by Jean Thomas
“Now it’s my turn to be enlightened. What are MREs?”
“Meals Ready to Eat. The army kitchens supply us with them when we’re out in the field. They’re not bad, either.”
“Fascinating. But I’m afraid that’s not going to help where Shrimp Creole is concerned. How else can you be useful? Domestically speaking, that is.”
Mark stroked his chin, thinking about it for a moment. “I can make beds. If basic training taught me anything, it was how to make a bed army style.”
“Think I’ve heard about that. So tight it’ll bounce a quarter, huh?”
“Well, that’s the general idea, anyway. Not that I’ve ever seen it actually tested.”
“Great. The beds in both rooms need making up for the night. You’ll find clean sheets and pillowcases on the closet shelves. Hop to it, soldier.”
He tossed her a smart salute and headed for the bedrooms. “And make sure you do a good job of it,” she called after him, “because I’ll be inspecting your work later.”
Mark had finished with the bed in the guest room and was moving on toward the master bedroom when he realized he was grinning like an idiot. Had been grinning since he’d left Clare in the kitchen.
There was no mystery about it. He enjoyed her company, the easy banter they’d been exchanging in the first relaxed aura they’d experienced since meeting each other in the bar of the Pelican Hotel.
It was this house. Not just its homey pleasantness but a feeling of security, as if its walls were embracing you in a safe cocoon.
Safe? Not a wise conclusion when there was danger lurking out there somewhere in this vast city. A danger that could find them if he neglected to be on guard against it.
But there was something else he couldn’t deny to himself, something equally pleasant. His awareness of Clare and him being alone in the intimacy of her home and where it might lead. An intimacy he wanted very badly. And that also could be unsafe.
It was a long way from Afghanistan, and there was nothing to spoil it. Except for one thing. The memory of Clare and Alan Britten in that photograph nagged at him. They’d looked so damn happy together.
Mark found himself struggling with the desire to make her happy like that himself. Dumb, but there it was.
Chapter 9
Shrimp Creole and cornmeal muffins. Mark didn’t know if the combination was a regional favorite or not, and he didn’t care. All that mattered was that it was delicious.
“Okay,” he said, complimenting her, “so the teacher knows how to cook, too.”
“Does that surprise you?”
“Everything I learn about you surprises me.”
“Ah, but aren’t women supposed to acquire an air of mystery?” she teased him.
“I’d say they’re born with it.”
It was this kind of harmless dialogue they exchanged while they ate their meal. The gentle light of the torches and candles on the patio, together with the tranquil flow of the electric fountain, was conducive to their conversation. Nothing serious, nothing intense. As if by an unspoken, mutual consent they had agreed that they needed a time-out to recharge themselves. It was why neither of them tried to discuss what their next move might be in this game they were playing with a desperate killer.
Mark knew there was another game on the table. The one he and Clare alone were playing. The game of a man and a woman caught in a powerful current of physical attraction. A current drawing them into deep waters that were capable of drowning them in their own emotions.
They didn’t speak of this, either, but he felt they were both aware of it. That it couldn’t be shut out like the subject of two murders and the puzzle of some amulets that had presumably triggered those murders. That it sizzled there between them, incapable of being extinguished even though Mark made the effort.
“I’m still seeing that photograph of you and your class and wondering.”
“About?”
“How you ended up choosing to be a teacher?”
“I didn’t choose education. It chose me. My love of children helped with that decision, of course,” she added, pouring coffee for them.
He could certainly relate to that. Hadn’t the army chosen him? There had never been any question about his wanting a career in the military. He still did.
There was a lull in their conversation while they drank their coffee. It was the silence of two people who were comfortable with each other. It probably would have remained that way if Mark, no longer able to resist asking the question that had been demanding an answer ever since he’d scowled over the sight of that other photograph, hadn’t gone and spoiled the moment.
“The guy who has his arm around you in the picture. What did you say his name is? Alan Britten, right? Any chance of you telling me about him?”
She lowered her cup to its saucer and stared at him, the expression on her face a guarded one now. His mistake. If he hadn’t been so abrupt, if he’d approached the subject in a strictly offhand manner, she might have been willing to confide in him. As it was, he was afraid she would refuse to answer him, that she would consider it none of his business.
In the end, though, her voice grave, she did give him what he wanted. “Alan was my fiancé.”
Was. She had used the past tense. He should have stopped right there, not gone and pursued it just to satisfy his need to be certain that Clare didn’t belong to some other guy. Which, considering the desirable woman she was, wouldn’t have been surprising.
“One of you went and ended the engagement, huh?”
“No, the war did that.”
This wasn’t good. He could already sense that. Was already regretting he’d ever discovered that damn photograph and asked her about it. She wouldn’t be telling him this otherwise, and he wouldn’t have awakened what had to be a painful memory. But now that he had, she seemed willing to reveal all of it.
“Alan was another teacher. We had that in common, as well as sharing a lot of other interests, so I suppose it wasn’t surprising we fell in love. He was—” she faltered for a second before finding the words “—was such an optimistic guy, always seeing the positive in people, especially the kids he worked with. But the war...”
She paused. Mark waited for her to go on.
“Alan had joined the National Guard. Not just because it made his college education possible, but because he considered it his duty. You understand that, don’t you?”
“Yeah, I understand.”
“When his unit was called up, he wanted us to be married then and there. I told him no, that it would be better if we waited until he got back when we would have time to plan the kind of wedding we both wanted. I lived with that mistake for a long time.”
Mark realized what she was telling him. “He didn’t come back.”
“No, Alan didn’t come back. He was killed in Iraq by a roadside bomb. A lot of them died that way, didn’t they?”
“Yeah, they did,” Mark said, hating himself for having been such a jerk to be irrationally jealous of a decent guy who, as it turned out, was another soldier, one who had died while serving his country. “Clare, I’m sorry I brought it up. I shouldn’t have gone and reminded you of what had to be a really bad time for you.”
“It’s all right.” She got to her feet and began to clear the table. “It happened over three years ago. I did my grieving. Did it for a long while before I was able to recover from his loss. I suppose I shouldn’t have that picture there on the wall, that I should put it away. But I was beginning to forget what Alan looked like, and it made me feel guilty. That I owed it to his memory to have something I could look at that would remind me of him and what we had.”
“I get it.”
“Thank you for that. If we’re through out here, we’d better unplug the fountain and snuff out these candles and the tor
ches.”
“I’ll do it.”
That done, he helped her with the tray she had started to load with their dishes. Carrying it back inside, he deposited it where she indicated beside the kitchen sink.
“The dishwasher hasn’t been connected yet. We’ll have to do all this by hand.”
“I’ll wash,” he offered. “You dry, since you know where everything gets put away.”
As they worked, she talked about the substitute teacher who was standing in for her while she was absent from her class. “I left complete lesson plans for her, so I hope she follows them. I don’t want the kids getting behind.”
It was an understandable concern, something Clare addressed in a tone that was in no way anything but ordinary. She seemed all right now that she’d permitted herself to tell him all about Alan Britten. Mark hoped that was true.
“I don’t know about you,” she said after she closed the cupboard door on the last cooking utensil, “but I’m ready to turn in.”
He agreed with her plan. Neither one of them had gotten any solid sleep last night, and the day had been a long, tiring one.
Clare made use of the main bathroom while he brought in his two bags from the SUV. After placing them in the guest room, he went around the house making sure all the windows and doors were locked. There wasn’t any likelihood of their being invaded in the night, not when their mystery man couldn’t have the faintest idea where they had gone or how to find them, but just the same...
Satisfied they were secure inside the house, Mark visited the half bath, said good-night to Clare, shut the connecting door between them, peeled off his clothes and crawled into bed. He expected to fall immediately into an exhausted sleep, but it didn’t work out that way.
He found himself awake in the darkness of the room, turning restlessly, sleep eluding him as the minutes passed slowly.
He never slept in anything but a pair of briefs when he was on leave. He shouldn’t have been hot, not with the air-conditioning softly humming away. Even when he tossed aside the thin blanket covering him, his body felt warm, like it was about to break out in a sheen of perspiration.
What the hell was wrong with him?
But Mark knew what was wrong.
He wanted the woman next door. From the moment he had sighted her last night in the bar, he’d wanted her. Had been wanting her all day. Except now it was more than just a matter of wanting. It was need. A need so urgent his body was raging with the fever of it.
He was conscious of her nearness. Only a wall separated them. Listening intently, he thought he could hear her shifting on her mattress in there. Or was it just his imagination, because he wanted her to be as awake and aware of him as he was of her? Wanted her alluring body flushed with a longing to be joined with his.
A groan rumbled up from deep inside him. He was aching for her, and the ache was no longer bearable.
* * *
Clare didn’t need the sound of the bed creaking in the guest room to remind her that Mark was only a few feet away. Hopefully, he was just moving in his sleep and not staring up into the darkness as she was.
She should have drifted off long ago. Her fatigue after she’d scrubbed off her makeup, cleaned her teeth, shed her clothes, dragged an oversize T-shirt over her head and climbed into bed had certainly warranted it. But her mind couldn’t seem to shut off long enough for sleep to overtake her.
Mark, of course. Thoughts of him kept crowding into her brain. Some of them innocent, some of them downright wicked. Things like how tough he could be. And yet he had this almost boyish capacity to be fun-loving and sweet.
Hard and then gentle. A fatal combination. The danger Terry had warned her of back at the jail.
That was just the innocent. The wicked was her memory of his riveting kiss this morning on the levee and the yearning it had awakened for something far more intimate than a kiss. A yearning that was now filling her head with wanton images of them locked in—
The images stopped there, sharply cut off by the soft sound of the guest room door opening. Her head turned in that direction as the door clicked shut behind the tall figure that had crept into her bedroom. Raising herself on one elbow, Clare gazed at him.
She had left the door to the hall open, as well as the one to the living room beyond. There was just enough light from the street lamp on the corner to faintly illuminate Mark’s body, naked except for a pair of briefs, standing there against the closed door.
The sight of him, face in shadow but the muscles of his arms and thighs gleaming in the soft glow, had the breath sticking in her throat. There was a long, taut silence before he whispered her name.
“Clare?”
That was all, just that one word. But his husky voice spoke it with the tenderness of a caress.
She swallowed before managing to answer him. “I’m awake.”
“I thought you might be.”
She didn’t ask him what he wanted. She already knew. The tone of his voice carried an underlying plea that told her why he was here. There was another silence, a brief one this time, before she responded to that plea. It needed no words, only the rustle of her movement as she shifted to the other side of the bed, making room for him.
He must have heard her action and understood it. That was why he padded swiftly across the room, why he was suddenly there beside her on the bed. His body fitting itself to hers, he reached for her eagerly. His arms went around her, drawing her tightly against his hot flesh.
Clare knew that welcoming him into her bed like this was a mistake, but she hadn’t the will to resist him. She wanted him too much. Wanted to share not just what her body could offer him but her pulsing emotions, as well.
He held her so snugly that she could feel the hard bulge of his arousal in his briefs. There was another bulge she could feel, a slight one this time that indicated he had a mysterious something tucked inside the waistband of those briefs.
“What are you hiding in there?” she demanded, hearing it crackle softly as she touched the area.
“Later,” he murmured. “Right now I have other business that needs my attention.”
“Like?”
“Like this.”
As dim as the light was, his mouth managed to find his intended target without error. Not her own mouth, not yet. What he wanted, to her surprise, was the scar high on her cheek. She felt the tip of his tongue there slowly tracing its crescent shape.
When he paused at last, it was to confide, “I’ve been meaning to explore this from the moment I noticed it.”
“It can’t be that fascinating.”
“Oh, yeah, it is.”
“Your finger could have done that.”
“Not nearly so satisfying as my tongue.”
“What else does your tongue want to explore?” she challenged him boldly.
“Everything.”
He demonstrated that claim by burning a wet trail across her forehead to her other cheek, then descending slowly. She expected him to settle on her mouth. He didn’t. He bypassed that area and instead went to her throat.
What he did there, concentrating on her sensitive pulse, was absolutely erotic.
“Please,” she begged him.
“Please what?”
“I can’t take this anymore.”
“You have to. We’ve just begun.”
That was when he finally transferred his attention to her mouth, when his teeth nipped and tugged at her lips until they were raw with wanting more. Only then did he oblige her with a kiss so demanding that her mouth opened for him. Obeying her invitation, that talented tongue of his entered her mouth where it sought and captured her own tongue in a prolonged duel of sweet sensations.
He literally took her breath away, making her so faint with his searing kiss she thought she would pass ou
t before his mouth finally lifted from hers.
“Where,” she croaked when she at last found air again, “did you ever learn to kiss like that? I don’t imagine it was something the army taught you.”
“You’d be surprised—” he chuckled “—at what a soldier on leave can learn.”
“It’s a good thing one of us knows what he’s doing.”
“With a woman as sexy as you, it’s no problem.”
Clare had never thought of herself as sexy, but she was in no state to argue with him. Not with his hands skimming the sides of her breasts, testing their plumpness. Without her bra, they were vulnerable.
They would be far more vulnerable when the T-shirt was removed, which he intended when he growled an impatient “Let’s get rid of this thing. Arms up, please.”
She complied by lifting her arms, permitting him to peel the T-shirt over her head and cast it aside. There was no pause to follow that action. His hands were immediately busy, stroking the fullness of her breasts, his fingers teasing the nipples into rigid peaks.
“Like silk,” he whispered. “Your breasts are like silk.”
His touch was wonderful and at the same time so unbearable that she could scarcely choke out a hoarse “Mark, please.”
“I know, sweetheart, I know. But there’s more.”
He proved that when he bent his head, his forceful lips closing over one nipple and then the other, drawing them deeply into his mouth where his tongue swirled slowly around each of them in turn. It was pure torment, threatening to become even worse had he not taken pity on her and surrendered her breasts.
“Don’t plead that’s enough,” he warned her when he raised his head, “because we’re far from through here.”
“What—”
He didn’t give her time to finish asking what he intended since one of his hands had already smoothed a path down over her belly, coming to rest at the waistband of her panties. He stopped there only for a scant few seconds before that hand dipped beneath the waistband, inching its slow way lower, still lower until it reached the juncture of her thighs where his fingers stirred through the nest of curls there, searching for the cleft he wanted.