Flash and Fire (35 page)

He scrubbed his hands over his face, as if washing the remnants of sleep away. He felt worse than if he’d gotten no sleep at all. His answer came out before he could think to censor it.

“No, most of it I just spent looking at you. I wasn’t planning on sleeping here, really.” He shrugged vaguely. I just thought I’d hold you for a while before I left. “I guess I must have dozed off.” And now he was damn sorry that he had.

She couldn’t resist feathering a hand through his tousled hair, then pushing it from his face. “Yes, you must’ve.” He hated being caught acting sweet. Too bad; she rather liked it.

Amanda looked at her watch. It was almost six. Christopher! she thought with a sudden start. She hadn’t looked in on him all this time.

“God,” she muttered, scrambling out of bed. She hit the floor moving. “If they handed out grades for motherhood, I would have flunked a long time ago.”

“His breathing’s regular.”

Amanda stopped just short of the door and turned to look at Pierce.

“How do you—?”

He pointed toward the intercom she kept by her bed. “I monitored him most of the night.”

This was a little above and beyond what she would have expected of him, even now that she knew he had a good heart.

“Why?” Amanda crossed back to the bed and sat down on the edge. “Why would you do that?”

He didn’t like her questioning his motives. There didn’t have to be a hidden meaning to everything he did. He’d been awake, the monitor was there, and he’d simply listened. No reason to make anything out of it. “Must be my mean streak coming out again.”

She knew he didn’t like her probing him any more than she liked being probed. But some things had to be explored if they were ever to go forward. “No, I’m serious. Why are you being so nice?”

He shrugged again and sighed. “Damned if I know. It’s totally out of character for me.” He twirled an imagi
nary mustache. “I usually find a few widows and orphans
to cheat before breakfast.”

She shook her head. One way or another, he kept hiding from the truth. “I’m beginning to think you’re not as hard as either one of us believes.”

He had gotten his wind back and felt awake. A wicked grin lifted the corners of his mouth. “I can be if you get rid of that ridiculous jersey.”

He was skirting around it again, denying good intentions and his feelings. She wasn’t about to let him, at least not easily.

“You know what I mean.”

Pierce sat up and hooked a thumb on the corner of her jersey. With a good tug, he pulled her to him. Laughing, she came willingly. He slipped his free hand under the jersey and up her thigh.

“And you know what I mean.”

Last night he’d denied himself because she had needed him to. This morning, his desire was ripe and so was she. He could feel her nipples brush up against his chest, and that sent needs running through him. Instantly.

“Why don’t you check on Christopher, satisfy yourself that he’s all right, and then come back here. We can discuss my payment for scouring the semi-sleeping city for a cold mist vaporizer last night.” He let his hands slide slowly down the length of her body.

Amanda felt herself responding to him. Just a single touch, that’s all it took, and the throbbing began. “Did I thank you for that?”

His eyes tore away her jersey, seeing her the way she’d been for a moment last night. Soft, vulnerable. Tempting. “No, but you can once you get back.”

Amanda moved away from him and off the bed with effort. “I’ll only be a minute.”

Pierce leaned back and laced his hands behind his neck. “I’ll be here.”

As she approached Christopher’s bedroom, Amanda could hear the soothing hum of the vaporizer through the door. Opening it slowly, she quietly crept into the room. It was like moving through the Everglades in the middle of summer. The air felt heavy with mist. It was covering almost everything in the room.

She was going to have to dry the carpet, she thought, looking down at the darkening semicircle around the side of the crib. But the important thing was that Christopher seemed to be better. His breathing was even and he was still asleep.

Smiling to herself, Amanda eased out of the room and closed the door.

Pierce looked up when she reentered the bedroom. “Well?”

Amanda slid fluidly onto the bed. “He’s asleep and his breathing’s normal.”

Pierce looked pleased. “What did I tell you?”

There were no words to express the gratitude she felt for what he’d done for her. There was no way even to begin. Tucking her feet under her, she sat down before him. Tiny pricks of excitement began to jab through her.

“That thing with the shower—how’d you know what to do?”

Pierce slowly began to trail his hands over her. He felt excitement drumming impatient fingers through him, but he maintained a slow, steady tempo.

“I’m just naturally brilliant.” He laughed as she arched a dubious brow. With a tug, he settled her against him. “I also saw a nun do it at an orphanage in the Ukraine while I was doing a three-parter on conditions there.” He remembered the appalling squalor he’d seen in remote parts of that country. It was hard to conceive of human life surviving in places like that. Yet somehow, it managed. “Except they didn’t have a real shower. She rigged up something with a garden hose hanging over the curtain rod. But it did the trick.”

He smiled as he thought of the nun. “Sister Maria Elena. Must’ve been at least seventy. She was a tough old lady, ran that orphanage like a military camp. But she managed to keep those kids clothed and fed, against all odds.”

Amanda cupped her hand along his cheek. She wished she could have met the woman who’d so earned his respect. He certainly didn’t give it easily. “Sounds like an admirable woman.”

Pierce captured her hand in his and pressed a kiss to her palm. He rolled her words over in his mind. “Yeah, I guess there are a few around at that.”

For once, she could easily read between the lines. “Don’t like women much, do you?”

He grinned broadly. He wasn’t in the mood for serious conversation. He was in the mood to lose himself in her. “I love women.” He ran a possessive hand over her hip. “They’re much curvier and softer than men.”

“I used the word like, not love.”

Looking over his past history, at the women who had figured prominently in his life—his mother, who had deserted him; his grandmother, who had abused him; and his ex-wife, who had cheated on him—Amanda could see why he didn’t exactly hold the gender in high regard.

No, he didn’t like women, Pierce thought, but he didn’t feel like talking about it. There was no point. It was all philosophical anyway.

“Trying to analyze me, Mandy?”

“Maybe.” He kissed her throat and her eyes fluttered shut for a moment. He was pressing her buttons again, and she was helpless. Her voice grew thick with desire. “Maybe I’m just trying to understand you so I know whether or not I’m being a fool.”

Pierce dove his fingers into her hair and framed her face. For a moment, he just looked at her—at the determined chin, the clear eyes.

“Not you, Mandy. You’re nobody’s fool.” Maybe that’s why he kept coming back. Because she didn’t allow herself to be used, and yet was still here for him. It was a powerful aphrodisiac.

She frowned as unwanted memories surfaced. “I was Jeff’s.”

He didn’t want to hear about Jeff, or anyone else in her life. He only cared about now. There was no tomorrow, no yesterday. They had only this moment. That was the way it had always been. No plans, no regrets. No ties. He wanted to keep it that way.

“You were younger.”

“I was in love.” Amanda searched his face, looking for
something he wouldn’t show her. “That’s very dangerous for intelligence. Intelligence seems to shut down in the face of a strong emotion.” Like now.

“I wouldn’t know.”

The lie came so easily to his tongue, he almost believed it. The fact was, he thought he did know. And he didn’t want to. He was still grappling with the unwanted emotion and the fear that knowing he was getting tangled up with her created.

Every ounce of reason within him told Pierce to leave. It was just his body, he maintained, that was urging him to stay. But even as he spun that excuse for himself, he knew better. Virile, with healthy, active hormones, he’d still never been the prisoner of his urges, not even when he was younger.

What was happening to him went beyond sexual enjoyment, beyond even a passing infatuation. It was more. And because it was more, he was afraid.

He saw the flicker of disappointment pass through her eyes at his words. He couldn’t help that, he told himself. He’d warned her. She knew what he was like. She knew he couldn’t love anyone.

Pierce began to slowly slide the jersey up her body. “Now, are you bent on talking away whatever free time I have left, woman, or are we going to do something constructive with it?”

Pulling it over her head, Pierce tossed her jersey to the floor. She sat before him, nude and tempting, an ice cream sundae set before a man who was dying for even the smallest of licks.

The very heat from his eyes was warming her. Leaning over, her breasts brushing along his arm, sensitizing his skin, she began to unbutton his shirt.

“Constructive?” she echoed. “I never heard it called that before.”

Impatient, he shrugged out of his shirt. Balling it up, he threw it next to her jersey. Amanda’s hand pressed against his abdomen as she slid her fingers to the top of his slacks.

She was going to make him beg, he thought, feeling his blood surging through his loins. “There’re lots of names for it,” he said.

Loosening his belt, Amanda placed the tip of her finger on the zipper and slowly moved it down. She slipped her hand inside.

“Like?” she prompted.

Fire flashed through him when she touched him. He saw the satisfaction come into her eyes and he almost laughed, enjoying her pleasure.

“Right now, all I can think of is you.” He pulled her down on top of him and lost himself in the taste of her mouth.

This time, the lovemaking evolved slowly, as if there were time, all the time in the world. As if there were no clocks ticking for either of them.

He let himself taste every part of her, sampling, nibbling, savoring. A deep fulfillment spread through him as desire bloomed like a spring flower. The sensation held him in awe.

With a gentle hand, Pierce explored what he already knew, and took what was already his. Amanda was like warm water in his hands, soft and fluid. She seemed to second-guess all his needs, all his moves; she was right there with him—not ahead, not behind, but with him.

She was his soulmate.

But when Amanda moved on top of him, straddling him like a horse she intended to ride, she managed to catch him by surprise.

Delighted, he kneaded her buttocks, gripping her warm flesh. “Something new, Mandy?”

“Always,” she murmured.

She felt both drugged and drunk on his Iovemaking. Her hair hung down both sides of her face like a blond curtain as she placed her hands on his chest and balanced herself above him. “With you, always. The familiar becomes different.”

“My thoughts exactly.”

Tangling a hand in her hair, he brought her mouth down to his and mercifully stopped thinking about anything except the wildness she aroused.

Chapter Thirty Eight

The hours knitted themselves into days, and somehow two weeks passed by.

Amanda felt like she was going stir-crazy.

Stone had gotten in contact with the station and had presented their terms. Wheels, as predicted, were turning slowly—far too slowly for Amanda’s taste. She wanted an instant confrontation, an explosion; she wanted to have it all over with now. But the law didn’t work that way, Stone counseled her.

How well she knew that. The law was slow, cold, methodical, and often plodding. The same adjectives she would have used to describe her father. Though now in Dallas indefinitely, Henry Foster had made no attempt to contact his only daughter, or to see the grandson he’d never met.

That, more than anything, Amanda couldn’t forgive him for.

“Poor Christopher,” she murmured, watching the boy play on the floor next to her. “Forsaken by both your father and your grandfather.” She sighed. “It’s not an easy life, sweetie.”

Her thoughts drifted to Pierce and what he had endured as a little boy. Unloved, unwanted, always in everyone’s way. What a horrible life for a child. It was a wonder he hadn’t grown up to be a homicidal maniac. At least Christopher had her and knew that he was loved.

She ruffled the boy’s head. He looked up at her and grinned. “You’ll always have lots of love,” she assured him. “I love you, Christopher.”

“Love you, Mama,” he parroted.

She’d taught him to say that, taught him the words from the very beginning so that they would always be part of his life. He was always going to know love and accept it as part of his due.

Not like Pierce, she thought, who resisted it now that it was finally being offered to him.

Contrary to her lawyer’s advice, Amanda had seen Pierce frequently during this exile. Try as she might to resist—and she wasn’t trying nearly as hard as she had earlier—Amanda would find herself either going to his apartment or opening her door to discover Pierce standing on her doorstep.

He was part of her life now. She knew it was only a temporary arrangement, but she’d take it on any terms it was given. She cared for him, wanted him, and even if it could only be for a short time, better that than not at all.

She knew that on some level, this whole situation disturbed Pierce. He didn’t like patterns, and he was falling into one. It was making him feel trapped. She could see it in his eyes.

Yet he was here, and it was enough.

What a stupid thing it had been to fall in love with him, she thought with a sigh. She knew that when he left—and he would—she was going to feel lost.

Though she didn’t say anything to Pierce that in her opinion might inadvertently be used against her, seeing him so frequently was having an adverse effect on her case.

Amanda was beginning to have doubts about going on with it.