by Beth Ciotta
He was still trying to sort it out when Kylie pushed up on one elbow. “This is weird.” She trailed her fingers through his chest hair. “You in my bed. Naked.”
“A little.”
“Regrets?”
“No.” He smoothed a hand down her beautiful back, cupped her tight ass and pulled her closer. “You?”
“Only the crying part.” She inched back and wiped away the last of her tears. “I need to explain.”
He thought he knew where this was going, but allowed her to lead the way.
“I don’t always cry after sex. It’s just that this was different. And not because I’ve been crushing on you since I was twelve.”
“You mean fourteen.”
She blushed. “Right. Anyway, without going into detail, because generally men don’t like to hear about past boyfriends, right?”
“Well—”
“The thing is, I thought I was wired wrong. I couldn’t seem to…no matter what the guy did, I couldn’t…” She blew out a breath. “I thought I was frigid. At least that’s what Red and Jerry said. And I assume Bobby—”
“Red Skyler?” Jack remembered him from high school. “Christ, honey, he was your first?”
She gave his shoulder a playful smack. “Someone had to be.”
“Red’s an idiot.”
“Yes, well—”
“As for those other two…” Damn, had there been only three?
“Would you please let me finish?”
“Sorry.”
“Where was I? Oh, right. My inability to have an orgasm without the aid of a shower massage or my own hand. So when you…when I…”
“Shower massage, huh?”
“Jack.”
“Sorry.” He smiled, adoring the kitten and tiger rolled into one. “Kylie, it’s not always the woman’s fault. Some men just don’t know how to push the right buttons. Other times, it’s about chemistry. Sometimes a man and woman click. Sometimes they don’t. It’s a combination of factors. Emotional, physical.”
“We click.”
“We click.” He interlaced his fingers with hers, then noticed, for the first time, a stuffed animal perched at the edge of her pillow. A giraffe wearing an Into the Wild T-shirt. A gift, no doubt from her brother, his best friend. Jack reached over and turned the animal away—prying plastic eyes to the wall. “You know, Spenser’s going to kick my ass when he hears about this.”
She actually looked worried. “Does he have to know?”
“Are you telling me I’m a one-night stand?”
“Are you saying you’d like to see me again?”
Jack held her gaze and stroked a thumb over her knuckles. He liked that she was comfortable with her body. He’d been with women who’d immediately slid under the covers or pulled on their underwear or a T-shirt after sex. Not Kylie. And the town thought she was frigid. Hell, up until tonight she’d thought she was wired wrong. What she was, Jack thought, was complex. “What I want and what’s best for you aren’t the same.”
She bristled. “Who are you to say what’s best for me?”
“Point taken, but—”
“Do you like me?”
“Very much.”
“Did you enjoy the sex?”
He smiled.
“Do you want to see me again?”
Oh, yeah. She made him feel good, grounded, happy. She was more intoxicating than a bottle of whiskey. “This could get messy, Tiger.”
“Nothing ventured, nothing gained.”
His lip twitched. “That’s Spenser talking.”
She coupled an innocent shrug with a not-so-innocent smile. “Speaking of Spenser,” she said after a glance at her alarm clock, “Into the Wild starts in ten minutes.” She gestured to the thirteen-inch television sitting on the opposite nightstand. “Did you want to watch? I guarantee every one else in Eden is tuning in.”
What he wanted to watch was Kylie squirming in ecstasy. He skimmed his fingers over her collarbone, the swell of her breast. “Do you really want your brother in the bedroom with us?”
She gasped when he pinched her nipple. “Um. No.”
“Tell me what you were dreaming about.”
She blinked.
“In the jail cell. When I woke you.”
“Oh. It’s sort of embarrassing.”
“Humor me.”
“It’s kind of kinky.”
Jack twitched back to life. “All the better.”
Her mouth curved into a shy smile. “It involved you and me and, well, handcuffs.”
He slid his hand between her legs, tested for wetness. “Who was the dominant one?”
She wiggled against his probing fingers, moaned. “You.”
Hard as hell, Jack trapped her wrists, hauled her arms over her head and rolled on top in one fluid move. “Say no more.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
“WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU babbling about, Sal?” Carmine peered up at his doctor through squinted, blurry eyes.
Not one to be intimidated, Dr. Salvatore Aversi leaned closer. “Your cholesterol is through the roof. What the hell have you been eating?”
What the fuck did he think? The normal stuff. Carmine tried to adjust his vision. His limbs felt heavy, his mouth dry. “Where am I?”
“The hospital.” Aversi straightened. “You had a heart attack, Carmine.”
At first the words didn’t register. He’d been in and out of the emergency room three times over the past two weeks. Panic attacks, they’d said. Brought on by stress, Aversi verified. To which Dr. Bennett had added, guilty conscience.
But then he noted the IV sticking in his arm. The monitor to his right blipping with his fucking pulse.
A heart attack.
Instead of scared, he felt vindicated. “Told you I was dying.”
“You’re not dead yet,” Aversi said, “but this is a warning.” He folded his arms over his barreled chest. “We were able to nip this one through reperfusion.”
“More medical mumbo-jumbo,” Carmine complained.
“Reperfusion is the process of opening the blocked artery and restoring blood flow to the heart muscle.”
“So I’m fixed for good?”
“Fixed for now. You’ll have to go on medication, alter your diet, exercise.”
“Fine.” Not that he thought it would do any good. Death was knockin’ at his door. “You gotta make things right before it’s too late.”
“When can I spring this joint? I’ve got a flight to catch.”
“You missed your flight,” said Aversi. “And I’m restricting air travel for at least two weeks.”
“Are you fucking oobatz?” Carmine struggled to sit up.
Aversi pressed him back against the bed. “Calm down. Stress only—”
“Don’t lecture me about stress. This trip is about alleviating goddamned stress.”
“You’ll have to find another way—”
“Where’s the phone? I need to call Buddah.”
“Buddah and Turk are waiting in the hall. I had to sedate the young woman.”
Dixie.
Carmine remembered now. He’d put his wife and kids on a plane to Florida, promising to join them at Disney at week’s end. Then he’d met up with Dixie two terminals down. He’d given last-minute instructions to his nephew and consigliere, cautioning them to handle business as usual without any mention of Carmine’s real reason for traveling. “I’m in Eden because of Bada-Bling! That’s it, that’s all. Capiche?”
Meanwhile, he’d obsessed on what he’d done to his brother seven years earlier and what he had to do now. He’d clutched his chest.
Heart attack.
“Send them in.”
Knowing it was futile to argue, Aversi spun off.
Carmine collected his sluggish thoughts, massaged his tight chest. He focused intently on the worried faces of his two most trusted men as they eased into the hospital room. Time was of the essence. “You gotta ma
ke this right.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
KYLIE KEPT EXPECTING to wake up from a dream. So far her evening with Jack had been too good, too perfect to be true. He’d even brought one of her fantasies to life. Granted, not in a jail cell, but having her wrists bound and being at Jack’s mercy while he did racy things to her body was the part she cared about most. The part that shocked and thrilled. Bonus, he hadn’t been quick about it. He’d taken his time, driven her insane, the anticipation making the orgasms so intense, at one point she was certain she’d died and gone to heaven.
Oh, yeah. Jack knew how to push her buttons and then some.
Even showering together had been fun and sensual. Bobby had lived with her for almost a year, that is whenever he wasn’t out of town on assignment, and she’d never been tempted to share the bathroom with him in any way. With Jack, it felt natural.
Since he’d informed her he’d be spending the night (Oh, yeah. She was still floating from that news), and since it was only 8:00 p.m., they’d opted for comfy clothes, dinner in and a movie from Kylie’s DVD collection.
At his request, she’d dressed in her striped boxer shorts (she still couldn’t believe he thought they were hot) and, of her own choosing, a baby-doll T-shirt featuring a dragon. As for Jack, it turned out he kept a duffel in the back of his SUV stuffed with various emergency supplies—including spare clothes. He’d changed into sweats and a faded blue NYPD T-shirt. She’d called him super-sexy, to which he’d replied, “You’re nuts.” But he’d tempered that observation with a warm smile.
Unlike most of the people in town, when it came to Kylie’s likes and dislikes, Jack didn’t make her feel like an oddball. He appreciated new world music and martial arts films. He was a big fan of Asian food and even liked green tea. When she’d mentioned that Wong’s delivered, he’d placed an order, impressing her when he’d pronounced the entries and appetizers with the ease of someone who knew the language. When she’d asked about that, he’d said he’d spent a lot of time in Chinatown. She’d been full of questions about the people and the culture. His answers had transported her to another world. If she never got to Asia, she’d definitely make it to Chinatown in Manhattan.
That’s if she could conquer her new fear of heights enough to get on a plane.
Sigh.
Forty minutes later, they sat on her futon drinking wine and eating Chinese takeout. Her coffee table was lined with several cardboard cartons filled with delicious-smelling Asian cuisine. Some new-to-her dishes, some old favorites. She watched as Jack expertly manipulated shrimp lo mein with chopsticks, marveling how a Midwestern boy had grown into a worldly man. No wonder he and Spenser enjoyed a lifelong friendship. Two adventurous souls with old-fashioned values.
Kylie nibbled at a bamboo shoot. “I bet you’d try zongzi. Or chimaki, the Japanese version.”
“I’ve had zongzi and chimaki.”
She furrowed her brow and sampled General Tso’s Chicken. “They have Japanese restaurants in Chinatown?”
“There are more than two hundred restaurants in Chinatown, hon. Chinese, Cantonese, Japanese, Thai, Vietnamese, Korean…”
“Wow. So, did you like it?”
“Zongzi?” He shrugged. “Kind of bland.”
“Oh.” Not exactly what she wanted to hear about one of her dream foods. “So, tell me more about your work with the NYPD. I know you started in the 5th Precinct, which includes Chinatown and Little Italy and SoHo—”
“Bits of SoHo.”
Another place she’d like to see, after hearing Jack describe it. A popular artsy neighborhood, populated with trendy boutiques and sidewalk vendors. “But then you said you transferred to a couple of other precincts. Because?”
“Various reasons. Promotions. Opportunities. Challenges.”
He’d worked his way up from patrol officer to detective. Homicide detective. When Spenser had first told her she’d been in awe, thinking of all the good he did. Now she could only think about the bad he saw. “I can’t imagine the crime you battled. The things you’ve seen.”
“Good.”
Kylie heard an awful lot of tension in that one word. She allowed a moment to pass, sipping her wine while she garnered her courage. Something told her this subject was off limits, but she was dying to know. “Faye said that Kerri said that Deputy Ziffel said you burned out on big crime.”
“That’s the short of it.” Jack topped off her wine, then refilled his own glass.
“Want to talk about it?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t want that stuff in your head.”
“The kind of stuff they show on CSI and Omertà?”
Jack met her gaze and held it. “There’s a big difference between fiction and reality, Kylie.”
She fidgeted. “I know that.”
“Tell me about your dream trip.”
The change of subject jolted her, but she decided to roll with it. She’d get to the bottom of Jack’s burnout at some point. As long as she sensed suffering, she’d want to soothe it.
“You’re a caretaker, not a risk-taker.”
Faye’s words still stung. They made Kylie feel bland, like zongzi. She shrugged off the hurt and drizzled duck sauce on a spring roll. She broached the cursed trip of her dreams. “Not much to tell. I fell in love with all things Asian—” she gestured to her home decor “—around the time I fell for you.”
“So you were twelve,” he teased.
“Fourteen,” she lied. “One time, okay a few times, I followed you and Spenser to karate class and peeked in.”
“Spense and I were in and out of martial arts when we were sixteen. A brief fascination with Bruce Lee.” His lip twitched. “You would’ve been twelve.”
She blushed. “The point is, I got sucked in by the grace and discipline of the art.” And the way Jack had looked kicking butt. “I started reading everything I could find on the Orient. Something about their culture, their spiritualism, called to me. I decided I was going to experience it for myself. I wanted to spend a month or two backpacking through Japan and China. Somewhere along the way, I started thinking of it as my dream trip. It wasn’t until this past week that I realized it truly is a dream.”
“Why’s that?”
“It’s a long story.”
“We’ve got all night.” Jack set aside his food and leaned back against the futon. His earnest gaze was unnerving.
She abandoned her spring roll and sipped more wine. “All right. Here’s the short of it.”
Jack smiled and her insides fluttered.
Dang.
She cleared her throat. “I actually had the opportunity to visit Japan as part of an exchange student program my junior year in high school. I was pumped. I had my parents’ blessings. Actually, I think Dad was happy to get me out of his hair for several months.”
“I don’t know about that, Tiger.”
“I do.” She’d been a nuisance, always hanging around the store. Always trying to impress him with her shoe smarts. “Anyway, I bailed.”
“Why?”
“That’s the year Grandpa McGraw was diagnosed with cancer. I couldn’t go. I just…I couldn’t.”
Jack nodded. “Okay. I’ve got the time reference now. Couldn’t have been easy to watch Wilbur fade like that.”
“It wasn’t. But, I loved him and my family was hurting, so…I needed to be here, not there.”
Jack reached over and squeezed her hand.
Kylie soaked in his kindness and shut out the past. “Fast-forward to several years later. I was determined to take my dream trip. It was a personal goal, something I kept close to my heart and under my hat. I guess I thought blabbing about it would somehow make it less special. Or maybe I thought people would laugh and chalk it up to another one of my eccentricities. I don’t know. Anyway, I worked hard, skimped and saved and was just a few hundred shy of my goal fund when I learned Grandma McGraw was close to financial ruin. Strike that. She’d hit th
e skids.”
Jack frowned. “Spenser didn’t say anything about that. He’s never said anything about your dream trip, either. I understand about not sharing your plans with all of Eden, Kylie, but why not your brother?”
“It would have meant him coming home for two months to run McGraw’s. I didn’t want to interfere with his career. First, he was up-and-coming, then he was the star of a hit cable show. The timing never seemed right. Although I admit, I thought he’d burn out at some point and come home to rejuvenate. Then I’d go.” She snorted. “Spenser’s proving himself tireless.”
“You could always hire someone to run the store in your absence. I can’t see Spense having a problem with that.”
“I have a problem with that.”
“Ah.”
“As for Grandma’s crisis, Spenser doesn’t know about that, either. And you can’t tell him.” Kylie held out her little finger. “Pinkie swear.”
Jack rolled his eyes, but he crooked his pinkie around hers and shook.
Kylie spilled the beans about her grandma’s depression and her lethal addiction to the shopping network.
“Christ.”
“Her pride was at stake, Jack. I couldn’t go to Mom or Spenser. I promised her I wouldn’t.”
“You used your dream trip fund to pay off her debts.”
She shrugged. “It’s only money.”
“But you still wanted to tour Asia. So you started from scratch. Saved again.”
“It’s not that hard. You just have to be frugal.”
“Hence the thrifty trailer in the middle of nowhere, the sparse furnishings. You’re the most unmaterialistic woman I’ve ever known.”
Kylie shrugged. “It’s the quality of life that matters. A fancy home and lots of stuff won’t make you happy if you’re not happy on the inside.”
“Are you happy?”
“Right now?” She grinned up at him. “I’m delirious.”
He smoothed a thumb over her cheek. “I meant in general.”
She glanced away. “I’m restless. I don’t know what it is, Jack. But ever since my birthday…I guess I’m not where I wanted to be at thirty-two.”
“Asia?”
That. And married with children. The former seemed the safer subject. She quirked a self-conscious smile. “I almost had enough for the trip, but I splurged on the renovations to McGraw’s. Faye said it’s because my priorities have shifted. She said deep down, the trip’s lost its appeal. She intimated I’ve lost my nerve. Said I’d rather run the store and look after Grandma and Mom. She said I’m a caretaker, not a risk-taker. Which really bugs me. If embracing the new means being a bossy Mother Hen obsessed with all work and no play and ending up an old maid, then I’m totally against it.”