“Wait.” I slipped into the seat and covered his hand with mine. “I want to be very clear about something. I’m only in this car because”--I swallowed hard--“tonight was the best date of my life.”
A smile flirted with his lips. “Grace…”
I shook my head. “I’m not finished, Jamie.” I pushed away the nagging doubts about him and concentrated on the minutes before he’d informed me of his deception. “We’re not square yet, and I have no intention of making a habit of taking my clothes off for the Sheperd boys. In short, this evening will remain one of those suitable for the Cartoon Network, a rated-G kind of night.” I’d drank enough wine to be able to find my compassion, but not so much I was ready to fall into bed with him. “Just saying.”
“Okay.”
I nodded twice, two quick stutters of my head. “Was that your house?”
“No. It’s his.”
Tucking my legs into the floorboard, I slammed the door to Blane’s car shut and said, “I wanna see where you live.”
He flipped the key backward, opened his door, and walked around to open mine. “I live above the grocery store.” Since it was only half a block down from me, there was no need to move the car to another spot
“Oh.”
My heels clicked on the concrete and the echo bounced off the walls of the building as we made our way around the side into an alley to a set of stairs attached to the brick exterior.
Before he opened the door, he turned to me on my step, three below the landing. “I’m kind of a slob.”
I shrugged. “I still have packing boxes stacked in my living room. I won’t judge.”
Lightening split the sky into three pieces, and right behind it thunder roared, shaking the ground close enough to hurry me off the metal staircase and in behind him.
He hadn’t lied. Sty would have been a generous description. Clothes in a pile occupied two-thirds of his couch, pizza boxes formed a tower on his countertop, and beer bottles littered every table. “You’re a slob.”
“I thought you weren’t going to judge.”
“I’m not judging. I’m merely agreeing with your earlier assessment.”
He smiled and gathered an armful of laundry to toss into what I assumed was a bedroom. I ignored him as he cleared away the trash and instead sank into a well-worn, uber comfy recliner.
“TV on,” he said and the ridiculously large screen, probably seventy inches of television hanging on the wall in front of me, came to life.
“Impressive. If you can get the refrigerator to bring me a beer, that would knock me right out of my shoes.”
He smiled and went off to the galley kitchen to fetch drinks. I nosed around his table. A girl could learn a lot about a man by what he kept within easy reach of his favorite sitting spot. An iPad, a notebook with a scribbled top page, my address, my phone number, and a copy of the police file on Gabrielle Quinn. Well, I already knew my vital stats, so the exposed papers didn’t interest me, but I wanted to see what notes he’d jotted into a private file he kept on my client.
“You, my friend, have very girlie handwriting.” I took a big swig of the beer he handed me and traced a finger over the swirling script in the margins of the official police report open in my lap. “Did you work on this case?”
He nodded and sat in the chair beside the table next to mine. “The place was too clean. I think that’s what bothered me the most about it. Not that there weren’t toys laying about and dirty laundry in the hamper, but no dust, no footprints on the floor, or smudges on anything at all.”
“You think she killed her kid, then gave the place a royal scrubbing?” I scanned down farther. “And hid the murder weapon?”
“How would you explain it?”
“Maybe the house isn’t the crime scene. Maybe she was killed somewhere else.”
Straws. I’d begun grasping at them as a lifeline for anything I couldn’t explain since I took the case. I didn’t see a reason to stop now.
“Then the killer brought her home and tucked her in?”
Okay. His argument had merit. Not one I could refute in that moment. I closed the file and grabbed the one marked confidential underneath it. Before I could open it, he snatched it away.
“Did you come here to snoop through my stuff?”
I shrugged. “Maybe.” I nodded toward the folder he tucked under his arm. “What’s that one?”
“It’s an open investigation.”
“Hmm. Someone need a lawyer?”
“Taking up ambulance chasing?” But he said it with a grin.
“I don’t see any swirling lights. Come on. What is it?”
He shook his head and tucked the file under his sofa cushion, then plopped down on top of it. “I can’t talk about it, Grace.”
“So a relationship with you is all secrets and lies. Good to know.” I cocked one eyebrow and stared at him as I fought to hang on to the anger dissipating in the face of his beauty.
He shook his head, rose to his full height, then crouched in front of me, one hand on each arm of the chair. “No. A relationship with me will be whatever you want it to be.”
I leaned back to escape the intoxicating scent of his cologne, the sincerity in his gaze. My anger dissolved to a puddle of confusion and disappointment. “How would I ever know it’s you and not him?”
His mouth twisted from one side to the other. “We could work out a secret code that only we know so you’ll never be confused again.”
I shook my head. “And you could tell him anytime you want or not use it when you’re pretending to be him.”
“I’ll get a tattoo.” At my frown he took my hand in his, kissed my knuckles, then continued holding it. “I won’t make that mistake a second time.” Oh, those eyes. Jamie had a depth in his missing from Blane’s. He gazed at me with longing, desire, sincerity, and hope all mingling together as he spoke. Like a sappy teenager lost in a world of poetry and romance, I imagined I saw his soul reflected in his eyes.
I shook it off and clicked my tongue against my teeth. “Too little, too late, lover boy. You should have broken the date for him, then showed up and asked me out as yourself.”
He nodded and stood, raked both hands through his hair before clasping them at the back of his neck. “I think you’re lying to both of us.” He eyed me up and down. “You wouldn’t be here if you weren’t attracted to me and didn’t want to give me another chance.”
At this rate, my eyes would see more of the inside of my head than the world outside it. “You’re easy to be attracted to. My sister’s been singing your praises like you pay her to do it. You have a pretty face, a nice smile, an accent that inspires swooning, and you get to carry a gun. That’s hot, but having men take advantage of my trusting nature is on my no-no list. Sorry. Doesn’t matter if you’re a Burberry model with a heart as big as the moon and eyes I could drown in, I’m not the chick who’s going to be making you breakfast in the morning.” As an afterthought, I added, “Or any morning.”
He nodded, the hint of a new smile playing with the corners of his lips. “Okay. I’ll make breakfast.”
“I think you might not have taken that in the manner to which I intended.” I hid a half-sigh behind a chug of beer.
He sobered and turned away. “So, you’re looking for that forever guy, the one who quotes you poetry and can’t stand sleeping without you, wakes up with a smile because you’re there, and hangs on every word you say, even if it’s ridiculous, simply because you said it?” He turned back before I could respond. “I’m that man, Grace.”
I didn’t want to be drawn in and should have walked into my apartment, ignored his moping, and shut the door. Instead, I sat there in his space, ready to fall at his feet over some lovely words spoken in perfect Queen’s English. I had no shield or cape to protect myself from the magic in his sentences. I called on whatever wits I had left. “You secretly have a stash of romance novels around here, don’t you?”
&nb
sp; He watched me, mouth open, eyes wide, as I brushed past him to the bookshelf. “You know. Half naked cover models, perfect sentiments touted by some hard-bodied hero designed by the writer to convince women that the perfect man is out there, somewhere, waiting for her. I mean, if it can happen in two hundred pages, despite the slight imperfections of said hero and seemingly insurmountable problems stacked against the couple, then by God, that man must exist for one and for all.” Shakespeare, Poe, Asimov, a Bronte collection. Mark Twain. Not a single shirtless male model on any cover.
I spun around and faced him. “Where they at?”
“I don’t own romance novels.”
“Really? Because no real guy talks like you do, and I know somewhere a woman writer is calling her attorney over your plagiarism.”
He chuckled. “Well, Miss Big-time-I-never-lose-a-case lawyer, I would have to write and print it for it to be plagiarism. Where’d you go to school again?”
My smile slipped, and I couldn’t stop the words before they fell out of my mouth. “Why did you have to lie to me?” I didn’t fight the longing in my voice, the regrettable whisper that heightened the emotion behind the statement.
When he closed the distance between us, I didn’t pull away or move as he brushed the hair back from my forehead. “I would sell my soul to take it back.”
He lowered his gaze, fixed it on my mouth, and sucked in a sharp breath when I licked my lips. My eyelids fluttered shut. Anticipation warred with apprehension in my belly. When his lips touched mine, I pushed all thought away and sank into the moment, plunged my fingers through his silky hair, and lost myself in the caress of his tongue against mine. He tasted like the finest whiskey soaked in maple syrup, and I let all sense of right and wrong fall away. My heart did a slow roll while my stomach fluttered. I wrapped one hand around his neck and laced my other into his.
Tugging me closer, he deepened the kiss while clutching the fabric of my dress in his fist, pulling it tighter, stealing any breath I didn’t already share with him. Somehow, my fingers tangled in the silk of his hair and I held on, afraid the kiss would end, more afraid I wouldn’t be able to stop it.
After a moment of passion-fueled insanity, I opened my eyes, broke the contact, slid my hands down to his chest, and pulled my lips between my teeth, savoring the taste and sensation of his kiss still tingling there. “I need to go, Jamie. It’s wrong to be here like this and know that nothing is ever going to work out between us.”
“But it could. We just have to give it a chance.” I had to be a fool to resist everything he had going on, but I didn’t have a choice. The hurt from this heartbreak would cripple me. I shook my head, took three steps backward into the bookshelf. “I can’t. I’ll never be able to trust you.”
He shoved his hands into his pockets and looked down at me. “Friends, at least?”
Oh, how I wished I had the strength to keep my hands off him. I couldn’t promise to be his friend, since he posed such a worthy temptation, nor could I speak the words that would end our association. Unable to manage enough breath to accomplish speech, I shook my head.
I couldn’t look at him for another moment and turned and walked to the door. Every snap of my heels against his scarred linoleum sounded with a purpose.
Before I could give the knob a life-saving twist, he caught my elbow and propelled me into his arms. “If I only have this one minute, I’m not going to let it pass by.”
His kiss seared my insides. My knees liquefied and I sagged against him, my hands gripping his biceps, clinging to his body as though I had a choice. His tongue traced the line of my lips, urging them apart, slipping between to dance with mine. And I was lost.
He cradled me, then increased the pressure, melded my body to his in a way that hid none of the urgency behind the kiss. No amount of resistance I could summon would be powerful enough to get me out the door, to the sidewalk, and on my way home when he pulled my bottom lip between his teeth.
Instead of coming on full-force, he backed off enough to leave me craving more--more of his taste, his touch--I was ready to beg for it. His gentle kiss captivated my senses, held me a willing prisoner, but when he went all in, my world lit up in a shower of skyrockets and star bursts. He pressed my hips against his, our hearts aligned, leaving no space between our bodies as he continued to tease me with his tongue, pulling it back when I wanted more.
As he trailed his mouth along my cheek down to my throat, I tilted my head, denying him nothing, ready to give every part of myself to him in any way he asked.
“Tomorrow, Grace. Tomorrow we can start not being friends. Not tonight.” He nipped at my earlobe as his whisper heated every spot below it. “Stay with me, tonight.”
Without a sound other than the harsh puffs of my breath, I loosened his tie, slipped it free of his collar, then worked the buttons of his shirt, one by one, scraping my pinky nail along the bare skin underneath. I looked up, blinded for a minute by the intensity of his gaze. “Tomorrow, I’m going to chalk this up to being drunk.”
“You didn’t drink that much.”
“But I’m going to tell myself and anyone else who asks about my goofy smile that I did.”
The shiny white of his teeth gleamed at me through his grin. “Deal.”
My fingers trailed over his chest as I pushed the shirt off his shoulders. The muscle definition in his stomach took my breath away and I faltered. He tugged me in and closed his eyes as I swirled my tongue in the hollow of his throat.
Ignoring the nagging thoughts of all my past mistakes--well, not all, but the men I’d fallen into bed with without a second thought--I went into full-on attack mode. I walked him backward to the chair, nudged him down without breaking contact with his lips, then hiked up my skirt and straddled his lap. The low timber of his moan as I ground us together spurred me on. I inhaled a sharp gasp and wrapped my legs around his waist as he carried me into his bedroom.
With one arm at my waist, he used the other to clear the bed of the laundry he’d tossed in earlier, then gently lowered me to the mattress. Stretched out beside me and leaning on one elbow, he ran his finger along my jaw. I could only stare up at him, mesmerized by his gaze, entranced by his touch, enthralled by the electricity sparking in the air around us.
While more desperate than ever to feel his skin against mine, I also felt safe, wrapped in our own bubble of passion and desire. There was nothing frenzied or desperate in his moves. Every practiced dip of his head, every slow glide of his hand, burned into me, and emotions I’d never experienced slicked over me, pulling me deeper and deeper into him.
“I want to be man enough to give you the choice to walk away, but I’m afraid if I do, you’ll take it and it will break me.”
I rose up on my elbows to lay a kiss over his heart. His breath caught, and he sucked in a quick gasp. I looked up at him. “Do you want me to leave?”
He shook his head, a ghost of a smile on his lips.
I quivered at the thought of those lips on my skin.
“No.”
“I don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow, but tonight, I want you. This.” In emphasis, I wrapped my fingers around the back of his neck, pressured his head down, and captured whatever words he’d been about to say with my mouth.
My eyelids fluttered shut, and I gave into a world of sensation coursing through my veins. While I wanted more skin-to-skin contact, and did everything I could think of to encourage it, he kept our interlude in PG-13 land. I wanted to taste every inch of him, feel whatever he could give. He left his hand resting on the curve of my hip. I shifted closer, a slow move of my body against his, then trailed my fingers up and down his smooth skin, hoping he would inch his upward to my aching breasts or down and inward.
When he changed the fiery heat of the kiss to a sweet warmth, I pulled back. “Jamie? Is everything okay?”
He shook his head, sat up with his back to me.
“I can’t make love with you while you’re m
arked by another man. My brother, for God’s sake.”
I bit back a retort. The hickeys hadn’t magically appeared. They’d been there all night, and he hadn’t seemed to care. What happened to breaking him if I left? Another lie. This one to get me into bed? Shamefully, I didn’t care. He could have told me he was king of America or any other huge impossible lie, and I wouldn’t have been able to summon an emotion strong enough to overpower the lust.
Every awakened nerve and live-wired cell in my body screamed for him to end the ache between my legs, to shut up and take what I wanted to give him. Instead, he ran his hands through his hair, then brought them down to his sides.
I closed my eyes, willed my heart to slow and my brain to resume its normal function. It was impossible to formulate an answer that didn’t involve begging him to ignore the bites Blane left as evidence makeup still wouldn’t cover.
Heat crept into my cheeks, and I hid behind my hands. “I should go.” I scooted off the other edge of the bed and stood, smoothing the fabric of my dress with fingers shaking from my own embarrassment.
With the slightest shake of his head, he looked away. “I don’t want that either.”
“You have to tell me what you want, Jamie, because I don’t know what to do.” I walked around to his side and sat on the mattress next to him. He continued staring at the wall in front of us. “I can’t help what’s already happened.”
“Do you want him?”
“I want the guy who quoted poetry and who wants to know what I wish when I blow out my birthday candles. I want the guy who sent me a mirror so I could see how beautiful I am.”
“But you wanted it to be him.”
Oh, God. “No, Jamie. I thought it was him because you led me down that road by lying about who you were by faking his accent and wearing his clothes and cologne and driving his car. I was disappointed when I found out you lied to me, but only because you lied to me, not because it was you.”
Still he stared at whatever crack or line he’d found more interesting than me. Anger, maybe at being ignored or at being duped, then blamed for it, pulsed through my veins and ate away any leftover lust.
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