Crossfire Christmas

by Julie Miller

  Had he read her mind? Had he sensed her second-guessing her place in this partnership? Whatever the reason for his words of praise and tactile show of support, the simple gesture warmed her, reassured her. It felt good to be needed. It felt better to hear Nash admit how much he needed her. Her. As though she could handle the job. As though she was enough.

  She could do this. They could do this. Together.

  “What about wheels?” Jake asked, his presence reminding her that her relationship with Nash was all about protection and medical treatment and finding out the truth. It wasn’t about the way Nash forced her to be stronger, smarter, more stubborn—the capable adult she’d always known she could be. He hadn’t babied her. Not once.

  No wonder she kept thinking she was falling for him. He treated her the way she wished her family would treat her. Like a grown woman. She’d never had anyone like that in her life before. If she wasn’t careful, she really would fall in love with Charlie Nash.

  Nash’s fingers reached for hers when she pulled away, but she wisely pulled her gloves from her pockets and kept both hands busy putting them on. If Nash noticed her sudden withdrawal, he didn’t let on.

  Neither did Jake. “You’re going to need a vehicle that can’t be tied to either one of you. Here.” He pulled a key from his wallet and tossed it to Nash. “Take my truck. It’s the silver pickup behind the bar. There’s a gun in the glove compartment, if you need it.”

  Nash thanked him. “I’ve got a go bag. We’ll be fine.”

  After checking to make sure the hallway was clear, Jake shrugged into his coat and escorted them down the hallway to the bar’s rear exit. “I’ll find out what I can and call you tonight on the burner phone.” Hunching his big shoulders against the evening chill that dampened the air and hinted at another dusting of snow later on, he led them out to the silver pickup truck parked near the Dumpster. “The gas tank is full. I’ll get a ride from Beth after work.”

  The two men retrieved Nash’s bag from her car and stowed it in the back of the extended truck cab. They exchanged a few more private words before shaking hands one more time. “Thanks, Jake. Call as soon as you know something.”

  “I will.” And then the big man nodded to Teresa. “Ma’am. You take care of this guy. He’s the oldest friend I can remember. Take care of yourself, too.”

  “I will. Thank you.”

  After Jake strode back inside the bar, Nash opened the driver’s-side door and handed her the key. “You’d better drive.”

  He made sure she was settled behind the wheel of the big four-wheel-drive truck before he circled around and climbed into the passenger seat beside her.

  Once more, she and Nash were outside in the cold, alone again.

  Chapter Nine

  The Seaside Motel wasn’t much of a tropical oasis in the wintry urban sprawl of Kansas City, Missouri. The “sea” was a cracked concrete pool filled with drifts of snow and two plastic palm trees chained to a peeling wrought-iron fence. The “motel” included two single-story buildings arranged in a U shape with the office around the empty pool. Twelve chipped and dented steel doors faced their own parking spaces.

  The old man at the front desk who checked them in had a flask behind the counter, a reality show on his portable TV and not so much as a curiously raised eyebrow for Nash when he registered as Mr. and Mrs. John Smith and paid an extra twenty dollars in cash.

  He had to give the owner credit for trying to upgrade the place by lining the porchlike overhang with colored Christmas lights. Some blinked, some didn’t. And every so often along the way, a bulb was burned out, broken or missing. Each door was draped with tattered fake greenery studded with red plastic berries. Teresa fingered one of the sprigs of plastic holly as Nash unlocked the door to 6A.

  “Festive, huh?” he teased before pushing open the door and turning on the lights.

  The musty smell of disuse greeted them inside. Teresa dropped her backpack on one bouncy mattress and his go bag on the other while he locked the door and pocketed the key. Then she pulled back the velour bedspread and sniffed one of the pillows. “At least the sheets are clean. They’ve been bleached.”

  Great, so no bedbugs. Still, it wasn’t the kind of place he’d ever want to take a woman like Teresa. In this kind of weather, he pictured them in a cozy lodge with big throw pillows and a thick wool blanket on the floor in front of a stone hearth. Sipping cold beers, warming themselves by the fire, getting better acquainted. Him exploring those curves. Her putting those soft, firm hands on him. The two of them getting very well acquainted.

  Nash swallowed hard, scratching his parched throat, quickly burying wherever that fantasy had been headed. Teresa had shed her coat and was already running water in the sink and checking out the bathroom when he apologized. “Sorry it’s not the Ritz.”

  “It’s not like we have much choice,” she answered through the door. “Your friend Jake said those men went through my apartment.”

  He’d already gotten the first of what he hoped to be several informative reports from Jake Lonergan. Unfortunately, learning her place had been broken into and searched wasn’t exactly the positive news he’d been hoping for. “Yeah. Sorry about that, too. I don’t think we left anything behind that could tell them where we are, but they know we’re together, they know I’m alive, and they won’t stop hunting for us.”

  “Thank you for letting me call AJ to tell him I’m all right. I’m sure he’d still prefer to see me in person to tell him that, but—”

  “That’s not going to happen. It’s hard enough to stay hidden from Graciela’s men. I can’t have half of KCPD looking for us, too.”

  “I know.” The toilet flushed and she reappeared. “I told him I’m staying with a friend for a few days. That’ll just have to hold him until we’re done with your mission.”

  “A friend?” He hardly qualified. Maybe she was getting a little too good at telling lies.

  “Don’t worry. I have a lot of friends. Even if he does check up on me, it’ll take him a while to contact all of them.” She stuck her fingers under the tap to wash her hands. “I’m mostly mad that those men damaged some of the presents I’d gotten for my nephews and the kids at the hospital. I’ll have to replace those before the twenty-fifth.”

  “I’ll replace them,” Nash insisted, hoping the traitor in his office would be exposed and he’d be alive to celebrate Christmas. As fatigued as he was, he was determined to stand tall on his own two feet and show her he could protect her. “It’s my fault your place was violated by those scum. You send me a bill for whatever replacing the lock and door costs, and let me know how much I need to reimburse you for your patients’ gifts or anything else they ruined.”

  She shut off the water and reached for a thin white towel. When she was done drying her hands, she turned and chucked the towel at his head. “You’re doing it again, Nash. All this talk about tabulating expenses and reimbursing me makes me feel like the hired help. That’s not the mutual partnership I agreed to.”

  “I’m not used to needing anyone but the men I work with, Peewee.” Nash caught the towel and tossed it onto the bed. “I’m not quite sure how I’m supposed to deal with you.”

  “How did you deal with the team you worked with in Houston?” She walked straight across the room to him and started unbuttoning his coat. Despite the professional efficiency of her fingers, having her undress him felt a little too intimate for his waning self-control around her.

  “Not like this.” When she started to push his coat off his shoulders, Nash caught her by the wrists and pulled her hands away. But he wasn’t strong enough to let her go, and with a surrendering sigh, he pulled her right up to his chest, winding his arms behind her back and tucking his chin atop the crown of her hair. “I want to take care of you, but you don’t want to be taken care of.”

  She snuggled inside
the opening of his coat, her fingers clinging to the front of his shirt. “Did you try to ‘take care’ of your men? Or did you let them do the job they were trained to do?”

  “Both,” he answered honestly. “Richter, Torres and Delvecchio were like little brothers to me. On one hand, I knew they were good agents—I trained Jim and Axel myself. On the other hand, they were my responsibility.” His arms convulsed around her, and he dipped his head to bury his nose in the fragrant softness of her hair, clinging to the present as the grief and guilt of the past few days surged through him. “I did a real whiz-bang job of taking care of them.”

  “Charlie, don’t.”

  “Charlie, hmm?” He shouldn’t have liked her calling him by the given name nobody used as much as he did.

  “None of this is your fault. That’s what you told me, right?” Her arms snuck around his waist beneath his coat, and she turned her cheek into his shoulder. “None of it.” She found where his spine met his belt with her fingertips and dug them in, pulling herself into his embrace. Her breasts pillowed against his chest. Her hips rubbed against his. Her cheek rested over the thump of his heart. “Does this hurt?”

  He knew she was talking about the bruising, stitches and bullet hole in his shoulder. But all he noticed was the way her warmth and energy seemed to wrap around him and seep into every cell of his body, easing some of the emotional pain and making even those most beat-up parts of him hum with an awareness of her feminine strength. “Not a bit.”

  “It’s like I tell my patients when they have to go in for another treatment or operation. Don’t judge the future by your past. Yes, horrible things happen.” Her fingers drummed a nervous pattern against his back before linking together and tightening her hold around his waist. “My father was murdered when I was little—I barely remember him. My mother died of cancer early last year. I got mugged walking home from my first job after high school. The guy gave me a black eye and stole my purse and probably sentenced me to forever being the Rodriguez that everyone else has to look out for.”

  Nash rubbed slow circles up and down her back, surprised to learn that she’d had to endure such tragedies. “If you’re trying to make me feel better, I have to tell you that all you’re doing is pissing me off. I hate that you had to go through all that.” He slipped one hand up to the nape of her neck, tunneling his fingers beneath her thick ponytail and massaging the tension he found there. “And now I’ve gotten you involved with this mess? I’m the one who’s trouble.”

  She laughed at his grousing, sending warm vibrations through his body. She turned her lips to his chest and pressed a kiss to the swell of his pectoral through his cotton shirts before snuggling in again. “But good things happen, too. There are more patients who get well than who never make it out of the hospital. AJ finally arrested the man responsible for my father’s death. I miss my mama, Sofia, but I have so many wonderful memories of her.” She loosened her grip at his back and leaned back against his arms, tilting her face up to his. “You’ll get this guy. We’ll stay two or three steps ahead of those gorillas he works with, and you’ll get him. I know you will.”

  The spicy scent of Teresa’s skin and hair filled his head with every breath. As much as he loved the feel of her diminutive curves clinging to the length of his body, he loved her spirit even more.

  Nash lifted a strand of coffee-colored hair that had fallen across her cheek and rolled the soft silk between his thumb and forefinger. “You just don’t know how to quit, do you?”

  “Nope.”

  He unwound the hair behind her ear. He smoothed aside another strand and tucked it behind the other ear. He stood head and shoulders above her, framing her face between his hands, looking down at those dark eyes and that beautiful mouth.

  Then she pushed up onto her toes, and he lowered his head and they were kissing. Not that sweetly tentative introduction they’d shared at her apartment building. This was twenty-four hours of pent-up desire and battling wills and raw desperation breaking free in a meeting of mouths and tongues and gaspy moans.

  Teresa’s lips parted in welcome, giving him a taste of her utter softness and fiery warmth. Her hands braced at his waist. His fingers slid into her beautiful hair, tangling, sifting, holding on as her tongue danced with his. He traced a path along the smooth line of her jaw with his lips, then worked his way back, dropping a dozen little nibbles along the way. He nipped at the decadent curve of her bottom lip, and she murmured his name in a sound that was heady pleasure to his ears. He touched his tongue to the spot and felt her lips tugging at his, urging him to deepen the kiss again.

  When Nash obliged, she skimmed her hands up the planes of his chest, caught his rough face between her hands and rubbed her palms against his beard stubble, creating a passionate friction. And then her arms were snaking around his neck, her hands were in his hair.

  He fell back against the door, and she came with him, her toes leaving the floor as he palmed her butt and took her weight against his chest. His pulse thundered in his ears. His body burned. Her nipples beaded beneath her sweater, poking him like delectable hot brands. He wanted his hands on her breasts. He wanted his mouth there.

  This was all kinds of crazy. All kinds of stupid. All kinds of right.

  Her thigh wedged between his, her arms tightened around him, and she sort of crawled up his body, her eager gasps and clinging hands tempting him to forget everything except the perfect storm of this moment. But even as anticipation leaped behind his zipper, Nash’s energy short-circuited. He was crashing.

  Of all the lousy luck.

  He wanted this sexy little spitfire in ways beyond what his body was craving. But if he was going to make love to this woman, he damn sure wanted to do it right. He wanted to make sure he could follow through and give her everything she wanted. Everything she deserved.

  And she deserved a lot better than the one-night stand in this seedy dump of a motel that he could offer her. She deserved her family and Christmas and a guarantee that being with him wouldn’t get her killed.

  Nash tore his mouth from hers and nuzzled the softness of her hair, dragging in ragged breaths beside her ear. “Darlin’, I’m sorry.”

  Her breath gusted across his cheek. “What’s wrong?” Her lips scudded across the same spot. “I’m not complaining. This pull that I feel toward you doesn’t make any sense, but I wanted you to really kiss me. I wanted...” She stiffened in his arms. She pushed his chin away from her ear and leaned back to read his face. “Nash?”

  The hand squeezing her bottom and the one palming the bare skin of her back tried to hold on when she began to slide back down his body. “I’m so sorry.”

  She braced her hands against his chest and pushed to free herself. Nash flinched at the stab of pressure against his bum shoulder. His left hand popped open and he dropped her.

  As soon as her feet hit the floor, she was at his side, sliding beneath his right arm and walking him to the closest bed. “You’re white as a ghost. I’m such an idiot.”

  “No.” He squeezed her shoulder, glad that she didn’t have to carry his weight like the night before but appreciating the balance she offered. “The mind is willing, but the body just isn’t up to doing this tonight.”

  He sank onto the edge of the bed, and she immediately felt for his temperature. “I’m the one who’s sorry.” She reached around him to help him remove his heavy coat without lifting his left arm. “I got carried away by my hormones and the stress of the past couple of days. I wasn’t even thinking.”

  “That makes two of us.”

  She tossed his coat onto the chair beside hers and went to work on the snaps of his shirt to get to the wound. “But I should know better.”

  That stung worse than the blow his male ego was already dealing with. He grabbed her wrists and stopped her halfway down the placket. “And I’m such a lowlife taking advantage of the woman I
kidnapped that I don’t?”

  Her mouth was still pink and swollen from the passion they’d shared. But the argument for trust remained. “I thought we were beyond that, Nash.”

  He liked Charlie better coming from her, but going back to trading barbs with Teresa was the splash of reality he needed. He released her and let her tend to him. “Right. We’re partners. But trust me, none of my team ever tempted me to forget a mission the way you do.”

  She paused with her hands at the hem of his T-shirt. “I’m on a mission, too.” Her sure hands weren’t quite so efficient as she peeled off his T and inspected the entry and exit wounds she’d stitched up. Then she retrieved her backpack and set out the medical supplies they’d purchased. She put on a pair of disposable sterile gloves, unwrapped a gauze pad and soaked it with distilled water. “You need me to be a nurse. I’m determined to do my job and do it well. I’m so tired of not being allowed to do the things I’m capable of, of not being trusted to make good decisions. And then when I sabotage myself—”

  “By making out with a randy cowboy cop from Texas?”

  A soft smile finally relaxed her mouth. “My brother and sisters would call for an intervention if I told them that.”

  “They don’t picture you with a bad boy like me, huh?”

  “On some days, I don’t think they picture me with anybody. Unless he’s staid, boring and unlikely to ever put his hands on me.” He gritted his teeth as she gently cleansed his mending skin. Yeah, that keeping his hands to himself would definitely cut him from the family approval list. “They don’t trust me to make the best choice in men or where I live or—” she shook her head “—who I stop to help along the side of the road.”

  Nash turned so she could clean and dry the stitches in his back. “I think I understand where your family is coming from. You’re lucky that someone cares enough to worry about your safety and happiness.”