A Hard-Hearted Man Read online

  “I won’t believe you if you tell me that you don’t want me,” he said. “Not after what’s already happened. Is this too fast for you? Do you want to slow down?”

  Lilah closed her eyes, and Ross felt a flash of triumph as she leaned slightly into his touch. But it was only for the briefest second, and then she seemed to realize what she was doing, because she stiffened again, and pulled away.

  “I think I should go to bed,” she said. Her gaze flicked up to meet his, and he was startled by the mixture of anxiety and unhappiness in her expression.

  What was upsetting her so much?

  “I think you should stay here and talk to me,” he said. “Just talk. Nothing more.”

  “I can’t. I have to go.”

  “Not yet. I want to know what’s happening here. Are you involved with someone else?”

  Surprise lit her face. “No!”

  “Then what’s wrong? We don’t have to go on with this. But if we don’t, I want to know why.”

  “It’s a bad time for me,” she said weakly. “The excavation... I’m busy—”

  “You’re saying that you don’t want to be in a relationship right now. That you’re too busy.”

  “Right,” she said quickly. “That’s exactly it.”

  “That’s fine,” Ross said. “I’m not looking for a relationship, either. But there are other, less complicated ways of being involved. We’re obviously attracted to each other, so why not just enjoy that? There’s no need for either of us to worry about anything more in the short time we’ll be here together.”

  Lilah recoiled as if he had slapped her, and Ross frowned. After what she’d just said, he had expected her to agree without hesitation, but the expression on her face told him that he had said something very wrong.

  “What do you want, Lilah?” he asked, trying to keep his frustration out of his voice. Once again, things had slipped away just as they seemed to be falling into place.

  She looked up, and her eyes were unnaturally bright. “I don’t know,” she said.

  “When you do,” Ross said, “tell me.”

  She nodded, and hurried out of the kitchen, leaving him wondering if he had seen the faint sparkle of tears in her eyes as she turned away.

  The ranch house was stuffy with the windows closed and locked against the evening breeze, but Ross was willing to bear a little discomfort for the sake of security.

  He walked down the hall, listening, in spite of himself, for any sounds coming from Lilah’s room. He heard nothing, and passed quickly by, resisting the urge to knock on her door. He had waited in the kitchen, watching the minutes tick by on the wall clock, until he was sure that she’d gone to bed.

  Halfway down the hall, a draft tickled his face, and he stopped, frowning. The door to the library was ajar, and he looked in to find one of the two windows standing open, letting in the rain-scented wind. The curtains tossed damply against the frame, and the papers on his desk ruffled in the cold air.

  “What the hell?” he said, staring at the scene.

  He had closed that window before he’d left that evening. Had Mama Ruth opened it to air out the room, then forgotten to shut it before she’d gone home?

  He ran his fingers over the desktop. The desk and phone were dry, except for a fine mist brought in by the post-storm wind. If Mama Ruth had left the window open earlier that evening, everything would have been soaked from the torrential rain.

  No, this window had been opened more recently, within the past few hours, when there was supposedly no one else in the house.

  Instinctively, he froze where he stood, checking over the room to see if anything else had been disturbed. His briefcase and papers were on a chair, untouched, but now he could see faint traces of mud on the wooden floor around the desk. Someone had been here, all right.

  He crouched down to examine the marks. They were dry by now, and indistinct, as if the person had taken care to minimize the traces he left.

  Ross leaned out the open window, and sure enough, even in the dim square of light spilling out of the house, he could see the new footprints in the wet ground. The marks nearest the house were deep and blurred, as if the man had jumped quickly through the window and taken off into the night.

  Ross closed the window, and locked it. The mud specks inside went no farther than the desk, only a few feet from the window, so the prowler hadn’t come far into the house.

  Nothing on the desk seemed to have been touched, so it looked as if the man had aborted his plan, whatever it was, and backed out in a hurry, at which point Mtuko had spotted him and started yelling.

  What had the intruder wanted? Information? Ross’s personal business papers were piled on the desk, but everything important pertaining to the ranch was locked up in the Nairobi office. Money? No. His watch and a few Kenyan pound notes were still scattered around. Wilder possibilities crossed his mind. Could it have been a failed kidnapping attempt? A bomb? A quick inspection of the room ruled out the last possibility.

  What then? And what would have happened if the man hadn’t bolted away? The thought left Ross cold and angry. There was no excuse for letting this happen. It wasn’t the askaris’ fault. Two men could do a good job but still miss a wily prowler in the darkness and noise of the storm.

  No, the responsibility was his for not locking the damned window. He never made mistakes like that, and this one was inexcusable. It also felt like a small but pointed reminder that he was slipping. Everything these days, from the ranch sale to Lilah Evans, seemed to be shifting shape when he tried to get a grip on it.

  Frowning, he closed the library door and walked down the hallway to his room. He stretched out on the big bed and stared at the ceiling, his mind churning over everything that had happened that evening. This trip back to Kenya was turning out differently than he had planned, and he didn’t like it. It was time to straighten out all of these uncooperative events, and force things to work out his way.

  Whatever that meant, in Lilah’s case.

  When he finally drifted off, his sleep was light and troubled, and suffused with the low growl of thunder from the receding tropical storm.

  Chapter 9

  Cold mud squished up between Lilah’s bare toes as she walked quickly over the lawn in front of the Bradford house. It was six in the morning, much earlier than she had expected to awaken, and her head felt groggy after the short and restless night.

  Ross was still asleep, or at least, his door was still closed, which was a relief. She couldn’t forget how she had felt in the kitchen last night, torn between the desire to lose herself in his arms and the fear of what might happen if she did.

  Falling in love with Ross Bradford would be about as safe as throwing herself into the path of a bulldozer. He had proved it when he said, very clearly, that he wasn’t interested in a real relationship. Ross might not have any trouble with the idea of a quick affair, but she knew that her own heart wasn’t so well protected. In a few weeks where would she be? Slinking back home to the States with no excavation, no tenure and a broken heart? No thanks. Better to pretend that last night had never happened.

  But that was easier said than done. She opened the door of the Land Rover to retrieve her pumps, and stopped as she caught the faint scent of Ross’s cologne, lingering against the leather seats. Even that ghostlike hint of him brought back the memory of his hands on her body, the heat in his eyes as he pulled her toward him, his rough passion as he kissed her....

  Emotion flooded her without warning, leaving her shaken by a wave of longing so intense that she wanted to scream and pound her fists against the car.

  I don’t want this! I don’t need this! Not now, not him! She was here to work, to focus entirely on the excavation, to lose herself in it as deeply and surely as she could ever lose herself in a lover. Concentrating her hopes and desires on the excavation was better, saner and a whole lot smarter than letting herself love a man who had no intention of loving her back.

  It was early enough to be
misty from last night’s rain, and water sparkled on the tall aloes bordering the house. The air was damp and clean, and the rising tropical sun painted the lawn with pale pink and yellow light.

  “Good morning!”

  Lilah froze, even as she realized that it wasn’t Ross’s voice behind her. Taking a breath, she turned to see Otieno Kasu, the ranch manager, walking toward her. She’d met him briefly on the morning that her team had arrived, and had liked him instinctively then, partly for the quiet strength of his face, and partly for the way Ross seemed to relax around him.

  Otieno wore work clothes and muddy boots, and gave the general impression that he’d been up for hours.

  “You are looking for Ross?” he asked. “It may be too early. I don’t think he is awake yet.”

  He took a closer look at her rumpled shirt and sleepy eyes, and seemed to reconsider, though he gave no indication of surprise. The corners of his mouth turned up almost imperceptibly. “Is Ross awake?”

  “No,” Lilah said. “Not yet, and I don’t want to wake him, but I need to get back to the canyon to work. Please, is there anyone who could give me a ride?”

  Even she could hear the urgency in her voice. She told herself that it was because she was anxious to get back to the site. She was not trying to run away before Ross woke up.

  Otieno was kind enough not to ask questions.

  “I will,” he said, turning toward the car. “It would take you too long to walk.”

  He was quiet as they drove away from the house, and Lilah wondered what he was thinking.

  “Do you have a family here?” she asked, his silence making her feel as if she should speak.

  He nodded. “I have a wife, two sons and two daughters, older than you. My sons are grown, also, but the youngest is still at university.”

  “Do you see them often?”

  “Not as much as we will when we move to the city. Mary has a new baby now, and my wife wants to be near her. We’ll find a flat there.”

  “Do you have to find a new job when the ranch is sold?”

  He smiled. “I have a new job. I’m going with Ross to work on the rain forest project, and then to Tanzania with his company. He has been trying to hire me for years, but I was busy with the ranch, and my children were too young. Now, I will go.”

  Lilah glanced at him. “He must be happy about that. He told me that he was practically raised by you and your family.”

  Otieno nodded, turning the car onto the track leading down to camp. The road was still slick with mud, but it had dried enough to be navigable.

  Everyone in camp was just waking up, with the exception of Elliot and Denise, who were wearing their mud boots and toasting bread over the fire. They looked over at the car and Elliot waved.

  Lilah sighed, and was about to thank Otieno, but he spoke first. “So, why don’t you ask me what you really want to ask me?”

  “What do you mean?”

  He humored her with a patient smile. “About Ross.”

  Lilah blinked at him. Either her feelings were more obvious than she realized, or Otieno was remarkably perceptive. He was right; there were a thousand things she wanted to ask him, but given the opportunity, she couldn’t voice a single one of them.

  How could she say, “Who is Ross, really?” or “What does he want?” or especially “Do you think Ross might ever fall in love with me?” As much as she wanted the answers, those weren’t the kind of questions she could ask.

  Otieno saved her the awkwardness of groping for something to say. “I will tell you this,” he said. “Ross keeps himself alone. Once, I think it helped him. His family was very rich, but not very happy. He learned to protect his heart when he was just a child, but now I think this is not good for him.”

  “Does he talk to you about this?”

  “Not much,” said Otieno. “I talk to him. I tell him what I think, and he hears me, but my words only go as far as his ears.”

  “But you’re his closest friend.”

  “Yes,” Otieno said with a glimmer of quiet humor, “but I am not a young woman. Perhaps you can do what I cannot.”

  “You have a lot of faith in me,” Lilah said. “But you don’t know anything about me. What if he doesn’t—”

  “I know that you and I share something,” Otieno said firmly. “We both care about Ross.”

  Lilah glanced at him with ever-growing respect. This man definitely didn’t miss much.

  “You’re right,” she said, and it was a relief to admit it. “We do.”

  “Well, then, perhaps it will do some good,” he said.

  Elliot glanced up over the rim of his coffee mug as Lilah walked into camp. “Morning,” he said with studied casualness. “Have a good time? How’s Ross?”

  Denise choked on her toast, and shot him a reproachful glance. “Great, Elliot. Really subtle. Now I’m in trouble.

  “Lilah, I swear,” she appealed. “I had to tell him when you didn’t show up for breakfast, or he would have been running around looking for the lion that ate you.”

  “It’s okay,” Lilah said, picking her way carefully across the campsite toward her tent, trying to avoid both the largest mud puddles and the scattered acacia tree thorns.

  Denise jumped up to follow her. “Well, good. I’m glad you’re not mad at me. Now that that’s taken care of, you better start talking. Where have you been? What have you been doing? What changed ‘Denise this is not a date’ into staying out all night? Am I being nosy? I don’t care.”

  Lilah unzipped her tent and ducked in, tracking mud onto the vinyl floor as she dug her work clothes out of her duffel bag and found her boots. Denise hovered expectantly in the doorway.

  “It was too muddy last night to get down the road to camp, so I spent the night at the ranch house,” she said, pulling on her jeans. “The party was fun, and I met Jake Wyatt, who gives me the creeps.”

  “Lilah,” Denise said sternly. “You’re giving me the runaround. Tell me what happened with Ross. Are you two on better terms after last night?”

  Lilah managed a weak smile. “You could say that.”

  “So do you like him any better now that you’re getting to know him?”

  Lilah bit her lip, wondering how she was supposed to answer that. “I like him,” she said finally. “A lot.”

  Denise looked sharply at her. “How much is a lot?”

  That did it. Lilah sat down on her cot and groaned. “It’s a lot more than I should I’m falling in love with him. Or maybe I’ve already fallen. I don’t know. What am I going to do?”

  “Okay,” her friend said slowly. “Let me see if I follow you. You’re falling in love with Ross, but yesterday you didn’t like him at all—”

  “I lined,” Lilah mumbled through her fingers. “I didn’t want to admit it.”

  “You dope. It figures. I knew you were trying too hard to convince me that he isn’t your type.”

  “I even convinced myself,” Lilah said. “Mostly.”

  “Um...so, last night. Did you...?”

  “I kissed him. Actually, he kissed me.”

  “Yippee!”

  “No! Denise, it’s complicated.”

  “You like him, he likes you, he kisses you, it feels good... What’s so complicated about that?” Denise paused, looking worried. “Unless it didn’t feel good. You’re not about to tell me that that beautiful man is a bad kisser.”

  “Ross is a very good kisser,” Lilah said, color rising to her cheeks at the memory of just how good he was.

  “Apparently so,” Denise said. “What’s the problem then?”

  “This whole thing is a problem. I’ve known him for a week. A week! It took me more time than that to decide what color to paint my kitchen, and this is a little more serious, not to mention dangerous.”

  “I keep trying to tell you that love isn’t safe.”

  “Well, it should be! I have a job, and a life, and I don’t have time to have my heart broken. I need something with a warranty.”

/>   “I can’t figure out why you’re so convinced that your heart is going to be broken.”

  “Because he’s only interested in a quick affair, no strings attached.”

  “Did he specifically tell you that?”

  “Yes,” Lilah said unhappily. “Very clearly.”

  “Oh, dear. Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure. Physical intimacy and emotional intimacy are very different things in his book, and he makes it sound so simple. We like each other, we’re attracted to each other, so why not jump into bed and have a fling?”

  Denise rolled her eyes. “Oh, God, that is such a guy thing. What did you say when he brought up this fabulous idea of his?”

  “Nothing,” Lilah confessed. “I left and went to bed. I didn’t know what to say, Denise. Things were getting pretty intense just before we kissed, and I felt like we were making a...connection. Like he was telling me things that he doesn’t tell other people. Things he needs to talk about. For me, the kissing and the...” She paused. “And the other physical stuff—”

  “Don’t spare the details for my sake,” Denise urged. “I’m living vicariously.”

  Lilah ignored her. “For me, it’s all connected. It has to be. I don’t know how to have a heartless fling.”

  Denise nodded. “You’re very loyal. You’d have to be, to stay with Jeff for so long.”

  “It’s true! I get attached. I’m devoted and monogamous by nature. I know it’s old-fashioned and unhip, but I can’t help it. So what am I supposed to do?”

  “A lot can happen in a few weeks,” Denise ventured.

  “I want to believe that. Something in me thinks I should just try this, on whatever terms, and hope that it all works out. But I’m scared. I thought I was going to die when Jeff left me. I can’t handle loving another man who decides to dump me and move on. I can’t. If I’m setting myself up to have my heart ripped out...”

  “Look,” Denise said. “Here’s what I think, and I’m sorry if it sounds unsympathetic, but life isn’t about hiding in a cocoon and protecting yourself. It’s about going after what you want and facing whatever happens with guts and pride that you did your best. You know that.”