“So what’re you saying?” Luke sputtered. “You want me to be lousy in the sack and knock myself off the proverbial pedestal?”
“In a sense. But I don’t want you to be anything you’re not. Sabrina would know if you put on an act.”
“This is nuts.”
“Please. I can help her forget the memories of a lost love. I can even try to heal her broken heart. But I can’t compete with a dream man who she’ll spend the rest of her life mooning over and wondering what could’ve been.”
Luke closed his eyes. He was in big trouble. Ben’s reasoning had actually begun to make sense. “So you’re hoping she’ll develop a case of buyer’s remorse.”
“Huh?”
“Like when a guy buys something he’s wanted for a long time, and after he gets it home and uses it, he realizes it’s not nearly as good as it was cracked up to be. The fellow feels sort of betrayed and stupid for wanting it so much.”
“Yes!” Ben shouted in his ear. “Now you understand.”
Unfortunately, he did. “I’m not agreeing to your sick scheme. But I’ll forget about the home healthcare agency for now and give it some thought.”
“Thank you. You know, it may help you, too. You might discover Sabrina isn’t any better than the other women you’ve been with.”
“Yeah, right.” If he believed there was even a remote chance of that happening, he’d sleep with her in a heartbeat. Luke ended the call and buried his face in his good hand. Someone must’ve lobotomized him at the hospital while he hadn’t been watching. Why the hell else would he agree to let Sabrina stay?
They’d been alone together less than eight hours, and he’d already had his hand on her breast and his naked dick pressed against her fanny—not to mention the eyeful he’d gotten of her crotch. He had to be realistic. As a red-blooded, heterosexual male with a healthy sex drive, he could only resist temptation for so long before his control snapped—especially if Sabrina kept prancing around half-dressed.
Sooner or later, his willpower would weaken, and he would do what Ben had begged him to—and enjoy every mind-boggling second of it. But, damn it, he refused to be the one to make the first move.
~*~
“So, what about the sleeping arrangements for the rest of the night?” Sabrina set her half-finished plate of food on the tray she’d situated between them on the bed.
Luke pressed the mute button on the remote to silence the television on top of his dresser. “What about them?” He pointed to the chicken she’d left. “Aren’t you gonna eat that?”
He’d already polished off two frozen dinners and half dozen cookies while watching a rerun of How I Met Your Mother.
“No. I don’t know where you’ll put it, but you can finish it if you’d like.”
“Thanks. What do you mean by sleeping arrangements?”
“Where do you want me to sleep? I brought an old jar up if you want to use that to relieve your—”
“You can sleep right here.”
She did a double take and frowned. “Wait a minute. Where’d you stuff the guy who just had a hissy-fit when he woke up and discovered me in his bed?”
“I do not have hissy-fits,” he mumbled past a bite of her chicken.
“Why the sudden U-turn?”
He shrugged one shoulder. “I simply realized you’re right. You can’t help who you love. All these years, I’ve been a fool thinking I needed to protect you from myself when you know full well I have no interest in anything more than a short-term affair. You’re a big girl, so it should be your call if you think you can handle casual sex.”
“Well, it’s about time you realized it.”
“But,”—he wiped his mouth on his napkin—“inasmuch as I’m not gonna beat myself up if you throw yourself at me, I also refuse to be the instigator of your infidelity.”
In other words, if anything happened between them, she would have to initiate it. She’d never been comfortable in the role of the aggressor. If she had, it wouldn’t have taken her fifteen years to summon up the nerve to kiss Luke.
“What about Ben? Aren’t you worried about betraying him anymore?”
“No. I gave that some thought, too.” After several attempts to close the cookie bag one-handed, he passed it to her. “I mean, I told Ben the score. And he seems to think the only way you’ll ever be content with him is if you sow your wild oats with me.”
“That’s right. He’s given me his blessing to do whatever I need to do to resolve my feelings for you. So, I see it as a sexual exorcism.”
“Call it what you want. I just don’t want to be blamed for not helping you to get over me. All I ask is that neither of you hates me when the smoke clears.”
She wasn’t certain she liked the change in Luke’s attitude. It made him seem shallow and callous. But in his defense, he was only giving her what she’d asked for and what Ben had sanctioned.
He sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed. “Would you mind disappearing for a few minutes while I use that jar?”
“No problem. I need to use the bathroom, too. Holler when you’re through.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll be finished before you get your panties down.”
“You forget.” She grinned back at him as she headed to the bathroom. “I’m not wearing any.”
“You had to remind me, didn’t you?”
She reached into the bathroom and pulled her silky thong off the towel rack. “It’s mostly dry. If you’d like, I can put it—”
“How do you usually sleep—with or without?”
Stepping back into the bedroom, she turned it right side out. “That all depends on what I’m wearing. If it’s a long nightgown, I go without. If it’s just a camisole or baby dolls, I wear panties.”
He snorted, pointing at the scrap of fabric in her hands. “You have the nerve to use the term panties? One of the patches on my uniform would cover more than that.”
She usually wore something a little more substantial, but she’d brought these to Ben’s, figuring she’d be undressing for him. “Fine.” She flounced into the bathroom. “If you feel that way, I’ll let it finish drying.”
When she crept back into the bedroom a few minutes later, she glanced around Luke’s side of the bed. “Where’s the jar?”
“I’ll take care of it when I get up in the morning.”
“Stop being such a baby. I’m a nurse. I’m used to disposing of patient’s urine.”
“Well, I’m not used to being a patient. It’s humiliating having you dump my piss.”
She crossed her arms and huffed. “Luke.”
He pointed to the floor between the night table and the bed and turned his face away. “Would you mind closing the window and turning on the A/C, too? It’s a little warm in here.
After pouring the contents of the jar into the toilet and rinsing the container, she set it on the night table where he could reach it. As soon as she finished switching on the central air conditioning, she hopped into bed beside him.
“Will it keep you awake if I watch TV for a while?” He clicked off the light. “I’ve been working the graveyard shift the last month, and my body is used to being awake at this hour.”
“No, that’s fine. Most nights I go to sleep with the television on.”
As he turned the volume up just far enough to hear it, she snuggled against him. Sliding the arm with the sprained wrist around her, he pressed his lips to her forehead. “G’night, Princess.”
“You’ve been calling me that ever since I was a kid. I recently found out my name actually means princess. Did you know that?”
“Why’d you think I chose it?”
“I had no idea. All I know is it made me feel special. Maybe it’s why I fell so hard for you.”
She laid her head on his shoulder and combed her fingers through the raven curls on his chest. After several moments, he pressed his left hand over hers and held it still, his heart thudding like a tom-tom under her palm.
“I love
you,” she whispered.
His chest expanded as the cadence of his heart picked up. “I love you, too.”
It should be enough, but it wasn’t. She wanted him to be in love with her.
Dusty whimpered from the floor next to the bed.
“I think he misses Mopsy.”
“He’s not getting in bed with us. He should be locked in his crate.”
“Just for tonigh—”
“An hour ago, you were calling him an ungrateful little mongrel.”
“I know.” She pouted. “But he’s sorry for what he did. I won’t let him on your side of—”
“No. Now go to sleep.”
“I’ll fix you lasagna for dinner tomorrow,” she offered in an enticing tone.
“With your homemade sauce and extra cheese?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Mmmm....that sounds good.” He held her closer and sighed. “I can’t wait.”
She smacked his rock-hard abdomen. “That was supposed to be a bribe.”
“I’m an honest cop, Brina. I can’t be bought—and even if I could, it would certainly take a lot more than a lousy plate of pasta and cheese.”
“My lasagna is not lousy.”
“Sorry. I stand corrected. Your lasagna is as good as my mom’s.”
It should be. Teresa Marino had taught Sabrina everything she knew about cooking. She drew a circle around his navel with her fingernail. “How about if I offer you sexual favors?”
“Nope.” He grabbed her hand and moved it back to his chest. “Just last week, a hooker offered me a freebie when I busted her for possession. I turned her down, too.” He pushed Sabrina’s head back down on his shoulder. “Now go to sleep, or I’ll have to arrest you for attempting to bribe an officer.”
“Oh, goody. Do you promise to use your big nightstick to subdue me?”
“All right, this conversation has regressed far enough.” He flipped off the TV and plumped his pillow. “If you won’t go to sleep, I will.”
Silence reigned over the dark room for several minutes. Being in bed with him this way made her yearn to be his wife more than ever. But even if he was emotionally able to make a commitment to her, his viewpoint on cops and marriage would hold him back. She rubbed her cheek against his muscular bicep. “Luke? Can I ask you a question?”
“Uh-huh.”
“When we were kids, you always said you wanted to teach high school social studies and coach football. What made you decide to major in law enforcement instead of teaching?” When he didn’t answer, she shook him. “Well?”
“I said you could ask. I never said I’d answer.”
“You can be such a jerk sometimes.” Particularly whenever she tried to get inside his head. “Did it have anything to do with losing Nicco to drugs?”
During Luke’s sophomore year in college, his brother had died from his second overdose in less than two years.
“Yeah,” he rasped. “It had a lot to do with it. As well as finding out my dad—”
When he clammed up, she leaned over him. “What about your father?”
“Nothing. Forget I mentioned it. It’s late.”
“No, I won’t forget it. What did you find out about your father?”
Luke heaved a tortured sigh. “When my dad’s car ran off the highway the night he died, it wasn’t an accident.”
“He didn’t fall asleep at the wheel?”
“No. He committed suicide.”
She gasped and covered her mouth. “Oh, God, no. How can you be sure? Didn’t the police rule it accidental?”
“Yeah, but two days later, my brother got a letter from my father, explaining why he’d done what he had. He’d made it look like an accident so my mom would get the life insurance from his job. After Nicco overdosed the first time, he showed me the letter. Coping with that and keeping it a secret is what started him getting high.”
“You were older than Nicco. Why’d your dad send the letter to him?”
“Because, at the time, he figured I was too pissed off at him to deal with it.”
“What were you mad about?”
“The night before, he caught me reading a Playboy magazine instead of doing my homework. He went off like a bomb with a short fuse and beat the crap out of me.”
“But you weren’t doing anything other teenage boys don’t do.”
“I know. But my mother had just told him what I’d done to your Barbie and Ken dolls, and that was what he’d come to talk to me about.”
“Oh, my gosh.” Now she felt awful about bringing that incident up at her party.
“He called me a pervert for doing something so smutty to a little girl’s doll. It was like he thought I was trying to corrupt you. And then, four years later, I learned he killed himself the next night,” he whispered absently, as if he were speaking to the walls.
“Oh, Luke.” She put her arm around him. “I’m so sorry. I’m sure he didn’t kill himself because of anything you did. You were just a horny thirteen-year-old.”
“Almost fourteen. Ben and Tyler don’t know about my dad taking his own life, so keep it to yourself, okay?”
He hadn’t even told his best friends? It shouldn’t surprise her. Luke was an intensely private person.
His father’s suicide must have devastated him. He’d been extremely close to his dad. Sal Marino had spent hours playing with his sons and had always included Tyler. Whereas, her father had always been too busy hiding from bookmakers and loan sharks to pay attention to them. Without Sal Marino in his life, her brother never would’ve had the example he needed to become the good father he was today.
She remembered how swollen and battered Luke’s face had been and the sling he’d been wearing for a dislocated shoulder. “At your father’s funeral, you told us you’d been roughhousing with Nicco and fell off the top of your bunk beds.”
“What’d you want me to say—that my father had flipped out and put me in the emergency room? He’d never laid a hand on any of us before, and losing control like that scared him.”
Apparently, the incident had driven his father into an even deeper depression than he must have already been suffering. She couldn’t imagine a perceptive woman like Teresa Marino not seeing he had some sort of a problem.
“When his temper got so short, didn’t your mom suggest seeing a doctor? Sudden personality changes like that can be triggered by many different pathological causes, most of which can be treated. He could’ve—”
“Brina, I’ve already told you way more than I should’ve. Just go to sleep.”
“But Luke, I really—”
“Please. I don’t want to talk about it.”
Despite that he’d shut her out again, it gave her a warm feeling to know he’d shared as much as he had with her—especially when he hadn’t told anyone else. “Thank you for trusting me.”
He rolled back toward her and wrapped her in a desperate embrace that ignited a spark of hope. Maybe one day he’d introduce her to some of his other demons.
There wasn’t a doubt he had more than a few. Luke’s attitude had undergone a complete transformation in college. Practically overnight, the cautious, responsible guy she’d grown up with had transformed into a reckless daredevil who seemed to have lost all reason for living.
At the time, everyone had seen his risk-taking as a way of coping with his brother’s first overdose. But if that had truly been the case, in the last fifteen years, Luke should’ve come to terms with his loss and given up jumping out of airplanes or throwing himself in front of drug dealers’ cars.
There had to be something more behind his propensity for danger than simply unresolved grief. For some crazy reason, it seemed Luke had a death wish.
CHAPTER 6
Was it possible he’d died and gone to heaven? Or maybe he was simply dreaming. Luke buried his face in Sabrina’s silky hair and breathed in her powdery scent. If not, there must be some doozy of an explanation for why she was in bed with him. He would never let that happen ou
tside of his fantasies.
Whatever the reason, he refused to ruin a perfectly good dream dissecting the how and why of it. Only a fool would deny himself the chance to enjoy the inexplicably real feel of her curves pressed against his naked body and her incredible scent in his nostrils.
He pressed his morning erection against her soft bottom and froze when she whispered, “Are you awake?”
Okay, so it wasn’t a dream. All the reasons for Sabrina’s presence flooded back as the pain in his ankle and wrist reminded him of the previous day. Maybe if he pretended to be out cold, he could slip back to sleep and enjoy holding her for a few minutes without any guilt-pangs ruining the experience.
He slowed the rise and fall of his chest to deep, steady breaths and basked in the pleasure of her cuddled in his arms.
“I guess not,” she murmured as she gently extricated herself from his clinch and flipped her half of the sheet over him. A minute later, the radio he kept on the shelf over the toilet turned on along with the water in the shower.
Luke rolled onto his back and imagined Sabrina dragging his T-shirt over her head. The glass stall clicked shut inside the bathroom, and, for some strange reason, the sound of the water and the music grew louder.
He pried his eyelids up just in time to glimpse Dusty’s tail squeezing into the bathroom. Sabrina must not have closed the door completely. Once the dog’s body set it in motion, gravity in the settled old house finished pulling it open.
Luke reached over his head in a long stretch and stiffened.
Holy crap. The large mirror above the dresser sat at exactly the right angle to allow a clear view of the mirror over the bathroom sink. Talk about perfect triangulation.
He couldn’t help staring at Sabrina’s reflection dancing in the shower as she soaped her breasts and wiggled her hips, singing along with an old Rod Stewart song.
As the dog scampered back out of the bathroom, Luke scooted further up in the bed to improve his perspective and murmured, “Dusty, you brilliant puppy, you’re gonna get an extra dog biscuit for this.”
In fact, if the mutt promised to open the door every morning, he might even let him sleep in the bed.
A Heart Decision Page 8