by TL Schaefer
Cris moved toward him, meaning to comfort him, to heal with touch, to hell with the consequences. But Nick held up a hand.
“The Corps offered me a desk job, but I couldn’t do it. I opted out, medically retired. Came back home, hung with my folks for a bit before signing on with the OSBI. This,” he pointed to his knee, “is only one of the reasons I’m not a field officer.” He pushed away from the door and stepped back into the hallway. “If you need it, you’ve got an ear, okay?”
Cris swallowed past the lump in her throat. What she’d gone through had been horrific, but it had been strangers, and her own naiveté, that had died, not comrades, not brothers or sisters in arms. It burned to realize that she’d been wallowing in guilt for nearly two years, when what she’d experienced was nothing compared to the soldiers, sailors and airmen who were even now in hotbeds across the globe.
She nodded in reply to his offer and he returned to his room, leaving her with the image of his tanned, toned back, puckered here and there with shrapnel scars long healed.
Her fingers itched to reach out and touch, stroke, to ease what obviously still echoed within him. But he’d respected her space, backed away when before he’d been all push.
She sat down on the bed and thought long and hard. Why the difference? Once he’d dropped the Nick Coleman façade, he’d been all cop, all Marine. Was she bringing his past to the surface, simply by being around him? When she wore her own history as a badge of dishonor?
Flopping back onto the cold, lonely sheets of the guest bedroom, she stared up at the ceiling. Seeing Nick’s vulnerable side, even though it’d been hidden beneath a manly attitude, threw her for a loop. There’d been sparks between them before, but his admission, his similar, hurting soul, drew her more than anything she’d ever felt. That’s why she’d felt the need to comfort, to succor. And darned if she didn’t feel it right now, while he was down the hall, presumably wrestling with his own demons.
But she didn’t want them to sleep together as an act of pity. For either of them.
She turned, punched the pillow and pulled the sheets over her body. When she went to Nick McLain’s bed, it would be because she was sure it was the right thing, not because she felt she’d found a kindred spirit.
Nick heard Cris tossing and turning, knew she was dreaming again. He wished he could fall back asleep himself, but the images from that day seemed burned into his retinas. He’d seen Cristine’s face as he told his story, had seen that she truly understood what he’d said. He’d never had that experience with a woman before. Every female he’d been around since returning had tried to heal him, to save him. Honestly, there wasn’t much to heal, or to save.
He’d tried to connect when he returned from downrange, but it had never taken. He was what he was, and he’d accepted the fact a long time ago that he’d never find a woman who understood his past, both before and after the military. He only had to look to his parents to realize the happily-ever-after in the movies and books were fairy tales.
Instead, he appreciated a woman’s beauty, her grace. The way she moved, smelled, tasted. He wasn’t a forever kind of guy. Wasn’t a keeper. Never would be, and he made sure his lovers knew that. It didn’t stop them from being women though, good women who thought they could be the “one.”
The shrinks he’d been sent to, first in Germany, while he was recuperating, and then later, in the States, had been undermanned and overworked and not all that dogged in cracking his skull open when he said he was fine, just pissed off and sad he’d lost so many of his buddies. Eventually they bought it and left him alone. Now, after too many years of introspection, he realized they would have had a field day with the distance he put between himself and pretty much everyone, but he was way past needing therapy. Or was he?
Had he begun to do that with Cristine, even unintentionally? He didn’t think so, but the thought he might have churned his stomach. She was a psychologist, trained to deal with trauma. Trained to deal with talking someone down, to diffuse a potentially deadly situation.
He was more screwed up than he’d thought. First, he’d accused her, if only in his head, of being an adrenaline junkie. Then he’d seen she was anything but. She was simply a woman used to looking out for herself and doing what needed to be done. Then he’d let raw lust temper his vision.
She deserved better than that, better than a man who had absolutely no problem feeling lust and slaking it without looking back. The realization saddened him, because he was just starting to realize that what she churned up inside him were nothing he’d ever experienced before.
Morning dawned too bright, too early. Cris threw an arm over her grainy eyes and groaned. Her head felt like she’d slammed a six-pack and as many tequila shots back. When she opened her eyes, she was greeted with the sight of a strange bed, a strange room. What had happened last night?
It all came rushing back to her… Yesterday morning’s events, the flight from first her house, then Nick’s, last night’s revelations. Criminy. Her reasons for keeping an arms-length from Nick McLain, in the light of day, were all frighteningly valid, but darned if she didn’t wish she’d awoken beside him this morning.
It was a useless endeavor. Last night’s personal confessions about her past made it painfully clear she had a lot of thinking to do about her own priorities, and where she wanted to go in the future.
As she lay there, she analyzed her life for the last 18 months, forced herself to be brutal. And found it lacking. Yes, she’d come to Oklahoma to heal, but she’d done more than that. She’d hidden, not just from Lori Wright and the journalists, but from herself. And now that she’d seen the cowardice, she couldn’t unsee it.
Because of that, like it or not, she didn’t envision herself going back to Rob and the yard. Not because he was guilty of anything—which still remained to be seen—but because she’d doubted, and she’d never be able to forget that doubt, both in him and herself.
Working for Rob had been exactly what she’d needed, back in the day. A job where she didn’t have to think too hard, not with her skillset, but paid a few bills, kept her mind off her own troubles, kept her physically busy. But now, something besides her doubt called out for her to take more. To be more. What that was remained to be seen. Those thoughts, that future course of action, was something she’d deal with later, when she was sure she wasn’t going to be in someone’s crosshairs.
Today, she and Nick needed to get back to the place they’d been yesterday at about noon, sitting across Linc’s table as uneasy allies. She’d happily give up the uneasy part, but none of the other things that had happened could be allowed to continue. Nick harbored his own ghosts, demons that put hers into perspective.
She wouldn’t fall into the tried-and-true psychoanalyst role, wouldn’t try to heal Nick, because she was already too close to him, too entwined with him through more than circumstance.
She’d tried to fix her marriage to Trent, and it had backfired spectacularly. It still hurt, still galled, still made her doubt her worth as a psychologist, as a woman.
After Austin, a relationship had been out of the question, she’d been too busy licking her wounds. Casual sex was a decent way to blow off steam, and she’d be lying to herself to say she hadn’t considered it after the first few months in her new city. But she hadn’t acted on it. The concept of washing Trent off her hands like a germ held a lot of merit, but she hadn’t found anyone who really hit those switches. Not when the risk of her past being discovered and re-exploited by the tabloids was all too possible.
For good or for bad, Nick was the first man she’d been wholly attracted to since her divorce, and he didn’t deserve to be part of her healing process. Never mind that she felt safer with him, from an emotional standpoint, than she’d ever felt with anyone. She was afraid her feelings, beyond attraction, were a combination of rebound and mothering, and she didn’t want to do that to either of them.
So instead of mucking up things even further by following through on their
attraction, they needed to put their heads together, try to figure out exactly what was going on, and exactly who they could trust.
Cris flung back the sheets and stood, stretching, then visited the bathroom, and headed for the kitchen. Nick must have set the timer on the coffeepot because there was no sign of him, but java sat, hot and steaming in the carafe. She poured herself a cup, liberally dousing it with powdered creamer, and walked the inside perimeter of the building. Her old habits, her old instincts, had come screaming back with a vengeance now that she needed them, and she was glad for it.
The memories were an everyday thing anyway, so having the reflexes that went with them again left her feeling more in control. A control she hadn’t experienced in far too long.
It was as if she was experiencing a rebirth of a sort. She was finding herself. Not the Cristine O’Connor of Austin, Texas, but plain old Cris Eagen. A woman who’d gone from the gilded corridors of the state legislature to a hundred-year-old fixer-upper of a house. From a job where she was the best of the best to recovering flashy cars for a living.
The events of the past twenty-four hours, seeing her life through Nick’s eyes, had shown her that she had so much more to do. She just had to figure out what.
Her rediscovered self-confidence went south the moment Nick walked through the front door, disarmed, then reset the alarm, his drool-worthy body coated with a thin sheen of sweat, even this early in the morning. He was dressed for running, wearing a tee shirt and shorts that left nothing to the imagination, but the image of a leisurely morning run was dashed by the sight of the Glock on his hip, the holster held down by an old-fashioned leather thong tied around his thigh, gunslinger style.
He limped slightly, as if his knee bothered him, and Cris supposed it probably did. The total knee reconstruction she imagined after seeing his scars in the light of day wouldn’t have made recreational running a pleasant experience. The psychologist in her wondered if Nick was punishing himself for something. She pushed the musing aside and walked to the coffeemaker.
“Coffee?”
“In a sec,” he walked to one of the cabinets and pulled down a glass, filling it with water from the tap before chugging it.
Cris’ eyes were drawn to the strong line of his throat as he swallowed the water, the image making her vision fog the tiniest bit. A bead of sweat crept down his jaw. She followed its progress like a woman in a trance before mentally shaking herself and taking a sip of coffee.
What was it about Nick that made every nerve in her body jangle?
He set the glass down and leaned against the counter. “Perimeter’s clear, and I swept the truck one more time. No bugs that I can find, although the equipment we got is over the counter, something anyone with a good tracking device could get around.”
“So basically, we still don’t trust anyone,” she said, setting down her own cup.
He nodded, his midnight-dark hair flopping over one eye, like it had yesterday morning. God, it seemed like weeks ago, not just twenty-four hours.
“Except Linc,” he amended. “He had more than enough opportunity to turn on us, and never took it.”
Cris mulled his statement over, and had to agree, logically, even though her heart screamed “of course Linc is clean.” With their lives on the line, everyone was suspect. But if both of them thought it, and Linc’s actions bore it out, even better. “What about Jacobsen?” she asked.
Nick shook his head. “Nope. He may be my boss, but I’m not risking our lives based on that. No, it’s Linc, and only Linc at this point.” He paused. “Let me grab a shower, then we can rustle up some breakfast and talk this through. Compare notes, see what we may have missed.”
“Okay,” Cris replied. “I’ll see what I can put together while you’re in the shower.”
“I didn’t mean you had to cook for me,” Nick said, meeting her eyes, his expression serious.
She took his words in the spirit they were given and smiled. “I know. I’d kick your butt if you’d meant it that way.”
He grinned in return and sent Cris’ system right back into overdrive. “You could try, at least.”
Nick stepped beneath the hard spray of the shower, letting his mind run at full throttle. He was in a quandary. He wanted Cristine, his body reminded him of it even now. And he’d seen the way she looked at him, as if he was the last chocolate chip cookie on the face of the earth. But he’d also come to respect her, and after his mental bombshell last night, he knew he’d end up using her to fix his messed-up head, consciously or not.
While he’d been a user in the past, with Cristine, it wasn’t a concept he was comfortable with. Yes, the sex between them would probably rock both of their worlds, but what about after? They would still be stuck together until this was all over, and it wasn’t as if they could spend twenty-four-seven in bed.
Because he respected her, he didn’t want there to be anything between them. While knowing his past, present and future might not make a difference for her, it might for him. So, he’d do the right thing, clear the air between them, let her know that as much as he wanted her, he wasn’t good enough for her. And in the end that was the bottom line.
He stepped from the shower and toweled himself off, knowing in his heart and mind that his decision was the right one, even if it would be uncomfortable to reveal it. He’d never trusted that blunt truth with anyone else, especially not with someone he was attracted to.
He slipped into jeans and a t-shirt, then walked purposefully into the kitchen.
Cristine sat at the counter, staring out the window silently.
“There are some things we need to talk about,” he poured himself a cup of coffee and pulled out a chair at the dining room table, waiting until she joined him.
“That’s kind of obvious,” she replied, a half-smile on her face. That she could smile over their predicament told him how much she’d actually lived through. It made his pending confession that much easier.
“Not about what you think,” he replied seriously. He leaned back in his chair and dove in. “I apologize for being so brutal about what happened to me last night,” he began. “I told you what happened to me because I thought it might help, not to have you help me, as a mental health professional.”
She opened her mouth, to rebuff his apology, he was sure, so he continued talking. “But I realized I might have been going there. Maybe not last night, but at some point in the future, and be doing it unconsciously. It’s not fair to you. I’ve got a pretty ugly past when it comes to dealing with women. Started with my mom, who’s a functioning alcoholic and a train wreck. I realized my father and I made careers out of enabling her. I grew up thinking life with her was normal, until I joined the Corps, and by then it was too late. I spent my childhood watching her drink herself into a stupor and my father as he went out for more booze, because it made her happy, made her compliant. And I didn’t know that their behavior was wrong. Back in the day, growing up on the south side, they weren’t different from the neighbors.” He ran a hand through his hair. This was harder than he’d thought.
“I don’t do relationships,” he said bluntly, seeing no reason to sugarcoat it. “I’m no good with anything beyond the sheets. I’ve tried it, but it’s just not in me. It always goes south, and usually dramatically. We both know there’s something between us, something pretty hot. I don’t want us to end up in bed, then have to deal with the aftermath later, maybe when our lives are on the line.”
Cristine’s face was stoic for a long moment before she burst out laughing. “Gee thanks, that’s big of you, McLain. Saving me from myself.”
She laughed and his jaw dropped. He never thought he’d heard such a feminine, carefree sound. Then she sobered.
“I was married for five years, and it didn’t end well, all right? So you don’t have to warn me of the dangers of hopping into the sack without considering the consequences. And yeah, you’re right, we’ve got sparks, but that doesn’t necessarily lend to me following through on it.
I worked really hard on my marriage, and it didn’t work out. I haven’t been willing to try since then, it takes too much energy, especially when I’ve spent the last eighteen months trying to figure out who I really am. So yeah, I get you. Just so you know.”
Completely dumbfounded, Nick propped his elbows on the table and stared at her.
“What?” she asked. “Did I suddenly grow two heads?”
He snorted in response. No, she’d done the one thing that could possibly make her even more attractive in his eyes. She’d been herself, admitting her own frailties without expecting an answer or consoling. He blew out a breath. “No, I’m not used to hearing women talk about themselves so frankly.”
She regarded him steadily. “I don’t have anything to lose, Nick. You might remember that. If I do decide to go to bed with you, it will be because I’ve thought it through, not because my hormones are ruling my decisions. You were right about one thing, though. We’ve got enough problems going on without adding sex to the mix. And as for the whole ‘mental health professional’ thing, hey, I’m a female. The whole helping people out thing is pretty much ingrained in our DNA. I’m sure you know that.”
“See, you’re doing it even now,” Nick said. “Trying to help.” He wasn’t sure what to do with that. Not with someone as blatantly honest as Cristine. He’d shown his warts, and she just didn’t care. It was something he needed to think about, roll around in his head.
Cris shrugged. “Like I said, it’s in the DNA. Now that we both know where the other stands, how about we figure out the rest of it?”