Standing directly in the last remaining beams of the setting sun, she watched Connor’s eyes darken. “The hell with the question. I’m going to kiss you.”
“Kiss—”
Just that suddenly, Connor’s hands were in her short hair, his mouth was slanted against hers, and the hot wetness of his tongue was begging for entrance to her mouth by way of her startled, closed lips.
Connor McCoy’s kissing me. Bronte couldn’t seem to wrap her mind around the possibility even as it was happening. She’d have bet anyone her life savings that he’d never even noticed her in college, much less held an interest in her. And his demeanor toward her ever since Kelli had met David at the bar could only be described as civilly chilly.
Yet here he was, coaxing her lips open and delving into her mouth like a man seeking the sweet waters of the fountain of youth.
Bronte’s knees went weak and she melted against him for support. It felt so very, very good to kiss a man taller than her. To feel all her body parts nicely aligned against his without her needing to crouch skillfully lower. Thomas… She forcefully ousted the name, not wanting to think about him now. Needing to feel alive. Wanted. Desired. And desire-full.
She slowly realized Connor’s erection pulsed against her belly. She drew in a sharp breath. He groaned something, then launched a renewed attack on her mouth.
She sighed and collapsed against him again even as he backed her against the rough bark of the tree, well out of sight of any onlookers. The low-hanging branches creating a fragrant cocoon around them. The sun finally slipping over the horizon, leaving them in deep, secretive shadows.
Bronte felt a whimper gather at the back of her throat. Who knew quiet, brooding Connor McCoy could kiss so well? And who knew that she had it in her to respond so physically to another man so soon after her last relationship had failed so miserably?
She was aware of strong fingers against her rib cage, a prelude to a more intimate, probing touch. A man’s way of letting a woman know what he had in mind. A warning that if she wanted to prevent the progression, now was the time to act.
And Bronte knew she should do just that. This kiss was so totally unexpected. But she didn’t. Instead she found herself hungrily arching her back away from the tree trunk, telling him in her own feminine way that she wanted his touch as much as he wanted to touch her.
Then he did.
Bronte shuddered as his hand seared her flesh through her dress. His fingers expertly found and lightly plucked at her protruding nipple, causing desire to pool between her thighs and her breath to freeze in her lungs. Then he dipped his finger inside the low neckline and his hot skin made contact with hers. Amazingly, she found herself on the verge of climax, and they hadn’t even done anything yet.
Yet.
The word caught and held in her mind even as she pressed her breast into his touch, straining for a more complete contact.
Yet.
No, they hadn’t really done anything…yet. But if he didn’t stop—
Connor widened his stance and pulled her into the cradle of his thighs with his other hand. The hard, solid feel of his erection against her belly nearly sent her reeling.
Just one touch, she told herself. She just wanted to see if he was as turned on as he seemed to be. Needed to verify that he was indeed as large as she suspected.
She thrust her hand down shamelessly between them, cupping the long, thick ridge in her palm. Oh, dear Lord. He was everything and more than she expected.
Connor dragged his mouth from hers, leaving her panting for air against his neck. Then she fell back against the tree, desperately clamping her hands behind her, finding support in the solidness of the trunk.
“Whoa,” Connor murmured under his breath, pacing a short ways away, then returning. She couldn’t make out his eyes in the darkness, but she didn’t doubt that they held the same shock she felt from head to heel.
“This doesn’t make any sense,” she said, closing her eyes and shaking her head. “I mean, I’m not really sure what just happened, but…”
The sound of the grass crushing under Connor’s footsteps was all she could hear over the thundering of her heart.
“But what?” he asked, startling her.
Her eyes flew open. He was standing closer than she expected. If she put her hand out, she would touch the hard wall of his chest. The same chest she’d been flush up against mere moments ago.
“But…this doesn’t make any sense.”
He made a sound similar to a quiet laugh. “You said that already.”
“Yes, well, I’m going to say it again, so prepare yourself.” She laid her head back against the uneven bark of the tree and took a deep, calming breath. Only it didn’t go very deep and it wasn’t calming. “Well, since I’m momentarily incapable of describing what happened just now, maybe you’d like a go at it.”
A nearby lamp flickered to life, illuminating the path some twenty feet away, and throwing Connor’s features into relief. “I think I’ll pass if it’s all the same to you.”
She smiled shakily. “Well, if it’s all the same to you, it isn’t all the same to me.”
The way he wiped at the side of his mouth with his thumb made her knees go weak all over again. “Are you involved with anyone?”
She shook her head. “No. You?”
He grimaced. “No. And I don’t want to be either.”
“Good, because neither do I.”
What was the matter with her? She swore after the last time that she wouldn’t leap into another intimate relationship without looking first. And she certainly hadn’t seen this coming.
So what did she do? Suggest they pretend their kiss hadn’t happened? Dumb, dumb, dumb. She’d never been one to play coy after a good, riling bout of tongue tangling. She wasn’t about to start now.
A low-frequency beep pierced her ears, followed quickly by another. She reached for her purse, then realized she’d turned her cell phone to vibrate. Nothing more irritating than someone’s phone ringing in the middle of a wedding ceremony.
Connor’s movements as he slipped his hand inside his tux jacket told her the ringing had come from his portable. He pulled it out and punched a button.
“McCoy here,” he said, turning to walk away slightly.
She appreciated the long line of his back, the way his hair lay neat against his head, exposing his neck as he bent forward. It took her a moment to realize that her purse had begun vibrating. She scrambled to take her cell phone out and prayed her voice sounded normal as she answered.
Connor swung to face her, his gaze snagging hers even as she understood that they were being contacted about the same thing. Her witness, Melissa Robbins, had just been found dead. And one Deputy U.S. Marshal Connor McCoy, the man she had just nearly devoured, was the prime suspect.
TWO DAYS LATER BRONTE wasn’t any clearer on what had happened between her and Connor McCoy than she’d been the night of Kelli and David’s wedding. Not that it mattered. She hadn’t seen him since, and likely wouldn’t for a while, what with David and Kelli being off on their honeymoon in the Poconos for the next two weeks.
And not with Connor being implicated in the death of Melissa Robbins.
Tightening the sash on her white silk kimono, she opened the door and scooped up the eight newspapers stacked haphazardly on the cement steps of her Georgetown town house. The spring morning was warm and clear. She hugged the papers to her chest and tilted her face toward the sun dappling the steps through the trees.
“Good morning, Miss Bronte.”
She opened her eyes and smiled at the elderly woman that lived two doors up. Seven o’clock and already she was digging through the spring flowers flowing from artfully placed baskets in her front window, bright yellow cloth gloves protecting her aging hands. “Morning, Miss Adele.”
The neighborhood was comprised mostly of young professionals or tenured academics and budding politicians, but Miss Adele added a little bit of the something Bronte had been lo
oking for when she first moved to D.C.—a kind of old-world, southern charm she was coming to cherish. “Your geraniums are looking good.”
Miss Adele smiled. “Nothing like a few coffee grounds mixed into the soil to perk them right up, I always say. A little trick my grandmother taught me.”
Bronte waved, then headed back inside her town house. Padding into the kitchen, she slid the newspapers one after another onto the thick oak tabletop. She sighed, Miss Adele and her geraniums quickly forgotten. If the story about her witness and Connor McCoy’s alleged involvement in her death wasn’t on the front page, a teaser leading to it was.
When she’d first arrived on the scene at the safe house, still decked out in full maid of honor wedding regalia, she’d brushed away any possibility of Connor’s involvement in Melissa Robbins’s death. After all, hadn’t she just spent the better part of that day salivating after him, first in the church during Kelli and David’s nuptials, then later at the reception?
Then it slowly dawned on her that a good six hours had stretched between the ceremony and the reception. And it was smack dab in the middle of those six hours that Melissa’s death had been approximated.
Still, she’d been unwilling even to consider that a man so obviously a steadfast believer in the law would break it so acutely. Then little circumstantial pieces of evidence began to pile up. The fact that there was a strong history of conflict between Connor and Robbins while she was in his custody; there were several minor complaints littering her file from Robbins over the past couple months claiming Marshal McCoy had been physical with her. At the time she’d written those complaints off, simply because she’d had a difficult time dealing with the demanding woman herself. And follow-ups to the complaints had proven that the physical incidents Robbins had cited were minor events brought on by her stepping outside the boundaries set for her protection, and were completely warranted. Such as the time when Connor took the phone from Robbins’s hand and pulled the cord from the wall when she was going to order in from a swanky D.C. restaurant where she was well known. Or when she’d tried to ditch her protection during a visit to Bronte’s D.C. office so she could squeeze in a visit to a spa that had been deemed prohibited by the marshal’s office.
Separately, the occurrences could be explained away. But when combined, and coupled with no apparent outside breach of security…well, Bronte’s arguments for Connor’s innocence had lost a bit of punch.
Of course, it didn’t help that his alibi of target practice out in an abandoned stretch of countryside during the window of opportunity couldn’t be verified.
None of the circumstantial evidence was enough to issue a warrant for his arrest. But given the air around the U.S. attorney’s office, the possibility was growing more likely with each passing hour.
Bronte stuck her thumbnail between her teeth and sighed. Boy, she really knew how to pick them, didn’t she? Wasn’t it bad enough she’d gone through what she had with Thomas? Did fate have to toss one hottie in the shape of Connor McCoy into her path so soon afterward? An alleged murderer, at that?
She snatched her hand away from her mouth, then slid into a chair. “It was just a kiss, for God’s sake.”
Clasping her rose-etched antique cup of Earl Grey between both hands, she took a long sip. She grimaced at the cool liquid, then glanced toward the unplugged microwave and the television tuned in to the local news next to it. She couldn’t run both the microwave and the TV at the same time in the old town house, a wiring challenge she hoped to remedy with her plans to renovate the place. Plans she could put into motion just as soon as she settled on a design.
She jerkily opened the first newspaper and carefully spread it out on the table in front of her. Just a kiss. Yeah, right, and the Concorde was just a plane. First kisses didn’t even remotely resemble what had passed between her and Connor in the park the other night. There had been something…explosive about the meeting of their lips. Something undeniably sexy. She’d felt the amazing urge to push her dress up and cradle him between her thighs with no thought about tomorrow. No qualms about how well she didn’t know him. Absolutely no thoughts of why they shouldn’t be indulging in such decadent behavior in the middle of a park in the heart of the nation’s capital.
She propped her head in her hand. Who was she kidding? It wasn’t so long ago that she had entertained ideas of indulging in such behavior solely because it was the nation’s capital. While she didn’t claim to be an exhibitionist, there was something decidedly erotic and intense about the idea of having sex a mere stone’s throw away from the White House.
The city itself had proved an incredible aphrodisiac when she’d first started attending G.W.U. Or could it perhaps have been that D.C. wasn’t the small town of Prospect, New Hampshire? She still couldn’t be sure. But leaving the place where she’d grown up as the youngest of three daughters of the high-school math teacher had been wonderfully freeing. Not once had she been taunted for her height. Nor had she felt hemmed in by her lack of career choices. The sky was the limit as far as her future was concerned. And when she discovered that men were attracted to her…well, she’d taken to them like chocolate, in some odd way trying to make up for every guy who had shunned her in high school, every kid who had teased her, made her feel like a towering tree with absolutely no grace. In essence, she’d become a serial dater.
She supposed the reasons were far more complicated than that. Still, while her personal life was littered with debris from failed relationships, she had excelled in her studies and career. Affirmative action may have made it easier for her to obtain certain positions, like clerking under an esteemed superior court judge, followed by a stint in the local prosecutor’s office, then a gratifying round with a citizens’ action group, but it was her unabashed ambition and singleminded purpose that had landed her in the U.S. attorney’s office four years ago.
Then came Thomas.
She shook the paper vigorously, hoping the action itself would snap her from her reverie. She didn’t want to think about him now. Didn’t want to think about Connor either. After Thomas…well, she’d vowed to spend uninterrupted quality time with herself. And that didn’t include one U.S. Marshal Connor McCoy. Especially given the cloud of suspicion now hanging over him.
The wall phone rang. Bronte slanted a look at the clock, then continued reading. Too early for her mother. Besides, she’d spoken to her the day before yesterday, so it would probably be next week before she spoke to her again, unless something important popped up. And if it was something important, she didn’t think she could deal with it right now. She turned the page and continued to pretend to read the story.
Her gaze was again drawn to the phone.
The caller could be someone from work. With this Robbins witness case, everything at the U.S. attorney’s office was in upheaval. While it might be good to let whoever it was think she was already on her way downtown, that call could be important, too.
She bit on her bottom lip and slowly lowered the newspaper to the table. Four rings.
She picked it up on the fifth. “Hello?”
“Bronte?”
She absently rubbed her forehead, thinking she should have let the answering machine pick it up.
“Bronte? Are you there?”
She closed her eyes and drew in a steadying breath. “Yes, Thomas, I’m here.” Though she wished for all the world that she wasn’t. Just five minutes later she would have been in the shower and would have missed the call. Just a half hour later, she would already have left the town house for work. But no, Thomas had to call now when he knew she would probably pick up.
“You haven’t returned my calls.”
She leaned against the wall. “No, I haven’t.”
“You mind telling me why?”
He sounded too calm, too rational, and far too familiar. “Maybe because I don’t have anything to say to you?”
There was a pregnant pause, then he said quietly, “I’ve left Jessica, Bronte.”
T
he words swirled in Bronte’s mind. “And that affects me…how, exactly?”
“I guess that’s for you to decide.”
“Funny, I thought I made my decision.”
“Things change, Bronte.”
Her gaze caught on a grainy black-and-white photo of Connor McCoy on the front page of one of the newspapers. She rubbed her forehead. “Yeah, and the more they do, the more they stay the same.” She sighed. “Look, Thomas, I’d really appreciate it if you wouldn’t call me anymore.”
“Okay. I can respect that.”
She began to pull the receiver away from her ear, but his quiet voice stopped her, drawing her back like a dog who had either been kicked too much, or not enough. He said, “But that doesn’t mean you can’t call me. I’m at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel, room 21104. And, of course, you still have my work number. Call me anytime, Bronte.”
“Goodbye, Thomas.”
She hung up the receiver with both hands, then stood staring it at for a long, long moment.
What was it with men? Months pass without a word, time in which you learn to pull yourself together. Then bam. One phone call and they expect you to come running. Forget that he had virtually ripped her heart out. This, after steadily dating for three months. Long after she’d fallen head over heels in love with him.
She leaned against the wall again, burying her face in her hands. Weren’t women supposed to have a sixth sense about married, lying, cheating, heart-stealing creeps? Some sort of alarm that went off, saying “warning, warning, pond scum at twelve o’clock”? She’d never figured herself to be the gullible type. The exact opposite, if truth be known. On the rare occasion when she took a sick day and spent it listing around in bed knocking back Chinese chicken soup and ogling day-time television that featured shows with themes like, “She slept with my brother, emptied my bank account, killed my dog, but I still want her back,” she’d harshly judged the other women as no-good home wreckers who’d known the men they were seeing were married and continued the relationship anyway.
Never Say Never Again Page 3