Larger than Life by Kay Hooper Page B

He sipped his coffee as he watched her finishing her meal. “One was Alex—didn’t catch his last name. The other was Matt Preston.” Her face did a fine job of hiding whatever she felt, he thought, but there was dismay in the quick glance she threw him. Evenly, he added, “He asked Cory if she’d told you he was here.”
    Saber pushed the food around on her plate for several moments, then lifted her eyes to meet his.
    Gazing into the serene, unreadable silver eyes, Travis was unable to stop the words escaping from the very heart of him. “Is he the man, Saber? Is he the one you have to prove something to?”
    “Yes,” she said steadily.
    “You’re in love with him,” he said.
    Something flickered in her eyes, then vanished. “No. But I love him.”
    Travis put his napkin aside and rose to his feet in the very controlled motion of a man who had to
move
or do something violent. He left the kitchen, pacing the larger space of the living room.
    Saber followed him, watching him silently. When she finally spoke, it was in an oddly anguished voice. “Travis, there are things I can’t explain to you right now. I made a promise, and until I’m freed of it …”
    “You can’t tell me why Matt Preston’s important to you?”
    “No,” she said, badly unnerved. He was pacing like a tiger in a cage, and she wondered dimly why until now she had seen only that rare surface beauty. Why she had glimpsed only the rippling muscles and deadly grace of a vital primitive creature? She was not frightened, but something inside her was awed, made wary and uncertain.
    He stopped pacing, gazing across the room at her. It was her vulnerability that reached through the fog of his painful jealousy.
    “I love you,” he said huskily. Swiftly, he moved to stand before her. “And I’ll fight for you. But I have to know what I’m fighting, Saber.”
    “You’re not fighting Matt,” she whispered.
    He reached out to enfold her in his arms, holding her tightly. “I’ve never been jealous before,” he said. “I don’t … quite know how to handle it.”
    Saber burrowed closer to him, obeying a sudden need for the touch of him, the feeling of his hard body pressed to hers. There was an unfamiliar ache in the pit of her belly, a hollow longing she’d never known before. Disturbed, she tried to keep her mind on his words.
    “Give me time,” she murmured.
    He framed her face in warm hands, turning it up so that she could see the tenderness in his green eyes. “We’ll take all the time you need,” he said gently.
    Saber gazed up at him for a long moment, then said quietly, “There is something I want to tell you about now.”
    Travis watched the lovely, delicate face tighten, felt tension flow into stiffening shoulders. Silentlyhe led her to the couch and sat beside her. “Then tell me,” he said.
    So she did, her voice level and calm, her silver-gray eyes flickering from time to time with the caged wildness that had fascinated him from the beginning. She talked about the months missing from her life, and a battle that had scarred her physically and wrenched a woman from a girl.
    A battle of survival … and she lived it again.
    It had been a freak accident, a combination of violent storm and the failure of delicate instruments. The chances of her surviving the crash had been a million to one. And the odds against her continued survival—alone, lost, too many miles from civilization, and in a hostile, unfamiliar environment—had been astronomical.
    She was a delicate creature with no experience of physical or emotional hardships. Educated for city streets and dinner parties. Accustomed to soft beds and clean clothes and processed foods. Shehad never before seen violent death or wilderness or her own blood.
    Now, as the midday sun glinted off twisted, ugly chunks of metal, she tied an awkward knot in the strip of material torn from a silk blouse. Blank gray eyes stared at the improvised bandage covering the jagged cut on her