“I wouldn’t want to go into one thinking that, no.” She sat forward again, gesturing with her glass. “I mean, I watched my mother work her ass off to salvage what she had with my father. She wheeled and dealed and begged, even agreed to let him do his man-alone-with-nature thing while she took care of me. He left anyway. Just loaded up his truck and his horse trailer and drove off into the sunset.”
Hmm. Was she basing her feelings about relationships on one couple? Her parents? She had to know that marriages rarely survived something so horrific as what had happened to their child. Or…wait. Was Jamie blaming herself for her father’s desertion?
Kell looked over at the strands of hair blowing into her face, catching on her lips and lashes. He reached for them, brushed them back over her shoulder, but then he let his hand linger there, let his fingers drift softly over the skin beneath her ear.
It was a big mistake, touching her, and even though he pulled away, he knew he’d done so too late. He’d crossed a line he shouldn’t have, and even if he’d wanted to he could never go back. “If your father didn’t work just as hard, then their marriage didn’t stand a chance. There are two people in a relationship, and if only one is working, it’s hard to imagine that it wouldn’t fail.”
Jamie sat shaking her head, before pushing to her feet and walking to the center of the driveway, as if she’d reached her limit on sitting still. She wobbled a bit, swayed a bit more, found her footing and stood in profile, her hair lifting on the warm night wind.
The moon bathed her; Kell could see the globes of her breasts, her nipples, the long line of her back to the gorgeous swell of her rump, the hint of her sex beneath the cotton of her pjs that was very very thin. Just like she wasn’t wearing a bra, she wasn’t wearing panties.
“The problem with my parents’ relationship is that it grew to be about a third person, not just the two my father signed on for. The third, me,” she said again, this time her voice cracking like glass, “was what ended up tearing them apart.”
Kell didn’t know the details, he had no right to assume or intrude. But Jamie’s state of mind was a crucial component in what he was hoping would be tomorrow’s success—though he knew what was going on here, tonight, between them had nothing to do with the case.
“It wasn’t your fault, Jamie—”
“Of course it was,” she shouted back, the sound like an explosive blast in the stillness.
If she’d had neighbors living close, he would’ve expected lights in windows to come on, curtains to sweep aside, concerned eyes to peer out and see if she needed help. But her closest neighbor on Lamplighter Lane was half a block away, and the house remained quiet and still.
Inside, Kell was anything but, his stomach and heart battling a surge of emotion, and he had to force his frustration into calm. “If your father left because of what happened to you, it was his problem, not yours. You were in the wrong place at the wrong time. That’s all.”
“A wrong place he didn’t want me to be,” she said, and finished off her drink, heaving her glass toward the garage, where it shattered, the slivers and shards scattering on the pavement.
Kell didn’t move. He waited—though he would stop her if she even thought about cleaning up the glass. She was barefoot, a little bit drunk, and it was dark in the shadow of the garage.
She stayed where she was, however, dropping down and wrapping her arms around her knees, rocking back and forth, her back and shoulders arched like a turtle’s protective shell.
So her father hadn’t wanted her to work at the Sonora Nites Diner? Because of the late hours? Because of the easy access to the interstate? Because he’d wanted her to focus on her studies? Kell hadn’t met her father, had only read about Steven Monroe’s abandonment years after the fact. He had no way of knowing what the issue was between Jamie and her father.
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.
7
JAMIE KNEW BETTER than to drink. She had no tolerance for alcohol. She was an easy drunk, the cheapest of cheap.
And a barefoot Kell Harding, wearing nothing but his jeans, was going to make her cheaper and easier than she’d been in years. She could feel it in her blood, in her bones, a fire of lust and stupidity and Jim Beam.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.