Bear Claw Lawman

by Jessica Andersen

  Flushing, she looked away. “Guess not, huh? Well, you’re probably right, forget I asked. Lord knows we don’t have much of a track record when it comes to platonic anything.”

  “Okay.”

  She turned back.

  “I’ll take half the bed. Assuming the offer’s still open.”

  She wasn’t sure which was worse—the thud of her pulse at his agreement or the quick sting of disappointment at the implication that he could do platonic when it came to her. Then again, he’d already made it plenty clear that whatever he felt for her, it wasn’t enough to overcome his discipline and better sense.

  Be grateful, she told herself. One of us needs to be rational here. She knew darn well that it wasn’t fair to be annoyed by his self-control when she didn’t really want to start things back up. Frustration kicked, not aimed at him this time, but at herself. She was feeling weak, and knew it. Which meant she should take the darn couch.

  “The offer’s still open,” she said instead. “And thank you.”

  Fool me once…

  They dealt with the logistics in a companionable if somewhat strained silence, using the bathroom, wearing far too many clothes and pulling out extra blankets so they could each have their own sets and wouldn’t touch in the night. Wouldn’t cuddle.

  Ten minutes later, he clicked off the lights, leaving them in the darkness, rolled up side by side.

  “Good night,” she said softly, not letting herself dwell on how odd it was to lie there without touching him, without kissing him.

  “’Night, Jenn. Sleep well.”

  She might’ve laughed at the thought, but as she curled up in her blanket nest, even though she was careful not to touch him, his body heat seeped into her, along with the reality of his presence and the steady breathing that said he wasn’t asleep, not yet. And she felt herself relaxing toward sleep when she wouldn’t have thought it possible.

  They had been apart far more days than they’d been together, yet in some ways it felt as if he’d never left. She was instantly easy with him there, warm and relaxed beneath the buzz of desire. It was that buzz, though, that said things weren’t like they used to be. She wasn’t sated, hadn’t been thoroughly loved. And wouldn’t be.

  He was there, though, protecting her, making her feel safe. And, yeah, maybe that safety was an illusion, but she would cling to the pretense for right now, because that was far more comforting than the knowledge that somewhere outside, beyond the safe perimeter, the Investor was planning to kill her.

  Don’t think about it, she told herself. And she wouldn’t, she decided. Instead, she would think about the warm, solid bulk beside her, and the fact that they understood each other a little better now than before. For better or worse.

  Closing her eyes, she let herself be lulled by his steady breathing, the gentle wine-spin of the room and the knowledge that, at least for tonight, she wasn’t alone.

  * * *

  NICK AWOKE NEAR DAWN, when the false light was just beginning to outline the mountains and the city was still mostly asleep.

  Jenn, too, was still slumbering, her face soft, her breathing a steady rise and fall beneath her blanket cocoon. She was facing him, had her hands curled beneath her chin, and she looked like nothing he’d ever seen before in his life.

  She damn near took his breath away.

  It wasn’t just that she was beautiful, though he’d noticed that right away when they’d first met. He was a Lang male, after all, and was therefore programmed to appreciate the hell out of a curvy body, along with high cheekbones, a wide and mobile mouth, and eyes so expressive that they practically had a language of their own, though not one he always understood. So, yeah, she was gorgeous. But she was so much more than that.

  She had a delicately angled jaw that could go firm and stubborn on a moment’s notice, a spine that walked her into crime scene after crime scene even though they gave her nightmares she wouldn’t admit to, and narrow, fine-boned hands that could work near miracles with soil samples…as well as his body.

  It was those other things that had caught and held him, and had made him do dumb things. Like dumping her without an explanation. Like thinking he could see her almost every day without wanting her. Like sleeping with her and promising celibacy and pretending it wouldn’t be torture.

  That was what she needed from him, though. And so he would give it to her.

  Somehow.

  “You’re staring,” she said without opening her eyes. Hell, without doing anything that would’ve warned him she was awake. But that was his Jenn, always full of surprises.

  Only she wasn’t his Jenn.

  Leave it alone, he told himself. Last night she had been buzzed, stressed and vulnerable, and she had asked him to help her out as part of the backward friendship they seemed to be developing. There was no way he should complicate things further under the circumstances.

  She’s not buzzed now, his inner devil reminded him; that part of him didn’t care about anything more than the heat that had settled low in his gut, and the way his chest had tightened when he’d thought about her being his woman.

  Her eyes opened, blurry with sleep but clearing as she looked at him, and her expression went softly quizzical. “Who are you right now?”

  The question hit hard, not just because she looked into his face and needed to ask, but he didn’t have an answer. He wanted to think he was entirely himself unless he chose to become one of the others—Bad Cop, Good Cop, the Underling…the list went on and on. Now, though, he wondered whether he needed to add another: the Lover. Because as he lay there looking into her eyes, there was nothing he wanted more than to know that he would be able to do the same thing tomorrow, the next day and the next.

  He wanted to touch her, kiss her, lose himself in her, write her some damn poetry and recite it over a picnic in the state park. Which was how he knew that this wasn’t him, couldn’t be him. It had to be another role.

  “My parents own a theater in New York City.” He surprised himself by saying it, but at least it wasn’t poetry. “It’s several ‘offs’ away from Broadway, but it’s in a good neighborhood and has a strong local following, good word of mouth. Enough that ticket sales have stayed pretty reliable, even now. And back when I was a kid…” He grinned. “It was a pretty great way to grow up, doing stuff behind the scenes, playing bit parts, seeing that world from the wings.”

  He didn’t know why he was telling her all this. Or maybe he did and he didn’t want to admit it.

  She had gone utterly still. Instead of asking what he was getting at, though, she said, “You were on the stage?”

  “We all were—me, my older brother, Stephen, my younger sister, Caroline. Whenever the script called for a ‘ragamuffin cameo’—that’s what my mother called it—we would step in. Even our dog, Max, made it out there a few times. My mother worked sometimes, but she mostly acted as the stage manager-slash-stage mom, keeping everything up and running. My dad usually directed, though sometimes they would switch it up and she would direct while he managed.” He paused. “Looking back, I think that mostly happened when she wanted to remind him that he didn’t run the universe. Let’s just say, she was a better director than he was stage manager. Probably still is. They have a core group of actors and stage crew, most of them relatives. Aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces, nephews, the works.”

  Even now, the memories made him grin. More, they reminded him that he should really call home. Maybe visit. It had been too long.

  Jenn shook her head. “That sounds…like nothing I can really imagine. Or maybe something I would’ve imagined. You know, the only child of parents who both worked full-time plus imagining what it would be like to be surrounded by family.”

  “It rocked.” He propped his head on his hand, so he was lying on his side, facing her fully. “I won’t pretend there weren’t fights. There were, of course. Big, loud ones that sent everybody off in opposite directions, cursing up a storm. Nobody does drama like actors, after all.” He
lifted a shoulder. “It always blew over, though, or got worked out. We’re a tight group. Were a tight group,” he corrected, “until I broke the mold and went cop.”

  “They didn’t like the idea?”

  “They worried about me.” They still did, he knew, and didn’t really believe he was happy being Cool Uncle Nick. “And, yeah, they would’ve liked to keep me in the fold. My brother and sister both stayed in acting. Callie ended up in L.A., but Stephen circled back to the theater after doing some commercial work. Now it’s his kids playing the bit parts.” He grinned, remembering the last bunch of playbills he’d gotten, along with a wistful tug. Yeah, he really needed to visit. Maybe when this case was over, he could take a few weeks in New York before he went back down south.

  The thought of his time in Bear Claw being over brought a twinge, though, and made him very aware of the woman lying beside him, studying him with thoughtful eyes. “That’s it, isn’t it? You’re acting.”

  “Now? Nope. What you see is what you get.” And that was the God’s honest truth.

  But she shook her head. “That’s not what I’m talking about. I mean, it is, but it isn’t.”

  “I’m not following you.” He couldn’t read her expression, except to know that whatever was going on inside her head, it was important to her. More, it put a faint shimmy in the pit of his stomach, one that said it might be important to him, too.

  Don’t go there. His blood warmed, though, at the look in her eyes.

  “Sorry.” She reached out as if to touch him, but drew back before she made contact. The move made him very aware that they were lying in bed together, their bodies sharing warmth even through the blankets separating them. “Forget it.”

  “Don’t stop now.”

  She rolled onto her side and propped up her head on a hand so they were facing each other, positions mirrored, their bodies separated only by a few layers of cloth. “After Terry died and everything started coming out, hindsight being twenty-twenty, I realized just how much of what I thought we’d had together had been a lie. I’m not even sure he did it consciously all the time, or if he was just a natural manipulator.”

  “That’s a good way of describing lots of actors,” he said, not sure how to defend himself, or if he ought to even try. There was more of a similarity there than he wanted to know, especially lying in bed beside her.

  “You’re not the same as him, though, are you?” she said, watching him intently. “You know when you’re doing it, and you do it on purpose. When you’re talking to nice little old lady witnesses, you’re the Sweet Nice Officer. With thugs, you’re the Tough Cop, maybe even the I’m Badder Than You guy. With a semi-smart perp like Slider, you’re all business with an edge of don’t-mess-with-me… . Yet with other cops there’s none of that tough-guy stuff. You listen to them, make them feel important.” She paused. “Those are roles, aren’t they? They’re not really you.”

  They’re all me, he almost said. That would’ve been too easy, though, and it wouldn’t have been the truth. So instead, he went with the harder reality. “I’m that person in the moment, I guess. I’m thinking like him, acting like him, reacting like him…but, yeah. Part of me knows it’s a role. At least here.”

  “But not undercover.”

  She saw it. Of course she would see it. He nodded. “That’s different. When I’m under, I am the guy. I eat, sleep, breathe him. Call it method acting, call it being a really damn good undercover cop, whatever. That can’t be a role. For the duration, it has to be me.” He’d seen agents blow their covers, had nearly done it himself once or twice, early on. That had been a hell of a wakeup call, showing him all too clearly what could happen when an op went to hell.

  Yeah, maybe that had been the real beginning of the end, the point where he’d started pulling away from Stacia and the kids. “I guess that maybe I played a role at home back then, too, acting like the sort of husband I wanted to be, and not really realizing until way too late that I was shutting out Stacia and the boys in the process.”

  He thought how it should’ve been strange, lying there in Jenn’s bed—a bed where they’d made love as many ways as possible, from raucous to tender—talking about their exes. Yet somehow it seemed right. Right, yet unnerving, because he didn’t remember the last time he’d talked like this to anyone. He was close with his family, buddies with Tucker and a few guys back in Florida, but even with them, there were boundaries. And with women, he never even came close.

  With Jenn, though, it was different. It was natural, comfortable, yet uncomfortable at the same time. Which was just one of many reasons he hadn’t been able to make himself walk away for real. Not six weeks ago when he should’ve made a clean break, and not now, when he knew damn well he should leave her bed before he got drawn any deeper than he already was.

  He didn’t move, though; he couldn’t. Not with her a scant couple of feet away from him, staring at him as if she were seeing him for the first time…or maybe understanding him more than she had before, and liking what she saw.

  He cleared his throat. “I’m still the same guy I was yesterday, the same guy I was six weeks ago. Nothing’s changed.”

  “Maybe not for you, but it has for me.”

  “Jenn…” he began, levering himself up so he rose above her, looked down at her, only then realizing how dangerous a position he’d put himself in. With her eyes still a little drowsy with sleep and her hair fanned out on her pillow, she looked soft and approachable, and so damn sexy it made him ache. He couldn’t go there, though, couldn’t mess up the new understanding—maybe even friendship—they were starting to build. So he said simply, “I’m myself when I’m with you. I hope you can believe that.”

  “I can. I do.” She lifted a hand to cup his stubble-roughened cheek. “I trust you, Nick. More than I probably should.” Her eyes darkened. “And the thing is, I get it now, why you broke things off, and even maybe why you were a jerk about it. You were right, too—I was starting to get in way deeper than either of us meant to go.”

  His mouth dried to dust. “Yeah. Me, too.”

  “But that’s not a problem now, is it? We understand each other better now, understand the situation. And what’s more, I get that you’re nothing like Terry. You’re you.”

  His pulse kicked up a notch. “What are you saying?”

  Her lips curved faintly. “I’m saying that you’re in my bed, we’re safely tucked away together and we both want each other. It’s not exactly a love nest buried in the forest, but I think we can make do. More, I think we should try again with the no-strings affair, this time with both of us knowing exactly where we stand.” She paused, lips curving. “So, what do you say, Detective? Are you interested?”

  * * *

  JENN HADN’T THOUGHT SHE WOULD be worried about his answer—there was no questioning the chemistry, and he’d mostly held back because he hadn’t wanted to hurt her, which wasn’t an issue now. But when he hesitated, searching her eyes, nerves sparked deep inside her, warning that she wanted this, wanted him, far more than was wise.

  “Strictly casual,” she said, as much to herself as to him. “We both know the ground rules for real this time, and the reasons for them.” Taking a breath, she went for broke. “There won’t be a future for us. I get that now, deep down inside. But that doesn’t mean there can’t be a now…and I’d hate to have you leave here when this is all over, and know we could’ve had this time together.”

  It would hurt when he left…but she thought it would hurt worse if he left without them having acted on all the feelings that had broken through over the past two days. She was seeing him in a different light now, understanding him in new ways.

  And, smart or not, she liked the guy she was getting to know. She liked him very much.

  “Ah, Jenny…” he said, and her stomach tightened at the nickname he’d only ever used when they’d made love. Before she said anything, he added, “I keep telling myself to walk away.” His eyes, though, kindled on hers.

 
Heat flared in her bloodstream. “Looks like you’re still here.”

  He leaned over her, bracing one arm beside her so he was bracketing her, surrounding her yet not touching. “I’ll be damned if I can make myself stay away from you. Not even when I tell myself it’d probably be better for both of us.”

  “That’s because you know you’re wrong. This is better.” She wrapped her fingers around his wrist, holding him over her, drawing him close and inviting him in.

  With a low, reverent curse, he bent to her, covering her lightly with his body as their faces aligned for a kiss. “Yeah,” he rasped softly. “This is better. This is damn near everything right now—I can’t think of anything else, can’t care about anything else. Except you.”

  The heat became a burn, the nerves a churn of excitement that rode low in her belly. “Then take me,” she whispered against his lips. “We’ve got the time, here and now, and this doesn’t have to change anything we don’t want it to.”

  And if that thought set off faint warnings inside her, she was the only one who needed to know, the only one who could know, because just then, Nick kissed her and the rest of the world ceased to exist.

  His lips covered hers and he swallowed her gasp as he took things deep and dark in an instant. Sparks detonated inside her along with a sharp yearning and an inner whisper of, Yes. Oh, yes.

  It felt as if it had been forever since they’d last been together, yet at the same time the weeks telescoped to nothing and it was like they’d never been apart. She knew his taste—sharp, exciting and purely male—and she knew the solid warmth of his body on hers as he shoved the clinging blankets aside and came down on top of her, pressing her into the mattress. Yet there was also a new ache inside her, brittle and poignant, that said she needed to take what she could right now, not knowing if there would be another opportunity.

  Before, some part of her had believed—despite everything they’d said to each other about casual and no-strings—that they were starting something. Now she knew better. But instead of that making her sad or panicky, she found herself storing up the sensations, reveling in them and loving the fact that she was getting at least one more chance to feel the way he made her feel.