“Because you leapt without looking.”
“Exactly. And I don’t leap. Not anymore.”
“What happened six years ago?” he found himself asking, when it shouldn’t matter and it wasn’t any of his business.
“I came to work for Della full-time and stopped playing at getting a degree.”
“Who was it? A fellow student or a professor?”
She stuck out her tongue. “A TA, if you must know. He was in it for the fun and games. And I wanted something more. See? The two just don’t mix.”
“I can’t imagine you writing off relationships based on one bad deal,” he said, almost choking at the “r” word he let slip. Was that where they were headed?
“And what do you mean, you can’t imagine me doing that? We had a one-night stand. I don’t see how that qualifies you as a Perry expert.”
He shook his head as he pushed away from the table.
She sat back—arms crossed, chin lifted—and he knew the battle was on. “Fine. Then explain to me why you think you know what you know.”
The woman was driving him mad. “You, Ms. Brazille, are an open book.”
Her lips pruned up. “You don’t say.”
“I do say. Anyone who spends any length of time with you can tell what you’re thinking.”
“Oh, really?” she said, tapping one foot. “And what am I thinking now, Jack, huh? What am I thinking now?”
She was thinking he’d hit too close to a truth she didn’t want to admit, and she didn’t like it at all. She didn’t like being as easy to read as she was. She didn’t like that she’d allowed herself to be hurt—or that he was the one who’d done it.
She believed in astrological animals and ghosts that sang in stairwells and whatever the hell rune stones were, but she couldn’t bring herself to believe that he’d figured her out in only a matter of days. Neither did she seem to be buying that he’d never intended her harm.
And he’d about had it with that. He reached for the leg of her chair and hauled hers up against his. Then he planted his hands on either side of her hips, holding on to the seat as he held on to her gaze.
Once he knew he had her attention, once he saw the flutter of her pulse in her throat, he leaned closer, bringing his mouth inches from hers before saying, “I don’t know about you, but this is the only thing I’m thinking.”
And then he moved in for the kiss. She was warm and willing. She smelled like the spices he knew, tasted like salt and ketchup and the same dinner they’d both eaten. The thought made him chuckle.
His laughter made her groan. “I know. Onions.”
“They’ve never tasted better,” he assured her, and went back for more. She brought her arms around his neck, and somehow ended up in his lap in his chair.
It was exactly where he wanted her, exactly where he needed her to be. She caught at his lower lip, pulling him into her mouth, bathing him with her tongue, nipping him with her teeth.
He liked the way she nipped, that she wasn’t afraid she might hurt him, that she let him nip her back and laughed when he did.
It was the perfect battle of wills, the perfect parry and thrust. Their tongues mating, teasing, playing. He didn’t think he would ever get enough.
He slipped his hand to her back, eased his fingers beneath the hem of her sweater, kneaded circles up her spine until he found the clasp of her bra. He freed it, and she gasped into his mouth. A gasp followed quickly by a giggle.
He didn’t think he’d ever met another woman who laughed at such inopportune times, and he loved every single sound that spilled from her throat. He also loved the way she twisted and turned until his hand covered her breast.
He thought back to the way she’d looked in the shower, how pale her skin, how dark her nipples, and he found her areola and stroked the puckered skin.
She moaned and squirmed, and he pinched her nipple, kneaded her breast, shoved his tongue into her mouth and made sure she knew he was thinking about shoving it into a certain part of her body that tasted salty and warm and marine.
And then he was the one groaning, the one on the edge of coming apart. And he was the one wanting her mouth sucking on more than his tongue, licking at more than his lips.
Give him five seconds, ten seconds max, that’s all he needed and he could have her on the edge of the table, her skirt up to her waist, his fly open, her thighs wrapped around his hips…
A softly cleared throat brought him careening to a mental coitus interruptus. Perry unwound her arms from his neck and pushed back with her hands on his chest.
He did his best to slip his hand from beneath her sweater without drawing Della’s notice. But when Perry started to push out of his lap, he held her there, hiding the bulging proof of their indiscretion beneath her skirt.
“Don’t mind me,” Della said, thumping with her walking stick into the room. “I only came for a bottle of water.” She crossed to the fridge for her drink, then returned the way she came. “I’ll be in the reading room when you’re ready, Jack.”
Once the thump of the walking stick faded, Perry asked, “Are you ready?”
No, the reminder of what lay ahead had pretty much taken all the ready right out of him. “Shouldn’t you be asking me if I have any last wishes? Or what I want for my final meal?”
“I thought that’s what I just did,” she teased, climbing from his lap and waiting for him to gather up his balls and get on with it.
THE ROOM DELLA USED for her readings was small, no larger than the bathroom off the kitchen. He didn’t have a blueprint to go by, but Jack was pretty sure the two shared a communal wall.
The entrance was marked by a curtain of blue beads, a twin to the one that led from the shop into the kitchen hallway. This one he’d never seen before, tucked as it was into the far corner of Sugar Blues.
The room was lit by a single-bulb lamp that hung low on a chain from the ceiling. In the center of the room was a table. Beneath the table, two chairs. On top, a dark bowl of water-covered petals.
The petals were fresh. He could smell the floral aroma as soon as he entered the room. He waited for Della to speak. She said nothing, did no more than indicate he should sit in the closest chair.
She took the other, facing him and asking him to place his hands, palms down, on either side of the bowl. Her voice, when she made the request, was barely audible. Her eyes, which hadn’t yet made contact with his, appeared hazy and lost. He supposed it was more like a trance than confusion.
The chair was comfortable enough, the seat and back both covered in a dark blue velvet, and the smell of the flower petals was soothing, like lavender or jasmine.
He figured the water could have turned them blue since he didn’t think either of them were. But then he quit thinking of anything because Della dipped her fingertips into the water before she placed them over his.
Her skin was cool, as was the water, her touch calming and light. He wasn’t sure where to look, and so he focused on her face. Her eyes were clear as she stared into the bowl.
“You’ve been hurt,” she finally said, her voice soft, the words even. “You’ve also hurt others.”
None of that was news, or specific enough to cause a blip in his pulse. He figured, in fact, that it was a fairly universal complaint.
“Choosing the military over moving with your family was the best choice. You need to stop wondering and move on.”
Thinking about Janie, about his parents, about how he’d failed them emotionally by not being there…His chest tightened, the fingers of his left hand twitched and he would have made a fist had Della not been holding him in place. Funny, she didn’t seem that strong.
And, really. It wouldn’t have been hard to discover the reasons for the choice he’d made. His friends in Austin knew, though he couldn’t quite see Della calling up any of them to ask.
She inhaled deeply, exhaled slowly. The tips of her fingers flexed; her touch stroked over his knuckles. “Having met you, I can’t say I’m surprised you drew the attention of your superiors so quickly. You’re not an easy man to overlook.”
He hadn’t thought to ask in advance if he was allowed to talk. And so he said nothing instead of telling her that what got him noticed was the same thing that got him into trouble. Trying to make a difference.
He didn’t do well with authority. Not when those in such positions wouldn’t give him the one thing, the only thing, he wanted. Logical reasons for the decisions they made. “That’s the way it’s always been done,” just didn’t cut it. That mindset stopped progress in its tracks, kept good men from making a difference.
“That path isn’t always the easiest one to take.” Della’s fingers slid over his knuckles and the backs of his hands before growing still. “And the price can be so very great.”
But military men and women paid it on a daily basis, and not just in ongoing wars in places like Afghanistan and Iraq. Also in covert operations infiltrating terrorist cells around the world, to gather information to bring them down, and thwart future attacks being planned.
“Most leave their tours never experiencing a gunshot. But you carry scars from several.” Her fingers searched out the pressure points between his bones, pressing lightly, sliding to his wrists then back. “You’ve seen more conflict than a man should ever see.”