She heard him kneel beside her.
“Are you okay?” He touched a cool rag to her cheek. “Do you know where you are? Can I help you?”
His voice was soft and kind and would have been extremely comforting if she hadn’t felt so sick. She lifted her head to look at him. “Oh, God, I’m sorry—” She jumped up.
Not quick enough, she realized, with the cold rag or the shower. She dashed past him and into the bathroom. Experience told her that throwing up was best at this point. Get it over with quickly. Get coffee. Move on.
She dropped to her knees.
When he approached the bathroom, she slammed the door.
He opened it. “I’m coming in, okay?”
“No.” The sickness tore through her a second time. “Don’t you dare,” she croaked, leaning against the toilet.
He stepped in with her robe.
She rubbed the cool cloth he’d given her across her face. “Don’t you ever listen?”
“Not very well,” he answered. “Come on, let’s get you up.” He tugged her to her feet and wrapped the thick, burgundy robe around her shoulders. “Are you sick? You’re shivering. Should I turn up the heat?”
She shook her head. It wasn’t cold in the apartment. It wasn’t the flu. It wasn’t food poisoning. It wasn’t anything that could be explained logically. She shook her head a second time. Finally, he backed out of the bathroom and allowed her a minute.
Her knees trembled. The thought of what had happened made the nausea return; he’d witnessed another dream. What a mess. She stared at her ghostly complexion in the mirror. Splashing cold water on her face and brushing her teeth didn’t give her nearly enough time to come up with a logical lie.
She walked out of the bathroom feeling caught and cornered. He deserved some explanation. He deserved a normal woman who could be truthful and honest, but her truth just wasn’t an option. She’d never risk looking into his eyes and having him look back as if she were crazy. History told her that’s exactly what would happen. It had happened.
After her family’s murder, she’d trusted the people who claimed they only wanted to help. She’d told the police and the social workers about her dreams. Then she’d spent the next few years paying for it. Admitting to nightmares and conversations with the dead didn’t get her help—it had gotten her labels. PTSD, psychological trauma, severe anxiety, nightmares.
It had also gotten her forced visits with a shrink who believed all of her sleep issues could be fixed in the form of a pill. As an adolescent she may have been trapped in the system; as an adult she had a choice.
That choice included happily eating a bullet from her own gun before spending a single second of her adult life in the same antidepressant haze she’d spent a good portion of her childhood.
Ty was a good man, but it didn’t mean he’d understand her dreams.
“I started a pot of coffee,” he said. “Come sit down.”
When she didn’t move, he stepped closer and slipped his hands around her waist. His lips brushed her forehead, and the hot jolt of need was nearly painful. Melting against him, she trembled at the feel of his warm body holding her.
“Oh, God.” The plea ripped from her throat. She’d made it almost thirty years without getting into this kind of mess. Her entire adult life she’d avoided this kind of intimacy to escape this exact moment. She’d done the one thing she promised herself she’d never do: let a lover in. Now she had to push him away.
“I can’t do this, Ty. I’m sorry.” Looking at him wasn’t an option. Turning away, she stepped toward the one small window in the apartment.
He walked up behind her and settled his hands on her hips. “You seemed to do fine last night.”
“It’s not a joke. I’m not ready for what this feels like it’s turning into.”
His hands dropped. In the silence, his breathing went faster, deeper, and, she was quite sure, angrier.
Forcing herself to face him, she prepared for the fight. “I tried to tell you from the beginning I don’t do this. My job, my life, it’s just too...” Her throat swelled, and she blinked, determined to hold back the tears attempting to form.
“You’re trying to push me away because of a couple of nightmares? That’s ridiculous. You think I don’t understand the stress you’re under because of this case? You think I haven’t driven myself crazy worrying about the best way to take the Bucks down?”
“It’s not just this case. There’s more.” A hell of a lot more. “My life... It’s just... I can’t, Ty. Please just leave it at that.”
The thoughts were there, but she couldn’t get the words out. In the past, kicking a lover to the curb had filled her with relief. Now, her knees were ready to buckle under the weight of the regret. “I’m sorry.” She turned away again, knowing she could never look in his eyes and end it with dignity. “I’ve messed up, and I don’t know the best way to fix it—”
He spun her back around. “Then I’ll tell you. You’re going to continue with this case, and you’re going to continue being with me. We’ll work together, and when we’re done, the Bucks won’t be seeing the light of day for a very long time.”
The delivery of his words was as confident as ever, but she saw the glimmer of uncertainty in his expression.
“Then things will get better. The stress will get better,” he said. “The nightmares will get better.”
“They won’t. You’re not listening. They’re not going away. I’m trying to be honest—”
“Then try being honest with yourself first. After last night, can you really push me away and be done with me? I don’t think so.”
Habit made her want to lash out, verbally shred him with some flip remark, but his eyes held enough heat to silence her.
His grip tightened on her shoulders. “There’s no way you can pretend last night didn’t mean something. Is that really what you want? For me to walk away and not look back?”
She wanted him to stay, maybe more than she’d ever wanted anything. But it wasn’t realistic, and the longer she let him stick around the more it would hurt in the end. “If you have any brains, you will walk away, and you won’t look back. I’ve been lying to you since I met you. My family didn’t die in a car accident... they were murdered.”
***
Ty wasn’t entirely sure he’d heard her right. “Your family was murdered?”
Jordan nodded.
“But you said there was a car accident.”
She knuckled the tears away. “People understand car accidents. Since it wouldn’t be polite, they don’t ask questions.” She exhaled on a bark of hysterical laughter, but her chin quivered. “Murder, on the other hand... No one understands murder.”
The words sliced through him. He understood murder. Enough to know it cut you off at the knees, leaving a big, gaping hole forever. He sucked in a breath, swallowed back his own memories, trying to focus on what had happened to Jordan. “How?”
Her teary gaze locked onto his. “A gunman broke in to my home when I was ten. He shot my family on Thanksgiving night. I only survived because I cowered in a closet.” The words spewed out, full of anger and self-loathing. “I did nothing, absolutely nothing, while some crazy son of a bitch killed everyone I loved. I have nightmares. All the time. They never go away, Ty. Never.”
Of all the things he expected her to say, it hadn’t been that. He eased closer, but her eyes opened wide.
She backed around the small dining table, putting a very clear barrier between them. “The nightmares don’t come every night.” Her face blanched, her words barely a whisper now. “But often enough.”
His mind raced as he tried to figure out what to do for her, what to say. But experience told him that no words were going to make it any better. He swallowed, worked up the nerve to ask, “Who’s Katy?”
Her gaze shifted restlessly around the room, as if searching for an escape. He wondered if he hadn’t been standing between her and the door, if she may have just bolted. Finally, she
exhaled a long, defeated breath and allowed her eyes to settle on him. “Katy was my sister. She was eight when she was murdered.”
Her admission powered into his gut like a physical blow. The image of a little girl hiding in a closet, listening to her family being killed, stalled in his mind. Momentarily frozen, he forced himself to breathe and absorb the enormity of her words. Honestly, he wasn’t sure whether to push for more details or insist she stop. “Do you want to tell me what happened?” he asked softly.
She shook her head as if she couldn’t bear it, but spoke anyway. “Katy and I spent the whole day cooking with Mom. My dad had been gone for weeks.” She shrugged. “He was always gone, but Mom said he was coming home for the holiday, and she was like a different person when he was there, so happy and...”
Ty tried to piece together the details. “Your dad traveled? Like a salesman?”
“Oh, he was a salesman all right. Just not the kind you’re thinking of. My mom said his job kept him away, but even at ten, I knew things didn’t add up. Katy and I would listen to her cry at night, sometimes until she passed out. We were little, but we knew it wasn’t right.
“After Thanksgiving dinner, Mom told Katy and me to take a bath. On holidays it was kind of a tradition for the four of us to snuggle in Mom and Dad’s bed and watch movies.” She absently swiped at her tears. “We were all curled up together watching a movie when it started. Out of nowhere, there was a vicious pounding and a horrible, angry voice. My dad jumped up and sprinted toward the front of the house and...”
She stopped. Even her full, pink lips drained to a pale, sickly gray. “He killed my dad,” she finally said. “We were in the bedroom, but we heard the gun go off. Mom screamed, started crying. She scooted Katy under the bed. At the last second, Mom grabbed me and pushed me in the bottom of her closet.
“The guy busted through the bedroom door. Mom begged and begged. I heard her plead with him. She said we didn’t have his money.” Jordan’s quiet gaze held his for a long moment. “Or his drugs.”
“Oh, Jordan,” Ty said. “It was drug related? You think your dad was dealing?” His heartbeat raced with the implications.
Jordan nodded. “I don’t think it, I know it. I have an uncle in Kansas City that I stayed with for about a week after it happened.” Shrugging like it was no big deal, she said, “When the cops came to talk to him, I listened in. They said my dad made a horrible decision, and it cost his family their lives. My uncle told them they had to find a different place for me to stay. He said he wasn’t risking his family because my dad had been involved in a huge drug war.”
So many things began to make sense. The way she attempted to kept him at arm’s length. Working narcotics. The stupid damn risks she took. All the cryptic answers she’d given him fell into place and completed a large part of the puzzle. “I’m sorry that you had it hear that, baby,” he murmured.
“I’m not. Asking why over and over is almost as hard as living through it the first time.”
Unable to stop himself, he took a step closer, but she jerked a chair between them and held up one shaky hand. “When you’re ten, no one wants to break you with the truth. But for me, the truth was better. I knew exactly why it happened, and I knew exactly who to hate.”
Ty watched her eyes drift shut and her body stiffen. He eased a little closer, thinking she might passing out or something.
“I lost my mom and sister because of my father. He led a crazy, high drug addict straight to our door. My mom tried so hard to talk to the gunman. She begged to go the auto-teller with him, promised him an insane amount of money just to get him out of there and save Katy and me. But he shot her anyway.”
He decided she wasn’t passing out, just trapped in a flashback.
“Katy whimpered when the gun went off. Soft at first. I thought maybe he didn’t hear her, but he looked under the bed and grabbed her by the leg of her pajamas. I had about an inch of space under the door that I was looking out of. He dragged her across the floor. Tossed her on the bed. She rolled off trying to get to the closet. To me. She kicked and screamed and...and he pulled the trigger.”
Jordan opened her eyes, stared straight at him. “If I’d have just opened the closet. If I’d done something... She was trying to get to me, her older sister, for protection. But I did nothing. I could’ve jumped from the closet or startled him.”
“No,” he said sternly. “You’d be dead now, too. You know that, right? You can’t blame yourself for something like that, baby. Sometimes it just...” He opened his eyes wide, blinked away the burn. “You were a kid, Jordan. You had no idea what was happening on the other side of the door.”
“I wish that were true,” she whispered, then swayed.
Ty moved around the table, decided to hell with her barriers.
“Ty, no!” she yelled when he pushed past the chair. “Don’t. I don’t want you to touch me.” She backed further into the corner, tried to steady herself against the wall but wilted toward the floor instead. “God, please go. Please just go.”
“Stop it,” he growled, swooping her up. He couldn’t—wouldn’t—do it anymore. Stand on the other side of the room and watch her drown in misery. “I’m not going anywhere. If you don’t like it, that’s too damn bad.”
There was no fight left in her. She sagged in his arms.
“Ty. Oh, God.” Breaking, she buried her face against his neck and sobbed.
His chest hurt. His heart pounded with a painful, wretched throb. Still cradling her, he fell back onto the sofa. He had no idea what to do, so he simply held her, let her cry it out. He wondered if the tears were helping or just sucking her farther into the past.
Finally, she collapsed limp and exhausted across his lap. Her voice was weak, barely audible when she spoke. “I think I’ve pushed it down for so long that when I sleep, it just swallows me whole. The dreams about that night, they get worse at stressful times, especially when I’m undercover. But they never go away, not totally.”
She tilted her head back and looked at him. “I’m messed up, Ty. I’m broken when it comes to caring for someone. Not even what happened last night between us can fix me.”
He picked up her hand and laced his fingers with hers. “Have you ever told anyone what you just told me?”
She shook her head.
“Then why did you tell me? Why trust me with something you’ve never told anyone?”
She sat up straighter on his lap. Shrugged. “Because I think you want something I’m not capable of giving. You deserve more. You’re handsome and kind.” Her mouth curved in the hint of a smile. “And brave in a totally warped kind of way. You should be with someone who can give you everything, a life, a family, a—” Her brows drew together. “What?”
He knew his smile confused her. Her mood shifted ever so slightly from wrecked to mild irritation. For that little spark, he was grateful.
Her eyes narrowed. “You could be a little more broken up that I’m ending this, cowboy,” she said. “Are you even listening to me?”
“Yeah,” he tossed back smugly. “Are you listening to you? Because you sound an awful lot like someone who cares to me. Enough to risk a secret you’ve never shared with anyone. Enough to warn me you’re a pain in the ass. But lucky for you”—he tapped her nose with his finger—“I’d already figured out the pain-in-the-ass part.”
Her eyes brimmed with tears again. “This isn’t a joke.”
“No, nothing about any of this is funny. But your past doesn’t matter to me. The dreams don’t matter.” He tipped her chin up and sealed his mouth over hers, figuring he was a whole lot better at kissing than he ever would be with words. His tongue stroked between her lips, and that sizzle of connection that could bind them whether they were making love or standing on opposite ends of the room ignited bright and brilliant.
“That’s what matters,” he said breathlessly when he pulled his lips from hers. “It’s the only thing that matters. I’m not asking for marriage or forever. We’ve both
got a lot of issues to work through. I’m just asking for a chance. I want to get to know you better, and I want to help with this case.”
He touched her cheek, forced her eyes toward his. “So for once in your damn life, can you just mutter a simple okay?”
She dropped her head back to his chest and nodded. “Okay,” she said. “Okay.”
Chapter 11
Thanksgiving Day officially sucked sideways in Jordan’s book. And this one was looking less promising than the last nineteen. In fact, this year she was going to have to endure it sober and awake. Drinking wasn’t Jordan’s normal style, but once a year she made an exception, although she’d yet to find the magic bullet that could put her in a coma from about noon on Wednesday straight through black Friday. But in past years, the most promising results had come in the form of cheap red wine.
Unfortunately, today would be spent without the numbing effect of alcohol. She was on her way to the Bucks’ family home, and if all the stars aligned just right, she’d figure out a way to get inside Arlo’s home office long enough to riffle through some of his documents. One small break—a scribbled phone number, a date on a calendar—was all she needed to tie the Bucks to the Delago Cartel and possibly confirm whether Ty’s suspected delivery date was correct or not.
But something about the raw ache that began when she kissed Ty goodbye continued to churn in her chest. The lingering unease of it baffled her. The whole thing with Ty baffled her. The last week had been unlike any she’d ever experienced. Her evenings at Buck’s had been spent ignoring Ty with frigid disregard, only for them to discreetly meet at her place after work and make love until the early hours of the morning.
She craved him like an addict craved the next fix. How ironic for a narc cop to develop a dependency. And not just any dependency. It took a special kind of Jordan Delany dysfunction to let a man be her drug of choice.
He’d shocked her with his support and understanding when she confessed about her family’s murder. Then he’d carved a path for her she’d never thought to travel down by herself.
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