Believing Again (13 page)

Maybe it was because she felt more like Danita Rebecca tonight, the girl who came from a close and happy family, the one the woman
Danny
had distanced herself from for some time. Shabbat with the Abrams felt good. She liked Jake’s parents, liked the easy relationship they had with each other and with their son, the love she could feel around that table. The only thing was, it was forcing her to face the reality that she was beginning to feel the same thing for Jake he said he felt for her, even though she swore she never would, never could.

How could she be in love with Jake and be who she wanted to be? She was
Detective
Danny Hartmann, strong and independent, the kick-ass woman even Jake acknowledged she was. Being partners with Sam was one thing. He wanted her to have his back in a tough situation. Being partners with someone who might want something else, like putting him first or being there every night for dinner, was different. Different and impossible. Wasn’t it?

As soon as they got into the house, Jake took her in his arms. “Thank you for going with me tonight. It was … magic.” He gave her a soft kiss.

“I should be the one saying ‘thank you.’ It was the best evening I’ve had in I don’t know how long.”

“Really?” He looked down at her with a frown. “I thought we’ve had some pretty spectacular evenings in the past couple months.”

“You know what I mean.” She nestled her head into his shoulder. “I haven’t felt part of a family like that in years. I’d forgotten how good it feels. Your parents are great.”

“Annoying and intrusive at times, but, on the whole, more than passable, I agree.” He lifted her chin up so she was looking directly into his eyes. “They like you. Which is no surprise. They knew how much I cared for you and they were prepared to like you because of that. But you … you blew them away. Like you blew me away from the very first time I met you. Still blow me away.” He paused for a few heartbeats. “Danny, I’m not beginning to fall for you — I love you. Flat out love you.”

She started to respond but he put his fingers across her lips.

“Hush. Let me finish. It comes with no strings. No requirements. You don’t want to tell me you love me? Fine. I know how you feel. I can see it on your face and feel it when you kiss me.”

She tried again but he shook his head and went on, “You don’t do relationships? That’s fine, too. We won’t have a relationship.”

This time he let her talk. “What do you call what we have, then, Jake?”

“Does it matter? It’s just us. We can be just us. I don’t give a damn what you call it. We’re good together. You know it. I know it. Hell, I bet if we asked Sam he’d say we’re good together. My parents would agree — I heard what my mother said in the kitchen.” He didn’t look the least bit guilty for eavesdropping.

No, he looked intense and passionate and loving. As he stroked his finger down the side of her face she knew she had one foot on solid ground and the other on a slippery slope. She tried to get back in control, at least of her own feelings. She started, “I know how good we are together and I know how you feel about me. I even think I know how I feel about you. I don’t know if I should … if I can … ” There was a long pause while she tried to get her head wrapped around the idea of saying the words she’d never said to any man. She tried. “Jake, I … ” The rest of the words didn’t want to come out.

He held her closer. “I know, baby, I know.”

“I don’t know if you do.”

“Then explain it to me.”

“I’ve worked so damn hard to get where I am, given up so much. Like I said, being a police detective isn’t my job — it’s who I am. Those guys I work with are not just my colleagues, they’re my family, my friends. My whole world. I can’t imagine walking away from it, taking a chance on a relationship that may not work out because I can’t be who you want me to be.”

“I want you to be the woman I see in front of me. The one I love. I’m not asking you to walk away from your work, to give up your life. Just to let me be part of it.”

She still didn’t know what to say, except, “I don’t deserve you, Jake.”

“I know. You deserve someone a whole hell of a lot better looking, with an intact body and a mind that hasn’t been fucked up with a tour in a war zone. But you got me. And if you think I’m gonna let you go, even though I know you deserve better, you haven’t been paying attention to who I am.”

“You know that’s not what I meant.”

“If it wasn’t, it should have been. You’re a beautiful, accomplished woman who deserves some guy who’s, I don’t know, a super hero, maybe, or some star athlete.”

Danny almost choked laughing. “Yeah, because I look like the kind of woman who falls for comic book characters. And if you think being arm candy for a rich, spoiled athlete is my style, you’re the one not paying attention.”

He took her chin again and lightly pressed his mouth against hers. “Seriously, all I’m asking is that you give us a chance. Because now that I’ve got you here, I’m not about to let you go.”

“You have me. What’re you going to do with me?”

“I’m going to take you to bed and make love to every inch of you. Slowly and sweetly and for a long, long time.”

She could feel the slow curl of hot, thick desire blossom in her body at his words. “Oh, I think I’ll like that.”

• • •

Jake’s parents had always said they liked the few women he’d brought home to meet them. But until Danny, they’d never fallen for anyone like they had tonight. Hell, if he hadn’t been in love with her before now he would have fallen hard himself.

He’d seen the expression on his mother’s face when Danny had prayed the blessing with her, had watched his father listen closely to her frustration at what her colleagues faced every day dealing with people with mental illness with few resources other than handcuffs, pepper spray, and jail. He could tell they loved her intensity and her commitment, admired her passion for her job and for getting it right. He thought they might love her almost as much as he did.

Somehow he had to find a way to convince her that being in love wasn’t anything to be afraid of. That she wouldn’t lose who she was in a relationship with him. That all he wanted to do was love her and it would be good.

But that was long term and right now, long term could wait. Tonight he simply wanted to make love to her.

He turned the sound system on to his favorite Bach cello music. She grinned over at him as he clicked on the bedside lamp. “What, no candles tonight?”

“You want candles? I can get … ”

“Jake, I was teasing.” She hooked her finger into the belt loop on his pants, pulled him to her, and began to unbutton his shirt.

“Not tonight. It’s all about you tonight.” He took her hands and kissed the back of them, then let them drop.

“You say that every time. When is it ever for you?”

“It’s always for me, baby. Touching you, tasting you, watching you come. That’s always all for me.” He was headed for taking off her knit top but then she bit her lower lip and licked the spot where her teeth had made a small indentation, on purpose, he was sure. It didn’t matter. He couldn’t resist, didn’t want to wait. He claimed her mouth for what he intended to be a short little kiss before he went back to undressing her. But once his mouth touched hers, he couldn’t stop, couldn’t rein in the need to have her that had been building in him all evening.

Instead of the soft, tender kisses he’d thought they’d spend time exchanging, what he was giving her now was hot, hard, and unforgiving. In seconds he knew that her lips weren’t enough. He needed to feel her tongue, feel the soft slide of it against his. Feel her body against his, every soft inch of her against every hard inch of him. He gripped the curve of her hips and ground himself against her.

She didn’t object. Instead, she twined her arms around his neck and, moaning softly, her body arched against him, she whispered, “I want you. Now.”

There was no leisurely, sexy undressing. He stripped off her top, threw it to the floor, and added her bra, pants, and panties in seconds. After he led her to the bed and she crawled in, his clothes were in the pile even faster. He didn’t think he’d ever shed his clothes that fast.

She stretched out her arms to him and he lay down beside her. At the same time he took one breast in his mouth, she threw her leg over his hip. Suckling her nipple, pulling at it with his mouth, grazing his teeth over it, he heard her groan deep in her throat, felt her hips rock against his.

Moving to the other breast, he gave it the same attention, drawing back only once to see her face, to watch as she moaned, her eyes fluttering, as she almost came to climax. But he stopped before she got there.

“Please, Jake,” she pleaded as he released her breast.

“Soon, baby. Soon,” he murmured and began to kiss his way to the delta of now-damp curls at the apex of her thighs. When he got there, she spread her legs to give him access and, making love to her with his mouth, he finished giving her what she wanted, what he had started with her breasts. He circled her clitoris with his tongue and gently scraped his teeth across her most sensitive place, until he could feel her bucking her hips hard against him. Then he licked and sucked until she came apart against him, crying out his name.

Moving back up her body, he settled between her thighs, his now-rock-hard penis up against her sex.

But suddenly he remembered — “Shit. Condom.” He rolled over to open the drawer and fumbled around until he found one. He handed it to her and together they ripped the packet open, she unrolled the condom over him and pulled him back between her legs.

In one powerful thrust he was inside her. She was ready for him, wanting him there as much as he wanted to be there. Where he would stay forever if he could. She moved under him in perfect rhythm with him until, finally, he felt her quiver, felt her begin to clench around him and then felt her explode again. Kissing her, plunging his tongue into her mouth with the same power as he thrust his penis into her, he poured himself into her and found his own release.

It took a few minutes for them to regain enough control over their breathing so they could talk. She got there first.

“So, what happened to slow and sweet and for a long, long time?”

He pulled back from her and frowned. “Is that a complaint?”

“Hell, no. Just wondering what caused the changeup.”

He kissed her on the end of her nose. “You did, baby. You’re the reason. I can’t keep my hands off you or my dick out of you.”

She burst into laughter. “Mr. Romance certainly disappeared in a hurry.”

“I’ll go see if I can find him,” Jake said as he left to get rid of the condom.

• • •

Danny was actually happy he had been so urgent, so demanding in his lovemaking. Urgent sex she could handle tonight. Slow, sweet, and tender she might have had a hard time with.

Any more emotion and she was afraid she’d break into tears, something she hadn’t done in years. She didn’t cry. Ever. Yet tonight, a couple times she’d felt tears well up in her eyes.

She’d thought she’d gotten over the need for the kind of family connections she’d experienced at dinner tonight. All she needed was her family at work, she’d always told herself, the people who understood her choices, her life. Had she been wrong? Or was she creating this fantasy that could never be as good as she imagined, for reasons she didn’t really want to think about?

Before she could explore the idea too much further, Jake came back to bed.

Plenty of time to think about it tomorrow
, she thought.
Me and Scarlett O’Hara
. She spooned around him and drifted off to sleep, where she dreamed she was dressed in a hoop-skirted sprigged muslin dress, fending off marauding soldiers with her Glock while Jake took care of the men she wounded.

“I don’t have to ask. I can see how good the weekend was.” Sam handed her a cappuccino and grinned. “So, this thing with the doc getting serious?” He acted like treating her to her favorite coffee gave him permission to pry.

“Good weekend. None of your damn business,” she said, the growl underlying her response an attempt to ward off any further intrusion into her personal life.

“Of course it’s my business. This is how we bond, partner.”

“If we haven’t bonded in the last three years over a shitload of dead bodies, it ain’t gonna happen over my love life.”

He sat on the edge of her desk and took a sip of his coffee. “Interesting. You called it your love life, not your sex life.”

“Go away, Sam.” She busied herself shuffling papers, not really knowing what they were, in an attempt to get the message across that the conversation was over.

“Not talking, huh? Another sign. But I’ll leave you alone. For now.” He slid off her desk and started to leave. “Oh, wait, Amanda asked me to double check and make sure this Saturday is still on.”

“Dinner at your house is fine with Jake. I think he’s astounded that not only one but two women were foolish enough to marry you. He’d like to meet the current one.”

Sam ignored the dig. “I have the boys this weekend so you might warn him that he’ll be socializing with a teenager who occasionally sulks, a toddler who won’t shut up, and a middle schooler who tells bad jokes. Oh, and then there’s Chihuly. Does he like dogs?”

She laughed. “He’ll be fine. And I’ll be happy to see your kids.”

Their social lives for the weekend taken care of, Sam and Danny turned to less easily settled matters.

The transient camp cases were still not any closer to being cleared. They’d followed up every lead from their interviews with the staff at Veterans Medical Service Clinic but had drawn blanks. No one had noticed any unusual interest in the cardboard boxes from East State Medical Supplies, Inc., although several staff members admitted it was not only possible that their clients swiped cardboard from their recycling, it was probable. The locked gate and razor wire may have kept people out of the alley but it was easy enough to pick up the boxes before they got out there — they were in almost every examining room. And they were a convenient size for their clients to use for storing their belongings. In fact, numerous members of the staff took them for that reason, too. The boxes were sturdy and great for packing or moving.