Playing for Keeps

by Cherry Adair

  Of course he didn’t. Jon Raven had always been one hundred percent focused on what Jon Raven wanted to the exclusion of all else. Oh, she knew he cared about her in his self-possessed, it’s-all-about-me way. Jon was around when he wanted to be. When his schedule permitted. She was little more than a footnote in his action-packed life.

  Well, she wanted more than the few crumbs he tossed her way when it suited him. Not that Jon’s crumb tossing had been anything to sneer at. Five minutes of his undivided attention equaled a year with a lesser man.

  And that was the problem.

  It thrilled her and annoyed her in like amounts. When he made time for her-for them-it was nothing short of spectacular. Especially in bed. In bed, they’d been- Danica dragged her already soggy brain away from that minefield. Sex had never been a problem with them.

  Everything else. But never sex.

  He took her hand, wrapping her fingers around the cup, and pushed it inexorably toward her mouth. His dark hair had grown since she’d seen him last-twelve months, one week, and three days ago, not that she was counting-and now brushed his collar. His eyes, blue as Mediterranean waters, looked bruised and intense. And his mouth-God, his mouth. The mouth that used to take her to places of intense delight was now narrowed with poorly veiled. . .what? Anger? Annoyance?

  Fear?

  No way. Jon Raven wasn’t afraid of anything.

  “Buck up and drink,” he said tightly. Using a finger to lift the cup to her mouth. “These bastards have been drugging you. You have to wake up and get with the program.”

  Because he wasn’t giving her multiple choices, and because she knew the caffeine would clear her brain, Danica chugged the coffee like bad medicine-worse now that it was lukewarm-and thrust the cup back at him. Making sure this time to avoid any skin contact. “I understand the principle. Stop bullying me.”

  “I’m not bullying you, I’m saving you.”

  “Well, don’t save me so loudly, okay?”

  She felt at a distinct disadvantage as he loomed above her. Still a tad foggy on the details, she remembered being dragged up, positioned against a mound of pillows and him holding a cup to her lips. A quick glance down to see what the hell she was wearing, revealed the crumpled sheets bunched in her lap, leaving her torso revealed, clad in a too flimsy, unfamiliar white nightie.

  Jon’s repositioning had pulled the thin silk taut so it now strained against her like a second skin. As armor went, the nightie was useless. The lacy cups meant to conceal her breasts-sort of-were low enough that the areola of each nipple showed. A fact made crystal clear as she felt his gaze drop to admire the view.

  Not even attempting to be subtle, she pulled at the stretchy lace so it at least covered her nipples. She wanted to yank the sheet up too, but he was sitting on it. Danica hated that despite suffering the trauma of a plane crash and being drugged for God knew how long, Jon don’t-you-dare-smile-at-me-that-way Raven had only to look at her to inspire that sudden rush of need inside her. He was warm and solid, and smelled of Lever 2000 soap, a heady, aphrodisiacal fragrance reminding Danica of long steamy showers and hot sex.

  Sadly, she knew that when she was ninety, in a wheelchair and half blind, a mere flash of his attention would still have the same effect on her.

  He glanced; she melted. Nothing changed.

  But she could cover up. She had to if she wanted to protect her dignity. Not physical dignity-she liked her body just fine. Emotional dignity. She didn’t want Jon to see that even in her weakened state she still responded to him in the same old way.

  Nerve endings sat up and begged for attention.

  Girl parts melted.

  Rational thought took a vacation.

  Damn him!

  All her parts shrieked as Danica moved, and she couldn’t help a moan of pain. Jon reacted as if she’d screamed at the top of her lungs in agony.

  Gentle hands shot out to grip her shoulders as he searched her face with eyes glowing like the hot coals of hell. “Where does it hurt?”

  Everywhere. But body aches were overshadowed, in spades, by the ache in her heart caused by seeing him again. She realized that she’d been a whole hell of a lot more immune when he wasn’t in the same geographical area as she was. Clenching her teeth, Danica put up a hand in a wait-a-second motion. “I’m okay.”

  Of course, she was okay. Pain meant she was alive. She gritted her teeth and tried to push herself higher on the pillows. “A few muscle relaxants are druggi—Hey! What are y—” He slid his palms under her arms to help her sit up straighter, then held her carefully by bracing a hard, muscled arm across her chest as he leaned her forward, readjusting the pillows behind her back.

  She closed her eyes, trying not to breathe in the achingly familiar scent of him. They were close enough for her to feel the heat of his body, close enough for his breath to wash over her upturned face. She felt the memory imprint of his fingers skimming the sides of her breasts. Her nipples grew tighter and harder. She fought it for all she was worth. No. No. No.

  Jon lifted his head. With just scant inches between them, his eyes held hers. And asked a question.

  Yes. God, yes. “Forget it,” she told him flatly.

  He straightened, his mouth curved slightly in a slappably smug smile. He, better than anyone, knew her body. Generally, better than she did herself. He knew how much his touch affected her. Knew that breathing against her ear would force a moan from her lips. Knew how, when, and why her breath caught.

  He indicated the pillows behind her. “Comfortable?”

  “With the pillows? Yes. With you looming over me? No. Mind giving me some room to breathe here?” She kept both her gaze and tone steady.

  He rose, hands up in surrender-as if-and took an elaborate step back. “Good enough?”

  “DC would be better.” Right here in my bed would be best. She gave herself Brownie points for sticking to her promise to herself-absolutely no physical contact with him again. Ever. It was a life sentence. Nevertheless, for self-preservation she had to stick to it.

  “You’ve been dealing with the wrong kind of people too long,” she told him. “The pills were to help me sleep so I can heal. I might not have broken anything, but every muscle and tendon was traumatized by the—the—” Spiraling out of control, heart stopping— “crash.” Her stomach lurched as her memory filled in the sounds of screaming, the hideous rending noise as the body of the craft ripped and twisted in the air like tinfoil. The stench of jet fuel. . .the screams.

  “Yeah?” Her ex looked furious as he raked his fingers through his too-long, dark hair and stalked around the room like a caged panther. “Well, my every muscle and tendon was traumatized when I heard about the crash as well. And until I get you back stateside, have you looked at by every conceivable specialist, I’m going to make damn sure you don’t get near anything that’s going to hurt you.”

  “Yeah? Guess you’d better leave then, huh?” She didn’t say it with as much heat as usual. Despite her every mental protest, she was overwhelmingly happy to have him here in South America with her. Besides, she wanted to go home. Even if it meant being escorted by her surly almost ex. “News flash, buddy,” she added, working up a bit more heat. “This is about me. Not about you.”

  “No shit, it’s about you, Dani.” He shoved both hands through his hair again, stalked to the window on the far wall, then spun around and came back again. “I heard about the crash, and all I could think about was finding you.”

  She refused to be moved. Refused to be touched. “You found me. I’m alive.”

  “Yeah, and you’re gonna stay that way. So get used to me sticking to you like Super Glue. Until I’ve got you home and medically cleared, I’m your goddamn shadow.”

  She’d take his help. She’d even take his concern, because she knew that once life was back to normal, Jon would fad
e away again, disappearing back into his life on the edge. She’d go back to her life alone, but at least this time, she had a life to go back to.

  Her chest ached with unshed tears. All those people-damn it, her friend Angie-why had they been dealt the death card, and she and Rigo hadn’t? And here was Jon. Big and strong. Solid and familiar. She needed, craved, the feel of his arms around her. Need to hear the steady beat of his heart. Needed to feel alive.

  As she knew only too well, it was good to want things, but that didn’t mean the things she wanted were good for her. Before her stood six feet three inches of sexually charged male to prove it.

  Waking up to find herself not only in a strange bed but also in a strange country had been discombobulating enough. Waking to find her almost-ex-husband standing over her, with an unreadable expression on his handsome face that she had never seen before, had almost finished off what the accident hadn’t.

  While he force-fed her coffee to get rid of her mental fog, he told her how he’d heard about the accident and flown directly from DC to Miami, then chartered a plane to come to San Cristóbal. Most of his words drifted inside her like smoke on a hazy day. All Danica cared about was that she needed him, and for once, he was there.

  Jon Raven was her drug, and she’d been addicted to him from the moment they met.

  Going off him cold turkey-moving from DC to Florida-resulted in nothing more than severe withdrawal pain. Seeing him again, without the buffer of a conference table and two suited lawyers, brought the clawing desire to the forefront. When she was near the man, every sensible, self-preservation instinct flew out the window.

  So, she’d let him escort her home. Politely thank him. Not touch him. And say good-bye. The sooner the better. “Oh, shoot—”

  He scowled. “What?”

  “They’re giving me the keys to the city on Saturday.”

  “Two days from now?” He gave her an are-you-out-of-your-fucking-mind look. “Forget it. You don’t need the keys to this city.”

  She lifted a brow, unnoticed under her bangs. “Hello? Who made you the boss of me? The president wants to honor me for bringing his son home safely. He’s already tried offering me more money than I’d see in a lifetime.” The conversation was hazy at best. But that had been the gist of it.

  She kicked back the covers and swung her feet to the floor, then had to rest a minute as her body protested and the room did a weird dip and sway before settling again. Eyes downcast she wondered who’d undressed and redressed her and shuddered, rubbing the chill from her arms.

  “Damn it, Dani, I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

  She lifted her eyes to his taut features. “Yeah, me too.” She absently straightened her bangs with her fingertips. “Probably because of the crash and all.”

  He glowered at her.

  “Jon.” His name came on a sigh. “The president wants to thank me for his son’s life. The least I can do is stand there and be thanked.”

  He gave her a dark look. “Be thanked long distance. I’m telling you, something’s not right here. Trust me.”

  Her hair brushed her bare shoulders as she shook her head. The movement made her woozy again and she had to brace a hand on the mattress. “Oh, that’s good, coming from you.”

  “Fine. Don’t trust me. But trust my instincts.”

  She was a little taken aback by his fervor. Jon was a lot of things, but he wasn’t an alarmist. His instincts had always been good. Who was she not to pay attention now? “I don’t have any clothes. I can’t very well walk out of here in my borrowed, virgin-slut nightie.”

  His expression softened slightly. “I threw some stuff together for you at the airport. I figured you’d need clothes at some point.”

  When did her Jon take notice of such things? But he wasn’t her Jon. Not anymore. “You did?” She stood unsteadily.

  “Yeah,” he said gruffly, stuffing his fingers into the front pockets of his jeans when she shot him a back-off look. “Doing laps?” he inquired mildly. “Or are you heading for the chair over there?”

  “Right now I just need to stand. Right here.” She wanted to pace off the rest of the lethargy, because Jon was right. She needed to get her brain clear and her stiff and sore muscles working again before she tried boarding another plane. If she could board another plane.

  The thought made her press a hand to her midriff. Of course, she could, she told herself firmly. Law of averages. . . She absently straightened the crisp, Egyptian cotton sheets and pulled up the coral and cream silk comforter. She smoothed the wrinkles out of a pillowcase edged with lace, then placed the pillow precisely back on the bed. She turned to look at him.

  Oh, God. What a sight he was. A navy MIAMI DOLPHINS T-shirt, a size too small-which looked perfect on him-hugged his broad shoulders, fit snug across his chest, and was tucked into new jeans. His hair needed combing, and dark circles smudged his blue eyes. The sharp planes of his cheekbones showed pale under his tan. He looked like hell.

  He looked like heaven.

  “I can’t just leave, Jon. The man is the president.”

  “He’s not your president. Tell him you’re wiped. Tell him your twelve children, two cats and a dog need you at home. Hell, tell him anything.”

  Stubbornly, carefully, she shook her head. He was the one who’d taken the twelve children, two cats and a damned dog off the table. The house, God only knew, was freaking big enough. But that kind of menagerie required two responsible adults to care for them. He’d never been home.

  “Dani, think, for God’s sake. These guys took you off American soil, without notifying anyone. They kept me out there for hours while they fed you some sort of narcotic, and you want to stay here?”

  Yeah. That pissed the hell out of her. A lot. However, she wasn’t about to roll over and let Jon dictate her life just because he’d shown up in the nick of time. Yes. She needed help-his help and expertise-to figure out what was going on. But she didn’t have to like depending on him. Most of the time if she needed saving she could do it herself, thank you very much. Unfortunately, here and now she needed him. Damn it.

  “First,” she told him firmly, “whether I want to stay here or not isn’t the point. The point is I’m twenty-seven years old. And single. I make my own decisions. And no, I don’t particularly want to stay, but I’m going to anyway because it’s the right thing to do. I refused the money, but I can’t just blow off the president, Jon. It would be rude. I’ll leave after the ceremony on Saturday. You, however, can take your bossy self back to DC and remember we’re divorced.”

  “Almost.”

  She shot him a level look filled with meaning. “Almost is good enough for me.”

  “For God’s sake, Danica-”

  “Don’t Danica me. I’m leaving on Saturday and that’s that.” Unfortunately, the more insistent he became that she leave, the more insistent she would be to stay. Perverse. But there you go. Her typical, if not always logical, knee-jerk reaction when Jon pushed was to shoved back. But the reality was she wanted to get the hell out of Dodge. She was scared because he was scared.

  She had to get over this reaction to his action cycle if she ever hoped to live peacefully without him. She thought she’d mastered that little personality quirk but apparently not. Of course, her willpower and resolve worked just fine when they were thousands of miles apart. She’d mastered stringing together almost ten minutes consecutively of not thinking about him. And almost three minutes consecutively not wanting him. It was a start. As time went on the minutes would turn into hours, and days and months, and years. She’d have years to not think about him.

  Annoyed that he was close enough to re-infect her when she was still under emotional quarantine, Danica started the million-mile walk to a pair of chairs across the cream-and-rust-colored, inches-thick, big-as-a-football-field area rug. Her legs were shaky.
Hell. Her entire body trembled from the tension in her muscles.

  “Need help?” he asked, quietly coming to walk beside her.

  Her jaw ached from clenching her teeth. “I want to do this on my own.”

  “Don’t you always?”

  She shot him a puzzled glance, noticing the tightness of his jaw and the way his hair brushed his well-muscled shoulders. “No. I enjoyed doing things with you. Whenever you were home. Which wasn’t often. I learned pretty damn fast to be independent.”

  “Dani—”

  “I know.” This was an old argument, and one she really wasn’t up to having at the moment. “You were starting the security business and had to baby it to get it off the ground. Wasn’t it off the ground when you cleared your first million? How about the second? What about the third? How many millions did you need to make to prove you could do it and do it well? How many damned millions did you need to remember our big fancy house and me there waiting? Alone. Ten? A hundred? A billion?”

  “You always came first with me.”

  She snorted. “Yeah. And pigs fly. Even if I believed you, that’s a small comfort. I walked around a sixty-thousand-square-foot house decorated by a New York decorator flown in especially to surprise me, and I felt nothing but alone and lonely. And if I never see the color fuchsia again, it’ll be too damned soon.”

  “I thought it was what you wanted.”

  “I wanted you and. . .never mind. That part of our lives is mercifully over.” He was what she’d wanted. And his babies to love.

  Instead, over the three years, the houses and the cars had gotten bigger and bigger, and the lonely place in her heart had become an aching cavern that not even spectacular sex could fill.

  She finally reached the chair and clutched a fabric-covered arm, lowering herself into it like a little old lady with chronic arthritis.

  He sat in the chair beside hers, then stood again and started to pace, his long legs moving with animal grace as he walked off his-what? His mad?

  “You’re making me dizzier. Can’t you sit down for a second?”