This time, he didn’t hold back the groan before bringing his mouth down to claim hers. His rigid length pressed against her stomach and their lips and hands slipped against each other as they both tried to gain traction. “Molly, you better tell me to stop or I’m going to take you right here in this shower.”
“Hold that thought,” she said before opening up the glass door. She stepped out without grabbing a towel and walked over to the sink. He stared at her dripping wet body as she bent to retrieve something from the cabinet underneath. When he saw the box in her hand, he didn’t even bother to turn off the water before stepping out and striding across the tile floor to her. She barely had the foil packet opened when he lifted her up and set her on the counter. He stepped between her knees, and, as she rolled the condom on him, he prayed he didn’t lose himself right then.
She raised her lips to his and he entered her at the same time. She gasped and he held himself still, letting them both acclimate to the feel of each other. But when she gasped and rocked her hips forward, he took the invitation. He hooked his forearms under her knees, each stroke bringing him deeper and closer to her.
He could tell by the little panting sounds coming from her throat that she was on the edge and he pulled his face back, just enough to watch her as he delivered one more fulfilling thrust.
* * *
Molly was curled up against Kaleb’s side on the queen-size bed, the sheets still damp because, apparently, they didn’t like wasting time with towels. He’d carried her here after their rushed coupling on the bathroom counter. He hadn’t said anything about what had just happened between them and, while Molly had never slept with a man she wasn’t in a relationship with, she also wasn’t the kind of woman who mistook physical attraction for love.
And what had happened between her and Kaleb was pure physical attraction. Okay, so maybe the hair washing thing had been a bit intense, but only because of their mutual desire. It had been building all week and things had come to a head when they’d kissed this morning in the café. Sure, some of her raw emotions might’ve affected her better judgment and caused things to happen sooner than she was used to, but she’d been dealing with so many setbacks in her life lately, she needed to prove to herself that she was still a woman, capable of feeling something other than disappointment and doubt. She could still experience pleasure.
When she’d dropped her robe in front of Kaleb, she felt a rush of power and confidence that she hadn’t experienced in so long. All thoughts of physical inadequacy and failure floated away and she was back in control of her body.
“Thank you,” she said to him, doubting that he would ever comprehend how grateful she was in that very moment.
The muscles of his abdomen flexed as he gave off a short chuckle. “I think I should be the one thanking you. I’ve never felt so clean and yet so dirty at the same time.”
She lifted her head to face him. “Just so you know, I don’t always invite the men I’m platonically dating into the shower with me.”
“I don’t think there was anything platonic about what we just did.” He smiled and she traced a finger along his bare chest. Maybe not. But that didn’t mean that Molly could afford to go falling for someone when she had no idea what her future held. Not that she was falling for anyone. This was pure sex. It had to be. She had enough to deal with; she didn’t need to further complicate things by adding a relationship to the mix. He cupped her chin and lifted her face up to meet his gaze. “What’s wrong?”
The guy was ridiculously good at reading her emotions. So she might as well be honest with him. “I’m enjoying spending time with you, Kaleb. Even when you deprive me anything worth eating.”
The corners of his lips turned down and his jaw grew hard. “But...?”
“I know that you have your own life waiting for you when you leave here.” She put her finger on his lips when he started to speak. “And I’m still trying to figure out what I’m going to do with mine.”
“So you don’t want to make any promises while you’re going through an adjustment phase?” he said around her finger.
“Ha! It’s a bit more than just an adjustment phase, Kaleb.” She didn’t want to touch on the making promises part of his statement. Did he want her to make a promise? She had no business even wondering. “My career, my health, my goals, all of that is up in the air. There’s so much I don’t know.”
“Then why don’t you start looking for those answers?” he asked.
She flopped back onto the pillow. Of course it was just that simple for him. He had an army of assistants and attorneys and experts on speed dial, ready to advise him so he could solve everyone’s problems. “That’s what I’m trying to do. In my own way and on my own terms.”
He shifted on the bed so that he was leaning over her. He gently tugged on the sheet and then lightly drew his thumb over her exposed nipple. “For someone who likes to go so fast all the time, it sure seems to me like you’re taking your sweet time.”
She hooked a leg around his waist and rolled him onto his back. When she rose above him, she asked, “You want to see how slow I can go?”
He smiled and slid his hands up her legs, settling them on her hips. After that, they didn’t talk about speed or anything else.
Chapter Nine
“Nobody said anything about a baby shower,” Kaleb told his sister as he balanced his phone between his shoulder and his ear so he could whisk eggs. He normally would’ve put the device on speaker, but Molly was still sleeping in the other room and he didn’t want to wake her. “So you can count me out.”
“Relax, big brother,” Kylie replied. “You don’t have to come to the party tomorrow, but I need Mom to help with the decorations, so either you and Dad can go to the store to pick up baby shower gifts, or you can go with Molly. I know you stayed the night at her house because the truck is still at the docks, right where you parked it yesterday.”
His breath came out in a defeated whoosh, releasing any further argument. “Fine. But I’m only doing it because your friend Maxine has always been nice to me. I’m not doing it for you.”
“Are you doing it for her sister, who you obviously have the hots for?” Before he could deny it, Kylie began singing, “Kaleb and Molly sitting in a tree. K-I-S—”
“Oh, grow up,” Kaleb said before disconnecting the call.
“Who aren’t you doing what for?” Molly asked as she came into the kitchen, wearing a skimpy tank top and little pajama shorts. Even dressed and after three rounds of lovemaking last night, Kaleb was still aroused by her.
“My sister just volunteered us to drive into Boise and pick up gifts for Maxine’s baby shower. And I use the term volunteer loosely.”
“Together?”
“Is that a problem?” After all the togetherness they’d shared in and out of bed last night, Kaleb didn’t see how it could be. But then again, he also hadn’t been the one to deliver that lets-just-enjoy-spending-time-with-each-other speech last night. It wasn’t that he was in the market for anything serious or long-term, either, but it was definitely a blow to his male pride to think that there was a woman out there that wouldn’t consider him a good catch.
“I guess not.” She sniffed at the vegetables sautéing in the pan. “But I’ll have to stop at the military hospital on the way down the mountain to do some blood work and I know how you feel about needles.”
He settled his hand along the back of her neck and leaned in close. “I’m going to need the promise of some sort of reward to get my mind off all the needles and baby shower talk I’m going to have to endure today.”
“Maybe if you’re a good boy at the doctor’s, I’ll get you a lollipop,” she said as she pressed a kiss along his lower lip. Before he could tell her all the other things he’d rather taste, she added, “And I won’t tell the rest of your family on you when you use your work laptop in the waiting room.”
<
br /> “Please don’t remind me about my annoying relatives when I’m trying to seduce you.”
“You could better seduce me by throwing out those vegetables and adding some ham and cheese to my omelet.” She gave him a playful smack on his rear before heading down the hall to get dressed.
“It’s a frittata,” he called out.
An hour later, Kaleb didn’t know how he’d gone from being a private chef to a chauffeur, but he drew the line at folding himself into Molly’s tiny car for the entire ride to Boise. After eating breakfast, they drove back to the lake to get the truck. Despite Molly’s insistence that she knew where they were going, he typed the address for the military hospital into the navigation system, then synced the playlist from his smartphone with the truck’s radio.
“Are you ever not playing with a gadget?” she asked, tapping her fingers on the armrest.
“They’re not gadgets. They’re complex computerized systems that make our lives simpler.”
“Kaleb, you just spent an extra twenty minutes programming a bunch of stuff we don’t need for a drive that only takes half that amount of time.”
He pointed to the estimated time readout on the digital map. “It actually takes thirty minutes to get to Shadowview.”
“Not if I was driving, it wouldn’t,” she muttered.
He thought back to her trying to set a speed record on the Jet Ski yesterday. “Well, some of us would prefer to arrive at our destinations without all the blood centrifuging down to our feet because of sustained G-force acceleration.”
“While it’s a top-of-the-line truck—” she patted the leather dashboard “—I doubt even I could get us up to a whole G in this.”
“But with all those turns going down the mountain, that’s a lot of changes in velocity, which can add to the G-force.”
Molly laughed. “Now I see why Kylie calls you Brainiac.”
“You’re only now seeing that?” he asked. He put the vehicle in gear and tried to pretend that she wasn’t blatantly studying him as they drove out of the parking lot.
“Not that I’m saying I’m smarter than any of them—except maybe Kevin—but I had a lot more time to study.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because they were always busy with their after-school sports and I...well...I wasn’t.”
“You seem pretty athletic to me,” Molly suggested. He lifted a brow at her, and when her cheeks turned crimson he knew she was also thinking of how he’d carried her from the bathroom counter to the bed last night. She cleared her throat and continued. “Were you just not that into sports growing up?”
“No, I was,” he admitted. “But I was diagnosed with scoliosis when I was ten and wasn’t allowed to play most of them, unless they were noncontact and approved by my physical therapist. I was decent at swimming, but each time I had a surgery, it would set me back.”
“That must’ve been tough considering most of your family members are professional athletes.”
“I don’t mind so much now that I’m an adult, but back when I was a kid it bugged the hell out of me. Everyone got to be on the field while I was on the sidelines watching. I think it would’ve been easier if I’d been diagnosed later on, after I’d already been able to prove to people that I was just as good as my brothers. But now, none of us will ever know if I could’ve had a different career.”
“Hmm.” Molly propped her chin on her fist as she looked out the window. “If it were me, I think I’d rather not know. People say it’s better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all. But I call bull on that. It sucks to get a shot at something others can only dream about, experience a feeling that’s better than you ever could’ve imagined, know in your heart that it’s what you were made to do—and then have it ripped away from you.”
“So if you could go back in time ten years ago, you never would’ve joined the Air Force? You wouldn’t have become a pilot?”
“I just don’t know.” Her voice was soft. “I can’t see myself as being anything but that.”
“I bet you’d go back and do it all over again,” he said. “You’re too stubborn to do anything else.”
“Well, the question is totally irrelevant unless your company is currently developing the latest software for time travel,” she replied, a spark of attitude pushing the sadness out of her tone.
“How do you know we’re not?” he asked as he steered the truck into the Shadowview parking lot. Just seeing that big, red cross on the sign already had his heart hammering. Telling himself that he wasn’t the patient did little to help.
“You’re not the only one who researches stuff, Kaleb. I looked up Perfect Game Industries and found out that if it doesn’t involve crafting alternate dimensions, or shooting aliens, zombies or pirates, you can’t be bothered.”
Whoa. That didn’t exactly sound like a compliment. He waited for her to wink or chuckle or do something that would indicate that she was teasing him. Instead, she grabbed her tote bag and opened the passenger side door.
He followed her across the asphalt and toward the large automatic glass entrance. “By the way, do you know where we’re going?”
“What? You don’t already have the building blueprint downloaded on your phone?” she asked, this time with a cheeky grin.
Instead of figuring out where they needed to go, he watched her as she examined the information signs with arrows pointing out the directions. Maybe he was on edge because he hated hospitals, but something about her dismissive comment about his company wasn’t sitting well with him.
“Looks like the lab is this way,” she said, then tugged on his hand when he stood there planted in place. He allowed her to lead the way, keeping his fingers linked with hers as they followed a maze of hallways toward the bowels of the building.
They got to a set of double doors, and when they entered the large waiting room on the other side, the smell of antiseptic and blood made Kaleb’s nostrils twitch. She signed in at the desk and when she joined him on a cold plastic bench, she whispered, “You look a little pale.”
“I’m fine,” he sniffed, before shifting in his seat.
“The receptionist said it’s just some routine blood work and won’t take long. There’s a lounge area across the hall and you can wait for me over there.”
“I’m fine,” he said again, before curling and flexing each individual finger.
“You’re making me anxious with the way you’re squirming in your seat and jiggling your leg like that.”
He let out a snort. He wasn’t that bad. “I think it’d be more supportive if I stayed.”
She patted his knee. “I wasn’t asking.”
“Okay.” He stood up. “But text me if they move you to a different room or if you get some bad news or if anything goes wrong. Sometimes, they can’t find the vein and they end up poking you over and over—”
“Kaleb,” she squawked, then frantically motioned her head toward a little girl who was watching them with bulging eyes as she clung to her father’s arm.
“I’ll just be down the hall, then.” He didn’t fully exhale until he was out of the waiting room. Putting his hands in his pockets, he walked to an area that said Rehabilitation Lounge.
When he went inside, the first thing he noticed was a big-screen television set with level eight of “Rookies” playing on the screen, and a wave of pride washed through him. He wished Molly was here so he could point out that his company produced sports-related video games, as well. They were even exclusively contracted with all the major franchised teams.
A young man with a bandage wrapped around his head was dressed in Green Bay Packers pajamas and sitting on a sofa, a black wireless controller in his hand as he positioned his offensive line. His opponent was the woman wearing a robe and sitting in a wheelchair, both of her legs missing below the knees.
“Hey, man,” a g
uy sitting behind a bank of computers said to Kaleb. “Nice shirt. I had the same one when I was in junior high.”
Kaleb looked down at the silk-screened image of the Pac-Man character and the sting from Kylie’s earlier comment about him dressing like a fifteen-year-old boy festered.
“Don’t pay any attention to him,” the woman said as she blocked a virtual field goal. “He’s just mad that we got here before he did and he can’t watch The Price Is Right in HD.”
“Whatever.” The man stood up from behind the computer and Kaleb saw the cast that started at the guy’s wrist and went up and over his shoulder. “All there is to do around this place is sit in front of a screen. It’s as if they want to rot our brains and make us lazy. All this supposed technology out there and none of it is helping me get back to the front lines any quicker.”
He passed by Kaleb, taking one last look at the T-shirt before shaking his bald head.
“You ready to go?” Molly asked from the doorway as the guy with the cast walked out.
Kaleb had never been more ready. Unfortunately, that was the exact second that Hunter and Maxine’s husband, Cooper, walked in the door.
Chapter Ten
“What are you guys doing here?” her nephew asked.
Molly saw her brother-in-law’s eyes zero in on the stretchy blue bandage wrapped around her elbow and she knew the former-MP-turned-police-chief was dying to hear her answer. Her brain spun trying to come up with a plausible explanation. Was it flu shot season? Best to stick to something vague. “Just some routine stuff.”
“Captain Markham!” A corpsman chose that precise moment to come into the room holding out a sheet of paper. “You forgot the printout we downloaded off your glucose meter. We already sent the data electronically to the endocrinology department.”
She pried her fingernails out of her palm to take the offered paper.
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