His smile faded, replaced by a cool demeanour. ‘You’re being over-dramatic, Kate.’ He picked up a helmet and put it on, slid on his sunglasses.
‘You think?’ She jingled the car keys in front of him. ‘My brother died throwing himself off a cliff in a hang-glider. I won’t stand around and watch someone else I l—’ she caught the runaway word on her tongue ‘—someone else who thinks he’s invincible prove he’s flesh and blood and as easily broken as the rest of us mere mortals.’
A moment of stunned silence hummed in the air before anger and desperation gave way to an all too familiar bone-deep weariness.
‘Just go away and do your thing.’ She turned on her heel and pointed herself in the direction of their car, but she only made it halfway before Damon clapped his hands on her shoulders.
He spun her to face him. ‘Kate.’
Sunlight glinted off his helmet. She couldn’t see his eyes behind his sunglasses so she couldn’t read his expression. Glaring up at the mirrored lenses, the firm, implacable, fragile jaw, she fought back tears. ‘Get out of my way.’
‘No.’ Damon yanked off his helmet and glasses, tossed them on the ground. A ball of something like guilt hit him square in his gut as he closed his fingers around the slender bones of Kate’s upper arms, drew her shivering body against his. He buried his nose against the soft fragrance of her hair. He’d never felt so inadequate.
Yes, he had—and his fingers tightened on her arms as he remembered. When he’d watched Bonita die.
He understood Kate’s anguish. And realised how differently they’d dealt with their loss. It had made her afraid to take risks, whereas he’d used risk to block out the pain. He released her arms to stroke her shoulders, her neck, the sun-warmed braid against her back.
She jutted her chin up at him. ‘Doesn’t the word death mean anything to you?’
He shook his head. ‘Death only makes you more aware of your own mortality. It reminds us to live for today because we never know when it might be our last.’ A creed he’d lived by every day for the past nine years. He focused directly into her eyes. ‘Are you a woman who likes to live each day to the full?’
Her eyes widened fractionally and her posture stiffened. ‘I like to live, yes.’
‘Carpe diem, Kate. Seize the day.’ He tightened his fingers around her slender bones, felt the telltale tremor run through her. ‘You can do this—not for me; for you.’
Her eyelids closed and two fat tears rolled down her cheeks. He wiped them away with his thumbs. ‘You face this and overcome it, you’ll feel a freedom you’ve never felt.’
She seemed to wage some sort of internal battle, then straightened, and when she opened her eyes a light glimmered that hadn’t been there two minutes earlier.
He added a gentle squeeze of reassurance. ‘Believe in yourself, Kate.’
A good fifteen seconds of silence passed. ‘You’ll owe me big time,’ she murmured finally.
She flashed that tiny spark of courage at him and he felt as if he’d lost an already tenuous foothold on the side of the mountain.
Whether she knew it or not, Kate Fielding had Power. The power to do whatever she chose, if she’d just reach out and seize it. He bent down to retrieve their gear. He had a feeling that if she chose to wield that power—over him—she had way more than was safe.
But her lips were chalk-white and clamped together as he slid the helmet over her head. ‘Hey, it’s like sex,’ he reassured her, tracing those lips with a finger. ‘We fly off the edge of the world and—’
‘I’ll scream,’ she warned him between clenched teeth. ‘And possibly pass out. Are you ready for that?’
‘Ready, willing and able.’ He grinned. ‘As I said, it’s like sex. Spectacular, swoon-worthy sex.’
‘I don’t scream when I’m having sex.’
A smile twitched at his cheeks as he checked over the equipment a final time. ‘Perhaps you should.’
‘Is that a criticism?’
His grin widened. ‘You should let yourself go—you don’t do enough of that. Or maybe I’m just not doing my job well enough.’
He didn’t miss the momentary heat flare in her eyes, but her voice remained cool as she said, ‘If you’re fishing for compliments, forget it.’
He resumed his task. ‘Okay, let’s buckle up. No loose items in pockets?’ She shook her head. ‘Put your sunglasses on.’ One knuckle grazed the soft, sweet valley between her breasts as he lifted the glasses hooked to the neckline of her blouse and he was momentarily distracted.