Bear Claw Bodyguard (8 page)

We don’t have to do this,
she thought. She didn’t say it, though, because they had already gone too far.

So, telling herself that she couldn’t worry about whether he liked what he was hearing, she said, “If I haven’t mentioned my mom, it’s because there’s zero friction there. She and I are flips of the same coin. At least we are these days. She and my dad got divorced right around the time I left home—they waited until I was out of the house. Or, rather,
she
waited. My dad would have gone on indefinitely the way they were, with him working and her keeping the house, and them taking their two weeks on the lake every summer, and nothing ever changing really. He didn’t want to hear that she was feeling bored, stifled and
stuck,
still living in the same town, with the same streets, same stores, same people she’d known forever. He loved it, and thought that if she didn’t love it, she just wasn’t trying hard enough.”

Aware that her voice had gone sharp, she blew out a breath and told herself to ease up. “Anyway, she’s happier now with Cesare. They don’t have a ton of money, but they still manage to travel the world together, picking up work as they go. She’s even writing a series of magazine articles about their adventures. They’ll start coming out next month.”

She paused, waiting for a comment, a nod, anything. But he just stood there, pretending to dry a plate with a bright purple towel.

Mouth going dry, though she couldn’t have said exactly what she was worried about—there wasn’t anything between them, so there was nothing to lose, right?—she con
tinued, “My dad remarried, too, and this time he picked a woman who likes his routine, likes sticking close to home and making it a nice place for him to come back to after work. My two older brothers both married nest builders, too. Which is a good thing because if either of them had fallen for a woman who wanted more than that, it would have been a disaster.” She paused, aware that the air was suddenly strung tight with hurt and tension even though she didn’t know why. “Are…are you okay?”

He said something under his breath, too low for her to hear. Then, moving slowly, deliberately, he racked the plate with a sharp click of stoneware on stoneware, wadded up the purple towel and tossed it on the counter and then turned toward her. His face was stern and set, that of a man who was ready to make an arrest, read rights, inform a family of a loved one’s death. But again she saw the pain beneath the mask.

“Jack?” she said softly, finally rising and taking a step toward him, reaching to touch, to soothe.

“Don’t.” The word was a harsh rasp, his uplifted hand a signal to stay away. “I need…” He made a vague gesture toward the door. “I’m going to check the perimeter. Stay inside until I come back.”

They both knew he’d checked it an hour earlier, and the lights on the console beside the door were green across the board.

She told herself to let it go, to let
him
go, but she was caught by the pain. “Look, I know we don’t know each other and we’re not really friends. Not the kind you have, anyway. But maybe that’s not a bad thing right now…and I’m a good listener.”

He started for the door, but then stopped and turned
back to meet her eyes. “I don’t think this is a good idea.” It wasn’t the cop looking at her now, but the man. And the man wasn’t just turning down her offer of a listening ear. He was turning it all down, turning
her
down.

She wasn’t surprised that he’d make the smarter, safer call. She
was
a little surprised, though, how much it stung, driving a sliver of pain into her heart, one that said she’d been hoping it would go the other way even more than she’d realized. But she only said, “I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Me, too.” But he walked out anyway, closing the door firmly behind him.

She stared at the door long after his footsteps faded outside, not really sure what she was feeling. Or, rather, not sure which of the competing emotions was winning. She was frustrated by the churning warmth that never quite went away when he was in the vicinity and sorely disappointed that he’d turned down her not-quite-an-offer, yet at the same time, she felt for him, wanted to ease whatever hurt she’d just accidentally caused.

“Leave him alone,” she told herself. “If he’d wanted to keep talking he wouldn’t have walked away.” But that wasn’t entirely true either. If he was anything like her—and she was coming to realize that there were more similarities than differences, at least in some regards—he might just have needed to be outside breathing the night air and clearing his head. Once he did that, he might welcome the company out there under the stars.

“Don’t push it,” she told herself. “Go upstairs and get back to work.”

She went after him instead.

Jack heard her footsteps on the stairs leading up to the observatory platform, and just shook his head.

Of course she hadn’t stayed inside. And of course she had come after him. No doubt she saw him as akin to one of her sick forests: in need of tending, lest a catastrophic collapse follow. Or maybe she saw him as something more than that, something—or, rather, someone—she cared about within her own comfort zone of caring. Which would only complicate things more.

He shouldn’t have let the conversation get so personal.
Let it?
he thought with an inner snort. Hell, he’d taken it there, pushing her to open up to him, no doubt with some deep-seated and arrogant belief that she was secretly tired of the traveling lifestyle and ready to settle down with the right man.

More, her comments about her brothers and father had struck a nerve because he’d been that guy. Hell, he
was
that guy. That was what had driven him out of the kitchen, and it was what had him now gripping the waist-high railing that edged the platform, and staring up into the night sky.

He’d killed the floodlights—only a mild security risk given that the other sensors were still online—and the
moon was only a thin sliver behind him, leaving the night dark and gorgeous, and filled with far more stars than the city ever saw. The sky was gorgeous, endless. It made him feel small and insignificant, yet at the same time reminded him that he and Tori were far more similar than they were different.

But that was the thing, wasn’t it? Sure, they had some things in common—more, it turned out, than he would have thought at first—but a couple of the things they differed on were deal breakers for him.

She stopped at the edge of the platform and stood there for a moment, watching him. He knew he should tell her to leave, that she would go if he asked and they would probably both be better off. They could go back to their unstated truce with the memory of that one kiss between them. At least he thought they could. Maybe that, too, was wishful thinking.

Instead of sending her away, though, he looked up into the sky, and said, “When I was a kid I used to dream about growing wings and flying up toward the stars. I don’t remember the last time I thought about it—probably years. But I know for damn sure that tonight is the first time I’ve felt like flying in a long, long time.”

“To get away from me?” Her footsteps were quiet on the sturdy observation platform, leaving him to sense her approach in the fine tingle of electricity that raced across his skin, making him dig his fingers into the railing so he wouldn’t turn, touch, take.

“No, never,” he said. That was the difference between them, wasn’t it? She wanted to escape; he wanted to stay right where he was. “It wasn’t ever about escaping. I’ve never wanted to be anyplace else.” How could he? There,
in the pitch blackness, he was aware of the backcountry spread out around them, falling away from the observatory. Even down in the city, where the starlight was dimmed, he knew the mountains were near, that his friends and family were there. The people he cared about, the ones he was sworn to protect.

“Not even now?”

He sighed. “Okay, maybe a little.” He turned to face her, finding her to be little more than a darker shape in the shadows, with a gleam of starlight coating her face and giving her depth and substance.

She linked her hands together in front of her body, the action more a whisper of sound than motion, and said, “I told myself to go upstairs and leave you alone.”

He felt his lips curve. “How did that work out for you?”

“Not so well. But I’m not staying. I just wanted to say…” She paused as if choosing her words carefully. “You don’t owe me anything, Jack. If anything, I owe you for helping me out the way you have over the past few days, despite the fact that you would have rather been working on the drug case. I know you’ll say you were just doing your job, but it’s been more than that to me. And…well, anyway, I just wanted you to know that I’m grateful for that, and I’m not asking for more, or expecting it, or anything. And I’m sorry if I went too far just now, and I hope you’ll keep in mind that the lifestyle that works for me doesn’t work for most other people, and vice versa. Just because I don’t want to put down roots and settle in, that doesn’t mean it’s the wrong answer for you.”

He hesitated, then admitted, “That’s pretty much what Kayla said, too.” Until he said the name, he hadn’t been certain he was going to go there. It felt like stepping over
a line he hadn’t realized was there until a few minutes ago, when Tori had been talking about her brothers and it had started feeling like she was talking about him. He’d heard all the same arguments, after all, only in another woman’s voice. “You didn’t do or say anything wrong, Tori. You just hit a nerve, that’s all.”

“Kayla.” She repeated the name. “Ex-wife?”

“Ex-fiancée.” It seemed like too simple a word for what she had been to him, though, prompting him to say, “I knew her most of my life, though. We knew each other as kids, went steady in high school, did the long-distance thing when she went away to college and I stayed local…and then she moved back so we could be together when I went into the academy. I asked her to marry me right after graduation, when I started out as a uniform, and she said yes. We knew we were young, but we figured we would keep growing up in the same direction. At least I did.”

He paused, and then when she didn’t say anything, shrugged and continued, “Anyway, she wanted to be in TV news, but took a magazine job instead, so she could stay local and still move forward. But then, when we were planning the wedding, a big station in Chicago offered this dream internship. So we postponed things for six months while she did the internship. Then another year when she got offered a job…and, well, we eventually sort of slid into a vague promise of ‘we’ll plan it when things settle down.’ Only they didn’t. Or, rather, she didn’t. She just kept orbiting farther and farther away…until eventually she stopped coming back.”

He sighed. “She said I was stifling her, that Bear Claw was stifling her, that she needed to leave because she loved herself, not because she didn’t love me. And she said lots
of the same things you were saying about your father and your brothers… So, yeah, it stung.”

“Because you still miss her or because you hadn’t really looked at it from her—or, rather my—perspective before?”

He exhaled a long, slow breath. “Wow.” He didn’t think he’d been looking for sympathy, or for Tori to apologize on Kayla’s behalf or anything like that, but the sudden burn of irritation said otherwise. Filling his lungs, he concentrated on smoothing out the suddenly raw edges even though he knew they colored his voice when he said, “Maybe we should call it a night after all.”

“You’re probably right.” She sounded equally annoyed, but then sighed out a long breath and said, voice softer, “I’m sorry.”

“For the delivery, but not the content?”

Her headshake showed in the wan starlight. “I shouldn’t have come up here. I guess I thought… I don’t know. That maybe I could help you somehow, pay you back for helping me these past few days. Instead, I just made it worse.”

“Maybe we needed to do this,” he said, wondering if the heat would die down now, as his subconscious—and his libido—had come to grips with the fact that she wasn’t even close to the right woman for him to be involved with. “Maybe we needed to get to this point, where it’s glaringly obvious that we might be attracted to each other but we’re coming at this from two totally different places. You don’t do serious and I’m not wired for casual…which doesn’t leave us with any middle ground.”

“Maybe. But at the risk of making things even worse, let me ask you something.” She took a couple of steps and closed the gap between them. “If you really loved Kayla, why wouldn’t you go out on the road with her? Shouldn’t
being with the person you love be more important than just a place?”

He’d heard that one before, too, and could answer without heat: “Home and family are more than a place for me, Tori, and my career is more than a job. Any woman who’d expect me to give up any of those things doesn’t know me nearly well enough to ask.”

He expected an argument, was braced for it. He wasn’t prepared for her to take the two more small steps needed to bring her inside his space, though, and he wasn’t braced for her to grab his collar and use it to tug his face down to her level. But that was what she did.

They stood there for a breathless moment, nose-to-nose in the darkness. Then she leaned in, so her breath was warm against his lips as she whispered, “News flash, Detective. I’m not asking you to give up anything except your three-date, five-date, ten-date rules. And I’m offering fireworks in return.”

Heat flared through him, lit him up and hollowed him out. As his senses started to churn, he told himself to back off, back away, call it a night. Instead, as the scent and feel of her burned in his blood and branded itself deep in his psyche, he caught the back of her neck.

And he moved in.

They met halfway in a kiss that instantly heated, becoming far more than the simple press of lips and touch of tongues, turning instead to urgent desire. The clutch of her hands at the back of his neck said
Come closer.
The hum at the back of her throat said
Yes, there.
And the slide of her tongue said
More.

So he went closer, touched there, gave more and, there in the concealing darkness, with them the only people
around for miles and miles, he gave in to what his body wanted, what the heat demanded. He gathered her close and leaned back against the railing, and was suddenly very aware of the free fall that waited behind him, seeming to beckon for them both. But there was no reason to take the plunge when everything he wanted right then was in his arms, kissing him back with fervent abandon.

She was warm and womanly, and where in the daylight her personality made her seem larger than her physical self, in the darkness her unabashed sensuality seemed to exceed her physical form, making her seem to be everywhere at once, surrounding him with light touches and inciting caresses that made his blood burn and his heartbeat thunder in his ears. She tempted him with her mouth, seduced him with touches that trailed across his ribs and down his flanks to hidden spots that made him shudder against her and groan into their heated kiss.

Moaning, she swayed against him, fisting her hands in his shirt and hanging on as if she’d lost her balance. His equilibrium was long gone, swept away by the flames that raged within him, blazing hotter and faster than drought-spawned wildfires as he filled his hands with her hips and cupped the sweet curves of her bottom. Lifting, he drew her up against his body, let her feel him hard and wanting behind his zipper.

Her breasts pressed against his chest, inciting him with the hint of hard, budded nipples beneath her shirt and bra. He wanted to cup them, touch them, rub them until she moaned into his mouth. His pulse thudded as he lowered her to her feet, following her mouth so their lips never parted, so the kiss never ended, but instead continued on in a swirl of flavor, sensation and intimate heat while he
tugged her shirt out of her waistband and slipped his hands beneath.

Her skin was so soft it felt like a dream—warm, fluid and yielding—and she purred against his mouth, wordlessly urging him onward. He slid his hands up from the slight flare of her hips to the lean dip of her waist, and then higher so he could skim the heels of his hands along the edges of her breasts. Lace brushed softly against his skin, achingly feminine. He traced the contours of her bra and then, when she arched into his touch, cupped her fully, cradling her erect nipples in the crooks of his thumbs so he could rub, gently at first and then with increasing pressure as she moaned her pleasure.

Lust stampeded through him and their kiss went wetter, turning carnal. He was dying to strip her naked, wanted to be naked himself, skin on skin, so he could kiss every inch of her, lick his way into her secret moistness, and—

Jack froze as the rules—and the mistakes that had helped him craft them—came crashing in on him. His eyes flew open and he stilled within the kiss, withdrawing his tongue but not breaking the connection of their lips.

Oh, holy hell. What was he doing? This wasn’t date ten, wasn’t date three. It wasn’t even a date. It was… Damn it, he didn’t know what it was, except that this wasn’t him. It wasn’t the way he did things, wasn’t the way he wanted to live his life.

He didn’t know when or if she opened her eyes, didn’t know what she was thinking or feeling; he knew only that his hands were on her breasts, her taste in his mouth and things had gone way too far for his peace of mind.

Although she must have felt the tension in his body, her lips curved against his and lingered for a soft, chaste kiss
before she drew away, and there was a husky, aroused rasp in her voice when she said, “See what I mean, Detective? Fireworks.”

Yeah. There was no question about that.

Clearing his throat, he dropped his hands from her breasts to her hips, where he smoothed down her shirt for a moment, knowing he had to let go, but not quite ready to stop touching her. Needing to, though, he pushed away from the railing, bringing their bodies once more flush before he took a big step back, away from her.

The night air was very cool on his body, chilling the places that were warm from her touch. “That was… Wow.”

She laughed. “I’ll take that and send it back in your direction because it was ‘wow’ for me, too.” She paused, and there was a new, more searching note in her voice as she said, “So, what do you say? Just a few days, no harm, no foul, all fun, completely off the books and only when we’re safely inside the perimeter here, so you don’t need to be watching either of our backs. Come on…what can it hurt?”

But that was the thing, wasn’t it? Because going into something knowing it was temporary didn’t necessarily stop it from hurting.

“I can’t.” He almost looked around to see who had said that, but he didn’t because he knew the words had come from him. And he knew they were the right ones, no matter how much it sucked to turn her down. “I’m sorry, but I just can’t do it, not like this. You’re amazing. But this…it isn’t me.”