Safe in Your Arms

by RaeAnne Thayne

  “Everyone should have a friend like that. Someone who knows all about you and…loves you anyway.”

  She was talking about Tina, he realized, and his heart squeezed with sympathy. What if he’d lost Gracie?

  He didn’t like thinking about how she had considered killing herself during those dark months after Marisa died. She had never told him but Dugan had.

  He would have been devastated to lose her, and it would have been so much worse if she died amid a tangle of unanswered questions.

  He had to help Elizabeth. Somehow in the last week, investigating the death of Tina Hidalgo had become far more than a favor to Grace. It was important to Elizabeth so it was important to him.

  Now there was a scary thought. When did her happiness become such a blasted matter of concern?

  They were approaching Harbor View, he saw by the landmarks. “Do you want to try docking?”

  “Oh, no. I couldn’t!”

  “That’s what you said about navigating her and you did great. Come on. I’ll walk you through it.”

  How did she still manage to smell so heavenly after all day on the water? he wondered. He wanted to stand here all night and just sniff her hair.

  Hell, if he were honest with himself, what he really wanted to do was take over the controls and head out to open water and just cruise with her for the next month or two or six.

  “That’s it. Just a little closer. There. You’ve got her.” He jumped to the dock and quickly hitched up the bow and stern lines, then returned to the cabin.

  “Perfect landing.” He grinned at her. “I couldn’t have done a better job myself.”

  “Really?” Her face lit up with pleasure, her eyes gleaming in the dusky light. She smelled so heavenly and he realized grimly that he had absolutely no self-control when it came to Elizabeth Quinn.

  What else could he do? He kissed her.

  She sighed and leaned into him as if she’d been waiting for exactly this moment.

  Talk about perfect landings. She fit just right against him, her willowy body soft and supple. The need he’d been suppressing the whole damn day burst free and he growled and licked at the corners of her mouth, needing to taste her, to feast.

  She parted her lips on a gasp and he slipped inside, his fingers entwined in her hair.

  Ah, heaven.

  She moaned and wrapped her arms tightly around his neck, holding him fast.

  “You still taste like chocolate cake,” he murmured. “Did I mention I’m crazy about chocolate cake?”

  Her laugh sounded ragged. “I think I figured that out around the third slice.”

  He decided he loved her teasing. She unbent enough to do it so rarely it was like that first precious glimpse of sunlight after a long, cold winter.

  He returned to kissing her, and she participated with such sweet enthusiasm his body naturally craved more. Without thinking anything beyond getting closer to her, he backed her up a few feet to the cushioned bench along the bulkhead of the pilothouse and lowered her down. There wasn’t a whole lot of room here, but then, that wasn’t necessarily such a bad thing.

  When he slid down to her, she made a soft, erotic sound in her throat and arched against him. Her hands fluttered like hummingbirds at sugar water, dancing to his shoulders, then his back, then his hair, then back to his shoulders.

  The sun finally slipped behind the horizon, and the interior of the cabin dimmed but he could still make out the pale, fragile beauty of her features.

  He touched her then, just lightly through her cotton shirt on the curve of one small, perfect breast, but she jumped as if he’d shot her with ten thousand watts of power.

  Her eyes were wide, unfocused. Unbearably aroused. He’d never affected a woman with such a mild caress. After that, he lost whatever slim hold he might have possessed over his control. He couldn’t kiss her enough, couldn’t touch her enough.

  He wanted to take her right here, while the Mari rocked and swayed on the surf and the stars popped into the sky one by one.

  Hard, fast, urgent.

  Any way he could.

  He was trying frantically to remember whether he might by some miracle have any condoms onboard when she drew in a ragged breath and wrenched her mouth away.

  “Beau, you’ve…we’ve got to stop this.”

  Maybe in the medicine cabinet in the aft head. There might be one left at the bottom of the box. He nibbled her lip, trying to calculate how long it would take him to go down and check.

  “Beau, stop.”

  This time she pushed against him and her message finally pierced the haze of desire enveloping him. When a woman said stop, he stopped.

  But nobody ever said he had to like it.

  “Why?”

  “A-Alex.”

  Damn. He hadn’t even given the kid a thought. “He’s down for the count, and I don’t think he’ll be coming up anytime soon. Anyway, we can take this down to the other stateroom and lock the door.”

  “Not just Alex. Other things.”

  She drew a shaky breath and moved to the other end of the pilothouse, then lifted trembling hands to her ponytail in an effort to restore what his fingers had tugged free.

  “What other things? Why are you running away?”

  She was silent, her gaze out on the water. “I need…space. I can’t think when you’re so close.”

  “What’s wrong with not being able to think once in a while? With just letting yourself feel? We both wanted the same thing back there. You can’t tell me we didn’t.”

  “I can’t,” she agreed, her voice small. “Beau, we have this…heat between us. I would be foolish to deny that. But that’s all it is. All it could ever be. A…a momentary passion.”

  He didn’t know why her words hurt him and wasn’t sure he wanted to dig any deeper into his psyche to find out.

  “I don’t have flings,” she went on. “I just…don’t. And there are too many…differences between us for anything else.”

  “Differences between us? What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  She had restored her hair, and her face in the dim light was once more that cool, distant mask. “We might have heat between us but that’s all. We have very little in common. We’re two very different people from two very…different worlds.”

  He listened to her but he could hardly believe what he was hearing. So there it was. Different worlds, hell. That was just a polite way of saying she was an heiress and he was a good-ol’-boy cop with a fifteen-year-old boat and a hick Southern drawl.

  With a jerk of his thumb, Beau flicked on the inside lights. He gave her a hard stare across the width of the cabin. How could she stand there looking so soft and innocent and heartbreakingly—deceptively—sweet?

  She was just like Marie, ridiculously class conscious in a country where class dividing lines had supposedly been erased hundreds of years ago.

  Did he need a stinking tree to fall on his head? How could he have been stupid enough to forget that the woman had ice water flowing through her veins?

  Even as he thought it, he knew he couldn’t use such a sweeping generality to describe a woman as complicated as Elizabeth. She wasn’t cold all the time. What about the kid? With Alex she was loving and gentle. She couldn’t be faking that.

  So what was the act and what was real?

  Or was it just him? Was she just grabbing on to any excuse to push him away?

  Whatever the reason, she’d done a good job, striking out the one way that was guaranteed to cool his desire faster than shoving an iceberg down his jeans.

  Three times she had bluntly and abruptly rejected him. Not again. He would be damned before he let her play him for the fool once more.

  CHAPTER 11

  Hold it together. Just a few moments more.

  Elizabeth chanted the mantra to herself as she followed Beau up the stairs, Alex in his arms. Her voice sounded amazingly cool as she directed him to Alex’s room, then slipped the half-asleep little boy out of his sand
y clothes and into clean pajamas.

  Bath, Alex signed, his eye drooping drowsily.

  Not tonight, she signed back. You’re too tired. You can bathe in the morning.

  He nodded and offered them a sleepy smile, then gave up the battle to stay awake the moment he hit the pillow.

  They stood by the bedside together for a few seconds, tension thick and heavy between them, then Elizabeth led the way out of the room.

  Just a few more moments. Then he would leave and she could examine her battered emotions in solitude.

  “I…thank you for a wonderful day, Beau. It was…almost perfect. I’m only sorry for the way things ended.”

  He would never know how very sorry she was that she had stopped. She had never wanted anything in her life more than she had wanted to take him up on his offer and go below deck to the other stateroom, lock the door and lose herself in his arms.

  Lose herself was exactly the right choice of words, and there was the problem. She couldn’t afford to make love with Beau Riley. She couldn’t.

  “It’s over,” he muttered. “Let’s just forget it. Believe me, it won’t happen again.”

  She thought of the wonderful day they had shared, and her heart broke a little at the realization that it was a once-in-a-lifetime experience, never to be repeated.

  Just as well. As she’d tried to explain to him in her usual clumsy fashion, they came from different worlds. He was smart and clever, commanding and confident. He made his living with his brain, piecing together clues to solve crimes and catch criminals.

  She, on the other hand, was tongue-tied and awkward. Insecure. Stupid.

  She had tried to explain it, but she had a feeling her meaning hadn’t come across right. He had been offended, although she wasn’t exactly sure what she had said that had turned those eyes a storm-tossed green like the Sound on a winter day.

  How could she have explained without telling him the truth about her impairment? She couldn’t! So far she thought she had done a fair job of concealing it. She would never be exactly glib, but she hadn’t made too many horrible gaffes around him.

  She had been lucky, she knew. But she couldn’t keep it hidden forever. Eventually he would use that clever brain of his to figure out something was wrong with her. Then he would be disgusted. She had to do everything she could to maintain as much distance as possible between them to make certain that didn’t happen.

  When her emotions were involved, she was far more prone to making mistakes. So all she had to do was keep her emotions detached, to maintain a nice, safe distance between them.

  And maybe one day she could sail around the globe by herself, too.

  She sighed. “Anyway, thank you for a…a lovely day.”

  “You’re welcome. Tell me again the plan for tomorrow.”

  She frowned, not sure for a moment what he meant, then it hit her. Andrew’s birthday party. How could she have become so wrapped up in her own angst over that shattering kiss that she’d forgotten?

  It took her a moment to remember the details. “The party begins at eight. As we said before, it makes more sense for me to use the car service and have the driver pick you up at your house in town.”

  His mouth tightened as if the suggestion annoyed him, then he nodded. “Fine. Give me a piece of paper and I’ll write down the directions to my house.”

  She quickly found one in a drawer near the front door, and he wrote in a slashing, bold hand. She found herself watching those strong fingers move across the paper, thinking about them stroking with such tantalizing heat across her skin. Her nipples budded to life at the memory, at the yearning to feel not only his fingers but his mouth, as well.

  He glanced up and caught her watching his hands. Color soaked her skin. Oh, she hoped her expression didn’t reveal the racy things she had been thinking.

  Beau cleared his throat. “Come early enough that we can test out the electronics.”

  “All right,” she murmured. “We’ll see you about quarter after seven, then.”

  She walked him to the back door, then stood on the patio and watched him ready the Mari for departure.

  The clouds that had threatened since the sunset finally delivered a soft, hesitant rain. She stood with the mist pearling against her face and watched him cast off from the dock and enter the channel.

  It took her several moments to realize the heavy ache in her chest was painfully similar to the sense of forlorn abandonment that used to lodge there every time she watched her father head out to sea.

  * * *

  “Yes, Mr. Parker. This is the correct neighborhood. I have the address right here.”

  Despite the nerves waltzing through her the next evening, Elizabeth summoned a smile for the man in the front seat of the limousine.

  Anthony Parker was one of her favorite drivers at the car service she used. In his early sixties with salt-and-pepper hair, a thick chest and an eternally cheerful attitude, Tony never failed to charm a smile out of her, no matter how badly her day was going.

  “You said 3560 was the address, right?”

  “Yes. That’s what Detective Riley said.”

  “That should be right at the end of this street, then.”

  Elizabeth looked out the window, trying to focus on something besides her stomach twirling with nerves. She wouldn’t have expected this kind of neighborhood to appeal to a hard-edged detective. She supposed if she had to guess, she would have pictured him living in a bachelor apartment somewhere without much furniture.

  This was a family neighborhood of modest, well-kept homes with basketball standards mounted above garage doors and minivans in the driveways.

  Tony pulled in front of a house matching the address Beau had given her, and she gazed at the small redbrick dwelling. Black shutters flanked the windows and the branches of a climbing rose, bare now, curved over the door. A thin blanket of leaves from a red maple covered a small circle in the front grass but the rest of the yard seemed immaculate.

  The house was charming and warm, far more welcoming than her home, with its imposing iron gates and sophisticated security system.

  She drew in a deep breath, wishing she could stay here admiring his house for the rest of the evening. She did not want to do this.

  “Would you like me to go ring the doorbell?”

  She drew a deep breath. “What’s the usual protocol for these situations, Mr. Parker? Should I go to the door in person or send you to do my dirty work for me?”

  An amused smile creased his dark features. “You do whatever feels right, I guess.”

  What felt right was for her to ask him to turn around right now and take her home where she was safe. But she didn’t suppose that was what the driver meant.

  She dithered for another twenty seconds. “I’d better go to the door,” she decided. She thought Beau had said something the night before about testing the microphone and receiver before they left, and it would probably be easier to do that inside than in the limousine on the way to the party.

  Anthony immediately stepped from the car and spread open a wide black umbrella against the soft rain. She knew it was foolish, even cowardly of her, but she couldn’t help being comforted by his presence. She felt as awkward and unsure of herself as a silly teenage girl on her first date.

  This wasn’t a date, she reminded herself sternly. Beau Riley was escorting her to the party only for moral and investigative support while she talked with Andrew.

  Still, wouldn’t it be heavenly if she and Beau weren’t going to a crowded society party to interrogate a possible suspect? If instead they were going on a real date, somewhere dark and romantic, where they could laugh and kiss and share a meal, then end the evening wrapped in each other’s arms?

  She blew out her breath, trying to ignore the silly fantasy while Mr. Parker rang the doorbell.

  After a few moments Beau yanked it open. He was only half-dressed, which spawned a whole new crop of fantasies, in just black slacks, a white shirt, with a crooked tie
and a scowl.

  “Sorry you had to walk up in the rain. I would have come out, but I was still trying to fix this damn tie. Help me, here, will you?”

  She gazed at him helplessly. She didn’t know the first thing about tying a bow tie. How could she? It wasn’t exactly a skill she’d ever had reason to learn. Under other circumstances she might have helped with her father occasionally but Jonathan always had an old-fashioned manservant to help him.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t…”

  To her vast relief, Anthony stepped forward. “If you don’t mind, sir, I might be able to help.”

  Beau gave him a distracted look. “Who are you?”

  Elizabeth cringed at her poor manners. “I’m sorry. Beau, this is Anthony Parker. He’ll be driving us to the…” Her mind went completely blank, a vast vacant field of nothing. How was she supposed to think with Beau standing in front of her, looking gorgeous and wild and grumpy with his dark hair slightly mussed and that crisp white shirt showing every ripple of his hard-muscled chest?

  “It’s my pleasure to be taking you to your social engagement this evening,” Anthony interjected smoothly into the breach. “And if you don’t mind my saying, I’m considered quite an expert at the fine art of knotting bowties.”

  “Fine. Whatever. Just help me here.”

  Elizabeth watched while Anthony quickly and competently knotted the tie then stepped back to admire his handiwork.

  “Thanks,” Beau muttered. “I was just about to forget this whole thing and change back into a regular jacket and tie.”

  He pivoted and disappeared into another room, leaving behind just an enormous tomcat who watched them from the doorway with an unblinking gaze, exactly as if they were two juicy mice.

  She never would have figured Beau for a cat person. He struck her as the kind of man who would have a big, athletic dog like Maddie. The cat sauntered over and began to rub against her leg, purring like a freight train. She bent to pet his ginger-colored fur just as Beau returned.

  “Gordo, cut it out,” he muttered. “He’ll get hair all over you.”