He still hadn’t forgiven Roger for grinding his face into the dirt on the elementary school playground a month ago.
Forget about the fact that Morgan had jumped him.
Of course it had been after Roger started slinging insults back at the older boy.
Although he did have to admit, in hindsight, that he’d gotten into the self-defense thing maybe a little too enthusiastically, particularly after that bullshit Lyle had spouted about Roger’s sister, Elaine.
Nos had had to pull him off, and the look in his eyes was one Roger would always remember.
Afterward, both Noah and Walt had sat him down—separately—and talked to him about something ridiculous called anger management. Noah had gone so far as to present him with the legal definition of manslaughter, as well as an overview of the average number of years spent in prison by a person who killed another person in a fistfight.
Roger had protested. He’d had no intention of killing Lyle Morgan. Although, even as he said the words, he could remember that odd, metallic taste in his mouth and the way his anger seemed to pound through his veins with every beat of his heart.
It had controlled him.
It wasn’t just Lyle he was fighting that day. It was his father. And his mother, too. God, why did she take those pills? Pills to sleep. Pills to wake up. Pills that made her drift aimlessly around the house and not really see him.
What she really needed was a pill to make Roger’s father go away for good.
“Where you going, Ringo?” Lyle asked now. He had a crew cut that didn’t work real well with his pumpkin head or his acne. “Over to your lover’s house?”
Yeah, actually, I’m going to your girlfriend’s, dickhead. Roger clenched his teeth over the words. Taunting Lyle in return would only escalate the situation.
“Just keep walking,” Walt had advised him when he’d asked the older man for help. “And say—”
“I’m not going to fight with you, Lyle.” Roger tucked the manila envelope with Noah’s school assignments under his left arm, farther away from the older boy.
Unfortunately, his doing that drew Lyle’s attention to it.
“What’s in the envelope? Pictures of you and Einstein doing it?”
“It’s Noah’s homework. Mr. Gaines called me this morning before school and asked me to pick it up for him.” Roger could have used Nos’s steadying support right about now. It was also very likely that if Noah had been with him, Lyle would never have approached. Bullies never liked odds that weren’t in their favor.
“Mr. Gaines, huh? You his little slave boy? Ain’t that a switch.” Lyle laughed at his own joke. What an asshole.
Roger walked a little faster. “I’m not going to fight with you, Lyle.” You fricking piece of shit.
“You know, now that your cousin has come out of the closet, you might as well, too, faggot.” Lyle laughed again.
Jerry Starrett had lived down the street from Lyle and his mother. He was four years older, and back when Roger was in first and second grade, he’d worshiped the ground his cousin had walked on.
Last year, Roger’s uncle Frank had kicked Jerry out of the house after he’d been arrested in a gay bar in Dallas. It was old news, but apparently it had just made its way to Lyle’s ears.
And now it was going to be all over school tomorrow.
If he was going to make it through these next few days without fighting, he was going to need to come down with that strep throat Noah had contracted. Except Nos had been on antibiotics for so many days, he wasn’t contagious anymore.
Roger could always lie and say he was sick.
Problem was, Walt disapproved of lying almost as much as he did fighting.
Jesus, it was hard being good.
“I always used to wonder why Jerry would rather play with a stupid first grader than with me,” Lyle said now. “Now I know the kind of games you were playing up there in his room.”
Noah’s house was in sight. “I’m not going to fight with you, Lyle.” It was amazing he could speak at all through such tightly clenched teeth.
“You’re not even going to deny it, are you, fudge packer?”
Roger didn’t know what that meant, but it didn’t sound good.
“Stay in control,” Walt had told him. “Don’t let your anger use you. Use your anger. You’re smarter than most people. Use your brain to win without violence.”
Lyle’s taunts usually came down to homosexuality. Faggot, fairy, homo, queer. That wasn’t unusual. Roger himself had found that questioning an opponent’s sexuality was usually the fastest way to get a knee-jerk reaction. But he’d also discovered that some people were touchier about it than others. Some kids shrugged it off. But others—like Lyle Morgan—went ballistic at the slightest suggestion that they might enjoy the time they spent in the boys’ locker room a little too much.
Maybe because they actually did, and they were terrified someone might find out.
“I’m not going to fight with you,” Roger told Lyle, stopping at the bottom of the Gaines’s driveway. “But you know, now that Jerry has admitted what he’s admitted, well, you might want to take care reminding people that you lived down the street from him. I was his cousin—I had to go over to his house,” he lied. “But I seem to recall there were quite a few times you and Jerry put a tent at the edge of the backyard and zipped yourselves in together, nice and cozy.”
Lyle lunged for Roger, but he was ready for it, and he sidestepped the rush.
“You so much as touch me,” Roger said, “or spread any rumors about me or any members of my family, and I’ll print leaflets about you and Jerry and put ’em on the windshields of cars all over town.”
Lyle stopped cold. “You wouldn’t dare!”
Roger didn’t blink. “I think you know I would. But let’s not go there, okay? Let’s negotiate a truce. You treat me and Noah with respect, and we’ll treat you with respect in return. Does that sound fair?”
“Fuck you!”
“Why don’t you sleep on it and let me know in the morning?” Roger said, and went up the steps.
Walt was standing there, behind the screen door. He opened it to let Roger inside, stepping out onto the porch just enough so that Lyle could see him.
Lyle took off at a run.
“That was very impressive, young Ringo,” Walt said.
Roger handed him the manila envelope with hands that were shaking.
“Shoot!” he said. “I wasn’t scared. This isn’t cause I was scared of him!”
“It is okay to be scared,” Walt said. “I was scared every time I climbed into my plane in Africa and Italy and Germany. I spent a lot of time during the war scared—not so much of the Germans or even of dying, but scared I’d make a mistake and end up killing my men.”
“I was scared I’d screw up,” Roger admitted. “I wanted to rip that smirk off Lyle’s fat face just about more than I’ve ever wanted anything.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No, sir. But it sure as hell would’ve been easier if I could’ve just killed him.”
Walter laughed and hugged him. Roger had been hugged more in the months since he’d met Walt and Dot than he had been in the years since his mother had twisted her ankle and had started taking all those pills.
“Maybe yes and maybe no,” Walt told him. “But remember this, Ringo my dear boy. Anything worth having doesn’t come easy.” He headed for the kitchen. “Let’s get you a snack. You must be starving. You appear to have grown another inch since you came in the door.”
Alyssa cursed her bladder.
She could have made the trip from Gainesville to Sarasota without a pit stop quite easily—if she hadn’t had all that coffee this morning.
But she’d woken up still weary to the bone, and she’d started chugging it, first getting a cup at the gas station convenience store when she’d filled the tank and bought that map. The sensation of caffeine flowing into her system had been such a good one that she’d bought herself an
other cup when she’d picked up the doughnuts.
Cup. That was a word that was rapidly becoming obsolete. These days a large coffee came in a container that could not be called a cup. We have three sizes: barrel, vat, or tanker. Would you like milk with that? Is a gallon enough, or would you like a gallon and a half?
Damn it, she needed to pee.
She glanced over at Sam. He’d gotten really quiet after she’d started holding his hand.
She’d reached for him for a lot of different reasons, and she couldn’t deny that high on the list was the fact that his fears about being like his father had moved her.
Who would’ve thought Sam Starrett had those kinds of insecurities? He came across as so cocky and self-assured, utterly cool and calm under fire, confident and intelligent and just egotistical enough to be the perfect Navy SEAL.
Maybe egotistical wasn’t the right word. Because Sam truly was faster, stronger, and smarter than most men, with better reflexes and an ability to make well-thought-out command decisions in a heartbeat. The fact that he knew it went with the territory. Navy SEALs were the best of the best, and he was one of the SEALs’ best officers. He wasn’t smug about it—at least not too often. It was just who he was.
But here she was. Holding his hand. Good thing she was driving, or he probably would have already gotten her naked and into bed with him.
God, she was a fool.
Or she would be if she didn’t have that list of additional reasons to be holding on to him—the first and foremost being that she was trying to distract him. Maybe holding his hand for a while would slow him down. Because she knew—without a doubt—that he was going to try to get away.
No way was he going to let her bring him back to Sarasota.
Max had suspected as much, too. Which was why, when he’d called her at the car dealer’s, he’d told her in no uncertain terms to tell Starrett that she was taking him to Sarasota, but to instead deliver him to the FBI office in Tampa.
Except Alyssa wasn’t going to make it to Tampa without stopping. She was going to have trouble making it to the next exit.
“Sam,” she said.
His hand tightened on hers very slightly. “Yeah.”
She signaled for the exit. “I have to stop at this gas station and use the ladies’ room.”
“That’s a relief. I was just about to tell you that I need to stop, too.”
Oh, crap, how was she going to deal with that? She’d figured she could cuff him to the back door handle—a solid piece of plastic—while she ran into the bathroom really fast. But if she took him out of the car, even securely cuffed to her wrist, she knew that somehow he’d manage to get away. And even if he didn’t, what was she supposed to do? Go into the men’s room with him and stand there, while he …?
She looked at the empty enormous coffee cup wedged into the cup holder. Hmm.
She glanced at Sam. “Don’t be offended,” she told him, “but I’m going to cuff you to the back door while I go in there.”
Both Jules and Max had told her that when she lied, her gaze flicked up and to the right. It was very slight, but it was a classic textbook tell, and right now she worked hard to keep her eyes from moving at all. She just watched the road, taking the exit ramp a little too fast.
“Then I’ll come back and take you in,” she continued. Keep those eyes still. “You’re not going to like this, but I’m going to have to go into the men’s head with you.”
Sam smiled very slightly as she ran a stale yellow to get to the gas station on the other side of the intersection. “So that I don’t escape through the storm drain?”
She parked at the edge of the lot, away from the other cars, and let herself smile back at him as she released his hand. The smile was mostly to give him incentive to stick around, not really because she liked the way his smile deepened in response.
“Alyssa, I have to tell you—”
“Don’t,” she said, digging into her fanny pack for the keys to the cuffs. “Let’s not complicate this more than it already is. Maybe after we’re back in Sarasota, after we find Mary Lou and Haley …”
“Maybe what?” he said.
There they were, thank goodness. Her key to the handcuffs was on her ring with her house keys. “I don’t know. Just … maybe.” She closed her eyes so he wouldn’t see that she was lying. Maybe she’d use a school bus for target practice. Maybe she’d be invited back into the Navy as the first female SEAL.
It was one thing to hold Sam’s hand when he told some sad story, but as far as getting involved with this man again, the phrase “over her dead body” leapt to mind. But “Maybe’s the best I can tell you right now,” she said to him.
“That’s, um … that’s okay,” he said. “I’m … Maybe’s okay. Is that leather?” Sam motioned with his chin toward her pack as she zipped it closed.
“Yeah,” she said, tossing it to the floor beneath her legs. “I upgraded last year.”
“Nice. It’s … Look, Alyssa, you need to let me go.”
“I need to not get fired.”
“Like Max would ever fire you,” he scoffed.
“If you run, I will lose my job.”
“If you don’t let me go, I’ll probably lose my daughter.”
“I said I’d find her,” Alyssa countered.
Sam just sat there, looking at her.
“Climb into the back,” she ordered, putting the armrest down between them, so there was space for him to do just that.
“What do I have to say to make you—”
“Starrett, if you don’t climb into the back, I’m going to wet my freaking pants. And you better believe that if that happens, no one goes inside. We drive another two hours to Sarasota in a rolling Porta Potti.”
But he still hesitated. “It’s going to be hard to do this while we’re cuffed together.”
She spoke through clenched teeth. “I’m sure you can manage.”
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he said, using his free hand to pull himself toward the backseat.
As soon as he wasn’t looking, she took out her side arm, stashing it under her seat. There was no way she would shoot him, but she wasn’t so sure he wouldn’t try to grab it and use it to subdue her.
“I’ve got these boots on,” he continued. “I don’t want to kick you in the head by accident.”
Was that a threat or …? Alyssa took it as a warning and went with him, squeezing between the two front seats while pressed tightly against him, before his feet got anywhere near her head.
She landed in the back, on top of him.
And just as she’d expected, he went for her weapon.
Or maybe she was wrong, and what he was reaching for was really her breast. Because that’s what he connected with. And he didn’t hesitate or telegraph any surprise at all by the absence of her side arm in her shoulder holster.
He did, however, press his thigh hard between her legs.
As he kissed the hell out of her.
If this was his response to a maybe, what would have happened if she’d actually said yes?
Someone save her.
Kissing Sam Starrett was as world shaking as it had been all those years ago. He clung to her with all the desperation of a drowning man, as if she alone could rescue him.
It was mesmerizing, it was gratifying, it was exciting as hell to be wanted so badly, to be desired with such intense passion.
And, except for the full beard, it was all so heartbreakingly familiar.
He tasted like Sam. He smelled like Sam. He felt like Sam.
But she’d been here, right here, before and she still hadn’t completely recovered.
His kisses could suck all the air from her lungs, all thoughts from her head.
If she let them.
The dead last thing she needed was to let him get his hands on the keys to the handcuffs. She could just picture that—she would end up handcuffed to the door handle while he walked away.
This was not going to go down tha
t way. Alyssa pulled back and looked at him. He was breathing as hard as she was, desire making his eyes fierce and incredibly, strikingly blue.
“Lys,” he started to say.
She shut him up by leaning down and kissing him again. Not because she wanted to, but because she suddenly knew how to make him completely compliant. It involved shifting forward and spreading her legs so that she was straddling him and—oh, God. Sam Starrett, man of steel. This was familiar, too.
As she kissed him, she reached between them and started unfastening his jeans, as if they were going to … right there in a public parking lot. But then she pulled back, breaking their kiss, laughing and gasping for air. The gasping, at least, wasn’t feigned.
“Sam,” she said. “Sam. We can’t do this here. And I have to pee right now. Help me cuff you to the door, and I’ll be back in two minutes. We’ll find a place a little less populated and—”
He shook his head. “You don’t need to cuff me. I’m not going anywhere.”
She smiled at him as she took the keys from her pocket. “Oh, but I want to cuff you, baby. And then I want to … Do you have any condoms?”
“No, ma’am.” He held out his left hand, Mr. Obedient. His right was up under her shirt, underneath her bra, doing things he had no business doing to her breast.
“You trust me to buy some?” Her voice came out breathless and higher pitched than she’d intended, but glory alleluia, she’d gotten the handcuffs off her own arm and locked him securely to the car without his putting up a fight.
“Yes, I do.”
“Then I’ll be right back.”
She pulled his hand away and started to back off, but he caught her and drew her down close to him again and kissed her.
It wasn’t like those other kisses, those explosions of pure sex.
This time, he kissed her gently. Slowly. He took his time getting there—his gaze dropped to her mouth before he looked into her eyes again.
And then his mouth met hers in a caress that was so sweet, it brought tears to her eyes.
It wasn’t without passion. No, she could still taste his need for her as he kissed her longer, deeper, but still tenderly. She could feel it in the way his heart was pounding in his chest. He was just … expressing it differently.
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