by Jill Shalvis
Lilah rose to her knees on the bed and gave him the “come here” finger crook.
Raising a brow, he walked forward until his legs bumped the bed.
She wrapped her arms around his neck. “Hi,” she said.
He bent his head and kissed her until they were both breathless, and then he set his forehead to hers. “Hi.”
She smiled and he got hard. Just like that. “Dinner,” he said. “Out. You up for it?”
“Another date?”
“If I say yes,” he asked cautiously, “are you going to tell me you don’t have anything to wear?”
“Hey, you’re the one nearly naked.” She ran her hands down his chest, over his abs, and then played with the edge of the towel low on his hips, the one barely covering him. “And you smell fantastic,” she murmured, and took a bite out of his shoulder. “I could eat you up.”
He was on board with that.
But she got off the bed. “I’ll get dressed. I ordered something new.” She stripped off the T-shirt and then the yoga pants as she walked to the closet in nothing but a teeny tiny black pair of bikini panties.
He groaned.
She shot him a smile over her shoulder. “You’ve seen it all before.”
Yes, up front and personal. Three nights in a row, in fact, and he couldn’t imagine ever getting tired of it. “Put clothes on,” he said in a voice so low and thick he barely recognized it as his own, “or you’ll be dinner.”
Laughing, Lilah slid a halter-style summer dress over her head and slipped her feet into sandals, then twirled for him.
“Pretty,” he said, and tugged her into him so that she fell against his chest. Sliding his hands down he cupped and squeezed her ass.
“Hmmm,” she hummed, face against his throat as she rocked her hips to his. “Either you’re happy to see me, or”—she rocked again, grinding into him, making him groan—“you’re packing again.”
Giving her a light smack on her ass, he pulled away and dressed, then carried her out the door.
“I was shot in the arm, not the leg,” she pointed out. “And I’m all better. I can walk.”
He didn’t set her down until he placed her in the passenger side of his truck.
“Where are we going?”
“State secret.”
She rolled her eyes, but she didn’t ask any more questions until he’d parked outside of a steak house in Coeur d’Alene.
“I needed red meat,” he said to her silence.
“Yes. It’s because you’re a caveman.”
Smiling, he came around for her, but she shoved him in the chest. “Don’t even think about carrying me in there.”
“Some women like to be carried.”
“I’m not some women.”
“True,” he said.
She waited until they were seated and had ordered before she asked, “Are we celebrating something?”
“Yes. The fact that I’m not wearing duck shit today and also that for the first time in days I’m done working before bedtime.”
Some of her enjoyment of the evening drained. “I know. I know and I’m so sorry. I wanted to come back to work today, but you said you’d withhold sex if I got up.”
He set his hand over hers. “I’m not complaining, Lilah. You work your ass off. I know you’re still hurting some, and I wanted you to have one more day off.”
She studied him over the candle flickering between them. “Thanks.”
“For?”
“My life, for starters. I still can’t believe you and Dell got to me so fast when I needed you.”
His eyes softened and he set down his glass and reached for her hand. “You’d have been fine.”
“It could have gone another way.” She drew a shaky breath. “I should have been more aware of my surroundings. I need to be more careful.”
“More careful would be good.”
She scrubbed her hands over her face. “I was just so damn tired, and then I got that call . . . ”
“So next time you’ll take one of us with you.”
“You won’t be here next time.”:,You know what I mean.
His eyes were steady on hers. “You know what I mean. You’ll take someone.”
She stared into her wineglass and nodded, trying not to think about how soon that might be. It’d already been close to a month, which meant it could conceivably be only a matter of days.
“What did you get on your test?” he asked. “Grades posted yet?”
“Got an A.” She smiled. “Only two more semesters to go.”
“And then what?”
And wasn’t that just the scary part. She didn’t know.
“You’re awfully closemouthed about your hopes and dreams,” he noted.
She raised a brow. “Recognize that, do you?”
Clearly not feeling playful, his eyes never wavered. “You must have ideas on what you want.”
“Yes.”
He waited for more, but suddenly she wasn’t feeling like sharing. Liar, said a little voice. You always feel like sharing. You’re just afraid to give it all and then lose him. And you are going to lose him. Soon.
He was looking at her, and when she remained silent, he said, “So you let me into your body but not into your head.” He nodded but didn’t look happy. “I get that.”
“You don’t want to be in my head,” she reminded him. “And hell, Brady, half the time I don’t want to be in my head.”
His eyes were stormy. Filled with censure. Feeling like a jerk, she pushed around a piece of steak on her plate. She understood why she was feeling out of sorts. She’d started this whole adventure with him for fun, but then she’d gone and gotten her heart involved. Which didn’t explain what his problem was. “Help me out here, Brady. I’m not sure exactly why we’re doing this.”
“Doing what?”
“Fighting.”
“Are we fighting?”
She shrugged. “Feels like it.”
“I’m just trying to get to know you better.”
“But why? You’re not long-term, remember?”
“Hello, pot,” he said softly. “Meet kettle.”
She stared into his eyes. “Not fair.”
“No?” He leaned forward, intent and focused on her. “Then tell me why everyone and everything else in this town is allowed to take up residence in your fold, but you keep me out.”
“You didn’t want in, remember?”
“Christ.” He sat back, his expression suggesting that maybe she was being an unfathomable pain in his ass.
Which was true. She was being a pain. It was called fear. Because she decided right then and there that she was absolutely not going to let herself ruin what very well might be one of the last few nights she had with him. No regrets, she reminded herself. Not ever again.
They left the restaurant in silence.
Normally that was Brady’s favorite state of being but not tonight. Tonight he needed more.
And it pissed him off.
He opened the door to the truck and went to help Lilah in, but she gave him a long look and he lifted his hands in surrender, backing up to watch her struggle one-handedly.
“Goddammit,” he breathed when she winced in pain from tweaking her still healing arm, and gave her a boost.
When he walked around and angled into the driver’s seat, he felt her hand settle on his arm.
“Thank you.”
Turning toward her, he stroked a strand of hair from her face. “For letting you hurt yourself trying to get into the truck?”
“For letting me be as stubborn as . . . well, you. Turn left,” she said when he would have turned right to take her home.
He turned left and ended up at the convenience store.
“Wait here,” she demanded.
He arched a brow.
“Please,” she added so sweetly that he shook his head and did what she asked. She vanished inside, only to come back five minutes later with a brown bag and a smile.
&nb
sp; “Ian was inside,” she said. “He says if you strike out tonight, I’m to call him.”
“Good to know,” he said, wondering if he was going to indeed strike out. He reached for the bag.
“Nope,” she said, holding it out of his way. “Surprise. Go straight.”
He went straight.
“Now right again.”
He slid her a glance, but in the dark of the night he couldn’t see her expression. “Finally decided to take me to some remote area to off me?”
Her soft laugh was a balm to the soul he hadn’t realized was aching. “You afraid of me, Brady?”
More than you know. “Should I be?”
She was quiet a moment. Then she let out a soft “yes.”
Twenty-One
Lilah took Brady to the lake, his earlier words echoing in her head.
You’re awfully closemouthed about your hopes and dreams.
You let me into your body but not into your head.
I’m just trying to get to know you better.
The night was balmy, with a nearly full moon, and aware as she had been all week that her time with him was winding down, she took his hand, wanting to lose herself in him, wanting to feel connected.
They walked to the water’s edge, sitting there, absorbing the night. The soft breeze rustling the hundred-foot pines. The distant cry of something looking for its mate. The water lapping near their feet.
He was right, she had held back. Big-time. She’d done so out of self-preservation, but that didn’t make it okay. If she was going to have no regrets, she needed to be fearless. Because no way was she going to be the woman who couldn’t—or wouldn’t—let herself love.
She pulled the bottle of whiskey out of the bag and made him laugh softly. God, she loved making him laugh. He didn’t do it often, but when he did it was a beautiful sound.
She went back into the bag for her second item—a deck of cards.
“Strip poker?” he asked hopefully.
She showed him that they weren’t regular playing cards but the game Uno. “It’s all they had.” She shuffled and dealt, then took a swig of the whiskey and offered the bottle to Brady.
Eyes on hers, he tossed back a swallow, then smiled because she was still coughing. “So, you do this a lot,” he said.
She laughed and picked up her cards. They played a round and she lost. She set down the cards.
“Strip Uno?” he asked this time, still hopeful.
When she smiled, Brady knew he wasn’t going to get to see her strip.
“Something not quite as fun as stripping,” she said. “But I hope you’ll like it.” She hesitated. “I’m going to tell you something about me.”
He was surprised by this.
Lit by the glow of the moon playing off the water, she smiled at his expression. “I know, brace yourself. Are you ready?”
“Hit me,” he said.
“I grew up out here.”
“I already knew that.” He eyed her sundress, knowing she wore only a pair of skimpy, mind-blowing panties beneath—which meant that he could have had her naked in two rounds of Strip Uno.
“Yes, but you didn’t know that I grew up poor as dirt.”
He stopped thinking about Strip Uno and met her gaze. “I guessed.”
She nodded. “Of course at the time, I had no idea we were that bad off,” she said. “My grandma never let on. She took on odds jobs like cleaning houses and sewing, taking me with her so I wouldn’t be alone. She’d pretend we were going on a grand adventure, and I believed her until in second grade, when John Dayley told me I was poor white trash.”
Brady’s chest tightened, for her grandma, for the little girl she’d been.
Laughing a little, she shook her head. “I didn’t even know what white trash meant,” she said, not nearly as bothered as he. “When I got home, I asked my grandma and she said it meant that we were special. The next weekend she took me to the circus. One of her cleaning clients had left her the tickets. It was”—she closed her eyes and smiled in fond memory—“amazing. I wanted to be a circus ring leader. I wanted to grow up and have all those animals around me, and I wanted to take care of them.” She paused, glancing at him to make sure he wasn’t going to laugh.
But that ache in his chest had spread now, and he didn’t feel much like laughing.
“It was my first personal goal for myself,” she said quietly, hitting him with those mossy green depths that he could jump into and never come up for air.
He smiled past a tight throat. “I like it.”
They took another shot of whiskey each and played a second round. He lost, but only because he forgot to say Uno. Lilah looked at him expectantly.
“I’d rather strip,” he said.
“Don’t tempt me. Talk. Tell me something about you. Something about when you were young.”
He found it far easier than he could have imagined, which was no doubt thanks to the whiskey. “I was a punk-ass teenager when I landed at Sol’s, and pissed off at the world.” God, so pissed off. Even now he could remember the anger burning through him at every turn. “I’d just gone through a few different foster homes, each nicer than the last, and for various reasons, I didn’t get to stay at any of them.”
And he’d wanted to. Stay. He’d wanted a place where he belonged to someone.
“Why couldn’t you stay?” she asked.
He shrugged, able to once again feel that bone-deep helplessness at not being in charge of his own fate. He’d been through some hairy shit in his life, especially in the army rangers, where too many times to count death had been a certainty, and yet nothing had been worse than that helplessness he could still practically taste. “The first couple that took me in ended up getting pregnant, and she got too sick to care for a kid, even a nearly grown one.”
“Oh, Brady,” she said softly.
“The second family had four daughters of their own already. They’d requested a girl, and when one came along, they traded me in.”
“What?” She straightened, eyes blazing. “You weren’t a used car!” she said in outrage, making him smile and reach for her hand.