Raven's Prey

it hadn’t been for you.” Judging by the brooding stare he gave her, that wasn’t quite what he had wanted to hear.
    “Honor, if I had it to do over again…” he began grimly and then let the sentence trail off into nothingness.
    “Yes? If you had it to do over again, what would you do differently?” she prodded curiously.
    He sighed. “Nothing. Given the same set of circumstances, I probably would behave in exactly the same way. I would have taken me job because it paid well and I would have wound up trying to sort out the truth of the situation in my own fashion instead of romantically declaring myself your unquestioning champion, right or wrong.”
    She sipped her drink. “Well, that’s honest, at least.”
    “I’ve tried to be honest with you from the first.”
    “Yes, you have. You behaved very reasonably in Mexico, Judd. I was the one who was unreasonable.” If he could be honest, so could she. “I read far too much into what happened between us that night. And you were perfectly right when you accused me of romanticizing the situation. I’ve always been something of a romantic, I guess. That was one of the reasons I came to Arizona.”
    “It was?” He appeared to want to say something else, something about her confession that she had been in the wrong, but Honor got the impression he didn’t know how to phrase it.
    “Ummm. I moved to the Southwest because I find the desert and the mountains spectacular. And I love the blend of cultures in this part of the country. I grew up in the Northeast, but for as long as I can remember there’s been a certain pull about this part of the country.”
    “Your family? Do they still live in the Northeast?” he asked.
    She hesitated and then nodded. “Oh, yes, they still live there. I don’t see much of them,” she admitted. “I didn’t really fit in. That’s an odd thing to say, isn’t it? That you didn’t fit into your own family?”
    “Why didn’t you?”
    She lifted one shoulder uneasily. “Something to do with the whole lifestyle. My father is a banker and my mother is very [_New England, _]if you know what I mean. I always played with the right children, went to the right schools. I was quite a little preppy monster there for a time.” She chuckled reminiscently. “But as I grew older I grew more and more restless. I knew I wasn’t going to marry the right man and become a community-conscious corporate wife. I began to feel trapped. So after I graduated from college I fled to the Southwest. My romantic escape!”
    “You didn’t go to your parents when you found yourself in trouble,” Judd noted coolly.
    Honor shook her head emphatically. “They would have thought I was a raving lunatic. Just as you did.” He winced but she didn’t bother to soothe his conscience. “In any event I couldn’t deliberately bring Garrison and Prager down on them, could I? I had no right to put my parents in jeopardy.”
    There was a silence and then Judd said quietly, “You mean you didn’t even feel close enough to your parents to be sure they would believe you?”
    Honor bit her lip as she acknowledged his surprisingly accurate assessment of the situation. “No.”
    “My God ” he breathed. “You’re really on your own, aren’t you? In spite of having a family.”
    “I suppose you could say that,” she agreed slowly. “What about you, Judd? Do your parents know how you make your living?”
    His mouth twisted in wry amusement. “My mother gave me up for adoption when I was two years old. I have no idea what she thinks about my career. Lord knows who my father was.”
    Honor’s mood was suddenly softened by compassion. “Were you adopted, then?”
    “I’m told I was a difficult child,” he murmured dryly. “In any event I never seemed to last too long in the various homes where the agency tried to place me. No, I never got myself adopted. I guess I gave everyone a lot of trouble until I was fifteen. Then I discovered airports. I started hanging out around the field near town and conned a pilot into taking me up for a ride. After my first flight I knew what I was going to do with the rest of my life. As soon as I got my license I started taking any job that would keep me in airplane fuel.”
    “I guess I can see now why you never got married,” Honor heard herself say wistfully. “What woman could compete with your love of flying?”
    His voice hardened. “In spite of what you seem to think is some sort of unnatural