Crossfire Christmas

by Julie Miller

  “Are you sure Emilia will be safe in the E.R. with that man?” Teresa still felt uneasy about leaving her sister behind to deal with Sanchez’s brother and friends.

  “She had her husband on the phone before we left,” he reminded her. He reached across the center console to squeeze her thigh. “You can call her when we get back to the Seaside Motel to make sure she’s okay.”

  Teresa flashed him a weak smile. “Thanks.” She glanced down at the phone in his hand. “Did you find anything?”

  “No names. But our Señor Sanchez has a lot of incoming calls from the same number. Three within the past hour.”

  “Is the number in your black book?” She turned her attention back to traffic as the light changed.

  “It’s a Houston prefix. I’ll check it when we get back to the motel. Maybe Jake’s friend Detective Montgomery can run the number for me.”

  Teresa followed the car in front of her up to the road and turned right just as another car was pulling into the parking lot. What the...? She glanced in her sideview mirror, checked the rearview, too. There was something familiar about the dark-haired man behind the wheel. But he sped away before she could get a second look.

  “What is it?”

  Probably just her frazzled nerves working overtime, making her see ghosts. “Nothing. Just thinking of what a small world it is.”

  “Teresa, there are armed men in your hospital looking for us. They threatened your sister and tried to kill me. What did you see?”

  Maybe she was smart to be more suspicious of the people around her. “That car that just passed us. I swear the driver was that drunk who was hitting on me in the Shamrock Bar.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Teresa had forgotten how good a shower could feel, even with bargain-brand soap and shampoo for her hair. She felt revived, refreshed, warm, clean, relatively normal.

  Since the Seaside Motel’s amenities didn’t include a hair dryer, bathrobe or complimentary pajamas, she blotted her wet hair, then twisted it up on top of her head with a towel before dressing in her underwear and jeans. She opened the bathroom door to let the steam out before pulling on a camisole and stepping out to use the mirror to dab some lotion onto her cheeks. She squirted more lotion into her palms, and while she rubbed it into her arms and hands, she let her gaze slide to the mirror to study the man working in the room behind her.

  Nash sat in the chair beside the rickety table, jotting notes in his little black book of clues and suspicions. He, too, had showered and was letting the stitching around his wounds air out and dry before he put on a warm shirt to sleep in. This was the first time she’d seen him clean shaven, too. It was a different look from the scruffy bear she was used to seeing. She wouldn’t call him handsome, exactly—there were too many hard angles and bruises and bumps. Then there was that slightly crooked mouth that charmed like a little boy when he grinned and molded so perfectly to hers when they kissed.

  Maybe not handsome, but masculine, compelling. Sexy.

  The shave wasn’t the only thing different about him tonight. There was more tan than pale to his skin now that he was feeling better. He seemed to have more energy, more focus.

  He’d checked the security of the room and peeked outside several times, ensuring they’d drawn no undue attention from anyone. He’d made a couple of calls to Jake. Nash had given his friend the suspicious number to trace off Angel Sanchez’s phone, hoping that would lead back to his contact within the DEA or even get a ping on his brother’s location if he was here in Kansas City. He’d given Jake Teresa’s description of the driver she’d seen. But a man in a suit with dark brown hair and dark eyes wasn’t much to go on. Jake promised to run everything past his friend at KCPD and ask some questions around the bar, as well.

  Nash had even trusted her, encouraged her, to make an important phone call of her own to her family. Emilia was home with Justin and their son, Joey, and AJ had Sanchez tied up at Fourth Precinct headquarters for all kinds of questioning related to both the assault at the hospital and the break-in at Teresa’s apartment.

  Not that AJ was pleased to learn the extent of her involvement with the Graciela cartel or just how much she’d been helping one agent in particular. But he understood undercover work and protecting his family. So he’d sit on Sanchez for now and save lecturing Teresa and strangling Nash for later.

  This healthier, warier version of Nash felt different from the man she’d stitched up at her apartment. He was different from the man who’d held on to her last night and wept for the friends he’d lost.

  This Nash was prowling, driven, self-sufficient—an intensified version of the man she’d fallen in love with.

  And maybe he no longer needed her as much as she needed him.

  Suddenly, she was aware of golden-brown eyes meeting hers in the mirror. “I can hear you thinking all the way across the room, Peewee.”

  Caught staring, caught musing, caught revealing far more of her feelings than a smart woman should, perhaps, Teresa quickly straightened the counter around the sink and headed into the main room. The hour had grown late. They’d eaten the last of the soup and split the last sandwich, and she’d given Nash his pill. “Thanks for cleaning up in here.”

  He grinned. “You’ve been cleaning up after me long enough. You okay?”

  “I’m just worried about people. Worried about everything. Wishing I could do more.” She walked past him to pick up the new Kansas City Chiefs sweatshirt she’d bought for herself at the hospital gift shop.

  “I think risking your life to help me and your sister qualifies as more.” He closed the black book and tucked it into the go bag on the floor beside him. “There’s nothing else we can do until I hear from Jake about tracking down those phone numbers.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Try to get a good night’s sleep?” he suggested.

  “You need one.” Instead of putting on the heavy shirt and removing the damp towel, Teresa gathered up the first-aid supplies and brought them back to set on the table beside Nash. She gently poked at the stitches in his shoulder. They were dry. “I’ll get this rebandaged so you can get dressed and go to bed. It’d be ridiculous if you caught a cold now, after everything you’ve been through.”

  But when she picked up the first gauze pad, Nash captured her wrist and stopped her. “That’s not what I need, Peewee.” He pulled her onto his lap. “I’m not cold.”

  He wasn’t. The heat on his skin sizzled beneath the hand she’d braced against his uninjured shoulder. And it wasn’t from any trace of fever. Teresa tried to make light of the hyperawareness she suddenly felt expanding every pore of her body. The goose bumps on her arms gave her the perfect excuse. “Well, one of us is cold.”

  He wound his arms around her, pulling her closer to all that bare skin on his chest. “Is that better?”

  Yes, she was warmer. But that dusting of tawny hair across his chest was a prickly caress beneath her sensitive palms, and the sleek ripple of muscle that shifted beneath her hands each time he moved was even more distracting. She tried to remember that she was the nurse and he was the patient, that they’d known each other for only a matter of days, that extraordinarily difficult circumstances in close quarters had probably led to this shared feeling of intimacy. He was the injured man. She was the strong one, right? “What are you doing, Nash?”

  He rubbed his hand up and down her arm, chasing away the goose bumps there. “There’s something about being locked inside this little room with you that makes me crazy.”

  “Gee, thanks.”

  “Your scent is in every corner.”

  “The smell of soap and antiseptic?”

  But as much as she tried to make a joke about the tension that drew them to each other, he wasn’t laughing. There wasn’t so much as a teasing chuckle in those warm golden eyes as he dipped his head to nu
zzle her neck. He inhaled and exhaled softly against the indentation behind her ear, tickling the microscopic hairs there. “You smell like goodness and home and—” he reached up to release the towel from her hair, sending the long, damp strands tumbling down her back “—all the things I may never get to have in my life.”

  Teresa turned in his lap. “Don’t talk like that. You’ve gotten another lead with Sanchez’s phone. Jake is helping. Justin and AJ are working on the case, too.” The glimpse of despair she saw in his eyes touched something much deeper than the physical desire his encompassing warmth and gentle touches were stirring inside her. She brushed her fingertips across the line of his bruised cheekbone and cupped the side of his smooth jaw. “We’ll get through this.”

  He sifted his fingers through her hair, smoothing the long layers over her right shoulder and breast, rolling the curling tips between his thumb and fingertips. “For days, all I’ve been able to think about is avenging Tommy’s and Axel’s and Jim’s deaths. Exposing a traitor. Protecting all the agents who go up against the cartel. From the moment I drove into that Kansas City warehouse, I’ve fully expected that I’m going to die trying to get this job done.”

  “Nash—”

  He shushed her with a finger over her lips. His gaze, which had been so fascinated with her hair a moment earlier, landed there. “You have the most beautiful mouth I’ve ever seen on a woman. When I’m alone in this room with you, and the rest of the world is some distant nightmare outside that door, all I can think about is that kiss we shared yesterday.”

  Her gaze instinctively zeroed in on his mouth. “You were delirious with fever. You probably aren’t remembering it accurately.”

  At last those firm lips crooked up with a dangerous grin. “How’s my temperature now, Nurse Rodriguez?”

  “Normal. Your fever broke and hasn’t come back since this morning.” Was that hushed quiver of anticipation really coming from her throat?

  Nash brushed the callused pad of his thumb across her bottom lip, sparking a dozen different nerve endings. His smile grew at her soft gasp. “My eyes are focused? My thoughts are sane? No delusions?”

  Her mouth was parched with anticipation. “As far as I can tell, you’re...healthy.”

  “Good. I just wanted to make sure we’re clear on this.” Then he leaned in, replacing his thumb with his mouth. He stroked his tongue across the curve of her lip. He kissed her gently, then drew the sensitive bow between his lips to suckle and tease. Teresa’s breath stuttered in her throat, then rushed out to blend with his. He touched his tongue to hers, retreated, touched her again. With one hand palming her hip and the other buried in the weight of her hair at her nape, he held her in place against his mouth and thighs.

  Her fingers dug into the warm skin of his chest. The tips of her breasts pearled into needy nubs at this leisurely seduction of her mouth. The liquid heaviness of growing need settled between her legs. She whimpered in her throat at the thoroughness with which he tasted, aroused, soothed. She squirmed in his lap to find a better angle to meet each kiss, threaded her fingers into his short hair to pull him closer, to increase the pressure, to deepen the kiss.

  “Nash?”

  “Me, too.”

  Suddenly, the atmosphere in the room changed. The kiss grew more impatient. Like a match lighting a fuse, Nash’s right arm snaked around her waist and he stood. Her bare toes never touched the carpet. He hauled her up to his chest with his good arm and kissed her harder. “Hold on to me, darlin’. Unless you want me to stop.”

  Teresa willing obeyed, winding her arms around his neck and reconnecting the kiss. His left hand threaded into her hair and his right hand palmed her bottom, holding her body flush against his as he turned, sat on the edge of the bed and fell back with her on top of him.

  “Watch your should—” He kissed her into silence. Other than a single grunt when they landed, the man didn’t appear to be feeling any pain at all. Her thighs parted around his and he bent his knee slightly, rubbing its solid strength at the juncture there, stoking the pressure and leaving her gasping for release against the salty warmth of his neck.

  With his knee trapping her against the flexing heat of his body, he rolled her to the bed beside him. While he kissed her cheeks, her chin, that sensitive bundle of nerves behind her ear, his hands went to work, too. He pushed the knit camisole up to her breasts, stroking his hand along her stomach, exposing her heated skin to the room’s cool air. He skimmed the camisole off over her head. And then his hand was on one breast, squeezing, playing. His mouth was on the other, tonguing her to a feverish pitch through the wet satin of her bra.

  Teresa bucked beneath the weight of his lower body pinning hers, wanting to be closer, needing to feel more. She laced her fingers through his hair and clutched at his scalp, holding his raspy tongue against the thrusting tip of her breast. There wasn’t a cell in her body that wasn’t on fire, and all that extra heat seemed to be building in the sensitized weight of her breasts and priming something bigger, hotter, deep inside the heart of her.

  As he explored her body with his hands, she tried to take the same liberties with him. She found the stiff bead of a male nipple in the crisp curls on his chest. She discovered the quivering response of her fingertips brushing across the flat of his stomach, dipping beneath the snap of his jeans. She squeezed her legs around the wedge of his thigh and skimmed her palms up his strong arms and back.

  When she accidentally brushed her fingers over the wound by his shoulder blade, there was just one little flinch of discomfort. Just one big reminder of what was happening here.

  “Nash,” she gasped. “We probably shouldn’t. You’re still on the mend.” And though she couldn’t quite seem to catch her breath, she braced her hands on the relatively neutral space of his chest and started to shift away. “Just because we—”

  “Don’t you dare.” Nash pulled her right back. He brushed the hair away from her face, looked down into her eyes. “I’ve never felt as strong as I do when I’m with you. I need you more than I need the truth, more than I need my next breath.” He threw one long leg over both of hers, letting her feel the bulge of his arousal at her hip. Very healthy indeed. “Please, Peewee.” Although his chest heaved in and out with every deep, ragged breath, brushing against hers, he held himself back. “Will you?”

  “Nash, I...” She tiptoed her fingers around his neck, looked up into his handsome, expectant eyes and knew her answer. “I want to call you Charlie. It feels more personal. Is that okay?”

  His mouth slowly crooked into a grin. “That’s very okay with me.”

  “And, Charlie?”

  “Hmm?”

  “No more Peewee, please. Not when we’re close like this.”

  He slipped his hand between them, slowly unzipped her jeans and slid his fingers inside to torment her. “Close like this?”

  She clenched her thighs against the pressure of his hand, barely able to speak as the pleasure built inside her. “Yes.”

  “I’ve never met anyone like you, Teresa Rodriguez. Strong and gentle, brave and full of fire.” He pulled her panties aside, thrust a finger inside her, and she moaned against the fragrant warmth of his chest. “I’ve never wanted to be with anyone the way I want to be with you.”

  “Me, either.”

  “We make a great team, don’t we?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ve been on assignment or focused on my work for so long that I can’t remember the last time I wanted—”

  “Charlie?” She pressed a kiss to his chest. Kissed his chin. Pulled his mouth close to hers.

  “Yeah?”

  “We only have until Christmas, remember? Less talking. More action.”

  He grinned. “Yes, ma’am.”

  For several needy, frustrating seconds, they pulled apart to remove the rest of their clothes, to dig a cond
om from his wallet, to fall back onto the bed together.

  And then his mouth closed over hers. Her body melted beneath the beauty of his kiss and the weight of his body moving on top of her and sliding inside. “That’s it, darlin’. Let it happen.”

  There were no more words. Only touches and kisses, moans of need and gasps of pleasure. The heat detonated inside her, and Teresa held on tight, riding the shock waves of pleasure. She held on tighter as Charlie’s fingers tangled in her hair, and he groaned with the power of his own release.

  Afterward, they drifted off to sleep, still cradled in each other’s arms. Her dark hair and the warmth of Charlie’s body draped possessively around hers were the only cover she needed.

  * * *

  SOMETIME LATER IN the night, Nash awoke to find a petite package of decadent curves spooned against his chest. When he stroked her long, soft hair down her back, Teresa shivered against him, stirring the interest of his body again.

  When he looked down, he found her beautiful dark eyes open, watching him. “Are you okay?” she asked. “You were sleeping pretty hard.”

  “Always taking care of me, hmm?”

  Her fingers drew tantalizing little designs across his chest. “That was the deal, right? I take care of you, and you live long enough to catch the bad guys?” Her gaze shuttered and dropped to the middle of his chest. Her hands stilled. “I think I’m in love with you, Charlie Nash.”

  His heart swelled at her softly spoken admission, spreading light into his dark world, filling him with a humility and hope he had no business feeling.

  Similar words danced across his tongue. But he couldn’t bring himself to say them. This woman was too good, too sweet, too important for him to make her any promises he couldn’t keep.

  Instead he captured her chin between his thumb and finger and tipped her face back up to his. “Teresa...”

  Her mouth softened with a beautifully serene smile and she nodded, as if she understood the things he couldn’t say. And then she stretched up against his eagerly attentive body and kissed him. This he could do. This he could give her.