by Lexy Timms
“Then what?” Luke checked the mirror and moved out into the road. There were no cars at the moment, a good thing since the Cadillac leapt onto the pavement and tried to run off on its own. Luke swore and hit the brake. Hard. Dani’s hands shot out, palms smacking the dash as she gave him a dirty look. Really? Hadn’t the man ever driven anything even remotely combat-ready in the service? Hell, this thing couldn’t be any harder than a Humvee.
“I really think I should drive, dear!” his mother said from the back. Her hand was on the top of the seat beside Dani and she was white-knuckled. Dani gingerly took her own hands off the dash, only because Luke shot her a look that was equal parts frustration and hurt. As surreptitiously as possible she eased herself back in the seat and checked her seatbelt.
“Never mind!” Luke muttered, navigating around a car that was parked too far out into the street. “What do you have in this thing anyway?”
“A 500-cubic-inch big block V-8, but the torque works out a little higher, hi-performance cams, and nitrous injection. Why do you ask?”
“Nitro... Mother!”
Elaina shrugged. “I needed a hobby.”
“Mrs. Mc...” Dani started, but Elaina held up a hand.
“No dear, if you’re going to marry this one, you call me ‘Mother’.”
“I... uh, thank you... Mrs.—Mother. We’re at the stop sign, where to now?”
Elaina sighed, and rolled her eyes. “Well, I’d suggest that you park, but I don’t know if my opinion carries any weight anymore.”
Dani looked around. She tapped Luke’s arm and pointed to a building next to them. “I take it that’s the church?”
“Lovely, isn’t it?”
Dani had to admit it was. A deceptively large building, though between the clever architecture and the way the vines and shrubs grew around it, it was difficult to tell its true size from the road. Only the sign in the front identified it from the row of houses and medical offices that lined the street. Palm trees swayed in the breeze, and a bright cascade of flowers framed the doorway.
It was utterly charming and beautifully maintained.
It also appeared to be closed.
Not one to trust appearances, Luke sprang from the car as soon as it was in park and was at the front door in moments. “There’s no one here!” Luke gave a frustrated pull on the door’s handle. It was his third such pull, as though the very act of yanking on the handle repeatedly would change the situation somehow.
Dani rolled her eyes and slumped in the seat, cringing with embarrassment.
“Why would there be someone at a church on a Thursday?” Elaina reasoned, arms crossed and standing on the sidewalk before he’d even gotten back to the car. “We don’t do bingo.”
“Find something to break one of the windows,” Edwin suggested, joining her on the sidewalk, his head tilted to the side speculatively as he regarded the building.
“You will NOT!” Elaina stomped right up the sidewalk and whirled around, hands on her hips, planting herself firmly in front of one of the stained-glass windows that flanked the front door. “This is a church! Do you have any idea how much this window costs? Do you? Because I don’t, but it’s probably very expensive. Dani, get over here and guard the other one.”
Dani slunk still further down in the seat, thankful there wasn’t a soul she knew in Florida to see this.
Elaina threw up her hands and rounded on Edwin, abandoning her post to wag a finger in his face. “Do you think you’ve led such a good life that you can desecrate a church?”
“I would never dare to do such a thing.” Edwin rose to his full height. Just under six-foot he reached his full height rather quickly, but his smile and demeanor seemed to soothe Elaina. Somewhat.
Her eyes were wary, but she backed off. “Good.”
“But we need...”
“Yes, dear, you need the statue; I heard you the first fifty times. You’re just going to have to wait, aren’t you? The sale starts tomorrow at nine. I know that means you’re stuck with me, and I’m going to ruin your plans... whatever they are. But you’re just going to have to deal with your disappointment like a grown man.” Elaina walked off while speaking, circling the parked car and, heading back around to the driver’s side, waed her arms in dismissal of children in general. She turned at the street and held out her hand. “May I have the keys to my car now?”
Not liking where this was going, Dani scrambled out of the car and found a place next to Luke on the sidewalk; he gave her a look that said quite clearly he thought she was a traitor. It was all she could do to not stick her tongue out at him just then.
“I can drive—” Luke started to say, but Dani’s thumb under his rib stopped him mid-sentence.
“But you’re the one who kept pointing out that everything was in walking distance. I’m sure you would enjoy the stroll. And it would do you a world of good, too.” The last was said rather darkly as Elaina leaned across the hood and snatched the keys from Luke’s hand and climbed into the car. Edwin quickly climbed into the passenger seat. Marcus looked like he was getting in the back, but a gesture from Edwin sent him backward onto the sidewalk where he stood, impassive and professional though Dani swore she heard him sigh.
The Cadillac roared to life again and Elaina pulled away from the curb, and turned the maneuver somehow into a U-turn. The turn radius barely cleared the available space, but when she was pointed the right way she lay down about four yards of rubber and smoked the rear tires.
“So...” Luke said in the silence following the squeal of melting tires. “That’s my mom.”
“Charming woman,” Marcus said flatly, and shook his head.
Luke did a double-take, apparently not having seen that they’d been appointed a bodyguard. He looked at Dani, who could only shrug.
I finally get some time alone with him and we get a chaperone.
Dani reached over and took Luke’s hand, trying to absorb his touch, to make the casual grasp somehow make up for the whole stupid, ridiculous day. The tension radiating off him should have come with a hurricane warning. Somehow being around his mother made her want to batten down the hatches. But was she really so bad?
Maybe if they weren’t all so frantic about that stupid thumb drive. Dani sighed, and laced her fingers through his own, relishing the feel of skin against skin, even if it was only two hands united. She’d been frustrated since they’d been so badly interrupted—was that only yesterday?
I need him. I physically need him. And it turns out he’s got mommy issues.
She sighed, leaning her head against his arm. He stared down the road, deep in thought. Did he even know she was there? Officially engaged, and the whirlwind romance was all wind and no whirl. She tugged his arm in the direction of his mother’s place and he followed, his fingers flexing in her hand, entwining around hers.
He knew she was there after all.
Suddenly she started giggling. She hated when she giggled, it sounded too much like a little girl, but she couldn’t stop it either. She was just so very...relieved. They were together. The sky was blue. Birds sang. Why not laugh?
“Just exactly what’s so funny?” Luke asked, taking a deep breath and looking at her like she was nuts.
“This.” Dani waved in the general direction of herself and him and Marcus slowly walking behind them. “When I was in high school, if I was with a boy, or worse, walking with a boy, Father would invariably send David out with me as chaperone.”
Luke glanced over his shoulder. He looked back at her smiled. “Give him a quarter,” he whispered, “see if he’ll go away.”
“Why should I give him a quarter? You’re the boy! You’re supposed to pay for the date.”
“He’s your bodyguard!”
“So?”
Luke barked a short laugh and grabbed her, pulling her under his arm. “I want you so bad,” he said under his breath, “I’m about to take you right here, on the street.”
“Now you know why Marcus is along with us,” she teased, and m
ade a grab for his crotch. “For your protection.”
“I’ll take the risk.”
“When we return,” Marcus said slowly and distinctly, “if the two of you wish to examine your mother’s car more closely, as it seems to be in a private garage, I would be happy to divert any searches for either of you.”
Luke turned and regarded the man. “That’s very kind of you.”
“Tell me, Miss,” Marcus asked Dani. “How much did David charge for a similar service?”
“A dollar.” Dani smiled. Luke’s face reddened; he’d apparently thought he was being quiet. She poked him, hard, in the ribs. Right where she’d gotten him before. “Well, pay the man! One dollar!”
Luke dodged out of the way, and looked between the two of them as though trying to judge how serious they both were. Marcus held out his hand. Luke shook his head and pulled out his wallet and looked. “I don’t have anything smaller than a five.”
Marcus slowly extracted the five-dollar bill from the compartment, leaving the rest.
“That’s quite all right,” he assured Luke as he folded the bill. “I don’t mind.” He walked past a bemused Luke and nodded once to Dani. “Pardon me.”
Dani started giggling. She couldn’t help it. The look on Luke’s face was absolutely priceless. “I like him,” she said between breaths as Marcus slowly walked away.
Chapter Five
Dani waited until she figured Marcus was out of earshot. It was tricky, he’d been a good several paces behind, but she swore he could still hear everything. She turned to Luke who was still trying to get his wallet back into his pocket. She moved in front of him, choosing to walk backwards, hands behind her back, trying her damnedest to look innocent, though she couldn’t quite hold back her smile.
“I think I was just conned,” he said, coming to a halt in front of...whoever’s house that was. Elaina had told them, she was sure, but who really cared? Let the window curtain twitch, let whatever old biddy there spread the word all over the neighborhood. Dani was alone with her man.
Luke crossed his arms, but a corner of his mouth was quirked. Dani was relieved to see that; even a half-smile was good. She placed her hand on his and got in close. He’d been tense since they’d arrived.
Maybe that was what had thrown her. He’d been Mr. Calm when Marcus landed a helicopter blind, at night, in an area the size of a shoebox. One misstep and they would all have gone up in a fireball, but leave it to Luke to be unfazed. Even escaping from a shoot-out, in a near riot with burning buildings and bodies strewn everywhere hadn’t left him so much as shaken.
But get the man around his mother and the little veins in his head start taking mambo lessons. Not that he really seemed to see his mother at all. She was surrounded by wealth, she was still a young, beautiful woman, in her mid-fifties, not old by anyone’s standards who had gone through puberty, but he had her wasting away in a “nursing” home somewhere as the years piled onto her sweet, gray head.
How did he not know about the money? Was it that new, or that old? The longer they lingered here, the more questions she had. And she wondered just how much she’d ever learned about him at all. Which hardly seemed fair when he knew enough about her family to write a Master’s thesis on them. She wanted to change that. Their relationship couldn’t be just about sex.
Not that sex didn’t have its place.
She tugged at his hands, disentangling his arms until they hung at his sides, no longer creating a barrier between him and her. One palm flat on his chest, she stepped in as close as she could, lifting her chin that she might nuzzle his neck. Dang, he was tall. His arms came around her, cradling her against him as he bent his head to meet her lips lightly, in the most fleeting of kisses. It seemed like forever since they’d touched like this, tender and romantic.
She rubbed her leg against his crotch and smiled. “Well, we’re going to have to make sure you get your five-dollars’ worth, then, won’t we?”
“Drafty old musty garage...” Luke’s hands drifted down her waist, and grabbed her butt and squeezed, lifting her to her toes so he could cover her lips with his. Her hand dug into his side and held on, her other hand braced against his back, her leg rising around him.
She could feel his arousal, the bulge in his jeans growing larger and harder as she rubbed against him. It was almost enough to rub against, but the thickness of her shorts and his pants conspired to thwart them. Still, she kept the pressure of contact until he groaned in frustration and his hand went from her butt cheek, sliding up her back before coming around to grasp the side of her breast, fingers splayed against the tender flesh. Dani gasped against his mouth, forgetting little old ladies hiding behind lace curtains, the sound of traffic, or a million other distractions. The world faded, and it was only the two of them.
His mouth dropped to her neck and he inhaled deeply, as though the scent of her skin and the smell of her hair were the most intoxicating perfumes in the world. She arched her neck like a cat, reveling in the touch on her neck, and her hand grasped his shirt, fingernails digging into the cloth. Her leg wound around one of his, knee wrapped around his buttock, and she nibbled fiercely on his earlobe.
“Fuck, I need you,” he murmured, hands now under her shirt in the back, reaching up past the strap of her bra, then under it. “I need you now.”
“We can’t have sex on the street.” She laughed breathlessly, and for one wild, crazy instant she wondered if they could.
Apparently, he thought the same thing. “Watch me.”
She grabbed his head between her hands and smothered his protests with her lips. Not that he was protesting. Her hand pulled up his shirt and found the rough, curly hairs on his chest. She grabbed a handful, alternating between stroking the fur and pulling on handfuls as her passion waxed and waned.
The press against his jeans must have been becoming unbearable, it was as bad as she’d ever seen in him, but he just kept on as though she was the only food, the only salvation, for a lost and starving man.
She felt the same. It was one thing to lose yourself in a lover, but when he was lost in you it became an entire world, a separate and distinct reality where no one else existed. Sadly, they were standing on someone’s front yard, and the reality of other existences pressed through her passion and hunger for him. Of course, it didn’t help that the old lady behind the curtain had started to knock on the window and make shooing motions with arthritic and twisted hands, the way one would try to scatter stray cats or approaching door-to-door salesmen.
“I like garages,” she managed to say as he worked his lips down her neck to the hollow of her throat.
“Cadillac,” he mumbled. “Big back seats. Lots of room and all...” He dropped his hands and grabbed her ass, bodily lifting her. She wrapped her legs around his waist and held on, kissing the base of his neck. “... and all thick, soft upholstery.”
“Mmmmmm,” she purred as he continued down the sidewalk as though she weighed nothing at all. “You’ve done this before!”
He grabbed her hair and pulled hard. She gasped and looked up into his eyes. “I left my virginity in a Cadillac,” he said, and pulled her to him again to kiss her so thoroughly that she whimpered against his mouth, to let him know she needed to come up for air.
She pressed against him, strong legs holding her in place. “Mine was on a mountainside during a thunderstorm.”
He pulled back to look at her and blink. “Okay, that’s hot!” he admitted, and assaulted her lips with renewed passion.
“You’re thinking about that right now, aren’t you?” she asked, breathless and blushing when he finally allowed her to come up for air.
“Come with me to the garage and I’ll show you what I’m thinking!” And this time it was he who laughed.
It was the first laugh she’d heard from him in a long time, and her heart lifted. Crazy, deliriously happy. Maybe she’d take him instead, she felt so giddy. Did it matter which it was at this point? The fact that he’d laughed made her feel ha
ppier than she’d been in longer than she could remember.
She leapt down from her perch and knelt right there on the sidewalk, bending forward to kiss the thickness through his pants. He mimed opening the zipper and she grabbed his hand.
“Not yet, people might talk!”
“Only if they’re impressed, so make it look good,” he said, and winked.
Be still her heart. He was a rogue, a genuine rogue. She was lost. Definitely lost. “Goodbye Mrs. Fielding!” Dani called, and waved to a random house.
“What?” Luke turned. “That’s not even...”
But Dani had a head start on him. She was already running down the street to his mother’s house. Luke ran to catch up to her and she flipped her shirt up, giving him a tantalizing view of her back as she ran. “Last one to the garage has to clean the...”
She stopped short across the street from the house. Luke thudded to a stop beside her.
She burned, a pent-up mix of frustration and anger. Was she EVER going to get five minutes alone with the love of her life? You’d think no one respected the whole engagement thing they had going, even if it wasn’t necessarily genuine. Yet.
“Shit.”
She looked at Luke to share in her frustration but Luke stood silent, his eyes wide, his face absolutely drained of all color.
He might as well have seen a ghost.
THERE WAS A SMALL CLUSTER of people gathered around the garage. As Luke and Dani approached the house, she could just make out the image of his mother and her father, but there was a third figure she didn’t know, a man in a suit.
He was... dapper.
It was the only word that fit him. Tailored suit, thick wavy hair, and a ready smile that looked too poised and practiced. Either he was a used car salesman or a politician. He stood in the driveway with his hands clasped in front of him. It could have been a very submissive pose, even should have been. When Marcus or one of his men stood like that, waiting for orders, it screamed “underling”.
But this man made it look like he was a benevolent god accepting the adulation of his worshipers, though adulation was the last thing that either parent was willing to give. Even from a distance, Dani could hear Luke’s mother’s voice. From here it was impossible to hear the words, but her tone was plenty emphatic.