Claimed by the Rebel: The Playboy's Plain Jane / The Loner's Guarded Heart / Moonlight and Roses. Jackie Braun

of his error. He’d told himself he had been trying to give her back something she had lost. Now he saw he had tried to give her back what he missed about himself.

      Hope. Belief. Trust.

      He was not the man for this task. Foolish to have taken it on.

      Katie glanced at him. Suddenly her whole demeanor changed. “Mom, I’ll call you back.”

      “Dylan?”

      “Huh?”

      “Are you okay?” She came out of the back room, came and stood looking up at him.

      He pasted his breeziest smile on his face, tried to see the plain Jane in her. But he saw something else. A girl who needed a man who could be one hundred per cent real. Katie needed someone brave enough to trust her with who he was once he laid down the shield.

      He folded his arms over his chest. He wasn’t ever having a relationship with her. He’d done the decent thing. He’d given her back her spirit, however briefly. Both of them knew now that it had only been hidden, not lost.

      And what of his own spirit?

      He was aware of his lack, that he had overdeveloped many sides of his personality: strength, daring, persistence. Others he had managed to totally ignore: sentiment, softness, vulnerability. If he let this thing with Katie go any further, he was going to get to the place where he really hurt, and dammit, he didn’t want to go there! He was not the least bit interested in discovering his own humanity, what lay beyond the fearless facade.

      He was about fun and danger, and lovely combinations of both. He was not about self-discovery. In fact he could honestly say he hated stuff like that. Nothing could bring on that nice-to-have-known-you bouquet faster than a girlfriend wanting to have a deep and meaningful conversation.

      “Dylan, what’s wrong?”

      “Nothing,” he said.

      She looked doubtful. “Did you want to see Tac Revol?”

      “Excuse me?” he said, lifting an eyebrow at her. “Like, I’d be caught dead at something like that!”

      For a moment she looked unconvinced, and then her face relaxed.

      “Oh. Of course you wouldn’t! You probably don’t even know Tac Revol spells Cat Lover, backward. You’ve just been so persistent. I thought, oh, never mind what I thought.” Her smile came back. “So, you don’t care if I take my mom?”

      “I’m glad you’re taking your mom.” He ordered himself to stop talking. McKinnon, get out. Get out with your life. Full retreat. “I wish I could make my mom so happy. Just one more time.”

      “Is she gone, Dylan?” she asked softly.

      Such a complicated question. “Yes,” he said gruffly. She was gone. The mother of his youth, brilliant, witty, warm, loving, capable, sensitive, she was gone. And she was never coming back.

      “Oh, I’m so sorry.”

      Everything brave and fearless in him was collapsing in the face of the light in her eyes, the wariness washed from them, replaced with something so warm, a place a man could lay down his shield and rest his head.

      Katie Pritchard was beautiful in a different way than he had ever experienced beautiful before.

      Hers was a kind of beauty that changed the things it touched, made them need to be worthy of her. She was deep and real and genuine, and she’d already been stuck with one guy who wasn’t anywhere near worthy of those things, who could not live up to her standard.

      And that knowledge of her and what would be required of any man who linked his life with hers, even temporarily, made him feel oddly fragile, as if he had inadvertently touched something sacred. He was aware of feeling the route he was on had taken a dangerous twist and become very, very scary. Scary? But that was impossible. The Daredevil Dylan McKinnon was fearless. A little snip like her was not going to bring him to his knees.

      Or maybe she was.

      Because she reached up and touched his cheek with her hand, soothingly, as if she understood all the secrets he was not telling her.

      And then she kissed him.

      Her lips were unspeakably tender, they invited him to tell her everything, they called to the place in him that he had been so fierce about guarding, that he had revealed to no one.

      It was a place of burdens and loneliness, and the burdens felt suddenly lighter, and the loneliness felt like it was fog that sun was penetrating.

      “If you want to go for coffee sometime,” she said, hesitantly.

      He reeled back from her. “I have to go out of town for a while,” he said, and saw her flinch from the obviousness of the lie.

      But he felt as if it was better—far better—to hurt her now than later. The fabric of life, and especially of love, was fragile after all. He could not trust himself not to damage what he saw blossoming in the tenderness of her eyes.

      Love. He could not trust himself with love.

      CHAPTER FIVE

      KATE took up her post beside her window, glanced at the clock. Nearly one o’clock and no Dylan. Just as there had been no Dylan for the past three days. No dropping by her shop, no teasing, no exotic invitations. Ever since she had accepted the tickets from him—and made the mistake of telling him she was available for coffee—it was as if he had dropped off the face of the earth.

      The chase was over. For a guy like him it was all about the chase. She knew that from sending his flowers.

      He had told her he had to go away, but she could see his red sports car parked right up the street. He certainly didn’t have to let her know his schedule!

      Still, this feeling inside her should serve as a warning. She missed him coming by. Each day she chose an uglier outfit in anticipation of it. Today she had on a pair of daisy-printed culottes and had her hair tied with a matching bandanna. It was a lot of trouble to have gone to if he wasn’t going to come by and appreciate it.

      For all that she had thought she was winning this game of cat and mouse they had been playing, she now realized she hadn’t been at all.

      She’d been kidding herself, falling more in love with him every day. The tickets to the Tac Revol reading had finished her really, swamped her with tenderness for the man she wanted—no, needed—so desperately to hate. And when he had choked up, at the mention of his own mother, it was like the armor around her heart had been pierced irreparably.

      And then he’d stopped coming, proving her instincts had been correct. Saying yes to him, inviting him for coffee, was the beginning of the end. Except her end seemed to have come without the stuff that was supposed to come in the middle. Ridiculous to feel regret.

      Probably Dylan had seen something in her face that day she took the tickets that had frightened him off. Girl who cares too much, feels too deeply, capable of sappy behavior over small gestures.

      Good, she tried to convince herself. Good that he had lost interest in his game. She had no hope of coming out the winner in any kind of match with him.

      It was five minutes past one. He wasn’t coming. He wasn’t running today, or if he was he was avoiding her shop.

      She felt her heart drop, hated it that she felt her throat close and her eyes prick as if she was going to cry! She would not cry. Her assistant, Mrs. Abercrombie, was working today. People came in all the time!

      Stop it! She ordered herself. She’d known all along this was the danger of dancing with a man like that. That is what they had been doing, the last weeks, dancing, circling around each other, jousting.

      A dangerous dance, because how could you spend any kind of time with a guy like that and not want more?

      Not more of the good looks and charm, not more of the fun-loving