Rafe angled his head and smiled at the petite woman with the shimmering eyes that reminded him of emeralds and smoky quartz. She was scrappy, competitive and definitely unafraid to challenge anyone bigger or stronger than her. When he’d tackled her, he made certain to take her down gently to avoid injury, but Simone Whitfield didn’t go down easily. She relented only when he exerted additional pressure, rendering her immobile.
He winked at her. “I’ll see you.”
Simone waited for Rafe to leave before undressing and then walked into the bathroom. She showered, shampooed her hair, singing loudly under the flow of warm water. Revived, she massaged a scented crème over her body, pulled a wide-tooth comb through her damp hair, leaving it out for faster drying, and slipped into a pair of shorts and sleeveless tee over her underwear. She lay on the bed where Rafe had tossed and turned restlessly the night before and closed her eyes. Unlike Rafe, sleep came easily as she gave in to the exhaustion from the strenuous activity.
* * *
Rafe stood in the doorway to the theater room, smiling at the reactions of the younger Sanborns to The Transformers, a live-action update of the popular 1980s cartoon with dazzling special effects. He stared at the images on the large screen for a quarter of an hour before retreating to the upper level to shower.
He walked into the bedroom to find Simone asleep in his bed. Moving closer, he stared at the cloud of reddish-brown curls covering the pillow where he’d rested his head hours before. Rafe had wanted Simone in his bed, not just to make love to her, but to feel the warmth and softness of her body against his.
Staring unbeknownst to her made him feel like a voyeur. Whenever he looked at Simone, he wanted her to be fully aware of his intent. Turning on his heels, he headed for the bathroom. The smell of her perfume and shampoo still lingered in the air. Stripping off his clothes and leaving them on the floor, Rafe opened the door to the shower stall and stepped in. The sight of the colorful bath sponge, bottles of shower gel and shampoo reminded him of another time when he’d shared a bathroom with a woman—a woman whom at that time he’d loved more than himself—a woman who professed to loving him, but had deigned to sleep with more than one man.
When the woman he’d lived with came to him with the news that she was pregnant, Rafe’s first reaction was to propose marriage. However, his shock and joy was short-lived when Dorene admitted that the child she carried wasn’t his. Although he and Dorene always used contraception, she hadn’t with the man with whom she’d been working.
There were other women after Dorene, but none had tugged at his heart the way Simone did. What he liked most about his witness was her fire and spunk. She’d come at him knowing physically they were a mismatch, but that hadn’t stopped her. There was something about Simone that reminded him of one of his mother’s hens who wouldn’t let anyone gather her eggs. In the end, the feisty little pullet had become the farm’s best laying hen, turning out broods Gideon sold to other farmers in the area.
He forgot about Dorene when he turned on the water and soaped his body. Stepping out of the shower, Rafe wrapped a bath sheet around his body, toga-style, and walked into the bedroom. Simone hadn’t stirred on the bed. Not even when he dropped the towel to pull on his underwear. She was still asleep when, fully dressed, he walked out, closing the door behind him.
An imperceptible restlessness wouldn’t permit Rafe to sit and relax. Other than the children lounging on leather chairs in the theater room, the house appeared to be unoccupied. He walked through a narrow hallway outside the kitchen and entered an enclosed all-weather patio area. Pocket doors were open to let warm air in through the screens. A retractable awning covered a stainless-steel grill, tables and chairs.
Sliding back the screen, Rafe stepped into the warmth of a picture-perfect spring afternoon. Micah, who lay on a webbed recliner under one of half a dozen umbrellas beckoned to him. “I thought you would’ve been resting with Simone.”
Rafe sat and swung his legs over a matching lounger, lay back and closed his eyes. “I’m not sleeping too well.”
Micah peered over at the man responsible for protecting his fiancée’s sister. “Does your problem have anything to do with a woman with curly hair and hazel eyes?”
Sitting up quickly, Rafe met Micah’s knowing smile. “How did you know?”
Grinning, Micah also sat up, running his hand over close-cropped, gray-flecked hair. “It’s as apparent as the nose on your face that you have a thing for my sister-in-law. Don’t look so surprised. It was Ethan who first noticed it.”
“Damn, I didn’t think I’d be that obvious.”
Micah sobered quickly, his expression impassive. His respect for the marshal had shot up appreciably. “I’m glad you didn’t try to deny you have feelings for her.”
With wide eyes, Rafe met the district attorney’s steady stare. “How can I when supposedly my face is an open book?”
“You’re a lot better than I was before I realized I wanted Tessa in my life. I liked her the moment I saw her, but what I couldn’t accept was her telling me that she loved me.”
“Why?” Rafe asked.
“I had issues—serious issues—about my biological mother abandoning me after she told me that she loved me.”
“How old were you?”
“Four.” A slight lifting of an eyebrow was Rafe’s only reaction to Micah’s disclosure. “What I didn’t know at the time was that my birth mother was terminally ill and she couldn’t take care of me, so she left me in the clinic of a hospital with a note pinned to the inside of my jacket explaining this.
“The Sanborns adopted me, giving me a childhood most kids fantasize about. And despite my achievements, I struggled with abandonment issues until I realized I was going to lose Tessa if I didn’t face them.”
“Why are you telling me this, Micah?”
“Your time with Simone will end when you’re reassigned, and knowing her she’ll move on a lot more quickly than you will. She has her business and extended family to keep her busy, while you’ll be holed up in a hotel or safe house going stir-crazy with a talkative witness reeking of liniment.” Attractive lines fanned around Rafe’s eyes when he smiled. “Am I right, Brother Madison?”
“Sure you right, Brother Sanborn.” Within seconds Rafe’s mood changed, darkening. “She’s not easy to get close to, Micah.”
“Neither was her sister,” Micah countered. “But would you like her if she was easy? Personally, easy women bore the hell out of me.”
“I have to agree with that. I’ve always preferred a little piquante to bland.”
“Hey, now,” Micah drawled, touching fists with Rafe.
Rafe sobered again. He didn’t want to think of Simone and the feelings she evoked in him just by occupying the same space. “What’s the word around the Brooklyn D.A.’s office about the attack on Judge Fischer?”
“Within minutes of the attack, the court went on high alert. Clerks were pressed into service to identify judges who presided over hate crimes. Faxes, e-mails and texts were streaking throughout cyberspace with requests from judges for the Marshals Service to install residential security systems in their homes. The number of senior inspectors and deputy marshals has also increased at the federal courthouses.”
“I’m not going to let anything or anyone get to Simone,” Rafe said after a prolonged pause.
Micah let out an exhalation of breath. He didn’t want to imagine anything happening to Tessa’s sister, who he now regarded as a member of his own family even before exchanging vows with Tessa.
“I know you won’t.” He nodded, and Rafe returned the nod. “I’m going into the house to get a bottle of water. Can I bring you one?”
“Please.”
Rafe lay back on the lounger when Micah got up and went into the house. He hadn’t known Simone Whitfield a week and he was mooning over her like a lovesick puppy. Perhaps if he hadn’t had to be around her 24/7, then his emotions would be less intense.
Liar! a silent voice
taunted.
He was no different than Micah Sanborn. The moment he saw Simone, he’d become enthralled with her. The difference was he didn’t have abandonment issues. And despite Dorene’s duplicity, he was still able to engage in a healthy relationship with a woman.
He hadn’t lied to Simone when he’d revealed that he’d never begged a woman for her body. If it happened by mutual consent, then he enjoyed the intimacy, but if they didn’t then he continued to see them, aware that some liaisons were better if sex wasn’t an integral component of the relationship. He’d realized that when in college he’d unknowingly dated a rape victim. They dated for four months before she decided to end it, claiming she felt bad not sleeping with him. When he told her it didn’t matter, she refused to relent. They parted as friends, and the following semester he got a letter from her informing him that she’d joined a group for abused women and was getting the help she needed.
He closed his eyes and thought about some of the women he knew and some he shouldn’t have known. Then he thought about Simone. He didn’t know if it was the woman, or if he was tired of being alone.
His assignments took him away from his home for weeks that sometime stretched into months, but that was a choice he’d made impulsively almost twelve years before. But living with Simone had changed him. He enjoyed waking up to seeing her, sharing meals and pretending she was his girlfriend. What she didn’t know was that he didn’t want the pretense. He wanted to play house for real.
CHAPTER 11
Rafe adjusted the wipers to a faster speed. Water sluiced down the windshield in rivulets, making it almost impossible for him to see the taillights of the car ahead of his.
“Did the meteorologist predict rain for today?” Simone asked as she squinted to see beyond the torrents lashing the landscape.
“I don’t know. But at least it held off until later in the day, or we would’ve never gotten in the football game.”
“You’re feeling real cocky, aren’t you, because you made five touchdowns?”
“Don’t tell me you’re jealous,” Rafe teased, grinning.
“Of course I’m not. The next time you won’t be so lucky.”
“Oh? You attribute our spanking the ladies to luck?”
Simone wrinkled her nose at him. “You spanked us because most of the guys on your team are jocks. I’m certain you work out, Ethan at the health club in his subdivision and Micah admits he still boxes with a few of the cops at his old precinct. And look at Abram. He’s so broad he could easily masquerade as a Hummer.”
“Micah said that sometimes they play mixed teams. If that’s the case, then I want you on my team, because I like your aggressiveness.”
“It’s competitiveness, not aggression.”
Rafe gave her a quick look. “My bad,” he drawled in his best Midwest twang.
Simone glanced at the glowing number on the dashboard clock. It was minutes before seven. To say she’d enjoyed hanging out with the Sanborns was an understatement. Edgar and Abram had grilled marinated New York strip, bone-rib eye steaks and filet mignon to order for the adults and Angus burgers for the children. Potato salad, coleslaw, vegetable kebabs and grilled sweet corn on the cob were set out as side dishes, along with beverages that included cold beer, lemonade and bottled water.
Late in the afternoon, storm clouds and a rumble of thunder forced everyone indoors where copious amounts of food were devoured as if the assembled hadn’t eaten all day. She and Rafe gathered their bags and raced to the Sequoia as the heavens opened, soaking them to the skin.
They were now stuck in slow-moving bumper-to-bumper traffic. Her skin felt cold and clammy, and the cool air coming from the vents had her nipples standing at attention through the damp material of her white tee.
Rafe smothered an expletive under his breath when the driver ahead of him hit his brakes, forcing him to do the same. Instinctually he stuck out his right arm to stop Simone from lurching forward, his fingers grazing her breasts.
He gave her a quick glance. “Sorry about that.”
She closed her eyes when a tingling shot through her chest as her breasts grew heavy with a strange sensation that left her struggling to breathe. “That’s all right.”
Simone said it was all right when it was quite the opposite. Her body was on fire with a longing she hadn’t thought possible. Raphael Madison had crossed her threshold five days before, his very presence evoking a longing and need she hadn’t thought possible.
Simone wanted to be anywhere but sitting less than a foot away from a man who, despite not being her type, she craved like a drug addict. Inwardly she cursed the weather that slowed traffic to a crawl. The sound of the reverberating thunder and the powerful energy from the flash and crack of lightning ignited a burning passion that raced through her veins like a lit fuse. She closed her eyes, her heart thundering. The harsh, uneven sound of her breathing echoed loudly in her ears.
Rafe gave Simone another quick glance. Her labored breathing frightened him. “Simone. Baby, are you all right?”
Teeth clenched, she nodded. “I’m okay, Rafe.” She’d lied twice in a matter of minutes. Pressing her knees together, she tried to still the pleasurable throbbing between her thighs. Miraculously it stopped before she embarrassed herself.
The storm moving in a westerly direction was in full effect when Rafe entered the city limits for White Plains. Lightning hit a tree, snapping thick branches as if they were fragile matchsticks. Slowing, he came to a stop when sparks from a downed wire skipped along the wet roadway.
“What are you doing?” Simone asked when he shifted into reverse.
“I have to take another route. There’s an electrical wire blocking the road.”
“There will probably be some electrical outages tonight.”
“Do you have candles in the house?”
Simone nodded. “Yes. I also have an extra supply of wood in the mudroom, so we can always start a fire for light and heat.” All the fireplace grates were filled with wood. The only exception was her home office where she’d replaced the wood with fresh herbs.
Rafe smiled. “Have you ever cooked over an open fire?”
“No.”
“I’ll show you how one of these days.”
“Now why would I cook over an open fire when I have a range?”
“It’s good to know in case of an emergency. One winter, we lost power for three days after our county was paralyzed by two feet of snow. We had to use oil lanterns for light and the fireplace replaced our stove. We took turns melting snow for bathing and cooking.”
“It probably gave you a healthy respect for what your ancestors endured to survive life on the prairie.”
“It did.”
“Do you think you’d ever go back to living on a farm?” Simone asked Rafe.
“No,” he replied much too quickly. “I left farm life behind when I went to college. Of course I went home for holidays and during recesses, but I never wanted to be a farmer like my father, grandfather or great-grandfather.”
“I’d asked you once where you went to college and you never told me.”
Rafe remembered Simone asking, but he’d been reluctant to give her an answer at that time. But their relationship had changed, become more personal. “I went to Florida Memorial.”
Shifting slightly on her seat, Simone gave him an incredulous stare. “Are you talking about Florida Memorial College in Miami?” He nodded. “But, that’s a historically black college.”
“I know that,” he confirmed.
Her shock waning, she asked, “How did you feel—”
“The same if I’d attended a predominately white school,” Rafe said, knowing what she was going to ask him.
“I’m sorry, Rafe. I didn’t mean to insult you.”
“There’s no need to apologize, Simone.”
The words were barely out of his mouth when the road went completely black. The streetlamps had gone out.
“Dammit,” she swore softly. They were le
ss than a mile from her home, and she prayed she still had power.
Lights blazed from the windows of the homes along the stretch of road leading to her house. Marshals in black sedans and SUVs with tinted windows were parked outside Judge Mitchell Fischer’s house and property.
Seeing the vehicles was a reminder to Simone of her fate. She’d gone about her daily routine as if she hadn’t become a government witness. The only exception was the man sharing her house. And even with Rafe as her bodyguard, she hadn’t been made to feel like a prisoner.
They were complete opposites—physically and psychologically—yet complemented each other. He liked her and she liked him—a lot.
Rafe was already turning into the driveway when he heard Simone’s soft sigh. The lamps flanking the front door were on. He touched the remote on the visor and the garage door opened. He pulled in and parked next to his Yukon. There was just enough space between the two vehicles for Simone to open the passenger-side door and squeeze out.
“I’ll get your bag,” Rafe offered, as he shut off the engine. He reached for the gun holstered to his ankle, tucking it into the waistband of his jeans and opened the door on his side.
Simone stood near the steps that led into an area outside her kitchen, waiting as Rafe deactivated the alarm and went inside. At first, she’d thought his command that she not enter the house until he came to get her overly dramatic because her house was wired. However, she did change her mind when she realized that even the most sophisticated security systems were compromised. She also realized he’d become her first line of defense if someone managed to bypass her security code; he would kill Rafe first before coming after her.
He returned and nodded. “You can come in.”
Mounting the stairs, she handed him her tote and his bag. “Please leave them in the corner near the washing machine. I’m doing laundry tomorrow.” She kicked off her running shoes. “I’m going upstairs to get out of these wet clothes. You should do the same. You’re not going to be much use to me sick.”
Rafe opened his bag and took out a toiletry case. “Will you take care of me if I do get sick?”
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