“Don’t be,” he said softly. “I should have told you about the gun when you invited me to stay. I’m so used to having it, I didn’t think about how you might react.”
“Why do you have it?” Her voice quivered and she hated herself for that. Hated herself even more that she still couldn’t look at him. Instead, she focused on the family portraits sitting on the mantel over the fireplace. Her grandparents’ wedding photo and her parents’. Her dad teaching her to ride a bike in the yard out front and various other still-frames of her childhood. Christmases, Thanksgivings, Easters.
The lighthouse stood in all of the shots.
That was why she’d come home. So many good memories here to drown out the bad.
Behind her, she heard Alex set something on the end table beside the couch. Probably the gun. She shuddered. She didn’t want to see it again.
“I was a Marine for a long time,” he said after another long moment of silence. “Spec ops. After I got out, I felt naked without a gun. It’s second nature for me to be armed.”
She turned at the odd note in his voice and thought she caught regret fluttering over his expression. Then he shrugged. “I’ll lock it up and you don’t have to see it again.”
Maybe she imagined the flash of remorse or transplanted her own emotions onto him, because his gaze was as intense and direct as always.
“No, you don’t have to do that. It’s not the gun.” When he arched a brow, she added, “Not completely. It’s a long story. I have…issues.”
Alex slouched into the couch cushions and laced his hands across his stomach. His grin had a wholesomeness to it that contradicted his city boy swagger. “Doesn’t everyone?”
Pru tried to laugh. It came out somewhere between hysterical sob and hiccup. “I guess so, but…not everyone has these kinds of issues. Um, my therapist called it post-traumatic stress.”
“Fuck therapists.”
This time when she laughed, it came out sounding more like a real laugh. Sniffling, she wished she had something other than her sleeve to wipe her nose. “Wow, and they say I have issues.”
“No, seriously,” Alex said. “I’ve had extensive experience with them. It’s no coincidence the word ‘rapist’ makes up two thirds of the word ‘therapist’. I’ve learned the best therapy is having a good friend willing to listen. Saves money too.” He patted the cushion next to him. “Need a shoulder to cry on?”
“I already did that.” Self-conscious, she chaffed her arms and gazed around her living room, one of the few areas in the house not touched by construction. She’d chosen the décor, an eclectic mix of old and new, to please both her love of antiques and her love of creature comforts. John Jr. had once despairingly called her style “schizophrenic,” and maybe it was, but she wasn’t looking to win any interior design awards. It was a good space. Bright, cheerful, and cozy. Her space, where she made a fresh start—and still the shadows of the past were always right there, under the surface, threatening to yank her back into the darkness.
That terrified her.
Maybe Alex was right and she did need someone to listen, but should she confide in him? Part of her wanted to—no, craved to. Even Miranda didn’t know the whole story of her divorce and return to Three Churches, and it would feel so good to let it all out for once. But baring her emotional scars seemed like an intimate act, making him less of a stranger, and she really needed that barrier. At least until she could rein in her raging physical response to him.
“Hey, you don’t have to tell me,” Alex said when the silence stretched out a little too long. “I’ll admit, I’m curious though. You don’t seem the type to have many skeletons in your closet.”
“I don’t, not really. It’s…”
C’mon, Pru, you’re being silly. Telling him was not equivalent to an act of intimacy. Simply conversation.
She blew out a breath that ruffled her hair and sat beside him. “Two years ago, I lived in Portland with my ex-husband, Owen. We had just opened our own restaurant, which has been a dream of mine since my grandma first plunked me down on a stool beside her in the diner’s kitchen. I cooked, Owen handled the business, and we struggled a little at first, but then a major food critic reviewed us and—boom.”
She smiled, remembering the overwhelming joy, the excitement, the pride that welled up inside her that morning when Owen read the critic’s review aloud over breakfast. It seemed like so long ago now.
“I bet things got easier,” Alex said and reached for her hand.
“Yes and no. We still had problems, just different kinds. Overnight, everything changed. We had a full house every night and we didn’t have the staff for it. Owen hired ten waitresses, I hired four chefs. Celebrities came up from New York and Boston to eat there. It was … beautiful. Hectic, tiring as hell, but beautiful.”
Emotion rose up so suddenly, she choked on it. She pressed her hand to her mouth and felt tears trickle down her cheeks.
Alex moved closer, tucking her in the curve of his arm. “What happened?”
“Someone robbed us after Christmas last year.” It felt strange to say it aloud with such ease. For a long time, she wasn’t able to form those words together in that order. Part of the PTSD, her therapist had said.
Alex cursed and rubbed a hand from her shoulder to her wrist and back. She nudged closer, tucking her legs underneath her body, wanting to wrap herself in his heat and absorb some of the strength she felt in his arm as it tightened around her.
“I was out front with one of the waitresses,” she continued in a hollow tone, seeing the whole horrible night play out in her mind’s eye. “Carrie. Her boyfriend, Todd, was one of the new chefs I’d hired and we were waiting for him to finish cleaning up his station so I could lock the door behind them when they left. Just standing there talking, you know. She bitched about his commitment phobia, mad that after two years of dating he still hadn’t proposed. I stood there and did the girl-power, what-do-we-need-men-for thing, but the whole time I knew Owen had helped Todd pick out a ring just that afternoon. He was going to pop the question on New Year’s, right in our restaurant, had this big thing planned. God.”
The tears spilled out in earnest now. Alex did his best to wipe them away. “Carrie never got her ring?”
“No.” She sucked in a shaky breath. “The guy came in wearing a ski mask. It was cold out, one of the coldest winters we’d had in a while, and a lot of people were wearing them so at first I thought he was a customer. I told him we were closing. He said, ‘good,’ and then I saw the gun. Carrie screamed. He shot her in the head, just like—like he didn’t even think twice about it. The blood…splattered all over me and the tables and the walls and Todd came running out of the kitchen and the guy grabbed me and shoved the gun into the base of my neck—” She touched her neck, could still almost feel the barrel digging in there.
“Okay,” Alex said, voice raw. “Okay, baby, stop. You don’t have to tell me more.”
She heard him somewhere in the back of her mind, but the words poured out. The dam that had held them back broke and she relived each one in terrible, vivid detail.
“He wanted the money out of the register but there wasn’t much there because everyone uses credit cards now. He took my wedding ring, the money in my wallet—there wasn’t much there either. Everything I had, I put into the restaurant. He took my keys and said he was going to my house. Then he wanted Todd’s keys and wallet and the ring for Carrie, but Todd wouldn’t give that up so he shot him. I started screaming and couldn’t stop. I thought he was going to kill me too. He locked me in the freezer. I still don’t know why he killed those two kids and spared me. Owen found me an hour later in shock, hypothermic, and called the cops. By then, our house had been ransacked.”
“Did they catch the bastard?” Alex asked. The dark edge in his voice made her flinch. He tightened his arm, holding her to his side, soothing her by rubbing his hand down her arm again.
“I’m sorry, baby. I didn’t mean that to come out like
it did.” He linked their fingers, raised her hand to his lips. “Don’t be afraid of me. Hearing that someone hurt you like that…it hurts me,” he said, sounding amazed by the realization. He pressed a kiss to the top of her head. “And pain makes me angry. It’s not directed at you. Never at you.”
Nothing else he said or did could be any sweeter than that admission. Pru relaxed into him, watching her tears drop onto his skin and roll down his pectoral muscle, over his nipple.
“No, they never caught him,” she answered finally, “and that’s the worst thing. He’s still out there. For a long time afterward, I dreamed about him coming back to kill me. I had panic attacks. Owen couldn’t take it. We fell into debt and he blamed me because I couldn’t function. It didn’t help that my dad died right after all this happened. I was…broken.”
“Believe me,” Alex said, “I know how that feels.”
“It took me a long time to fix myself.”
“But you did it, and that is amazing to me.” His finger hooked under her chin, forcing her to look at him. The smooth pad of his thumb strayed over her lips and she released a shuddering breath. Hot, unfamiliar waves of desire poured into her stomach, warring with the guilt and pain.
“You are the bravest, most amazing woman I have ever met,” he said. He wasn’t lying or feeding her a line—she could see the truth of it in his eyes.
Oh, that did it. First he’d given her the sunflower. Then he’d forgiven Wade for attacking him. Then he’d held her while she freaked out on him. But this was the cake topper. He’d listened to her ugly story and didn’t run for the hills screaming or brush it off and tell her to get over it. He just accepted it and the scars it had left on her. The man was almost too good to be true, and that worried her. She really couldn’t take getting her heart broken again.
“Alex, you’re a stranger to me,” she whispered, breathless, and yet she could not find it within herself to push him away.
He smiled, and there was a guarantee that he was something she’d never had before in the small curl of his lips. “That I am.”
His hand dropped and traced the fine bones along her collar before circling to the back of her neck and pulling her closer so that she was almost on his lap. Her voice abandoned her, leaving only a rusty semblance in its wake. “What if I don’t want you to stay a stranger?”
“I think I’d like that very much.”
He was using the velvet chocolate voice again, the one that made her bones turn to water, and she nearly melted into a puddle right there beside him on the couch.
“But I’m not going to just hop into bed with you,” she said, struggling to maintain an ounce of control. “It’s not that simple.”
“Of course it is.”
She pushed a hand against his chest. “I told you my story. I need to know something about you now.”
Something other than the way those fingers of his, kneading the back of her neck like that, made it hard to breath.
His fingers moved, threading into her hair, and she sighed, half with relief and half with disappointment. His other hand traced the curve of her waist and flattened against the small of her back, bringing her closer still. He pressed a kiss to her head, then leaned his forehead against hers and smiled.
“Anything you want to know, Pru. Anything at all.”
Her body reacted to the caress of his hand down her spine as if struck by a bolt of electricity. Her mind short-circuited. Every nerve ending tingled in response to his touch. The only thing she really wanted to know about him was how he would look without those blue jeans on. How his lips would feel crushed against hers. How those big hands would move on her skin. How he would feel on top of her, pushing inside her.
Oh, screw it. She was tired of thinking. She needed comfort right now and he wanted to give it. She needed to feel more than that old, raw edge of fear, needed something beautiful to fill the black hole that had opened up in her heart. He was beautiful.
Pru lifted her head and pressed her lips to his. A gentle kiss, but the surprise of it fractured something inside him. She felt his control slip, hanging on by one less link than before, and smiled into his mouth. She did like riling him. She threw a leg over his body, straddling him, and pressed her center to the hard ridge in his jeans. The shudder that tore through him as he gripped her hips excited her, made her breasts tingle and her body turn molten. She ground her hips against his pelvis.
“Pru…” He groaned her name. His hands left her hips long enough to find the edge of her nightshirt.
“Oh, c’mon.” He pulled at her sports bra, but he wasn’t going to get it off until her shirt came off and she wasn’t about to help him. She had to make him work for it a little. He started swearing, fighting with her for control of the shirt.
“Oh, c’mon,” he said again. She liked the edge of desperation in his voice.
Pru wrapped her arms around his neck and shifted positions, drawing him down to the couch, reveling in the weight of him on top of her, drowning in the sexed-up male spice of his scent. She arched into him and another link popped on his control. A rumble rose from deep in his throat and he plundered her mouth with a hot, hard kiss, all gentleness gone, his tongue sparring with hers, conquering.
Yes. This was what she wanted. She parted her legs, and his hips settled between them as if they had done this a thousand times, no awkward jostling or rearranging. Her bare legs curled around his. The bulge of his erection probed the wet strip of cotton covering her, and she twisted against him, wanting to be closer, wanting more. He forgot about the sports bra and delved his hands underneath her, gripping her bottom, pushing into her heat. His jeans scraped her bare thighs but—oh, did it feel delicious. She rubbed herself on him, no doubt soaking the front of his jeans with her lube.
With a growl that sounded primal to her fevered brain, Alex shoved himself up and reached for the fly of his pants. He froze midway through undoing the button and looked over the back of the couch toward the foyer.
And, damn him, his control rebounded as if it never slipped—she could almost see the links she’d broken reform and lock tight again. His muscles tensed, coiled like a spring trap. She had a feeling he’d jump into action if she said “boo!”.
She ran a hand down the taut muscles in his thigh. The man looked fine in blue jeans, but she wanted them off. Now. She reached to finish undoing his fly herself. “Don’t stop.”
He shifted his weight backward enough to avoid her hands. “Are you cooking something?”
She blinked. Wow, talk about a subject change. Her mind raced to catch up to the non sequitur, but her body was a little slower to respond. Her panties were soaked through and the spot where his hands had pressed against her butt zinged with erotic heat. Small, excited tremors worked up her legs. Her womb clenched in anticipation of a joining that didn’t look like it was going to happen now.
Maybe he’d changed his mind. Maybe he got enough of a look at her naked body and decided he wasn’t interested in pear-shaped women, turned off by her lumps and bumps and cellulite thighs. The flood of mortified disappointment shook her to her core.
God, how many more times can she make a fool of herself tonight?
“Um, no, I’m not cooking anything.” She tried to keep her voice light despite the lump rising in her throat. Self-conscious, she struggled to sit up and straighten her shirt, but his heavy weight looming over her held her pinned to the couch. “Are you, uh, hungry?”
Duh, she told herself, of course he was hungry. He passed out before dinner, so he probably hadn’t eaten since lunch or before.
“No,” he said and gazed down at her still sprawled underneath him with her nightshirt all twisted around and pulled up to her chin. Heat—embarrassment, not arousal—flushed her skin from her face down and she knew she had to be turning pink. All over. She tried to squirm away.
“At least, not for food,” he added. He let out a vicious curse and got to his feet, adjusting his erection to fit more comfortably in his jeans. “I smel
l something burning in the kitchen.”
“Fire?” She sat up and caught the faint scent he’d noticed, like a pork roast but with a slight rancid undertone. It was a smell she recognized, one that hung in the air at least once a week.
“Oh.” She huffed out a breath in relief and pressed a hand over her heart before it jumped out of her chest. “That’s Lovie making her dinner. You’ll smell it once in a while. See, it’s already fading.”
Alex stared at her, mouth-hanging open, brows drawn low in such a comical expression that she had to smother a giggle behind her hand.
“Lovie?” he echoed. “Uh, wait.” He closed his eyes, shook his head, opened his eyes and squinted at her like she was a foreign recipe he couldn’t figure out. “Lemme get this straight. Your…ghost…cooks dinner?”
Pru grinned. “Don’t believe me?”
“Ghosts don’t exist.”
She shrugged and pushed to her feet, smoothing her nightshirt into place. She ignored the dampness between her legs and his scent, a dark spice laced with clean soap, clinging to her body. The moment was ruined and now that she thought about it, that was probably a good thing.
“Then c’mon,” she said and crooked a finger at him. “I’ll prove to you I have nothing cooking.” She crossed to the foyer. He still stood by the couch, the button of his jeans undone, his hair mussed, his expression one of disbelief with a hint of annoyance. He was still hard, his jeans ridged from the erection. She pretended not to notice. “Coming?”
“Uh-uh,” he said. “Why don’t you save your parlor tricks for your tourists in the spring and come back in here? Or better yet, we can go to bed.”
Not a good idea. If it wasn’t for The Green Lady, he’d be inside her right now. Most likely, without a condom. She certainly didn’t have any in the house and unless he made a habit of carrying around a just-in-case stash, she doubted he had any either.
How much more reckless could she be? He could have a STD or something and the timing was perfect for her to get pregnant. For the love of God, she didn’t even know his last name.
Vision of Darkness (D.I.E. Squadron Book 1) Page 8