“Sera. You are so far from weak.”
“Still. It’s not really migraines. It just happens when I’m really um…stressed.” She shot him a glance, looking almost…fearful.
He blew out a long sigh. “Sit down.” He patted the couch beside him.
She sat. He felt her warmth, smelled her warm berry-fruity scent.
“It’s not a sign of weakness,” he said. “I’m eating antacids like they’re candy. We all have our triggers.” Speaking of…his gut churned and burned. He reached into his pocket for his roll of antacids and popped a couple into his mouth. Jesus. “But are you sure you’re up for this?”
Sera laid a tentative hand on his thigh. “Yes! I can handle it.”
He sighed. “Sera. If you can’t handle the stress, how are you going to finish this off?”
“I can do it!”
He was silent. She shouldn’t have stepped in like that. “You’re getting personally involved,” he said.
“I can still do it. Please, Ryan. I have to do this.”
He looked at her for a long moment. “I think we both need a good night’s sleep,” he said finally.
She nodded slowly, stood there, slim back straight, head held high, still touchingly pale. “Yes. You’re right. Good night, Ryan.”
And she returned to the bedroom—alone—leaving him to sleep on the couch. Alone.
“I have to go back to L.A.”
Sera struggled up from the depths of sleep, her mind foggy, her mouth fuzzy. She pushed her hair back and blinked at Ryan standing next to her bed in the pale, early morning light.
“What?” She squinted at him.
“The hospital just called. My mom’s not doing well. I’m going back right now. I just need a few things.”
“Oh.” She sat up straight. “Oh no.”
“Sorry to disturb you.” He yanked open a dresser drawer and grabbed some clothes, tossed them into a duffel bag.
“That’s okay. God, Ryan, it’s okay. What can I do?”
“Nothing.” He snagged a couple of shirts out of the closet and a pair of jeans and started to change. Right there in front of her. He turned his back on her as he stepped out of the boxers he’d apparently slept in and tossed them into the laundry hamper. His long, muscular body was entirely naked. She admired the muscles in his legs and his back, rippling and flexing as he moved, her eyes lingering on the two indentations of his lower back just above his round, tight ass, and her hands longed to reach out and touch. He stepped into clean boxers then jeans, and turned back to her as he zipped up and adjusted himself inside the jeans. Her heart picked up speed at the wholly masculine, completely unselfconscious gesture. Then he dragged a clean T-shirt over his head, covering his bare torso with its firm pecs and ripped abs.
His nearly black hair hung loose around his shoulders and he reached for a brush on the dresser, slid it through the silky strands and fastened it at his neck in his usual ponytail. He didn’t bother shaving, his face dark with stubble. God, he was sexy.
She shouldn’t be thinking things like that when his mother was on her deathbed. How could she be so shallow? She struggled to control her breathing.
“What do you want me to do here?” she asked him.
“Just stay out of trouble.”
“But…what about Zocco? Want me to talk to him?”
“Christ, no! Let me do that. I’ll take care of it when I’m back.”
“But…” It didn’t feel right letting him leave like this. “Do you want me to come with you? I could drive…maybe you shouldn’t…”
“I’m fine.” His jaw tight, eyes narrowed, he flicked a glance at her. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll call you when I know more.”
“Okay.”
She sat there cross-legged, the covers across her lap, bit her lip as she watched him finish his packing then grab the bag.
“Bye, Sera.”
And he was gone.
She stared at the closed door for a long moment, listened for the sound of his truck starting and driving away, the roar of the engine gradually fading into silence. Then she flopped back down on the bed. She hoped his mom would be okay. Worry gnawed at her stomach.
He was still angry with her. He thought she shouldn’t have interfered, shouldn’t have cared so much about what happened to Carly. She covered her eyes with her hands for a moment. He was right. She shouldn’t care so much about what happened to Carly.
She sat up and swung her legs over the side of the bed, then headed to the bathroom for a shower. Her headache was gone and she felt mostly normal. Maybe she shouldn’t have interfered with Carly and Vince. Maybe she just should have let things go the way they were supposed to, knowing that if their undercover operation went as it was supposed to, Vince would end up in prison where he belonged.
The thought of how Carly would feel when that happened grabbed at Sera’s insides like a fist. Poor Carly. She was so dependent on Vince and being his woman. It made Sera ache, but she had to accept there was nothing she could do about that.
She poured shampoo into her hand and sudsed up her hair, then tilted her head back to let the soap wash down the drain.
She should go back to L.A. too. She had a huge stash of angel sugar she needed to get rid of. Before the cops decided to raid the house after what happened yesterday. Jesus.
She cranked off the taps and shoved back the shower curtain. She wrapped her head in a towel turban-style, another around her body, and yanked open the bathroom door just as Manny emerged from the other bedroom.
“Uh…hi.” He eyed her attire.
She rolled her bottom lip in. Oh hell, what did she care? Manny was a gorgeous guy, but there were no sparks there like there were with Ryan. She had no freakin’ idea why that was, but it was the reality. “Hi. Need the bathroom?”
“Yup.” He looked past her like he expected Ryan to be there and was afraid he’d interrupted something. A smile tugged the corners of her mouth.
“Ryan’s gone back to L.A.,” she told him, tugging the towel up under her arms. “His mother’s not doing well.”
“Oh.” His brows drew down. “Damn.”
“Yeah. He’ll let us know how she is.”
“Okay.”
“And I’m heading back too. I have to log in all that sugar I bought and do my reports.”
“Okay. I’ve got some things up today—possible lead on some guns.”
“Great.”
She moved past him, a cloud of fragrant steam following her out of the bathroom and returned to her bedroom to dress.
She spent the rest of the day at the ATF offices in L.A. She checked in with her SAC at the DEA to update him on how things were going, leaving out the messed-up emotional parts.
“Where’s Thomas?” Darren barked at her at one point.
She stared back at him. “At the hospital. With his mother. Didn’t he call you?’
He scowled. “Oh yeah. He left me a voice mail. I forgot. How long’s he going to be there?”
“I don’t know,” she replied evenly. “I suppose until he knows what the situation is with his mother. It’s possible…she might pass away.”
Darren’s scowl deepened. “Great. Just what we need right now. My ass is on the line with this op and he’s taking some personal time. Jesus.”
She watched him walk away, his middle jiggling under his shirt, and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. She no longer worried about being callous. Darren Forsythe had that market cornered.
Her cell phone rang. She reached for it, checked the caller ID. Ryan. She smiled and flipped it open. “Hi.”
“Hi.”
He said nothing more, so she asked, “How’s it going?”
There was a long pause. Then he said, “She’s gone.”
Chapter Sixteen
Sera’s heart squeezed. She leaned back in her chair. “I’m sorry, Ryan. So sorry.”
“Yeah. It’s okay.” Silence again. She pictured him, his beautiful face, the sadness he no dou
bt felt.
“Where are you?”
“Still at the hospital.” Another pause. “I have to make some arrangements…” The low tone of his voice told her all she needed to know.
“What can I do?”
“Nothing. That’s not why I called. I just wanted…to tell you…”
“You have to let Darren know.”
“Yeah. I will.” The despair and hurt in his voice stabbed at her. “I’m going to need some time off. A few days, I guess.” She imagined him shoving a hand through his hair.
“That’s okay. We can put things on hold for a few. No big deal.” She wasn’t sure if Darren would echo those words, but whatever.
“Yeah. Thanks. Maybe you could call Vince. Or Carly. Let them know that’s why we’re not around.”
“I can do that.”
“And Manny.”
“Of course. What else?”
“I…nothing. That’s okay.”
She wanted to see him. She ached to see him, to touch him, to comfort him in any small way she could. And she realized she didn’t even know where he lived. Another moment of irony. They lived together in Clover City, had slept together, but she didn’t know where he lived for real. God.
“When will the funeral be?”
“I don’t know.” Silence. “I’m going to try for Friday or Saturday. Gotta give the relatives from out of town a few days to get back.”
“Will you call me and let me know? Where and when?”
“Sure.”
“What are you going to do now?”
“I have a call in to the funeral home. I have to go there and…do stuff. I don’t have a hot clue.”
“Do you want some help?” Her tone was soft. “I can come…”
She fully expected him to say no. That’s what she would do, in the same situation. So she was surprised when he said, “Okay.”
She blinked. “Where should I meet you?’
She made arrangements, touched and warmed by the fact that he actually wanted her, wanted her help, wanted her there.
She met him at the funeral home, sat with him while he planned with the funeral director. She didn’t know Ryan’s mom, couldn’t help with any of the numerous decisions that had to be made, but she could support him on the ones he had to make. An only child, like she was, he was on his own with this.
When they emerged from the building into eye-stabbing sunshine, they both slid sunglasses onto their faces. “What now?” she asked him, slipping her hand into his.
“I have to make some phone calls. I’ll call Mom’s sister in San Diego first, and ask her to pass the news on about the funeral.”
“So you’re going home?”
He stared straight ahead, standing on the sidewalk. “Yeah. I guess.”
He sounded so unenthusiastic, she said, “Come to my place. I’ll make us something to eat.”
“I’m not all that hungry.”
“I know. But you have to eat. Come on.”
She gave him her address, in case they got separated when he followed her home, but he pulled up on the street in front of her apartment building just as she parked in her parking spot.
They went in together. Again, the air in the apartment felt stale and flat. She needed to light some of her favorite candles, open the windows, turn the air conditioning down to cool it off.
She attended to those things while Ryan used his cell phone to make the calls to family, giving them details of the funeral. She opened cupboard doors and surveyed the contents, wondering if she had anything at all she could make into a meal for them. Luckily she put her hands on a box of pasta, a can of tomatoes and some dinner rolls in the freezer she could turn into garlic buns.
Ryan wandered into her tiny kitchen as she worked, chopping garlic that had kept well in the garlic jar on her counter. She tossed it into a pan of fragrant olive oil and gave it a stir. “Smells good,” he said, sitting on a stool at the counter separating kitchen from living room.
“It’s not much, but at least I had something.”
She chopped more garlic and mixed it up with margarine from the fridge.
“Do you want to talk about it?” she asked. “About your mom. Did she die this morning?”
“Yeah.” He heaved a sigh. “I was with her all night. They didn’t think it was going to be long. Then her heart stopped at about two in the morning. They resuscitated her, but I knew she wouldn’t want that. It was only a matter of time. So when her heart stopped again, we just…let her go.”
Sera paused in the act of spreading the buns with garlic butter. She wanted so much to make him feel better, the words came easily to her lips. “It’s not something to be afraid of.” At his lifted brow, she added, “Dying. It’s peaceful and calm. She’s in a wonderful place now.”
He stared at her. After several heartbeats of silence, she said, “I told you about when I tried to commit suicide.”
“Yeah.” His eyebrows pinched together.
“Well, for a while I actually was dead. On the way to the hospital in the ambulance.”
“Okay.” He blinked. “They resuscitated you at the hospital.”
“You could say that. Or you could say I decided to come back.”
“Huh? Come back from where?”
She sighed. “I had a near-death experience. I was…” She bit her lip, peeked at him through her eyelashes. “I was outside my body for a while. I was watching them try to resuscitate me, rushing me to the hospital. It was very…weird. I wasn’t down there being worked on, I was floating above. I could move around.”
“Don’t tell me. You saw a bright light…”
She pursed her lips. “Don’t make fun of me. I’m not the only person this has happened to; it’s an accepted phenomenon.”
He shrugged. “Yeah, I’ve heard that before.”
“Yes, I saw a bright light. It was as if I was looking down a long corridor of dazzling light. After I’d watched myself, watched the people working on me, I was tired of it and I wanted to go. But I came back.” She hesitated. “It wasn’t scary, Ryan. Sometimes it gives people comfort to know that their loved ones have gone somewhere wonderful and beautiful and peaceful, away from the evil and hardships and pain of life. Your mom is okay now.”
For a long moment he said nothing, and she arranged the garlic buns on a baking sheet. “Thank you,” he finally said, his voice hoarse. “That does help. I want to believe that.”
The fact that he didn’t argue with her or tell her she was crazy or even get up and leave squeezed her throat. “It’s up to you to believe, or not,” she said. “I think it helps. If you believe.”
She finished making their dinner while he talked about his mom, and Sera felt unreasonably sorry that she had never met the woman who had raised such a strong, moral, determined man. She also felt envious of Ryan for having a mother who loved him that much, unconditionally, no matter what, unlike her own mother who would have sold her daughter to feed her addiction. Her chest tightened uncomfortably as she compared their lives.
And yet they’d ended up in the same place, doing the same thing, fighting the same fight.
“It’s weird,” Ryan said after dinner. “I always knew she was there, in the background, rooting for me, even when I was undercover and couldn’t see much of her. I don’t know how I’m going to do it, without her there.” One corner of his mouth deepened as he rose from the stool to help Sera do the dishes. “I’m all alone now.”
She’d been alone so long, she didn’t think much about it. Usually. The image of her father flickered through her mind. Okay, yeah, he was there in the back of her mind too, but it was different. Ryan knew his mother loved him and was there for him. She knew no such thing. Her father had left her and never come back. Maybe he was out there somewhere, but she was never going to know that, so it wasn’t worth thinking about.
When the dishes had been loaded into the dishwasher and it hummed away, Sera turned to Ryan, drying her hands on a towel. He looked so lost, so boyi
shly sad, that she moved toward him without thinking and wrapped her arms around his waist in a hug. His big, warm body felt solid and strong. She pressed her cheek to his chest, inhaled the scent of him, the clean, male scent of his soap mingled with the faint peppermint of antacids. His arms slid around her too, and he laid his face on her hair. They stood like that for a long moment, their hearts beating against each other, breathing in unison.
“Thank you, Sera.”
She lifted her head at his whispered words. “For what?”
His lips quirked. “For the hug. For the comfort. The understanding. Mostly, just for being there.”
She didn’t know what to say, her throat tight and achy. So she just leaned against him again. His hands stroked through her hair, and then he tipped her head back and lowered his face. He paused, their mouths only a breath apart, and their eyes met. He held her captive with his gaze, those endless amber eyes drawing her in and in…and then her eyes fluttered closed as his mouth touched hers in a soft, brushing kiss.
She kissed him back, gentle puckers of her lips against his, once, twice, then he deepened the kiss, his mouth opening wider, his tongue stroking across her bottom lip. She opened for him, met his searching kiss with her own, digging her fingers into the soft fabric of his shirt at his back.
One hand cupped her head, the other slid down her back to her butt, resting there, spreading heat. Warmth cascaded over her and she pressed herself against him, sliding her arms around his neck and spearing her fingers into his silky hair.
Last time, they’d been hot and panting for each other, sexual need fueled by the adrenaline of their physical fight. Tonight, it started as a comforting hug, a reassuring kiss, gentle warmth and consolation, but it quickly combusted into a blaze of desire, consuming both of them in its heat.
Flame spiraled inside her; fever suffused her. God! They kissed again and again, mouths craving each other, hands ravenous, bodies yearning.
“Sera,” Ryan gasped, and held her head with both hands, holding her back from him. They gazed at each other. Her heart thudded, her skin burned. His mouth was wet and shiny, his eyes dark and hot. Did he want to stop?
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