“How are you feeling?”
“I’m fine,” she said as she struggled to put on her boots. “Doc says I can go.”
With a curse, T.J. swept up the red boots in one hand, then caught her as she swayed. “You sure Doc said you can leave?”
“I’m just tired and my leg hurts. Doc gave me pills and they’re making me sleepy.” She stared at him blindly, then swayed again.
“Hold on to me.”
“I’m not going to faint,” she whispered.
“Sure, you’re not. You’ll be just fine.” His hands circled her waist, holding her steady.
She shuddered, her face losing even more color.
“That does it.” T.J. caught her up in his arms, scowling.
“What are you doing?”
“Taking you home. That way I can be sure you rest when you’re told to.” He shouldered the door open. “It’s about time I put you on a short leash,” he said as he carried her into the waiting room and past a crowd of interested bystanders gathered at the door.
“I can walk perfectly well,” Tess muttered.
“So can I. Next time you can carry me,” he said dryly.
“Put me down, T.J. This is embarrassing.”
“Get over it.”
“Is she going to be okay?” the school principal asked anxiously.
“Fine,” T.J. replied tersely without slowing down. The crowd parted in front of him as he kept moving, looking neither right nor left.
He yanked open the door to the Jeep Tom Martinez had brought back from T.J.’s ranch. By then he knew that the Blazer belonging to the Sheriff’s Department would be hooked to a tow truck to be hauled back to town for new tires.
T.J. settled Tess carefully into the passenger seat, then reached across to snap her seat belt, fighting an urge to kiss some pink back into her cheeks. He wondered if she had any idea that her face was the color of putty and her hands were shaking.
Probably not. The crazy female truly did have the temperament of a Gila monster. “Stop fighting me,” he growled as her hands wrapped around his arm.
Her eyes darkened. “I’m—not fighting. Actually, I don’t feel so well. I think I’m going to—”
T.J. whipped off her seat belt and angled her head outside. “Take it easy, Duchess. Just let it go.”
He heard her breathless gasp. It was several moments before he realized he was hearing ragged laughter. “What’s wrong now?”
“Not that kind of sick. Dizzy.”
T.J. brought her back up slowly. “Easy. Take deep breaths and think about something else.” He felt her muscles tense, her whole body going rigid. Cursing, he worked the knots in her shoulders.
“I’m better now.”
He raised her gently. Her face was still too pale, her pupils dilated—all to be expected after the experience she’d just been through. He offered her a drink from the water bottle he kept in the car, wishing it were brandy.
She stared at him, just stared, as if she were trying to read all his secrets.
T.J. fastened her seat belt again, slid behind his seat, buckled in, and started the car.
“Where are we going?” she asked wearily.
“Home—where I can keep an eye on you without getting the whole town involved.”
“That’s not necessary—”
“The hell it isn’t.” He brushed her cheek gently, giving lie to the roughness of his voice. “You’re going to rest.” He cupped her chin, interrupting her as she started to say something. “My house, my rules.”
“That’s blunt.”
His finger fanned out over her cheek. “No, that’s honest.” He saw color filter through her face and indecision fill her eyes.
“Bully.”
“Damned straight.” His fingers fanned out over her cheek. Then he put the Jeep into gear and backed out onto the street.
“Did you find anything when you went back to the ruins?”
“A spent rifle shell and what looked like a set of tracks leading down into the wash.”
“Someone was there. Do you think he shot at me?”
“It’s possible. I won’t know much until I have that shell analyzed.”
“They can tell you when it was fired?”
He nodded. And berated himself for being too slow. She could have been badly hurt, maybe even killed. He should have been prepared, not letting her out of his sight or his reach.
He wouldn’t make the same mistake again.
T.J. touched her hair. “If it gets too bumpy, tell me and I’ll pull over.”
“I’ll be fine,” she said flatly.
T.J. drove slowly, choosing the smoothest stretch of road, which wasn’t saying very much.
“I can’t believe they found me here so soon.” She stared out at the dusty road before them, her expression set. “But I’m not going to be paranoid about this.”
She didn’t have to be, T.J. thought grimly. He would be paranoid enough for both of them.
“So what happens next?” she asked. “Why don’t we just run a full-page ad in all the Boston papers: If you’ve lost a million dollars, call this number.’ ”
“Your brother is working on this, Tess.” T.J. frowned. “I’m sure a lot of people are putting in long hours.”
Her mouth thinned in a mixture of pain and groggy irritation. “I still don’t see how a million dollars can slip through banking records without a trace.”
“Andrew will have news any day now.”
Tess drew a shaky breath and stared at the mountains. “What’s taking him so long? Why haven’t he and his powerful friends in Washington figured out what’s going on?”
T.J. wondered the same thing, but said nothing more until they reached the ranch. He rounded the Jeep to open her door, then slid his arms beneath her and lifted her to his chest. For a moment, just a moment, her head touched his shoulder and he heard her small, broken sigh of pain.
“That does it. You’re taking another pill the second we get inside.”
When he reached the front door, with Tess in his arms, he swore silently. Maria was off for a couple of days. He could have used her help in tending to Tess. He pushed open the door and headed straight for Tess’s bed-room. After he settled her on the bed, he poured a glass of water and shook another pill from the bottle Doc had given him for her.
“Take this.”
“I don’t want it.”
T.J.’s jaw clenched. “Take it or I’ll hold your nose and make you swallow it.”
She raised the glass, swallowed, shuddered. “Cold.” She gazed up into his face, her eyes darkening. “I want a shower.” Tess looked up at him, swaying slightly, her face still too pale.
Muscles tensed throughout his body. Doc Felton had said that a hot shower would be a good idea, but T.J. wasn’t sure he could manage it and keep his sanity, too.
Frowning, she gripped the bottom of her T-shirt and tried valiantly to tug it upward. “Pathetic,” she whispered. “Can’t even strip properly.”
As she struggled with the shirt, T.J. pulled her against him.
Somehow he kept his touch cool and impersonal as he tugged off her shirt and tried not to stare at the wispy lace that captured her breasts.
“Are you going to try anything, Sheriff?”
“Like what?”
She sank against him. “Like maybe take advantage of the situation.”
Hell, it was just like her to bring up the one thing he’d been dreaming about for two days straight. Unfortunately, she did it at a time when no responsible male could think of acting on the offer.
“Well, what’s wrong?” Her eyes narrowed. “You don’t like the way I look?”
T.J. closed his eyes, fighting back the image of full, pale breasts and crimson tips that teased delicate white lace. There wasn’t a single thing he didn’t like, but he wasn’t going to think about it. Savagely clamping down on his desire, he unbuttoned her skirt and shoved it down to the floor. A quick glimpse of her bright pink underwear left
him dry-mouthed.
He swallowed hard and gave a silent prayer of relief that there were no stockings to deal with today. “Into the shower. You’re freezing.”
But Tess didn’t move. Her nose nuzzled his chest.
T.J. tried to forget just how much he wanted to slide his hands into her wild copper hair and kiss her senseless. But she needed calm and strength from him now, not blistering desire.
Suppressing a groan, he carried her to the bathroom and stood her up in the stall shower. Gripping her with one hand, he managed to whip the spray to full force, then center her beneath it. The jetting water drowned her angry protests. It also left a good part of T.J.’s shirt soaked through.
Worst of all, one part of his mind screamed for him to strip and join her beneath that steaming water. The sane part of his mind swore at him for even thinking about it.
She twisted in his arms as she shoved wet hair out of her face. Her breast nudged his arm and sent a jolt of electricity right up his chest. To distract himself, he found the soap and swept it down her arms.
Touching her body, wet and slippery with soap, was a whole new kind of sensual experience. He couldn’t help but enjoy it, even though it knotted his muscles painfully.
“So you’re not going to take advantage of me?” Her voice was wistful.
“Damned right, I’m not.”
“You’re not going to strip off the rest of my clothes, pin me against the wall, and do what’s on both our minds right now?”
T.J. turned her face and framed her cheeks gently with his callused fingers. “You’re living dangerously, Duchess.”
She ran her tongue across her full, wet lips. “It appears so,” she whispered. “Maybe because of what I saw up at those ruins.” She blinked hard. “Or what I felt.”
T.J. bit back an inventive string of curses. Didn’t the little fool realize she was playing with fire?
Angrily he swept up a bottle of shampoo. In his haste, he squirted half the bottle onto her hair. She yelled as his fingers ground down, scrubbing up a thick lather.
“Watch it. I’m dying here.”
“That makes two of us,” T.J. said grimly.
“What did you say?”
He didn’t answer, concentrating on shoving her back under the shower and rinsing the foam free. Then he made the mistake of looking down.
The water had turned her lingerie nearly transparent. Her breasts were full and high, perfectly crowned with crimson nipples. At the juncture of her thighs lay a triangle of lush, dark curls.
The damned woman might as well have been wearing cellophane.
And damn him for staring at her like a drowning swimmer staring at a life preserver.
He turned off the shower, yanked a towel from its bar, then wrapped her up tightly. If he couldn’t see her body, it had to make the pain better, he reasoned.
“Are you hoping to frighten me or simply smother me?”
“Neither. I’m trying to get you warm,” he said harshly.
She brushed at her face. Even with her hair slicked back like a wet seal and her skin stripped free of makeup, she was radiant, her beauty jolting through him like electricity.
T.J. pulled his heavy cotton robe around her. Forcing his hands not to shake, he gripped her shoulders. “You’ll have to take off the rest yourself.”
She leaned against him, her back to his chest. “Maybe I’d rather that you do it,” she said in a shaky voice. “Unless that’s a problem.”
“Why should it be?” he snapped. He pulled the robe from her shoulders, then flicked the front opening of her bra free. His teeth locked tight as he swept the lacy straps down. She didn’t protest, didn’t move, her body warm against him. And that silence more than anything else made T.J. pause, turn slowly, and stare down at her.
It was his worst mistake.
Her naked body could have been pulled right out of his most erotic fantasies. Except for the scrapes and bruises that marred her creamy skin and made him want to treat her with the utmost tenderness. She was pale, her eyes huge, a pulse leaping at her throat. And below that, except for her hot pink bikini briefs, she was all curves that left him aching.
“Dammit, Tess, stop looking at me that way.”
She stared at him, two spots of color high on her cheeks. “What way?” she whispered.
“As if you want what I could give you.”
“Maybe I do.” Her hand rose, tentatively sliding over his jaw.
T.J. closed his eyes, blocking out her words. She was feeling the influence of Doc Felton’s pills and probably didn’t know what she was saying. “No, Tess.”
“No what?”
“No, to all of it. It’s not going to happen,” he said tightly.
“So Mae was right; you are an honorable man,” she murmured. “Well, since you’re against taking advantage of me, at least answer a question.”
T.J. didn’t want to answer questions. He wanted to touch her, savor her, bury himself inside her. “What question?”
“What’s your never-never thing, Sheriff McCall? What’s the one wish you’ve always had but never hoped to achieve? Everyone in Almost seems to have something they regret not doing.”
The wish that I was happy, T.J. thought grimly. But the words that came out were very different. “I wanted to be on the team.”
“What team?”
“The one that guards the president.” His hands tightened.
He hadn’t meant to tell her. Then again, he hadn’t meant to hold her, to look at her, to want her desperately. Somehow whenever Tess O’Mara was around, sparks flew and things happened in a way no one expected.
“So what happened?” She raised her hands slowly to his face.
So damned warm. In a second there would be nothing between them, and he would feel all that lovely sweetness while they both pounded to a wrenching release.
He cleared his throat. “There’s nothing to tell.”
“Are you afraid to remember or just afraid to talk about it with me?”
Damned perceptive female. “Neither,” he growled. Both, he thought.
He pulled away from her hands, which were combing through his hair. Had it ever been like this before? Had his whole body ever been twisted in knots while he watched as if from a distance, aware of another person’s needs more deeply than his own?
“What happened?”
“It didn’t work out. They only wanted the best and the brightest, and I didn’t make the cut.”
He felt her stiffen. “I don’t believe it. There’s something more you’re not telling me.”
There was more, all right. But T.J. had told her enough already. “Let it go, Tess.”
“I might.” She turned her head slowly. “Under certain conditions.” Her lips opened on his damp skin.
He closed his eyes, cursing when he felt her tongue feather across his neck. “You’re playing with fire, Tess.”
“You’re still angry with me, aren’t you?”
A few hours ago he’d been angry enough to want to leave his handprint on her backside. But now he was only angry with himself.
For wanting things he shouldn’t even be considering.
“No, I’m not angry now. You’re safe and that’s all I care about.”
“Maybe being safe isn’t enough.”
It wasn’t the husky catch in her voice that clawed at T.J.’s control, but the wistful, uncertain note of honesty that smashed through all his defenses. “Tess, stop. Listen—”
“I’m tired of listening. I’m tired of waiting for something special to happen, when I can just as easily make it happen.” She drew a quick, shaky breath. “And this is special. You are special. You make me catch my breath, wanting things I’ve never wanted before.”
T.J. tried not to listen. “You don’t know what you’re saying right now. This will all seem like a dream tomorrow.” He stared at her, his hands opening and closing as desire lashed out at him.
“You’re wrong,” she said gravely. “Tomorrow
this will be real and everything else will be the dream, like those coyotes and the drums. So here’s what I think, Sheriff. If you want the last damp piece of clothing taken off me, I figure you’re just going to have to take it off yourself.”
He didn’t want to hear her. He couldn’t bear to look at her. He gripped her shoulders and tried to put her away from him, only to feel her turn back into his arms.
Desire flared hotter, fueled by a kind of primal madness T.J. had never known before.
Too late, he thought blindly, pulling her back against him, his hands gripping her arms as he slid down to find the tight, aroused buds of her nipples. “You’ll regret this, Duchess,” he said hoarsely. “We both will.”
16
If she hadn’t gone to the ruins, none of this would have happened. If she’d been her normal self, things never would have gone so far and she would never have admitted to these reckless feelings for T.J. But Tess wasn’t thinking, wasn’t sane and normal.
And she liked it just fine.
She was glad she’d gone to the ruins. A lingering sense of danger brushed her skin and left her heart pounding as he touched her. Even that made no difference.
Every time he moved, the maddening friction of his hands on her wet body turned her inside out. She forgot names, reasons, all the normal, tidy conventions of her well-organized life as time shifted, stopped. All that mattered to her was the small, heated space where their bodies met. She stopped trying to understand why or explain it away.
She closed her eyes, afraid that the lancing pleasure would wane. Death had come so close that afternoon that all she could think of was life.
Heat.
Skin.
“Tess, we can’t.”
“Why? I’m not afraid.”
He didn’t move, didn’t even seem to breathe. Then he put his hands on her breasts, his callused fingertips stroking with exquisite friction. “Maybe you should be,” he said hoarsely. “If you knew the things I’m thinking, you’d be running as fast as you can.”
With a curse he turned her in his arms, then froze. Looking, just looking. At her face. At her chest.
Lower.
Over the taut stomach and down to the line of silk at her thighs.
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