RENEGADE'S REDEMPTION

by Lindsey Longford

  “What I’d like you to do is help me stand up.” Fierce with determination, he stared her down. “If you will. Please,” he said through gritted teeth. “I need a shoulder, not a lot of dithering around.”

  “All right.” She squatted next to him and lifted his arm around her shoulder, his lean form unfolding with hers as they rose together. “And I don’t dither, you hardheaded, stubborn jack—”

  “You’re such a sweet-talking woman, Elly Malloy.” He grinned at her, his teeth flashing white in the grease-darkened contours of his face. “I might fall in love with you just for your sweet ways.”

  She wanted to punch him. He wobbled back and forth in front of her, and it wouldn’t take more than a whiff of air to knock him on his behind, and he was joking like a fool. “What are you trying to prove?”

  “Not a thing. Look, I’m fine.” He swayed and then steadied himself with a grip on the end table. “Well, more or less.” He lifted his arms out to the side carefully. “At least I don’t have any broken bones.”

  “But you couldn’t breathe—”

  “I got kicked in the ribs. The gut. And areas south. The ‘growin’ place’, as one of Leesha’s kids terms it. I got the wind knocked out of me, but I’m all right. I have bruised ribs, and tomorrow my face and head will look even worse. That’s all. Nothing critical, so I reckon I’ll take a pass on that hospital trip. If you have some pressure tape and a butterfly bandage or two, I can put Humpty Dumpty back together again.”

  “B-but—” Raking her hands through her hair, Elly stuttered into speech, stopped.

  He’d been beaten in her yard. She was responsible. If he were bleeding, if a broken rib punctured his lungs, if— He could die. She had to take the risk. She couldn’t let him die to save herself. “I’m taking you to the emergency room. I’ll call the police. This has to be reported.”

  “No emergency room. No police.”

  “No police?” She went dizzy with relief, her knees buckled and Royal reached out, grabbing her elbow before she fell.

  “What’s going on, sugar?” he asked softly, his face not two inches from her own. “Why don’t you want the gentlemen in blue here any more than I do? What are you hiding?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “You didn’t see your face when Leesha mentioned I’d been a detective. Sugar, sure as the devil whistles ‘Dixie’ down in Georgia, you’re hiding something.” He smiled, a tight, small lift of his mouth. “What are you hiding, Elly?”

  She jerked, and his hand slid to her waistband, his fingers slipping inside the waistband and holding tightly, cold and rough against her stomach. “I offered to call the police, remember? You’re the one who decided not to. I could ask you the same question. What are you hiding?”

  “Ah. We’re playing I’ll - show - you - if - you’ll - show - me, are we?” He leaned one inch closer, his breath mingling with hers. “Cards on the table, jokers wild?”

  “We’re not playing anything. I’m trying to help you.” She inhaled the sharp scent of his anger and sweat and pain. And underlying it, something darker, uniquely male. Disturbing. Startled, she rocked back on her heels, her fingers pressing into him as she grabbed his arm to keep from falling.

  In his good eye, the pupil darkened and swallowed up the bright green. He stared at her, his brows drawing together in a frown, and almost reflexively, his forefinger moved against her skin, brushing her navel. He glanced down at his lean, grease-smudged finger, and with a quick, clumsy motion, raised his hands, stepped back. “Right. You’re the Good Samaritan saving the wounded traveler. That’s the game of the moment.” He scrubbed his hands down the sides of his slacks.

  Following his movement, her breath coming too quickly, Elly said, “Your pants are ruined.”

  “Yeah, well, I can buy new ones—” He laughed. Amusement mixed with self-mockery as he poked a finger through the rip at his pants pocket. “Nope. Guess I can’t. Not anymore.” He leaned against the wall for support. “So, since neither of us, for reasons of our own, wants to invite the police into this little incident, what about those bandages? Does the offer of aid and succor hold?”

  Disturbed, she couldn’t answer.

  “Or are you going to cast me out like the dirty dawg I am into the cold, cruel night?” His grin was pure provocation.

  But she caught the slight tremble of his hand as he touched the abrasions on his face, and said slowly, wondering the whole time what kind of mistake she was making, “The streets may be mean out there, but it’s a warm night. I think you’ll survive—”

  “Right.” Flattening his hand against the wall, he tried to turn, but his knuckles went white.

  “—but I wouldn’t send even a junkyard dog away if he looked as bad as you do,” she finished in a rush.

  “I see.” His head dropped, and his hand flexed once against the wall.

  “Probably not,” she muttered.

  “You said that once before.”

  “What?” She jammed her hands into her pockets. Fastening on to the miniature flashlight as if it were a life raft, she gripped it for all she was worth.

  “That I didn’t see. That I wouldn’t understand. Maybe I understand more than you think I do.” Shoulders slumped with fatigue and pain, he faced her. His face was cold and hard, but his wary eyes, even half-shut, were filled with sympathy.

  For the first time, she saw the man she’d glimpsed behind the teasing mask. This man with his weary eyes and battered body, this man watching her with such understanding that she wanted to weep, this man was far, far more alarming to her than the fallen angel of the beach.

  And that was the most disturbing fact of all she realized as she led him down the hall to the bathroom. There was danger. And then there was danger. Stripped of his mask, Royal Gaines was terrifying.

  Because his understanding weakened her.

  Trailing her down the hall, where an overhead fluorescent light dimmed, brightened, dimmed, Royal stayed so close on her heels that she was afraid that if she suddenly stopped, he’d barrel right into her.

  “Tommy?” He gestured toward the bedroom.

  “Asleep.” Elly wasn’t about to volunteer any more information about her son, who’d apparently adopted Royal as the next-best thing to Baby Whale. “He didn’t wake up.”

  “Good.” Royal waited for her to switch on the bathroom light. “He’d be scared. I worried about that.”

  Her hand still on the light switch, Elly looked over her shoulder at him. “Did you?” She frowned. “Tommy handles most things in stride,” she said uneasily. “Why would you think he’d be frightened?” She wanted to know whether the man was guessing, fishing or— Why was Royal worried about Tommy?

  “It’s late. I look like I’ve been run through a mangler. Even though I’m not a stranger, seems like this would be a scary moment for a kid his age,” Royal said, shrugging. With his movement, he scowled.

  “At any rate, he didn’t wake up.” Elly opened the cabinet above the sink and took out a basket of first-aid supplies. If Royal Gaines had guessed about Tommy’s troubling insecurities, the man had been dead on target, and that unnerved her. She surveyed his face, touched the oil on his shirt. “I don’t think soap and water’s going to clean you up. What is this stuff?”

  “Axle grease.”

  “From a car?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You didn’t say anything about rolling around under a car. What did they do? Drag you from one end of the street to the other before you made it to my door?” She tried to wipe off the grease with a bit of toilet paper. The paper tore and stuck to her finger. “Darn. The blasted stuff’s all over you. Your clothes, your hair. You’re a mess.”

  “So I am. It’s a long story. Can it wait until I’ve gotten some tape on my ribs and cleaned up my head?”

  “Sure.” Elly recognized a wall when she ran headfirst into one. She dropped the subject. He was covered in axle grease? Fine. She couldn’t care less. �
�I have some goopy junk that I keep on hand for Tommy. He’s always getting into unidentifiable substances that soap and water won’t clean. We’ll see if it works on you.”

  “Whatever you say.”

  “You’re being so docile that you’re making me nervous.” Her laugh was shakier than she’d intended. “Even Tommy protests.”

  “Take advantage while you can.”

  At the back of the cabinet, she found the can of jellylike solvent. Lifting the lid off, she stuck her finger in it and then used another bit of paper to clean the oil from her hand, testing the solvent. “This should do the trick.” She filled her fingers with the gooey mixture and stood on her tiptoes, working the substance into his skin and hairline, into the strands of hair near his wound.

  As the cleaner melted the grease, she wiped his face with toilet paper. With each stroke across his face, through his hair, she found herself growing silent. The shape of his head was beautifully curved under her hand, sleek, perfect, a temptation to the touch in the way it shaped itself to her palm. His face filled her view, everything centering on its planes and hollows, its shadows and the one green eye watching her intently as she worked her fingers into the stiff clumps of his hair.

  He stood too still, his breathing matching hers, his body seeming to lean over her, to encompass her, and in the mirror to her side, she saw herself, him, saw her half-parted lips, the flush of pink in her cheeks. Saw herself, aroused.

  “Sit.” She motioned to the toilet seat.

  “Yes’m.” He sat, his long, narrow hands clasped between his legs, his head bent forward. “I’m in your power.” Doubled over as he was, his shoulder brushed the top of her thigh.

  He was too close to her in the confines of the small room, and she edged closer to the sink. “Really? In my power, huh?”

  “Totally.”

  “Now, why do I doubt that, I wonder?” Ignoring him, she poked through the basket of supplies.

  “Because you can’t see what a pitiful specimen I am? How weak and vulnerable?” he asked innocently as she reached for a washrag and soap.

  “Pitiful?” She snickered. Stooping, she glanced back at him. “Rude? Unpredictable? Wily? Oh, yes, those characteristics come easily to mind. But pitiful? Not in this life, buster.”

  “Hell, I can’t decide if I should be offended or if I should say thanks.” He glanced at her, his exhaustion showing clearly in the light’s merciless glare.

  “Don’t worry about it,” she told him sweetly, rummaging through her truly pitiful stash for a halfway decent washrag. “No, I don’t think anybody in her right mind would ever describe you as pitiful, not even now. Not even in your beach-bum disguise.” Her hair slipped forward into her eyes, and she brushed it back, anchoring it behind her ear with a finger as she leaned back on her heels and studied him.

  “Disguise? Interesting term.” He sighed and rested his head on his hands, his face out of sight.

  “No, actually, the more I think about it, the more I’m certain that’s exactly the right word.” Rising to her feet, Elly paused, replaying the vague picture that had suddenly flashed into her mind. “A disguise. Like an undercover cop.” The washcloth dangled from her hand. “Were you? Undercover?” A curl of dismay eddied through her. Heaven help her if he’d been following her, investigating her.

  The toilet lid squeaked as he shifted. Angling away from her, his knees skimmed against her. “Nope. I’m not a detective any longer. Remember?”

  “Yes,” she said hesitantly, sorting out her impressions of that day when he’d saved Tommy. At first, she’d thought he was drunk. Then she’d discovered he wasn’t. But he had been drinking, and he’d looked like a man on a two-day bender. He’d looked exactly like a man who lived inside a bottle.

  On the porch of the day-care center, though, he’d looked as though he’d stepped straight out of GQ. Royal Gaines was a man of a thousand faces. Turning on the faucet, she filled the sink with warm water and dropped the soap bar into it, swishing the faded green rag through the water and making bubbles. “Why aren’t you a detective anymore?”

  He tapped her nose, and Elly felt the cool slide of the grease from his hand to her nose. “There’s an old rule. Don’t ask questions if you’re not ready for the answer. Are you sure you want to know?”

  “Yes.” She sudsed the rag. Water dripped down her forearm as she turned toward him, the small of her back pressed into the rim of the sink. “I don’t like mysteries.”

  “That’s a good one, Elly. Because I do.” Suddenly he stood up, his hip bumping her leg, his finger moving from her nose to her throat and to the back of her neck. His thumb tilted her chin up. “And, sugar, you’re the biggest mystery I’ve seen in a month of Sundays.” His mouth hovered over hers, and that scent of danger and alert male enveloped her, wrapped around her like a cloak.

  One of her legs was between his, and the press of his thigh against her was accidental, purposeful. Arousing. But Royal Gaines never did anything without a purpose. Dimly, she wondered why she wasn’t afraid, why she didn’t slam the bathroom door in his face and head for the hills.

  She should have been terrified.

  She wasn’t.

  Later, much later, she would recall that in the moment when he hesitated, frowning, in that moment it was she who took a step.

  Beguiled by that scent, by the sudden heat flaring between them and flushing her skin, she stepped forward into the unknown, welcoming the touch of his mouth against her.

  *

  Chapter 5

  « ^ »

  She could never have guessed that he would kiss her so gently, so delicately, his hands not touching her, simply hovering near her face protectively, and his lips warm, hot, tasting the corner of her mouth.

  He kissed her like a sixteen-year-old boy filled with wonder. He kissed her as if the taste of her were a miracle. He kissed her as if she were fragile, priceless.

  And he made her feel for the first time in her life as if she were on the verge of a momentous discovery.

  The metallic scent of solvent, of oil and blood and Royal Gaines, drifted around her, mixing in a strange and provocative blend that made her hum with pleasure, with need, and she leaned forward, craving his touch.

  His tongue slipped over her lower lip, and as she sighed, opening her mouth to tell him she’d kill him if he didn’t touch her, he nibbled her lip, tugging at her bottom lip. She tilted her head, and with her movement, as if some chain had snapped, he moved forward, his tongue delving deep inside. With an inarticulate sound, he slid his palm under her hair and cupped her head, tipping it closer to his mouth. His thigh nudged the juncture of her legs, and vibrations rippled through her, internal muscles clenching and coiling. His left leg moved restlessly against her, and she jerked, shaken by hunger, by longing.

  “Easy, sugar, easy,” he murmured, and she wondered if he even knew he spoke. “We have all the time in the world. There’s no hurry. Let me taste you, Elly. Please.”

  With his words, his breath sifted teasingly across her earlobe, her cheek, and she turned her head toward the source of that exquisite pleasure. Earlier, he’d been so cold, but now the heat of his skin, of his breath, of his touch, burned her. And forgetting everything in the pleasure of the moment, she welcomed that fire, craved it.

  It had been so long since she’d felt, felt anything except fear and suspicion and terror. And loneliness, so deep and pervasive that it rose now like a snow-buried tulip toward the heat of his touch, betraying her.

  She tangled her fingers in his hair, holding his mouth steady against hers while his clever mouth moved with such inventiveness against hers, against her neck and chin, skimming her jawbone, the curve of her ear. Every stroke of his tongue, every slide of his mouth over her skin—everything. And still, not enough, not nearly enough.

  She could defend herself against him. She had no weapons against herself, against her own, desperate loneliness.

  “Ah, Elly, Elly.” His mouth slanted against hers, a f
ierce hunger in the taking, an urgency now in him demanding a matching urgency from her, and still he didn’t touch her.

  Instead, moving in so close that paper wouldn’t have fit between them, he pressed her against the hard rim of the sink. Startled by his sudden aggression, Elly dropped her arms, her hands sliding down his forearms as he lifted them and braced his palms on the wall behind her, one on either side of her head. He leaned over her, his body against hers, and her world filled with him, with the texture and scent and feel of Royal Gaines.

  To keep from touching his battered body, his bruised and scraped face, Elly gripped the edges of the sink counter and wondered why it didn’t crumble underneath her hands. She couldn’t open her eyes. She didn’t want to leave this darkness where sound and touch were magnified. In mingled embarrassment and need, she whispered, “Please.”

  “What, sugar?” His mouth scarcely left hers, but his words curled over her damp lips, leaving them tingling.

  “Touch me.”

  “Where, sugar?” Palms bracing him, he remained looming over her, so close that she felt the warmth of his forearms, his biceps surrounding her, his mouth sliding back and forth against hers teasingly. “Where do you want me to touch you, Elly?”

  She hadn’t known she’d needed the sound of her name, that proof that she wasn’t anonymous, the proof that he knew he was kissing her. That need, too, had been more powerful than she could have guessed because, with her name spoken between them, with her self acknowledged, embarrassment fled, leaving only need.

  “Where, sweetheart? Tell me.”

  “Anywhere,” she whispered, stretching on tiptoe and nipping his bottom lip. Her fingernails ground into the slick surface of the sink, slipped. “Anywhere. Just touch me.”

  And he did. But not with his hands. With his body moving over hers, gently, so gently that pleasure was pain, he touched her with himself, with the planes and ridges of his long body against hers, his hips moving in a rhythm that called to hers and found her body pressing back, moving forward, retreating, the beat of blood and need thrumming through her until she didn’t think about anything except the wildness inside her, the wildness that needed release, needed an end to the aching hunger winding so tight inside her that she thought she’d cry.