He stroked his hands down her back, tracing the length of her spine. He hadn’t come like that in years. But then, everything about Meg was different.
She turned her head, looking up at him with those big eyes of hers and he felt a punch near his heart. She looked vulnerable and he wanted to protect her. But he knew that protecting women had been something he’d never really been able to do.
He tried it before and failed miserably. It didn’t matter that his relationship with Meg was simply physical. He knew she didn’t want more from him than that.
But he’d lied to himself. He wanted more from her. And he had from the moment she’d plopped down next to him on the bench in the restaurant.
Chapter Fourteen
MEG WOKE WITH a start as Rory rolled over in the bed. She lay as still as she could so that she didn’t disturb him. A myriad of emotions swept through her. This was craziness.
She was kidding herself if she wanted to believe she could keep things light between them. She propped herself on her elbow and looked down at his face in the sliver of moonlight. He didn’t look big and tough when he was asleep. He looked vulnerable and sweet.
Even for just a few months, how was she going to act as if his job didn’t scare her?
She climbed out of bed as quietly as she could, took her robe from the hook near the door and walked through her house. She sat at the kitchen table with no lights on and tried to organize her thoughts. She folded her arms and leaned forward, putting her head on them.
Tonight had been about taking what they both needed. She didn’t regret it. Or did she?
“You okay?”
She lifted her head and turned toward him, noticing he’d put on his boxers. He was so comfortable in his skin, she thought a little enviously as he stood there. He filled the doorframe with his big muscled body.
“Yeah, just couldn’t sleep,” she said, but the lie almost stuck in her throat. She was on edge and she had no idea why. But all of a sudden, the reality of what she and Rory had done overwhelmed her.
“Liar,” he said, coming over to the table. Turning the chair next to her around, he straddled it, crossing his arms over the back and putting his chin on his arms. “Looks to me like you are having regrets. I never wanted that.”
She shook her head. “No, no regrets about tonight. I wanted you from the moment I saw you.”
“You did?”
“I did,” she admitted. “You were stretched out to spike the ball. I couldn’t breathe as I stared at your body.”
He shrugged. “I’m glad you like the way I look.”
“I do,” she said, reaching over to touch him. The light dusting of hair on his chest was a sweet abrasion against her fingers. She stroked him for a few moments before she realized what she was doing. She pulled her hand back and twisted her fingers together.
“So if it’s not sex, then what is weighing on your mind?”
She stared at him for a long minute. In the hours between midnight and dawn, the truth was right there in plain sight and she wanted to tell him everything. She’d let him get closer than any other man had been in years and yet, he was still a stranger. There was so much about him she didn’t know. And so much about her he didn’t realize.
“Stuff,” she said quietly.
“I think I understand. My job, right?”
“How’d you guess?”
“I saw you,” he admitted. “My ex-wife hated that I was a firefighter, and seeing that look in your eyes made me realize that you probably don’t like it either.”
“You’re right, I don’t. I would never have slept with you tonight if I thought I’d be staying in town. I don’t know if I’m strong enough to kiss you goodbye every morning, knowing you might not come back to me.”
“Ninety percent of what I do is boring.”
“Yeah, but that ten percent is a bitch.”
“I DON’T WANT you to be scared,” he said, pushing himself up from the chair. It was sobering to hear her say that she’d only slept with him because she planned to leave. But she’d been up-front about her plans and now she was being honest about her fear.
It was hard to be anything but honest himself. She appealed to him on so many levels.
“I know that. It’s just me,” she said. “I think I can handle this for as long as we’re together. And if I can’t, then I will let you know.”
He wanted to believe that a relationship between them could be that simple, but it wasn’t. Already, she had complicated his life. Today, when he’d come out of the fire having fought the beast and saved Tim’s life, he’d felt like he was on the way back. But then he’d spotted her, sitting behind the wheel of her car.
It had shaken something in his core, made him realize how much he wanted to have the right woman in his life to confide in. Meg was that woman, but she had different goals. And considering how much he’d resented Natalie for trying to change him, he wouldn’t dream of asking Meg to change her plans for him.
She flushed and looked down at her hands, which were twisted together on the table. He saw the chipped nails and the scrapes she’d earned refurbishing things. He realized, suddenly, that he wasn’t the only one with hidden scars. Why did she feel like it was only “safe” to get involved with him because she was leaving?
“What if you don’t win the show? What will you do?”
“Keep trying. If not this show, then maybe another one. I just know I can’t give up on my dreams.”
She was really leaving. And though she’d given him a heads-up, it was too late. He was starting to fall for her. With her big eyes, sassy attitude and incredible body, she’d entrapped him without even meaning to.
He closed his eyes. “I can’t change who I am. I quit my job once before because a woman asked me to. But it didn’t make all the problems disappear, Meg.”
“Fair enough.”
“My job’s not as dangerous as your dad’s was. I’m guessing that part of your fear must stem from that.”
“I think it does a little bit. We never knew if he’d make a routine bust or get shot and killed. His job consumed him for a long time. I understand that. Once I start working on the house, I’ll probably be the same way. But I’m not going to die redoing a house.”
“We never know where danger lurks,” he said.
She tipped her head to the side and looked at him. He had no idea what was going on in her head. “Fair enough. I just thought that by laying my cards on the table, I could control whether or not I got hurt.”
CONTROL. HE COULD count on one hand the times he’d experienced it, at least outside of the firehouse. When he was in the truck headed toward a fire, he knew that he could control and contain the beast. But in his life—well, he was the first to admit that was a lot harder.
When he’d finally decided to divorce Natalie, he’d taken back the control he’d ceded to her. He knew he’d let her manipulate his feelings of not measuring up in his father’s eyes. That was part of the reason why she’d talked him out of firefighting so easily, even though he now knew that he wasn’t really meant to do anything else.
In a way, Meg was offering him the same sort of freedom divorcing Natalie had given him. She didn’t want anything from him other than this summer, except maybe a smile from him as she walked away. Could he do that? He wasn’t a man who fell in love easily, but he knew he already cared for her.
There was so much about her that appealed to him, yet, at the same time, he knew that she would never be able to accept him as he was. She’d always be trying to mold him into what she needed him to be. And this time, he knew that quitting the fire station wasn’t an option.
“Okay. So how do you see this working?” he asked.
“I don’t know. I really didn’t think beyond telling everyone I was going after the TV show. After that, I
felt empowered, as if I could do anything I wanted . . . have anyone I wanted.”
He leaned a hip on the butcher-block table next to her. “And you wanted me?”
“I have since the moment I saw you. But then, you know that. I haven’t exactly been subtle, have I?”
“Well, I don’t always get subtle. So, you think we can date and just be friends?” he asked her. “In my experience, that’s never as uncomplicated as it seems.”
“Your experience? I don’t think I want to hear all about your sordid past.”
“It’s not that big a deal. I just meant that keeping things casual sounds easy, but it often isn’t.”
“Should we make this a one-time thing, then?”
He definitely didn’t want to. There was still so much to explore between them, in and out of bed. But it didn’t look like there’d be any more of that tonight.
He leaned down and scooped her up out of the chair. She put her arms around his shoulders and tangled her fingers in the hair at the back of his neck. He liked the way she did that. He was glad his hair was a little longer than it should be right now because it gave her something to touch. She traced a pattern from his neck to his shoulder.
“I’m not going to be satisfied with just one night,” he said.
“Me neither.”
“Well then, let’s just go with it,” he said. “We’ll know when it isn’t working anymore.”
She put her head on his shoulder and sighed, but didn’t deny it. They were both thinking the same thing. From the beginning, they’d been like fire and water, two things that couldn’t exist together.
He carried her down the hall to her bedroom, laid her in the center of the bed, then came down next to her. Reaching over to turn on the lamp on the nightstand, he then slowly opened her robe and pulled it off her, tossing it on the floor.
He took his time learning every inch of her body. He kissed the scrapes on her hands and she caressed the scars on his body. He lingered over her as if she were a fine delicacy. Now that the urgency of their first time was out of the way, he could make love to her the way he wanted to.
He kissed his way from her pretty toes all the way up the inside of her thighs, tasting her. Only when she was arching under his mouth, her hands grasping at his shoulders and her thighs closing around him did he flick his finger over her clit and push her over the edge. Then he slowly made his way up over her body.
He told himself it was just sex, but as he slid inside her and their eyes met, he knew that it was so much more. It was soul sex. The kind of sex that would sit deep inside of him for the rest of his days. He knew that, whatever happened between them, he’d never be able to forget Meg or this night.
Chapter Fifteen
RORY WOKE UP early to the alarm on his phone. He had the day off, but he always got up early to run. But waking up with Meg in his arms made him think of a totally different kind of exercise. He wanted to make love to her again. His cock stirred as he lay next to her.
But last night had felt like a temporary truce. He rubbed his hands over his eyes. Why wasn’t this easier? He was thirty-three, damn it. He should have figured out relationships by this point in his life.
He rolled over, but Meg stirred, throwing her arm over him and pulling herself closer. Unable to help himself, he wrapped his arm around her, tucking her head against his shoulder. He skimmed his hand down her naked body and rubbed at the small indentation in the small of her back right above her buttocks.
But there was no peace in this moment, even as the sunshine crept slowly into the room, lighting up all of last night’s shadows. In the cold light of day, he remembered what she’d said, that she wanted him just for sex.
His body was willing, but he was almost embarrassed to admit that his soul wasn’t. The truth was, he had stopped having affairs that were purely sexual long before he’d met Natalie. He didn’t like the way they left him feeling, as if he’d never find his place in the world.
God, he was getting maudlin. He should leave. But as he tried extricating himself, Meg woke. And then she looked up at him with those big eyes of hers that made him remember all the things he’d ever wanted.
“Leaving?”
“I think I should,” he said.
“Do you want breakfast before you go?”
The polite way she talked to him, as if he was a stranger and she hadn’t bared her soul to him the night before, made him angry.
“Not really. I like the thought of you staying in bed,” he said. He got up and walked naked to the chair where he’d left his clothes the night before. He pulled them on slowly, taking his time to let his temper cool down.
“Why?”
“Because it makes it easier for me to keep this casual. You still want that, right?”
“I think that’s for the best.”
He pulled his shirt over his head and realized he was lashing out at her. And it wasn’t just because of what they’d done last night. It was the lingering anxiety from what could have happened at the fire the day before.
“Tim almost died in the fire yesterday. He stepped on a hotspot and I had to grab him to stop him from falling through.”
She sat up, clutching the sheets to her chest. “Why didn’t you say something last night?”
“I wasn’t ready to talk about it.”
“Well, I am. Come and sit down.”
He hesitated. He hadn’t realized he needed to talk about it until this moment. But he did. He walked over and sat down on the edge of the bed and she put her hand on his back.
“What happened?”
He shrugged. “I’m not sure. We’d been checking the second floor for danger and then we got to the bedroom. J.J. had cleared it and had already called the coroner.”
“Mrs. Delany. She used to run the toy store on Main Street when I was a kid. I’m sorry she died.”
“Me, too. But smoking in bed isn’t very smart,” Rory said. He had sympathy for anyone who died in a fire, but he also thought an ounce of caution would go a long way. Unfortunately, he realized it was too late for caution with Meg. He felt like he was fanning the flames simply by sitting here and talking to her.
“What happened with Tim?”
“It was his first fire. He didn’t see the hot spot, or maybe he didn’t realize that the fire could weaken the integrity of the floor. So when he stepped on it, it opened up and I saw him falling . . . it could have easily been me.”
All the color drained from her face.
“I’m so glad it wasn’t,” she said, shifting around on the bed.
She wrapped her arms around him from behind, putting her head on his back and hugging him close to her. He felt her breasts against him, but it was the strength in her arms and the warmth of her breath on the back of his neck that stirred him.
He brought his hand up to cover hers. “That moment was everything I’d been afraid of on the job. I hadn’t been sure my instincts were still sharp.”
“But they were. And you were certainly where you needed to be. I get that you are meant to do that job,” she said. “I just don’t know if I can deal with it.”
Why couldn’t she be a different sort of woman? But he knew he wouldn’t have wanted her if she had been. “I know. I’m sorry for bringing it up.”
“I’m not sorry,” she said. “I wish I had let you talk about it last night. I’m not usually so self-absorbed.”
“Ah, Red, you weren’t last night, either,” he said, lifting her hands to his mouth and dropping a kiss on them. Then he stood. Looking down at her, he took his time so he’d never forget the way her hair curled over her shoulders or the way the sun looked on her freckled skin. Or the mix of sadness and affection in her eyes as he walked away.
MEG TOOK A shower after Rory left, but she still felt his presence in her home
. She realized she’d made a mistake bringing him home. Even though he was gone, it still felt like he was here.
Needing to get out of the house, she went next door to her sister’s place and rapped on the door.
Anne opened the door, dressed for work in a sundress and a pair of converse high-tops. Anne had her own sense of style.
“Are you working the early shift?”
“Yes. And I need to get moving if I’m going to get there on time. What’s up?”
“Nothing.”
“Ugh. That means something. Can you come to the diner with me? We can talk on the way.”
“Are you driving or walking?” Meg asked.
“Driving,” Anne said.
“Okay, let me lock up and grab my purse.”
Anne nodded and Meg went back and grabbed what she needed for the day. She’d come back for her car. They lived close enough to town that she could walk back later if she needed to.
She got in the passenger side of her sister’s VW convertible. Anne put the top down and her sunglasses on and Meg did the same. She was trying for normalcy, but every action she took seemed to underline the fact that she didn’t feel right. She’d thought last night that she’d been given the keys to the freedom she’d always craved. But this morning, she just felt lost, without the moorings that had always held her in place.
“What’s up?”
“Never mind,” she said. “I really just wanted breakfast.”
“Liar. I saw the motorcycle parked in your driveway last night. And given that Rory drives one, I suspect he spent the night,” Anne said.
“Then why’d you ask me?”
“Honey, you obviously want to talk about something. And since you changed your mind, I figured it had to be about a guy. What happened?”
“Last night, I finally gave in to the tension between us and went to Riley’s to find him.”
In The Heat 0f The Night (The O'Roarkes Duet Book 2) Page 13