by Lydia Burke
She hadn't wanted to do any of those things. But she'd decided that even though physical proximity had been forced upon them, emotional distance, at least, was essential after what had nearly happened yesterday. And since arguments required a certain amount of personal involvement, they were to be avoided at all costs, no matter how he provoked her.
By silent agreement they had put aside their differences for their visit to the Sentinel. Jessie remembered how he'd put his arm around her and called her "Jess" in that casually intimate way. Of course, he was just doing his job. Kyle would have been suspicious if he'd suspected they were at odds.
Firmly Jessie took herself in hand. She was right to keep her distance. When they were alone, any interaction with Ben beyond the most superficial wasn't worth the risk. She knew now how quickly and effortlessly anger could be converted into passion.
Contrarily, it bothered her that Ben hadn't shown any inclination to break through the barriers she'd erected since their argument. Certainly one part of her—the rational part—knew the pull between them was better left a question mark. But the dreamy idealist inside thrilled to the power of Ben's kisses and the touch of his hands on her body. She had never known such abandon before.
Her books were full of it, of course. She blessed every one of her heroines with a perfect partner who knew how to draw every last ounce of response from his woman and leave her blissfully sated. But that was fiction, the product of Jessie's own fairy-tale imaginings.
So she had thought. But twice now in Ben's arms she had felt herself on the precipice of a glorious realm of physical discovery that promised—or threatened—to change her forever. The frightening thing was that under the influence of Ben's compelling kisses, her instinct was to jump with heedless joy right over the edge. Yesterday, in fact, the only thing stopping her from succumbing to that urge was his restraint.
That was the problem. While every nerve in her body had screamed for more, Ben had pulled back. Humiliated and resentful, Jessie concluded she had been more overwhelmed than he. His greater control had given him the upper hand, something she'd vowed, after her divorce, never to grant another man.
It wasn't that Jessie was either an ardent feminist or a man hater. As miserable as it had been, her marriage hadn't put her off men altogether; she was wise enough to know that her ex-husband didn't represent his whole sex. She still planned to have a husband and children someday. Somewhere in the world
the right man was waiting for her. And when fate dropped him into her lap, she would devote herself to making him happy.
But it was glaringly evident Ben wasn't the right man, any more than Antonio had been. Unwisely she'd forgotten Ed's advice. Ben's insulting insinuation that she would be willing to wait for him until he had time for her was confirmation that his partner knew him well. His job would come before any woman.
To Jessie, that attitude was worse than the way he bossed her around. She wouldn't settle again for anything less than first place in her man's life. A smart woman didn't make the same mistake twice.
Lucky for her, Ben's work right now was in Port Mangus, so after today, no further contact with him would be necessary. With a hundred and fifty-plus miles separating them, Jessie would be able to get on with her life and forget all about him. She had her work to keep her sufficiently occupied.
She had just completed her latest manuscript, Angel's Tread, and sent it to her agent two days ago. Ideas for her next book had been brewing for weeks while she'd finished Sydney's tale, and soon she would be embroiled in a new plot with new characters, and there wouldn't be time to think about what might have been. She was better off not knowing what she was missing.
And if her hormones regretted the loss, well, she would simply choose to ignore them.
Ben mumbled something unintelligible under his breath. Jessie noticed him glancing frequently into both the windshield and side mirrors as he drove. Too frequently?
"What?" she asked, alarmed. "Is someone following us?"
Ben grabbed her arm in warning. "Don't turn around. I don't know yet. Adjust your seat belt as tight as you can, just incase."
Jessie stared straight ahead and followed his instructions. He made a right turn at the next intersection, and two blocks later he turned again.
"Damn," he muttered after yet another check of the mirrors. "Let's try one more."
The bumper-to-bumper traffic caused the maneuver into the left-turn lane to take some time, but they finally made it. Ben's
eyes were glued to the rearview mirror after he made the turn. Jessie sat tensely awaiting his judgment of the situation.
"Okay, we've got a tail," he said about halfway down the block.
"Oh, God," she said. "Is it the Chevy?"
"No, this one's a Mazda, I think, kind of a tan color, and if s just one man. He's hanging back one or two cars. Don't worry, though. We're lucky all the Christmas shoppers arc out today. I can lose him up here at the light."
Ben stopped for the yellow signal. The car behind honked angrily, but he disregarded the other driver's annoyance. They were still in the left lane, and now Ben's Trans Am was first in line for the green light.
His eyes flitted from the pedestrians crossing in front of them, to the cars passing through the intersection, to the pickup truck waiting on their right side, to the rearview mirror, and back to begin the cycle again. When the last pedestrian had cleared the hood, he eased into the crosswalk, his hands tightening on the wheel.
"Hang on "he said softly.
Now his gaze fixed on the traffic signal. The instant the light turned green, he pressed and held the horn, floored the accelerator and entered the intersection, cutting sharply in front of the startled driver of the truck.
Jessie was stunned by the move. She squeezed her eyes shut and buried her face in her hands. Immediately her ears were filled with a cacophonous symphony of blaring horns and screeching tires. Her whole body was flung toward Ben. The twin restraints of her safety belt and harness held her in her seat, but she felt the force all the way to her bones. The acrid smell of burning rubber sifted through the mask of flesh she'd created with her fingers and bit at her nostrils.
We're going to die, she thought. Beseechingly she sent a mute prayer toward heaven.
The expected impact never came.
"It's all over, Jess. We made it," Ben said, a few seconds after the swerving motions of the car had stopped pulling at her. Only then did she uncover her face and open her eyes.
To her amazement, once again there were cars on all sides, and except for the fact they were headed in another direction, Ben's suicidal gambit might never have been executed. They'd made the illegal turn without killing anybody.
"Thank you, Lord," she whispered fervently. To Ben she said, "Is he still back there?"
"He's back there, all right—way back," he said with satisfaction. "By the time he gets out of that gridlock we left him in, he won't have the faintest idea where to find us."
Jessie drew in a huge gulp of air and exhaled slowly. "I don't think I'm cut out for this sort of thing."
Ben grinned engagingly. "You did great. Not even a squeak out of you."
"Are you kidding? My vocal cords were paralyzed in abject terror, just like the rest of me."
He chuckled.
"Nice driving, by the way," she told him.
"And a little luck," he said modestly.
It was a nice, congenial exchange, devoid of undercurrents, and Jessie welcomed it. She and Ben weren't playacting now, nor did she want to return to their earlier stiff politeness. Their many confrontations and the heated emotions that accompanied them seemed insignificant at the moment—far less important than the fact that they were alive and well.
Nothing like a little mortal danger to put things in perspective.
They picked up Jessie's car at the Piney Woods Motel and drove to Chicago in caravan with only a single stop for gasoline. The trip was uneventful, but after the morning's excitement, Jessie was reassured
each time she glanced into her iearview mirror and found Ben's car following her trail like a faithful guard dog.
They made good time. In Oak Park, Ben pulled into her driveway after her and she waited for him beside her car. He got out of the Trans Am and moved toward her with a rangy, sensual gait. In the cold light of this winter day, the gold flecks lightened his direct green gaze and gave him the look of a predator, not quite tame and a little dangerous. Jessie saw the
underlying hunger there, too—hunger for her— and a tiny thrill of excitement shot through her. He was a beautiful beast.
She smiled, wondering what he'd think if she told him her thoughts. Ben hesitated in midstep, still several feet away, his eyes on her face.
"You must be glad to be home." He returned her smile with a crooked one of his own.
Jessie decided not to correct his misinterpretation of her good mood. "Oh, I am. Can I interest you in an omelet? I'm sure I left a dozen or so eggs in the fridge."
"Sure," Ben said. "I have to call the FBI office to coordinate the meeting with my boss anyway. I'll do it from here."
He brought up her bags and riffled through the box they'd taken from Allie's office while Jessie busied herself in her small kitchenette, wishing she hadn't left things so untidy.
Except for the bathroom, there were no dividing walls in the apartment. Jessie liked it that way, even though when she was in the midst of a writing frenzy, her tendency to clutter was worse than usual and she couldn't close any doors on the accumulation. She didn't have many visitors, so usually it didn't matter. Unfortunately, she had forgotten how she had left the place when she'd invited Ben up. There had been no time for housecleaning once she'd packaged up her finished manuscript, not if she was to make it to Port Mangus before Thanksgiving.
Well, it was too late now. Jessie noticed that Ben had set aside the box and was staring at her unmade bed in the far left corner of the room.
"Excuse the mess," she told him over her shoulder as she whipped the eggs. "When I'm writing, I'm not a tidy person."
Which was a true enough statement, as far as it went. Jessie didn't add that she'd been careless about housework ever since the divorce six years ago, and it had nothing to do with her writing. While she'd been married, her ex-husband had demanded that she keep their home spotless. He would become sharply critical if so much as a throw pillow was out of place.
Antonio himself, of course, had been less than a model of neatness, habitually leaving his clothes and whatever else came to hand wherever he happened to be when he was finished with them. To top it off, he had seen no inconsistency in his exact-
ing requirements of Jessie. She was his wife, and a wife picked up after her husband.
Now she looked at her unkempt apartment through Ben's eyes and decided that in this aspect she might have carried her declaration of independence from Antonio too far. Slovenliness was not an attractive trait
"The phone's on the desk by the computer," she told Ben, hoping to divert him.
He made the call from her "office," but stayed in the corner to idly scan the tides in her bookcase. "Did you write any of these?"
Inwardly Jessie cringed, but she reminded herself to answer confidently. She had nothing to be ashamed of. "The paperbacks on the third shelf from the top. I write under the pseudonym Luciana Wells."
She turned to the stove to pour the beaten eggs into a heated pan. The silence behind her meant Ben had probably taken a book down and was just realizing what kind of literature she wrote. Tfensely she waited for whatever his brand of put-down might be.
"You wrote all these?"
"Yes," she said without turning around. "I just finished number eleven before going to Allie's." She cleared her throat "That's the reason this place is such a mess. When I write I don't clean up behind myself. Sometimes, when if s going well,
I even forget to eat " Jessie stopped, aware she was on the
verge of babbling.
"I'm impressed, Jess. How long have you been writing?"
He sounded perfectly sincere. She looked at him over her shoulder. "All my life, actually, but I've only been published for a little over six years."
He sauntered toward her, thumbing through a volume—oh, Lord, which one, she wondered, feeling jittery. She was too far away to tell. Not that it mattered. All her books were romantic suspense, heavy on the romance. Jessie believed in giving her mostly female fans what they wanted.
"Looking for the good parts?" she taunted, to disguise her nervousness.
Ben looked up and raised a curious eyebrow as he closed the distance between than. "You're an intelligent woman, I as-
sume all the parts are good. I'd like to read this. Would you mind?"
Jessie returned to her eggs, feeling unaccountably defensive. He'd selected Midnight Lies, one of her most sensual offerings. "Of course I don't mind. Though I'm sure if s not your usual style of reading material."
"I admire creative people. In my business, you don't meet too many." He touched her arm lightly with the book in his hand. "Hey, Jess."
Oh, dear, there was that voice again, and calling her "Jess" to boot. The gooseflesh rose on Jessie's arms and she had to forcibly subdue the delicious sensation that shivered through her body.
Good heavens, if the man was a late-night radio announcer, he could make a fortune! He'd have all the women in Chicago panting in their beds as they listened. He'd be so popular, they'd probably syndicate him, and after that, Masters and Johnson would report a sharp rise in feminine erotic dreams and fantasies across the country, all centered around Ben Sutton's husky, evocative voice.
Jessie stirred the eggs briskly, then, realizing she was turning an omelet into scrambled eggs, slammed the spoon down on the stove and spun on her heel to face him. Wishing she didn't have to look up so far to meet his eyes, she said, "Go ahead and read it. I warn you, though, it's women's fiction. You may not like it."
Ben searched her face. "Why do I fed like I'm taking the hits for some other guy?"
The fire drained out of Jessie as she realized he was right. "Okay, guilty. My ex-husband thought my stories too earthy and trivial—too female— for a lawyer's wife. He was embarrassed to have anyone know about them, so I was forbidden to talk about my writing to any of his friends or colleagues. I suppose I'm a little touchy on the subject."
"Just a little."
The look on Ben's face was so pained Jessie laughed sheepishly. He smiled back, their eyes caught, and smiles wavered as the air between them began to throb.
"Jess..." Ben murmured.
Whatever he planned to say was lost forever when the phone rang. Jessie reluctantly excused herself and walked to the desk.
"Hello?"
"Jessie. Thank God. Where have you been?"
Her sister's anxious voice cut through the fog in Jessie's brain. "Allie?" Her two hands gripped the receiver, and she glanced back at Ben joyously. "Ben, it's Allie."
Then she noticed the smoke behind him. "Oh, no! The eggs!"
Ben turned around at her dismayed outburst and reacted instantly, grabbing the smoking skillet by its insulated handle and placing it on a nearby cutting board.
"Who's with you, Jessie? What's happening? Are you all right? Jessie!"
"If s okay now," she said into the receiver as Ben flung open a window to let the gathering smoke escape. "Just a little cooking mishap. Ben's taking care of it."
Ben said something to her over his shoulder as she spoke. Unable to make out the words above her own voice, she tucked the receiver under her chin and asked, "What?"
As he repeated whatever he had said, Allie, sounding frantic, shouted, "Ben? Who's Bra? Jessie, who's with you?"
"Take it easy, Al. I'm all right," Jessie soothed. "Hold on a sec, will you?" She put her hand over the mouthpiece. "Sorry, Ben, I couldn't hear you."
Ben stopped waving the smoke toward the window long enough to tell her again, "I said, wait a minute before you talk to her about the investigation. Make sure it's
off-the-record first."
"You're joking, right?" she scoffed. "She's my sister."
"No joke, Jess," he said. "Allie's a reporter, remember, and I don't want her interfering with this case any more than she already has."
"She won't, once I tell her what's going on."
Even across the room Jessie could detect the set of Ben's jaw at her protest.
"Off-the-record, Jessie, or you can give me that phone right now, and I'll talk to her."
She clenched her teeth. He did it to her every time. Just when she was beginning to think he wasn't half-bad, he started bossing her around again.
' 'You can dump those eggs in the wastebasket under the sink, and run some water in the pan. That should get rid of the smoke faster/' she said frostily. Thai she deliberately turned her back on him.
"Okay, Allie, everything's under control now. Ben says he knows you from that club where you were working as a waitress. Did you know he's a policeman? Why didn't you tell me what you were doing? I mean, a strip joint, for Pete's sake!"
There was a telling silence from Allie's end of the line, then, "Are you talking about Ben, the bouncer? He's a cop? Are you sure, Jessie?"
"I'm sure." Jessie heard rasping noises behind her and turned to watched him scrape the burnt eggs into the covered container she kept undo: the sink for garbage. "He's been working undercover, just like you. And, Allie, don't get mad, but he says the only way I can talk to you about what's been happening is if you agree it's off-the-record."
"What? Who does he think he is?"
"He's a cop doing his job, I guess." She was surprised to hear herself defending him. "I think he just means to protect his investigation until he and the FBI have all the evidence they need. They know you're a reporter."
"Just my luck. What's been going on there, anyway?"