His charm and arrogance were his shields, such that she’d not comprehended until this moment the depth to which she could hurt him. She’d been frightened, thinking she’d crossed a line where she couldn’t survive without him anymore. It had never occurred to her that his feelings would be a mirror of hers.

Only the strength of a Master like Tyler could reassure her, could force her to believe in his love by reinforcing the same lessons over and over. She wanted the Master in him, needed it. But she realized she also loved the man himself beyond comprehension.

When he started to rise, rather than letting him draw her up with him she stayed down, rubbed her head over his right hand held in both of hers and pressed her lips to his bare hip, his thigh. Holding her cheek to his leg, she spoke against the coarse hair and muscle. “I… It’s only been me, for a long time. I’ve never had to answer to anyone else. Be responsible or a part of someone else’s happiness. And I don’t know how to handle any of it. I’m afraid I’m going to hurt you over and over, until I drive you away.

And that would kill me.”

His hands clasped her upper arms. He brought her to her feet, tilted her chin to look at him, his expression full of emotion.

“Tell me just once,” he said. “And after that, not heaven or hell or even you will take me from your side. Not ever.” His voice was harsh with tears he wouldn’t, couldn’t apparently shed. She began to cry again for them both, reaching up to touch his face.

“I love you, Tyler. I love you.”

He took a few minutes to clean up in the bathroom. When he came back to her, she was waiting for him on the bed, her blue eyes like soft jewels in the semi-darkness of a room where the curtains were drawn, her hair floating around her body. He made love to her then, tenderly, the both of them nested in her quilts. His body stretched out on hers, moving slow, easy strokes into her heat and wetness. Her body clasped his with arms and legs and she buried her face into his shoulder as they finished together, shuddering.

Tyler suspected it might be the first time in her life that she was unconcerned about anything outside her bedroom door. He could feel her worry, though. Knew she was afraid her darkness made her incapable of living up to the expectations of the words she’d spoken to him. So with every touch, every softly murmured word of love and admiration, he let her know she was already everything he wanted, everything he needed. He put away his own dark fears where they could not touch this moment. And when she slept, at last he felt her relax into a world where there might finally be no dreams at all.

He watched her doze and held her close, his breath on her temple. Inhaled that familiar scent of tea tree oil, lavender and woman until he too succumbed to slumber, his feet over and under hers beneath the covers, an intimacy he’d not allowed himself with any woman since his wife. The simple joy of it after the past hour of intensity made him reflect that Marguerite was right. She wasn’t the only one who’d kept herself closed off.

But now it didn’t matter if she ripped his chest from his heart every day. If she was the eagle come to disembowel Prometheus and he was chained to that rock, he’d raise his face in welcome the moment he felt the breeze off her moonlight-colored feathers touch his brow.

Chapter Eleven

Perhaps because of jet lag he fell asleep more deeply than he would normally.

When he opened one eye, he found it was nearly eleven. While Marguerite was no longer beside him, her scent was on the pillow and a tray with a small carafe and coffee cup was on the nightstand. A spray of daisies and wildflowers tied in one of her ribbons rested beneath the tented note.

I’ll be back this afternoon. Had a class at eleven. If you can’t stay, I’ll be at your house tonight as planned.

She’d drawn… He drew back, squinting. Not for the first time, he acknowledged that eventually he was going to have to give in and admit that standard middle-aged farsightedness was about to overcome forty-plus years of twenty-twenty vision. XXs and OOs. OOs with smiley faces in them. He smiled, picked it up. She was never going to stop surprising him. Of course, she might have dictated the note to Chloe and the hostess had added the little flourish. Since he was lying in the bed with one length of leg from sole to buttock stretched bare over the cover, he hoped it was Marguerite who’d left the note, regardless of who had written it.

He took a quick shower, enjoying the intimacy of being surrounded by her razor, shampoos and soaps, though possessing the usual manly distaste of the floral aromas on his own skin. Pulling on his jeans and T-shirt, he courteously decided to wait on a shave so he didn’t wear out her blade with his rough jaw. Those were things he didn’t know about her. If she’d be annoyed by a man borrowing her razor. If she preferred her shower in the morning or evening. He looked forward to finding out.

It was an astounding nine in the morning. He found himself grateful that he could follow the corridor at the base of the staircase past the café’s restrooms and take a detour into the kitchen that didn’t take him across the public floor. A quick glimpse showed him at least ten of the fifteen tables were occupied with morning tea drinkers.

“There you are.” Chloe beamed as he came in. “Was the coffee to your liking?” At his alarmed look, she added hastily, “Marguerite took it up.” His instant relief produced a snort of laughter. “Though from your expression, I’m sure I missed a morning perk by not offering to do it myself.”

“You are incorrigible,” he said reprovingly. Her grin broadened.

“Hey, you got to enjoy it while you’re young enough to do more than just look.”

“That’s what worries me. Particularly when I’m unconscious from jet lag.” She giggled, gestured. “We’ve got scones and a really excellent coffee cake. In the boss’s absence, I won’t even charge you.”

Tyler sat down on a stool in a corner of the kitchen and willingly filched a piece of the cake, gesturing with the full mug of coffee he’d brought down. “Marguerite said she had a class. What class is she attending?” There were so many things he didn’t know about her. He did make a mental note to pay Chloe for the cake. He didn’t want to give Marguerite an excuse to throw him out on her next mood swing. He suppressed a smile at the image. He wouldn’t put it past her to do it.

“Oh, she’s an instructor.”

“So the note was true. I figured she was just avoiding me.” Chloe chuckled, putting down a sampler next to the coffee mug, thinking no woman in her right mind would leave her bed with something that looked like Tyler in it. “Try this. It’s a new green tea. No, if M wanted you out, I suspect she’d just kick you out.”

“My thoughts exactly.”

And wouldn’t she like to be the fly on the wall for that one, Chloe mused. She had a tremendous amount of faith in her employer, but she thought this one might be more than a handful when crossed. She liked him, though. Not only liked the way he looked at M, but how he looked after her. And how M acted around him. So she figured she’d take the risk of getting fired, play dumb if M asked her why she spilled the scoop over something very few other than her staff knew about her Thursdays.

“Today’s her jump day.”

“Excuse me?”

“M’s a serious skydiver. Has a standing appointment on Thursday of every other week.”

Tyler put down the sampler, having stopped it two inches from his lips. “She jumps out of airplanes.”

“Yes. Hey.” Chloe was concerned at the look in his eye as he rose, tossed some bills on the table. “I told you that you don’t have to pay for that. Seriously. And she’s really good. There’s nothing to worry about. In fact, she does it every other Thursday because they use her video stream to help teach the classes they hold that day.”

“Where?”

When she hesitated, Tyler’s expression changed and her mouth opened before she could stop herself, a reflex of self-preservation. “Oconee Airfield.” As he nodded and left, she shook her head. “M’s going to kill me. Kill me, then fire me.”

She was already in the air. The staff at the front desk encouraged him to go sit in on the advanced class that would be watching her video stream live.

Tyler took a seat, nodding to the class instructor who looked as if he had served in the military. His class of six or seven students ranged in age from twenty to forty. They were mostly men, adrenaline-seekers he guessed. Only one woman, a thirty-something who looked like she was doing it to break her out of the mediocrity track. In the back near Tyler two men sat in flight suits with the airfield’s logo, indicating they were also instructors assisting in some manner with the class.

“Marguerite is truly one of our exceptional jumpers,” the instructor was saying.

“She’ll be demonstrating the Atmonauti method we’ve been going over today. In a few minutes, you’ll watch her exit.”

Tyler’s gaze turned to the wide-screen television behind them. At that moment, the screen flickered and they had a picture of the inside of the plane, the camera holder obviously moving to the open doorway.

The camera tilted and Tyler blinked, his stomach dropping at the free-fall effect of seeing the ground thousands of feet below and the tips of the cameraman’s shoes as he stepped on the small platform just outside the door.

“Now the difference with Atmonauti is you’re flying at about a thirty degree angle to the horizon and you can vary that about fifteen degrees in either direction. You’re looking for a certain zone and wanting to hold it. You control the speed with your legs, move them wider to slow down, arrow them together to go faster. You can fly more efficiently and do more things because you’re working with the airflow.” The instructor went to the chalkboard where he’d diagrammed stick figures, angles and figures on velocity and ground covered. “She’ll be going a hundred miles an hour in the right heading. You can go slower with this method, prolong your dive. She’ll go about 1.5 miles out and then use her chute to bring her back to the DZ, the Drop Zone.” He glanced toward Tyler, acknowledging his presence and apparently taking him for a potential new diver auditing the class.