Malcolm and Ives 02 - Trouble With Air and Magic (20 page)

“I needed to check it out first,” he concurred. “I’m told there are three bedrooms.” He dubiously regarded the tiny stucco cottage with the tile roof visible beyond the wall. “We’d better take a look before we make any commitments.”

“You arranged all this when?” she asked, not ready to climb out of the truck. A spill of colorful flowers in the courtyard looked inviting.

“While I was waiting to see if you were alive. Kind of pumps the adrenaline.” He jumped down and came around to open the door for her.

Supergeekman acted instead of panicking. She found that reassuring. She also thought, judging by the way Conan’s energy was pulsing, that he’d stored up a whole lot of tension that needed release or he’d explode like an overcharged battery.

“You think you’re bringing the kids here?” Taking his hand, she stepped gingerly from the truck to the gravel drive.

“Unless you have a better suggestion.” He led her toward an arched entrance.

It was hard to picture nightmares in a place where oleanders softened the walls and roses danced on the breeze.

She could barely care for herself. How could she possibly take care of Bo’s kids?

“I don’t want those kids to know monsters exist,” she said firmly. She’d only been a few years older than Alexis when monsters had destroyed her world. Her niece and nephew had suffered enough already. “What about Amy?”

“Amy says she has to work and pay the bills. I told her she needed to come with them, but she refused. I think she’s looking for a vacation.”

Dorrie threw him a sharp look, but decided that was just Conan’s obnoxious humor. He was studying the house and probably didn’t even know how cold that sounded to anyone who didn’t understand him. “How did you know about the kids?”

“I left my business card with the computer I took to the school this morning. Your niece called me after the police left, probably when they couldn’t reach you and her mother started talking about Brazil. So I called and we made arrangements. Do you have any idea why your brother would have trained them in self defense?”

The air on this mountain smelled divine. Dorrie halted where she was, drawing in the warm earth energy. The
chi
here was peaceful and welcoming, and she embraced the calm. But the terror of what could have happened hummed just below her surface.

“They live in a bad neighborhood,” was all she told him before walking through the old wooden gate into a courtyard redolent of sage and eucalyptus. A huge rosemary bush vied with lavender in one corner, and autumn roses bounced on neglected canes.

“I think I’m in love,” she murmured, wandering the stone path to an arched porch entrance. A bubbling copper fountain greeted her as she stepped up to the red-tiled floor. Stained glass threw dappled light on the covered entryway. A wooden bench and a tall glass vase of dried grasses beckoned a visitor inside to the heavy wooden front door. Excellent feng shui.

“Quaint,” Conan muttered.

“Heavenly,” she countered.

The kids would love it here. He’d found her a
home
. She couldn’t quite take it all in. Maybe, with this kind of peaceful energy, she could manage the kids. For a day. Maybe two. Surely they would find a solution by then. “Is there a key?”

He lifted a frog-faced planter on a windowsill of the covered entry and produced a key. “We may have to change the locks if you stay for long.”

“It’s a pity I can’t stay here forever,” she sighed, entering an airy, high-ceilinged room completely illuminated by a wall of windows in the rear. “I don’t suppose anyone up here needs an overeducated office clerk.”

“Most likely not,” Conan agreed, unwittingly shattering a fledgling dream. “You won’t miss the roar of surf?” He wandered into the open kitchen to the right, checking inside cabinets and the refrigerator.

“After almost falling into it from the bluff? Not immediately, no.” Dorrie turned to the left and checked the bedrooms. They were small, but the one at the end had its own bathroom, and the hall had one with a bathtub. If Conan brought the kids up here…

It would be a madhouse. They should be in school. She turned back in his direction and almost ran her nose into his chest. She needed her high heels.

Instead of stepping back, Conan lifted her into his arms and covered her mouth with his. Before she could wrap her head around what they were doing, she threw her arms around his neck and kissed him as if he were a big drink of water and she was dying of thirst. And he replied with greedy need.

Ah, so this was how he spent his pent-up energy.
She approved. She desperately needed mindlessness for a while.

He carried her to a bed covered in fine white linen and a sage green duvet and the most welcoming mattress she could imagine. She needed to question him about the owner of this palace, but her tongue was otherwise engaged. Supergeekman knew how to kiss.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” he murmured, propping himself on his elbows and prodding at the bandage beneath her scrub top.

“I’ll let you know when it starts hurting.” Dorrie yanked his head back down to hers and arched against his surfer’s hard body. It had been a long time since she’d had a man’s strength shielding her, and the longing and need were urgent.

Conan didn’t need further encouragement.

Conan had spent his teen years studying porn videos. By the time he grew into his nose and girls finally noticed him, he hadn’t been totally clueless. He’d been refining his sexual prowess with an engineer’s skill ever since.

Dorrie blew all his practiced maneuvers clear out his ears. She’d twisted a knife deep in his gut when she’d been lying in that hospital bed, looking as fragile as a broken lily. He needed to rip out the knife she’d planted in him and plaster the wound with reassurance that she was alive and well and life would return to normal.

With Dorrie, however, he was realizing there was no normal. He was way out of his league.

Just the touch of her enchanted fingers stimulated him in ways he couldn’t comprehend. She stroked his hair, and he could swear every strand was electrified. The hum of magic intensified their kiss. He thought he’d have to devour her before he could have enough. He craved more. He nibbled her ear, sampled her jaw, and at her moan, returned to drinking the heady bliss of her lips.

“We shouldn’t,” she murmured, but her fingers were still caressing his biceps and sending tingling messages straight to his groin.

Conan flipped over and pulled her on top so he didn’t have to be so careful with her shoulder. “Yes, we absolutely should,” he corrected.

She rewarded him by ripping off his shirt buttons and kissing his chest. He almost came off the bed when she suckled his nipples and her magic hands slid down his belly, spreading sensual heat and lust and unquenchable desire.

He
was supposed to be in charge here, but his pint-sized Gypsy lady was turning him into jelly. He slid his hands beneath her loose smock, and her moan of pleasure increased his lust exponentially.

He shouldn’t be getting involved with a woman who attracted trouble, a woman who was hazardous to his family’s health…a woman who could distract him from what he should be doing.

She kneeled over him, pulled off her smock, and flung it across the room. Conan quit thinking. With fascination, he cupped and stroked her perfect breasts, amazed at how the dark rose peaks puckered and begged for more. Maybe they shouldn’t be doing this, but she wanted him as much as he wanted her. They could sort out their differences later.

She wasn’t large, but she filled his hands just the way he liked them, while being careful of the ugly bandage covering her shoulder. Using his abs, Conan arched his torso into a half sitting position so he could taste her without her having to use her arms for support.

She uttered a cry of pure ecstasy, caressed his biceps, and he suddenly had the strength of a dozen men. Damn if he didn’t feel her
energy.
He swung her back to the bed and yanked off her elastic-banded pants, then unzipped his and pushed them off. He still wore his knit boxers, but she didn’t waste time in locating the opening.

Conan thought he’d died and gone to heaven the moment she caressed his heavy erection with her magic fingers.

***

Holding all that splendid throbbing energy in her hand, Dorrie forgot about her shoulder. She forgot everything that annoyed her about this man. For the first time in her life, she’d discovered a physical harmony to match her
chi,
a harmony that allowed her to breathe and clear her mind. A harmony that awoke her to the songs of her body. Every particle of her being tingled and hummed in expectation.

Conan’s kisses and caresses only pitched the hum to higher intensity. She feared she would take off like a rocket when he stroked her clitoris. Instead, he was the key to her lock, the piece that completed the puzzle, the utter joy she’d been lacking. When he dispensed with the rest of his clothes, grabbed his wallet out of his jeans, and donned a condom, she arched to welcome him home.

Conan’s groan of hunger was an orchestration finer than Beethoven. He gently pinned her arms to the bed so she wouldn’t hurt herself lifting the injured one, but her legs were free to wrap around his hips and tug him so deep inside that he surely touched her heart.

Their first joining was rapid and explosive. The resulting climax left them both gasping for air. Dorrie wondered how much blood she must have lost to cause her head to spin in the clouds while the rest of her was so satisfied that she couldn’t move.

Conan tumbled to one side and stroked her breasts as if to memorize them. “I can do better than that,” he declared.

Dorrie chuckled. “You promised me steak, too.”

“Oh, shit.” He immediately sat up.

Dorrie tugged him down again. “I’ll survive. I don’t do this every day, so let’s just enjoy the aftermath for a few minutes, okay? You made the world go away.” She said it in awe. He’d made her lose every single thought. That
never
happened.

Conan tugged the covers over them, cuddled her in his muscled arms, and whispered into her hair. “I’m thinking in song lyrics right now, and I don’t even do karaoke. How do you do what you do to me?”

She giggled. “Bad choice of song. I think our adrenaline is probably just running high. It’s like taking drugs and will wear off shortly, at which time I’ll yell at you for promising the kids I’d take care of them.”

He spooned her bottom and caressed her nipples. “I probably can’t prevent yelling by keeping you in bed, and still expect you to look after kids. If I admit dumping Amy and the kids in my place with the dog was a dumb move on my part, will you not yell too loud? You were in a hospital bed, and I was in a state of panic at the time.”

She snorted in amusement. “You tracked me down at the hospital, helped me escape, found a hiding place, and rescued the kids on the side. That doesn’t sound like panic to me.”

“Believe me, it was heart-stopping, mindless gorilla instinct operating,” he uttered with feeling. “Don’t
ever
do that to me again.”

Given her family’s history, she couldn’t promise any such thing.

Dorrie sat up and slid to the edge of the bed, looking back with a tinge of regret at Conan’s tousled, sun-bleached hair and athlete’s torso. He was more man than she’d ever known, and she ought to be afraid of what he was doing to her. But they’d connected in ways she didn’t yet understand, and she was flying without a net.

She leaned over to locate her scrubs on the floor. “You live inside your brain, so you don’t have to feel what’s in your heart. That’s as bad for relationships as the cactus collection you probably have in your bedroom.”

“Cacti are interesting.” He sat up, grabbed his clothes, and without self-consciousness, strode nude to the bathroom. “And they don’t need watering.”

She flung her purloined shoe at the door when he closed it. The sex had been so terrific, she was willing to repeat the act anytime he asked. But supergeekman was a robot, not relationship material, and she needed to remember that.

***

“I need to talk to Amy. And I want to know what’s happening at the office,” Dorrie complained as she dug into the steak Conan had bought at the grocery and grilled for her. She’d sliced and seasoned potatoes to quick fry and prepared a salad. With food in her, her energy was returning sufficiently to fret.

“I’ll buy you one of those disposable phones. You can check in later so your family and employees don’t worry about you.” Conan helped himself to more potatoes. “I need to drive down and pick up the kids and your stuff, so I need a way of keeping in touch, too.”

“I still think this is unnecessary cloak and dagger silliness. I bet once the kid starts talking, you’ll find he was just crazed on meth and shooting anything that moved.” That’s what she was hoping and praying, but it didn’t explain the coincidence of someone going after the kids.

“Not betting your life,” he declared through a bite of lettuce. “You have something someone wants or fears, and until you figure out what that is, you’re staying here, out of sight. What kind of entertainment do you need? I’ll bring that back, too.”

She didn’t even own a roof over her head. She couldn’t imagine how she’d possess something anyone would want. Maybe, if she could remember more of the shooting… But she’d burned out brain cells defending herself.

“Bring my netbook. I’ve been neglecting my blog. I don’t suppose you could hook me up to the office so I could do some work? Beyond that, three kids will keep me running. I know nothing about taking care of kids.”

“Feed them. Don’t let them kill each other. Give them a bed to sleep in. They’ll be fine,” he said dismissively.

More comfortable with this topic, Dorrie threw a cherry tomato at him. Conan caught it without looking and popped it in his mouth. Damn, no man had any right to be that good-looking, smart,
and
coordinated.

“There speaks Robotman. Their world has been turned inside out. Those kids will be terrified and worried. They need the familiarity of school. They need love and affection and security. They are not lab rats.” It would be easier to get mad at Conan if he just wasn’t so abominably cool with her complaints. She could tell the dratted man was listening, even if he wasn’t arguing belligerently as her father would have.