a slice and bit down, the gooey cheese forming tiny strings between her lips and the pizza. She ran her tongue over her top lip, breaking off the remnants and leaving a thin, glistening sheen on her mouth.
“Really?” He reached for his own slice, trying not to concentrate on the way she made eating look like the good kind of porn. “More the veggie-lover-hold-the-cheese type?”
She offered him a wan smile. “No. I mean, I guess so now, but not when I was young. I loved it, but my grandparents weren’t big on pizza.”
Or joy, from what he could tell. But he kept his mouth shut and his annoyance to himself and let her continue.
“The only time I ever had it as a kid was when my mom would sneak me out to this pizza place in town.” The smile that had seemed so tender slipped from her face, her lips thinning instead into a line. “Anyway, I kind of got out of the habit of eating it.”
“Sorry.” He paused for a moment, watching her as she chewed thoughtfully, staring blankly at nothing in the corner of the room. “Did she…has she passed on?”
Slowly, Sarabeth turned to face him, her expression chilly. “No, not that I know of.”
It sounded like the end of their discussion, and he intended to leave her with her secrets, but she continued.
“You know, my grandparents told me she had, at first. They even went out all dressed in black and said I couldn’t go to the funeral because I was too young. Really, it was the most effort they ever put into sparing my feelings, as terrible as it sounds. They hadn’t counted on her middle-of-the-night phone calls trying to figure out how to get more money, though.” She took a swig of her wine. “So, no, she’s not dead. But she may as well be.”
He expected there to be bitterness in her tone, but there was none. She was matter-of-fact about her abandonment, and another thread of respect for her weaved into the strange attraction he felt. Again, he found himself wanting to comfort her as he had that morning, but he pulled back, not sure how to start.
Her confession had him thinking over his own childhood, memories of his mother’s late-night clients swirling through his head. Imagines of the mornings he’d spend tending to her wounds, and the morning her wounds couldn’t be tended to and he realized he wouldn’t have to look after her anymore. One less person to protect, which was both a horror and a blessing at the ripe old age of twelve.
He pulled on his beer, allowing the chilled liquid to awaken him from the realization that he and Sarabeth were far more alike than he would have thought.
“Looks like you’re going to have to teach me some self-defense sooner rather than later. Now whoever is after me knows I’m alive…I’m going to need to know what to do.”
He should’ve known she was far too quick, even tipsy, to have missed the correlation. He sighed and nodded.
She gulped down the last of her drink and smiled, hoisting the glass aloft. “Not that tonight would be ideal timing.”
“Actually, I’m rethinking and maybe we should hang here for a while. I’ll work from home for a few days. It’s too dangerous out there. While I was out, I got you some books to pass the time, so you can have the run of the whole upstairs and I’ll stay out of your hair. Just until this whole thing is settled.”
She cocked an eyebrow and studied him before answering, her bleary eyes going sharp again. She had a good bullshit meter too, this one. “This is because I kissed you.” It was not a question.
“No, that’s forgotten. It’s…not a good environment for you.” Or him. Having her close was a necessity. Having her within touching distance while he worked and that work making her heart pound and her eyes go all glassy in a way that made him wish he could bury himself inside her and keep that look on her face all day and night was not.
“Aren’t you supposed to take care of that? Keep me safe?” she asked, leaning closer to eyeball him hard.
“I am. And you’d be safest here.”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “Bull. Shit.”
He tried to hide his surprise, but it wasn’t easy. It was like she’d become an entirely different woman. What was next? Pole dancing? He immediately regretted the mental image as he struggled to return to reality.
“Maybe you should go to bed.” He rolled to standing and held his hand out to her, but she pushed it away, wrinkling her nose in frustration.
“Maybe you should go to bed.” She tried for a scowl, but she ended up looking far more like an outraged kitten. Even though he knew she had claws, he couldn’t help finding her adorable.
“All right, then. We’ll go to bed together. Come on.” He held out his hand and she bent further back against the cushions.
“Are you asking me to go to bed with you?” She blinked up at him consideringly, then closed one eye, probably to bring him into focus.
He glanced at the wine bottle beside her. Nearly empty. She looped her leg around his calf, brushing her toes up and down his ankle. “I do think you’re cute.”
He snorted outwardly, but inside he was willing himself to remember that she was drunk. She didn’t know what she was saying. The Sarabeth he was getting to know would never have told him anything she had tonight, let alone flirt with him. That reminder didn’t change the fact that this new Sarabeth was sexy as hell, though.
And drunk. And vulnerable. On his watch.
“Not tonight, Doc.” He bent low and scooped her into his arms, where she wriggled and protested for a second but then burrowed deeper into the crook of his shoulder with a sigh. He carried her down the hall and repeated under his breath. “Not tonight.”
But damn it if she hadn’t gotten him thinking about tomorrow night. And the next. And the next.
He glanced down at her serene face—her eyes closed, body relaxed, totally trusting—and let the mental curses fly as his heart squeezed. He’d come into this worried about the doc’s safety, and that was his first mistake.
He was the one in clear and present danger.
…
Sarabeth stared at the neon numbers of the clock and groaned inwardly. One forty-seven. Exactly three minutes later than the last time she’d checked and two full hours after she’d woken from her alcohol-induced slumber with a pounding headache. She’d taken the aspirin that Gavin had left by her bed, and it had helped the headache, but she had about as much of a chance sleeping as she did flying right now. To be fair, the concept of relaxing after the day she’d had was probably wishful thinking—between B&E, the cops announcing her officially missing, and her…oh God. She shot up in bed, scrubbing a hand over her face, desperate to erase the memory that kept rearing its head every time she turned around.
She’d all but begged Gavin to come to bed with her. She bit her lip, thinking over every possible excuse she could have had for her behavior. In her experience, drunk people only said what they didn’t have the courage to say when they were sober. Not to mention she’d already hit on him once yesterday.
With that realization, she knew two things for sure: there would be no more sleeping that night, and the next morning was sure to be mercilessly terrible.
She tried to clear her head of her all-consuming regret and leaned over to examine the brown bag propped next to her bed. She’d expected that it was there in case she got sick in the night, but upon opening it, she realized the sack was full of yellowing paperbacks, all worn and smelling like a senior center swap meet. On top of the stack was a book light he’d gotten her.
Her stomach flipped, and she warned herself not to read anything into it. So he thought of her while he was out. Big deal. He probably thought of all his clients, and the books were likely just a way to keep her out of his hair when they were at home.
Still, it was pretty thoughtful of him, she conceded, and she’d need something to distract her from what appeared to be a lifetime full of mistakes. Flicking on the tiny light, she picked up the first book in the pile and eyed it. The cover featured a young woman in the arms of a Fabio look-alike, her hair falling from its pins. Love’s Maid
en Voyage. Gag. She moved to the next one, Miss Kitty’s Broken Clock. Looked like a cozy mystery.
She put that one on the bed next to her as a possibility before snagging the next in the lineup, Savage Surrender. She snorted and moved to toss it aside, but didn’t. The guy on the cover was pretty hot. And a pirate, no less. His body was ridiculous, the white button-down shirt half-open to expose abs of steel. He had black hair and piercing blue eyes that drew her in. His lady was bent over his arm at an unlikely angle, offering her throat to him, bosoms a-heaving. Not usually her style, but for some reason, it was glued to her fingers. Maybe a little peek.
A scintillating hour later, she fought to keep her eyes open. To find out what happened between the dreaded pirate Benedict and his lovely captive Jasmine, but she was so very sleepy…
His cutlass dug into her neck, and his breath tickled her ear. Dread snaked down her spine as the hard length of his frame pressed against her back. He was nothing but a wall of thick muscle, and if he wanted to kill her, she was as good as dead.
“You know what I came for, Lady Sarabeth.” His whisper wasn’t menacing. Instead, it was beseeching. A seduction she was ill-prepared for.
“The rubies.” They were hidden behind the safe in Father’s study. But she would die before she handed them over to the likes of this rakish pirate.
He jerked her closer until the hardness of his hips ground against the softness of her bottom. “Either you give up the rubies”—he leaned in, and nipped the bare skin of her shoulder—”or I take a far more precious jewel.”
She gasped as a bolt of heat sizzled through her.
“One way or another, I will not leave empty-handed. What will it be, love?”
She mulled it over, then remembered it was a dream. She turned in his arms and pulled him closer.
His kiss was demanding, bordering on cruel. And as she pulled away, the scoundrel Benedict’s face slowly morphed into a much more familiar one.
She curled her fingers against his chest, heat pulsing through her. “Gavin?”
His smile was wicked. “Who else would it be, love?”
“Sarabeth?”
A low, gruff voice called, and a hand closed over her shoulder. She swatted it away. Stuff was about to get serious and she wanted to see what—
“You awake?”
She bolted upright in the dark room and promptly smashed her head against something hard.
“Fuck,” a low voice bit out.
She blinked, squinting to see by the glow of the tiny bulb on her book light. Gavin stood over her bed rubbing his chin, black brows pinched together in a menacing frown.
“A little more to the right, and that might have been a knockout,” he mused, reluctant admiration lacing his tone. “I knew you had a hard head.”
She rubbed the tender spot right above her hairline and shrugged. “Or maybe you have a weak chin.”
The frown cleared, making way for a slow, way-too-sexy grin.
“You didn’t seem to think so in your dream. In fact, I’m pretty sure you said my name and then y—”
She swallowed hard and cut him off. “And then you realized I was having a dream and you thought you’d come stand over me like some sort of creeper?” She crabbed her way back until she was sitting up against the headboard and yanked the blankets up to her neck. The fact was, she didn’t feel threatened. Quite the opposite. More like…beckoned. And the blankets weren’t to protect her from him, but to cover her humiliating reaction to the dream he’d been starring in. Her sensitive nipples still stood out, stiff against the cotton of her shirt, and she bit her lip.
“Actually, I was sound asleep when I heard noises coming from your room. After all the shit that went down today, I assumed you were having a nightmare. Logical, if you ask me.” He crossed his arms over his chest, and she realized that he was naked from the waist up. Sweet Jesus, his body was amazing. She swallowed hard and balled a handful of sheet into her fist.
“Okay, well all you had to do was give me a little shake and wake me up,” she reasoned, hating the waspishness of her tone. Had that always been there? Probably, but ever since she’d laid eyes on Gavin McClintock, she found it more and more annoying.
“I didn’t want to startle you. You’ve had your share of scares. Imagine my shock when I came over to check on you and realized that you weren’t having a nightmare at all.”
Was he going to seriously flat-out call her on it? How much had she said aloud in her sleep?
Even more terrifying, what had she done?
He reached out a hand, and she pulled the blankets even more tightly around her shoulders. What would she do if he touched her? Stupid question. She’d freak the heck out. Wouldn’t she? With that body and those hands, it was a distinct possibility, a tiny voice inside her whispered. Instead, to her relief—mostly—he picked up the book that had wound up next to her on the bed and held it close to his face.
“Savage Surrender?” he murmured softly.
“You’re the one who bought it,” she grumbled. “I couldn’t sleep and I didn’t want the TV to wake you. It’s not like I had a lot of choices.” She jerked her chin to the little pile of books.
“Right. Next time we’re on the lam, I’ll make sure to get a list of preferred reading material.”
He tossed the book back on the bed and turned toward the door before looking back at her. His gaze tripped lazily over her sheet-covered form, and her whole body tightened in response. “You know…if you can’t sleep, I have some suggestions.”
She forced a laugh and hoped it didn’t sound as fake as it felt. “Oh, I bet you do. Look, it was only a dream. I have no control over that. It was probably a combination of being overtired and stressed after today, like you said yourself. Then you showed up and my brain naturally cast you as the hero of the story I was reading. Totally logical.”
“Very, Mr. Spock.”
She narrowed her eyes at him.
“But I was about to suggest some relaxation techniques I learned when I was overseas. Breathing exercises and the like. We often went for long periods without sleep, and when we had the chance, we had to be able to basically sleep on command or risk total physical exhaustion.”
She let that sink in and shifted against the sheets, cheeks flaming again. So, not hot, sweaty sex, then. Was she forever doomed to say stupid and embarrassing things to this guy? She vowed that from now on, she’d leave off the whole jumping-to-conclusions portion of the show and wait until he finished talking to respond.
“That said, if breathing isn’t for you, I can definitely help you out with the total physical exhaustion part.”
Her eyes had adjusted to the relative darkness and when she looked up, she could see his gaze drifting lower to her exposed legs and back up again to meet hers.
She waited. Then waited some more. But there was no add-on. No kicker that made her feel silly when she realized she’d misinterpreted what he was saying.
“I—” She cleared her throat and tried again. “I, ah, think I’ll pass.”
“Suit yourself.” He shrugged, but the need in his eyes was anything but indifferent. God, why did his chest have to be so dang gorgeous?
“But the offer’s open. If it makes a difference, I can guarantee you total relaxation and a good night’s sleep.”
“It’s doesn’t.” It totally did. In fact, the words alone had about assured that she wouldn’t stop thinking about it. But jumping into her first one-night stand after a major emotional upheaval was a textbook response to emotional trauma. People thrown together in perilous, high-octane situations did stupid things with—and to—each other all the time. As a mental health professional, she recognized that and refused to allow herself to be a statistic. Giving in to her base desires would only make things worse in the long run.
But what a way to go down.
“Night, Doc.” He approached the door again, pausing in the frame so that a slice of light illuminated his strong jawline. “And if you dream about me ag
ain, make sure you keep it accurate and give me an eight-inch—”
“Argh!” She slammed the pillow over her face and bunched the sides over to cover her ears, but it didn’t deaden the sound of his laughter.
Chapter Nine
It had been a week, and the trail to Sarabeth’s would-be assassin was so cold, it was covered in frost. They’d both been growing more and more restless every passing day, with him staying up every night to examine each detail of the case, and her pacing around staring out windows, shoulders hunched tight. In spite of her protests, he’d managed to keep her at the house so far, but he could tell her nerves were fraying.
Between him, Maddy, and Owen working every connection he had, they were still coming up blank, and still nothing was fitting together the way it should have. He had other clients, but their cases were usually open-and-closed type stuff—and Maddy had taken the lead on most of the heavy lifting while he kept Sarabeth occupied at home. They spent a lot of time together, and although they talked a lot, she seemed to be retreating back into the shell she’d been in before the day after their joint heist.
He shrugged off the memory of her in that fitted black uniform, trying to remind himself that it was a bad idea to have her back out in the field with him. With her face plastered all over the news as missing, people were actively trying to spot her. Still, if it wasn’t her life on the line, it might have been worth a little extra risk for the reward of seeing her looking so happy…so alive.
How much longer could he keep her that way? How much longer would she be willing to stay locked up like this if he didn’t make some progress toward finding out who was after her?
He scrubbed a hand over his face, the words in her file blurring together as he read them over for the fifth time that morning.
As he began to reread a sentence he’d already attempted twice before, his phone buzzed along his oak desk, and he tapped the glass screen to see the message from Maddy.
Coming over. Make sure everyone is decent. Big news.
That would be some relief. Maddy had been in and out, but she never paused long enough to spend any time with the increasingly stir-crazy Sarabeth. Maybe a little female company would be a good thing. And maybe she had a break in the case.
Refusing to get his hopes up, he padded up the stairs and into the living room, knowing he would find Sarabeth curled in her usual spot on the far end of the sofa, a thick blanket thrown over her as she perused the latest book in the stack he’d bought her days before.
As he entered the room, her pert nose peeked over the top of the book, though the rest of her face was still partially obscured by Love’s Maiden Voyage.
“Sorry, did you need a minute? I’d hate to interrupt if someone’s love staff was entering a cavern of tenderness.”
Her cheeks turned rosy at his speech, and she settled the book onto her lap. “I’m fine. Staff has already entered and exited, thank you. And frankly”—she turned her assessing gaze on him—“now I’m wondering where you picked up that lingo.”
He chuckled, the chill in his chest easing a little. Maybe today would be a better day for her. “I may have come across a romance or two when I was young, before my mother went off the deep end. Granted, I skipped right to the dirty parts.”
She grinned, but that slowly faded as she took in the whole of his words.
“What did happen with your parents?” she asked softly.
He stared at her stupidly for a beat too long before answering, but got his head on straight quickly enough to keep his tone curt. “I never knew my father. My mother was a prostitute before she died and not a very successful one at that. We struggled for a long time, and I believe she also had issues with mental illness.” He shifted, crossing his arms over his chest. “Sometime short of my tenth birthday, she stopped coming home for long stretches. My aunt was eventually contacted by authorities after complaints from the neighbors, and I moved in with her for a while.” He didn’t add that life hadn’t improved all that much and he’d only stayed a year, because the doc’s face was already pinched with sorrow. And something else. Understanding? Hell, he guessed in a way, even though their circumstances were different, they weren’t so different at the core of it. They’d both been left by the one who was supposed to love them most. Albeit, she’d been left in a palace and he in a hovel.
Which, in the end, made all the difference.
She opened her mouth to speak but he cut in, not really interested in hearing her pity.
“Right.” He cleared his throat. “Well, I wanted to give you a heads-up that Maddy is coming by.”
“What for?”
The quick change of gears worked and the sadness in her eyes changed to apprehension. He was happy the focus was off him, but the worry on her face was like a vise grip on his heart. It was always his reaction now when she was scared, and each time it happened, he felt the warring need to comfort her and to leave her behind and never think about her again. The last week had been torture. Trapped in the same house while she walked around in her yoga pants, looking adorable and sad and him wishing like hell he could make her happy. And the more comfortable she became, the less comfortable he felt, especially considering that every time he saw her in the morning, he wanted to carry her back up the stairs to her room and get her right back into that bed.
It had been an endless struggle, and every day felt more and more like he was losing the fight. Even then, standing in the living room with her body covered by a blanket, he found himself fixating on the way her mouth scrunched into a kissable heart when she asked questions. On the way her hair brushed against her jawline when she moved.
And what she would do if he grabbed those trim shoulders, pulled gently on that sleek, dark hair, and—
He shook his head, reminding himself of the facts. Her kind was not for him. Plus, she was his client. More than that, she was in danger. Getting emotionally
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