In Protective Custody

by Beth Cornelison

  It was crazy. Just a brief touch sent him through the roof. He had to get a grip.

  With shaky hands, she started picking up the cards. Careful not to bump her hands, he helped gather the deck again.

  “How about poker? Do real men play poker?” Laura tucked an errant wisp of her hair behind one ear.

  “This one does. Five card draw?”

  When she nodded, her blond curls caught the dim glow from the fireplace and shone like spun gold. His fingers itched to plow through the soft, unruly waves and simply lose himself in silky tresses.

  “A nickel per toothpick?” she asked.

  “Make it a dime.”

  “Whoo-hoo. Last of the big spenders.” She flashed him a teasing grin as she got up and brought back the box of toothpicks from the kitchen. The impact of that coy smile spun through him like a twister through a trailer park. It devastated his control.

  Taking several seconds to cool his jets before he launched himself at her, he shuffled the cards. “So where’d you learn to play poker?”

  “Mr. Powell taught me.”

  “Who’s Mr. Powell?” Max dealt five cards to each of them and arranged his cards in his hand.

  She leaned sideways against the back of the sofa, so that she faced him, and tucked one leg beneath her. “One of my foster dads. My first foster dad.”

  “Mmm,” he hummed in acknowledgment. He studied his cards a moment. “So how long were you at the Powells’?”

  Her eyebrows snapped together in a frown. “Why?”

  It amazed him how prickly she became whenever he inquired about her personal life, her past.

  With a shrug that belied his curiosity over her wariness and distance, he took two toothpicks and put them on the couch between them. “Dunno. Just making conversation. Ante up.”

  “Well, pick another topic. I don’t like talking about my past.”

  So I noticed.

  Shadows stole across her face, and he wondered what had happened that was so difficult for her to discuss. Since he was no stranger to painful secrets himself, however, he didn’t press her to open up.

  She raised him by one toothpick, and he raised her another two toothpicks.

  “What do you want to talk about then?” He peered up from his cards and watched her face as she studied her own hand. She pouted, bit her bottom lip, sighed. He read her expressions like a book. Nothing. She had nothing. If only he could solve all the mysteries surrounding her as easily as he could guess the cards in her hand.

  “Well, you could tell me about your ex-wife. Why did you get divorced?” The tilt of her head and subtle lift of her brow said she was more interested in making a point about some topics being too personal, too taboo, than in hearing about his failed marriage. She dropped another toothpick on the couch from her pile. “Call.”

  He grunted and laid down two cards. “Touché. Whatcha say we just play cards without any conversation?”

  “Fine by me. Give me one.” She grinned smugly as she laid down one card, and he dealt her a new one.

  He looked at his new cards and bet two more toothpicks.

  Laura studied her hand long and hard without speaking, her face growing darker and more serious.

  “Well?” he prodded.

  “Call.” She put her two toothpicks out on the cushion and laid down her hand. “I have nothing.”

  “Full house,” he said and chuckled. He scooped up the toothpicks and began shuffling the cards again.

  “I was the one who found him.”

  He glanced up at her when she spoke, and seeing the distant, stormy look on her face, his hands stilled on the deck of cards.

  “Found who?”

  “Mr. Powell,” she whispered then grew eerily quiet. The faraway look in her eyes told him her thoughts were back at the Powells’ foster home.

  She shivered and blinked then glanced up at him. “He’d had a stroke in the backyard while mowing the grass. I found him lying on the lawn when I went out to play on the swing set. He was alive but unable to move.”

  “Ah, sweetheart,” he crooned gently. His heart turned over, and he reached for her trembling hands.

  She jerked them away from his touch and launched herself from the couch. Wrapping her arms around herself as if to ward off a sudden chill, she paced to the far side of the room—away from him.

  Distance. Physical distance to match the emotional distance she kept between herself and him. She’d pulled away from the comfort he offered before. Thinking back, he saw the pattern.

  No one waiting at home for her. No one to worry about her. Her dry wit deflecting questions about herself. Topical conversations instead of getting personal.

  Even after they’d kissed, she’d shown little reaction, as if the kiss hadn’t moved her at all. Yet when she looked at Elmer, her face always filled with a glow. A glow she turned off when she faced him. With Max, she remained remote.

  Emotional and physical isolation. Apparently she kept everyone at arm’s length. Except Elmer. And what threat was a baby? Babies gave unconditional love.

  Her remoteness twisted inside him. He hated the idea of this caring, beautiful woman keeping herself isolated. She deserved more. She deserved loved ones surrounding her and affection heaped on her.

  “Did he live?” he asked, going back to the topic at hand. Mr. Powell. He was almost afraid to ask. With the loss of her mother and father, the death of her friend’s baby brother, she’d had so much to deal with at an early age. Another death would have been adding insult to injury.

  She nodded. “But I heard he died a couple months after that.”

  “You heard?”

  She drew a slow deep breath. “Right after his stroke, all of us foster kids were sent to new homes. Mrs. Powell couldn’t take care of us and tend to an invalid husband.”

  He wanted to go to her, put his arms around her, soothe the demons he saw haunting her eyes. But he knew his comfort would be rejected. Again. So he waited, listened. She was beginning to open up to him, and he didn’t want to discourage her in any way.

  “I hated leaving the Powells. They’d been so good to me, helping me come to grips with my mother’s death.” She looked up and gave him a weak, sad smile. “Teaching me to play poker.”

  The grief in her expression knotted his gut. He knew about loss and the toll it took. He understood loneliness.

  He wished she’d allow him to shoulder some of the weight burdening her. She seemed so fragile at the moment that he half expected her to crumble under the load. Yet she held her back stiff and soldiered on. She clearly found her strength in nothing more than determination and stubbornness.

  “Losing the Powells hurt almost as much as losing my mother.” Her voice was little more than a hoarse whisper, her gaze still removed, remote. “That was the first of many moves to come. I figured out pretty quick that I couldn’t count on staying in any one place for long.”

  And that the best way not to get hurt was not to get too attached, he finished silently.

  Of course. Why hadn’t he realized it sooner? That had to be the reason she held herself apart, had no close relationships even today. Her response to him was self-protection, learned after repeated disappointments, numerous losses.

  At least through the hell his own life had been, he’d always had someone there. The entire community had rallied around his family when his father was killed in the accident on the offshore oil rig where he worked. Jennifer had shared his grief when his mother had died of cancer. Emily had supported him and listened to him when he’d gotten his divorce. He’d been fortunate to have loved ones to count on.

  But whom had Laura had? No one, it seemed. He absorbed her loneliness deep in his own soul, a tight, wrenching fist that choked the breath from him.

  “The Rodgers were just a spur-of-the-moment, temporary place to stick me when Mr. Powell got sick. Three weeks later it was the Hamptons, then the Jawoliskis for two months, until they decided to drop out of the program. I stayed at the Greenber
gs’ for three years, though. I hated the Greenbergs. They ran their house like a concentration camp, always yelling at us kids and—” She sighed and closed her eyes, dropped her chin to her chest.

  He thought for a minute that she’d finally given in to the tears he heard in her voice. Max couldn’t move, didn’t know how to respond, how to help.

  And he wanted to help her. His deepest, most basic instinct screamed for him to do something to fix things for her, to make things right, to take care of her. But his help was unwelcome. She’d made that clear.

  Shaking her head, she raised a weary but dry-eyed gaze to him. “I shouldn’t be dumping all this on you. I’m sorry.”

  He held her gaze and murmured, “I don’t mind. And I think you needed to get it off your chest.”

  She snorted and turned away. “It’s senseless to rehash it. It’s all in the past. It’s over.” She crossed the floor to the kitchenette and started putting away the dishes they’d left by the sink to dry. “I’d be better off leaving it all in the past where it belongs.”

  He watched her, listened to the clatter of the dishes and utensils as her restless hands worked.

  “Why couldn’t someone have adopted you?” he asked.

  Her hands stilled, and her shoulders drooped. “Someone could have adopted me, but…” She raised her gaze to him then, and he saw the tears blossoming in her eyes. “But…no one wanted me.”

  When her voice cracked, so did his heart.

  He couldn’t have stayed away then to save his life. Max crossed the room in two giant steps and gathered her into his arms. He wanted her, damn it! He wanted to hold her and protect her and lose himself in her aqua eyes.

  How he could have fallen so hard and so fast for the sassy, rebellious beauty was beyond him. But he had. She’d proven an invaluable help to him with Elmer. She’d made him laugh, made him angry, made his body zing with desire. She challenged him, inspired him, intrigued him. She was one hell of a woman.

  That no one had recognized her specialness, her inner beauty as a child and taken her into their family was inconceivable.

  She trembled as he hugged her tightly to his chest, and she squirmed, trying to get away. But he didn’t let go.

  Finally, with a sigh, as if surrendering a fight, she wilted against him. He bent to scoop her up and carried her to the rocking chair. He sat down with her cradled in his arms and rocked her the way he’d watched her rock Elmer the past four nights. She buried her face in his shoulder, clung to his T-shirt. But she didn’t cry.

  Sucking in deep breaths, she fought the tears he knew lay just under the surface. Like a soldier, she kept the enemy tears at bay, wouldn’t give in. Her determination not to cry broke his heart almost as much as her need to cry. Desperately she fought the emotions, suppressed the pain, denied the tears.

  He stroked her hair, kissed the crown of her head. “Don’t fight it anymore, baby. Let it out. I’ve got you.”

  She clutched his sleeve, her body quaking, but still shed no tears.

  “No,” she murmured into his chest, her breath heating his skin, even through his shirt. “Crying doesn’t help. It doesn’t change anything.”

  “It might make you feel better, though. Relieve the tension.” Drawing a comforting hand down her spine, he felt the shudder that shook her, felt her muscles tense as she battled the emotions warring inside her.

  Her fingers lightly raked his shoulder as she clutched his shirt in her fist, held on to him like a life preserver. She tucked her head under his chin, and the strawberry scent of her hair assailed his nose, taunted his libido.

  Curled on his lap as she was, she fit him perfectly. He circled her with his arms and held her close while she shivered and dragged in a ragged breath.

  “I didn’t mean to dump on you like that. I shouldn’t have bored you with—”

  “Am I complaining?”

  She sighed and shifted her weight. Her soft bottom pressed into his groin as she huddled on his lap, and, so help him, he was getting aroused. That was the last thing she needed, to know that he’d managed to become aroused while he comforted her.

  Gritting his teeth, he repositioned her so that her weight rested largely on one thigh rather than in the middle of his lap.

  She tipped her head back, peeked up at him with bright, piercing eyes. “Am I too heavy? I shouldn’t have—”

  When she made a move to get up, he hauled her back against him. “Sit. I’m fine, and you’re still shaking.”

  “But—”

  He put a finger on her lips to silence her.

  Mistake. The warm tickle of her breath and the soft velvet of her full lips caressed his skin. His body went ballistic. He dropped his gaze to the slight pout of her mouth, and the urge to kiss her slammed into him, robbing him of oxygen.

  Her own eyes grew smoky with desire, and she raised her chin a fraction of an inch, lifting her mouth, ready to receive his. He trailed his finger to her jaw to angle her head, slowly zeroed in on his target until their breath mingled. Her lips parted in anticipation. His body thrummed as a magnetic pull drew him closer to her lips.

  In the fireplace, a log popped with a crack like a gunshot.

  Laura gasped, and they jerked apart. Adrenaline and unanswered passion pumped through him, making his heart thunder and his nerves jump. Laura scrambled off his lap like a startled kitten.

  Hands off. He’d given her his word. Jeez, what had happened to his self-control?

  The fact that she’d obviously wanted the kiss as much as he did didn’t change anything. He had to stay sharp, alert, ready for trouble.

  And he didn’t need to take advantage of her at a moment when her guard was clearly down. Stupid. Stupid!

  Laura hugged herself, her breathing ragged, obviously trying to calm her own jangled nerves. She walked over to the edge of Elmer’s cradle and grinned wryly. “He could sleep through a hurricane.”

  Max sent her an awkward smile in response and shoved himself out of the rocker, his jeans painfully tight with his arousal.

  “I, uh…think I’ll get a quick shower before bed.” A cold shower. He nearly laughed aloud at the cliché. Had it come to this?

  He avoided her gaze as he headed into the bathroom, closed the door and leaned against it with a heavy sigh.

  He’d almost kissed her. They’d been so close. He still wanted to kiss her.

  Hell, he wanted to do more than kiss her. But, of course, he couldn’t. He’d promised not to touch her, needed to keep his head in case the Rialtos made another appearance. He had to get control of his raging libido.

  Stripping out of his clothes, he turned the shower on full blast.

  Sure, it had been a long time since he’d been with a woman. More than three years. By choice. After experiencing sex with someone he loved, casual sex just seemed…empty. Still, his long abstinence was no excuse for acting like a randy teenager.

  Max stepped under the cool spray, clenching his teeth as the cold water jolted his system. But not even the icy shower could wash away the image of Laura’s desire-hazed eyes or erase the memory of her yielding body in his arms. Resisting the lure of her come-hither gaze when she’d looked up at him had been impossible. But he had to do better, try harder. No excuses. He had to focus on the job at hand, to protect them.

  He cupped his hands to splash his face then rubbed his palms over his cheeks.

  He knew one thing for a fact. After hearing the gut-wrenching truth about her childhood and watching her battle to suppress the emotions that their discussion had unearthed, he couldn’t avoid the obvious.

  Laura wanted a family. Laura needed a family. Laura deserved a family more than almost anyone he’d ever met.

  No one wanted me.

  She had so much love to share, yet she fought her nurturing soul constantly. Her battle-scarred heart warred daily with her loving instinct out of learned self-defense. She must have felt like a stray animal, needing a home, wanting to be loved as she drifted from one foster home to another
.

  The idea sliced through Max with a dull blade, made him ache to wrap her in his arms and never let go. But, damn it, he was the last person she needed to grow attached to.

  A family was the one thing he couldn’t give her. He’d be damned before he’d make the same mistakes with Laura that he’d made with Jennifer.

  Laura didn’t need to be hurt or disappointed again. And with him, the disappointment and pain of not having a family was inevitable. He couldn’t burden Laura with his low sperm count. If he needed another reason to keep his lustful urges in check as he’d promised her, he had only to think of her vulnerability. He had no business raising her expectations of him by letting their relationship become physical.

  No matter how his body ached for her, his honor wouldn’t allow him to break Laura’s heart with false hope, false intimacy. He couldn’t promise things to her with his kiss, with his touch, that he knew he couldn’t follow through on. Things like a future together, love and commitment. Children.

  His gut pinched, and a fist of regret and disappointment squeezed his chest. Who would have thought his diminished ability to impregnate a woman would hurt so damn much? Certainly not him. Not before he’d learned of his own lack. It was infuriating. It was frustrating. It was…emasculating.

  Max balled his fists and cursed. It wasn’t fair. It just wasn’t fair.

  A high-pitched scream ripped him out of his self-pitying thoughts. His head snapped up, and his heart slammed into overdrive.

  Laura.

  Then a second scream, louder and more frightened sounding, shattered the night. Without turning off the water, he bolted from the shower.

  Chapter 12

  Max rushed toward the bathroom door. His wet feet slipped on the tile floor. Grabbing a towel, he flung it around his waist as he flew to the main room.

  Elmer slept soundly in his cradle by the bed.

  But Laura was gone.

  The front door stood open. The sound of snapping twigs, footsteps, filtered in from outside. His mouth went dry.

  “Laura!” Snatching his rifle from beside the bed, he dashed for the door. The cold night air stung his wet body as he ran out on the porch. “Laur—”