Inseparable

by Brenda Jackson

  All eyes turned to Jake Madaris. “Nothing wrong with keeping it handy, Lucas, but it’s not a good idea to load it right now,” said Jake.

  Lucas Sr. looked disappointed. “Not even one bullet?”

  Jake hid a smile. “Not even one bullet.”

  “And if you’re worried about your and Carrie’s safety,” Jake’s wife, Diamond, said, “the two of you can certainly move in with us for a while. We have plenty of room.”

  Lucas’s face broke into a huge grin. For any man to be under the same roof as the former Hollywood starlet was a dream come true, even if she was his sister-in-law. “Why, thank you, Diamond. I might…I mean Carrie and I might take you up on your offer.”

  “So does everyone understand?” Clayton asked. “We’re in this together and are committed to protecting each other.”

  He turned his gaze toward Reese and Kenna. “Reese, what about Kenna? She works downtown, and we all heard what happened this week with her car breaking down. Can we be certain nothing like that will happen again?”

  Kenna was surprised by the question and was just about to reassure everyone she was fine when Reese interrupted. “She won’t be in any danger again. Until she has reliable transportation, I’ll be taking her to work and picking her up in the evenings.”

  “Really, Reese, you don’t have to do that.”

  “Yes, I do, sweetheart.” Then he surprised her by leaning over and kissing her on the lips.

  She swallowed, almost afraid to look around as the entire room got quiet. She saw every single person staring at them. Some looked surprised, but most didn’t. It was Reese’s mother who cleared her throat and asked softly. “Kenna? Reese? Is there something we need to know?”

  “No,” Kenna said quickly

  “Yes,” Reese said just as quickly.

  Clayton chuckled, clearly amused. “Well, when the two of you decide what the answer is, please let all of us know.”

  A deep scowl appeared on Sir Drake’s face. “What are you doing here, Tori?”

  “I should be asking you the same thing.” She glanced around. “Evening, gentlemen. Did you think you could keep me out of your little party?”

  Ashton shook his head and chuckled. “We’re curious as to how you knew we were meeting.”

  “Drake talks in his sleep,” she said.

  “I do not! So how did you know?” Sir Drake asked.

  She smiled. “I overheard you on the phone with Ashton when you thought I was putting the baby down for her nap.”

  Drake lifted a brow. “In other words, you eavesdropped.”

  She waved off his words. “I never eavesdrop.”

  The three other men in the room simply stared at her. She smiled. “Okay, maybe I do sometimes. But still, you should have told me what’s going on. I’ll forgive you, Alex, for not knowing better. But these other three do know better.”

  Alex felt relieved that he was being given a reprieve. He’d seen Tori in action when she’d brought down a man twice her size. He thought the same thing now that he did then—that he wouldn’t want to run into the former Marine and CIA agent, who was an expert in martial arts, in a dark alley. “I planned on telling you tonight,” Sir Drake said.

  “You should have told me last night,” she countered. She then turned on Trevor and Ashton. “And when Corinthians and Nettie find out what the two of you are up to,” she said, referring to their wives, “I hope they make you sleep on the couch for a year.”

  “Oh, you’re mean,” Ashton said, frowning.

  “A regular drill sergeant,” Trevor added with a scowl.

  “You get what you deserve,” she said. “So now, what were you saying, Ashton? You mentioned something about setting a trap.”

  “You won’t be involved, Tori!” Sir Drake stormed. “This killer is crazy.”

  She smiled. “All the more reason for him to finally meet a woman who can kick his ass. I’d like to see how he likes being the one thrown into a pit with rattlesnakes.”

  Alex cleared his throat. “The mayor wants everything legal.”

  “And I’ll keep things legal. I won’t intentionally harm a single hair on his head,” she said, smiling sweetly.

  Every man in the room gave her a skeptical look.

  “Okay, I lied,” she admitted, grinning. “But he deserves everything he has coming to him. And if he gets a few bones broken, his face smashed in and his eyeballs ripped from their sockets before the cops arrest him, so be it.”

  A smile curved Ashton’s lips. “You’ve been hanging around Sir Drake too long.”

  Drake slowly crossed the room to his wife. “You were supposed to be at that meeting tonight with the other women,” he said, his voice low, husky and surprisingly tender.

  “I’m supposed to be here watching your back,” she countered in a voice just as tender.

  He reached out and caressed her cheek. “If anything were to happen to you…”

  “It won’t. You’ll have my back,” she said, entwining her fingers with his. She glanced behind him at the others. “All of you will. You all know me. I can hold my own.”

  The room got quiet and everyone looked at Drake. It would have to be his decision. After all, she was his wife. Moments passed as Drake stared at Tori. Then he reached out and wrapped his arms around her waist and held her against him. “If he harms you in any way, I’ll kill him,” Drake growled against her lips.

  Tori chuckled. “If he harms me in any way I’ll kill him myself.”

  Sir Drake couldn’t help but smile at that.

  “Is she in or not, Drake? The two of you are getting too mushy over there to suit me,” Trevor said.

  With his arms still draped around his wife, Drake nodded and said, “Yes, she’s in.”

  Reese followed an angry Kenna through the front door. She had refused to say a single word to him all the way home. “I really don’t know why you’re upset.”

  She swung around to face him with fire in her eyes. “You kissed me—in front of your family.”

  He frowned. “It was just a kiss, Kenna. A small one.”

  “Yes, but friends don’t exchange kisses on the lips like that,” she said, tossing her purse on the table.

  “I still don’t see anything wrong with what I did.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Now you’ve got them all thinking that we’re more than friends.”

  He threw up his hands in frustration. “First of all, most of them thought that anyway, and secondly,” he said, following right on her heels into the kitchen, “we are more than friends.”

  “We’re not!” she denied, swinging around so fast they almost bumped into each other. “We’re only testing the waters to make sure things work out between us, which I figure they won’t because I’m not the type of woman you’re interested in. So no one was supposed to know we were lovers, Reese.”

  He opened his mouth to say something, but before he could Kenna continued her spiel. “Now, thanks to your kiss, your whole family knows, and I can only imagine what they think of me. They probably think I moved to Houston just to start something and that I’m some kind of stalker. They probably think that Alyson suits you a lot better than I do.”

  Reese didn’t say anything for a moment as he tried to control his anger. Then he spoke in a low, tense tone. “If for one minute you assume my family thinks Alyson would be better for me than you are then you really don’t know them at all. And if you assume I think something like that, too, then you don’t know me either.”

  Evidently she saw the ferocious expression on his face and chose to keep quiet. As far as he was concerned that was a good move on her part, because he was past angry. He was in full-fledged rage, and he’d never been this mad at Kenna before. Not even close.

  “You are one piece of work, lady,” he said, feeling steam coming from his ears. “You can’t see what’s right in front of your eyes. I’ve tried showing you and you still can’t see it. You are not only the friend I’ve come to know and trust, but I’ve
fallen in love with you, Kenna. I was trying to put my words into action by showing you instead of just telling you how much I love you. And if you can’t handle it, then I don’t know what to say.”

  Heaving a sigh of frustration, he then turned and stormed out of the kitchen.

  Kenna stood rooted in place, shocked. Did Reese just say he loved her? She shook her head, thinking she had a few screws loose, but then she knew she hadn’t heard wrong. He had said he loved her. Yes, he’d actually said it, and he’d said it like he really meant it. And he was mad, literally pissed, that she didn’t believe, couldn’t believe that he wanted her and not Alyson.

  Happiness suffused her heart and filled her with a warmth she’d never felt before. The incredibly sexy Reese Madaris loved her! She closed her eyes and breathed his name on a sigh. She quickly opened her eyes when she realized that at the moment, the incredibly sexy Reese Madaris was pretty angry at her for not believing he loved her.

  On shaky legs she hurriedly followed him. When she reached the living room she heard a noise upstairs and slowly walked up the staircase. Reese loved her, and she intended to show him just how much she loved him as well.

  Chapter 23

  Kenna didn’t believe him, Reese thought, stripping off his shirt, sending buttons flying in the process. He was royally pissed. What was it with her thinking Alyson was supposed to be the one woman he wanted? She should have known from that night at the party that Alyson was so far out the picture that it wasn’t funny. And the other day she had mentioned seeing Alyson and Dr. Wendell Thomas together. Had she expected to get some kind of rise out of him? Some sign that he was jealous? Clayton had been right when he’d warned him that women were complicated.

  He went to the window and gazed out into the darkness. But he didn’t need the daylight to see all of his land, all seventy-something acres. It was a drop in the bucket compared to what his uncle Jake and his brother Chance owned, but it was his. And more than anything he wanted to share it with Kenna.

  Not only did he want to share his land, but he wanted them to have babies together, beautiful babies, as many as she wanted. He envisioned her standing at an easel painting, while several little ones were at her feet. That was an image he’d carried around with him for some time but was too afraid to ever see it for what it was or what it might mean. He didn’t want to be just a godfather to her children, he wanted to father them. He wanted to plant the seed in her body that would procreate their family.

  He heard the soft knock on his bedroom door. “Come in,” he said without turning around. He didn’t have to, since he could see her reflection in the window.

  She was nervous. He could tell by the way she rubbed her hands together. She probably didn’t know that he was very much aware that she was checking him out, taking note of the fact that he didn’t have his shirt on.

  Her eyes were taking him in, and in her reflection he saw the heated look in her gaze. His heartbeat raced as his chest tightened. He loved her so damn much, and before she left this room tonight, he would show her and tell her.

  It was at that moment, after he’d made up his mind about how he would handle LaKenna James, that he turned around and said, “Is there something you want?”

  Kenna gritted her teeth, forcing back what she really wanted to say, which was something like, Oh yeah, I want to take those jeans off your body and then push you back on that bed and ride you in a way that I’ve never ridden Rollins. When she walked into his room she hadn’t expected to find him half naked, displaying a strong, muscular back and the thick cords of his broad shoulders. And she couldn’t overlook how his jeans clung perfectly to his backside. She unconsciously licked her lips.

  “Kenna?”

  She blinked. She hated that her mind wandered. “I want to talk…to make sure I heard you correctly downstairs when you said…”

  Kenna swallowed, unable to get the words out because she couldn’t comprehend having a man say he loved her and truly meaning it. Terrence had said it like it was nothing, but that hadn’t stopped him from finding his way into another woman’s bed. Lamont had claimed he loved her in one breath, while voicing his distrust of her and Reese’s relationship with the next. Now she had serious doubts that either of them had loved her at all. She realized they had been saying what they thought she wanted to hear, but it definitely wasn’t in their hearts. She didn’t want to think about Curtis and how deceitful he’d been. He had claimed he loved her, too, but in the end she’d discovered he’d only wanted her to help him keep his secret.

  “When I said what, Kenna?”

  She unconsciously licked her lips again when Reese interrupted her thoughts. “When you said what you did in the kitchen.”

  Reese met her gaze and held it. He slowly began walking over to her. At first he decided to make it hard for her and make her come to him. But then he decided he would save her the trip. The sooner they cleared things up between them, the sooner they could spend the rest of the night in each other’s arms. But that was only if she loved him. That was something that was still up in the air. Something he didn’t have a clue about.

  “What did I say in the kitchen, Kenna? You tell me,” he said softly, forcing her to say the words aloud. “And if for some reason you can’t repeat it because you don’t feel the same way, then I understand and I accept that for now. But only for now, because I’m going to make you love me,” he said with conviction.

  He saw her eyes become moist before a single tear slid down her cheek. “But you don’t have to do that, because I already love you, Reese. I’ve always loved you. You’ve been there for me. You’ve been my strength when I didn’t have any. You were someone I could talk to about anything. You were my best friend, and that was what frightened me. I didn’t know how you felt and I was afraid that if you found out how I felt, then you wouldn’t want me as a friend any longer.”

  She swiped her tears away. “Everything was fine as long as you had a girlfriend and I had a boyfriend. But when that changed, my attention focused on you, and my attraction to you became too intense. I was afraid that you would find out the truth.”

  He tried to follow what she was saying and suddenly a lightbulb went on his head. “Is that why you kept pushing Alyson in my face? You thought our friendship would be safe if I was with someone?”

  “Yes. I thought it would be safe if you had a girlfriend and I had a boyfriend.”

  Reese slowly nodded. “Okay, now I’m following you, although I don’t agree with it. So tell me why you thought we were just testing the waters? Why would you think after all we shared we could go back to being just friends?”

  Kenna looked down at the floor, knowing she had to be honest and speak directly from her heart. She slowly raised her head to meet his gaze. “I was too afraid to think otherwise, too frightened to hope that you could possibly find something in me that you couldn’t in Alyson. She’s beautiful and refined and most of the time she looks like a model. She has a prestigious job and—”

  “She’s as phony as a three-dollar bill. I can see right through her.”

  “But the two of you dated for almost a year,” Kenna implored.

  “Because she was convenient and fun, and because at the time you were dating Curtis.”

  He chuckled. “My family had the right idea all along, which is why most of them weren’t surprised tonight by that kiss. I kept telling them we were just friends and none of them believed it. Oh, they pretended to, because they knew that’s what I wanted them to believe. But none of them really did.”

  Kenna lifted a dark brow. “Are you saying that they’ve…”

  “Been waiting for both of us to come to our senses and realize what they already knew. There has always been more than friendship between us. I love you, Kenna, and you are—and forever will be—the only woman that I want.”

  “Oh, Reese.” She moved closer as he pulled her into his arms, surrounding her with his embrace. He’d held her before. But she knew this time was different. Not only was
this where she wanted to be, but this was where he wanted her to be.

  And then he eased back and she caught a glimpse of the smoldering look in his eyes before he lowered his head to kiss her. She thought like she always did that there was nothing quite like a Reese Madaris kiss. As if on cue, her nipples hardened against his naked chest and the lower part of her body cradled his huge erection. A firestorm of desire swept through her on a wave that made her shiver all over. A warm and tingling sensation stirred in her stomach and had her heart pounding like crazy. Suddenly she was being swept off her feet into Reese’s strong arms and she knew he was carrying her over to his bed.

  And there he placed her, in the center of the bed, before taking a step back to relieve himself of his jeans and briefs. She watched, fascinated, enthralled as he stripped for her, revealing the sexiest body any man could possess. She couldn’t help trembling in appreciation and anticipation.

  And when he stood before her completely naked, her gaze roamed the full length of him. But time and time again her gaze returned to where his manhood stood proudly erect, jutting from a thatch of dark, curly hair.

  “Like what you see, LaKenna James?”

  “Yes, definitely, but I can’t ask you the same thing because I still have my clothes on.”

  He chuckled. “Not for long.”

  He moved toward the bed, and when he reached for her she came to him and slid her arms around his neck. This time it was she who went for his mouth, needing the taste of him. Their tongues mated, tangled and twisted as she felt passion oozing from every pore.

  He broke off the kiss and reached out and tilted her chin upward so their eyes could meet. “I love you,” he whispered.

  His words sent everything within her spiraling and she fought back her tears when she whispered back, “And I love you, too.”

  The corners of her lips curved into a smile, and then he began undressing her, chuckling in his throat and murmuring out loud that she had too many clothes on. By the time he had removed the last stitch of clothing from her body she intended to make the time he’d spent undressing her well worth it.