She stopped for a moment, afraid her voice would crack. Abilene waited, instinctively knowing that his silence was all she could handle right now.
“The floor beneath them collapsed. His friends died, burned almost beyond recognition. The other firemen managed to save Jason, but he had burns over 85 percent of his body.” Remembering those awful days, waiting for him to wake up, she had to take a shaky breath. Tears began to slide down her cheeks but she pushed on. “Eventually, he lost a leg. I kept trying to tell him that he was lucky to be alive, but he’d look at me with those dead eyes and tell me that he didn’t feel so lucky.
“Every day he slipped away a little more. There was no way I could reach him, no matter what I said or how hard I tried.” That was what hurt even more than seeing him like that. That she couldn’t help the man she loved. “I just couldn’t get through to him.
“He had God knows how many skin grafting operations—they had to scrape away all his burned skin and replace it. In between, the hospital tried to get him to work with a team of physical therapists. He tried in the beginning, but then he’d just tell them to leave him alone. That he was useless.
“I was there every morning, every evening. The moment I was off duty, I went to the hospital to be with him, to offer my support. But it didn’t do any good.” The tears were coming faster now. She wiped them away with the back of her hand. “He just lost his will to live. And then, on the day we’d set to get married, someone—and we never found out who—managed to bring him a gun despite all the security measures in place at the hospital.”
Kendra was talking in short bursts now, as if she couldn’t draw enough air into her lungs to speak in long sentences.
“And he put that gun to his temple—and he pulled the trigger. And then he didn’t have to be that broken man in the hospital bed anymore. He found his peace—and all the rest of us—his family, his friends, me—we were left in hell.”
She was crying now, almost uncontrollably, hating herself for allowing this breakdown in front of a witness.
“Pull over,” Abilene ordered.
They were still a couple of miles from his apartment complex. Maybe she hadn’t heard him correctly. She felt shell-shocked. “What?”
“Pull over,” he repeated in a firmer voice.
When she did, pulling up the hand brake and turning off the engine, he leaned over and put his arms around her. Kendra struggled for a second, not wanting his pity, but he remained firm, holding her despite the awkward angle.
And then whatever was left of her strength broke down completely and she just cried. Cried so hard that her entire body shook.
He said nothing, letting her cry it out as he continued to hold her.
Chapter 11
Kendra cried for several minutes, cried, despite struggling hard not to, as if her heart had just broken into tiny little pointy pieces inside her chest.
And then she stopped.
Abruptly.
Finally pulling herself together, Kendra blew out a long sigh that shuddered through her body. Lifting her head from her partner’s shoulder, Kendra used the heel of her palm to wipe away some of the damp streaks along the length of her cheeks—she couldn’t begin to erase all of them.
She was torn between lashing out at him because he’d been a witness to this breakdown, had drawn it out by his kindness, and apologizing for letting her emotions get the better of her around him.
Pressing her lips together, Kendra looked at Matt’s shoulder again. There was almost an oblong-shaped wet mark on the light blue material.
Her tears.
“Sorry,” she murmured, then cleared her throat, attempting to negate the raspiness that came out when she tried to speak. “I didn’t mean to get your shirt soggy like that.”
A soggy shoulder was so far down on the list of his concerns, it didn’t even begin to register. He laughed shortly.
“It’ll dry,” Matt told her, dismissing the unnecessary apology with a shrug. “Want me to drive?” he offered, thinking that, after crying so hard, perhaps she was exhausted and didn’t feel up to driving.
To her, the question had pretty much come out of the blue. Her ability to navigate a vehicle had nothing to do with the temporary breakdown of emotions she’d just suffered.
“Why would I want you to drive?” Kendra asked. “I didn’t short-circuit my wiring by crying. Just give me a second.”
She paused, taking in a deep breath, as if that somehow helped her to center herself. To put this break from her customary closemouthed approach behind her and forget about it.
And she’s back, he couldn’t help thinking after her flippant comment. Shields up and all.
Although Matt liked Kendra’s bravado, he had to admit that the vulnerable woman he’d just glimpsed did appeal to the protector in him. He supposed that was because he had never quite gotten over his Eagle Scout training as a boy. Damsels in distress—any kind of distress—had always been a weakness of his.
“Take all the time you want,” he urged. “The evening’s not going anywhere.”
She meant to say something flippant about his comment. Instead, what came out went back to her emotion-fueled moments where she’d bared her soul to him. She really should have held it together instead of falling apart like that, she silently chided.
What was she thinking?
“I’m sorry.”
“For what?” he asked. “For being human? I kind of already suspected that you might be, except that I didn’t have any proof.”
She wiped away another stray tear. “And now you do.” It was part question, part assumption.
Matt inclined his head magnanimously. “And now I do,” he agreed.
“It shouldn’t have happened. My breaking down like that,” she said, trying very hard to distance herself from the event by viewing the whole thing in a clinical light. Was this going to make working together harder, now that he knew about her pain? “That’s why I never talk about Jason and what happened.”
“Not with anyone?” he asked, surprised. Even without the Cavanaughs, she had a pretty big family and from what he’d seen and heard, they were a tight, close-knit bunch. They had to have known what happened to her fiancé.
In answer to his question, Kendra shook her head. Taking another long, deep breath, she turned the key in the ignition, then put her hands on the steering wheel and started to drive again.
“No,” she finally said.
Okay, he was no psych major, but anyone with an ounce of common sense could see what was coming down the road in that sort of a situation.
“You know, keeping that kind of thing bottled up inside you can make a person just explode at the worst possible time,” he told Kendra.
The wording struck her as funny, though she suppressed the laugh. But not the laughter in her eyes. “There’s a good time to explode?”
Abilene inclined his head in agreement. Poor choice of words, he told himself. “Point taken.”
He didn’t strike her as the type to spread rumors. But the truth, well, he just might be willing to pass that along if he perceived it as an amusing true anecdote. She didn’t want to take that chance. Would asking him to keep silent about what had just happened make him refrain from talking about it—or just encourage him to tell anyone who would listen?
Like everything else, she decided, it was a gamble.
“Look, what I just told you,” Kendra began haltingly, “I’d rather you didn’t talk about it with anyone.”
Matt snapped his fingers, as if he’d just lost out on something big. “Well, I guess there goes my blog post for today.”
He said it so matter-of-factly, for a split second Kendra actually thought he was being serious. Slanting a look at her partner, she asked cautiously, “You’re kidding, right?”
“I am definitely going to have to work on my delivery,” he murmured, as if to himself, then said, “Yes, I was kidding. I don’t have this driving need to share every little thing I hear with the immed
iate world. Let the world entertain itself some other way,” he told her, hoping to put her mind at ease.
Or as at-ease as someone as wired as Kendra Cavelli/Cavanaugh could be, he amended.
They had reached his apartment complex and within another minute or so, Kendra brought her car to a stop in a guest parking space that was only a few feet away from the door of his ground-floor apartment.
Instead of saying good-night and getting out, Abilene turned toward her and said, “I appreciate your inviting my mother to the party. I think she really enjoyed herself. It was just what she needed to feel better about herself.”
He meant every word. Why did he suddenly feel so awkward saying this? And why the hell did he feel like some gangly teenager who didn’t know where to put his hands? What was it about this woman that kept rubbing away his guard?
And then, having absolutely no intention of extending any sort of an invitation, Matt still heard himself saying, “Would you like to come inside for a minute?” as he nodded toward the apartment door behind him. “I don’t have anything fancy to drink,” he warned. “But I do have a couple of beers with a foreign-sounding label slapped on the bottle.”
Kendra laughed. Was that meant to impress her? Or did he think she was some sort of a snob? God, nothing could be further from the truth.
“I don’t need anything ‘fancy,’ ” she assured him. “And I drink beer, even without foreign-sounding names written on the label.”
“So that’s a yes?” he asked, his hand on the handle of the passenger door, waiting.
After purging her soul, she didn’t want to be alone, at least, not right now. Talking about it to her partner had unearthed just too many memories, memories she didn’t know if she could handle in her present frame of mind. So, accepting the lifeline he’d just tossed her, she shrugged in response to his question.
After all, she had to keep in character. Otherwise he might suspect just how very vulnerable she actually was.
“Sure, why not?”
“Can’t remember when I’ve had a more eager acceptance,” he said wryly, getting out. He came around quickly to the driver’s side and opened the door for Kendra before she could do it herself.
Ignoring the hand he offered, Kendra swung her legs around and got out. “I’ll just bet,” she answered with a short laugh.
He looked at her for a moment. “Meaning?”
“Just that your reputation precedes you.”
“I don’t have a reputation,” he informed her mildly. “Unless you’re referring to the one about my caseload.” It was her turn to look confused, so he elaborated. “I led my division in the number of cases I closed,” he said.
“And in the number of short-term relationships you amassed,” Kendra interjected. That was what she’d initially been referring to when she’d mentioned his reputation.
“All amicably ended,” he was quick to point out. “No promises of a rose garden or happily-ever-afters. Just a good time to be had by all. And then we went our separate ways.”
“Your mother’s influence?” she guessed. It didn’t take much to put two and two together.
“Maybe,” he allowed as he unlocked his front door and let her walk in ahead of him. “Or maybe I’m just not built for a long-term relationship.”
“Maybe,” she echoed. Some people weren’t. She now thought that she belonged in that group as well. “If you never make a promise, you can’t break it.” And then your heart doesn’t get scarred.
“Exactly,” he agreed, closing the door.
They were standing inside his apartment now, with only the single low light that he always left on illuminating the immediate area and holding the darkness at bay.
Was that what made her appear particularly appealing to him? That illumination whispering of things not seen?
But then, he’d found himself attracted to her off and on—mainly on—since they’d first been paired together. The pull had only grown stronger, and right now, he was having a really hard time resisting it. A larger and larger part of him didn’t even want to continue resisting. If there was fallout because of it, he’d deal with that later.
“So,” he said in a low, deliberate voice, “I guess we both know where we’re coming from.”
“I guess we do,” she agreed, never taking her eyes off his.
Suddenly, this was not just a philosophical exchange about the nature of relationships and how to avoid disappointment. There was an underlying current pulsing between them and she would bet anything that he was as aware of it as she was.
“Want that beer now?” he asked, nodding toward the darkened kitchen on his left and the refrigerator that was there.
Suddenly mesmerized, Matt couldn’t seem to draw his eyes away from her lips, watching them move as she answered, “Not particularly.”
“Then what would you like?” he asked, every syllable undulating seductively along her bare throat and shoulders.
Kendra didn’t answer. At least, she didn’t say anything out loud.
But he could have sworn that somehow between them, the word guess vibrated, sending off shock waves. Tempting him to take her.
He gave up the pretense of resisting.
Like a man walking on a beach for the first time after a particularly cold, desolate winter, Matt tested the incoming waters slowly.
Taking her face in his hands, he framed it gently, then, almost in slow motion, he lowered his mouth to hers. Their lips touched lightly, then pressed.
Then kissed.
The kiss deepened and grew, taking them both to a high, sharp edge neither one of them had even been sure existed.
And then he kissed her again.
And again.
Until they lost count and lost their sensibilities as well. What began in slow motion suddenly grew and multiplied in speed and urgency.
As pulses and heart rates sped up, so did the tempo of their needs. Hands flew, caressing here, tugging there, learning, absorbing, reveling.
Bringing unbridled pleasure with every stroke, every touch.
She’d purged herself of all her tears and found that she needed to somehow fill the emptiness that had been left behind within her, the emptiness that had been haunting her these last eighteen months.
Needed, ever so desperately, to feel alive again.
She needed to feel like a woman, to be regarded as a woman.
And his hands, as they passed over her body worshipfully, made her want things she thought she’d never want again.
The more he kissed her, the more he touched her, the more she wanted him to. On some logical plane, Kendra knew she should be backing away, calling a halt to this before it went too far. Before she couldn’t control what was happening inside her.
Abilene was her partner, a man she would be working with for at least a while and this might create some awkwardness between them.
But she didn’t care.
Didn’t care because what she was feeling right now was absolutely wonderful, like attending her own rebirth, with heat, stars, sunshine and explosions of happiness all rolled up into one, lighting her up like a Roman candle.
It had taken less than two minutes to undress her.
Kendra pulled away his shirt, tugged at his belt, desperately wanting him to be as naked as she was, as vulnerable as she was.
Now.
It took longer to undress him than it had her, but that was because her fingers seemed to be fumbling. And he had more on to begin with.
When his belt became stuck, she yanked at it in frustration and heard Matt laugh softly. Her eyes darted up to his face, but the amusement in his eyes wasn’t at her expense. Instead, it seemed to give her a sense of sharing. Like they were laughing at something together.
“I’ll do it,” he told her, stilling her hands.
And then, just like that, there were no more barriers in the way. Just like that, she found herself on the sofa, expecting the next moment to bring with it fulfillment—and an ending.
She was only half-right. There was fulfillment as he pleasured her in ways that took her breath away, even as they brought a shower of stars swirling about in her mind’s eye, but there was no ending.
Instead, the climax she experienced dovetailed into another wild, skyrocketing ride, leaving her to hang on for dear life.
To her unsuspecting delight, she quickly discovered that droll words were not the only things that could roll off Abilene’s tongue. He could all but make it do tricks.
She felt it, and his lips, passing along her skin, drawing in closer and closer to its target and then suddenly, as he thrust into her extremely sensitive core, there was an avalanche of stars and sensations shooting all through her.
Kendra caught herself digging her fingernails into the cushions, arching up into him as she tried to absorb every nuance, every wondrous feeling that this man was capable of creating within her.
Breathing hard, she pulled his face up to hers. Drawing as much air into her lungs as she could, Kendra pressed her lips to his, determined to at least partially affect him. Trying to make him feel as helplessly exhausted and crazy as he had just made her.
With her hands, her lips and her tongue, mimicking his style, she managed to bring Matt figuratively to his knees.
A long breath shuddered through his aching body.
Matt stared at her in wonder. She was one hell of a fast learner. He didn’t know how much longer he could hold himself in check, not when his entire body begged him to let go, to enjoy the wild sensation that had so swiftly built up within him, demanding to be released.
But Matt wanted to be certain that he had taken her up as far as she was capable of going, wanted to be sure that she bordered on exhaustion and had no resolve left.
He couldn’t put it into words that made sense, even to himself, but he felt a kinship with this woman to whom life had been so subtly cruel. Felt a kinship and at the same time felt a need to somehow make it all up to her, even though none of it was his fault.
Who knew—maybe his early nomadic life with his mother had somehow fried his circuits so that he was incapable of thinking clearly.
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