Every Breath You Take Read online

  Caught between shock at her candor and admiration for her courage, Mitchell gave her the tribute of an honest answer. “No.”

  “I knew that,” she whispered with another smile, and pulled her hand slowly from his cheek, sliding it down over his shoulder until she finally forced herself to lift it away from him entirely. “Now go away before I change my mind.”

  Mitchell noticed the way her hand lingered, he heard the slight shake in her voice, and he knew beyond any doubt that he could pull her into his arms and change her mind. He even sensed that on some level, she wanted him to do precisely that almost as much as he was tempted to do it. Instead he decided to do exactly what she said she wanted him to do, partly because he knew that was probably the wisest course. However, rather than end their brief acquaintance on a grim note, he deliberately joked with her about her decision as he prepared to leave. “You’ll regret it,” he predicted with sham gravity.

  She nodded in complete agreement and matched his tone perfectly. “Without a doubt,” she assured him, but her eyes were suspiciously bright.

  Attuned to each nuance of her expression now, Mitchell assumed tears were responsible for that sheen in her eyes. “If you change your mind about tomorrow—”

  “I won’t,” she interrupted quietly. “Good-bye,” she added, and held out her hand to shake his, just as she’d done twelve hours before when she introduced herself after spilling a drink on him.

  He looked down at her hand, and without warning or reason, he felt a sharp compulsion to change her mind for her and spend the night with her after all. Ignoring her outstretched hand, he took her chin between his thumb and forefinger, tilted her face up to his, and smiled into her eyes. “In Europe, when a man and woman have spent an evening together, they kiss each other good-bye.”

  If she’d looked away or tried to free her chin from his grasp, Mitchell would have forced her to kiss him and subdued the rest of her objections with his mouth and hands. Instead she gave him a confused, innocent look. “What part of Europe would that be? Would it be France? Or Sweden? Or Belgium?”

  Mitchell’s brows snapped into a scowl. “You’re stubborn as hell, aren’t you?”

  “Or Spain? Or Transylvania?” she persisted. Mitchell dropped his hand in irritation. She stepped back. “I’ll show you out,” she said politely, and turned to walk into the suite with him.

  He declined her offer in a bored, impatient voice. “Don’t bother; I’ll take the path around the building instead.”

  Fighting back tears, Kate watched him walk off the terrace and turn left, striding along the back of her villa, but as he reached into his pants pocket and withdrew his keys, he stopped for a moment, his dark head bent in thought, then he turned toward her. Kate’s hope soared at the sight of his brief smile, but the words he spoke yanked her back to painful reality. “You made the right choice.”

  Inwardly, Kate flinched at the additional damage he inflicted on her with his perfunctory smile and indifferent words, but she forced her aching facial muscles into an answering smile. “I know,” she lied.

  He nodded, as if completely satisfied with matters between them now; then he strode down the path and disappeared around the corner of the villa. And out of her life.

  In the trees at the border of the garden behind her, something made a rustling noise, but this time Kate didn’t feel any alarm or bother to look around. Since she knew it wasn’t Mitchell, she didn’t care what else was back there. Squeezing her eyes closed, she dropped her head in a losing battle with doubt and shame.

  The reasons she’d given Mitchell for putting an abrupt end to their time together were nothing but half-truths. When she originally decided to go to bed with him, she hadn’t needed to know how many languages he spoke or how many siblings he had before she could make that decision. The reasons she’d given herself for backing away were logical, but lame and dishonest. She’d realized all along that she might feel guilty or mortified later if she slept with him tonight, and she’d been prepared to risk that, and accept it if it happened. What she had not been prepared to do was go back to Chicago and torture herself with more unanswerable questions. The reason for her father’s death was a mystery; the future of the restaurant he’d devoted his life to was an uncertain mystery with Kate in charge. When Mitchell refused to talk about himself, she’d panicked at the realization that yet another frustrating mystery was presenting itself to her—standing right in front of her, in fact, looking at her with sexy, heavy-lidded eyes and a deceptively lazy smile while he practically dared her to try to unravel what was going on inside him.

  And what made Kate so furious with herself now, and so ashamed, was that she could have done it, at least partway. She had a master’s degree in psychology and several years of experience dealing almost exclusively with the living results of dysfunctional families. At dinner tonight, she’d realized within minutes that there were carefully erected emotional barricades around Mitchell, and she’d presumed that they’d been there a very, very long time—probably since childhood.

  Instead of granting him the right to have boundaries and admiring the amazing amount of warmth and strength he obviously possessed—instead of letting him put all that irresistible, confident sexuality of his to use, which he’d intended to do with her, Kate had focused on the probable foundation of his barricades and started digging there with probing questions about his family members.

  Finally, he’d asked her the one-million-dollar question: “What the hell difference does it make?”

  And the answer to that question was, Kate admitted miserably—no difference. Every adult male had some sort of useful emotional barricades. Sometimes, they let them down for a woman they cared deeply for, but never did they let them down simply because a woman they scarcely knew wanted to make them do it—and do it immediately!

  Swallowing back tears, Kate stepped off the terrace where she’d laughed and joked and danced with him … and been melted by one unforgettable kiss. Lifting her hand, she rubbed the aching muscles at her nape, then dropped her hand to her side. Less than half an hour ago, she remembered poignantly, his long fingers had been at her nape, shoved into her hair, his mouth hungrily on hers.

  The music had ended when he left, she realized as she wandered aimlessly toward the beach. The night had died when he left.

  She thought about the way he’d turned back when he was walking away, as if the act of taking his keys out of his pocket had suddenly reminded him of another act he needed to perform … “You made the right choice,” he’d told her with a brief smile; and for the first time, Kate finally understood his seemingly odd behavior: He was politely assuming all the blame for the failure of the evening—like a perfect gentleman. His manners weren’t merely excellent, Kate realized, they were impeccable. Whether he was being doused with an ice-cold drink or sent away with unfulfilled sexual expectations, he lost neither his temper nor his composure.

  She paused, trying to link that vaguely familiar behavior with something she knew, and then she remembered what it was: Supposedly, the British upper class behaved as if they were impervious to chaos. Any outward display of temperamental frustration was regarded as a sign of bad breeding. Evidently, Mitchell had somehow acquired the manners of the British upper class.

  She would never be sure if she was right about that. Because of her own cowardice and her infatuated eagerness to know everything about him, she’d spoiled her chance to discover anything about him at all.

  Knowing that made her feel so miserable that it was almost a consolation to think he hadn’t really given a damn about her. At least she couldn’t blame herself for spoiling chances she’d never have had with him.

  Chapter Eleven

  LISTLESSLY, KATE WANDERED TO THE EDGE OF THE GARDEN. IMmersed in regret and helpless yearning, she watched the shimmering surf spill onto the sand and then chase itself back into the moonlit sea.

  She was so wrapped up in her thoughts that she didn’t notice soft footsteps in the grass behin