by Cait London
“As in John’s father. John Sr. pulled my teenage butt out of trouble and into his home, a cop’s home with love and rules. He was a great guy who didn’t need to spend all his time figuring out how to get to me, but he did. He trusted me with his son and everything he had. The Scanlons were the first real family I’d ever had. They put up with a lot while I sorted out why I didn’t want to end up in jail…. The senior Scanlons are retired in Florida now. By the way, what did you do with my gun?”
“Left it where it was, with that thoughtful note of who to call. What was your birth name?”
He stared at her blankly and thought back though the blanket of years to remember. “Smith, plain old Smith. You just left a fully loaded handgun lying around?”
She returned the stare with a challenge. “What was I supposed to do with it? Mail it to you?”
“You’re damned irritating.”
“So are you.”
She wasn’t backing off and Kyle had expected no less. “I suppose we’re even, then. Any unexpected visitors last night?”
“For the whole two hours I was home, no…no one other than your buddy, Moses Fry, sitting in my parking lot. He was snoring with the car window open and looked like he’d been dragged through quite the day—relocating Iris and Patty, I guess. I took him out a piece of Mom’s German chocolate cake and told him to leave or I’d call the police. That made an impression, if you can call a grunt that, and he left. You came out here to warn them about me, didn’t you? They—and the girl who you gave that bicycle to—must be very special, or else a simple phone call would have done. The way I read this is that you didn’t want to alarm them, but take your time easing into a big fat warning about me, right? What they should say and not say? That sort of thing?”
“You’re damned irritating, honey,” he repeated slowly, because Rachel was right on target. He’d come to gently prepare Nola and John that Rachel would probably be asking questions about Katrina.
“And the hamburger offer was just to get me out of there, right, Scanlon? Mm. Scanlon, as in Heating and Cooling, stock car racing, a cop, and let’s see, there should be more clues to run down. Make it easy on everyone, Smith-Scanlon, tell me what I want to know—all those interesting missing pieces.”
“Okay, it’s a simple story—I’m a usual run-of-the-mill kid who’d had enough with my boozing parents, and I took off on my own too early. I hung around racing tracks and got into trouble. John’s dad took me to his home. John Sr. got me into country racing and I got those trophies, small-time stuff, just enough to make me feel like someone special, a little pride in myself. Somewhere in there, I wanted my own home and my own place. One day I was driving through Neptune’s Landing on my way to a race—I could always get work as a mechanic, but I was racking up a few trophies by then—then I saw this mermaid riding a wave on a parade float, and I thought how much I’d like to get my hands on her shells…and I wanted to live in a town where I could see the ocean every day and watch the whales blow…. Did anyone ever tell you that you’ve got bullying tendencies?”
Bob Winters had also been a determining factor for Kyle to stay in Neptune’s Landing. He’d come to Mac’s Garage, found Kyle stripping a car for parts, and had his say. “You’ll never amount to anything. You’re a punk, a smart-aleck kid with greasy hands, and you’ll end up with DTs in some drunk tank. We don’t need your kind in Neptune’s Landing. You’re trouble for anyone around you. Get out of town and save yourself some grief.”
But at twenty-two, Kyle had other plans, one of which was to prove Bob Winters wrong and John Scanlon Sr. right. Bob may have been acting as a protective father to Trina’s daughters, but Kyle wasn’t letting anyone push him back down into that gutter with his parents, if that’s what they could be called….
Rachel searched his face. “That’s what you and Mallory had in common, wasn’t it? The hard times as a child?”
“I knew where she was coming from, what had changed my life, the same thing that should have changed hers—someone who cared. But something went wrong with her…she had chances. Trina was a great mother and loved her, but Mallory chose something different. I could have ended up the same way. I…think she thought that kind of life was what she deserved, that she wasn’t worth anything—but she was. She was the gentlest person I’ve ever known.”
Rachel looked out the window to the passing farmland and her voice was uneven and quiet. “I wanted—I wanted her to be safe and I thought I knew what was best and I screwed up. I probably forced her in the opposite direction by pushing so hard….”
“Get over here.” Kyle reached out his arm and pulled her close to him. He kissed her cheek, tasted the tears there, and knew that he cared more for Rachel than he should. He eased off the highway and onto a country dirt road, then parked in a sheltered grove of pine trees. “Come here.”
This was the Rachel that few saw, the fighter stripped away, the vulnerable woman inside grieving for her sister, blaming herself for something she couldn’t fix or control. Her body shook in his arms and the place where her face rested against his shoulder was damp with tears. “I loved her so much, Kyle. And now she’s gone, and I probably didn’t tell her that enough.”
“You told her,” he whispered against her temple. “She knew.”
Rachel raised her face and drew his down for a light kiss. She studied each feature of his face slowly, intently, as her fingertips stroked his lips. Kyle let himself sink into the warm feminine softness curled next to him, but at the same time, realized that Rachel could bring danger to herself and others. “You’re tired, honey, and locked onto this thing. Not a good combination.”
And then Rachel said, “You could use a shave…. Is the girl who owns that bike Mallory’s daughter?”
From the moment she saw Kyle, standing in a greasy T-shirt and worn jeans, Rachel’s body recognized his.
When he’d walked slowly toward her, his expression grim, Kyle had known exactly how he affected her, his jaw rough, unshaven against her skin, raising Rachel’s sexual attention and something else.
There, crossing that bare ground, the barn and the stock car behind him, Kyle looked tall, tough, and fascinating. Rachel’s senses had spiked, needing to challenge him, to taste him. Sex, she decided, it had been a long, long time since she’d enjoyed lovemaking, and Kyle was an expert. He’d use sex to distract her, to waylay her, from the answers she wanted—if he could.
The really bad part, Rachel had to admit to herself, was that he had redeeming qualities—enough to make a woman care for him, to trust him.
Worse. At some base level, Kyle matched her need to challenge, to test, to play. Now that was an irritating thing for a woman to discover in a dangerous opponent, that she could really care for him, that she ached to hold him and comfort those raw hurting edges she had sensed.
Maybe that was his appeal—that women needed to ease his darkness from those times before the cop brought young Kyle into his home. In this man’s arms, Rachel definitely felt all woman, who could possess and who could be possessed.
Now, in his arms, Rachel drew her fingertip across Kyle’s lips, testing him. “Answers, Scanlon?”
He bit gently, humor rising in those blue eyes. Then, before she could take a breath, his hand gripped her hair, holding her as he took in her face. “Nice lipstick. Tastes like cherry.”
“Make it easy on yourself, Scanlon.” Rachel forced herself to breathe, her heart pounding, because Kyle had that tight narrowed look of a man with one thing on his mind—her.
“Did you miss me?” he asked rawly. The husky, uneven sound spoke of his uncertainty, of that appealing vulnerability and truth.
“Not at all,” she lied; she’d thought about him almost constantly—and his confident grin told her that he knew it, too.
“Sure. You’re here, aren’t you?”
She placed her hand on his chest, enjoyed the smooth hard surface, the male body beneath it. She tilted her face up to his and studied the way his eyes crinkled at
the sides, the slight curve of his lips. “Just delivering your dog, Smith-Scanlon, that’s all. And running down answers.”
“Sure that’s all it is, honey?” His low drawl and look down her body said he was ready to supply her sexual needs.
She’d relaxed, enjoying the crisp texture of his hair in her fingers, the sensual intimacy between them, and Kyle had just shifted it into a woman running after a man for sex. “There you go, saying things like that when you don’t want to—”
Kyle raised an eyebrow. “Give you what you want?”
Once again, he’d raised his defenses, not letting her too close, firing a lewd remark at her that would set her off and let him escape an uncomfortable intimacy—lovers relating truthfully to each other. On edge and deeply tired, Rachel didn’t want to play anymore. “I’ve had enough. Just get out. We’re both wasting time.”
Kyle’s expression hardened. “You’ve got other plans, right?”
She reached for her scarf and tied it around her head with shaking hands. “Get out.”
Kyle nodded grimly and got out of the car, closing the door behind him. Rachel slid to the driver’s seat, started the motor, and reversed, leaving him standing in the middle of the dirt road. His weight on one long leg, his arms crossed and looking tough and fierce, Kyle wasn’t asking for anything.
Which was exactly why she couldn’t leave him; Kyle expected nothing, no kindness, nothing but hard times—and that said his boyhood scars weren’t far from the surface when it came to her. He didn’t know how to relate on the simplest of intimacies and protected himself with those lewd remarks, keeping everything on a sexual level, when it evidently went deeper with them both….
Rachel drove slowly back to him. She parked, got out of the car, and walked to him. She took a deep breath, separated the hurt, vulnerable boy from the man staring down hard at her and asked, “Are you going to kiss me or not?”
His casual answer only irritated her more. “Okay, if that’s what you want. Do you think it will stop there?”
“Probably not.”
“You wearing that pink toenail polish?”
“Uh-huh.” Sensual heat quivered between them as Kyle’s lips brushed hers. “Let’s go get that burger.”
Forty-five minutes later, Kyle parked in front of Margie’s Little Motel, a plain tan-colored strip of rooms with doors painted in chipped maroon. In the late afternoon sunlight, several battered farm pickups and older cars parked in front of the different rooms. While Rachel was absorbing her current situation—parked in front of a cheap motel, located in a tiny burg of a town—a big tough-looking, unshaven mechanic was circling the car. He held a sack of burgers and a drugstore sack with a man’s basic travel kit and a big box of condoms. Kyle opened her door and grinned down at her. “What’s the matter? Is this a first?”
The milkshakes she’d been holding were probably melting from all the growing sensual tension between them. As they had made the purchases, Kyle’s hand had ridden low on her waist, his body had moved around hers as he opened the Burgers and Fries door and that of the drugstore. Embarrassed by his purchases, Rachel had studied the magazine counter.
“You won’t need those,” Kyle had whispered as he reached past her to collect one. He had added a couple of candy bars to the sack and had again rested his hand on her waist, guiding her out the door and into the car. It was a possessive gesture of a man who knew what he had coming, who was familiar with her body, keeping his close to hers….
Now Rachel slid out of the car’s seat and stood in the bright Idaho sunlight with the milkshakes melting in her hand and cars passing on the road nearby. A light was out in Margie’s high neon sign, and the city limits sign of ChakChak read, Pop. 1500. “Is this where you take all your dates?”
Kyle closed her door and opened the back one to retrieve her overnight bag. “Not a one, honey. They usually cost more. You paid for the room with your credit card,” he said with a wide boyish grin that said he was teasing her.
“Very funny. I need to check in.”
“No need. I told Amy, the clerk at the drugstore, to call Margie. The door is unlocked, the keys on the dresser. I also had Amy call John and tell him not to expect me any time soon.”
“Great. Now everyone knows.”
“Probably.” Kyle chuckled, a rich sound that took her looking up at him. Then everything inside Rachel stilled and locked onto this man, the textures, the colors, the sunlight glistening off his eyebrows, the wave that just crossed his brow, the sensual curve of his lips….
“Let’s get inside.” Kyle’s voice was uneven and low, his expression taut. With her overnight bag on his shoulder and the sacks in that same hand, Kyle’s other hand rested on her waist. Near his body as he opened the door, Rachel absorbed the heat and tension in it. She walked to the tiny table and placed the milkshakes on it, then watched Kyle close the cheap blinds, sealing the world away. He glanced at her and her hands locked together, icy with the fear of this threshold, this new relationship.
Kyle walked to her, took her hands and raised them to his face, warming them with his heat. Kissing each palm, Kyle looked at her. “Be here when I get back.”
“I’m not promising that, Kyle.” It had been too easy, standing beside him, considering the menu above the fast food counter, aware of his body brushing hers, his hand possessively on her hip, and the stop by the drugstore for essentials where Kyle knew the employees, chatted about the weather and crops, and introduced her simply as “Rachel.” And through all that, he’d held her hand, as naturally as if they’d been dating for years.
Kyle rubbed her thumb across his lips. “Honey, the heat is fairly dancing off you, the way you move against me.”
“I’m not going to ask how many times you’ve done this—burgers and condoms routine. You probably have a standing accommodation somewhere….”
His smile curved beneath her thumb, and he bit the pad gently. “Nope. This is a first for me.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“Then, don’t.”
Their eyes locked and Rachel realized that her hands had gripped the jeans covering his hips. “I’ve never been in a cheap motel room before.”
His eyebrow lifted. “Always a first time.”
“I might leave, Kyle. I might just go back to the Scanlon ranch and talk to that girl.”
He bent to kiss her jawline, running his tongue along her skin, flicking it. “You could, but I’m asking you not to.”
She was warm, melting, vibrating, hungry for him. “But can you trust me not to?”
Against her ear, Kyle’s breath was warm, his tongue busy. “She’s just a little girl who’s safe and loved…. I’m so hard, I don’t know if I can wait, and I’ve been working all morning with motor oil.”
Rachel inhaled that underlying pure male scent, and wanted him then, her hands moving up and under his shirt, smoothing that hard, hot chest, his pounding heart. “Down and dirty might not be too bad.”
His eyebrows lifted. “We’re still in the courting stages. I’m trying to be a gentleman.”
The challenge was there, to have her way, to push him. Those flickering silvery eyes darkened as she stood on tiptoe and kissed him, biting his bottom lip, enveloping herself with his textures, the hunger pouring out of him, that taut body jutting against hers. “What if I want you now?”
Only one night with Kyle and she was addicted, wanting more….
“Too bad. You’ll have to wait.”
“It’s not nice to keep a lady waiting.”
“Anticipation,” he murmured as he held her hands away; he walked into the bathroom, leaving her the choice to leave, or to stay.
Rachel picked up her strawberry milkshake and sucked the straw. Her insides were quivering, clenching, hot, aching for Kyle, and he knew it. She eased into a chair and studied the bag of burgers on the tiny table. She should leave him and drive back to the Scanlons. He’d tossed her keys onto the dresser. She could take them and—and she remembered th
e possessive way Kyle’s hand had caressed her nape, his thumb cruising erotically just behind her ear.
Strange that she should have had a long-term lover who had never discovered that tiny spot just there….
Rachel swallowed nervously; she was in a cheap but spotless motel room, and she was paying for the room and dinner was burgers, fries, and milkshakes. If she had any sense at all, she could leave and return to the Scanlons to find that girl. Once she’d talked to the girl, she’d know if she was Mallory’s daughter.
That’s what she should do. But Kyle had trusted her—
She was still sitting on a chair when Kyle stepped out of the bathroom, showered, shaven, and smelling great. Naked and powerful, a towel slung low around his hips, Kyle crossed the room slowly, kneeling beside her, taking her cold hands in his, taking them to his lips. “Hungry?”
“Yes.”
“Afraid of what’s happening between us?”
“Yes.”
He smiled against her fingertips, rubbing them against his newly shaven jaw. “Then I guess we should eat before those burgers get cold, right?”
“That’s logical.” The brisk scent of the drugstore’s cheap aftershave mixed with that of soap and shampoo and man; his skin was damp to her touch, his hair wet, uncombed and standing in odd peaks. She smoothed Kyle’s hair, locked her fingers in it briefly, before stroking the hard planes of his face.
Hunger danced across her skin, heating it and making her ache for him, for the press of his body deep inside hers. The knowledge that soon they would be wrapped in each other, pleasuring each other, caused her to breathe raggedly.
Rachel wouldn’t deny that her body needed his, that heat simmered between them, her hunger building…. She tried to breathe as his hand slid over her thighs, resting open on one as his thumb stroked her intimately, and heat flooded her body, her sensitive folds opening with the slight pressure. “It’s just five o’clock, Scanlon. Your hand is very busy down there.”
“You’re damp, Everly. And hot. Don’t you think we should do something about that?” He reached for a milkshake, took a long draw, and kissed her with cool lips and eased his cold tongue into her mouth as his hands moved over her breasts, caressing them. His fingers started loosening the buttons of her blouse, slowly undoing them. He looked down at her breasts, and she wanted him to see her body, to watch his reaction, that primitive flaring of his nostrils, that heat skimming across his broad cheekbones, the burning intensity of his eyes. “You taste like strawberries. Ever made love while drinking milkshakes?”