The Cinderella Mission (Family Secrets #1)(37)
Author: Catherine Mann

Chapter 10

Ethan choked. Coughed. Struggled for air.

What else could he do with words like Kelly’s pinging around in his head? Sizzling through him like embers taking flight from the fireplace.

Demanding that he finish what they’d started in the mine.

He tipped back in his chair, as if that might give him some much-needed distance, and studied her through narrowed eyes. Fading rays of sun through the window speckled over her, highlighting every exhausted line, every smudge.

And every ounce of her determination sparking from her eyes with more vibrancy than the display cases of gems littering the walls.

She wanted him. He wanted her. So why the hell was he so pissed off at her statement?

Kelly had obviously decided to find someone with experience to relieve her of her virginity with no ties. Well, hell. There were men out there who would leap all over that offer. He should leap all over her.

Instead he wanted to shake her, tell her not to sell herself so short. She deserved better than that. Better than him. “What do you mean you don’t want a ring? Don’t you want to get married and have kids some day?”

Damn. Damn. Damnation! He needed to shut the hell up before he landed himself in a monkey suit, chowing down wedding cake. He’d been tied into more knots than a rope on a Boy Scout field trip. And all by one woman.

He would zip his yap shut—as soon as he heard why someone as giving as Kelly didn’t want to settle down with a happily-ever-after of her own. If that bastard professor of hers had scarred her so much… Ethan cut the thought short before it fired the red haze of anger in his brain again. “Well, Kelly?”

“Of course I want to get married. And I’d love to have children of my own.” Her face softened with a timeless Madonna glow that warmed the room.

He searched for the answer and wondered why it had become so important to know. “You want to have your career first?”

“I understand I’ll need to stay out of the field during pregnancy.” She tucked the Aztec blanket under her chin and kicked the rocker into motion again as if already soothing her first baby to sleep. “But afterward, I don’t see any reason I can’t do both.”

Ethan disagreed with her there. “Field agent work is dangerous. What if you left a family behind? What if someone threatened you?”

She cocked a gently arched brow, her rocker creaking against the wooden floor. “Abiding by that logic, no cop, firefighter, lawyer or military person could ever get married.”

Bingo. He found the hole in her argument about no ring. “So you are ready for a ring.”

She shrugged.

He enjoyed three seconds of smug satisfaction. Until realization sucker-punched him with a brutal blow to his pride—and some deeper part of his emotions he didn’t want to consider. “You just don’t want to marry me.”

Kelly picked fuzz balls off the blanket. “You said it yourself, Ethan. You’re not marriage material. Don’t worry. You’re off the hook.” Her hands fell to her lap. Her spine straightened until the woolen blanket fell from her shoulders. “But I want you to be my first. I trust you, and you want me. Let’s have an affair.”

“No.” Yes. Yes. Yes! his libido insisted.

Frustration puckered her dirty brow. “You sleep with women all the time without commitment. Why not me, too?”

He commanded his brain to take over before his body accepted her offer. With the scent of her still on him, not that he could ever erase it from his memory, he would be damned lucky to get out of here with his pants zipped. “Do you really think we could have a no-strings affair, Kelly? I don’t know about you, but I have no intention of throwing away two years of friendship.”

“Haven’t we already done that?” She tossed aside the blanket and crossed to kneel at his feet. Her hands fell to rest on his knees. “I want to have something to show for it.”

Damned if she wasn’t right, and the thought bit. Too much.

He struggled for something, anything to keep distance between them. Control slipped a little further away every time she put those soft hands on him. The warmth of her touch filtered through his jeans to his skin. If she inched even a hint higher, he would lose it. He would toss her on her back and finish. He had to protect her from making a mistake.

And sex with him would be a colossal mistake. He wouldn’t be able to walk away from her. He had enough trouble pushing her away after just kissing her, touching her. If he slipped inside her, he could damned well lose himself in Kelly Taylor for good.

If he hadn’t already.

Pure panic slapped him like a cold palm. He could love this woman. This woman who wanted to throw herself into a career full of daily risks and evil he understood too well. The realization popped sweat along his brow.

Hell, he wasn’t just the wrong man for her. She was the wrong woman for him, and not because of her innocence.

He didn’t want to love anyone like that again, not after he’d barely survived losing Celia. He most definitely didn’t want to love Kelly, not now. Maybe if she still worked in her cubicle and kept herself safe. Maybe.

Meanwhile, they needed distance. Fast. He had to get through the next few days with his sanity intact. Then he could volunteer for an assignment somewhere in the far reaches of the universe.

Where he would sit and worry about Kelly.

For now, he had to wade through the next three days with enough mental distance to keep Kelly from getting killed by some screw-up of his own.

Ethan tossed out the first argument that came to mind to keep Kelly safe from the greatest threat of all. Him. “Maybe you’re capable of seeing this mission through in spite of how we…” he searched for a safe word, any word other than the one pounding at his brain, “…feel about each other, but I’m not risking it. You mess with my mind, and I can’t afford that right now. You said back in the mine that you’ve got more to lose here. I wouldn’t be so sure of that.”

Kelly studied Ethan through narrowed eyes and wondered what churned around in that gorgeous dark head of his. No doubt, he was running scared. And rather than upsetting her, it sent a rush of feminine power tingling all the way to her grit-filled hair.

What excuse would he roll out to protect her this time?

She sank back on her heels, her hands falling to her lap. “What do you mean?”

He hesitated so long she wondered if he would answer her. He toyed with the old rotary phone on the dormant potbelly stove beside him. “I told you my parents died in a car accident.”