Risky Business

to him as if she swam to drain herself of some tension or sorrow, and that with each lap she’d come closer to succeeding. Waiting, he watched her tip her head back in the water so that her hair slicked back. The marks on her neck had faded. As she stood, water skimmed her thigh.
    “I’ve never seen you relaxed,” Jonas commented. But even as he said the words, he could see her muscles tense again. She turned away from her contemplation of the mountains and looked at him.
    He was tired, she realized, and wondered if she should have seen it before. There was a weariness around his eyes that hadn’t been there that morning. He hadn’t changed his clothes, and had his hands tucked into the pockets of bone-colored slacks. She wondered if he’d been up to the suite at all.
    “I didn’t bring a suit with me.” Liz pushed against the side of the pool and hitched herself out. Water rained from her. “I charged this one to the room.”
    The thighs were cut nearly to the waist. Jonas caught himself wondering just how the skin would feel there. “It’s nice.”
    Liz picked up her towel. “It was expensive.”
    He only lifted a brow. “I could deduct it from the rent.”
    Her lips curved a little as she rubbed her hair dry. “No, you can’t. But since you’re a lawyer, I imagine you can find a way to deduct it from something else. I saved the receipt.”
    He hadn’t thought he could laugh. “I appreciate it. You know, I get the impression you don’t think much of lawyers.”
    Something came and went in her eyes. “I try not to think of them at all.”
    Taking the towel from her, he gently dried her face. “Faith’s father’s a lawyer?”
    Without moving, she seemed to shift away from him. “Leave it alone, Jonas.”
    “You don’t.”
    “Actually I do, most of the time. Maybe it’s been on my mind the past few weeks, but that’s my concern.”
    He draped the towel around her shoulders and, holding the ends, drew her closer. “I’d like you to tell me about it.”
    It was his voice, she thought, so calm, so persuasive, that nearly had her opening both mind and heart. She could almost believe as she looked at him that he really wanted to know, to understand. The part of her that was already in love with him needed to believe he might care. “Why?”
    “I don’t know. Maybe it’s that look that comes into your eyes. It makes a man want to stroke it away.”
    Her chin came up a fraction. “There’s no need to feel sorry for me.”
    “I don’t think sympathy’s the right word.” Abruptly weary, he dropped his forehead to hers. He was tired of fighting demons, of trying to find answers. “Damn.”
    Uncertain, she stood very still. “Are you all right?”
    “No. No, I’m not.” He moved away from her to walk to the end of the path where a plot of tiny orange flowers poked up through white gravel. “A lot of things you said today were true. A lot of things you’ve said all along are true. I can’t do anything about them.”
    “I don’t know what you want me to say now.”
    “Nothing.” Hideously tired, he ran both hands over his face. “I’m trying to live with the fact that my brother’s dead, and that he was murdered because he decided to make some easy money drug-trafficking. He had a good brain, but he always chose to use it in the wrong way. Every time I look in the mirror, I wonder why.”
    Liz was beside him before she could cut off her feelings. He hurt. It was the first time she’d seen below the surface to the pain. She knew what it was like to live with pain. “He was different, Jonas. I don’t think he was bad, just weak. Mourning him is one thing—blaming yourself for what he did, or for what happened to him, is another.”
    He hadn’t known he needed comfort, but her hand restingon him had something inside him slowly uncurling. “I was the only one who could reach him, keep him on some kind of level. There came a point where I just got tired of running both our lives.”
    “Do you really believe you could have prevented him from doing what he did?”
    “Maybe. That’s something else I have to live with.”
    “Just a minute.” She took his shirtfront in much the same way she had that afternoon. There was no sympathy now, but annoyance on her face. He hadn’t known he needed that, as well. “You were brothers, twins, but you were separate people. Jerry wasn’t a child to be guided and supervised. He was a grown man who made his decisions.”
    “That’s