Free Shameless (The Contemporary Collection) by Jennifer Blake Page A

Incredibly.
    Self-control was an absolute necessity, even if it was a bit late for it. He closed his eyes as he fought the stirring of his body. It took longer than it should have to conquer it.
    Easing away from Cammie, he drew the sheet and blanket closer around her, then slid from the bed. He had left his clothes on a chair near the door. He picked them up on his way out.
    Moments later, dressed except for the boots he carried, he descended the stairs in the dark and made his way along the hall. As he passed the sun room, he paused, then swung inside.
    The portrait over the marble mantel had squares of light flung across it from the outside security light near the driveway on that side of the house. One square illuminated the painted eyes. He walked closer, tilting his head back to stare up at it.
    The painting was life-size, showing Cammie seated in a chair of dark green brocade. Her dress was soft gray velvet with a wide lace collar that had been delicately reproduced in silvery, cobweb strokes. The painted hair was lustrous, cunningly back-lighted for a near halo effect. The face was beautifully captured; its oval shape; the determined chin and straight, aristocratic nose; the delicately molded mouth, with its confident smile. It was the eyes, however, that captured his attention. They were large, a delicate blending of green, blue, and brown with a gray outer ring; and they were secretive, mysterious.
    It came to Reid as he stood looking up that there was in them the sensitive sadness of the conscious dreamer. They were the eyes of one who prefers the imaginary world she has built for herself, even knowing its falseness, to ugly reality.
    It was a part of Cammie that she hid remarkably well. He might never have recognized it, he thought, if he had not seen it firsthand, as she tried to avoid accepting his help, as she talked about her marriage. Her most lethal verbal barbs were brought out to protect that inner self. She allowed no one to trespass.
    He wanted entry there more than he wanted life itself. And was as unlikely to find it as he was certain of eventual death.
    He wondered if Keith Hutton had ever penetrated his wife's defenses. Or if they had been erected, primarily, to keep him out.
    It seemed, looking back, that they had always been in place. Teenage girls were notorious for tender hearts, but Cammie's had been more sensitive than most. She was the girl who could cry on demand, not as a simple parlor trick, but from the mental pain of living in a world where others were carelessly cruel. She was the girl who could be depended on to recognize poetic allusions, who walked around flowers in the grass instead of stepping on them, who always rescued lame ducks and rooted for the underdog.
    She had changed very little from those days.
    He had.
    He didn't like the idea that he might qualify as either a lame duck or an underdog in her eyes. If he did, however, it made him even more dangerous to her. He would never become a part of her inner world, even if he could. He would tear it down from the inside; it could be no other way. That was how he had been trained: to destroy.
    It was possible that he had already given her the greatest injury that could be inflicted. He had shown her, without intending it, even trying his best to avoid it, that the walls of her inner world could be breached. She had invited him in, it was true, but he could have, should have, refused. At least he had enough integrity left, and strength, to leave quietly, and to close the door behind him as he went.
    Or maybe it was only self-preservation, after all; he couldn't stand it if he hurt Cammie. It would never be of his own will, but things had a way of happening, intended or not. He had learned that the hard way.
    His wife had been a lot like Cammie, or so he had once thought: the same rich hair color, the same eyes, even if Joanna's had been more green than hazel. But what he had taken for sensitivity in the woman he married had turned out