Conspiracy Game (GhostWalkers, #4)(76)

Briony felt his pain like a knife stabbing through her heart. It took a moment to realize she was in his mind. “He doesn’t want pity.”

“Hell no, he doesn’t. He’d shoot me first. He insists on doing the tiling, though.”

“He needs to do it, Jack,” Briony said, recalling the desperation in Ken’s eyes.

“I know. I don’t say anything, but it’s damned difficult some days.” Jack tossed her on the bed, ending the subject because if they continued to talk about it he might cry like a baby. “Before I left this morning I cleared out a couple of the top drawers and there’s plenty of room in the closet. Make sure you take a good look at the spare bedroom so you can tell me how you want to fix it up for the baby.”

“I will.”

“And stay the hell out of the bathroom. I don’t want you near the tile saw.”

“Jack.” Briony traced the pattern on the cover, looking around her at all the bright packages. Her fingers crept up to her earlobe, stroked the fiery rubies, and slid to her throat. “You can’t order me around, no matter how charming you are.”

Pain swirled in the depths of his eyes for just a moment. She caught the surge of sorrow in his mind. He turned away from her to open the closet door. “I told you I wouldn’t be an easy man to live with.”

“What does that mean?” Briony asked, frowning, trying to grasp what he wasn’t saying to her. She sank down onto the edge of the bed. “I’m a grown woman, Jack.”

He glanced at her over his shoulder, rubbed his brow with the pad of his thumb, and sighed. “I’m a control freak, Bri. It’s one of the biggest reasons we live here, so far away from everyone. It’s why I mostly work alone. I go out on my own and I control the situation. If I work with a team, I run the team. It’s who I am.”

“That isn’t big news, Jack,” Briony pointed out. She pulled clothes from the packages and began removing tags. “It isn’t an excuse to take away my rights as an adult to make my own decisions. Control is an illusion anyway. No one can control another person.”

“I control what I can, and it helps to keep everyone safe.”

“You don’t trust yourself.”

“No. I realized a long time ago I don’t think or react like other people. Under the right circumstances, things could go wrong.”

Briony busied herself with putting clothes in the drawers, all the while trying to grasp what he was saying. Jebediah, Ken, and now even Jack were all warning her about something in Jack that even he feared. She turned to look at his face. Whatever it was, he was more afraid of it than he was of a sniper’s bullet.

“I don’t think you’d ever hurt me, Jack. Not ever. You don’t have it in you. Is that what you’re afraid of?”

He looked at her, something moving in his eyes. Pain? Sorrow? Haunting fear? She couldn’t read his emotion. “I don’t know,” he answered honestly, ashamed.

She went to him, framed his face with her hands. “I do. Remember Luther? He hit me with no problem. I made him angry and he punched me. He didn’t slap me. He didn’t try to restrain me, he punched me with his fist. Maybe if I were your enemy… ”

He caught her wrists and yanked them down, holding them hard against his chest. “That’s just it, baby. That’s just it.” He dropped her hands and went out of the room. She heard the door slam as he left the house.

Briony let out her breath and sank down onto the bed more confused than ever.

The cursory knock didn’t startle her; she already knew that Ken’s stocky frame filled the doorway. “You okay?”

She nodded. “Where’d he go?”

“He’s probably headed to the shop. He hangs a bag there and works out when the devil rides him too hard.” He shrugged. “Either that or he’ll soothe himself with woodworking.”

“Why would he think I could ever become his enemy, Ken? I told him I knew he’d never hurt me, maybe if I was his enemy, but never otherwise. He’s afraid of hurting me, isn’t he?”

A muscle jumped in Ken’s jaw. He rubbed his thumb along a scar down the left side of his face. “He’s afraid of hurting everyone. He has to tell you himself, Briony. It has to come from him—and then you have to decide if you’re strong enough to live with him.”

“This is temporary.”

He shook his head. “You’re deceiving yourself and you know it.”

“He walked out. He said I was a liability. He told me he wasn’t the kind of man who would ever have a woman or kid.”

“I’m sure he did say those things. He believes he shouldn’t have a family. It doesn’t mean that he doesn’t want a family. He isn’t going to walk away from you ever again.”

“I don’t want him like that. Trapped because we were forced together by an outside source and now he’s stuck because I needed help.”

Ken leaned his hip against the doorjamb, a gesture very reminiscent of Jack. “What do you think he would have done had you been kidnapped and word got back to him? Even if he didn’t think the child was his, what do you think he would have done?”

Briony plucked at the comforter. “I have no idea. I barely know Jack, and when I think I do know him, everyone warns me off—everyone including Jack.”