“Let’s just say, if you were mine, I’d never let you go off house-sitting alone for six weeks. Especially after you’d just been shot.”
She dropped her eyes, stared at her bandage. “No, I don’t suppose you would.”
“Who was he?”
“Who was who?”
“The guy who broke your heart.”
“That’s none of your business.”
“You’re right, it’s not, but I’m asking anyway.”
In many ways she was as stubborn as he. He didn’t think she’d answer, but when she did, her voice was so low and hesitant that he had to strain to hear.
“His name’s Justin Parker—”
“The pro surfer?” He was impressed. He used to surf when he lived in Twilight, and had kept up with the sport.
She nodded.
“I read a big article about him in Sports Illustrated a few years back,” he recalled.
“He’s great at P.R., but not so great at being faithful.”
“He’s a real good-looking guy.”
“He knows. We were engaged until I found out he was cheating on me.” She shrugged, grew silent.
He knew damned well there was a whole lot more to the story—he could see the pain in her eyes.
It suddenly dawned on him that R.J. looked a little like Justin Parker. Not as much of a pretty boy, but he had the fair-haired, handsome, water-sportsman look. But R.J. wasn’t a player.
“I don’t play around, Kat.”
She instantly came back from wherever her thoughts had taken her. “Oh, really? And why is it you think I need to know that?”
“I like you. A lot.”
“Your feelings are raw right now. You’ve got things all jumbled together. Just because I’m the one who helped you find your daughter you’re transferring—”
“It’s more than that and I think you know it. I’ve known it since I first laid eyes on you.”
His right hand moved to her ankle. He ran his fingers up her calf, kneaded it. Her muscles were firm, yet supple and feminine. He heard her breath catch and tried to distract her.
“How long have you been kickboxing?”
“Not kickboxing. Not karate. Tae Kwon Do.”
“Whatever.” When his hand reached her thigh, he grazed the skin beneath the hem of her shorts with his fingertips.
“I’ve been at it long enough to know that I could easily render you senseless right now.”
“There are plenty of other ways you could render me senseless.” He leaned closer, his gaze trained on her mouth, wanting to kiss her in the worst way, wondering if she’d let him.
He shifted positions and wound up sitting closer. She’d fallen silent, as if contemplating what he’d said.
He moved in to steal a kiss, half expecting her to balk, but she didn’t. He found himself staring into her eyes when their mouths met, realized she’d parted her lips. She leaned back against the arm of the sofa as the kiss deepened. He thought he heard her moan.
His hand grazed her knit top where it covered her breast.
Her hand landed on his shoulder and there was a second when things could have gone either way before she gently pushed him back and ended the kiss. In one swift move, she stood up.
“It’s been a real long day, Chandler. I’m gonna hit the sack. You need some time to cool off.” Before he knew it, she was halfway across the living room, turning off the television.
“Are you sure you want to leave me out here all alone?”
The cushions on the sofa were deep and soft—a backache waiting to happen. Kat crossed her arms, pretending to think it over.
“You’re just lucky that you made it through the door tonight in the first place.”
IN HER BEDROOM, Kat was trembling as she peeled off her clothes and shrugged into an oversized tank top. Her legs were still shaking when she slipped into bed.
She left the light on and leaned back against the headboard, with her knees to her chest, her chin on her knees, and thought about the man in the living room.
Tempted by Ty, she’d let her guard down, and realized—almost too late—that her body reacted to his in a way it hadn’t responded to a man in a long, long time. She knew exactly what might have happened if she hadn’t been terrified into calling a halt to his kiss.
Not only had his kiss moved her, but he’d asked her some simple, straightforward questions, and for the first time in years, she’d opened up and actually talked about Justin.
Why now? Why with Ty Chandler?
She’d dated men since Justin. Not often and not many, but she had dated. She’d even gone to bed with a handful. They’d all been one-night stands, nothing more, few and far between.
She didn’t need a man in her life; at least she was fairly convinced of that by now—but more to the point, what she really didn’t need was to be hurt the way she’d been hurt before.
Hurt, hell. Shattered was a better word.
It might have been different if she’d had some experience before Justin Parker blew into her life. The pain might not have cut so deep, might not have driven her to be so reckless if she hadn’t believed that Justin was the man she’d been waiting for all her life.
Her girlfriends used to tease her about being the oldest living virgin on Kauai.
She’d fallen in love with Justin’s good looks as much as with the notion that he was a celebrity in the surfing world.
It never dawned on her that he might only want her because she was “local.” With her dark hair, eyes, and coloring, it helped Justin to be seen around the islands with a “Hawaiian babe” on his arm. Being with her gave him entree to places where haoles weren’t welcome.
It never occurred to her that he would move in with her, ask her to marry him, and still sleep with other women. She’d been so trusting, so blinded by love, that it hadn’t occurred to her at all.
She’d let desire get in the way of her common sense once. She wasn’t about to let it happen again.
Feeling in control again, Kat reached over and turned out the light, then wadded up her pillow and lay there in the dark with her eyes wide open.
After dredging up the past, she was afraid to fall asleep.
A crack of light appeared beneath her door and she heard Ty moving around in the bathroom. Then the light went out again and she heard him walk back through the kitchen to the living room.
He probably wasn’t going to get any sleep tonight, either.
She tried to forget about his admission of being attracted to her from the moment they met. What bothered her more was that the feeling was mutual.
She shouldn’t have let him kiss her again tonight. She never would have dared if she’d only known how quickly his kiss, his touch, would turn her on.
Chapter 10
EARLY EVENING, THE sky is a dull pewter, hanging close to the ground, hiding the mountaintops. Fierce rain squalls roll one after the other, over Kauai.
Torrents of runoff water carry rust-red dirt down hillsides, along rivers and streams, to the sea, where it clouds the reef. Rain slicks the highway, turns it into a shimmering asphalt ribbon.
She runs out of the apartment, jumps into her Mazda. The windshield wipers fight a losing battle against the rain.
Sugarcane grows tall on both sides of the Kapa’a bypass road, a lush corridor of swaying green stalks. She speeds along, mindless of the storm, negotiating another curve as she wipes tears from her eyes.
The pickup truck suddenly appears out of nowhere. Maybe it’s the buildup of water on the windshield; maybe it’s the waving cane or her tears that distract her. Whatever.
All she knows is that one minute she’s driving, and the next, a Nissan pickup on oversized tires materializes directly in front of the hood of her car.
Metal grinds against metal. Glass shatters. Tires scream and fail to grip the wet road.
The gray sky, the rain, the glistening cane stalks—everything turns inside out and disappears. Her world explodes and goes black. She sees nothing. Feels nothing.
Inside her, a scream starts to build. A scream that has no end.
TY WAS STILL awake when the sound of Kat’s scream tore through him, set his teeth on edge, and started his heart pounding.
He bolted off the sofa. His feet tangled in the blanket and he almost went down when he hit his shin against the low coffee table. Cursing, he negotiated the dark interior of Kat’s apartment, guided by the sound of her screams.
His heart pounded triple time as multiple scenarios flashed through his mind—Kat tripping in the darkness, a burglar slipping in through the back door, a rapist cutting the window screen.
He found her alone, tangled in the bedsheet, thrashing against an unseen threat. He knelt on her bed, pulled her into his arms.
“Kat! Kat, you’re dreaming.” He tried to calm her, not to frighten her any more than she was already.
“No! No, please, no!” She shoved at him. Tried to push him away.
Afraid she’d do damage to her injured hand, he grabbed her wrists, held her still.
“Kat. Wake up.”
She calmed, crying but no longer flailing around. He switched on a lamp on the nightstand. When he turned, he found her staring at him as if she had no recollection of who he was or what he was doing there.
He gently cupped her cheek.
“Kat, it’s me, Ty. You’re all right. You’re in your own room.”
Her eyes were wide but no longer wild. Her lips trembled. Tears glistened on her cheeks. He thumbed them off, pulled her against his chest, and held her tight.
She didn’t protest as he shifted around to lean against the headboard and hold her close. She shuddered and sniffed, wiped her eyes. But she didn’t pull out of his embrace.
“I’m suh . . . sorry,” she mumbled, sniffing again.
“Hey, it’s okay. It’s okay.” He was just glad he was there, that maybe he could help.
He rubbed his hand down her back over and over again. Her skin was clammy. The white tank top she slept in exposed her firm, shapely legs. When he noticed she only had a minuscule silk thong beneath it, he almost broke out in a cold sweat himself.
He glanced around the room. The windows were open, but bars protected the screens. Nothing appeared to be out of place.
“What happened?”
“Nightmare.”
“You want to talk about it?” It had to have been one hell of a whopper to make her scream like that.
Her head moved against his chest. “No,” she whispered.
“Has this ever happened before?”
“All the time. Almost all the time. I don’t sleep much.”
He remembered seeing stacks of videos in the living room, here and at Montgomery’s, imagined her driving herself to exhaustion during the day, then sitting alone night after night, afraid to fall asleep.
He was amazed that someone so together, seemingly so confident, could be so terrified by a dream. He wondered what terrible images her mind conjured.
Her tremors had subsided, but she continued to cling. He had no idea how she made it through these episodes alone. Then he recalled how frightened she’d been this afternoon after the BMW had nearly collided with them.
“I was in a pretty bad accident a few years ago. It left me a little . . . shaken up.”
Shaken up, hell, he thought. Maybe what happened earlier today had brought it all back.
“Do you dream about the accident?”
“It never goes away,” she whispered.
“Did it happen here, or on Kauai?”
Again, she hesitated at first. “Kauai.”
He didn’t know anything about nightmares or the psyche, but instinct told him the worst thing she could do was keep it all bottled up inside.
“Was anyone killed?”
She let go a deep breath. “A teenager in the other car. He’d just graduated from high school. The kids caravan in June. Some play chicken. Stupid, when their whole lives are ahead of them.”
“Is that why you left the island?”
He felt her nod yes against his chest. He let her be, and didn’t ask any more as she lay there in his arms, occasionally wiping away silent tears. The heat of her skin aroused him. He kissed the crown of her head, gently, wanting nothing more than to hold and comfort her despite what she was doing to him inside and out.
He skimmed his hand up and down her arm, lightly stroking her skin, petting her, calming her, until her breathing slowly returned to normal.
He thought perhaps she’d fallen asleep, when she suddenly pressed her open palm against his bare ribs and slid her arms around him. Then she tilted her head and looked into his eyes.
“Kiss me, Ty,” she demanded, offering him her plump mouth.
He knew her urge was primal, a grasp at consolation, or perhaps a lifeline. A way to numb her mind. To prove to herself she had survived another nightmare as well as the wreck that caused them.
She needed what he could give her tonight as much as—maybe more than—he needed what she was offering after the day he’d had.
Solace. A few brief moments of blissful oblivion, a time-out from the state of things, of the upheavals in his life. Physical release. Contact with another being at the highest level.
“Are you sure?”
“Don’t make me beg, Chandler.”
He kissed her. Gave her what she wanted. Took what he wanted. She met him halfway, scooted onto her knees so that she could kiss him deeply. She tasted sweet as honey, warm as velvet. Her lips were as soft as he’d known they would be, her skin smooth as silk.
The kiss went on and on until, breathless, she pulled back.
“Help me.” She tried to pull off her tank top with one hand. He obliged, quick and sure. Then she slipped out of her thong and was naked beside him. He reached for the lamp. She stopped him.
“Leave it on. Please.”
He pulled off his shorts, then his briefs. Tossed them on the floor, and remembered. “I don’t have a cond—”
“The bathroom cupboard. Third shelf, beside the Band-Aids.”
He thought she might come to her senses while he was gone, but when he came back, she was holding the sheet across her breasts, watching the door, waiting. He walked into the room, naked, fully aroused. He paused, waited for her to change her mind.
He slipped into bed beside her, took her in his arms, stroked her back, let her make the next move.
“Kiss me again,” she ordered.
She was easy to please. He kissed her deeply, slowly, until she moaned. He ran his hands down her tight abdomen to the soft flesh between her thighs, found her wet, slick, and ready.
He kissed her breasts, teased her nipples with his teeth until she cried out and came against his hand. When she’d recovered, when she was breathing even and deep, she guided him with a gentle nudge until he was lying on his back. She leaned over him, kissed him, ran her tongue over his lips and down his throat until he shivered.
The torture was exquisite. She took her time, running her fingers down his ribs, kissing him everywhere, licking him. She knelt between his thighs, took him in her hands.
He held his breath, watched when she took him into her mouth, teased him with her tongue. When he couldn’t take it anymore, he closed his eyes.
In the next breath she was on her knees, over him, drawing him deep inside her.
It was as good as he knew it would be. He held her hips. She used her body to stroke him. Slowly at first, she tortured him until his tension and desire spiraled. Only then did she begin to quicken her
movements.
He thrust in return, filling her. He wanted to give her everything and more. To take away her fears, her pain, whatever it was that haunted her nights and put shadows beneath her eyes.
They came together, let go, rode wave after wave of pleasure until she lay draped around him with her cheek pressed to his heart, until her breathing slowed and settled into a normal rhythm.
Five, ten, fifteen minutes went by. Carefully, so as not to disturb her, he turned out the light, wrapped an arm around her waist, and let her sleep.
KAT WOKE BEFORE Ty. The sun was already up. She slipped out of his arms and into the shower and had coffee made by the time he came out of her room. His dark hair was spiked in clumps, his eyes barely open. But he was smiling.
Embarrassed, she turned and took two coffee mugs out of the cupboard. She never spent the night with men. Never. Not since Justin.
Now she didn’t know what to say or do, but she prided herself on being honest and up front, and this was no time to change.
“Listen, Ty.” She turned, saw him leaning against the doorjamb, watching her. She tugged on the knot of the bright Tahitian pareau she’d tied around her, making certain it was secure above her breasts.
“I’m sorry about last night—”
He was across the small room in two long strides. She took a step back, came up against the tile counter. He had her in his embrace before she could get another word out.
“I’m not sorry.” He lifted her chin, met her eyes, searched her face with such intensity that she feared he could see into her soul and read her deepest, darkest secrets.
“Is this where you try to give me the brush-off?”
“No. This is where I apologize for your having seen me like that.”
It was the reason she lived alone, the reason she never let anyone in. The nightmares were as real as life when they hit her. Her memory just wouldn’t let go of the details. Her greatest weakness was her night terrors, her shame of what they’d done to her, what the accident had done to her.
“And I wanted to thank you for . . . for caring. Last night was . . .” Her face was on fire. “It was wonderful of you to . . .”
“Last night was pretty damn great for me, too, Kat.”
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