That knowledge called Alexa to mind. Her reaction last night had triggered several of the cop instincts that just wouldn’t stay dormant.
With a clearer head, he was able to sort that through. It was clear that she’d suffered some kind of trauma, but he didn’t understand her bafflement over it. Had she tucked it away so deep that she truly didn’t remember?
Stranger things had happened.
But even with the fragility of her confusion, beneath it was a visible core of steel. The woman was mysterious and yet adorable, cute with her kitten T-shirts and yet sexy... she was just a breath of fresh air, one of the most interesting people he’d ever met.
Sexy, he thought as he slammed the metal door to his locker shut. Yeah, she was sexy. Sexy enough that he’d had a hard time being a gentleman last night, when he was wearing nothing but his boxers and the blanket that smelled of her, and she was trying so hard to pretend that she wasn’t looking.
“Hey, Fury!” Foster, one of Nate’s fellow correctional officers, banged through the door to the men’s room with enough force to make Nate wince.
“Foster.” Apart from Stark, Nate hadn’t welcomed any sense of camaraderie with his coworkers. He was just here to do his job, to pass the time.
Foster was one of those who never took a hint.
Foster, a man in the vicinity of forty with a stocky build and thinning hair that he buzzed down to the scalp, bellied over to Nate with his phone outstretched. “Hey, Fury. Want to see a picture of my wife’s tits?”
What the fuck?
“No, thanks. I’m good.” Nate kept his face impassive as the other man leered at him.
Prison guards were a strange breed—he’d known this from the start. But clearly, some were stranger than most.
“Come on, take a look. If you like what you see, you can come on over some night.” When Nate just stared, Foster laughed, clearly thinking that Nate was the strange one. “What? It gets the missus excited. Come on, take a look. She’s got a huge rack.”
“No.” This time Nate shook his head as he tried to get around Foster. Jesus, what kind of a sick fuck just offered his wife up to another man in the locker room of a prison?
Foster glowered at him. “What’s the problem? You getting your cookie sugared somewhere else?”
Nate shook his head and this time pushed right past the other man. But Foster’s weird comments had played right into the thoughts he was having of Alexa, and he couldn’t help but imagine what it would be like to sink into her body.
He should walk away. He’d known that, even before last night he’d known that, but the evidence of her trauma only strengthened the rationale. Yet, instead of dragging one another down, he thought that maybe, just maybe, they could take their broken parts and make a whole.
His brow furrowed with resolve as he strode into the guard’s room where he had to check in before going out into the cell block.
For so many months now, he’d been content to just float along in a sea of nothingness. But once, once he’d been a man who’d gotten what he wanted.
Maybe that didn’t have to change.
* * *
“No, I’m sorry, but I really don’t feel qualified to do your wedding consultation. As I’ve said, I’ve taken down your information, and I’ll have Ellie call you back as soon as she’s back in town.”
“I don’t understand why you own a flower shop if you don’t know what you’re doing.” The woman standing on the other side of Alexa’s counter was young, maybe twenty, dressed in clothes that told Alexa that all of the girl’s taste was in her mouth.
She was chewing gum with her mouth open as she glared suspiciously at Alexa, as though Alexa was making up the entire story, just to liven up her day.
“Again, I don’t own the shop. I’m watching it for my sister until she gets back from a family emergency.” Alexa was seconds away from screaming. This, this was why she didn’t work with the public.
“Well, I really can’t wait.” The girl chomped on her gum and pointed her chin in the air.
“You just said that the wedding isn’t until 2017.” Alexa heard the temper in her own voice and did her best to tamp down on it—she might want to throttle Ellie for leaving her in this mess, but probably murdering a customer would be really bad for her sister’s business. “I would say that that’s plenty of time.”
“And I would say that you need to stop being lazy do this freaking consultation now,” the girl replied, smirking in a way that made Alexa’s fingers twitch, “or I’ll take my business elsewhere.”
Alexa did her best not to pump a fist in the air, instead schooling her features into a polite smile. At least, that was the look she was going for—the way she was feeling, she made no guarantees. “That’s your choice, of course.”
“Why, I…” The girl, clearly not accustomed to being told no, looked as though she was about to stomp her feet and burst into a tantrum. Alexa held her breath, waiting for it. But instead the girl stormed out of the shop, the glass bells on the door jingling merrily over her head as she went.
“Sweet mother.” Alexa buried her head in her arms on the counter, whimpering. “No more people. Please, no more people.”
The shop’s phone line rang. It was an urgent morning delivery. Then there was another. The third time it rang, Alexa found herself snapping as she answered it.
“Estelle’s Blooms!” Her voice was so loud that she winced.
“That was... enthusiastic.” It was Ellie, who sounded perplexed. “Why are you yelling? Is it raining? Sometimes it gets a little crackly when it storms, you just have to jiggle—”
“No, no. It’s fine.” Alexa spoke over her sister. It was in fact raining, but the line was fine. Everything was fine. No matter how much she resented having these responsibilities thrust on her, she still... well, she still wanted to prove that she could do them. Weird as that was.
“Oh. Okay.” Ellie exhaled so loudly that Alexa winced. “How are things going? Did you figure everything out?”
“As much as I could.” Alexa was surprised to find her voice a little frosty. But damn it, sisters or not—she was angry. She hadn’t asked to have Ellie’s responsibilities shoved into her lap. “I just turned down a wedding consultation.”
She wasn’t about to apologize, either. She was a painter, not a florist.
“Oh. Well, I kind of expected as much.” For the first time since she’d met her, Ellie sounded awkward. “And look, I... I shouldn’t have just dumped all of this on you. But everything with Gabe’s dad happened so quickly, I was afraid that you’d just leave. And that I wouldn’t be able to make you come back.” The last words were said in a rush, as though Ellie had to spit them out or lose them, and despite her best efforts, Alexa found her heart softening.
“Well. It hasn’t been all bad.” And it really hadn’t. She certainly hadn’t found a new calling, but she was finding a rhythm, working at the shop during the day, feeling inspired to paint at night.
Seeing Nate.
Ignoring the book.
“The apartment is all right? Do you have everything you need?”
“It’s been great, actually.” Some things were a little bit outdated, but Alexa hadn’t realized how much she’d missed living on her own. She loved her mother, but it was refreshing to come and go as she pleased, to not have to worry about someone worrying if she went out for dinner after work.
To account to herself, and no one else.
Ellie chattered on in her ear for a few minutes, talking about Florida and her in-laws, but Alexa’s mind had circled back and landed on the book.
Was it Ellie, the woman in the entries?
The thought made her sick. It plagued her until her mouth opened of its own accord, interrupting Ellie mid-sentence.
“I looked in the attic,” she blurted out, her voice again just a bit too loud. She knew that she didn’t imagine the weighted pause from the other end of the line.
“Why?” From her talkative sister, this
was a rather short answer. “There’s nothing up there. Just old junk that I’m organizing.”
Ellie’s voice—it had shifted from friendly and conversational to flat and harsh. Alexa was more than a bit taken aback.
“I—” Alexa wasn’t sure what to say, finally opting for the truth. “I... you said that the reason you found me was because of a box you found in the attic. So... I don’t know. I guess I was just... looking.”
“I’ve spent a lot of time cleaning it out.” Again, Ellie’s tone was not welcoming. “I’d really rather you just stayed out of there.”
Her wishes were clear—the attic was off limits.
As Alexa hung up, she knew that she was too late. She’d found what Ellie had been hiding. But oh God, oh God, what did it mean?
That book... the journal, or whatever it was.
If she had to guess, based on the way it had been hidden and Ellie’s response...
It had happened to Ellie. What the hell was she supposed to do with that information? Especially when her sister clearly didn’t want her to know.
It plagued her throughout the day. When she finally closed up for the day, locking the door behind her with a decisive click, Alexa all but ran up the stairs, in a frenzy.
Starting in the living room, she opened drawers, plastic tubs, shook out books. Surely if Ellie was the woman in that book, there was a mention somewhere else. A newspaper clipping, something.
There was nothing mentioning a violent attack on a woman. In fact, there wasn’t much of anything at all.
But in the bedroom that Alexa wasn’t using, in the ornate table that stood beside the bed, she found something else.
Gingerly, Alexa lifted the enlarged photograph from the wood. Yellowed with age, it showed three people—a man, a woman and a child—and styles showed that it had clearly been taken in the eighties or nineties.
She recognized two of the people in it. In the back, with a tight perm twisting her strands of blonde hair, was Alexa’s mother. And the imp in the front, in the denim ensemble—it was her.
Which meant that the utterly unfamiliar man must have been her father.
Feeling as though the air had been sucked from her lungs, Alexa gingerly turned the picture over.
Joseph, Tracy and Alexa. 1990.
What was left of her breath wheezed from her lungs. Lightheaded, Alexa sank down to her knees.
This—this was her father. She’d been under the impression that he’d died when she was two. Yet here they were, clearly a family unit, when Alexa was three.
How did Ellie fit into this?
Alexa’s head could barely contain it all.
Before she could think it through, she found herself reaching for her cell, pulling up her mother’s contact. They hadn’t spoken since Alexa had hung up on her, and Alexa fully expected her mother’s voice to be frosty when she answered.
Instead it was full of concern.
“Is everything all right?” An odd choice of words to lead with. She knew she wasn’t imagining it—her mother was hiding things. Things that she had a right to know.
“Well, I don’t know, Mom.” Alexa heard the anger tightening her own voice. “I just found a family picture. You, me and Dad, when I was three. I thought he died when I was two.”
There was a pause, and Alexa had just opened her mouth to continue when her mother spoke.
“This has nothing to do with you, Alexa.” Tracy’s voice was heavy like stone. “You need to leave this alone.”
For the second time in her life, Alexa hung up on her mother. For a moment she just rocked back and forth where she was, kneeling on the carpet in the strange bedroom, in an apartment that had belonged to a grandmother she’d never known.
Finding out about her past? It wasn’t bringing her the peace she’d hoped for. Suddenly she was on her feet, running—running out of the bedroom, out of the apartment, out of the entire damn building.
It was still raining, the wind wild—not quite a monsoon, but still a massive storm. Sheets of rain instantly soaked her to the skin, plastered her hair to her head, but she didn’t feel the cold, fueled by a burn that she didn’t quite understand, one that penetrated right to the marrow of her bones.
She ran until her lungs burned, and her sneakers sloshed, and the rain was coming down so hard that she couldn’t see where she was going. She stopped for a moment to get her bearings, leaning back against a building as her chest heaved, her lungs desperate for breath.
She’d blindly run all the way to the other side of town. Much more, and she’d have been at the gates of one of the prisons.
The barbed wire was just barely visible in the grey. Alexa stared at it for a long moment before turning and starting her walk back.
No longer blindly fueled by emotion, the way home was miserable. Her clothes stuck to her, chafing her skin, and the icy rain made violent shivers wrack her body. The wild run had been over in the blink of an eye, but the walk back took forever and a day.
A dark figure lurked outside the flower shop as Alexa came into view, and she stiffened, stilled, fear prying fingers into her mind. Then the figure turned, looked her way, and she realized that it was Nate.
One step, two, and then she was running. In that moment she wanted one thing only—to be in his arms, and to let the fire of what was between them melt the jagged cold that had settled in her very core.
“Alexa. What the hell are you doing out in this weather?” Nate was shrugging out of his coat before he’d finished speaking, wrapping Alexa in the dry warmth. “Where are your keys? Damn it, what were you thinking?”
“No talking.” Determined, Alexa freed her arms, used them to twine around him. “I need you, Nate. Now.”
He opened his mouth to speak, but she cut him off, rising onto her toes and pressing her mouth to his. Feverish with need, she slid against him, urging him to relax into what they both wanted.
“Alexa. I can’t do this when you’re obviously upset.” With a groan that gave away the effort, Nate tore himself away, steadied her with his arms. “It’s not how it should be.”
Trembling from something other than cold, Alexa looked up at Nate. He had a point, she knew he had a point, and yet right here, right now, she saw with more clarity than she ever had in her life.
“I know what I’m doing. I know what I want.” Fisting her hands in the front of his shirt, she rose onto her toes, kissed him again, and this time the embrace was slow and sweet, drugging her senses. “I can’t explain it. We barely know each other. But right now, you’re the only thing that’s right in my world.”
In response Nate crushed her to him, and his mouth moved over hers with a mastery than made liquid heat slide through her center. But her true undoing was what he said when he again pulled away.
“I can’t explain it, either. But I know one thing.”
She urged him to continue with the tilt of her chin. In response he slid his hands down, cupped her bottom, lifting her so that she could wrap her legs around his waist, so that they were pressed so tightly together that their heat generated steam.
“I know that when we’re together... neither one of us is alone in the world. Not anymore.”
Alexa felt her pulse accelerate at the words that so matched what she was feeling, but there was no time to dwell on it, not when Nate had lifted her bodily, carrying her into the shop, bracing her briefly to lock it—ever cautious. She buried her face in his neck when he reached the bottom of the stairs, the muscles of his arms moving against her as he mounted the stairs, her held tightly against him.
Slamming the door behind them, Nate pressed her back against it. The wood was cold against her back, a sharp contrast to the heat of Nate at her front, as he took her mouth in another drugging kiss.
“Are you absolutely sure?” When he asked again, Alexa groaned with frustration, then nipped at his neck.
“Damn it, Nate. Do you want me or not?”
“Oh, I want you.” The wicked curve of those lips that never f
ully smiled should have warned her, but nothing, nothing, could have prepared her what came next.
His stare holding hers, Nate slid her down his body with excruciating slowness, giving Alexa the opportunity to feel every last, hard inch of his flesh. Her mouth went dry when she discovered just how much he wanted her.
“You play dirty,” she murmured, her tongue sliding out to moisten lips that had suddenly gone dry.
He grinned, traced a finger over those lips, stepping back.
“I’m just getting started.” His stare raked her over, lingering on her breasts, her center and making her temperature shoot up.
“Strip.”
“I—what?” Surely he hadn’t just... ordered her?
That little half smile that had come to be so familiar appeared, and Alexa felt her knees weaken. “You heard me. Unless you’ve changed your mind?”
“No,” Alexa hastily fisted her hands in the hem of her sopping wet T-shirt. She wasn’t sure what to think of his demand—surely this wasn’t normal?
But being shocked had no effect whatsoever on whether or not she wanted to obey. Neither did the heat that flashed through his eyes when she peeled the wet cotton over her head and off.
His eyes gleamed, making no attempt to hide the way he was staring. But he didn’t speak, didn’t move and belatedly Alexa realized that he was waiting for her to carry out his order in its entirety.
To strip.
To be naked, as she had for no one before. She wasn’t a virgin, but she wasn’t very experienced either—and though it pained her to admit it, she’d never been entirely skin to skin with anyone in her life.
The realization made her falter, hands at the button of her jeans. But Nate was there, believing in her, and though it made no sense, not this soon, still she trusted him.
She worked her way from her jeans, kicked them aside. Reaching behind her, she tried to unfasten the clasp of her bra, and huffed with frustration when she couldn’t.
“Let me.” Then Nate’s hands were on her, twining with hers, undoing the offensive garment. His fingers hooked in the sides of her panties, tearing them away, and shock rocked its way through her, understanding that this calm, patient man was anything but in this moment.
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