Humor crossed his expression. “His mom made this horrified gasp, had him come back and apologize, which kind of ruined it, but I held onto that really important revelation. I wasn’t the center of the universe. Just another person doing their thing.”

  She was holding onto the look in his eyes, the touch on her face. She pressed her cheek into it, closed her eyes, trying to absorb his heat, wanting to sink into it.

  When she opened them, he was still watching her. “I shared something kind of personal,” he said casually, “so maybe you can do the same. Why do you have difficulty eating?”

  Her gut tightened up. “You’ll get angry.”

  “I’m not going to be angry at you.”

  “I know. But I…I don’t want to make you angry or sad about my family.”

  His gaze flickered, as if the comment had particular meaning for him. He lifted a shoulder. “I appreciate you caring for me like that. But I want you to tell me, Daralyn, if you can.”

  She sighed. “My father and uncle said it was expensive to feed me, and I’d better not ever waste food, or eat a mouthful more than I needed to. Sometimes they’d make me so nervous while I was eating…I’d throw it up. Then they’d be really angry.”

  She didn’t want to go back to that place in her head right now. She’d shifted her gaze to the mural. She could create a room that looked just like that in her head, go there…

  “Daralyn.”

  She looked up, and he was close again. His lips brushed over hers, making them part. That warm swirl happened in her belly as he gazed at her, so close his face was all there was. “Thank you for telling me. Don’t go away. Stay here with me. Tonight, that’s the only thing I’m going to ask you about your life before you came to live with us. I promise. And since it was tough, I’m going to give you a standing quid pro quo. You can ask me any question, no matter how uncomfortable you think it would be for me.”

  “Quid pro quo.” She tried that one out on her tongue. “It means…”

  “Sort of tit for tat. You gave me something, so I give you back something of equal value.”

  “Oh.” She pulled her notebook out of her purse and had him spell it, so she could write it down, carefully forming the letters before she tucked it away again. “All right. Can I bank my question? I need to think about what to ask.”

  Amusement had wreathed his face as he watched her, and it was still there. “It’s a standing offer. And when I ask you a question, if you don’t feel like you can answer it, that’s okay. Just say ‘pass.’”

  “I’ll always answer you, Rory.” Because when he posed a question to her, she had to answer him in some acceptable way.

  As a child, she hadn’t known what a choice was. Her uncle and father didn’t give her that option for anything they told her to do.

  Ever.

  Dr. Taylor spent a lot of time helping her learn how to think about whether she wanted to do something or not. A wall in her mind kept her from considering that in a meaningful way, but there was another quagmire to it.

  While she was constantly assured there was no longer any punishment if she didn’t want to do something, she wasn’t convinced. If the caring people in her life wanted something from her she couldn’t give, the tangle of feelings about whether or not she’d let them down, disappointed them, failed them, would overcome her.

  With Rory, there was something different about it. Her reasons for not wanting him to give her a choice on certain things, like answering his questions, had a different impulse. One she wasn’t quite sure she understood. She just knew it felt right to feel that way. Less paralyzing.

  She didn’t want to talk to Dr. Taylor about it because she didn’t want the psychiatrist to tell her a feeling was wrong that felt so deeply right.

  “Okay.” He didn’t ask her more about that. Just held her hand, playing with her fingers, caressing her palm, and encouraged her to talk about other things. Like the last time she was here. What she, Elaine and Les had talked about, eaten. Where they’d gone after the meal, the little second-hand shops where Daralyn had found a dish drainer in a cheerful bright red color and a sink stopper with a red, yellow, blue and green rooster design on the handle.

  He was easy to talk to. The way he watched her as she spoke had her tucking her hair behind her ear, smiling more than usual, and wanting to laugh. He also made her feel good about herself, just with his attention, and the more she seemed to feel good, the more absorbed he seemed to be in her. Since the table they were at was a good size, Rory had directed her to sit with just the corner between them, instead of across from one another. She had her legs crossed, and the side of her foot brushed his pants leg. Though she knew he couldn’t feel it, she saw his gaze flick in that direction more than once, lingering on the contact.

  When the food came, it was as if they’d been in a lavender-tinged bubble, and the waitress had stepped out of that concealing fog, bringing them back into their current surroundings.

  “Here you go.” She placed Daralyn’s plate in front of her, a small portion of the chicken marsala with the equally modest-sized sides of garlic mashed potatoes and seasoned grilled vegetables. “Keep some room for that dessert, now.”

  Daralyn chewed every bite carefully, savoring the taste. Before coming to the Wilders, she ate the same staples every day. Plain oatmeal. Rice, potatoes, a small amount of meat or egg. Vegetables out of a can, or packaged fruit cups. The only seasoning in her father and uncle’s house was salt and pepper, and she wasn’t allowed to touch those. So when she’d first experienced Elaine’s cooking, taken that first bite, flavor had exploded on her tongue. She’d put down her fork, too overwhelmed to do more than eat a few bites.

  Elaine had quickly picked up on the issue and cooked her basics. Chicken and rice, with just a little salt added, but she’d give Daralyn a tiny portion of what everyone else was eating, so gradually her palate expanded. But taste was still something that amazed her, one of many things that was the norm for everyone else.

  Rory had a different approach to food as well. Before his accident, he would have ordered a bigger, meatier steak, the kind Les would tease him about.

  “As if there’s not enough cow on the cow for you.”

  “That’s what the potatoes are for,” he’d retorted. “To fill in the empty spaces.”

  His diet now was consistently healthy. She’d picked up that it helped with his digestive system. His mother never pushed food on him the way she might with Thomas, Marcus or Les. And she didn’t push it on Daralyn. It was odd sometimes, the similarities between her and Rory that had entirely different reasons.

  Rory had good table manners, but so did she. Her father had instructed her how to act like other people in the ways that mattered. To blend enough, not stick out.

  They hadn’t counted on Elaine’s sharp eyes, seeing more than the obvious.

  She pulled herself out of her head. Another danger of the new was comparing it too much to the old. She focused on the present. Rory made her laugh seven times during the meal. When he chuckled, it was a masculine sound, one with a sensual undercurrent. He could make heat course through her so often from doing so very little.

  They talked, the music played, and gradually everything settled into a low-level hum of contentment, with the right edge of simmering anxiety. An anxiety that connected to the look in his eyes when he gazed at her. It made her want him to touch her, kiss her again.

  That could cause another problem, though—like what had happened last night. She couldn’t let her mind go that way, because things would go bad again. Yet every time he looked toward her legs, she kept thinking about—wishing—he’d put his hand on her thigh. That possessive touch he sometimes had with her, that made everything in her universe still, point directly toward him. She imagined his fingers tightening, which would make her legs want to loosen, open...

  No. She slammed the door shut as her body began that throb. No, no, no.

  “You okay? You look tense all of a sudden.”

  She nodded. “I’m fine. I promise. Thought waves.”

  Thomas had helped her come up with that term. She had so many mood swings. Someone asking her about them, making her analyze each one, could be as stressful to her as having them. So the term had become a way to tell her guardians what was going on, while simultaneously indicating she didn’t need any particular attention paid to them.

  Rory caressed her face with his knuckles, then dropped that touch to the side of her throat. As he stroked her there, she forgot about food. She wanted to lift her chin, give him better access. Like a cat, but it wasn’t the stroking alone she craved, but some kind of pressure. His hand circling her throat, holding her…

  With a murmured sound that sounded part reverent, part oath, he reached down, gripped the seat of her chair, his fingers brushing her thigh and hip. He tugged it closer to him in one easy pull. “Move your table setting over,” he said.

  She did, him rearranging his so there was room for her to eat side by side with him. He cut his steak into bite-sized pieces so that one hand was free for him to drape his arm over her seat back. He stroked the round of her shoulder as he continued to eat, too, only with her in the shelter of his arm span.

  Her body went on full alert when he eventually removed his arm and dropped it beneath the table, his hand resting on her leg. His fingers spread to cover her thigh, caress the fabric of her skirt and her beneath.

  They were in a restaurant. He wasn’t going to do more here, so she could maybe get away with what she was feeling. She’d have time to bring it back under control, so that when they were alone together later, if he wanted to do things like this, she wouldn’t upset him. But now her body hovered as close as it dared to the bliss of those searing feelings. She was so aware of his hand there. Her thighs loosened on their own, it seemed, the one directly under his grasp shifting toward him.

  Her body was going to betray her, she knew it, but she couldn’t find it in her to stop charging toward that precipice. She felt slightly feverish, and she couldn’t warn him they were headed into bad waters. He would be upset with her, maybe. He hadn’t been yet. Maybe even if he saw how weak she was, he’d still be okay with her. Maybe he’d overlook it.

  When her leg moved toward him, his dark eyes came her way. “Good girl,” he murmured softly, and the flush that went through her was a tide of pure heat. “Eat your dinner, now,” he said. “We have that dessert to look forward to.”

  Chapter Seven

  Rory once again asked Lobelia to divvy up the dessert, so Daralyn had a small sample on her plate, while he took a portion of the rest, and had the rest boxed up. It worked out so well, she finished hers.

  She was quiet on the way home, but Rory thought her reasons were the same as his. The good emotions and physical response tangled pleasantly together in the close quarters, providing enough in the way of conversation, all of it non-verbal.

  When her knees had parted for him at dinner, he’d felt a jolt to his lower belly. He hadn’t pushed it—hell, he wasn’t sure what had taken him over, making him initiate the touch and then following it up with the praise, but both had felt as natural as breathing.

  Before they went down that road, though, he reminded himself they had to figure out a way to talk about what had happened the other night with her. His gut told him that resolving it was vitally important.

  Thinking about how she’d retreated from him, he considered pulling off to a side road to talk to her about it. She wouldn’t have the option of jumping out of the van and running into her little house if things got uncomfortable.

  He discarded the thought immediately, ashamed of even having it. It brought back the unpleasantly vivid post-accident recollection of the first time his buddies had taken him out on a Saturday. His friends had just been trying to help, trying to recreate their carefree cruising nights.

  But he’d been in his total scared dickhead, bad attitude mode. When he wanted to go home, really wanted to go, they’d insisted on taking him by the liquor store and some of their old haunts. He’d become progressively more agitated, though he’d tried to conceal it. Then one of them had teased him, probably to help him relax.

  “Not much you can do about it, can you? Just sit back and enjoy the ride.”

  He’d completely lost it. Opened the door and flung himself out of the fortunately parked vehicle. He had some insane idea that he was going to crawl around the back and open the trunk to get his folded-up chair. He barely had the strength to drag himself across the ground. When his buddies gathered over him, trying to figure out what was going on, he felt suffocated and started fighting them. Punching, screaming, telling them to take him home. A fucked-up reaction somewhere between PTSD and a kid having the worst tantrum of his life.

  Take me home, take me home… Take me the fuck home.

  It had been a serious setback on his physical therapy, because his still far too weak upper body hadn’t been up for that kind of volatile reaction. But the mental setback had been worse. He’d been a simple guy, the kind who scoffed at psychobabble about depression and triggers. He still thought most people had the ability to pull themselves out of their own heads if they put effort into finding the handholds to do so. However, after coming face to face with what being in a pit of true, helpless despair felt like, he didn’t scoff anymore. Pulling out of that feeling made climbing Mount Everest look easy in comparison.

  He wouldn’t be taking Daralyn anywhere she felt trapped. But the way she kept looking at him, pressing his hand whenever he could hold hers, made his desire to figure things out even stronger. Fortunately, when he reached her house, he could tell without a shadow of a doubt she wanted him to come in.

  As they parked at her place, he noted Marcus and Thomas were home. The Mercedes was back, and the lights were on in the house.

  After leaving the van and crossing the yard to her house, Rory held out his hand for her keys. He noted the coldness of Daralyn’s fingers before he let her go and opened the door, gesturing her to go on in. She pushed back her fall of silky hair when she moved past him.

  As he clicked the door shut, she was laying her purse on the table. He watched her transfer the flowers she’d brought in with her to a vase, and sit it on a side table. Then she stood before it, her gaze resting upon the blooms.

  Her stillness, combined with her obvious heightened awareness of him, dictated his next actions. He killed the lights, letting what was coming in through the windows, thrown from the outdoor utility light and the moon, create a silver filter over everything.

  She turned partly toward him, her head down, but her peripheral vision on him. Her lips were parted. Her hand had closed into a curl on the table. While her coldness was a warning sign of agitation, other signs showed the heat of attraction.

  If he’d been able to walk, he would have come up right behind her, pressed himself against her, kissed her neck, held her close. Let her feel that all of him, his strength, his heart, every bit of his mind, was centered on her. That she didn’t have to be afraid.

  He could do the same thing a different way, following his gut down the road he knew they both wanted. His voice was rough but low as he glanced at the large living room window. “Close the blinds.”

  She’d worn a pair of white slip-on shoes with lace tops and rubber soles, so as she obeyed, she moved on nearly soundless feet. As she reached for the rod that would twist the blinds closed, she spoke. He heard the intriguing unsteadiness in her voice.

  “There’s usually just the occasional driver on the road, who only looks this way for a second. And Thomas and Marcus only have eyes for each other.”

  “I want only my eyes on you.”

  She finished the task. Then she turned toward him.

  “Let’s go into the bedroom,” he said.

  He followed her to the threshold. The back window overlooked a field, so he didn’t tell her to close the blinds there, since it was providing some of the light he wanted to use to see her.

  “I want the dress off.” He almost said take the dress off, but for where he intended to go in these next few moments, he needed the important distinction. She needed the command, but him saying I want made it different, in the right way.

  He had no intention of having sex with her. Hell, though it seemed they’d been headed on that track since that Christmas kiss, the reality was they’d only recently started pursuing this. A kiss, a spanking, a little petting. A hand on her thigh at dinner. This alone might be too soon, but it didn’t feel that way. He wanted to see all of her. He ached to see her.

  She gripped the dress, lifted it over her head. As she did, she showed him another simple cotton bra, but this one was pale yellow with a lace edge. She also revealed the curve of her rib cage and flat stomach, the shape of her hip bones, her thighs. She put the dress on a hanger and tucked it into her closet. She took care with everything given to her. He’d never seen her carelessly drop something over a chair, leave something out of place.

  Don’t dig into why that is. This is about the here and now, you and her.

  Even so, as his gaze coursed over her exposed body, another stark memory invaded. During that summer when Daralyn had first come to live with them, and he could still walk, she never closed a door to give herself privacy. At first, they thought it was a claustrophobia thing. Then Elaine accompanied the sheriff to the now abandoned house to see if Daralyn had any personal items to pack. She discovered only the bedrooms that belonged to her uncle and father had doors. None on the small room with a twin bed that had been Daralyn’s, or the one bathroom. Everything had been done in view of her male relatives. Modesty hadn’t been an option.

  So when the younger version of himself had been shuffling out of his room on a Saturday morning, he’d happened by the room Daralyn shared with Les. All that was in his head was the hope the girls hadn’t beaten him to the upstairs bathroom, necessitating a grumbling descent to the one on the first floor. Then he’d glanced left into the open doorway and been brought to a halt.