Shiver (28 page)

“I always fall asleep fast,” she replied, just as soon as she succeeded in getting the hot liquid all the way down. And was proud of how cool and unbothered she sounded.

“I was worried that”—here the tiniest of pauses caused her to read all kinds of meaning into the inscrutable expression in those coffee-brown eyes—“you might have trouble sleeping. Considering everything.”

Yeah, like how hot he’d made her. “I didn’t,” she assured him.

His eyes slid over her face, lingering just a second too long on her lips. To her chagrin, Sam felt the urge to wet them. Her pulse started to pick up the pace.

I love the way he kisses.
The thought sprang full blown into her mind. Horrified at herself, she dismissed it instantly. But even instantly wasn’t quick enough to stop her from feeling a quick rush of desire.

“So what should we do today?” Tyler piped up, directing the question at Sam. She almost jumped. She was glad of the interruption, of the chance to redirect her thoughts before they could
travel any further down the road they seemed hell-bent on taking. Tyler’s question was one that they always asked each other on weekend mornings, and it helped her to get her bearings. The very normalcy of it underlined the absolute abnormality of the situation. Pushing away the last of her breakfast (pancakes and bacon were Tyler’s favorites, not hers; she actually preferred something like half a peanut butter sandwich, peanut butter having been a staple food for breakfast, lunch, and dinner when she was growing up), Sam looked at her son and found herself at a loss for words. She had no idea what rules governed this new existence they had been thrown into: was going to a park, or a swimming pool, or for something as ordinary as a walk, even an option?

“You can help me clean house,” she countered with a playful smile, because on weekends at home cleaning house was one of the things they did. Not that Tyler liked being part of what she called the Jones family cleaning crew. But he did it.

“No way. We’re on vacation. Anyway, it’s not even our house,” Tyler objected.

Vacation?
Sam didn’t say it aloud, but her eyes shot to Marco, because she was pretty sure that there was only one place the idea that they were on vacation could have come from and it was from him. He was chomping down on the last of his bacon when their eyes met and she frowned suspiciously at him. His reply was a wry half smile, and a shrug.

Translation: guilty.

“It’s like a vacation. Kind of,” he replied to the look in her eyes.

Except for the whole everyone-wants-to-kill-us thing.
But Sam didn’t say it out loud. She gave Marco a narrow-eyed look instead.

“We’ll make it a vacation,” he promised, sliding a significant look in Tyler’s direction.

Given her son’s presence, what could she reply to that?

“Sounds good,” she said.

“Is it okay if I go check out the backyard, Mom?” Having finished his breakfast, Tyler slid from his seat. From where she was sitting, through the not-quite-completely-drawn blinds, Sam could see several slices of well-cut green lawn and a large, leafy tree. The backyard looked like the perfect place for a four-year-old to play. The whole thing seemed to be surrounded by a six-foot-tall wooden privacy fence, but she had no way of being sure it was safe.

Automatically she looked at Marco for guidance. Tyler did, too. Annoying to realize that they both assumed he was the one with the authority to decide, to tell them yes or no.

“Why don’t you check out the rest of the house first?” Marco suggested. “I bet there are all kinds of nooks and crannies you haven’t seen.”

“Okay,” Tyler agreed, and hopped up from his seat. With a quick look at Sam, he picked up his plate and glass and carried them to the sink. She smiled at him: that was something he always did. She gave herself a mental high-five for having raised him well.

“Thank you,” she said.

“I’ll be back in a minute,” he told her, and ran off.

Left alone with Marco, Sam felt every bit of discomfort she’d managed to push out of her mind earlier return in a rush. Desperate to find something to do, something to focus on besides the two of them alone at the table, she started to gather up the plates and silverware, preparatory to standing up and carrying them to the sink.

She was just reaching for the syrup bottle when his hand descended on hers, closing around it, holding it trapped against the smooth wood.

Her eyes shot to his.

“We need to talk,” he said.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

T
alking was
not
what Sam wanted to do. Escaping was more like it. But Marco picked her hand up from the table, holding it in such a way that she doubted she could have pulled free without a determined jerk.

A jerk that would reveal how uncomfortable she was with having him hold her hand.

Even as she hesitated, she very unwillingly registered the size and strength of his hand—way bigger and stronger than hers—and its masculinity, and the warmth of it. She remembered the way he had kissed her knuckles in the trunk. Then he ran his thumb over the silky skin on the back of her hand—shades of that thumb running over her nipple!—and her insides turned to mush.

Sam’s heart was beating a mile a minute. She was breathing way too fast. She was so focused on the way his thumb moving against her skin was making her feel that she didn’t even realize she was staring at their joined hands until he said, “Sam,” and she looked up to meet his eyes.

He was regarding her with a rueful expression that immediately made her brows twitch together.

“What?” Her tone wasn’t quite snappish, but almost. The way he was holding her hand, the way he was kind of leaning in toward her, the intensity of his gaze, was throwing her for a loop. A relationship with this guy was the last thing she wanted, or needed, but something about the way they were together kind of felt like they were sliding down the slope of starting a relationship.
Oh, no. Not happening. Reverse course.
She wasn’t making any more bad decisions where men were concerned. She had already screwed (and screwed was definitely the operative word) up enough in that department. She wasn’t doing it again. No how, no way.

Even if just having him hold her hand like this was making her go all jittery inside.

“About last night,” he said. That wasn’t a surprise—from the second he’d picked up her hand she’d had a pretty good idea about what the topic of conversation was likely to be. But his expression wasn’t jibing with the racing of her pulse, or the buttery warmth that was starting to spread deep inside her. It wasn’t saying,
I want to take you to bed.
It was saying—what?

Not anything she was going to like, she was starting to feel pretty sure.

“I’m sorry, okay?” He was playing with her fingers now, which were long and slender but not elegant, not perfectly manicured—actually, not manicured at all—a working woman’s hands. “I shouldn’t have done what I did. It was a mistake. I blame it on the pain pills. You were right, I was high as a kite.”

Talk about your wake-up call.
He
definitely wasn’t going all gooey inside. And sure as God made little green apples
she
wasn’t going to be going all gooey inside any longer, either. To hell with how he interpreted it; she gave the determined jerk necessary to free her hand from his.

“Let me get this straight: you’re saying you only kissed me because you were high?”

“I kissed you because I wanted to. But I wouldn’t have done it if I hadn’t been loopy from those damned pain pills.”

She felt affronted. She felt—okay, face it, a little hurt. It was all she could do not to get up, turn the appropriate part of her anatomy in his direction, say something like
kiss this
as she smacked it, and then stomp away from the table, but she didn’t, because above all else she was determined to keep her (outward) cool. The slight edge to her voice that she couldn’t quite seem to help notwithstanding. “Good to know. Thank you very much for telling me.”

She got the impression that he almost smiled. If he had, the way she was feeling right at that moment, she would have decked him.

“Sam.” He reached for her hand again.
Forget that.
Curling her fingers into fists, she crossed her arms over her chest. And did not glare at him, although it cost her a real effort. “Look. You’re beautiful. And sweet. And sexy as all hell. I want you. I’d give my right arm to sleep with you, but we’re in a dangerous situation here. I need you to be able to trust me. I don’t want sex to get in the way of that.”

Affronted didn’t even begin to cover how she was feeling.
Try—damned mad. For starters. “Me
trust
you? Probably not going to happen. Me have sex with you? Definitely not going to happen. So it’s looking like you strike out on both counts.”

His expression turned rueful. “The thing is, I can’t afford the distraction.”

“You say that like you think us having sex was actually a possibility. It wasn’t.” She seethed (invisibly, she hoped). “It
isn’t.
”

If that was humor she saw springing to life in the backs of his eyes, she would—she didn’t know what she’d do, but it wouldn’t be pretty.

Impossible to tell. But there was a suspicious glint in those dark brown depths that made the glare she finally directed at him feel extra good.

“Don’t give me a hard time, okay? I want you so much I’ve got a hard-on right now, just from sitting at this table looking at you. But I’m trying to do what’s best for everybody here.”

She made a rude sound. “You know what? I don’t want to know about your hard-on. You ever hear, too much information? Anyway, I don’t care. You could have a baseball bat in your pants and it wouldn’t mean anything to me.”

“I’m just trying to explain—”

“Explain
what
?”

“Why I’m backing off here. Why us having sex isn’t going to happen.”

Sam almost sputtered. “Like I thought it was? Like that was even a possibility? Listen, Mr. Criminal in Federal Custody,
you seem to have a pretty skewed idea about how much you appeal to women. Maybe you ought to try getting real.”

“Come on, Sam. After the way we were last night, of course you would naturally expect—”

“Naturally expect? I didn’t
naturally expect
anything. So last night we made out. So what? No big deal. It was an accident, practically, and it was never going to go any further than that. Believe me.” So she was lying, probably; he couldn’t know it.

He fixed her with a level look. “Now who needs to get real?”

She bristled. “Meaning?”

“Meaning it was completely obvious where last night was going. If we hadn’t gotten interrupted, we would have wound up in bed. I figured today you’d be expecting us to pick up where we left off, and I wanted you to understand why that can’t happen.”

Sam wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that steam was coming out of her ears. “I understand why that can’t happen, all right. Because there’s no way in hell I’d ever wind up in bed with you. Not last night, not today, not ever.”

“We’re on the same page then.”

Now, that calm statement was infuriating. Sam tried not to let it show.

“Absolutely we’re on the same page.”

A smile just touched his mouth. “So why are you so mad at me?”

“What makes you think I’m mad at you?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe because last night you kissed me like you were dying to crawl into my bed and when I showed up
in the kitchen this morning you made big bedroom eyes at me and now here you are spitting fire and yelling at me?”

“I am not spitting fire. And I am not yelling.”

“Yes, you are.” His voice went very soft. “And just for the record, baby doll, I think it’s cute.”

Sam saw red. “You know what you can do with that, right?”

“Easy.” He actually had the gall to smile outright at her. “All I’m trying to do here is make sure you and Tyler stay safe.”

“You keep talking like you’re the one who’s supposed to do that.” Sam was practically speaking through her teeth by now. “News flash: you’re the reason we’re in danger, remember? Keeping us safe is why there’s a U.S. Marshal in the next room.”