All a Man Can Ask

by Virginia Kantra

  “Would you?” she asked curiously.

  “Hell, I don’t know. Is he staying?”

  Her lips curved. “Yes.”

  “Then, no.”

  She laughed, which eased his mind and screwed the tension in his body up another notch.

  He turned to face her, leaning his hips against the rail. “Of course, I might reconsider. If you begged me.”

  She tilted her head. “Begged you,” she repeated slowly, as if she were tasting the idea.

  He grinned, enjoying the game. Enjoying her. “Yeah.”

  Her gaze lowered to his mouth. She touched her tongue to her bottom lip, and a zing went through his system.

  “For…?” she murmured.

  His mind had fogged. “What?”

  “What should I beg you for?”

  “Anything you want,” he said hoarsely. “I’m a generous guy. Given the right inducement.”

  She drew her fingers along his arm. “I’ll have to keep that in mind.”

  Oh, man. He’d had her twisting under him not twenty yards from this spot, not twenty-four hours ago. Could he get that lucky again?

  And then she turned to the water and sighed. “He’s not doing so well, is he?”

  Not tonight. His mind processed that, accepted it, even as his body struggled with disappointment.

  “Jamal? The first couple of days are the worst. He gets through them, he could be okay. How long has he been using?”

  “Five months.” It was the first time she had admitted the problem, faced the problem, without evasion or excuse. Was she even aware of it? Aleksy was. “He started using those caffeine pills to study for finals. I don’t know when the pills stopped working and he started buying drugs on the street.”

  “Chances are he didn’t get hooked right away. Which would explain why his symptoms are fairly mild.”

  She nodded. “It’s just that nothing I can do seems to help.”

  “Honey, nothing anybody can do would help right now. His normal reward system isn’t working.” He dug back into his narcotics training for an explanation that would satisfy her. “Amphetamines bypass the normal triggers—like food and friendship and sleep and sex—and go straight for the brain’s pleasure center. To compensate, the brain’s natural chemistry shuts down.”

  Her brow furrowed. “Which means what, exactly?”

  “Which means your basic junkie needs the drug even more to feel good.” Aleksy shrugged. “It’ll take a while for Jamal’s brain to recover and for normal rewards to work again, that’s all.”

  She stood on tiptoe and brushed soft lips across his cheek.

  “Hey.” His heart jerked. He was absurdly pleased. “What was that for?”

  “That was to thank you.” There was a smile in her voice as she added, “Consider it a normal reward.”

  She turned until she was standing directly in front of him, the yellow light from the house making a halo of her hair. She put her arms around his neck and the night slowed around them while his pulse went into over-drive. The hem of her skirt brushed his jeans. The tips of her breasts touched his chest.

  He swallowed hard. If he were the nice guy she thought he was, he would step back.

  He didn’t move.

  She did.

  She kissed him again, slowly, balancing herself with her hands on his shoulders. Her eyes were open. His eyes were, too. He saw her delicate features blur as she leaned forward and the silvery gleam of starlight on her cheeks and brow. He felt her lips and the tip of her tongue, and the weight of her, light and warm in his arms, and the taste of her, sweet and hot on his mouth, bypassed his usual defenses and went directly to his pleasure center.

  He couldn’t stand it.

  He crushed her against him and took and took, everything she had to offer, all her sweetness, all her light, all her warmth. He plunged his tongue into her mouth, he pressed her hips to his, and instead of telling him to get lost, to get a grip, she skimmed her hands up and down his back as if she couldn’t get enough of him.

  It was enough to make a guy a little crazy, especially if he knew that under her tentlike dress and soft cotton shirt, she was slight and silky and perfect.

  Only…

  A new thought intruded on his moonstruck brain.

  Only he’d already taken her once on the dock without even bothering to slip her out of her clothes. Without taking the time to see her naked or tell her she was beautiful or worship her breasts with his mouth.

  Yeah, before he made love to Faye again, he wanted time. And a bed. He definitely wanted a bed next time.

  He dragged the strength from somewhere to bracelet her wrists with his hands and pull her arms from around his neck. He pressed a kiss into the center of each palm. Her fingers stroked his face and the reminder of all he was passing up nearly made him change his mind.

  “I, uh—” Jeez, he didn’t know what to say. He’d sure as hell never said “no” before. “You should maybe go in. Check on the kid.”

  She studied him a moment, her big eyes questioning in the moonlight. “That’s a very good excuse,” she said. “Who is it for?”

  “Just be a good girl,” he begged, “and run along.”

  She angled her head. “Maybe I’m tired of running. I can almost guarantee you I’m tired of being good.”

  All the blood left his brain and rushed directly to his groin, which made it really tough to think.

  Did she mean it?

  Did he want her to?

  The uncertainty was killing him.

  There were worse ways to die.

  Chapter 12

  “I’m not going to touch that thing.”

  Aleksy tried to hide his frustration. “It’s not going to bite you.”

  “It’s wiggling!”

  “Of course it’s wiggling. Otherwise it wouldn’t attract anything.”

  Jamal watched Aleksy bait his hook with the worm and throw both into the water. “Man, that’s obscene. I think I’m going to throw up.”

  “You’ve been throwing up,” Aleksy said testily. “An hour or two fishing isn’t going to make it any worse.”

  Jamal squirmed around, trying to get comfortable against his tree.

  Aleksy had picked a spot where the bank fell sharply and the water flowed cool and deep. Despite the late hour—it was almost ten, and the sun was well over the trees—he figured they had a shot at a catfish, maybe some bluegills.

  “So some guys actually do this, like, for fun, huh?”

  Aleksy stretched his neck to get the kinks out. “That’s the idea.”

  “Well, it’s a stupid idea,” Jamal said.

  Aleksy was beginning to agree with him.

  But this morning, observing Faye’s pale face and tired eyes, her strained smile and weary patience, he thought she could use a break. The kid might be the artistic genius she claimed. But with his system still jangling from the effects of withdrawal, he was also a real pain in the ass.

  Aleksy baited the kid’s hook and handed back his rod. “See if you can drop your line by that log over there.”

  “Why?”

  “You might catch a catfish.”

  The boy looked briefly interested. “Like, to eat?”

  “Yeah. We could fry it for dinner. Channel cats are good eating.”

  “I’ll probably puke it up.”

  “Probably. But I won’t.”

  Jamal turned his face away, but not before Aleksy saw the grin that transformed him from sullen punk into nice kid. He flicked his pole over the water and caught his hook on the log.

  He swore.

  “Reel it in,” Aleksy said. “Try again. Not so hard this time. Right by the—that’s it.”

  Jamal jiggled the pole. “What do I do now?”

  “Wait.”

  “How long?”

  “Until you feel something on the line.”

  “That worm drowns, it won’t be so attractive anymore,” the boy said darkly.

  This time it was Aleksy who
turned away to hide his grin. “Don’t worry about it. Catfish aren’t choosy.”

  “How come you know all this stuff?”

  “My pop used to take me fishing. When I was a kid. Now shut up or you’ll scare the fish away.”

  That silenced the teen for all of about two minutes. He wasn’t shaking as badly today, but he obviously had trouble keeping still. He shifted again against his tree.

  “You got any kids?” he asked.

  Aleksy sighed. “No.” And at the moment he knew why.

  “Me, either.”

  Aleksy didn’t bother pointing out that, at seventeen, Jamal was far too young to be a father. In his neighborhood, younger kids were made fathers every day.

  “So, you married?” Jamal persisted.

  “Why? You want to ask me out?”

  “Funny, man.” But Jamal didn’t sound amused. His voice still wasn’t steady but his eyes were. Steady, and surprisingly adult. “What are you doing with Harp?”

  Aleksy’s line bobbed. It was a good question. He didn’t have any idea how to answer it.

  “Why?” he asked again. “You want to ask her out?”

  Red crept up the boy’s cheekbones. His mouth set.

  Oh, hell, Aleksy thought, alarmed by the mess he’d stumbled into.

  He should have seen it coming. Faye was young and pretty. She was sharp and funny and warm and kind. She had encouraged Jamal to pursue interests and dreams few people probably even understood.

  More than all that, she cared. Of course the kid had a major jones for her.

  Talk about your can of worms…

  “It’s not like that,” Jamal said with painful dignity. “Harp is, like, a friend. She knows a lot about art and stuff, but about some things she’s kind of clueless. So as her friend, I’m asking—are you two doing it?”

  Damn. Eric Denko couldn’t have done a better job of demanding his intentions. Aleksy didn’t know whether to swear or give the kid a gold star.

  He should say yes, to protect his cover.

  He should say no, to protect Faye.

  What he said was, “I don’t think that’s any of your business.”

  Jamal snorted. “Man, that is so lame.”

  Yeah. It was.

  Faye heard them argue as they approached the house.

  “I’m not cleaning any fish,” Jamal said. “I don’t know how.”

  “You’ll have to learn, then, won’t you?” Aleksy asked. He sounded amused.

  Jamal expressed his opinion of that in one short, ripe phrase and Faye smiled. They sounded so…normal, she decided. Surely that was good?

  Footsteps climbed the plank steps and crossed the wooden deck. The screen scraped open.

  She looked up from her seat on the floor and saw Aleksy, big and dark against the hot, bright day outside. He smelled of sun and water and, faintly, of fish. His hair was ruffled by the wind. His shirt clung to him in the heat.

  The light behind him dazzled her. He dazzled her. She felt summer unfolding warm and low inside her, and caught her breath.

  His quick gaze swept the mess around her and settled on her face. “How’s it going?”

  She smiled ruefully. “Well—”

  “Whoa, Harp.” Jamal checked himself before he planted his foot on a half-finished cloud study. “Looks like a starving artists’ sale in here.”

  “Productive morning?” Aleksy asked.

  “Not really,” she confessed. “I thought I’d use the time while you were gone to work. Only when I started to pull things out to work on, there wasn’t really… I couldn’t decide… How was yours?”

  He shrugged. “Not bad. Two bluegills. Kid here’s going to clean them.”

  “Yeah, right,” Jamal muttered.

  Aleksy stepped carefully over a pile of discarded sketches. “Fishermen’s rules, kid. You catch ’em, you clean ’em.”

  Faye widened her eyes in admiration. “Jamal! You caught them?”

  His shoulders straightened. “Yeah. Both of them,” he added, with a smug glance at Aleksy. “So, I’m thinking, since I did all the work so far, the cop should do something.”

  “Nice try,” said Aleksy. “Only it doesn’t work that way. You need to learn to finish what you start.”

  “That sounds reasonable to me,” Faye said.

  “Oh, yeah?” Jamal sauntered through the paintings scattered on the floor. “So what did you get done this morning?”

  She flushed. “Besides the breakfast dishes? Nothing.”

  Instead, she sat, with the whole bright, empty morning stretching before her and a dozen promising beginnings spread out around her, and let herself be paralyzed by the possibilities. Frozen by the fear of the wrong choice, she’d made no choice at all. Only excuses.

  There was a sorry parallel there to the rest of her life lately that she didn’t want to examine too closely.

  “I didn’t know what I should work on.”

  “If somebody in class said that, you’d be all over them,” Jamal observed, dropping onto the couch. “You always told us you can’t make the shot you never take.”

  Aleksy lifted one eyebrow. “Sports analogies? I’m impressed.”

  “Don’t be.” Her reply was too sharp and too revealing. She tried to soften it with a smile. “I didn’t even get in the game this morning.”

  “There’s still time,” Aleksy said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “You’ve got all afternoon. The kid and I are cooking dinner. Why don’t you go ahead and paint something?”

  “Paint something.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Just like that.”

  “Yeah. Why not?”

  Because I’m an artist, you clod, she wanted to tell him. I need to be in the mood to create something.

  Only wasn’t that precisely the attitude she was always fighting in her students?

  She looked around at her abandoned landscapes. That old ranger station reaching above the tree line had some promise, or those clouds scudding above the choppy water…

  “I suppose I could work for a little while,” she said without enthusiasm.

  “You do that. Jamal, get the newspaper. We’ve got fish to clean.”

  “Oh, man.” But the teenager shambled toward the kitchen.

  Faye stood, every bit as mutinous and even more unsure, wavering between Aleksy’s expectations and her own doubts.

  He cocked his head, slid her a grin. “Problem, cream puff?”

  Her breath hissed. Even when she saw quite clearly what he was doing, she was incapable of resisting his challenge.

  “No,” she said. “Nothing I can’t handle.”

  The fish turned out perfect, white and moist in a crisp golden crust. Jamal had two helpings and didn’t even throw up.

  Faye slid one last morsel onto her own plate. “Did you ever get a fishing license?” she asked Aleksy.

  He nodded. “Cost me fourteen bucks.”

  “Fourteen?” Jamal said. “Man, for that kind of dough we could have gotten steaks.”

  “Yes, but then you would have missed out on the whole he-man-hunter experience,” Faye said.

  The teenager shrugged. “I could’ve shot the cow.”

  Aleksy grinned. “Yeah, but would you clean it?”

  Faye enjoyed their banter. But sometime between clearing the table and sitting on the deck with her coffee, she began to notice gaps in the conversation, looming holes that they ignored, things they did not say.

  Jamal ducked any discussion of the future. It wasn’t simply that he didn’t want to talk about his plans for the coming academic year. He didn’t want to talk about what he was doing tomorrow. He excused himself early—“That he-man-hunter thing takes it out of a guy”—and went to bed.

  “He’s still crashing,” Aleksy said in response to Faye’s worried look. “This morning he couldn’t get it together to tie his own fishing line. He definitely can’t talk to you now.”

  “I am very easy to talk to,” she protested
.

  He lifted an eyebrow slightly. His resemblance to his brother Jarek in that moment was startling.

  “Aren’t I?”

  “Yeah. You are. Leave it alone, Faye,” he said, and went outside.

  She flinched. Now that she had stopped hiding, Aleksy was finding reasons to avoid her.

  She wanted more than I could give. To her or any woman.

  Faye didn’t know what to do about that yet. She didn’t know what she could do. She wasn’t even sure what she wanted to do.

  But she wasn’t going to take his dismissal lying down. In the morning, she and Jamal were going to have a few things out.

  “You could layer some gray in on those clouds,” Jamal offered over her shoulder.

  So he was awake, she thought hopefully. That was good.

  He was paying attention. Even better.

  Faye dipped her brush in the water, carefully nonchalant. “I don’t know. I don’t want to build up too much paint.”

  He shrugged. “Then you lift it out with a sponge. No biggie. Give it a chance.”

  She had taught him that, she thought with mild pride. It remained to be seen what else she could teach him.

  “So you figure if you make a mistake, you can correct it?” she asked.

  He met her gaze, instantly wary. “Uh-uh,” he said. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “If you really didn’t want to talk about it, you wouldn’t have come to find me.”

  He was silent.

  Faye sighed. Tried again. “All right. What do you want?”

  “I want everybody to leave me alone.”

  “Not happening,” Faye said. “Jamal, you have to face this. You can’t run away from your problems.”

  “Why not?” His voice was bitter. Resentful. “You did.”

  His attack left her momentarily speechless. She drew a careful breath. “Is that how it felt to you?”

  He stared at her with a man’s closed, accusing face and a child’s hurt and hopeful eyes.

  “All right,” she said. “Okay. Maybe it felt that way to me, too. But I didn’t just drop you on this one, Jamal. There’s a difference between quitting and being defeated.”

  “What difference?” he said. “Either way, you left.”