Raven’s Prey(48)
Author: Jayne Ann Krentz

“Thank you ” she said politely, aware that his eyes were lingering now on her hair. She knew he wanted to reach out and touch it and wondered why he didn’t do exactly that. The restlessness in him was unnerving. Judd always seemed so very sure of himself.

The restaurant he had chosen was warm and inviting. There was a pleasant intimacy about the rustic southwestern decor. The lounge was beginning to fill up with the cocktail crowd, but Judd managed to find a small corner table.

“I haven’t been here in a long time,” he began apologetically. “I hope the food is still good.”

Good heavens! Now he was worrying about the food. Honor smiled a little distantly and sipped at that margarita he had ordered for her. What was the matter with Judd this evening? He acted as if he were trying to walk on eggshells. “I take it you don’t get out much?” she hazarded dryly.

He gave her a sharp glance and then shrugged. “Does it show?”

“A little.”

“I admit that taking a woman out on a real date doesn’t come as naturally to me as it seemed to come to your friend in Phoenix,” he muttered, looking down at his margarita. “I’m more at home in a sleazy Mexican cantina, I suppose.”’

“It wasn’t a sleazy cantina! Everyone was very nice to me there,” she protested, smiling.

He closed his eyes briefly as if counting to ten and then opened them to give her a very level stare. “You don’t know how damn lucky you were to flit through that part of Mexico all by yourself without any major disasters.”

“At the time I thought the only disaster that had befallen me was having you show up.”

* * *

Judd studied her composed expression and she wondered if he could read anything at all in her face. She hoped not He seemed to gather himself for the next question, as if he weren’t sure he wanted to hear her answer.

“Do you still consider my arrival a disaster?”

She hesitated and then said smoothly, “It all worked out for the best in the end, didn’t it? I’d still be down there, cowering every time a stranger showed up in the village, if it hadn’t been for you.” Judging by the brooding stare he gave her, that wasn’t quite what he had wanted to hear.

“Honor, if I had it to do over again…” he began grimly and then let the sentence trail off into nothingness.

“Yes? If you had it to do over again, what would you do differently?” she prodded curiously.

He sighed. “Nothing. Given the same set of circumstances, I probably would behave in exactly the same way. I would have taken me job because it paid well and I would have wound up trying to sort out the truth of the situation in my own fashion instead of romantically declaring myself your unquestioning champion, right or wrong.”

She sipped her drink. “Well, that’s honest, at least.”

“I’ve tried to be honest with you from the first.”

“Yes, you have. You behaved very reasonably in Mexico, Judd. I was the one who was unreasonable.” If he could be honest, so could she. “I read far too much into what happened between us that night. And you were perfectly right when you accused me of romanticizing the situation. I’ve always been something of a romantic, I guess. That was one of the reasons I came to Arizona.”

“It was?” He appeared to want to say something else, something about her confession that she had been in the wrong, but Honor got the impression he didn’t know how to phrase it.

“Ummm. I moved to the Southwest because I find the desert and the mountains spectacular. And I love the blend of cultures in this part of the country. I grew up in the Northeast, but for as long as I can remember there’s been a certain pull about this part of the country.”

“Your family? Do they still live in the Northeast?” he asked.

She hesitated and then nodded. “Oh, yes, they still live there. I don’t see much of them,” she admitted. “I didn’t really fit in. That’s an odd thing to say, isn’t it? That you didn’t fit into your own family?”

“Why didn’t you?”

She lifted one shoulder uneasily. “Something to do with the whole lifestyle. My father is a banker and my mother is very [_New England, _]if you know what I mean. I always played with the right children, went to the right schools. I was quite a little preppy monster there for a time.” She chuckled reminiscently. “But as I grew older I grew more and more restless. I knew I wasn’t going to marry the right man and become a community-conscious corporate wife. I began to feel trapped. So after I graduated from college I fled to the Southwest. My romantic escape!”

“You didn’t go to your parents when you found yourself in trouble,” Judd noted coolly.

Honor shook her head emphatically. “They would have thought I was a raving lunatic. Just as you did.” He winced but she didn’t bother to soothe his conscience. “In any event I couldn’t deliberately bring Garrison and Prager down on them, could I? I had no right to put my parents in jeopardy.”

There was a silence and then Judd said quietly, “You mean you didn’t even feel close enough to your parents to be sure they would believe you?”

Honor bit her lip as she acknowledged his surprisingly accurate assessment of the situation. “No.”

“My God ” he breathed. “You’re really on your own, aren’t you? In spite of having a family.”

“I suppose you could say that,” she agreed slowly. “What about you, Judd? Do your parents know how you make your living?”

His mouth twisted in wry amusement. “My mother gave me up for adoption when I was two years old. I have no idea what she thinks about my career. Lord knows who my father was.”

Honor’s mood was suddenly softened by compassion. “Were you adopted, then?”

“I’m told I was a difficult child,” he murmured dryly. “In any event I never seemed to last too long in the various homes where the agency tried to place me. No, I never got myself adopted. I guess I gave everyone a lot of trouble until I was fifteen. Then I discovered airports. I started hanging out around the field near town and conned a pilot into taking me up for a ride. After my first flight I knew what I was going to do with the rest of my life. As soon as I got my license I started taking any job that would keep me in airplane fuel.”

“I guess I can see now why you never got married,” Honor heard herself say wistfully. “What woman could compete with your love of flying?”