He nearly got back into his car and drove off. But he shrugged and decided that since he was here, he'd might as well enjoy the view.
"Hell of a spot," he said as he walked up to her. It gave him perverse pleasure to see her jolt.
"I was enjoying it," she muttered and kept her back to him.
"Plenty of view for two to enjoy. I saw your car, and…" When he got a look at her, he saw that her eyes were damp. He'd always been compelled to dry a woman's tears. "Bad day?" he murmured and offered her a handkerchief.
"It's just windy."
"Not that windy."
"I wish you'd go away."
"Ordinarily I try to comply with women's requests. Since I'm not going to in your case, why don't you sit down, tell me about it?'' He took her arm, thinking the tension in it was edgy enough to cut glass. "Think of me as a priest," he suggested, dragging her with him. "I wanted to be one once."
"To use some clever phrasing, bullshit."
"No, really." He pulled her down on a rock with him. "I was eleven. Then puberty hit, and the rest is history."
She tried and failed to tug free and rise. "Did it ever occur to you that I don't want to talk to you? That I want to be alone?"
To soothe, because her voice was catching helplessly, he stroked a hand over her hair. "It crossed my mind, but I rejected it. People who feel sorry for themselves always want to talk about it. That, next to sex, was the main reason I decided against the seminary. And dancing. Priests don't get lots of opportunity to dance with pretty women—which, I suppose, is the same thing as sex. Well, enough about me."
He put a determined hand under her chin and lifted it. She was pale, those long, spiky lashes were wet and those deep, doe's eyes damp. But…
"Your eyes aren't red enough for you to have had a good cry yet."
"I'm not a sniveler."
"Listen, kid, my sister highly recommends a good cry, and she'd deck you for calling her a sniveler." Gently, he rubbed his thumb over Kate's chin. "Screaming's good, too, and throwing breakables. There was a lot of that in my house."
"There's no point—"
"Venting," he interrupted smoothly. "Purging. There aren't any breakables around here, but you could let out a good scream."
Emotions welling up inside her threatened to choke her. Furiously she jerked her face free of his hand. "I don't need you or anyone to charm me out of a mood. I can handle my own problems just fine. If I need a friend, all I have to do is go up to the house. Up to the house," she repeated as her gaze focused on the towering structure of stone and wood and glass that held everything precious to her.
Covering her face with her hands, she br
oke.
"That's a girl," he murmured, relieved by the natural flow of tears. "Come here now." He drew her close, stroking her hair, her back. "Get it all out."
She couldn't stop. It didn't matter who he was, his arms were strong, his voice understanding. With her face buried against his chest, she sobbed out the frustration, the grief, the fear, let herself for one liberating moment be coddled.
He rested his cheek on her hair, held her lightly. Lightly because she seemed so small, so fragile. A good grip might shatter those thin bones. Tears soaked through his shirt, cooled from hot to cold on his skin.
"I'm sorry. Damn it." She would have pulled away, but he continued to hold her. Humiliated, she squeezed her aching eyes shut. "I never would have done that if you'd left me alone."
"You're better off this way. It's not healthy to hold everything in." Automatically, he kissed the top of her head before easing her back to study her face.
Why it should have charmed him, wet, blotchy, streaked with mascara as it was, he couldn't have said. But he had a terrible urge to shift her onto his lap, to kiss that soft, sad mouth, to stroke her again, not quite so consolingly.
Bad move, he cautioned himself, and wondered how any man faced with such sexy distress could think like a priest.
"Not that you look better." He took the handkerchief she'd balled up in her fist and mopped at her face. "But you should feel better enough to tell me why you're so upset."
"It has nothing to do with you."