by Julie Miller
Alex grinned. “We’ll let you have a punch or two before we arrest him for violating his no-contact order.”
“It was an abusive relationship?” Pike asked, possibly remembering the trauma his wife had suffered growing up.
Mark nodded. “Amy told me he put her in the hospital. Then he tried to blackmail her into not reporting him.”
“And he’s the one who lost his job and ended up serving time.” Alex raked his fingers through his dark curly hair and huffed a noise of admiration. “That woman sounds like she’s got some backbone. Think you can handle her, baby brother?”
“I can handle her just fine,” Mark answered, refusing to be baited by his teasing. “She says she needs me, and I don’t intend to let her down.”
“Hold on a minute.” Pike braced his elbows on his knees and leaned forward. “Matt said you were struggling with some kind of savior complex because of Grandpa Sid. Taking risks you shouldn’t, getting involved with a woman you barely know—”
“I know Amy in every way I need to.” Mark straightened where he stood. He didn’t have to defend his feelings for Amy, but he was doing it anyway. Because denying his feelings for her would be a lie. “I’ve talked more to Amy Hall in these past two weeks than I have to any other woman I dated for months. How long did you have to be with Hope...or Audrey—” he included Alex’s wife in his argument, too “—before you knew you were in love with them?”
Tactical error! Mark saw the transformation from concerned argument to surprise to amusement at his expense on his brothers’ faces.
“You’re in love with her?” Pike asked. He and Alex exchanged a knowing look. “Uh-oh.”
Mark crossed the room and tossed his empty coffee cup in the trash with more force than was necessary. “My point is, I’m not doing this for Amy because I feel guilty about Grandpa and I think I have to make amends. She needs somebody. She says she needs me. I want to be there for her.”
“We’re not questioning what’s in your heart, baby bro.” Alex moved in beside him, slapping a hand against his shoulder. “Well, not about Amy.”
Why did Pike moving in on the other side of Mark make him feel like he was about to get some kind of intervention on his love life? “You didn’t answer my question. Do you love her?”
Mark glanced up into blue eyes and down into brown before he answered. “How do you know?”
“You know,” Alex assured him.
Pike’s reply was more helpful. “Does anything scare you more than losing her?”
Mark squeezed his eyes shut and remembered the blinding anger he’d felt when he’d caught O’Brien trapping Amy in that burned-out bedroom. He remembered the utter destruction of an innocent life when they’d discovered Jocelyn Brunt’s body and when he’d found Lissette Peterson dead, bound and burning in last night’s fire. He remembered the angry bruises on Amy’s hand and wrist and the pictures someone had taken of her, watching her, stalking her. His gut was tight with dread as he connected the dots and imagined some bastard breaking Amy’s stubborn will and silencing that beautiful mouth.
Yeah. Losing Amy scared him more than anything.
“I love her.”
Pike squeezed his shoulder. “She can’t do any better than you, baby bro.”
Alex squeezed the other shoulder. “We’ll get this guy,” he promised. “You’re a Taylor. You’ll keep her safe. We’ve got your back for whatever you need.”
“Thanks.”
And then, because they were brothers and they loved each other and they knew each other so well, Alex ended the supportive moment with a punch to Mark’s shoulder. “Then, if you’re not moping over this woman, and you’re not feeling guilty about Grandpa Sid, why did you make Grandma cry?”
Mark groaned and shoved them both off. “This is not the time, Alex.”
Pike stopped him at the door and showed him an old family picture in his wallet from when they were newly adopted kids. “See this picture? She’s smiling. You made her cry, dude, by skipping her open house. You didn’t even give her a reason why. Not cool.”
“I’ve already had this conversation with Matt.”
Alex nodded toward the curvy redhead coming down the hall to join them, but he had one more lick to get in before the conversation ended. “Then you know what you need to do to make it right.”
Amy arched a questioning eyebrow as she walked up to the three of them. “Am I interrupting anything?”
Alex grinned. “I see what’s to like, Mark. Nicely done.”
“Excuse me?” Amy was an only child. She had no idea how relentless the teasing among a team of brothers could be.
Mark reached for her hand and pulled her into the break room. “Red, these are my brothers Alex and Pike.”
He knew when she touched her necklace that she was a little anxious about this introduction. She was grounding herself, reminding herself she could deal with this. And she could do it with her beautiful smile. “Wow. Uncles? Brothers? Are you related to every cop in Kansas City?”
Alex, who was shorter than she was, took her other hand and winked. “Just the good-lookin’ ones like me.”
Pike nudged Alex aside to shake her hand, as well. “Ignore him. He’s married, adopting a baby and not nearly as charming as he thinks he is. I’m Pike Taylor. Beautiful wife. Two kids. Big dog. I’m the brains of the family.”
“You wish.” Alex shoved him right back.
“You two work this out on your own time.” Mark slid his hand behind Amy’s waist, steering her toward the elevators. “We have to go.”
“Nice to meet you, Amy,” Pike called after them.
“Talk to Grandma, Mark.” Alex was more direct as he followed them to the elevators. “I can’t handle her crying over you because you skipped her party, and she thinks you’re avoiding her.”
Several minutes later, Mark and Amy were in his truck, cruising onto the highway toward his grandmother’s house east of downtown KC. Mark was deep in thought, about Grandpa Sid, about his brothers’ concern that he was alienating the one family member he loved the most, about his feelings for Amy.
Probably because his brooding radiated off him and filled up the truck cab, Amy reached over to adjust the air-conditioning and broke the silence. “Wow. Your brothers are sure protective of your grandmother. Saving the day seems to be a trait that runs in your family.”
He grunted. She was tapping into a well of emotions he wasn’t sure he could keep a cap on anymore.
“Why didn’t you go to the party?” she asked. “Did you have to work?”
Mark’s fingers tightened on the steering wheel. He felt her eyes on his hands, knew she had some kind of weird fascination with men’s hands and wondered what message she was getting from his white-knuckled grip.
They’d pulled off on the exit to Lee’s Summit Road before Amy spoke again. “Is this about your grandfather’s death?”
“Don’t you push, too.” The cap had been opened, and the emotions were steaming to the top.
“If you haven’t noticed, that’s kind of my nature. You’re hurting. Apparently, she’s hurting, too, if your brothers are that worried.” Her gaze darted between his eyes and his hands. “If you want to stay for a while and talk to her, I don’t mind. Gran and I can wait in the truck.”
Mark shook his head and turned south. “I want you and Comfort to stay with Grandma. At least for a night or two. One of my uncles or brothers can be there to keep an eye on you. You and I should go back to your house to pack some things for her. I’ll stop by my place on the way back and pack a bag so I can stay out at the farm. I don’t think we should leave it unattended.”
“One, no one is chasing me out of my own home. And two, do you feel responsible for your grandfather’s death?”
“What?” The truck swerved toward the next lane as his hands jerked on the wheel. That vat of emotion
was completely uncorked now. “I am responsible.” He wasn’t sure if it was his brothers’ badgering or the fact that he’d already shared so much with Amy that he felt he could talk to her about anything. He pounded the steering wheel as the guilt and pain came pouring out. “You’ve seen a glimpse of what a big, loving, crazy family I have. I took him away from all that.”
“Did you murder him?”
“What? Of course not. He had a heart attack. We were...” He shook his head. His jaw hurt because of how tightly he was clenching it. “I don’t want you to see me hurt and angry like this. I don’t want you to ever be afraid of me.”
“Pull off into that parking lot, Mark. We need to talk.” Oh, man, she was tough. On the outside. But he knew how vulnerable she could be, too. She pointed to the next turnoff. “Do it, Fire Man.”
He glanced across the seat. If she had on that bossy, let’s-run-into-the-fire look on her face, he would keep driving. Instead, she looked frightened, sad. She cared that he was hurting. He couldn’t resist the woman who looked at him with those hazel eyes as though she believed he could make her world better.
Slowing the truck, he pulled up beside an empty ball field in Adair Park. Before he’d even turned off the engine, she was unbuckling and climbing onto her seat. She reached across the center console and placed her hands over his, gently willing him to let go—of the steering wheel and of the guilt and pain battling inside him. “For what it’s worth, you are too kind, too Captain Good Guy, for me ever to be afraid of you, Fire Man. Now talk.”
He pulled her hands to his lips and kissed them. She waited patiently for Mark to unfasten his seat belt and push his seat all the way back. She didn’t protest when he reached across the truck to pull her onto his lap. With her long legs stretched out across the console, she wound one arm around his neck and stroked the angles of his cheek and jaw with gentle fingertips. Although the sweet weight of her hip nestled against his groin stirred other ideas, he reveled in her tender ministrations. She was warm and caring and strong and irresistible. Mark felt the hard shell that guarded his emotions crack open and crumble into dust.
Maybe she was right about the whole rescuing thing. He was the one who needed to be rescued. He was the one who needed to trust that his heart and his secrets and his future would be safe with her.
After several moments of simply touching her hair and putting his faith in those green-gold eyes, Mark drew his hand down the smooth skin of her neck to capture the chain she always wore between his fingers. He traced the path of the chain down to the pendant of knotted silver around a small heart and treasured the warmth it had drawn from her skin into his palm. The symbolism of trusting Amy with his own heart and all its twisty complications wasn’t lost on him. She had made this beautiful thing. She had made his heart come alive again.
And she still waited for him to speak.
“Grandpa and I were...” He hated to say the touchy word around her, but she wanted the truth. “We were rescuing some people from a bad car accident. The strain was too much for his heart.” Her sympathetic gasp couldn’t stop him now. The comfort of her hand stroking his jaw couldn’t stop him, either. “I saved everyone else that day. Didn’t save the one man who mattered the most.”
“Was he as old as Martha?”
“A couple years older. Why?”
Her fingers trailed down his neck to rest against his chest. “My grandfather was seventy-nine when he passed. His doctor said every heart has only so many beats in it. Whether you were helping those people who needed you or not, maybe his heart was done. It was his time.”
He released the pendant and curled his hand around the curve of her thigh. “Great. So, you’re saying he would have died in my truck driving home from the lake. Still my watch.”
“You need to talk to your grandmother about all this, Mark. You’re both grieving. Instead of fighting each other, you could be healing each other.”
“It hurts.”
“Hell yes, it hurts.” She slipped her arms around his neck and hugged him tightly, briefly, before sitting back in his lap. Her hands framed his jaw. “I was in the middle of Preston’s trial when my grandfather died. You don’t think I wanted to be there for him? You don’t think I felt guilty that all my trouble caused him so much stress that it probably contributed to his heart attack?”
He rubbed his hand up to her bottom and down to her knee, wanting to draw her even closer. “You didn’t tell me that’s how you lost him. I’m sorry.”
“Look, Mark, I know I’m not the poster child for smart choices and easy answers, but I do know about surviving. I know about all the fear and guilt and grief that goes along with that.” She stroked her fingers across his lips, and he felt the tugging need to kiss her all the way down to his groin. “The number one thing I’ve learned is to be with the people who love you the most. When Grandpa Leland died, Gran needed me. She didn’t need me wallowing in self-pity. She needed someone to take care of. She needed someone to grieve with who understood just how much it hurts to lose someone you love. She needed someone to love when Grandpa Leland died. So did I. So do you.” Tears glistened in her eyes, but she blinked them away before Mark’s thumb could catch one. “Getting over a loss like this—it’s not going to fix itself overnight. But it will get better. I promise. If you’re anything like your grandfather, I know he was a good man. I can imagine the loss you feel. Let your grandmother take care of you a little bit. Let her talk and share memories. And you do the same. Don’t deny her—or you—the chance to heal together.”
When her fingers tried to brush his hair into order, the last of Mark’s strength snapped. He crushed Amy in his arms, buried his nose in the herbal scent of her hair and finally shed the tears that had been locked up inside him.
Her arms circled around him and held him tight as she whispered soft comforts against his ear and gently rocked him. Mark shook with the depth of his grief. He released some of his guilt into the depth of her strength. And still she held on.
He loved this woman so much. He needed her. He wanted her. Whether it was yin and yang, Captain Good Guy and the bad girl, intuitive and creative and grounded in training and duty, she completed him. Amy Hall made Mark Taylor whole again. This woman who had seemed so alone knew more about being together with him than he ever knew he needed.
Somewhere along the way, the intensity of his emotions turned to passion, and the generosity of her comfort turned to a blinding need to know all of her.
Mark seized her mouth in a searing kiss that ignited a fire behind his eyes and in his heart and in that potent male part of him that wanted to link them together in the most elemental way. After a quick scan outside to assure the privacy of their surroundings, Mark tilted his seat back as far as it would go and pulled Amy on top of him.
He palmed the back of her head and squeezed her bottom, fitting her to him in all the right places. He thrust his tongue in her mouth and traded sparks of desire, claiming and taking as equal partners. His jeans grew uncomfortably tight as her thighs settled on either side of him and gripped his hips. Her breasts were beautiful, pillowy mounds that flattened against his chest, her nipples beady pearls that branded him through the clothes they still wore.
Too many clothes, too tight a space, perfect woman, consuming need. Not the way he’d imagined making love to Amy. But he had a will, and he would make a way. He cupped her hips and lifted her slightly off him, loving how she arched to keep their lips together even as he unbuttoned her blouse and filled his hand with a full perfect breast. He caught the tip between his thumb and hand and she finally tore her mouth from his and gasped a hot, breathy moan. “Not fair, Fire Man. This is supposed to be a two-way... I want to...”
When he unhooked her bra and moved her to capture the pale pink tip in his mouth, he discovered she had trouble saying any words at all. She hummed. She moaned. She made him crazy, kissing and nibbling on any part of him she could rea
ch. Her fingers tightened against his scalp when he moved her to claim the other breast.
She knew where this was going because she uttered a single word—“Protection?”—before tugging at the hem of his T-shirt and scorching her hands across his flank and chest.
“Are you sure?” A rational part of his brain tried to fight its way through the fire raging inside him. She unzipped him and her hand found its way inside his jeans to cup him, and Mark discovered he was the one struggling to talk. “Can’t...be...too...good here.”
“With you, it’ll be perfect.” He guided her hand to the back pocket of his jeans and she pulled out his billfold. “We’ll do it pretty next time.”
“Next time. I like that.”
“Shut up, Fire Man.” Together, they opened the condom, pushed aside jeans, shorts and panties. Mark cracked his knee on the steering column, but barely felt it. Amy’s elbow hit the automatic door lock the next time he lifted her. “Soon. Now.”
And then he lowered her on top of him. She was hot, wet, perfect. Her moans were music to his ears. Her greedy hands roaming all over him were incendiary. Once they were linked as closely as a man and woman could be, Mark thrust inside her. Her soft, freckled breasts bobbed in his face as they found the rhythm they needed to bring each other to a swift, fiery completion. As Mark released himself on one last, powerful thrust, he slipped his thumb between them to tease her sensitive bundle of nerves and ignite the tremors that cascaded all around him. “Yep. Great...hands...” Overcome by the strength of her release, she gasped his name and collapsed on top of him.
Mark wrapped his arms around Amy and whispered, “You’re beautiful.”
A few minutes later, spurred by the reality of all they needed to do and the possibility that they might be discovered, despite the empty parking lot and trees that blocked his truck and the ball field from the road, Mark sat up, spilling Amy into his lap. She scrambled over the console and Mark straightened his seat. He put the condom back into its wrapper and dropped it into the trash while she adjusted her clothes and combed her fingers through the loose hair he’d pulled from her braid.