Carmen’s eyes twinkled. “He’s a nice caveman?”
She chuckled and looked away. “A misnomer, I know, but...yeah.” And he was, Sapphira realized, in his own sexy, boorish way.
“And you like him.” She said it with an implied ooo-la-la and rocked back on her very pregnant heels.
“Stop that,” Sapphira admonished. “You’ll fall over.”
Carmen frowned. “Hey, I’m not that big.”
No, but she was that counter-weighted, Sapphira thought. She bit her tongue and kept the comment to herself. “Of course, not.” She hugged her again. “I should go. Give me a couple of minutes to get Sir Pain in the Ass out of the hall before you come out, okay?”
The younger girl chuckled. “Sir Pain in the Ass? How does he feel about that nickname?”
“I wouldn’t know,” Sapphira quipped in a near whisper. “Because he doesn’t know about it.” She winked and quickly made her way out into the hall, where Huck sat.
That silvery hawkish gaze did a slow once over that started at the tips of her toes and ended when his gaze found hers. Humor, heat and something else, something thrillingly dangerous and deliberately guarded hovered there, making her breath hitch in her throat and a single dart of alarm land in her heart.
Something had changed, Sapphira realized. She didn’t know what--couldn’t even begin to imagine--but the status quo had shifted sometime between the minute she walked into that room and the instant she’d walked out of it.
She hesitated, the barest betrayal of her sudden unease, then plastered a smile on her face and hoped that he wouldn’t notice. Futile, she knew. The man didn’t miss a friggin’ thing. But... “I’m ready,” she said and started down the hall.
Huck stood. “I’m not.”
Sapphira drew up short and turned around. A funny taste developed in her mouth. She labeled the flavor panic. “Sorry?”
“I’ve got to pee. Where’s the bathroom?”
Her eyes widened and every second they spent in the hall put her that much closer to discovery. “You couldn’t go while I was in there?” she asked, pointing the examining room.
He smiled. “I was guarding you,” Huck said. “I couldn’t leave my post. Where’s the bathroom?”
Sapphira looked desperately up and down the hall, could feel her blood-pressure heading toward stroke level. Huck could not see Carmen. Everything she’d worked for--everything she’d accomplished--would all be at risk. Her involvement with Carmen would go into the report to her father. He’d start asking questions and poking around, discover the extent of Belle Charities and her involvement in it and...and...
She’d be finished.
And all the girls and families who depended on her would be left in the lurch.
She couldn’t let that happen.
Sapphira hurried over and grabbed his arm and in loud, carrying tones said, “This is a gynecologist’s office, Huck. They don’t have a men’s bathroom. Come on,” she said, tugging him toward the exit. “You can pee in the bushes outside. That ought to appeal to you.”
Huck dug in his heels. “I don’t want to pee in the bushes outside. I want to pee in here. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you have something to hide in here.”
Her throat parched. Any second now Carmen was going to walk out that door and the jig would be up. Furthermore, for whatever reason, she knew he was stalling. She’d spent the past three days with him and the man had an iron bladder. A few steps to the parking lot wasn’t going to cause him any physical injury. He was being bull-headed and belligerent and had evidently caught the scent of a mystery, one she could not let him solve.
For the first time since this all started, Sapphira wished she could confide in him, wished with every fiber of her being that she could share her real life with him, not the one she’d been forced--and was still being forced by her father--to portray.
She hesitated, looked up and him, and longed to unburden her soul. She wanted to entrust her secrets and unburden her heart, to make him more than a lover, but a friend as well. She instinctively knew he’d be a good one, loyal and true, honest and frank. And in the deepest part of her soul, particularly after last night, intuition told her he could be so much more.
More than she dared to hope for.
Because, ultimately, he worked for her father. And that cast more than one fly in the ointment--it put every other unsavory insect in there as well.
The thought, however depressing, braced her. He had to guard her, right? Well, he couldn’t do that if she left. Unhappily reverting to her prima donna roll, Sapphira turned and walked down the hall. “I’ll wait in the car.”
He hesitated--one, two, three--then muttered a curse and hurriedly caught up with her.
Back ramrod straight, Sapphira inwardly wilted with relief. Geez God, but how much longer could she keep this up?
Better still, how the hell was she going to keep herself from falling head over heels in love with him?
CHAPTER 10
“Are you sure you can behave yourself in here?” Huck asked as he held the door open to her favorite coffee shop. He had grim memories from the last time they’d darkened this door and didn’t want a repeat performance of her there-isn’t-enough-foam-on-my-latte rant.
Sapphira had the grace to blush and a droll smile rolled around her lips. “I’ll be fine,” she said. “And when I’m not, I tip well. Just ask Mark.”
“Who’s Mark?”
She nodded toward the twenty-something hippy boy behind the counter. “That’s Mark.”
The boy smiled when he saw her. “Where’s Trixie?”
“She’s at home today,” Sapphira told him.
Mark inclined his head. “The regular?” At her nod, the boy’s gaze swung to him. “What for you, sir?”
“Coffee. Black.”
Mark looked momentarily confused, but eventually smiled, revealing a set of dimples on each cheek. “Kickin’ it old school, eh, chief?”
Old school? Huck thought with a mild frown. Evidently catching his look, Sapphira chuckled softly under her breath and those unusual green eyes sparkled with humor. She snagged a chair and settled into it. “You’re thirty-something, right?”
“I’m thir-ty,” he clarified, shooting Mark a glare. “Not thirty-something.”
“Well, to him it doesn’t make any difference.” She wraggled her brows significantly. “You’re old.”
“I’m not old,” Huck insisted, needled. Hell, thirty wasn’t old. Did he miss his twenties? Certainly. They were some of the best years of his life. But hell, he wasn’t ready to shuffle out to the retirement home just yet. “It’s not like I’m playing bingo and researching the best denture adhesive.” He paused. “How old are you exactly?”
“What?” she asked dramatically. “You mean that isn’t in the file?”
Actually, it was. Mark arrived with their drinks, then quickly moved away. “You’re twenty-six, right?”
Sapphira swore, but there was no heat in the expletive. “Dammit, can’t I have any secrets?”
Huck felt a chuckle break up in his throat and he inclined his head. His gaze tangled intently with hers. “Oh, I think you’ve got several.”
Looking as if she wished she could gnaw off her tongue, she shifted and casually licked the foam from the top of her latte. Whether she meant it to be a sexual gesture or not, Huck couldn’t help but react. After all, that hot facile tongue of hers had been licking him just last night. Heat coiled in his belly and spread into his loins, forcing him to shift.
“Me?” she joked. “You’re the mystery man. You’ve got a file on me and I know absolutely nothing about you.”
Huck poked his tongue in his cheek. “Carnal knowledge doesn’t count?”
Her eyes twinkled and, clearing her throat, she reached into her purse and withdrew a small bottle of hand sanitizer. “You know what I mean.”
Rattled her that much, had he? he thought, unreasonably pleased. “And the file is not on you, specifically,�
�� Huck felt compelled to point out. “It’s about your case.”
“Do you typically sleep with your cases?” she asked, throwing it right back at him.
Huck nodded. “Yes.”
She blinked, stunned, and her mouth dropped open in evident shock. Strangely, she seemed to have lost the ability to speak. He patted himself on the back for that one and absently scratched his chest. “You’re my first case,” he explained, “and since I’ve slept with you, I guess I’d have to call it typical, wouldn’t I?”
“I’m your first case? Seriously?”
“And probably my last with this firm.” He winced, then smiled. “I’m going to need to go over the employee handbook, but I thinking sleeping with you was probably against the rules.”
She snorted. “Then don’t tell them. I’m certainly not going to, and I’d advise you to keep it out the report you send my father.”
He felt a half-smile shape his lips. “You almost sound worried about me.”
She cocked her head as though she were confiding something important. “Hey, you might be a sonofabitch-asshole-bastard-unsufferable-boorish-clod, but I’d hate to see you murdered.”
He smiled. “You think your father would kill me?”
She made a moue of distaste. “Not in the literal sense.”
“Sweetheart, better men have tried. I’m not afraid of your father.”
A shadow moved over her gaze and she looked away, stared at passersby on the street through the plate-glass window. “That must be nice,” she said. “He scares the hell out of me.”
“What are you so afraid of?” he asked, surprised by how much he wanted to know. Not just to satisfy his curiosity or to help make sense of this case, but because he wanted to alleviate those fears. Fix them for her. Did he have the power to do that? Probably not. Should he want to do that? Hell no. But he couldn’t seem to help himself. She brought out a protective streak in him, one that he would have never imagined he possessed. In fact, she had the uncanny ability to bring a lot of things out of him, things that made his gut clench and a fluttery warmth breeze through his chest. Things he didn’t know how to explain or compartmentalize. He told himself that she made him crazy, that the phenomenally hot sexual attraction had skewed his perspective.
He told himself that and prayed like hell he’d eventually believe it.
Sapphira’s lips twisted into a sad smile. “I don’t want to talk about my father,” she said. “Here’s a thought. Why don’t we talk about yours?”
He made a derisive snort and took another sip of his coffee. “That’d be a short conversation.”
“Why?”
“Because I’ve never met the man.” The admission shocked him, rattled him to the soles of his feet. What the fu-- What in God’s name had possessed him to say that? Why would he--
“I’d wondered,” Sapphira said, seemingly unsurprised. He didn’t detect a single inkling of pity--which would have set his teeth on edge and generally make him want to tear the room apart--just genuine interest. “When Ella’d asked about your family, you mentioned your mother and grandmother, but not your dad. You’re too deliberate for it to have been an oversight.”
And he obviously wasn’t giving her enough credit, Huck thought, impressed that she’d noticed. “You don’t miss much, do you?”
“It pays to pay attention.”
Yes, but to what? Huck wondered. What had her attention? And more importantly, who was in that room with her today? And why was that such a secret? He could ask her, of course, but in futility, he knew. If she’d wanted him to know what was going on, then she would have told him already. Clearly he had some more poking around to do--a new investigation to launch--and instead of focusing on who was sending the letters, Huck thought his time would be better served concentrating on her.
He smothered a dark laugh. As if he could concentrate on anything else.
“So...you’ve never met your father. Does that mean you don’t know who he is, or just aren’t interested in making his acquaintance?”
“Tell you what,” Huck said. “I’ll answer you when you tell me why you’re afraid of your father.”
Sapphira merely smiled. “You’re stuck on that, aren’t you?”
“I want to help you.”
Her gaze softened and she smiled sadly. “I wish you could.”
“What makes you so sure that I can’t?”
Another weary smile slid over her ripe mouth. “Stop being so nice to me,” she said. “I don’t know how to act.”
He felt a laugh rumble from his chest. “Have I been that terrible?”
A wicked gleam lit her gaze and she chewed the corner of her lip. “You made up for it last night.”
“If you’re trying to flatter me by telling me that I’m good in bed then...go ahead,” he finished magnanimously, releasing a pent up breath. “I won’t try to stop you.”
Sapphira stared at him a moment, almost wonderingly, then chuckled. That warm, feminine laugh struck a cord deep inside of him and settled intimately around his heart.
“I thought you said you needed to go to the bathroom,” she reminded him.
He’d lied, but telling her that probably wasn’t a good idea. Of course, neither was squandering a perfect opportunity either, he thought, as visions of her back against a wall, him pushing inside of her suddenly filled his head. Ordinarily sex in a public place wasn’t his thing--he preferred a little privacy--but he’d been itching to climb back into her body since the instant he’d left it last night and now, sitting here with her, intrigued and consumed with the irrational need to save her, Huck didn’t think he’d ever wanted a woman more. She drove him insane. Tore him up and pulled him inside out.
But he knew the instant he had her--the second he settled into her heat--that he’d be fine. The madness--the sheer insanity of whatever was happening to him--would recede, and for the moment, he’d be able to breathe.
“I do have to go,” Huck said, standing abruptly, thankful that he’d had the foresight to snag a few condoms from her bedside stash. He grabbed her arm and tugged her along with him. “And since you can’t leave my sight, then you’re just going to have to come with me.”
“Into the men’s room?”
“Don’t be a sissy. Aside from the urinal, it’s exactly the same.”
He pushed open the door, then shut it and flipped the lock.
“Can’t I just wait outside?” Sapphira said, shooting a distasteful look around the bathroom. No doubt she could feel the germs leaping onto her body, Huck thought, smothering a smile. For reasons he couldn’t begin to fathom, he found her germiphobia adorable. “Ooo, Lord, I’m going to need an entire bottle of hand sanitizer after this.”
Huck sidled closer to her, backing her up against the door. “I take exception to that remark. You didn’t mind my germs last night.”
Gratifyingly, her gaze darkened to a mossy hue and she moistened her lips. “It’s not your germs that I’m worried about.”
Huck lifted her off the floor and pressed a no-holds-barred I’m-going-to-fuck-you-senseless kiss against her lips. “Here,” he said. “Let me see if I can distract you.”
Then he rocked his hips against hers and smiled against her mouth as a little gasp of pleasure eddied from between her lips.
“You make me crazy, you know that?” he asked, feeling marginally better now that she was in his arms, kissing him as though she needed this as much as he did.
“And you talk too much,” she said, wrapping her arms around his neck. “Focus, Huckleberry. Focus.”
* * *
There was nothing quite like having the undivided attention of Lucan Finn, Sapphira thought as his big warm hands shaped her rump and squeezed. And, oh, how that warmed her heart. He made a low growling noise in the back of his throat which absolutely made her go all gooey inside. She could feel herself melting, coming apart, getting needier and wetter with every slide of his tongue against hers, every greedy masculine sound echoing between their jo
ined mouths.
Whatever he suspected--and she knew that he definitely realized something was going on--it didn’t keep him from wanting her, didn’t keep him from being able to deny the white-hot, uncontrollable attraction between them.
Had she ever been this mindless? Sapphira wondered. This desperate? Had she ever felt like her skin was going to burn off her body if his lips didn’t put out the blaze? Had she ever hungered for the taste of man so much that her mouth actually watered?
There was a sweet spot just above his cheek bone, but not quite at his temple where his skin was so soft it made her eyes water and her chest yearn for unnamed things and terrifying emotions. Things like happily ever after and dark-haired children with mirrored gazes, sleeping late on rainy days and sharing a dawn over a hot cup of coffee. Christmas morning and new family traditions. It made her long for a family of her own--desires she’d never truly plumbed until now. Because they’d been out of reach? Because she hadn’t found the right partner? Why? Who knew? But there was no denying them now, no pretending as if everything could just go back to the way it had been.
He’d changed her, Sapphira realized in an inconvenient moment of insight, as her pants gathered in a knot around one ankle and his fingers slipped her panties aside.
He rolled a condom into place and she felt him nudge her weeping folds, felt her breath leak out in a relieved sigh and realized just how far gone she really was.
She was about to have sex. In a public restroom. Germ heaven, billions of bacteria. She swallowed a hysterical laugh. And she didn’t care. She didn’t reach for her hand-sanitizer--she reached for him.
Muscled shoulders bunched thrillingly beneath her hands as he lifted her hips and settled her on top of him. She felt herself stretching, welcoming, relishing every enormous inch of him. The door at her back, a big wall of hot hard man at her front, inside of her...
Sweet Lord.
Sensation bolted through her, enervating every cell in her body. She leaned forward and licked a path up the side of his neck, then nibbled on his earlobe. She’d found that little detonator last night and loved knowing that she could set him off as easily as he managed to ignite her flame.
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