Shiver (26 page)

Her life, her kid’s life, and his own life were on the line here. For all their sakes, sex couldn’t be allowed to enter into the equation at all.

No matter how much he wished things were otherwise.

Without really even meaning to wind up there, Danny found himself standing at the doorway to Tyler’s bedroom again. Behind him, the bathroom light was still on; it provided enough illumination for him to easily see the pair on the bed.

They were curled up facing each other, both black heads nestled close on the same pillow. Clutching a small teddy bear close to his chest, Tyler looked small and frail under the protection
of Sam’s arm, which was draped over him. Sam looked—well, the only word he could come up with was delectable. Her hair fanned out over the white sheets like a banner, and her features, seen in profile, were strong yet delicate and were echoed in miniature by her son’s. She was wrapped in the thick white robe, which precluded him from seeing any real detail of the curves that had made him burn earlier. But the robe parted just below the belt that she had cinched tight around her waist as she’d run away down the hall, high enough so that he could see a silky white triangle of cloth curving between her legs. He realized that what he was seeing was a little bit of the underwear he’d felt sliding against his shorts earlier, and his body responded with an instant surge of heat. He assumed that the panties, like the boxers he was wearing, had come with the town house, and seriously doubted that they were the kind of underwear she would choose if she had been choosing. Whatever their origin, just a glimpse of those thin white panties was enough to turn him on. To add to the problem, below that triangle of white her bare legs were on full display. They were long and lithe, and looked very tan against the white sheets. Her thighs were slender, her calves well shaped. Her feet were long and narrow.

He had no trouble at all imagining her legs wrapped around his waist.

Do not go there.
But it was too late. The instant, involuntary mental picture had already made his heartbeat quicken. His body hardened faster than quick-set cement. With the best will in the world for it not to happen, his mind instantly shot back
to those hot kisses. To the soft roundness and hard little nipple that was her breast.

Damn it to hell, anyway.

Cursing himself under his breath, Danny abruptly turned away. Clumping along the hall to his own room, he did his best to replace the image of Sam in that bed with anything and everything else he could call to mind, anything that he thought—hoped—might drive her out of his head. But the image of her lying there sleeping, that silky triangle of white promising all kinds of luscious secrets yet to be revealed, her sexy bare legs just about begging to be wrapped around him, was, he discovered, impossible to override.

When he slept, finally, his dreams were so erotic as to be embarrassing when he woke up and semiremembered them. By then, it was morning. And not early, either. He could tell that by the quality of the light that was filtering in through the curtains that covered the single window. One result of dreaming about rather than actually having an orgy of hot sex with his pretty companion in hiding was that he felt grouchy as all hell. And really, really horny. Plus his head ached. Practically every bone and muscle in his body hurt. And to top it off, as he had expected, his leg felt like a thousand angry wasps were going to town on it with red-hot stingers.

What could he say? Another day in the life.

Moving gingerly, he barely managed to suppress a groan. Even the slight weight of the covers lying across the bandage now felt unbearable. He tossed them aside.

Bring on the Lortab. Quick.

No.
Not going there. From here on out, it was cold turkey all the way.

Cursing silently, grimacing, Danny tried to go all Zen and practice mental control and block out the pain.

Didn’t work.

Gritting his teeth, hitching himself into a sitting position, getting ready to carefully swing his legs off the bed preparatory to standing up, Danny glanced around in search of his crutches. In the process of doing so, he discovered that he was the object of what appeared to be fascinated attention by a pair of big blue eyes.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on how he looked at it, they didn’t belong to Sam.

It was Tyler who stood in the open doorway watching him.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

“P
ancakes,” Sam called out to Tyler in as cheery a tone as she could muster, scooping up the last of the golden brown disks from the skillet where they had been sizzling and sliding them onto a plate with the others. The unmistakable smell of breakfast—pancakes, plus bacon and coffee—filled the air. It made her stomach growl, and she realized that despite the circumstances she was actually very hungry. Like the rest of the house, the kitchen was clean, completely furnished and well equipped down to the dish towels, decorated in earth tones, with a big sliding glass door at the far end that was only partially veiled by sand-colored vertical blinds. Having already filled another plate with a dozen crispy strips of bacon, she picked up both plates and turned around to set them on the table. That’s when she discovered Marco. He leaned on his crutches just inside the kitchen doorway watching her. Her stomach instantly tightened, and her heart quickened its beat.

Oh, no.
After a lifetime’s worth of making bad choices where men were concerned, was she really still this stupid?

He was clad in loose gray sweatpants and another of the house-favorite ubiquitous white T-shirts, plus his own sneakers. She was wearing one of those white T-shirts herself, along with a pair of too-big black gym shorts that she’d found among other garments folded in the drawers of the dresser in the master bedroom. The shorts hung past her knees, and the only way she was keeping them up was by the drawstring, which she had cinched supertight around her waist; since her boots were the only shoes she had, she wore them as well. With no makeup—whoever had stocked the town house apparently hadn’t thought of that—and her hair twisted into a loose knot on the top of her head, she was not feeling particularly attractive, which didn’t make her any happier to see Marco standing there.

“Hey, Mom.” Tyler stood right in front of Marco, and it didn’t require much imagination to guess where he’d run off to when he had disappeared from the kitchen as she had started pouring the pancake batter into the skillet. What was it they said about hindsight? She would have stopped him if she had realized. The more distance she kept between herself and Tyler and Marco, the better. She couldn’t have felt much warier of a snake—unless, she thought with an inner grimace, she was sexually attracted to the snake, too. “It smells good.”

Tyler wore another of the white T-shirts. Adult size, it was as big on him as a dress and completely hid his short pajama pants, which he had on beneath. As he’d brought no shoes, he was barefoot. Clothing, or rather her and Tyler’s lack of it, was an issue that Sam knew she was going to have to address with
somebody, but that was added to the discussion-to-be-had-later list and consigned to after breakfast.

Right at the moment, she had Marco to deal with. Even stooped over the crutches as he was, he was physically imposing, tall and wide shouldered, with muscular arms, big hands curled around the handles, and an athlete’s body complete with long, strong legs, the foot of one of which was barely touching the floor. His black hair was unruly and he badly needed a shave. Her eyes collided with his, and to her dismay instant electricity blazed between them. As the memory of their last, charged encounter sizzled in the air like a heat shimmer—his hand on her breast being the crowning moment—Sam felt a wave of embarrassment. Luckily, she wasn’t prone to blushing, or she probably would have turned the color of a ripe tomato. As it was, biting down on her lower lip was the only outward sign of discomfiture she gave, and as soon as she realized she was doing it she stopped.

“I told Trey breakfast was almost ready.” Tyler glanced over his shoulder at Marco as he spoke. “He’s hungry just like us.”

“Only if there’s enough.” The smile Marco gave her made her heart skip a beat. As a result, her brows snapped together in a quick frown. God, had she really kissed him like that last night? What had she been thinking?

Obvious answer: thinking was
not
what she had been doing.

“He wants to try your pancakes. I told him you make the best pancakes ever.”

“Thank you, sir.” Getting a grip, Sam managed a smile for her son. Tyler’s answering smile as he headed toward the table
was so sunny that Sam didn’t have the heart to do or say anything that would dim it. He had been through enough trauma over the last thirty-six hours or so to last several lifetimes. Keeping things as normal and unterrifying as possible had to be a top priority for her now. At least, for as long as she could manage it. But whatever the day, or the coming days, might bring, there was nothing she could do to change any of it at the moment, so she tried to push from her mind the gnawing fear that had been threatening to consume her ever since she had woken up and realized where she and Tyler were.

“There’s plenty,” she told Marco. Okay, so maybe her tone was a little short. Acute anxiety coupled with an attraction to a man she absolutely should not be feeling attracted to tended to make her cross, she was discovering. When Tyler glanced at her, looking faintly curious, she tried to compensate for her tone with a brief and very insincere-feeling smile, manufactured entirely for Tyler’s benefit, which she directed at Marco.

He did not smile back. Instead he stayed where he was, studying her just a little too intently. She had almost no doubt that he was recalling those kisses, too, probably way more graphically than she was, and the knowledge rattled her.

“Come on, Trey.” Tyler pulled out one of the four wooden chairs that were arranged two by two on the long sides of the rectangular, farmhouse-style table, plopped himself down in the chair next to it, and patted the seat of the one he had pulled out invitingly. “It’s getting cold.”

With a wry inner grimace, Sam recognized the words she regularly used on Tyler to get him to leave whatever game had
him enthralled and come to the table. Marco’s gaze flicked from Tyler to the dishes Sam was holding. Until that moment she hadn’t realized that she had been frozen in place with a steaming plate of food in each hand. Reluctantly acknowledging that there was no way out of feeding Marco breakfast that wouldn’t involve upsetting Tyler, or making plain to Marco just how unsettling she now found having him around, she moved toward the table and set the pancakes and bacon down on it. Then she forked a couple of pancakes onto Tyler’s plate, and added several strips of bacon. Tyler reached for the syrup with enthusiasm.

“Fix Trey’s plate,” Tyler said. It wasn’t such an unusual request. If Kendra or another friend stopped by when she was cooking, Sam automatically put food on a plate for them at the same time as she served herself and Tyler. But fixing Marco a plate
felt
different.

Lips firming just a little, Sam put two pancakes and some bacon on the plate she had set out for herself, and slid the plate to the spot beside Tyler.

“The food’s getting cold,” she said over her shoulder to Marco as she turned toward the refrigerator to get out the carton of milk so she could fill Tyler’s glass. Unlike the clothing that had come with the town house, the food she’d found in the refrigerator and pantry when she had checked was varied and for the most part actually stuff that Tyler would eat. He loved pancakes, for example, and since he’d been cheated out of his Saturday morning ritual, when she’d gotten up that morning and found that the supplies included pancake mix and bacon she had decided to fix his favorites. The familiar ritual of
making breakfast had brought thoughts of Kendra and poor Mrs. Menifee and home and everything that had been left behind rushing into her head, but she had deliberately forced them out again. Worrying about what she could do nothing to change didn’t help anyone. It certainly didn’t make the present situation easier.

“It looks great.” Marco was easing himself down into the chair beside Tyler when she returned with the carton of milk. His crutches were propped against the wall within easy reach. He cast a quick, assessing glance up at her as she filled Tyler’s glass, and she noticed a kind of shadow at the backs of his eyes that made her wonder if he were in pain. Having slid her glass over in front of him when she’d repositioned her plate, she automatically proceeded to fill the glass that was now his with milk, too.