Hot & Bothered

by Susan Andersen

  “If they’re looking in the right place they do.”

  “My God. Does your ego know no bounds?”

  He shrugged. “Not when it comes to this. I’m hung, okay? Word gets around—or it used to, anyhow.”

  “Like some big Hollywood stud?” A sound suspiciously close to a snort escaped her. “That’s ridiculous. I certainly didn’t know anything about it.”

  “Yeah.” He grinned. “I know. It was pretty refreshing.” She must have looked as irate as she was beginning to feel because he hastened to add, “Look, every branch of the service has its groupies. For my friends and me that meant women who slept with Marines simply because we were Marines. And a subculture of that were the women who only slept with guys who were particularly well-endowed. Part of the rush for them, apparently, is providing details of whatever guy they bang to their sister size-bunnies. So—like I said—the information got around.”

  He rubbed his hands up and down her arms and for the first time she realized she was every bit as naked as he was. She started to pull back, but his fingers tightened.

  “My point, though,” he said, “is that from the moment you walked into that bar I knew you weren’t like anyone I’d ever met. And if you think I didn’t work like a maniac for your attention, you’re crazy. Before that night women had always seemed pretty interchangeable to me. Lose one and there’d be another along to take her place. But I didn’t want just anybody else that night—I wanted you.”

  “Why? Because I was a challenge?”

  “No! Maybe. I don’t know.” He shook his head impatiently. “The only thing I knew was that you were worth any effort it took. Or maybe it was because talking to you wasn’t an effort. You made me hot, but you also made me laugh and think about things. You made me be…I don’t know—just me. That’s a person I very rarely was around women, but I knew I was willing to be the real deal if it meant making you stick around. So don’t go calling yourself a slut. I don’t like it.” He set her loose and turned toward the other end of the room. “Why don’t you order us room service?” he said over his shoulder. “I’m gonna take a quick shower.”

  She was still standing there slack-jawed when he disappeared around the corner. A second later she heard the bathroom door click shut.

  She walked over to her suitcase and opened it. For a moment, however, she simply stood and stared blindly at the contents while her mind went back in time.

  Yesterday she would have sworn up, down and sideways that she remembered every detail about the night she’d met Rocket. Yet here she was, realizing that in the emotional upheaval following her time with him, she’d somehow managed to shove aside the fact that she had made him work to catch her. She’d buried that memory in the farthest recesses of her mind where it had languished until it was forgotten.

  She’d been attracted to him from the minute he’d slid into a chair next to her at the table where she’d been sitting with two women she’d met earlier that day in the check-in line. He’d struck her as a little too cocky, though—his charm a bit too practiced. So she’d divided her time between him, her new acquaintances, and the man who’d come to the table with him. What had the guy’s name been? Rooster? No, that wasn’t right. Something like it, though. Oh, wait—Bantam! That was it.

  As if it mattered. The other Marine hadn’t stood a chance with her. Not when Rocket had crowded close, making her feel warm and bursty tight, as if her skin were a size too small. Not when he’d gotten her jokes, laughing as though she were the funniest thing to sashay down the pike since…she-couldn’t-think-who. And certainly not after he’d left off consciously milking the Mr. Charm role. The real Rocket had blown away every last inhibition she’d ever possessed.

  And the rest, as they said, was history.

  She reached into the suitcase, grabbed the first thing her hand came into contact with and carried her selection over to the bed. But she stopped dead before she reached it and stared down at the box of condoms that sat on the nightstand. Where had that come from?

  Well, okay, Rocket had obviously gone out and gotten it while she slept. But why hadn’t he mentioned them? Or…used one? He could have had her—he had to have known that.

  Damn it! She rubbed her forehead. Every time she thought she had him nailed down as this kind of guy or that kind of guy, he went and did or said something that messed with all her neat preconceptions. She wanted to believe he was all about sex, because that kind of guy would be so much easier to ignore, since she was pretty sure she’d never fall in love with a man that shallow.

  But John wasn’t merely about sex.

  And she had gone and fallen in love with him.

  She sucked in a breath. She’d been denying it for a long time now, but she could no longer hide from the truth. The process had begun long before today. She’d had strong feelings for him six years ago—it wasn’t as if she’d reneged on their arrangement and slunk off into the sunrise because she’d been bored and had felt it was time to move on. She’d left because she’d known she was in imminent danger of developing feelings far deeper than their short-term, open-ended agreement had been designed to bear.

  Slowly she set her clothing down on the unmade bed and tugged her mental shields back in place. Okay. She was a strong woman. She hadn’t caved under the relentless pressure her father applied when he’d discovered she was pregnant and thought it was his God-given right to know who the father was, and she didn’t intend to turn into a hearts-and-flowers type dreamer now. Admitting her newly realized feelings wasn’t the same as expecting some fairy-tale kind of relationship to come from them. And everything else aside, she had Esme to consider. She planned to study her options very, very carefully.

  But for today…She glanced toward the common wall the room shared with the bathroom and listened to the sound of running water. Well, today she was away from home. Without her child.

  She picked up the phone and called room service, where she ordered enough food for a small army. Then she plucked a condom out of the box and strolled down the hall toward the bathroom.

  She bet John wouldn’t mind washing her back.

  BY TUESDAY AFTERNOON Jared was so hungry he could feel his belly button kissing his backbone. It amazed him to recall that there had been times back in his former life when he’d thought he was starved. What that had actually meant was that there hadn’t been any junk food around—that there’d been nothing in the house to eat except eggs and meat and vegetables and who the hell wanted any of that when it meant having to prepare it for yourself?

  Man, what he wouldn’t give for just one of those things now. But he and P.J. hadn’t had anything to eat in almost twenty-four hours and his stomach stridently protested its lack of sustenance.

  He’d spent his last dollar today calling home in the hope that Tori might be there. Surely she’d come over from London for Father’s funeral. His empty stomach cramped painfully at the thought and he had to blink furiously against the sudden burning pressure at the back of his eyes. Don’t think about it, don’t think about it.

  Think instead about the fact that she would have sent him money if they’d connected. He knew it without a doubt and for a moment her image swam across his mental screen, warming him.

  But it didn’t take long for heaviness to resettle in his gut. Because in the end he’d thrown away his money. DeeDee had answered the phone and he’d immediately slammed it down in a panic.

  “Hey!” P.J. dug her sharp elbow into his side. “Smile pretty for the tourist. That lady over there has been eyeing you.” Then her mouth twisted and she pointed in a different direction. “Course, so has that man.”

  Involuntarily, Jared’s glance followed the trajectory of her finger, but he jerked his gaze away when a pudgy older man wearing an expensive-looking suit raised an eyebrow and gave him a hopeful smile. Ice crawled through his bowels. For the pinch of desperation he was beginning to feel. For the fear that all his choices would soon be used up if his and P.J.’s circumstances didn’t im
prove pretty damn quick.

  He honest-to-God didn’t know if he could live with himself if it came down to having to do that in order to survive.

  As if he’d voiced the fear aloud, P.J. said fiercely, “We aren’t there yet, bud,” and jerked him around so he could no longer see the man. “And you’re smart. You’ll figure out something before we get to that point.”

  She tugged him over to the curb where they waited for the trolley to rock past before stepping into the street, which was closed to all other traffic. She nudged him around to face a middle-aged woman waiting for the northwest-bound car and with a final squeeze of his arm, she gave him a little shove. “Now go make nice with the lady. She looks like someone who’d love to part with a bit of change.”

  Jared dug his feet in. “How about we try something different?”

  She quit shoving to stare up at him. “Okay,” she said slowly. “Like what?”

  He hitched his thumb at his backpack and leaned down to murmur instructions in her ear.

  Her big golden brown eyes lit up. “Oh, too good.”

  He kept walking toward their mark as Peej danced around behind him. A second later he felt the flap of his pack lift and her beginning to rummage through it. When she made a sound of distress and started yanking things out, he nearly smiled. Damn, she was good.

  “Wait a minute,” she said. She smacked the pack when he kept strolling toward the woman at the trolley stop. “J, wouldja stop? It’s not in here.”

  He craned around to stare at her. “What do you mean it’s not there? It has to be. You just missed it, is all.”

  “No, I’m telling you—it’s not there.”

  He yanked the straps of the pack down and swung the satchel off his back, dropping it to the ground practically at the feet of the woman they hoped to con out of a few dollars. Forcing himself not to look her way, he began pawing through the backpack, pulling out items with increasing speed and dropping them on the ground next to the pack. “Oh, God,” he said and found it wasn’t difficult at all to sound desperate. Because he was—desperate to know he and P.J. would have at least one meal to eat tomorrow. “What are we going to do, Peej?”

  “Mom’s gonna kill us,” she wailed.

  “Excuse me,” said a gentle voice, and they both looked up at the woman. “Are you kids all right?”

  “Yes, we’re fine ma’am,” Jared said at the same time P.J. wailed, “Nooooo.”

  “Did you lose something?”

  He looked at her kind eyes and worn shoes and realized she wasn’t a tourist at all. Jeez, she didn’t look much better off than the two of them and he felt lower than a cockroach because he knew he was going to rook her anyhow. Gathering up the stuff he’d dropped out of the pack, he slowly rose to his feet. “It’s nothing.”

  P.J. smacked him. “Yeah, if you don’t mind the fact that we now have no money to get home, and Mom’ll never let us forget that she told us we couldn’t be trusted to come to town by ourselves.”

  The woman dug through a purse that had seen better days and pulled out three wrinkled dollar bills. Catching a glimpse into her wallet over her shoulder, Jared saw it only left her with two dollars for herself.

  She held the bills out to him. “Maybe this will help.”

  His growling stomach reminded him just how much it would help, yet he couldn’t seem to raise his hand to take the money. P.J. suffered no such qualms and plucked them from the woman’s fingers.

  “Thank you, ma’am. You just saved our lives!”

  “It’s my pleasure.” She bestowed a gentle smile on both of them. “Your brother reminds me of my son.”

  “Oh, hey, that’s too bad. He’s ugly, too, huh?”

  A shadow passed over the woman’s eyes. “No, he was quite handsome.”

  P.J.’s incessant movement stilled. “Was?”

  “He died in Operation Iraqi Freedom.”

  “Oh, man, lady. I’m sorry.”

  “Yes. So am I.” She turned toward the trolley that was rattling down the tracks toward them.

  Jared dug through his pack and pulled out a pen and a scrap of paper. He thrust it out to the woman. “Will you write down your address?” he asked. “We’ll repay your loan as soon as we can.”

  “That’s not necessary, dear.”

  “Please!”

  She looked into his eyes for a moment, then reached for the pen and paper and scribbled on it. The trolley arrived as she was handing them back. “Good luck, kids,” she said and climbed aboard.

  They stood watching the car depart down the track. Then P.J. turned to him. “Well, that worked like a dream and was a real hoot at first.” She stared at him despondently. “So why do I feel like crap?”

  “Same reason I do, I guess.” Jared carefully tucked the scrap of paper in the pack’s front pocket, even though he knew he didn’t have a prayer of repaying the woman’s generosity. “Okay with you if we save her money for tomorrow?”

  “Yeah. It’s time to head over to Skyline anyway.” Giving him a doubtful look, she said without much conviction, “We’ll prob’ly feel better after we get something in our stomachs. Don’t cha think?”

  “Sure,” he lied. “We’ll probably feel a lot better.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  “OH, MY GOD, JOHN. There he is!”

  Rocket looked down as Victoria clamped her hand tightly around his wrist. She glanced up at him, her face alight, but promptly swung back to stare across the urban park.

  “You were right,” she breathed, “Jared is here!”

  Following her gaze through the concrete canyon that was Skyline Park, he zeroed in on a tall, slim boy with the same thick, streaky brown hair as hers. The kid was wolfing down a sandwich as he listened to a girl who kept flitting around him, darting and dodging like a hummingbird.

  John turned his attention back to Tori. He could understand her disbelief. After combing the city yesterday, most of last night and earlier this afternoon without catching a single glimpse of the boy, it was a bit unreal to finally see him. It made John doubly glad the tip he’d received had panned out, but he also felt they’d better discuss the manner in which they approached him. Making contact after a kid had been on the street a while often required delicate, cautious handling.

  Unfortunately, the need to warn her had no sooner entered his mind than she dropped his arm and started across the park.

  “Victoria, wait!”

  But it was clear that she’d worked up a full head of steam—not to mention an acute case of excitement deafness—and she took off like a thoroughbred out of the gate, weaving with long-legged grace through the throng of kids milling around in groups or lounging on the cement steps that surrounded a red rock fountain. He picked up his own pace behind her, but even as he caught hold of her elbow to halt her, she called out her brother’s name.

  Shit. But she’d warned him now and it couldn’t be taken back. He dropped her arm and moved forward, balancing on the balls of his feet as he prepared to run Jared to ground if necessary.

  The boy merely blinked once or twice, however, as if he couldn’t believe his eyes. Then his lips moved, shaping Tori’s name. He said something to the hummingbird girl, grabbed her by the hand, and just as John feared, took off at a dead run.

  Only…the kid didn’t run in the direction he’d expected. Instead, his somber face suddenly alight with a huge grin, Jared made a beeline straight for his sister.

  For once, Victoria wasn’t the least bit attuned to John. He might not have existed at all, in fact, so keenly was her focus locked on Jared. She raced to meet her brother halfway, her arms opened wide, and within seconds, she was embracing him. Terrified he’d vanish again, she wrapped her arms tightly around him, backpack and all, anchoring her fingers in the pack’s water-resistant fabric to keep him close. To keep him safe. A distant corner of her mind registered his slightly ripe smell, but she didn’t care. The only thing that had any meaning was the knowledge he was here. In one piece. The rest was merely
details.

  She felt him begin to tremble and tightened her hold on him, rocking them from side to side. He responded by hugging her harder and pressing his cheek against the top of her head. A second later she felt him wipe his eyes against her hair, and of all the things she could have, and probably should have, been thinking, her only clear thought was, When did he get so tall?

  Then he raised his head to look down at her. “I’m sorry, Tor,” he said hoarsely. “I’d give anything to go back and do that night over again. But you gotta believe I didn’t mean to kill Dad.”

  Her heart sank right down to her toes and only then did she realize how much she’d been counting on having him clear up what she’d believed in her heart of hearts must surely be a misunderstanding. She’d been so sure he couldn’t have killed their father. But his tortured expression said even louder than his damning words had that she’d been wrong and her stomach was suddenly full of frozen knots.

  She forced herself to shove the discomfort aside, however, and think. He was still her little brother, and given Father’s less than warm and cozy personality, she didn’t doubt there were mitigating circumstances. Reaching up to trace the light stubble on his cheek with her fingertips, she said softly, “I know you didn’t. Can you tell me what happened?”

  He let her go and stepped back, thrusting his long fingers through his hair. “He said that I…that I should have been…” He cleared his throat. “He said something awful and I just wanted to get away, you know? So I shoved him to get past. But I didn’t mean to kill him!”

  “Wait.” She stared at him. “You pushed him?”

  “Yes.” His movements were jerky with agitation. “I just wanted to get him out of my face, but then he tripped and fell and hit his head on the corner of the hearth. And I know I should have called 911, but I couldn’t feel a pulse, and there were all those people in the dining room, and I guess I panicked and God, Tori, I am so damn sorry!”