by T. L. Haddix
~ * * * ~
When Wyatt had walked into the warehouse earlier that evening, the very last thing he’d expected to find was Maria, injured. When he had realized just how seriously she was hurt, he’d felt sick.
As he moved around her kitchen in his white t-shirt, his heart was finally starting to settle down.
“Are you sure you don’t want my help?” she asked as she watched from the table. The look he shot her had her raising her hands. “I’m just asking.”
“I’m quite sure, thank you. And I’ll have you know that I am an accomplished chef, if that’s what you’re worried about. I can heat soup and make sandwiches in my sleep.”
Maria, dressed in a comfortable sweatshirt and pajama bottoms, laughed. “Oh, really? Do tell.”
He nodded as he removed the first sandwich from the sauté pan. “I love to cook. Always have.”
“You’re serious?”
“Sure. If I hadn’t become a cop, I probably would have become a chef. It’s still not out of the question.” He dished up the steaming vegetable soup and set a bowl in front of her. He quickly followed it with the sandwich.
“Do you ever wish you’d chosen cooking instead of law enforcement?”
He shrugged as he plated his own sandwich and joined her at the table. “Some days, yeah. Today, for example, would have been a wonderful day to have been a chef instead of a sheriff.”
Her expression was sympathetic. “Ah, but if you had chosen the cooking, you couldn’t have come to my rescue this evening and spent the last hour taking rusty fish hooks out of my back.” Picking up her water glass, she toasted him. “We’re really going to have to work on your dating techniques.”
He was glad he didn’t have any food in his mouth because his laughter would have choked him. Once the shock passed, he still wasn’t sure what to say. Maria took a bite of her sandwich, watching him with an expectant look. He finally settled on their usual teasing camaraderie.
“I will have you know that there is nothing wrong with my ‘dating technique,’ as you call it.”
Rolling her eyes, Maria grinned. “Oh, really? Let’s see. For our first date, you leave your evening with another woman, tear me away from a good steak dinner, and then drop me off at a remote location to sit for hours. I have to catch a ride with a cop to get into town, and when you finally remember me, you take me to a cheap diner and feed me waffles. Waffles, Sheriff, do not make a good substitute for a steak dinner.”
He was laughing so hard, she stopped and waited until he’d calmed down before she continued. “As if that weren’t bad enough, you leave me at my door without so much as a peck on the cheek. I get it—you don’t want to go out a second time—but then you show up at my job and ask for a favor. ‘Maria, can’t you leap tall buildings for me, pretty please?’ Not that I couldn’t do it, mind you, but still… it’s the thought that counts.”
She stopped to take a bite of her sandwich, and he leaned forward, placing his arms on the table. Still chuckling, he shook his head. “That’s just terrible, the way you’ve been treated. Do go on, please. Tell me how it ends.”
“Oh, I suppose I can.” The grin she shot him was full of mischief. “So the next thing I know, you’re sneaking up on me in the Brown Bag, buying my breakfast. Do you know what people are going to think? My reputation will be ruined. I’ll be considered a fallen woman. No decent man will have me.” She gave a dramatic whimper.
“For shame. And as if that weren’t bad enough,” he said, “I then unleash my sadistic side, torturing you with rusty fish hooks. And I still don’t take you out for that steak dinner, not even after drawing blood.”
“No, you don’t!” She laughed. “Instead, you bring me back here and mooch off my generosity. What in the world am I going to do with you?”
He shrugged, a wide, boyish grin on his face. “You keep treating me like this, I’ll move in and quit my job. Spend all my time drinking cheap beer and watching TV.”
Maria had to wipe her eyes, she was laughing so hard. “At least tell me the sex will be good. There has to be some compensation.”
His eyes filled with devilish intent. “Well, yeah. A man has to earn his keep somehow.” When he gave her an exaggerated wink, she dissolved into great whoops of laughter. Wyatt shook his head and just watched as she let mirth overtake her. Hair coming down from where she’d pinned it up after washing it with his assistance, cheeks rosy, she was stunningly, heart-stoppingly beautiful. It occurred to him that he was perfectly content, despite the horridness of the day.
As she finally calmed down, the washing machine completed its cycle. His shirt had been stained with her blood, so she had insisted on trying to remove the stains.
With a groan, she stood. “I’ll make sure the blood came out. Do you mind clearing the table?”
“Not at all.” He got up and started removing the dishes.
Within a few moments, she was back. “It’s all clear. I put the shirt in the dryer, and it should be ready in about twenty minutes.” Moving to the refrigerator, she pulled out an unopened bottle of wine. “I’m going to have some of this. It’s a sweet dessert wine. Would you like a glass?”
He hesitated, then shrugged. “Sure.”
Wine poured, she led the way into the comfortable living room. Setting the glasses down on the steamer trunk that served as the coffee table, she moved to light the gas fireplace.
“I’ve been chilled ever since the warehouse. The weather’s definitely turning colder.” Once the fire was going, she carefully eased down on the small couch, her wounds making her movements cautious. Her face was in shadows, and her knees, Wyatt noted, were only a hand’s breadth away from his leg.
“Tell me it’s none of my business, but what did your attorney say? How bad is it?”
He swirled the wine inside his glass, watching as light from the fireplace reflected off the ruby-colored liquid. “John was not happy. I won’t repeat the things he said, but he gave me the verbal equivalent of an ear boxing. I deserved it, though. Like he said, I should have told him when I had my first suspicion.”
“How damaging does he think this is?”
“Best case scenario for me? We never solve this case, the extortionist doesn’t follow through with his threats, and the general public never knows about the attempt.”
“That’s a lot of guilty weight for you to have to carry around,” Maria commented.
“It is, and I’m tired of carrying it. The other aspect of this whole mess is that if I’m not the one who told, then that leaves Marsha. That would mean Julie really did kill herself. Suspecting she did was bad enough, but knowing?” He shook his head. “That’s going to be hard to deal with.”
Maria reached out to touch his hand where it rested on the back of the couch. Sliding her fingers over his, she held on. “The difference is that now you won’t be alone. You have friends and family you can lean on this time.”
He kept his gaze on their hands, not moving as sensation raced up his arm. Slowly, so as to not startle her, he turned his hand so that their palms touched, and intertwined their fingers. When he did, she let out a long sigh and tightened her grasp.
“What’s the worst case scenario?”
With a grimace, he answered, “Absolute worst case? I’m asked to resign and criminal charges are filed against me for concealing a crime. Marsha gets indicted for helping Julie kill herself, and every case I’ve ever been a part of gets reinvestigated.”
Her sharply indrawn breath told him she understood the implications. “That would open the county up to an ungodly amount of lawsuits.”
“Yes. But if it makes you feel any better, John thinks that most likely result will be that I’ll have to make a public statement, fully cooperate with an inquest, and possibly have to resign. At the very least, I’ll face a tough reelection if I do run again.”
“There’s no easy way out of this, is there?”
He shook his head. “Not even remotely close to easy. John and I are meeting wit
h Rhonda Roberts tomorrow. We’re hoping a preemptive strike from the county prosecutor will put the balance in our favor.”
She squeezed his hand. “I hope it works.”
“Well, we should know tomorrow, one way or another, or at least have a fair idea if I need to be polishing my resume.”
Maria ran her thumb along his in a caress. “Will you do me a favor? Either way it goes tomorrow, will you come and tell me?”
Wyatt felt the world shift around him for a brief instant. When it jumped back into place, it returned to a slightly different place than it had been before. “I can do that, if you can do something for me.”
“Okay. What?”
“First thing tomorrow, you get those wounds looked at by a doctor.”
Her smile was soft. “I was planning on it. It’s a deal.”
He finished his wine and set the glass aside. “So you’re afraid of hospitals, but not doctors. Why is that?”
Pulling her hand from his with a muffled groan, she wrapped her arms around her legs. “Generally speaking, I still don’t care much for doctors, but I can tolerate them. They don’t represent the same phobia to me as hospitals. At least that’s the theory my counselor gave me.”
“You’re in counseling?”
She shook her head. “I was a few years ago. I had… issues to work through, let’s say.”
Wyatt let the comment slide, focusing on her fear of hospitals. “So what is it hospitals represent to you?” She didn’t respond for a few minutes, and in the quiet, he realized the dryer had shut off. He wasn’t about to move off the couch, though, not until he had an answer.
When Maria finally spoke, her voice was neutral. “When I was six, I had to have my tonsils out, urgently, as it turned out. Daddy was out of town and Mom? Well, like I said earlier, she’s never been the most nurturing soul. They admitted me to the hospital and did the surgery. I was in Recovery for a little while, and everything seemed fine, so they gave me a room. I guess I’d been there about ten minutes when Mom left. I’d gone to sleep, and she just slipped out, went home.”
He interrupted, astonished. “She left you on your own? At six years old, after you’d had surgery?”
She nodded. “Yes, she did. And when I woke up sometime later, I was scared. My throat was so sore I couldn’t talk, couldn’t cry out. She’d closed the door behind her when she left, so the room was dark. I didn’t know how to use the call button, and all I could do was just lie there, crying without making a sound, until one of the nurses came to check on me.”
“Maria…” He ran a hand over his head, wanting to punch something. “How long did you have to sit there?”
She reached over to the trunk and picked up her wine, taking a couple sips before she answered. “I don’t know. A while. I can still see the look on the nurse’s face when she found me, sitting there alone. By that time, I’d wet the bed, and I was running a fever, probably from the stress. She stayed with me, wouldn’t leave. She got me cleaned up, and then made one of the other nurses stay with me while she called Daddy’s parents. She knew the family, you see, and she couldn’t believe no one was with me.”
“Hell, I can’t believe no one was with you. What in the hell was Veronica thinking?” he asked, referring to her mother.
“I don’t know. She never bothered explaining herself. Not to me, not to Daddy, not to anyone, so far as I’m aware.”
“So what happened? I can’t imagine Joe being very happy about that.”
Her laughter held no humor. “Oh, you could say that. Once Eva had called my grandparents, they let Daddy know, and he rushed to the hospital to be with me. See, Mom had called the hotel where he was staying when she found out I had to have surgery, and she’d left a message with the front desk, asking him to call home. He hadn’t checked in with them before he went to his room, though, so he had no idea anything was wrong. And she hadn’t told them the message was urgent.”
“Where was he?”
“Some farm tool convention in Cincinnati. He’d planned to take Mom and make a weekend of it, but I had strep throat. She had to stay home to take care of me. She was angry about that, and I guess she thought she’d punish me by leaving me alone.”
“I almost hate to ask what Joe did when he found out.”
Maria moved her shoulders restlessly. “He came to check on me first, and then he had Grandma stay with me while he and Grandpa went to the house. Mom was asleep. I guess he woke her up, and they had the fight to end all fights. She actually left for a while after that, and I think Daddy was in the process of filing for divorce when she came back. She was pregnant with Savannah.”
He stared at her, saddened and shocked. “I don’t know what to say. I just… but I’ve seen your mother with Curtis. Is she that good of an actress?”
“No. She’s a great mother to Curtis. I don’t know if it’s because she’s older, or because he’s a boy and she doesn’t see him as a threat. She was better with my sisters than she ever was with me, but she still wasn’t great. I’ve always thought her attitude stemmed from the fact that she was pregnant with me when she and Daddy got married. I’m the reason they had to get married.”
Unable to stand her sadness another minute, he held out his hand. When she took it, head tilted curiously, he tugged. “Come here.” He gently pulled until he felt her resistance melt, and then she was resting against his side, her head snuggled on his shoulder. He rubbed his chin across her hair, and for long minutes, they sat watching the fire.
After a while, she stirred. “Wyatt?”
“Yeah?”
“This isn’t a date, is it?”
Not quite sure what to say, he decided to be cautious. “No, I don’t think this is a date, necessarily.”
“Hmm… so it’s a moment out of time, then?”
“I guess you could say that. Why?”
Maria pulled away, turning to get onto her knees and face him fully. “Because if this isn’t a date, if it’s a moment out of time, what I’m about to do won’t have repercussions come tomorrow.”
He frowned, suspicious. “What are you talking about?”
Moving closer, she slid her arms around his shoulders and leaned forward. “This.”
Chapter Seventeen
Maria didn’t give him a chance to protest. Heart pounding, she bent her head to feather her lips across his. His heavy five o’clock shadow tickled her palms as she pressed her hands to his cheeks and moved back in for a deeper kiss.
Before their lips met again, however, Wyatt stopped her, his hands on her shoulders. He stared at her, brow furrowed, and she met his astonished gaze head on. If he declined, she’d have to quit her job. There wouldn’t be any living with the embarrassment.
Just when she thought he was going to push her away, he gave a deep groan, and his grip gentled to a caress. “God help us,” he whispered, and claimed her mouth with his.
As her eyes slid closed, it registered somewhere in the back of her mind that the teasing brush she’d given him had been like setting fire to dry tinder. There was nothing tentative about the second kiss. Wyatt held nothing back as, with both his hands framing her face, he used lips, tongue, and teeth to seduce her with his mouth. Gentle nips, soothed with his tongue, followed by slow, heated thrusts, and it was all Maria could do to hold on and let her mouth be ravished.
When he finally released her, they were both breathing heavily. His mouth open, he trailed his lips down the column of her throat, moving slowly. Reaching the area where her neck met her shoulder, he nipped lightly, and she shuddered.
Her hands clenched on his shoulders, and she arched toward him. “Wyatt…”
There was almost too much sensation when his hands slid up under the hem of her sweatshirt and moved to cup her breasts. With another moan, she reached up and placed her hands over his, through the shirt. “Wyatt…” she whispered again.
He pulled back and met her stunned gaze, his hands still on her breasts. “This is definitely not a good idea,” he sai
d, his voice thick. “You should push me away, slap me, something.”
Maria shook her head as his hands fell to her waist, and he tugged her onto his lap. Taking advantage of the position, she slid her hands up his arms and back around his neck. She relaxed so that she rested against his chest and sighed. “I don’t want to push you away.” She tucked her head into his shoulder and placed a soft kiss beneath his ear.
He slid his arms around her hips and tugged her closer. “I’m trying to do the right thing here, and you’re making that extremely hard.”
She smirked. “I know. I can feel how hard it is.”
“Maria!” With a startled laugh, he pulled back and looked at her. “You little devil.”
Her grin widened. “Well, it is.” Turning serious, she touched his face again. “What is the right thing, Wyatt? You leaving here and us pretending this never happened? Pretending for the rest of our lives we aren’t attracted to each other?”
“I don’t know. Yes, probably.”
She nuzzled his cheek. “Is that what you want?”
He swallowed. “No, not by a long shot. But just because I want something doesn’t mean I can have it. It isn’t as simple as just us. There are consequences we have to consider.”
Fighting back the tears that threatened, she nodded. “I understand. Damn it.” With every ounce of willpower she possessed, she made herself release him and stand. Gathering their empty glasses, she headed for the kitchen and then into the laundry room to retrieve his shirt from the dryer. She held it to her face, inhaling, even though it smelled like fabric softener now instead of Wyatt.
In a few moments, she had her emotions under control enough to return to the living room, where he stood putting his gun belt back on. She handed him the shirt without speaking.
“Maria…”
She stepped up to him and placed two fingers across his lips. “Don’t, please. Don’t apologize. Don’t try to explain it away. Let’s just let this be what we said it was, okay? A moment out of time.”