by Rebecca York
“How?”
“Candy fills me in on stuff about people in town. I knew you’d moved your mom to a senior community in Baltimore County—and that you’d been renting out the house. But the last tenants had made a mess and left without paying the rent.”
“That’s a lot of information for her to know.”
“She still comes back to town to see her parents—and high school friends. She married Dave Markham, then divorced him a couple of years ago. You remember him from school?”
“Yes. He was going to build high-end yachts for the people who have vacation homes down here.”
“He does.”
“Would Candy tell Warren if she knew where you were hiding out?”
Leah looked shocked. “No.”
“She might think she was helping to patch up your marriage.”
Leah closed her eyes and opened them again. “I guess that could be right, but I was careful not to be seen here. I hid the car in the garage,” she confirmed what he had suspected. “And I didn’t use any lights after dark.”
“How did you get in?”
She lifted one shoulder. “The key was under the same rock where it always was.”
“I’d forgotten about it.”
“And you didn’t know I was in here, right?”
“Not until I got inside,” he conceded. “Then the house didn’t smell empty.”
Once she’d started talking, she had given him a lot of information in a short amount of time. Now she looked drained.
The slump of her shoulders made him ache to comfort her, and when he stretched out his arm, she came into his arms.
He stroked her back, then reached to run his fingers through her hair, feeling her tremble in his embrace. He’d found her here by accident, and she’d tried to come across like she didn’t need his help, but he knew that was all an act.
She lifted her head, searching his face, and what he saw in her eyes made him go very still. Probably she’d been frightened for a long time, and now she had finally found a champion.
It had been forever since he’d held her in his arms, and he’d resigned himself to the emptiness of living without her. But here she was, putting her trust in him. More than trust. She was silently acknowledging that she hadn’t forgotten how good they’d been together.
Without giving himself time to consider the consequences, he lowered his head. The touch of his lips against hers was like a homecoming.
She murmured his name against his mouth, then opened for him, telling him that she wanted this as much as he did. Angling his head, he moved his lips against hers, absorbing the pleasure of the intimate contact. She made a small sound in her throat as she slipped her hands around his shoulder, holding him to her.
He had resigned himself to never holding her again—kissing her again. Now he felt dizzy with the intimate contact, drunk with the intoxication of enjoying what he had dreamed of for years. Her taste was familiar, transporting him back to the time they’d been together. And her body felt so right in his arms.
He wanted to keep kissing her forever—taking everything she was willing to offer and giving back in return. In his heated imagination, he pictured shifting his body, stretching out on the mattress and taking her with him. He’d undress her slowly. Do all the things that he knew she liked, and when she was aroused to a fever pitch of need, he’d join their bodies. He could feel it. Taste it. See it. But a small voice in the back of his mind told him that pushing the two of them over the edge was wrong—for a lot of reasons.
When he’d been a kid, he hadn’t known how to handle his gift of second sight. Even when he was on the job with the Baltimore PD, he’d been uncertain about using his special talent to solve crimes. It had taken Frank Decorah to show him effective ways to utilize his unique sense of touch that gave him a window into another person’s life.
Since joining Decorah Security, he’d realized that his psychic power carried an obligation to help people—not take advantage of them—the way he he’d be doing if he made love with Leah. And he wouldn’t let himself take advantage of Leah now—no matter how much he ached for her.
Fighting for self-control, he lifted his head. Leah’s eyes blinked open, and she stared at him with a mixture of confusion and hurt that made him feel like the air had turned to ash in his lungs.
“Steve?” she asked in a low voice.
He moved back, putting a few feet of space between his heated body and hers. “Sorry.”
“About what?”
“Things were heating up pretty fast.”
She had lowered her head. Now she raised it again. “Don’t you think I would have stopped you if that was what I wanted?”
“Sure, but you’re in fragile shape right now. You’re not in any condition to make sexual decisions. Plus, you’re a married woman.”
“A married woman,” she repeated, her voice as dry as parched earth. “Yeah, that might signify something if the marriage still meant anything.”
This time she was the one who moved farther away along the wall, and he ached to reach for her and pull her close again, but he kept his arms at his sides.
“We need to figure out how to help you—not ignore the problem.”
She raised one shoulder. “Like how?”
“I saw that scene where he pushed you against the chest and hurt you. But I couldn’t hear what he was saying. What was he angry about?”
She kept her gaze steady. “I answered the phone.”
“Huh?”
“I’d forgotten he’d told me not to answer if it rang.”
“Why not?”
“He didn’t say. It was just something that he’d decided to require.”
Steve winced at the way she said it. “And your answering was enough to make him go batshit?”
She kept her gaze steady. “Yes.”
He repressed a curse. There was no use getting angry. Instead he glanced out the window. When he saw it was getting dark, he asked, “Are you hungry?”
“Complete change of subject?”
“Yeah.”
“There was some junk food here, not much. And I was afraid to have people see me at the grocery.”
“I’ll go out and pick something up. What do you want?”
She shrugged. “Whatever.”
“Why don’t we go with carryout from the Crab Depot? I always liked their stuff.”
“Fine.”
He used his cell phone to put in an order, then looked at her. “Will you be okay here alone?”
“I was here alone before you arrived.”
“True.”
Outside in the spring night, he called Decorah and apprised Frank of the situation.
“I kind of thought you might run into trouble down there.”
“Why?”
“Just a feeling I had.”
“One of your hunches?”
“Right. Let me switch you to Teddy.”
That was Teddy Granada, one of the Decorah IT guys, who promised to do some research on Warren Pendelton. “If you come up with anything interesting, send it to my phone.”
“Will do.”
oOo
As Leah watched Steve walk to his car and drive away, she felt her chest tighten. She couldn’t stop herself from thinking that it might be better if she were gone when he came back. She hadn’t expected him to show up, and it wasn’t fair to drag him into her problems. But if there was anyone who could help her, it was probably him.
She thought about what he’d revealed—about his talent for touching people’s things and getting information about them. He’d hidden that well. What she’d seen all those years ago was a darkly appealing tough guy. He still had the same dark good looks, although he was older and a lot worldlier.
But when they’d been teenagers, there was also the rebellion factor. If there was anyone who her parents would have considered unsuitable for her—it was Steve Outlaw. Which made him deliciously forbidden fruit.
She remembered thei
r heated encounters—especially the one when they’d said good-bye. She’d thought she’d get together with him when she came back from school for Thanksgiving. That was before she’d met Warren, and he’d started monopolizing her time.
She muttered an unladylike curse under her breath. She hadn’t seen it back then, but Warren had picked her because he thought he could control her. That was the kind of relationship he was looking for. And if she hadn’t been so eager to fall in with his plans, he would have dropped her for someone else. She would have been crushed by the rejection, but she would have escaped a lot of emotional and physical pain.
What if she’d come home for Thanksgiving and gotten back with Steve? It was nice to think that she would have picked up their relationship. But it would have been too complicated. It was one thing to sneak around for a few delicious weeks without her parents knowing what she was doing. It was quite another to bring the town bad boy home to dinner.
From bad boy to cop to PI. All in a very appealing package. He’d looked lean and hungry when they’d said good-bye eight years ago, clasping each other so tightly that she’d thought he wasn’t going to let her go. He was still lean, but it was with an athlete’s toned body. And he had a startlingly firm moral compass. How many guys would have stopped themselves from making love to her a few minutes ago when she was practically throwing herself at them?
When she’d met Warren, she’d told herself that she was getting into a normal relationship, not some furtive tryst with a guy who was too much of a loner to settle down. Now she knew she’d gotten it exactly backwards.
Her thoughts were interrupted when she heard a car door slam outside and tensed.
“It’s me,” Steve called as soon as he’d opened the door, obviously aware that she was going to be anxious.
He switched on a flashlight, sweeping it around the room and directing the light away from where she still sat on the floor with her back propped against a wall.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“Yes.” It might not be true, but it was the only answer she could give.
Chapter Four
Scrambling for something else to say, Leah whispered, “I’m sorry it’s so dark.”
“That’s the way it should be if you wanted the house to look like nobody’s here.”
He laid the flashlight down, aiming it against the far wall where it gave enough light to see the bags of food he’d brought.
He spread several napkins on the floor, then opened the bags, setting a wrapped sandwich in front of each of them, plus small cartons of cole slaw and paper dishes of deep fried onion rings.
“I didn’t ask what you wanted to drink. Coffee okay?”
“Fine.”
When he joined her with his back against the wall, she unwrapped her sandwich.
“I got them to put several of the mini crab cakes into each bun,” he said.
She took a bite. “I’d forgotten how good this was.”
“Eastern Shore comfort food,” he said. For generations, many of the men in town had made their living on the water—fishing, crabbing or tending oyster beds. Or like Candy’s former husband, shipbuilding.
Leah took another appreciative bite. “I tried making crab cakes for Warren. He never got into them.”
“Where is he from?”
“New Jersey.”
“And that’s where the two of you live?”
“No we moved to the northern part of Baltimore.”
“Why?”
She lifted one shoulder. “I think he wanted to establish his own outpost.”
“It’s an upscale part of town.”
“Yes, but I’m not going back.”
He answered with a tight nod. “Good.”
She wanted to touch him, maybe to thank him for not suggesting she should return to a bad marriage because that was what a wife was supposed to do. Instead she spooned up some of the cole slaw. It was also good—with that down-home tang she remembered.
“So you came here. What were you planning to do after that?” he asked.
“Maybe drive out West, get a low-wage job where I could work ‘off the books,’ save enough money to get a new identity.” She dragged in a breath and let it out. “Of course, a new identity is probably pretty expensive.”
“You said you didn’t have girlfriends who would help you. Why didn’t you come to me?” he asked suddenly.
She kept her gaze focused on the food. “I knew I’d made a mistake getting mixed up with Warren. And I was ashamed to have you know about it.”
He answered immediately—with no hesitation. “You didn’t have to feel that way.”
“I should have known better.”
“Don’t say that. He knew how to fool you.”
“You mean manipulate.”
Ignoring the interjection, he went on, “Plenty of women end up in that situation. It takes guts to get yourself out—when he’d cut you off from any reasonable avenue of help.”
“I waited long enough.”
“But you did it. On your own.”
“Yeah,” she answered, thinking about the course of her life. It had gradually deteriorated. But the realization that she was in serious trouble had only gradually crept up on her.
“Do you know why he got violent?”
“I thought it had something to do with his business.”
“Which is what?”
“Basically, retail. He has several furniture . . . galleries, he calls them. And in the past few years, he acquired a couple of electronics stores. But I think he was worried about money, or something. Or maybe someone was putting pressure on him.”
“You’re not sure what?”
She shrugged. “He didn’t discuss business with me. And if he didn’t want me to answer the phone, I guess he didn’t want me to know his business.”
“Yeah.”
“Thank God I didn’t have a baby.”
“What?”
The room was dark, and she hoped he couldn’t see her flush. “Did I say that out loud?”
“Yeah.”
“I didn’t mean to.” She heaved in a breath and let it out. “At first I wanted children. Then I figured out that Warren was too wound up with having me take care of his every need to share me with anyone else.”
oOo
Steve winced, wondering how he would feel if he were forced into a bunch of revelations he’d rather not share. Well, he’d been forced into one, and it seemed to have worked out okay.
Leah looked down at the remaining food. “I don’t think I can eat any more.”
“Okay.” He waited a moment before asking. “Is there any chance he would think you’d come here?”
“I hope not.”
“I’d take you to a motel, but we’d need two rooms, and I don’t want to leave you alone.”
“Okay.”
“You’ve been sleeping on a mattress on the floor?”
“Yes. I don’t mind.”
He hesitated again, thinking he could drag another mattress in here. Then he decided it was better to avoid temptation and stay down the hall. If someone came to the house, he’d only be a few yards from her.
He stood up, and after sitting on the floor for so long, his bad leg threatened to crumple.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, seeing him falter.
“I was shot—during a drug bust gone bad.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It doesn’t get in the way much,” he answered, thinking he had less of a problem than his boss, Frank Decorah, who had come home from Vietnam with half a leg missing.
He made a stop in the bathroom, then went into the smaller bedroom—where he’d slept when he was a kid, glad that all trace of his living there had been erased. He didn’t want to bring up any more memories. Except there were some he couldn’t banish. As he lay down on the mattress, still fully dressed, he was thinking that this was where he had made love with Leah when his mom had been at work.
It was strange how the
y’d gotten together. He’d been aware of her in some of the classes he took—and he knew she was aware of him. Because he’d considered her way out of his league socially, he hadn’t tried to get anything going with her until one afternoon when school was out for the summer. He’d been cruising around town on his motorcycle when he’d seen her outside the local ice cream shop—one of those places where you ordered at a window and ate at a picnic table out front. She was walking toward the window, and one of the town losers, a guy with greasy hair and a week’s worth of beard stubble, stepped into her path. When she tried to move around him, he kept up the sideways dance, a smirk on his face.
Steve cut his engine, pushed down his kickstand, and walked over.
“Leave the lady alone.”
The jerk turned to face him, the smirk replaced by anger. “You gonna make me?”
“If that’s what it takes.”
When Steve took a step closer, the other guy ended up backing away—and finally left. After making sure he wasn’t in danger of a sneak attack, Steve turned to Leah. “You want to get out of here?”
He’d had no expectation that she’d agree, but after a moment’s hesitation, she said, “Yes.”
He inclined his head toward the bike.
She was game to climb in back of him and circle his waist with her arms. He took her to a local park, where they watched ducks gliding across the water as they got to know each other a little better.
She flipped her long hair over her shoulder. “Thank you for getting that guy off my back.”
“It seemed like the right thing to do,” he allowed.
“Are you enjoying your summer?”
“When I’m not working at Smith’s Hardware.”
“Are you earning money for college?”
“We’ll see,” he answered, thinking that would be a stretch. Maybe he could take a few courses at the community college, but would that make any difference in his life?
He took her to a burger joint for dinner, then back to the park for a more up close and personal encounter. When she agreed to see him again, he was riding a high that would last the rest of the summer.
They started going to his house when Mom was at work, and it was a slow but steady process to get her to go all the way with him—starting with more and more intimate make-out sessions in the privacy of his bedroom. Really, they were both learning about sex. But he wasn’t shy about experimenting and discovering what gave her pleasure. And perhaps because he was so open about wanting to fulfil her needs, she went along, doing the same for him.