Up Close And Personal. Lynn Raye Harris

hanging from a chain around his neck. He was tall, broad, tough—the kind of man to whom a weapon was an extension of his body and not just a foreign object. It’s what made him so good, she realized. And so lonely.

      “So where is home for you? Where is the place you most identify with?”

      She wasn’t sure, but it seemed as if he stiffened. And then he was looking at her sharply before he smoothed his expression. “I’m a mutt,” he said. “I have no specific home.”

      “A mutt?”

      “Someone of mixed ancestry, like a dog that you can’t quite tell what the dominant breed is.”

      “But you live in London,” she said, trying to approach it from a different angle. “Is that the place you prefer over the rest?”

      “I don’t prefer anywhere. I go where I want to go.”

      “Like here?”

      “Precisely.”

      She took another sip of wine. “But what about when you’re ready for a family? Where will you settle then?”

      His eyes were hard, glittering. “Don’t, Veronica,” he said. “Don’t take this conversation down that road.”

      She tilted her chin up to glare at him icily, though her stomach was doing flips. “Don’t flatter yourself. I was simply making conversation, not trying to set up house with you.”

      He shoved a hand through his hair and leaned back on his chair. The torches crackled, the sea churned, and he was silent for a long moment. “It’s complicated,” he finally said. “I’m complicated.”

      “Aren’t we all.” She said it as a statement, not a question, and he looked at her, appraising her.

      “You certainly are,” he said softly. And then he took a drink of his wine. “Family is not for me,” he said. “It’s not what I want.”

      Her heart pinched in her chest. Yes, she did want a family—a husband, children—but she didn’t want them right this moment. Nor was she naive enough to think that one night of sex with Raj made him her ideal man, her love for all time. But the fact he could state so emphatically that a family was out of the question …

      Yes, it bothered her. Because it seemed as if men never thought of her in terms of family life. They thought of her for sex. For uncomplicated, uncommitted relationships based on physical attraction.

      There was nothing deeper. There never had been. And that saddened her.

      She set her napkin on the table, pushed back and got to her feet. “Thank you for a wonderful meal,” she said. “But I think I’ve had enough excitement for one day. It’s time to turn in.”

      “Veronica,” he said, standing, holding his hand out as if to stop her.

      She turned slightly, her gaze not on him but on a point behind him. “It’s okay, Raj,” she said. “I understand. I’m just tired.”

      “It has nothing to do with you. I just don’t feel the need for those things. I’m happy the way I am.”

      “Are you?” she said, her voice stiff even though she tried to make it casual.

      He looked as if he pitied her. She hated it, because she knew what he was thinking. It made her wish she’d never told him about the baby. She didn’t want his pity. She didn’t want anyone’s pity. She didn’t deserve it.

      “Not everyone needs the same things out of life. I have money and freedom. I need nothing more.”

      “How lonely that sounds,” she said. “And what happens in twenty years when you wake up and realize you have no one who cares?”

      He shook his head slowly. “You’ll find him, Veronica.”

      “Find who?” she asked, quaking inside.

      He reached out and skimmed a finger along her cheek. “The man who will love you the way you want to be loved.”