One Good Man (7 page)

He did know that it was time for sleep. For Jamie, and for him, too, so he capped the bottle, set his glass beside it next to the steps and went to bring her inside.

She knew he was standing in front of her, but she kept her eyes closed. It had been hard enough not to touch him when he’d been sitting on the stoop beside her. She could smell him then, and now.

He’d showered before bed, and the heat of the night had carried the scent of his clean skin until she wanted to crawl beneath it, and wrap it around her like a cloak, and remember what it had been like to live without looking over her shoulder. She wanted that back, all of it.

“Let’s go in. You need sleep. I need sleep. The glass will wait till morning.”

Still hunkered down, she shook her head. “If I sleep, I’ll dream, and it won’t be one I can stomach alone. Not tonight. Not with…all of this happening. And with tomorrow.”
Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry,
she told herself.
Please, please, don’t cry.

“I’ll be in the next room. And I’ll be with you tomorrow.” He touched her hair then, brushed his knuckles against her temples. “I’m here now.”

But he wasn’t here in the way she needed him. He was here as a cop, a watchdog, here to keep her smart and sober and on time, though he was running late on the first two counts. She grabbed his wrist to stop him from moving his fingers along the shell of her ear, using her hold as leverage to gain her feet, rising along his body.

And then she couldn’t help it. He was in front of her, looming, his chest big, bare and magnificent and calling her. She placed her hands there, the heels of her palms just beneath his pectoral muscles, her fingertips skating the edges of his nipples.

The wedge of hair in the center of his chest was soft, thinning as it descended his abdomen. She followed it with her thumbs, her eyes wet, her cheeks wet, her belly tight with wanting him, with wanting.

He stopped her when she reached his waistband. She felt him there, just beneath, swelling, full and firm, but he kept her from enclosing him in her hand, and held her arms at her sides. “Not a good idea.”

His body said otherwise. “Are you sure? I’m getting some mixed signals here.”

“I’m sure,” he told her, his grip tightening when she tried to pull away and prove him wrong. “Another time, another place, maybe.”

“You’re saying no because of tomorrow?” Not because she was an old maid, damaged and broken and lost, with nothing to offer a man? Not because she was ugly and drunk and pathetic? Not because he didn’t want her?

“I’m saying no because we both need sleep,” he reiterated, his voice rough, rougher than the hands holding her, than the concrete driveway she was standing on. “And because the reasons right now are all wrong.”

What did that mean? That he could only tumble her into forgetfulness if it fit his white-hat sense of right and wrong? How fair was that, when she was the one who wanted no strings attached?

She pulled against his efforts to keep her at a distance, lifting her hands to his chest again, to his shoulders, lacing them around his neck.

She shimmied close, pressed her nipples to his chest and rubbed against the cotton of her camisole until sensation swept her to the edge of oblivion. “What do the reasons matter?”

He groaned. The rumble rose from a spot just beneath his ribs and made it all the way up his throat before stopping. His heart drummed, a thudding, primal, near-violent beat. “We can’t. Not now. Not…like this. Here. It’s late. You’ve been drinking.”

Exactly. She could do anything she wanted to do. She had Jim Beam on her side. Eyes closed, she leaned her forehead against him and breathed.

His chest hair tickled her nose, her lips. She licked them, caught the edge of his nipple and licked that, too, smelling the alcohol in his pores, the heat of the night, something wholesome and sweet. All of it right, and hers.

“Jamie.”

He ground out her name like a curse. Or a caress. She wasn’t sure which one. She didn’t care. She brought her mouth to the hollow of his throat, drank of his taste and his scent. He lowered his head, nuzzling his chin to her temple.

It was soft, but it was still need, and she turned into it, finding his mouth, biting until he parted his lips and bit back. Oh, he was going to be good, greedy and giving, hungry, hard.

She cupped his head, kneading the nape of his neck as she kissed him, her tongue on his, her chest against his, her sex aching where the ridge of his pressed, his hands on her ass lifting her like a puzzle to fit his pieces.

It was her whimper that ruined everything. He was hard everywhere, his fingers bold and questing, and it had been so very long since she’d wanted anyone to touch her as intimately as Kell was doing now. And so she whimpered, but just barely, with pleasure and need and an appreciation for the bad-boy way he kissed.

Kell’s hands on her bottom stilled, then dropped her cheeks like two hot potatoes. He broke the kiss, found her wrists and broke her hold on his neck, cursing to himself as he took a step away. His face was in shadow, but his darkness was more than the lack of light.

He was angry. At her? At himself? And his whole body raged, stiff and tight and pulsing. “I said no, Jamie. Not here, not now, not without a better reason than dreading tomorrow.”

If he didn’t think dreading tomorrow was reason enough, then he was right that this wasn’t the time or place. And he wasn’t the man. Good thing Jim Beam wasn’t so righteous.

“Good night then, Ranger Sergeant Kellen Harding,” she said, walking away with a wobble, but without a single look back, and picking up the whiskey bottle before opening the screen door. “I’ll do whatever it takes to deal with tomorrow. And I’ll get help from whomever will give it.”

No matter how very very much I want it to be you.

Spending the night with Jim Beam had not been particularly smart, but it had worked as a preemptive strike against freaking out; all she had on her mind this morning was not getting sick. Thankfully, Kell hadn’t brought up her drinking, or anything about last night.

“I don’t drink like that very often.” She closed her eyes, opened them quickly when her nausea insisted on looking at something besides the blood-red interior of her eyelids.

“That’s good to know.” And that was all he said, his right hand on the steering wheel, his left elbow on the padding where the window met the door. His face was close shaved, his shirt starched and pressed. He wore his white hat and dark sunglasses. Jamie hadn’t seen his eyes all day.

He hadn’t had as much to drink last night as she had, so she didn’t know if he was hiding bloodshot whites or dark purple half-moons beneath. Maybe he just didn’t want her to know when he cut his gaze toward her, if he did, how often, how thoroughly he looked her over, what he was visually searching for. Maybe he just didn’t want her to see his disillusionment.

“I mean, I’m not an alcoholic or anything. I drink sometimes, when I can’t sleep.” Or when I do sleep and the nightmare comes back.

“You don’t have to justify anything to me, Jamie.”

Right. He was going to turn her life upside down, but didn’t want an explanation for her reaction to having that happen. Well, she didn’t want him looking back and thinking her a slutty little lush.

“I’m not justifying anything, Kell. I’m explaining what went on last night, what you saw. That wasn’t…me,” she said, though the words rang false because the woman he’d seen was exactly who she was.

She put on a good front for her mother, her neighbors, her coworkers and friends, the world, but the real truth was too sad and broken to let anyone see. Anyone, apparently, but a man in a white hat with a gun.

He looked over at her, his jaw taut, his mouth grim. She couldn’t see his eyes or his forehead, but could tell his face wasn’t happy. She could tell, too, from his voice that was gritty and sharp. “Don’t you think I get that? Yeah, we just met, but I know your case inside and out, and that includes the person you are.”

She wanted to believe him, but it sounded a lot like he was making nice to get her to shut up about it. And, really, she wanted to shut herself up about it. She didn’t know why it mattered so much that he think good things about her.

Except she did know. It mattered because of that kiss. Last night’s blood-alcohol level hadn’t kept her from remembering, reliving the feel of his mouth, his hands, his…everything dozens of times since rolling her protesting body out of bed this morning.

She wanted to kiss him again. She wanted to kiss him while sober. She wanted to kiss him in broad daylight or with the room’s lights blazing. She wanted to kiss him and remember things the Jim Beam meant she’d forgotten.

None of that would happen, however, until he remembered something other than his disappointment in her. At least she assumed it was disappointment that had him keeping such a stiff distance between them.

“Did all that reading about me make you curious?”

“About?”

Oh, now he was being purposefully thick. “Anything in particular? What author I most like to read, or my favorite restaurant, or where I’ve traveled, or if I like to go fishing, or maybe know how to kiss?”

The corner of his mouth twitched. His hand on the steering wheel tightened, his knuckles like jagged peaks. “Who’s your favorite author?”

Sigh. It was better than talking about the weather, or traveling in complete silence, though she’d much rather know what he thought about kissing her. “I’d have to say Tess Gerritsen. She writes a suspense series about a Boston police detective and medical examiner.”

“Hmm.”

“What does that mean, ‘hmm’?”

He shrugged, continued to face straight ahead. “I would’ve thought you’d prefer something less…gruesome.”

Because of what she’d been through? “It’s storytelling. It’s entertainment. I’m not looking to forget what happened to me by escaping my reality. Or to work my way through it by projecting my experience onto a piece of fiction. It’s just…reading.”

“If you say so.”

He didn’t buy it, or else he was being contrary to keep her at bay. And that really didn’t make any sense when everything else he’d done was about keeping her close…unless the kiss had made him change his mind.

“What’s your favorite restaurant then?”

Fine. She’d play along, but only because she wanted to see if he’d make it through all five of her options, or if he’d stop when he reached the last one. “I’m not sure I have a favorite, but there’s one in Junction called Isaack’s where the cheeseburgers are the best I’ve ever had in my life.”

He chuckled at that, a funny, rough sound, glancing in his side-view mirror before signaling and changing lanes. “How do you feel about fishing?”

Moving right along here…though he’d skipped asking about where she’d traveled. Was he in a hurry to talk about kissing her? Or just wanting to get it over with ASAP? “I’ve never been.”

That earned her a glance, one she couldn’t read because he was still hiding behind his dark glasses.

“I’m not sure I’ve ever met anyone who’s never fished,” he told her, then asked, “No opportunity, no interest, what?”

“Both, I guess. Though I’ve eaten my fair share of things that live in the sea. And lakes, streams, rivers, swamps.”

“Swamps?”

“Crawfish. Frog legs. Alligator. You know. Swamp things.”

Kell shook his head, giving a soft snort that she interpreted as disbelief. He didn’t seem the type to be disgusted by things that weren’t everyday food. “You’ve never been fishing, but you’ve eaten frog legs and alligator.”

“I didn’t have to catch them, just order them,” she said, her headache easing along with some of the tension causing the drive to be so uncomfortably difficult. Funny how talking helped simplify things, when keeping them bottled up and hidden away made a more “out of sight, out of mind” sense.

And, no, she was not going to stop and apply that realization to the last ten years of her life. Or wonder why she’d talked more about what she’d seen and suffered to Kell Harding than she had to another soul in years. Crawfish and frog legs and alligator. That was the ticket, the always safe subject of food.

She leaned into the corner of the seat, shifting to see him better. “In case you didn’t notice at dinner, I’ve got a big thing for food. I’ll try anything, and I love almost everything. My mouth was definitely made for eating.”

“That must be why you taste so good.”

And just like that, there was the kiss.