Bringing Benjy Home (Security Ops) (12 page)

“It doesn’t matter if it sounds familiar,” she retorted. “It will have to
feel
familiar. And I won’t know until we get there. I’ve told you that before.”

But she leaned to trace the path the on screen map showed at the same time he jabbed his finger at the beach’s destination point on the screen. The now-familiar current sparked to life at the inadvertent touch and then a scene flashed into her mind, so quick and ugly that she caught her breath. It vanished as suddenly as it had come, swirling away like mists of fog.

She sat back in her seat quickly, curling her fingers into her palms. She had to be more careful. She couldn’t afford to touch him, even by accident. Each time set off too many disturbing reactions, on too many levels.

My father used his hands a lot
. She shivered, still responding to the short violent scene she’d experienced at their brief brushing of hands. An interesting way to describe a man who had used his fists on his family and drunk with indiscriminate fervor.

The inadvertent peek into his past left her with the need to reassure him. “Benjy is still okay,” she told him softly. “He hasn’t been . . .”
Hurt
, she was going to say, and then stopped when she remembered the stinging slap to the toddler’s cheek. She bit her lip. She would never relay that information to Trey, especially in light of what she’d just learned about him.

“He’s safe. They have plans for him, though. This wasn’t a random snatching.”

Her words snared his attention. “Why do you say that?”

“You said Lauren was drugged so that the kidnappers could grab Benjy. People don’t normally just walk around armed with drug-filled syringes in their pockets. The kidnappers were prepared to snatch him that day.”

“Yes, but that still doesn’t mean that Benjy had been singled out. A sicko could have gone to the park that day with the intention of picking out a child, any child. There’s no way to be certain whether he’d been specifically targeted.”

“Oh, he was specifically targeted,” she said. “I don’t know how, but I
know
it.”

“But if you’re right, and Penning isn’t involved . . .” he started, dubiously.

“He isn’t,” she said surely. She shivered suddenly. “I’m certain he isn’t.”

“Then we’re still no closer to the answer than we were before. Benjy could have become the target once the kidnapper saw him. He’s a cute little guy . . .” There was a pause, and when he continued, Trey’s voice was gruff. “There are any number of reasons someone would pick him out of a crowd if he was looking for a kid.”

Habit had him dodging the emotions that threatened to well up and choke him. He’d come a long way from the explosive teenager he’d been to the man he was today. In humid jungles and searing deserts he’d learned to practice patience, to be as still as his surroundings while waiting for his prey. His stint in the army had seemed peculiarly suited to his nature. A childhood spent growing up on the streets had taught him survival skills and cunning, natural tools for the work he’d done in covert operations. There had been a time when he’d wondered if he would be suited for anything else.

But something had irrevocably changed inside him the day he’d dragged Mac from that bombed hotel, sure that his friend was dying at his feet. He’d started to envision himself suffering such a fate, half a world away from the only family he had in the world. He’d kept his past tightly sealed away, rarely allowing himself to think about it. But once he allowed the vault door of those memories to crack open, their power was impossible to deny.

Once Mac had left the military, it really hadn’t taken much to coax Trey into joining him in his security company. It had presented Trey with the opportunity to search for the only family he had left.

It had taken him better than two years, but when he’d found Lauren again, a part deep inside him, a part he would have thought was dead, had come back to life. And Benjy’s birth had nurtured that element. He couldn’t bear to think that Benjy had entered their lives, only to be snatched away so quickly, so completely.

He glanced at the woman next to him, who was quietly humming along with the radio. Anyone seeing the two of them would think they were just another vacationing couple. They’d never guess the desperation behind their search. Or the tenuous hold Jaida was exerting over him, despite every effort he made to fight it.

The fragile bond of hope.

“I trust I didn’t rush you.” Trey’s voice was a little too polite when Jaida finally strolled out of the truck stop, carrying a grocery bag.

“Not at all,” she answered airily. “While you were getting gas and checking our location again, I had time to grab a sandwich and a few things for us to munch on.”

He eyed the stuffed bag before pulling out of the truck-stop parking lot. “A few things?”

Jaida rummaged through the sack. “I convinced them to make you a hot roast beef to go.” She held it out to him.

He took it from her, peeling the wrapping back and eating with one hand while he drove with the other. He made short work of the sandwich, then reached for the soda she’d put in the container holder next to him. After a few minutes he glanced over at her. “What else do you have in that bag?”

Jaida peered inside it, drawing out one item after another. “Cheese popcorn, pretzels, red licorice and a couple packages of sandwich cookies.”

“I see you’re not concerned with the current low-fat craze.”

“Not really,” she replied, opening the bag of licorice and selecting some. She offered the bag to him, and he shook his head. “My mother thinks my appetite is quite unladylike. I guess she thinks I should hide in a corner to eat when I’m hungry.”

“You’d have to spend most of your time there,” Trey observed blandly. He held out his hand. “Give me a few cookies, will you?” He watched with sharp interest the way she opened the package and held it out to him, rather than take some cookies out to drop in his hand. It could have been fastidiousness on her part, but he didn’t think so. Jaida seemed to go to extreme lengths to avoid touching people, although he might not have noticed it if he hadn’t been watching her so closely in the past few days.

As a matter of fact, he tried to recall whether he had ever seen her touch someone voluntarily, and couldn’t recall that he had. He vividly remembered the times she’d been unable to avoid his touch, however. The shocking connection that had leaped to life each of those times was fascinating and hard to forget. An unbidden thought flashed across his mind then, and he wondered if the current would fade or intensify under a more intimate touch.

“Where does your mother live now?” he asked a few miles later.

“She lives in New Orleans with her fifth or is it sixth,” she wondered aloud, “husband.”

“Do you visit her frequently?”

She cast him an amused look. Was he resurrecting their “game” from this morning or merely bored? “As infrequently as possible, at her request. I’m a major source of embarrassment to Marilee, you see.”

“Embarrassment?” His tone was sharp. He well knew that all mothers weren’t blessed with a nurturing instinct, but the thought that Jaida had been as unwanted as he and Lauren had been was curiously disturbing.

“I did the unacceptable and grew up. It became very hard to explain to her high-society friends and potential husbands that she had a daughter only a few years younger than she was pretending to be.” She shrugged. Her mother’s shallowness had long ceased to be a source of pain for her. “The best thing she ever did was let Granny raise me. I had a normal childhood, as normal as possible. The worst times I remember are the experiences when I did live with Marilee, or went for a prolonged visit.”

“Why, what happened then?”

Jaida paused to rip open the bag of cheese popcorn. “I wasn’t the easiest child to have around. Even when she could keep me cleaned up long enough to introduce to her friends, I had an unfortunate penchant for blurting out personal remarks about them after shaking their hands.” She smiled in vague amusement as she remembered a few of the choice tidbits that had transferred to her at a casual touch. She’d been too young to guard her tongue and too naive to realize the embarrassing nature of some of the information she’d innocently revealed— information that ranged from the price of a woman’s dress to an indiscreet disclosure of a lover’s name. She shook her head in silent sympathy for the young, confused girl she’d been. It had been a painful period in her life; she’d tried as hard as she could to fit in and be the kind of daughter that Marilee would be proud of, one she would finally love.

A fierce scowl came over Trey’s face. A picture was forming in his mind of Jaida’s childhood, and he didn’t like what he was hearing. In a perfect world children should be protected, sheltered and loved. He knew better than most that the world some children lived in was far from perfect. He never would have dreamed that he had an idealistic side to him, but Benjy’s birth had shown him otherwise. He’d vowed that his nephew would grow up never knowing what it meant to be hungry, afraid or unwanted. It should mean nothing to him that Jaida West had grown up with problems. Problems were, after all, what people were best at manufacturing. But the realization was troubling nonetheless.

He glanced at her then, but her revelations hadn’t seemed to upset her. She was lounging next to him, with her feet up on the dash in front of her, her head tilted back to catch the breeze. She’d braided her long hair into a loose plait that reached below her shoulders, to keep it from becoming tangled in the wind. He decided swiftly that he didn’t like the style. It might be practical, but he would much prefer her hair tumbling in disarray around her shoulders or whipping past her profile at the capricious mercy of the wind.

He returned his attention to the road, irritated at his mental wanderings. Jaida West was only a tool in the search for Benjy, and he’d do well to remember that. No useful purpose would be served by learning more about her or by beginning to understand her.

And there was no purpose at all in wanting her.

“Don’t be such a grouch,” Jaida snapped hours later as she struggled to get her luggage out of the trunk. “I was ready to stop hours ago. You’re the one who insisted on driving farther.”

Trey slammed down the trunk lid with barely restrained force. “I thought that the point of this little excursion was to drive until you
felt
something.” His voice was mocking. “I’m beginning to believe that the only thing you’re capable of feeling is constant hunger and the overwhelming urge to drive me crazy.”

“Now, that would be a short trip,” she muttered. She went only a few steps before she stumbled over the uneven pavement. “You refused to stop while it was still daylight. Is it too much to ask that you find a motel with a better lit parking lot?”

“You’re lucky I found us a room at all,” he grunted, his long legs striding past her. He was holding a flashlight, so he wasn’t having trouble finding his way. “You never thought of the fact that we’re traveling down the coast during the height of tourist season. Maybe the next time you go into one of your trances, you can make us some reservations.”

She made a face at his back, her childish reaction lost in the darkness. She followed almost blindly in his path as he led her past the string of motel rooms and down a hill. Something furry ran in front of her, and she shrieked lightly.

“What?” Trey barked.

“You aren’t by any chance planning a camping trip for us, are you? Because I’ll tell you right now, I’m not real fond of sharing my bed with wildlife.”

“Oh, you’ll get a roof over your head,” he promised. “Here we are. This must be it.”

Trey played his light over the front of a rustic cabin that had obviously seen better days. She had a feeling that darkness did a small kindness to the cabin’s appearance. “This is it?” she asked dubiously.

“This is all the motel had. Apparently there used to be a string of these, but the rest of them were torn down as they added rooms to the newer complex. This one was left because it was in the best shape.” At least, that’s what he’d been told by the motel clerk. He put the key in the lock and pushed the door open, reaching in to flip on the lights.

The room would be suitable. The dim lighting didn’t reveal anything that crawled or flew, and that was always a bonus. He’d slept in far worse, of course, but in his time out of the military he’d quickly grown accustomed to more luxurious surroundings. He was tired enough right now, however, not to care overmuch about the amenities.

Jaida followed him to the doorway and peered into the room. It looked clean, although it was apparent no one had used it in a while. There was an old-fashioned dial telephone sitting on a small desk, but no television or radio. “It has running water, doesn’t it?” she asked suspiciously.

Trey walked into the room and opened a door. “Right in here.”

“Okay, this is fine, then,” she said. A nice warm shower would be all she needed to fall asleep almost immediately. She had no doubt that they’d be back on the road at daybreak. “Where will you be staying?”

“Oh, I’ll be close by,” he drawled. “As a matter of fact, I’ll be sleeping right beside you.”

Chapter 8

Surely her ears had deceived her. Jaida looked at him, blinked, then swallowed hard. Her heart responded by accelerating its rhythm. “You mean . . . you have a room in the motel?” she asked hopefully.

Trey crossed over to the suitcase he’d dropped by the door, and slung it onto a bed. Clicking open the locks, he replied, “No, I mean here. In this bed.”

It was impossible to miss the taunting gleam in his eyes. “Is that going to be a problem?”

Spending the night with Trey Garrison? It didn’t qualify as a problem, exactly. Calamity came closer to describing it. Disaster. Or plain, old-fashioned catastrophe. “No.” Her voice squeaked, and she cleared her throat, hastening to add, “No problem.”

A faint smile crossed his lips and he turned back to his suitcase. “Good. Because there’s not another place within thirty miles and I’m not in the mood for arguing. I haven’t had a lot of sleep in the past few nights, and I’m beat.”

“Yes. Well . . .” Her voice tapered off, and she just stared at him. He was making himself at home already, taking his shaving kit out of his suitcase and pulling his shirt free from his pants. What was the protocol in a situation like this? Her experience was depressingly limited. “Would you . . . do you want to use the bathroom first?”

He shook his head. “Go ahead. I have some phone calls to make.” He took his cell out of his pocket.

Jaida stared hard at him. Already he seemed to have forgotten her. She had a feeling it was going to be a bit harder for her to forget his presence, however. He seemed to fill the room, to command it. Her imagination had the walls shrinking in even further on the two of them, until she found it difficult to breathe. She forced herself to turn away and moved jerkily to her own suitcase, giving him a wide berth. He didn’t even glance up from his conversation. His call had gone through, and it sounded as if he had Mac on the line.

Why, oh why, did this have to happen to her? The first time she shared a room with a man, it was forced by circumstances and the man had to be Trey Garrison? Did she live under some kind of bad karma, or what? She grabbed her nightgown and overnight bag and almost ran to the bathroom. She shut the door and found that it didn’t have a lock. She leaned against it weakly. What possible difference would a lock make, after all? Trey wasn’t about to come in here and join her; the man thought she was half nuts at best. Maybe, she thought, moving to the sink and looking at her reflection with wide eyes, maybe it wasn’t Trey she was so nervous about. Maybe it was herself.

She reacted to his touch in more than the usual way. That in itself was enough to keep her wary of him, at the same time causing some very forbidden thoughts to arise. What would it be like to be touched by him in more than a casual manner? Would she respond each time with involuntary peeks at old wounds from his past, or would that unfamiliar current between them strengthen in voltage?

She watched a flush crawl up her cheeks and turned away from the mirror, stripping with jerky movements. She was unaccustomed to such erotic thoughts about a man, but she’d been off kilter since Trey Garrison had stalked into her life. She adjusted the temperature of the water and stepped into the shower. It didn’t provide the relaxation she’d hoped for. The thought of sharing the bedroom with Trey kept her muscles tight, her nerves jumping.

Jaida took as long in the bathroom as she dared, spending so long that her hair was half dry. She was hoping that Trey would have his phone calls completed and be ready to take his place in the shower. Unfortunately, she hadn’t brought a robe with her, but her nightgown was hardly daring, and he’d seen her in it before. It hadn’t, she thought dryly, enflamed him to passion then, and there was no reason for her to feel so uneasy about wearing it before him now.

When she opened the door, she took two steps into the other room before stopping cold. Trey was just hanging up the phone, and in the next moment he unbuttoned his shirt, stripped it off and tossed it casually over to his bed. Jaida swallowed hard as her gaze took in the way his muscles played across his back. Then he turned his head, catching her staring at him.

“Did you use up all the warm water?” he asked.

She tore her gaze away from him and shook her head. Going toward her bed, she busied herself with putting her things back into her suitcase. “Did you finish your phone calls?” she asked, trying for a disinterested tone. At his silence she looked up, which was a mistake. A very serious mistake. Her eyes went immediately to his bare chest. She stopped breathing.

His torso was lightly padded with muscles and bisected with neat patches of dark hair. His arms were roped with strength, a strength that was belied by the fluid, stalking way he had of moving. She watched in fascination as his muscles flexed and released as he walked toward her.

“I was talking to Mac. He’s wondering just how long this chase down the seaboard is going to take. I had to tell him that I’ve been wondering the same thing.”

She strove to concentrate on his words. “I’ve told you . . .” Her voice was husky. “I won’t know the place until we get there. I don’t know what you want from me.”

One corner of his mouth tilted. What he wanted from her. The answer to that was becoming more and more complex. “What I want is what I’ve always wanted,” he murmured. He smelled the fragrant shampoo she’d used on her hair, and his nostrils flared in immediate masculine appreciation. “I want to know where this will end. I want to know whether you can help find Benjy.”

She realized that she’d reached a milestone with him. He was gradually, grudgingly, beginning to trust her ability, at least on some level. But her logic seemed relegated to a distant corner of her mind. He was much too close. She continued to edge away from him, as carefully as she would having encountered a panther. That was what he most resembled, she thought a little wildly. All sleek muscles and tensile strength, luring its prey to complacency by its stillness.

She felt the wall against her shoulders. He appeared just as close to her as before, although she couldn’t recall him having moved. And there was no room for retreat. “You’ll just have to wait,” she said, attempting to pick up the thread of their conversation. “We both will.” Her voice tapered off as her attention wandered to the hollows of his shoulders. The skin stretched across them tautly, a silent invitation to explore.

His eyelids drooped. The shower had washed away her light makeup, and her skin appeared translucent. The neckline of the gown was demure, but the satiny material made it impossible to hide the fact that she wasn’t wearing a bra. Her wet hair had left moist paths on the gown, and one arrowed across her breast, over the nipple, and disappeared. He was dimly aware that he was about to make a mistake. A huge one. And Trey Garrison prided himself on not making mistakes.

“Do you know what else I want?” he asked in a low voice. Her startled gaze flew to meet his, and he noted with satisfaction that her emotions were remarkably easy to read. He leaned toward her, and she jerked wildly, but his face moved past hers to the pale hair streaming over her shoulders. He inhaled and drew back a little. “I want you to tell me something, Jaida.” He paused, sidetracked, watching as her lips parted and she moistened them with the tip of her tongue. Her scent was fresh, sweet and intriguing. Just like her. “Tell me what happens to you when you touch me.”

She shook her head, not able to answer.

A slow smile crossed his lips. He already knew, even without her words. Hadn’t he experienced the same thing since he’d met her? “I’ll tell you what happens to me,” he offered huskily. “Little currents of electricity jump under my skin every time we touch. You feel it, too, don’t you?”

His words sent a flutter of excitement through her. He felt it, too. She’d thought he did, but he was so difficult to read she hadn’t been sure. The knowledge was heady and terrifying at the same time. It was gratifying to know the unusual response wasn’t one-sided. It was the implications of that certainty that had her pulse pounding, her stomach jumping.

She was very still, staring at him. He found himself hypnotized by the delicate gold flecks in her blue orbs. “I think you do,” he murmured. “I think you felt it the first time I touched you, in the meadow. And you know what else?” He raised his hands to rest them against the wall on either side of her face, caging her effectively. “I think it frightens you.”

“I wasn’t frightened,” she lied weakly. A show of fear would be a mistake with this man; she knew it intuitively. And how many times had other men taken her carefully acquired caution as an invitation? Some just couldn’t seem to resist the chase.

That husky voice came again. “I think you were. Still are. Startled and afraid. Why is that, Jaida? Because it’s the reaction you’re used to avoiding? Or because you’ve never felt it before?”

His lips brushed her bare shoulder and she began to tremble, as much in response to the accuracy of his guess as at the intimate gesture.

“Tell me,” he whispered.

His mouth moved until it was a fraction from hers, and all her attention focused on his lips. She watched fatalistically as they drew closer to hers.

She couldn’t deny having wondered what would happen if she got this close to Trey Garrison. But she was afraid she already knew. She longed for the same things from life that most people did—someone to love, someone to love her back. The nature of her ability had always precluded physical intimacy. The most innocent of touches could bring flashes of visions, but if she concentrated, she could often block those. An embrace was different. Too many emotions were emanated, buffeting and overwhelming her. She’d never felt real desire; she’d never been allowed to. Her senses were overtaken by the man’s thoughts and responses, and those hadn’t always been particularly flattering. Intimacy seemed to intensify her ability to an unbearable pitch. In her frantic haste to escape the psychic onslaught, she’d never failed to embarrass herself.

But this time might be different
, a tiny voice inside cried.
He might be different
.

“I want to hear you admit it,” he said in a low, rough whisper. “You don’t react that way when anybody else touches you, do you?”

He was so close his words caressed her cheek. Her eyes fluttered shut as he dropped a kiss, feather light, on her mouth. She tensed, waiting for the familiar, inevitable response. It didn’t appear, and her breath came out in a little sigh, mingling with his. When nothing else happened, she opened weighted eyelids to see him watching her. The message in those dark-green eyes was impossible to misconstrue.

Her answer came softly, hesitantly, without conscious volition. “No.”

He was amazingly easy to read now, for once. Satisfaction was stamped on his hard features. “Touch me now,” he demanded in a low, rough whisper. It was a dare, intimately appealing and so very tempting. “Do it, Jaida.”

She shook her head fiercely, as much to clear away the fog that seemed to have settled into her brain as to refuse him. His lips went to her throat, and searing heat was pressed against the pulse that beat with rapid rhythm there. He was holding himself away from her by his arms braced on the walls, touching her only with his mouth. Yet her captivation was as total as if he held her in a complete embrace. A necklace of kisses was strewn lightly and deliberately across her throat, and then his mouth made its way back to hers, hovering above her lips.

“Jaida.” His whisper was intense.

His lips came down on hers then and sent the ground careening away under her feet. There was an almost studied sensuality to his openmouthed kiss, one she recognized immediately. She’d known from the beginning that he was a master at coercion. Yet even as she sensed his practiced finesse, her knees weakened alarmingly. She’d spent her life eluding touch. It didn’t make sense that she should, contrarily, crave it so much. The kiss of this man, above all others, was something she’d wondered about, dreamed of.

Even as she attempted to turn away from him, his lips followed hers, changing the angle of their kiss. Something else was different, too, something that sent flutters of desire humming through her veins. Closer. He was nearer than before. Only a whisper of space separated their bodies. His hands bracketed her face, creating a warm human cage. His body heat warmed hers. His lips pressed hers apart, and she tasted a measure of desperation. He wasn’t teasing, wasn’t pretending, and she detected the exact moment he lost his famed control. He made a sound low in his throat and the bottom dropped out of her stomach. His tongue pressed into her mouth, and all hints of finesse disappeared. Where he had coaxed before, now he demanded. His genuine desire was too enticing to ignore. She kissed him back, going on tiptoe to get closer, to make demands of her own.

The first taste of her response was heady, and his hands left the wall to cup her face, to hold her mouth steady under his. He savored the now-familiar sensation of electricity prickling between his skin and hers. She could try to hide her reactions to him, but she could never hide this. He drew her hands, hesitant and resistant, around his neck. And then he pressed closer, until her smaller, frailer body was trapped between the wall and the muscled planes of his chest.

Heat. His skin felt unbearably hot against hers, searing her sensitized skin. Her mouth twisted under his, and her shy, untutored response only seemed to feed his hunger. Her fingers clasped around his neck, before threading through his dark, crisp hair. She’d been afraid that to be this close to him would bring on sharper, more intense visions than ever before. But instead, the responses ran together in a brilliant kaleidoscope of sensation—the sweeping, dizzying hunger of his kiss, overwhelming in its complexity; the current that ran between them everywhere they touched; and the undeniably sweet reality of being wanted by this man.