Goes down easy(19)
He snorted. “Right.”
What was that supposed to mean? “Seriously. It’s been, uh…” Gah, did she really want him to know? “Uh, years.”
He waited a moment, narrowed his eyes as he watched her dress. “How many?”
“You tell me, I’ll tell you.”
A brow went up. “Isn’t this the conversation we were supposed to have before?”
Men. Always so…manlike. “Better late than never, I always say.”
He snickered at that. “Something about a horse and closing a barn door is bothering me here.”
Infuriating man. Still, if they were going to take this…this…what they’d done further, she wanted him to know. “All right. It’s been six years.”
“Hmm. Well. It’s been…a while for me.”
“A while?” she asked, snapping the elastic of her panties into place.
“Yeah, you know. Here and there.” He gave a shrug that didn’t come across as quite as careless as she thought he’d intended. “Nothing important. Always protected.”
Right now, she didn’t have time to process all that his admission—or his attitude—implied. “I suppose we’re doubly safe, then.”
“You’re on the pill?”
She sighed, reached back to hook her bra. “Does it make me seem pathetic that I am? I mean, celibacy’s as effective as birth control gets. Why the overkill, you know?”
Jack reached up, punched a pillow beneath his head, cleared his throat before saying, “Because celibacy doesn’t take chemistry into account.”
Was that all this was? Physical chemistry? Was that really what he thought? “So why nothing long-term for you? Have you been in Tibet?”
He frowned. “Tibet?”
“At a monastery. Or at the South Pole studying penguins and their bad habits?”
One corner of his mouth lifted. “That was bad.”
“Really?” she asked, grabbing her towel and squeezing what water she could from her hair. “I thought it amazingly clever.”
He shuddered. “Do you have any heat in this place? I’m freezing my balls off here.”
She tossed him the duffel bag she’d brought into the room before she’d climbed into the shower. “Guess you didn’t get used to the conditions while you were away, Tibet and the South Pole both being so cold and all.”
He sat up, covered his lap with the blanket before digging for clean clothes. “I haven’t been out of the country since my discharge.”
Facts. Good. They were getting somewhere. “When was that?”
“Eight years ago.”
She canted her head and considered him. “How old are you?”
“Then, I was thirty.”
“I’m thirty now.”
“Good. That means you’re old enough.”
Uh-oh. “For what?”
He paused, paused, and paused another few seconds, then said, “To not think that showering together means anything more than conserving water. Or that sharing a bed is about more than sleeping.”
“Actually,” she began, working for flippant, feeling the heat of embarrassment rise, “I’ve been waiting for you to suggest we start shopping for rings. I’m free today if you are.”
Jack sighed. “Think about it. It’s been a while for both of us, and we met under pretty strange circumstances.”
Fine. Whatever. God, she couldn’t breathe. And why was her chest aching? “Oh, hey, don’t worry your pretty head about it. Strange circumstances always have me horny and getting naked in the shower.”
“Don’t do this, Perry.”
“Don’t do what?”
“Make this into something it’s not.”
“Then tell me, Jack. What is it?”
“It’s sex, Perry. That’s all.”
She wasn’t going to let him hurt her. She wasn’t. She wasn’t. This wasn’t a romance. It wasn’t too late to back out.
She was such a liar. Such a liar. Still…“C’mon, Jack. Don’t you think I know that without you giving me some shit about conserving water? Like you said, I’m old enough to know what I’m doing.”
She was also old enough to march into her walk-in closet and close the door behind her without once looking back. And that’s exactly what she did.
9
LYING WITH ONE arm beneath his head, the other draped across his bare stomach, Book Franklin stared up at Della Brazille’s bedroom ceiling. He couldn’t see much of anything as dark as it was, the only light in the room peeking through a gap in the heavy blue drapes.
The lack of visibility wasn’t a big deal. He could only think of one thing—one woman—he wanted to see, and since Della was at his side sleeping, that was good enough.
It wasn’t as if, since seeing them last, he’d forgotten anything about the tiny dimple in the hollow of her throat or the patch of freckles on her shoulder or the knot above her ankle from a poorly set break. And the way she’d looked up at him, the tears she’d cried as they’d made love, sure as hell hadn’t slipped his mind.
Thinking of everything he’d learned about her during the night had more than his heart aching. The fact that someone wanted to hurt her weighed large on his mind, making sleep impossible. It was time to get up anyway, or would be if he could bring himself to leave her side.
He couldn’t. All he could think about was the reality that if she’d been standing three feet closer to the door when that brick had come sailing through, he wouldn’t be in bed with her now.
He was still having a hard time believing that after all this time she’d been the one to make the first move. He’d never talked to her about his feelings, figuring there wasn’t any need, that more than likely she knew as much about them as he did.
The last two years had been trying, not knowing if she felt the same, if they would continue to see one another only as cop and psychic.
Until last night, he hadn’t realized how very much he wanted them to share more than a professional relationship. How waking up to her every morning was about the most perfect life he could imagine. He just couldn’t figure how making it happen was possible.
Call him old-fashioned and a chauvinist, but he hated the idea of subjecting the woman he loved to his schedule and his life. The hours were brutal, the situations in which he often found himself even more so.
Sure, he could be driving to an office job and get hit by a tractor trailer, but the odds of not coming home in one piece were a whole lot higher as a member of the NOPD than if he’d belonged to an organization of CPAs.
Then again, maybe he was being a prick about it. He knew plenty of guys who made it happen. He just didn’t see himself being one of them. Not after having his own father gunned down in the line of duty.
Book had been fifteen when it had happened. His mother had never recovered, and he’d been thrust like a big fat cliché into a role he wasn’t ready for. How many fifteen-year-olds, whose previous focus had been how to get that baseball scholarship, would be?
The man of the house. What a joke. He’d been the survivor of the house. The level head. The only source of sanity or common sense. It had been a hell of a jump from being a kid intent on playing ball to bearing the weight of the Franklin world on his shoulders.
He didn’t want to put Della through anything like that. Or worse, to imagine her suffering the same fate as his mother.
He needed to go see her. It had been way too long since he’d visited her in the nursing home where she’d been living for the past two years. It was hard to see her so frail, so forgetful, most times not even recognizing him.
“Yes. You do,” Della whispered at his side.
Damn uncanny woman. “I do what?”
“You need to check in with your mother.” That was all she said as she scooted closer, cuddled up to his side, and placed her hand over his. “She might not know you now, but you don’t want her to worry about the boy she remembers.”
He didn’t think he’d ever been so grateful for the dark as he was now, what with the way his face was burning. “How do you do that?”
“I try not to. At least, when it’s a situation where my insight hasn’t been sought out.” She laced her fingers through his. “You were so still and so quiet. I knew you weren’t sleeping, and then I picked up a sense of conflict between you and your mother. That mostly she doesn’t know you any longer, and that keeps you away.”
“It’s complicated,” he said, then snorted. Complicated wasn’t a strong enough word. “Aren’t most relationships between parents and kids?”
“I don’t think so. Though I imagine you see more than your fair share.”
He tightened his grip on her fingers, as if it would keep her close. “Did you ever want kids of your own?”
On the pillow beside him, she shook her head. “I knew a long time ago I wasn’t motherhood material.”
“Having Perry with you didn’t change your mind?”
Della’s laughter was as soft as her skin. “Oh, no. I was a horrible parent. Instead of trusting my instincts, I studied how-to guides and followed each and every instruction. Try doing that when every third thing out there contradicts the first two.”