by Laura Parker
“Yeah. Pretty much.” Joe lowered himself slowly into the straight chair by the door. “I don’t like seeing anybody roughed up, especially not a man accosting a woman. You think I should have just let him drag her out as he was trying to do?”
“You should have minded your own business and let the police handle it.” She stepped out of the bathroom carrying a handful of ice in a plastic bag and a damp washcloth. “They were on the spot in five minutes.” As if she had not already made the point she said again, “You could have gotten yourself killed.”
“Not likely. You forget I was a once New York City cop.”
“You forget you’re no longer any kind of a cop.” She thrust the ice pack at him. “That man had a knife. He might as easily have had a gun.”
He looked at her and smiled. “I know that. Expect the worst is part of my former job description.”
Halle glanced away from the implacable reality in his gaze and found herself staring at the tear at the shoulder seam of his shirt. Three buttons had been ripped off in the brawl. Where the shirt gaped open there was a long thin scratch showing like a thin red river beneath the lacework of his dark chest hair. The knuckles of the hand holding the ice pack to his left eye were scraped and raw. When her gaze came back to his amused one, partially obscured by the swelling shut of one eye, her anger doubled. “You were enjoying it, weren’t you?”
“Not exactly.” Joe shrugged and winced. Something in his midsection was remarkably sore. He remembered staggering into a high-backed chair after the guy’s one lucky punch. He reached inside his ruined shirt to gingerly quest out the source. “It’s been a while since I had to react so quickly. I’m a little out of practice.”
He found the source of the ache. It was a scrape the width of two fingers along his lower right ribs. He’d look at it later, when he was alone. No need to frighten her any more than she already was.
“The guy never would’ve gotten that lucky punch in if I hadn’t been trying to hold off his girlfriend. Domestic altercations are the worst. Women are so unpredictable.” He looked up. “You swing a mean briefcase. Thanks.”
Halle blushed, embarrassed by her own temerity. She had grabbed the first thing that came to hand when the fight had turned two to one against Joe. Fortunately the man’s briefcase she picked up was as heavy as a brick. Joe’s assailant had gone down in a tackled sprawl when it hit him low and from behind. “He had a knife and you didn’t. It was obvious that nobody else was going to help you.”
It was equally obvious to Joe that she resented having been lured into the fracas but he couldn’t keep back a wide grin of pleasure. Halle had come to his rescue.
“Why did you get involved?”
She crossed her arms, drawing his attention to the small rip in her silk blouse where the lace of her bra showed through. “Are you serious?”
“Yeah, I am.” He shifted his ice pack from his face to his ribs. “It would never have occurred to you to come my aid before.”
“How can you be so certain?”
“Something similar happened a few years ago in the city. I was carrying a shield and a gun in those days. I was off duty and we were out with friends one night when we came across a robbery in progress. You freaked when I stepped in to make the collar.” He gave her a lazy warm smile. “Later, you said you’d leave me if I ever did anything like that again.”
“Leave you?” The air was suddenly as still as glass.
Joe stood up and waited a heartbeat to see if she would say where her thoughts had taken her. But wherever that was, she didn’t share it with him. “I was a cop. That was my job, stopping criminals, even on my days off.”
Halle stared at him, still caught up in the idea that she had once threatened to leave him. How personal a leave-taking would it have been? “You did what you had to do. Maybe I’ve grown up a bit because I understand that now.”
Joe moved to and sat down heavily on the bed. “Yeah, well, maybe I have grown up a bit, too.” He touched his aching eye. “Or maybe I’m just not as eager as before to show off.”
Halle came forward and cupped his battered face in one hand, frowning as she surveyed the abuse it had taken. “Your poor eye. I won’t be able to tell until I’ve cleaned you up but I think that cut over it is going to need stitches.”
“It won’t,” Joe answered calmly and then winced as she gently explored the area around the gash with a damp cloth. “Soap and water and a few bandages, and I’ll be as good as new.”
But he knew that was a lot of wishful thinking. The way it throbbed, he knew his eye was going stay swelled shut for a good twenty-four hours.
He was much more interested in the fact that Halle was standing so close to him that he could see between the buttons of her blouse to the satin skin of her abdomen. He lifted a hand and settled it on her waist as he spread his legs farther apart, allowing her to get closer as she worked. “You smell good,” he said and inhaled deeply.
“It must be eau de tamale. We didn’t get to have any lunch,” she reminded him as she worked carefully to clean away dried blood from his eyebrow and the creases around his eye.
“No, you smell like lemons,” he murmured.
“Oh, you’re right. That nice police officer at the station offered me a lemon candy while I was waiting to see if you would be charged with assault. I wonder if I’ve ever ridden in a squad car before?”
Joe wondered what she would do if he reached up and pulled her down onto his lap so that he could lick the lemon flavor from her lips. Would she let him? Would she let him lick all around the edges of her lips and then between them and then sweep the inside of her mouth, taste her tongue and drink her in until the only flavor left was uniquely her own?
His second hand settled on the other side of her waist but she didn’t seem to notice. “Are you really mad at me for doing the gallant thing?”
“I suppose not. It’s just that what I thought should happen and what did are two different things.” She fished surgical tape and scissors out of the drug store bag and began cutting strips to make a butterfly bandage. “Do you think that attorney would really have sued me for scuffing his briefcase?”
Joe chuckled. “You handed him two one-hundred-dollar bills. He looked more than satisfied.”
“How did you convince the Dallas police to let you go?” She began applying the strips to draw the edges of the gash closed.
“I gave them the secret handshake.”
“What?”
“I told them I’d been a cop. We swapped a few stories. Man to man. Works every time.”
“I’m sure the females officers loved that.”
“I got a few looks.”
As she finished Halle leaned back from him for she had the sudden sensation of being pulled in against him by the waist. “What are you doing?” she asked suspiciously.
“Enjoying the view,” he answered, his eyes on a level with her breasts. “You really are a spectacularly arranged woman, Halle.”
Halle reached up and laid her hands over his where they rode the narrow curves of her waist. “Joe, you keep saying we need to stay out of each other’s way.”
“I talk too much.” He leaned forward until his forehead was pillowed against her stomach. “You feel good and my head aches so bad I couldn’t do much more than hold you anyway. Let me have this comfort, Halle.”
A little reluctantly, her arms came up to cradle his head against her. “You’d feel better if you would lie back and take a nap.”
“Will you lie with me?” He rocked his head against her middle, his hands flexing to hold her closer. “Lie next to me so that I can rest my head on you. You’re so soft, better than any pillow, and you smell like a woman. I like your smell. Always have.”
A tiny shock like an electric current zipped through Halle. He was talking to her as a lover might. Did he realize that or had the blow to his head addled his senses? Before she could decide, he leaned backward and drew her with him until she tipped forward over him a
nd sprawled out along the length of him as he lay back on the mattress.
For a moment she lay motionless on him, her legs levered between his spread ones. That position pressed her hips tightly against his loins. A moment’s consciousness of their proximity answered the question of the source of his interest in her. He was half aroused and gaining tumescence with every passing second.
She raised up, bracing herself by her hands on the mattress as she looked down into his face. He was a mess. The cut over his left eye, which capped a swelling the size of a goose egg, was still oozing blood. His lashes were meshed into a slit which she doubted he could see through. The surrounding contused skin was already turning several shades of red and purple. But when her gaze dropped to his mouth, she felt the sudden flutter of desire in her middle.
“Halle?” He reached up to cup her head and she bent to him, sighing as he lifted his head to fit the shape of his mouth to hers.
Something broke loose from its moorings inside her as he drew her into his kiss. The hand pressing at the back of her head ushered her into the welcoming warmth of his parting lips, pulled her into the surge of his tongue, positioned her to absorb the rhythm of their tangling mouths. She knew this, recognized this moment with a knowing that went beyond mere recorded memory. This was the source of the life force surging through her, through him, between them. This was real, true, unforgettable.
She did not know how long he kissed her or even exactly when she moved or he moved so that she was no longer draped over him but on the mattress beside him, so closely fitted to his body that they touched in one long caress from shoulder to knees. Breasts to chest, stomach and hips fitted like jigsaw pieces, their arms holding the parts locked, they kissed until her lips became so sensitive his mere breath across their surface sent shivers coursing down her spine.
“I could get used to this,” he murmured finally, his lips buried in her neck. “I could get damned used to this.”
Halle opened her eyes. The light in the room had changed. Had five minutes passed, or an hour? She couldn’t tell. He’d only kissed her! Only that. And she felt ravished, afire, burning with the warm steady flame of a kerosine lamp, golden in her glow.
When he rolled away from her an involuntary whimper escaped her. “I know,” he whispered beside her. “I know.”
Halle turned to stare up at the ceiling. “What? What do you know?”
“That nothing is ever what it seems.” How sad he sounded. “Life complicates the simplest things.”
“Is this complicated?” she whispered.
“Isn’t it?”
“Because my memory’s missing?”
“Because mine isn’t.”
The steady flame inside her wavered in the back-draft of his words. Halle felt like crying, no, weeping. That was that. He’d lit the match, turned up the flow of sexually charged fuel to high, and then blown out the fire. The flameout smoked her eyes, heated her cheeks and burned the back of her throat. “Okay,” she whispered. “I understand. No problem.”
Yet when she attempted to rise he caught her by the waist and pulled her closer. He lifted his head and rested it on her shoulder as one of his legs shifted up and over both of hers, trapping her. “Just lie with me, Halle. Just do that much for me.”
Why? What do you want from me? She tensed to keep from yelling the words to him. Did he think she was some kind of insensitive being because her memory had wandered off? Her mind wasn’t missing, nor were her feelings and her needs. The lack of a past seemed an awful burden at the moment.
“Don’t be angry,” he murmured as he pillowed his face in the valley between her breasts.
“I’m not,” she answered. She was furious!
Joe had navigated through traffic with one eye swelled shut before. There was only one problem, he had no depth perception. Highway driving would be hazardous. With great care, he turned into the parking lot of a fast-food restaurant and parked.
He turned and flashed Halle an enigmatic smile. “Come on, let’s order. I’m starved.”
Halle followed him into the burger place but her mind remained on what had, or rather, had not occurred between them.
Strangely enough they had both fallen asleep on that hotel bed when she would have bet a million dollars that sleep would have been impossible after the kisses they shared. Okay, so she’d survived a heavy necking session. She doubted it was her first taste of sexual frustration. With Joe for a companion, she suspected it wouldn’t be her last.
When she had ordered Joe stepped up behind her and said, “We’re together. Let’s see, I’ll have a double burger with extra cheese and bacon, a large order of fries and a chocolate milk shake. No wait, make it a double burger no bacon. Small fries.”
“Were you afraid the bacon would tip your carefully orchestrated cholesterol intake?” Halle asked sweetly.
Joe scowled. “No, my wallet.” He pulled said item out of his pocket. “Got to watch my pennies in case I don’t get paid.”
Halle surreptitiously accessed the contents of his wallet as he pulled out a few bills to pay for the meal. “Why are you so hung up on money?” she inquired when they had carried their trays to a table and sat down.
“Because I don’t have any.” He stripped the paper from his sandwich and took a huge bite.
Halle studied his face. The purple bruising ran along his cheekbone now and the swelling affected half his face. He looked as if he’d been in a prize fight, and maybe had come out the loser. She hoped the man he had defeated was looking and feeling even worse. Joe had landed his fair share of punches. There was something heroic about the man, no doubt about it. So why was he suddenly grousing about something as mundane as money?
“What do we do now?” Halle asked when he came up for air after a long noisy drag on his shake straw.
“Looks like we’re stuck in town until the swelling goes down.” He hammered the table softly with his fist. “Only trouble is, I can’t afford the time. If the McCrea kid returns home before I find him, I’m going to lose out on a paycheck.”
“Joe, are you’re really in this only to make a few dollars?”
“This is called a job,” he muttered. “And, yeah, I’m in it for the money. That’s how it works. Average people go to work, do the job assigned them, collect a paycheck and then go home and blow it all on extravagant things like food and soap and gasoline so they can continue to go to work.”
“Boy, are you in a bad mood.”
He didn’t answer that. He spread out his hands before him and studied the fingertips. “Looks like I’ll be getting plenty of opportunities to improve my calluses this spring.”
“Where would you get calluses?”
“Doing odd jobs on neighboring farms. Mending fences, digging post holes, repairing machinery, things like that.” He picked up his half-eaten burger. “A handy man can always find work.”
“Why would you want to do such menial work?”
“I live in east Texas,” he replied after a bit of chewing. “Jobs requiring a private eye are few and far between. I do whatever I can to earn a living.”
“What about your degree in psychology?”
His one good eye narrowed in a squint. “What about it?”
“It must qualify you to do something besides manual labor.”
“It means I can work as a cashier at the local grocery or sell shoes at the mall. A B.A. in psychology is about as good as a high school diploma.”
“Then why not go for a master’s or Ph.D.?”
“And do what?”
“Well, you might consider opening offices here in Dallas. A city this size could easily absorb another psychologist’s practice.”
“What if I don’t want to live in Dallas?”
“How could you not? Or, are you thinking that after New York, any other city of a million plus would still seem provincial?”
His features compressed in lines of irritation. “That’s your trouble, it’s always been your trouble. You city women think l
ife only happens in metropolises of a million plus. Well, there’s life, good decent life, in small average places. There’s good in plain average people, too. Maybe if you’d ever bothered to get to know someone besides your designer-clothed friends you would know that.”
Gold sparkled in the green depths of her eyes. “What’s that supposed to mean? I knew you, didn’t I?”
“Yeah. You made me the exception to your rule and you know where that landed you.”
Unwilling to be defeated by his shift back into ungraciousness, Halle smiled at him as she reached across the table to wipe a blob of mustard from his lower lip with her thumb. “Actually, I don’t remember what happened when I made you an exception on my friendship chain. Why don’t you tell me?”
He grabbed her wrist in a grip so tight she gasped. “Don’t do that.” He whispered the words but they seemed to penetrate the convivial air about them.
Joe glanced right and left and then very slowly released her wrist, one uncurling finger at a time. “Let’s get the hell outta here. People are staring.”
When she looked around Halle saw that Joe was right. The two high school age waitresses in pink nylon uniforms refilling napkin holders were making no attempt to hide their interest. The middle-aged couple in the next booth were all but craned forward in their eavesdropping. Four young men in jeans and caps were grinning and talking among themselves but every gaze was trained on their table. She supposed they did make a strange couple, a kind of ad hoc Beauty and the Beast, and the beast was growling.
Halle folded the paper over her untouched sandwich and tucked it back into her bag. He waited for her to finish then rose and walked toward the exit, shoving his half-eaten meal into the waste container as he passed it.
The sunset was dying fast. The retreating magenta glow of the western sky cast thick purple shadows on the evening which seemed, by contrast, to be deeper than night. Joe had crossed the parking lot before he noticed that it was his throbbing eye and not Halle’s questions that was fueling his temper and his headache. He owed her an apology. He whipped around so suddenly she stopped short as she came up behind him.