken one of his own off a peg. "You'll just get that pretty blouse wet and chill your skin."

  She snatched it from him before he could help her into it. "Fine. I'll get it back to you."

  "Bring it with you, if you think of it, when you come to paint in the morning. I'll be walking by."

  "I may not be there." She shoved her arms into the soft worn denim, stood with the sleeve flopping past her fingertips. "Good night."

  "I'll walk you to the car." Even as she started to object, he took her arm and led her out of the kitchen and down the hall.

  "You'll just get wet," she protested when they reached the front door.

  "I don't mind the rain." When they reached the car, he wisely swallowed a grin. "It's the wrong side, darling, unless you're wanting me to drive you home."