Sleight Of Hand by Kate Kelly Page A

red jacket. Even with the narrow shoulders on the
secondary road, there should have been enough room to pass him
safely.
    He swallowed the violent curse that grew
inside him as a raging thirst gripped him. Imagining cool, smooth
liquor sliding down his sandpaper throat, he wiped the back of his
hand across his mouth. Getting drunk was not an option. He had to
keep it together.
    For Sarah. For himself.
    "Looks like word got here before us." He
braked and waited as a car pulled out of a parking spot across the
street from the diner.
    "Maybe we should wait until tomorrow." Sarah
peered out her window at the parked cars, her voice thin and
uncertain. "We'd be intruding."
    There was never a good time to grieve. All a
person could do was move past it. Which is exactly what he and
Sarah needed to do. In public. With a lot of people around them.
Not back at the cabin, alone and both feeling vulnerable.
    He wrestled the Blazer into the empty parking
spot. He understood that bottom-falling-out-of-the-world feeling,
and he knew only too well how affirming it was to lose yourself in
someone's arms for a few hours. He could easily lose himself in
Sarah.
    But could he find his way back?
    The snow changed to rain as he turned the
motor off and sat staring at the windshield. Needs were as
changeable as the weather. He often thought he needed a woman, and
maybe he did, but no woman had ever held his interest for long. He
wouldn't permit that.
    He shifted sideways and watched Sarah twist
her fingers into a nervous clump. His life would be a lot less
complicated if she weren't in it right now. To need Sarah was a
whole different thing than what he had felt for his other lady
friends. What did he have to offer a woman like her?
    "Dill pickles." They both started as his
words bounced around the closed interior of the car.
    She turned and blinked. "What?"
    Hell, if he'd ever seen a woman who needed to
be comforted, it was Sarah. Her eyes held a lost, luminous look
that made you feel as though you could see right into her soul. She
looked wide open and way too vulnerable to be sitting this close to
him.
    Chance rolled down his window and let the
cold air bath his face. "I was wondering if you still liked dill
pickles. Your dad told me how you ate a whole bottle of them
once."
    "Oh." She sent him a shy half smile.
    "You don't like dill pickles?"
    "I was six." Her mouth trembled, as if she
were confessing to a serious crime. "I didn't really like the
pickles. My dad thought it was so funny, I kept right on eating
them. After that, I didn't want to disappoint him and tell him I
didn't care one way or the other about the stupid things."
    She tried to smile, but didn't quite pull it
off. "Kids. The things we do to impress our parents."
    She hadn't been a kid for a long time, and he
bet O'Sullivan still bought her bottles of pickles, and she still
stoically ate her way through every damned bottle. Life could be so
damned sad sometimes.
    He pushed open his door and stumbled out into
the cold rain. What difference did it make if Sarah ate a whole
bottle of pickles every day of her life to please her father? He
didn't care. He couldn't. He snapped up his collar and slammed his
door shut. "Close my window will you? And grab the keys."
    He waited outside the diner as Sarah scurried
across the street to catch up to him. At least she didn't look
vulnerable any more. No, she looked embarrassed. He was acting like
a jerk--again.
    "You should tell him," he said as soon as she
reached him on the sidewalk.
    "It's such a small thing, and it gives him so
much pleasure. You can't just take what you want from a
relationship; you have to give as well."
    He opened his mouth to retort, but realized
Sarah didn't know him well enough to know how close to the truth
she had come. Even if she did, there was nothing he could say in
his defence. Ever since his father had died, he'd taken exactly
what he wanted and had given nothing in return.
    Before he could recover from her