by Diana Palmer
He stopped short at the sight of her putting butter on the table and blinked. “I thought I told you to stay in bed,” he remarked, coming closer.
She was trying not to stare. His wavy blond-streaked brown hair was disheveled, and his chest was sexier than a TV commercial. She’d seen his chest before, with broad, hard muscles covered with a tangle of soft hair that wedged from his collarbone down into the low waistline of his jeans. She’d touched it as well, that last memorable evening they’d spent together; touched it, kissed it, nibbled it…
She flushed and averted her eyes. “I’m much better,” she said. “It’s sore, but I can handle that. The fever seems to be gone.”
“Does it?” He was beside her before she had time to be shocked, one lean hand pressed to her cheek.
Her heart stopped and ran away. He saw her pulse rampaging in the artery of her neck. The shirt she was wearing—his shirt—was throbbing from the force of her heartbeat. His fingers spread gently on her cheek and his thumb rubbed softly over her swollen lips, sensitizing them in a silence broken only by the insistent sizzle of bacon in the iron skillet on the stove.
“The bacon,” she choked.
His eyes held hers for one long minute before he dropped his hand and moved to the table. The impact of those soft, dark eyes made him ache. He’d done nothing but hurt her in the past, but she still wanted him. He wondered what she’d say if she knew how hungrily her hands had explored his chest while she slept in his arms for the past two nights. It had kept him awake until dawn. Of course, he was used to grabbing catnaps and functioning with them.
With unsteady hands, Josette took a spatula and piled the bacon onto a platter lined with paper towels. She then moved the pan off the hot burner to an unlit back one. She put the bacon on the table beside the eggs she’d just scrambled and the basket of hot biscuits. She poured coffee into two mugs and put them on the table.
“I’m going back to work today,” she said huskily.
“You’re not.”
She glared at him. “I don’t get paid for lying around in bed…!”
“You have sick days just like any other government worker,” Brannon said calmly, while he buttered a biscuit. “I’ll bet you haven’t taken a sick day off since you’ve been in Simon’s office,” he added, staring straight into her eyes.
She averted her gaze and grabbed a biscuit. “I don’t get sick.”
“Neither do I, as a rule, but a gunshot wound isn’t exactly sick. You’ll stay home today,” he added, impatiently taking the biscuit she was trying to butter with one hand away and buttering it himself.
She took the biscuit from his outstretched hand with a mutinous expression. “All right,” she said curtly. “One more day.”
“We’ll see.”
Her gaze fell reluctantly to his chest and darted away. He wasn’t overly muscular, but he was well-built and fit physically. She didn’t doubt that he could hold his own in a free-for-all. He was certainly efficient when he went after someone, and she remembered amusedly how he’d tackled the man who shot her.
He finished his eggs and bacon and biscuit and sat back with his coffee cup in his hand, and watched her try not to look at his chest. It amused him that she was still shy.
“You could take off your shirt, too,” he remarked as he sipped coffee. “We could compare wounds.”
“You’ve already seen mine,” she pointed out, trying not to react.
“And a lot more,” he added with a wicked grin.
She flushed, almost overturning her coffee cup. “That’s enough, Brannon.”
“We’re back to that, are we?” he said wistfully. “I suppose you don’t think we know each other well enough for first names anymore.”
She put down her cup audibly and wiped her mouth with her napkin. “I’m going back to bed, since you won’t let me out the door.”
He stood up, blocking her way. His big, warm hands caught her face and held it up to his pale, glittery eyes. “Don’t box it up inside you,” he said curtly. “You still resent the fact that I walked away from you without a word.”
“Yes, well, some memories are more vivid than others.” Her voice sounded odd. The touch of those strong hands on her face made her melt inside.
“I testified for the prosecution at your rape trial,” he continued, his tone blunt and uncompromising. “On the basis of the boy’s assurances and the deposition of a resident in the emergency room. How do you think I felt when I knew, knew, that you were telling the truth that night?”
She searched his eyes. “It was a long time ago,” she said heavily.
“Not for me. I made a mistake—a hell of a mistake. Instead of support and justice and sympathy, you were treated as if you’d committed the crime. It scarred you. You’re still carrying the wounds, and they’re not easily treated, like the one in your arm.”
Her gaze fell to his chest, but she didn’t really see it. “I can live with my scars.”
“Well, I can’t,” he said flatly. His eyes were flashing like sunlit silver. “I can’t bear them! You dress like a dowager. You don’t date—yes, I know,” he added when she looked up, surprised. “Simon told me. He said you cut men dead if they so much as smile at you. You had therapy, but only for a couple of weeks, because your father didn’t believe in that sort of thing. Now here you are, twenty-four years old and as sexless as that table over there. And it’s my fault. It’s my fault, Josette!”
Her eyes closed. Most of it was true, she supposed. She hadn’t wanted to think about the past. But the past and the present were linked together like a circle, forming a chain that was endless.
His warm hands went to her waist and contracted. “I couldn’t deal with it, so I quit the Rangers, joined the FBI and left Texas. But even that didn’t work. The memories went along.” His hands drew gently over her small waist. “Gretchen said you didn’t blame me.”
She searched his hard face, surprised by the indecision there, when he was always such a forceful person. Her lips parted on a soft breath. “I didn’t,” she said. “I was in Jacobsville selling my father’s last bit of property there. I ran into her at the bank.” She looked down at his broad chest. “She said it wasn’t because I accused Bib Webb of old Mr. Garner’s murder. I thought it was, you see. I thought you blamed me for accusing him, and you couldn’t bear the sight of me afterward…”
“Dear God.” He drew her to him and held her as gently as he could, allowing for the wound in her left arm. His lips moved in her long, soft hair. “People disagree with me all the time. It doesn’t usually inspire me to quit my job and leave the state.”
She smiled to herself. “I’ll remember that.”
He smoothed the length of her hair, enjoying the softness of it. “I left because I knew how badly I’d misjudged you. Despite the relationship we were developing in San Antonio, I still had doubts,” he confessed quietly. “If you were the sort of woman who’d accuse an innocent boy of rape… Well, it was a question of trust.”
“You thought you might end up in court as a defendant,” she said flatly and with a hollow laugh. She pulled away from him and moved to the doorway.
“I don’t trust people,” he said harshly. “I never have! Most people are only kind when they want something. I thought you were too good to be true. Given your past, or what I thought was your past, I erred on the side of caution. And then, that last night, I lost my head completely.” His eyes closed. “When I left you, I drove around for hours, trying to accept how mistaken I’d been about the whole situation. I remembered the verdict, when the boy was acquitted largely due to my testimony and that of the intern. You sat there so stiffly, so proud, so wounded, and you didn’t cry. You held up your head and you walked out with your parents as if you were the victor. That memory was what hurt the most.”
She met his eyes. “We’ll always be on opposite sides, Brannon,” she said, and she didn’t smile. “You don’t trust people. Neither do I. Not anymore.”
“At least
you were exonerated when that creep was killed in that high-speed car chase after raping and nearly strangling that woman in Victoria,” Brannon said, trying to find some good in the awful situation.
“Not that it mattered anymore,” she replied. “I have a good job, nice co-workers and a future in state government to look forward to.”
His eyes narrowed. “And how about a family? Kids?”
She turned away. “I don’t want to marry.”
His face contorted, because he knew why. He’d only just realized it. A woman like that, with her tortured past, had given in to him completely one dark night. She wouldn’t have been capable of sleeping around after her experiences. The only reason she could have had to give in to Brannon that night, that disastrous night, was that she loved him. It was the only possible explanation for what had happened. She’d loved him. He’d found her virginal and was so shocked by it that he’d jerked back from her as if she were diseased. He’d rearranged her disheveled clothing, stuck her in his car and driven her straight home. He left her at her front door, and stalked away. Except for one fumbling phone call to check on her, later that night, he walked away and never said another word to her, until they met outside Simon Hart’s office two years later.
He shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans, his expression harder than ever. “We could have solved a lot of problems that night if either one of us had been honest about what we felt.”
She turned. “I felt ashamed.”
His jaw tautened. “Not until I stopped,” he drawled with self-recrimination in his tone.
She flushed to the roots of her hair and started walking back down the hall.
He followed her into the bedroom.
“I’m not going to argue with you!” she raged. “I’m hurt. You just leave me alone!”
There was a suspicious brightness in her eyes. “You aren’t walking away this time,” he said, and moved closer. “Never again.”
She put up both hands at his approach, wincing as the left one protested.
“Idiot,” he murmured as his arms enfolded her against his bare chest. “You’re vulnerable.”
“I don’t want your arms around me!” she fumed.
“Funny, because you’ve slept in them for the past two nights.”
“Wh-what?” she exclaimed, staring up at him.
He pushed the long, soft hair away from her cheek. “If I’d been shot and raging with fever, would you have been in here asleep with me in the other room?”
“Of course not,” she said without thinking.
“Exactly.”
“But it would have been impersonal,” she said doggedly.
“It was mostly impersonal,” he agreed.
“Mostly?”
His fingers trailed down her neck, making chills where they touched. “It’s difficult for a man to be totally impersonal when he’s hard as a rock.”
She didn’t believe she’d heard him say that. Her eyes were like saucers.
“I thought of it as penance,” he murmured, amused by her shock. “Retribution. You kept stroking my chest and kissing it and whispering how much you wanted me. I’m only human, Josie.”
“I never!” she exclaimed, horrified.
He lifted an eyebrow and smiled slowly. He looked rakishly handsome when he did that. “No, you didn’t, but it was going through my mind all night how sweet it would be if you did.” He shrugged. “I haven’t had a woman in a long time. I’m very easily aroused when I’ve abstained for this long.”
She met his gray eyes evenly, fascinated.
He could see the question that she didn’t want to ask. He touched her lips with his mouth, tenderly brushing them apart. “Two years,” he whispered into them. “I haven’t had sex in two years, Josie. Not since that night I lost my head with you.”
While she was trying to get her mind to work, one of his lean hands eased up under the shirt she was wearing with nothing underneath. His fingers began to stroke her naked breast while his mouth played tenderly with her soft lips and teased it into submission. He nibbled the upper lip while his thumb and forefinger found a hard nipple and caressed it softly.
He felt her body tauten against him, heard the soft, shocked moan that went into his mouth. “Yes,” he whispered, and his mouth ground hungrily into hers.
Both hands were under her shirt. Then they were on the buttons. While he kissed her, he opened the shirt. He drew back, so that when he pulled the edges aside, her pert, pretty little breasts were bare, their dusky nipples hard, her body trembling with desire.
His lean hands held her narrow waist. His eyes blazed as he looked at her body. “Not even the dreams were this beautiful,” he ground out.
He bent, and she felt his mouth ease down very tenderly on her nipple. She jerked. His head lifted a fraction of an inch. “I won’t bite you,” he whispered. “I only want the taste of you.”
Her breath was audible. His mouth eased closer, enveloping her. She felt his tongue smoothing against the hard nipple. Her whole body arched. There was a raging heat in her abdomen, a sudden moisture in another place. Her trembling hands caught in the thick waves of his hair.
His free hand was at the fastening of her jeans. She caught it, holding his wrist, digging in.
He sighed against her breast, but he didn’t insist. Seconds later, his head lifted and he drew her bareness against his own, letting her feel the thick hair on his chest brushing her sensitized nipples while he looked into her wide eyes.
“You haven’t had that minor surgery we discussed,” he guessed.
She swallowed hard, trying to get her breath. She was standing half nude in his arms, feeling his body so intimately against her own that she could feel the strength and power of his arousal starkly against her lower stomach.
“I told you…years ago,” she managed to say shakily, “that I didn’t have affairs. I still don’t.”
His pulse was hammering at his throat. His eyes were blazing with desire. His body was rigid.
“I know. I’m living in the dark ages,” she said sarcastically, trying to pull away.
“Chastity isn’t something you need to apologize for,” he said quietly, watching her. “I respect it.”
She looked down at her bare breasts pressed hard to his bare chest. “Sure you do.”
He smiled gently. “This is foreplay,” he said in a soft, teasing tone. “Perfectly permissible, even among some of the most devout people.”
Her hands met on his broad chest. “Let me go.”
He did, slowly and with obvious reluctance. He brought the edges of her shirt back together after one long, last look at her breasts. “I’ve never seen a Greek statue who could compare with you,” he murmured as he refastened buttons. “You have the most beautiful breasts I’ve ever seen.”
“You mustn’t say things like that to me,” she choked, embarrassed.
“You can say them to me anytime you like,” he offered.
She coughed. “You don’t have breasts.”
A slow, wicked smile split his lips. “I have something else you could comment on…?”
She pushed at his chest, hard. “You stop that!”
He laughed, not at all put out by her bad temper. He swung her up gently in his arms and deposited her in the bed, leaning over her to search her angry face. “You might ask me why I haven’t had sex for the past two years.”
“Does it have anything to do with a social disease?” she asked pointedly.
He grinned. “Nope.”
She averted her eyes to his mouth. It was slightly swollen. Such a masculine mouth, and it could wreak the most delicious havoc on a woman’s lips…
“You shouldn’t tempt me while you’re lying on a convenient flat surface, Josie,” he mused, bending to kiss her very gently. He stood up and moved away. “Now stay put. I’ve got to go out for a while, but I’ll be back before you miss me. I’ll put on the dead bolt when I leave. Don’t open the door for anyone. Understand?”
“I understand.”
He moved toward the door.
She sat up, breathless. “Marc.”
He turned, his eyes softly inquisitive.
“Why…haven’t you had a woman for two years?” she asked huskily.
He searched her eyes. “Oh, I think you know, Josie.” He turned and went out, back to his bedroom. Scant minutes later, he called goodbye as he was closing the outer door. Josette was still sitting up in bed, trying to reason out that cryptic remark. She was no closer to solving it when she drifted back to sleep.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
When Brannon came back, he brought her case files and some of her clothes. He acted as if he hadn’t said or done anything unprofessional, and he was polite and gentle, but completely remote. She wondered if he regretted what had happened. She didn’t get the chance to ask, because he no sooner delivered her things than he went right back out again.
When he was through with work for the day, he found her on the telephone with her notes spread out on the bed and a pad and pen close by. The pad had scribbling all over it. She’d changed clothes, too. She was wearing a pair of gray sweatpants with an oversize long-sleeved cowl-necked pullover, and her hair was back in its neat bun.
She glanced up at him while she talked, curious about the odd look on his face as he went toward the kitchen.
When she finished her conversation, she hung up, picked up her notepad and walked into the kitchen in her socks.
He was making sandwiches with a package of sandwich meat, a loaf of bread and a jar of mayonnaise.
“Ham and cheese or salami?” he asked.
“I fixed myself a salad just before you got here,” she said. “That’s all I usually have for supper. Breakfast is my big meal.”
He only nodded and continued what he was doing.
“I’ve been trying to run down leads,” she said. “Simon managed to get Phil returned by the FBI, so I called Phil in Austin and got him busy on Sandra Gates’s background. Then I phoned the assistant district attorney and told her the direction the investigation is going. She’s going to put her cybercrime expert in touch with Phil. That would be Grier, I guess?”