Into the Crossfire

by Lisa Marie Rice

  With a sigh, she tugged and he allowed her to slip her hand from his. She dipped into the hummus with a slice of home-made bread and hummed with pleasure. Delicious.

  Nicole had learned the hard way the lesson of living moment by moment, being grateful for even the smallest of pleasures. This was a fabulous meal in the company of an amazingly sexy man. She had to put her feelings aside and enjoy it. She hadn’t had this nice an evening since she’d learned her father was sick. God knew when she’d have another evening like it.

  “This is fabulous.” Nicole refrained from rolling her eyes with delight, and spooned some tabbouleh onto a torn-off chunk of fried bread.

  Sam nodded gravely. “Yes, it is. Bashir and his mother are fantastic cooks.” He pushed a terra-cotta bowl of fatteh toward her. “Are you finished?”

  She stopped, another bite halfway to her mouth. They had to leave already? A pang of sadness shot through her. Wow. That was quick. She’d said she wasn’t available for an affair and he wanted to end the evening as fast as he could.

  Nicole tucked the disappointment away. “Finished? With the meal?”

  “No. With what you wanted to say to me. Said all you wanted to say?”

  Not really. She’d only lived in San Diego for a little over a year and between Wordsmith and her dad, there’d been no time to make any friends. This was the closest she’d come to a heart-to-heart talk since her lost carefree life in Geneva.

  She hadn’t told him how her heart broke at watching her father die, day by day, piece by piece. How hard she tried to hold on to him, how horrible it was to feel him slipping from her grasp.

  She hadn’t told Sam how tired she was between caring for her father at home and the fouteen hours a day and more she put in at work.

  She hadn’t told him how lonely she felt, sometimes, without a friend to help relieve the relentless pressure. Or how worried she was about money, wondering whether her money would hold out to help ease his end.

  But he wouldn’t want to hear that. Her story was pathetic enough as it was. “Yes. I think I more or less said what I had to say.”

  Those dark eyes bored into hers. He raised his hand and brought it to her face. The fine hairs on the nape of her neck lifted as he ran the back of a long index finger down her cheek.

  “I’ve never felt skin this soft before.” The finger ran lower, over her jaw and rested on a vein in her neck. Surely he had to feel how her heart pounded?

  She was finding it hard to breathe as he ran his finger up and down the pulse point. He could read her every reaction there, as if her neck were some kind of lie detector.

  He wasn’t reacting at all, simply looking at her, touching her. “Did you even listen to a word I said?”

  His mouth tightened. “Oh yeah. Every word. So. Let me get this straight. You’re caring for a sick father, while trying to start up a new business and keep your head above water financially. Is that about it?”

  “Very sick father.” How it hurt, every time she said it. “But yes, that’s about it. And what it means is that I don’t have the time or the energy for an affair.” She finally found the strength to move her head away from his touch and sopped up some muhummarrah with a pita triangle and put the whole mess in her mouth. Hot, spicy, delicious. Pure heaven, tinged with regret. Well, the bitter taste of regret was one she was used to by now.

  Man up, she told herself.

  “I’m sorry.” Nicole studied the grain of the wooden table for a moment, then met Sam’s eyes again. “I’m trying to be as clear and honest here as possible, Sam.”

  “Yeah, I can see that.” His jaw muscles clenched. “And I appreciate your honesty. What I don’t get at all is why should any of this should make me desire you any less?”

  She blinked in surprise. “Well, I told you. I don’t have time for an affair. Time or energy. My father is my top priority, and after that comes trying to make a living. There just isn’t anything else in my life. There can’t be. So…anything you might want from me, I can’t give you. You’d be better off with someone else, someone who isn’t so wrapped up in problems. Actually, frankly, right now you’d be crazy to want me.”

  He was silent a long moment, then picked up his fork. “I think we’d better eat some more of this meal, otherwise Bashir will have my head.”

  Nicole put on a wobbly smile. He was right. The food was fabulous, it would be a huge pity to let it go to waste. Live in the moment, and all that. A sigh was in her chest but she refused to let it out. What good would it do?

  It felt good to have spelled out the situation to Sam, clearly and coolly. She’d definitely done the right thing. And if it felt like she’d stabbed herself in the heart, well, her heart had been taking a pounding for quite some time now.

  Her appetite had gone, but she made a real effort to do justice to the magnificent meal. She was a diplomat’s daughter and had attended 17-course state dinners even when she was ill and had to choke down the food. She knew how to do this.

  Sam was quiet, and so was she. Maybe he was feeling the regrets, too. But life was like that—good things happened at the wrong time. It was simply fate.

  Kismet, Bashir would call it.

  The sun was starting to set over the pretty gardens by the time the waiter came with a small bronze coffeepot with a long wooden handle, the dallah, that had always somehow reminded her of Aladdin’s lamp, and poured a fragrant brew. The cups were without handles. Smiling, Nicole brought the warm cup to her nose and sniffed appreciatively. The coffee had been brewed with cardamom and was dense, sugary, delicious. It set off perfectly the tiny bite-sized pieces of baklava the waiter slipped on the table. She loved the Lebanese version, made with rosewater syrup instead of honey.

  The room was dramatically lit by the intense glow of the setting sun, turning everything golden; even Sam Reston’s dark, deeply-tanned skin turned bronze. Right at this moment, he looked almost sinfully attractive. And utterly beyond reach.

  Sam put down his coffee cup, crossed his arms on the table and leaned forward, face deadly serious. Deep grooves bracketed his strong mouth and his nostrils were white and pinched, as if from some strong emotion. “Now I have something to say to you.”

  Nicole put down her cup, leaning a little forward, too. He’d done her the courtesy of listening carefully to what she had to say. Now she’d return the favor.

  Whatever he had to say wouldn’t change the situation, but he deserved a hearing. Whatever it was he wanted to say wasn’t pleasant, though. His face had taken on such a grave cast.

  “Here’s the deal. I never talk about my past. It’s no one’s goddamned business but my own. But I think there are a few things about me you need to understand. You know I talked about my brother Mike, and that though we don’t share any blood, we’re closer than most brothers?”

  Nicole nodded. The cop. The cop who was going to be driving by and deterring Creepy and Creepier.

  “There’s a third brother, Harry. He’s not in good shape right now. He was shot up pretty bad in Afghanistan. He’s working with me. I’m going to make him a partner as soon as he’s better. Right now he’s barely on his feet. That’s the three of us. The reason Harry and Mike and I are so tight is that we spent part of our growing-up years in the same foster home, run by a brutally cruel couple. We had each other’s back, always, otherwise I don’t think we’d have survived. We’ve been looking out for each other ever since.”

  He stared down at his clasped hands. They were clean, the nails short, but they looked like they’d been used a lot, and hard. There were scars and nicks and calluses, the hands of a man who, though a businessman, didn’t shy from manual labor. Completely unlike the hands of any other man she’d ever been out to dinner with.

  Nicole couldn’t help herself. She reached out, one hand hovering over his clasped ones. She hesitated for just a second, then covered his hands with her own. She wanted him to feel the human connection. He’d known hard times, too.

  His hands were warm, radiating he
at and strength.

  He spoke, looking at their joined hands.

  “My mother abandoned me in a Dumpster. Just threw me away, like garbage.” He looked up at her shocked gasp, opened his hands and sandwiched her hand between his. A wry smile lifted his mouth. “It’s okay, honey. The story has a happy ending. Eventually. I’m here, aren’t I?”

  “Yes, you are,” she murmured. He was here. And how. Huge and strong and utterly unlike any other man she’d ever met. She tried to suppress the sharp punch she’d felt when he called her “honey.” Stop that, she told herself sternly. This wasn’t going anywhere. Getting her heart involved wasn’t going to help anyone, least of all her.

  “Someone had seen her doing it and fished me out. They took me to the hospital immediately and I was put in an incubator stat. Apparently I was about a month old and seriously underweight. Hard to believe, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, it is.” Nicole looked him over. Immensely broad and tall, with hard-packed dense muscles. It was impossible to connect him with an undernourished baby. This tragic story definitely had a happy ending.

  “This woman—my mother—was a drunk and a prostitute. She was known in the area. I have no idea who my father was. I don’t think she did, either. The police tracked her down and she was tried and convicted for attempted homicide and was sentenced to ten years in jail. She served eight years, then was paroled. She went looking for me at the orphanage, spouting nonsense about wanting to atone and start over.” He rolled his eyes. “Some nutcase of a social worker believed her and they simply gave me to her. I was eight years old and I’d never seen the woman who claimed to be my mother before.”

  “Oh no,” Nicole breathed. The story might have a happy ending but it sounded like there was to be tragedy before they got there.

  “Yeah.” His hands tightened on hers. “Her name was Darlene Reston. I can’t think of her as my mother, she was just this…woman I had to live with for a few years. She drank away the welfare checks and there were drugs going on, too. One thing I do know is that she sure wasn’t buying food and milk and clothes with what the State sent her. Once I got a bad ear infection that went untreated and I was left with a weakened eardrum. I squeaked by the physical to get into the Navy but then a mortar round finished the eardrum off. I was almost deaf in one ear, had to leave the Navy on a medical discharge. I had an operation that restored some of my hearing. But I can’t dive to any depth.” He shook his head. “Can’t be a SEAL if you can’t dive.”

  Nicole had a flash of a young, skinny, vulnerable Sam, trapped in the care of a woman who drank away his food money, who wouldn’t get him medical care when he needed it.

  “There were men around, too, lots of them.” Sam’s deep voice was low and dispassionate. “Most of them were high and stayed high for days. They barely noticed me but when they did, I got the shit kicked out of me. For most of my childhood, I was badly undernourished and weak.” His mouth tightened. “The kind of kid a bully loves to kick around. Makes them feel strong. When I was around twelve, a teacher finally noticed that something was deeply wrong. So the State took me out of Darlene’s care and put me in a foster home.”

  “Thank God.” Nicole blinked the tears back. The strong, successful man in front of her was light-years away from the small, abused boy and he wouldn’t want her tears. But her heart ached.

  “Not really. The foster home wasn’t any better. Old Man Hughes and his wife took in older, unadoptable kids because they got paid more. The wife gave us watered-down canned soup and crackers bought in bulk, slapped us upside the head when the spirit took her, and locked herself in her room when her husband had his little spells of rage. He could go beserk on a dime. Anything could set him off. An unmade bed. Cracker crumbs on the table. A look, even. We learned never to say anything, ever. He hated a lot of things, but mostly he hated what he called ‘mouthy’ women and kids. He was a big, mean son of a bitch and he loved using his fists on us.”

  There was a huge boulder on Nicole’s chest, making it hard to breathe. Her battle against her tears was a losing one. He reached out once more to dry a tear against her cheek.

  How terrible life could be. She’d wept for her dying father and now she wept for a child who’d never known love, only neglect and violence. She met his impassive gaze. “Tell me something good happened. Please. Tell me they took you out of that foster home and put you in another one.”

  He shook his head. “Nope. Stayed there until I was old enough to enlist. But a couple of good things did happen. There was a nice elderly lady lived next door. Mrs. Colley. Strange old coot, but kind-hearted. She was scared to death of Old Man Hughes but when he wasn’t around, she invited me over and stuffed me full of food. I grew six inches and put on forty pounds in one year. I made sure they were forty pounds of muscle. The old man started thinking twice about using his fists on me.”

  “Good for you,” Nicole said fiercely. Sam Reston had grown up to be the kind of man no one beat up on, not without serious consequences.

  “Another good thing happened when I was twelve. My brother Harry Bolt arrived and then three months later my other brother Mike Keillor. Harry had tried to defend his baby sister and his mother against his mom’s meth-head boyfriend. The fucker—pardon my language.”

  Nicole nodded and waved the expletive away with her free hand. Fucker sounded about right for a man who hurt little girls. “Fucker beat Harry’s little sister and mom to death. Harry went wild. Put the guy in the hospital but not before he got both legs broken. He was fostered out to the Hughes. I saw Old Man Hughes smile as Harry walked through the door on crutches and I knew exactly what he was thinking. I wasn’t an easy target for his rage any more. He needed an outlet and here comes Harry, crippled, fresh meat. That night I took a knife to Old Man Hughes and I told him that if he so much as touched the new guy, I’d cut his miserable hide to ribbons, starting with his balls. I meant every word, too, and I think he knew it. By that time I was as tall as Hughes, though he had a lot of weight on me. But it wasn’t muscle, it was all gut. Harry healed and Mrs. Colley shoved as much food down his throat as he could eat and by the end of that year, he was as big as I was. Harry and I were really tight. And then Mike came. It was his eighth foster home. The three of us banded together, looked after each other and we all shipped out as soon as we could. Me to the Navy, Harry to the Army and Mike to the Marines.”

  Nicole opened her mouth to say something but he hadn’t finished. He brought her hand to his mouth and kissed it, lips warm against her cold skin. Sam’s story had chilled her to the bone.

  “Now, the reason I told you all of that is so that you can understand something. Me and my brothers came out okay because we looked after each other, no matter what. All three of us know, up close and personal, what it means when no one looks out for you. When no one cares. And we know, deep down in our bones, what it means when someone cares and does the right thing. We all have jobs where we see, daily, the effects of not caring for your kid or your wife or your parents or your friends.”

  His face suddenly sharpened, the skin over those high cheekbones tightening, eyes boring into hers.

  “So, Nicole, you will forgive me if I don’t find it a turnoff that you love your father so much. That you’re sacrificing important things to make sure he has a dignified death and you’re making sure that he’s right where he wants and needs to be. You’re doing the hard thing, the right thing, and I admire you for it. I was blown away by you the first time I saw you, but by God, it’s worse now that I know what’s behind that gorgeous face.”

  Sam took her hand and, shockingly, brought it under the table, between his legs. He folded her hand over his penis. His huge, rock-hard penis. At her touch, she could feel the blood coursing through him, turning his penis even harder, thicker.

  The feel of him beneath her hand brought a rush of blood to her own sex, which clenched involuntarily, once, twice.

  She was utterly incapable of movement, of thought.

  “Not want
you?” Sam’s voice was raspy now, as if he found it difficult to get the words out. He breathed out hard. His jaw muscles bunched and his nostrils flared. “I’ve wanted you since the first second I saw you. I couldn’t do anything about it because I was on an undercover job but I sure as hell thought about it, night and day. Christ, Nicole, I want you so much I can hardly breathe. I want you so much I can’t think. Say you’ll come back home with me. Now.”

  She couldn’t remove her hand because his big one was curled around it, keeping it over his penis. This was utterly insane. Nothing like this had ever happened to her before.

  There was no air in the room.

  No, the answer was no, of course. She had to say no. How could she go home with him, just like that? This was crazy, she’d never done anything like that in her life.

  She’d had her share of lovers but she was incredibly picky. It took several evenings out and if there was a false note, if she was uncomfortable in any way with the idea, she just said no. She was good-looking, she got asked out a lot, but then a lot of men were jerks. She’d said no a lot since puberty. There were tons of reasons to say no right now to Sam, if only she could get her brain working again to think of them. Like her hand, like her breasts and between her thighs, it was hot, melting in a sudden surge of pulsing desire.

  No, of course not, are you crazy? she said, only the words didn’t quite come out that way.

  Somehow, what came out was, “Yes.”

  Chapter 5

  Yes!

  Sam stood up abruptly, tilting his chair over. He barely heard the clatter as he reached into his pocket and pulled out a hundred-dollar bill. He threw it onto the table—it was more than enough, but even if it wasn’t, Bashir knew he’d be good for it later—and grabbed her hand.

  Nicole was looking utterly shocked at what she’d said, big blue eyes wide in dismay, that luscious mouth a shocked O.

  Sam couldn’t stop to think about that. He couldn’t think about anything, actually, except getting her into his bed. Or wherever. It didn’t have to be a bed. Against the door or the wall or on the floor or the couch would do just fine. He didn’t give a shit.