Casting the Dice

  He couldn’t wait, either. The police had arrested the men after her. Most likely they were the same men who’d blown up his car, and she’d be leaving town as soon as she got square with the contractor. It was now or never.

  “I’m sorry about—”

  “I should never—” she said at the same time.

  “Go ahead.” He kept himself tight, wanting to get this out before he lost his courage, but maybe she’d say something that would smooth the way. She had to be feeling the same sense of conclusion.

  “I should never have exploded at you, but I appreciate your apologizing.”

  He frowned. “I’m lost. What do you think I’m apologizing for?”

  “For telling me I couldn’t handle what you had to say at lunch. Patronizing me. I thought I was being a friend by asking about your dad.” Her throat moved in a swallow.

  Lunch seemed like a century ago. “You are my friend, and I overreacted.”

  He wanted to pull her close but forced himself to remain still so she could see his face. This was too important for her to misunderstand.

  “Your turn.” She rubbed her arms. “What are you sorry about?”

  “Being a jerk. I promised myself long ago I would never behave that way. I was also out of line thinking you bothered Kurt.”

  “He’s your brother. You help each other.” Her mouth pursed, her blue-green gaze on something behind them for a moment before pinning him. “Is that an apology?”

  “Yes.” He looped his arms around her waist. He’d been hiding his head in the sand about how good she made him feel. About how much he needed her.

  With a thumb, he wiped away rainwater from her cheek. He would have released her, but she slipped both hands around his neck and pressed her lips to his.

  He tugged her hands loose, and she clutched them together. “Should I step back?”

  Step back? He shook his head. “I like where this is going.”

  “You did resist in the very beginning. Admit it. That’s why you tried to boss me around.”

  “I qualified for that position. I live in this city, and you don’t. I knew what we had to do and where to go, but I didn’t want this pull, or whatever it is, between us to interfere with my being able to concentrate on your safety. I used to rescue fallen or injured baby birds as a kid, but they never survived. I wanted to make sure you would survive.”

  Her eyebrows rose and a look of wonder flashed across her face. “I guess my hearing loss puts me in the broken-wing category, but I want to go on the record that you’ve been doing a fine job. Even when you have to destroy electronics.” A smile stretched her sweet mouth.

  “I felt this special thing between us right away, too,” She rested her hands on his waist. “It was hard not to notice. You were hard not to notice, but I set myself up to fail with my ex-boyfriend because I made him into a hero. I tried so hard not to like you, but you kept buying me meals, kept chauffeuring me around, kept saving my life.”

  The weight resting on him dropped away like a scuba tank sliding off his shoulders. Energy built inside him. And peace.

  He touched her cheek before sliding his fingers behind her neck. The scent of rainwater in her hair washed over him, pulling him under her spell.

  The brush of her taut nipples through his shirt set his skin sizzling. He already rode the edge but jumped into the fire with a kiss below her ear. “Annie…”

  She sighed and pressed closer. “Do that again.”

  “What about something better?” He opened her hand and slid his tongue along the base of her thumb to the center of her palm. Her little sounds of pleasure fueled his blood, testing his restraint. The way she leaned into his hips stoked his furnace hotter, and he lavished the same attention on her other palm.

  He lifted his head and sucked in a breath. If they didn’t stop now, he’d shatter. He swallowed and said her name, waiting for her to look at him. His words came out way too husky, but someone needed to say them. “We need to face the truth.”

  “What’s the truth?” She pulled the tails from his pants.

  He caught his breath at the graze of her knuckles and stilled her hand on his buttons. “That we want to get naked again.”

  “Right off hand, I’d say yes. At least I do.” Amusement flirted with her mouth.

  He kissed the sensitive spot beneath her ear again and nuzzled her neck. She slipped her hands under his half-unbuttoned shirt and over his chest.

  Steam rose from their wet clothes. They could be the only people on earth, lost in their own primitive heatwave. Fine with him, and Annie didn’t complain. He unzipped her pants and slid his fingers over her sodden panties to her center.

  “Oh.” She arched her back and pushed against his shoulders. He slid his wet fingers free, and inhaled her scent. He needed to be there with everything he had. Soon.

  He took her breast into his mouth through the fabric. She jerked, and he stopped. “Bad?” he signed.

  “No. Good.” She ran her hands over his bare shoulders and under his loose collar. “So good.”

  Had she hesitated? He lifted his head.

  “What are you doing? Don’t stop.”

  You sure?

  “I’m sure.” She gave him a get-real look, reading his mind.

  “O.K.,” he spelled and caught the curve of her mouth in a kiss. “Let me know if I do anything you don’t like.”

  She tugged his shirt over his head.

  “Let me.” He stopped her when she would have finished undressing and stripped off the rest of her clothes before touching and tasting with his hands and mouth.

  “You’re driving me crazy,” she whispered.

  All good in his book, crazy or not.

  He spread a dry towel on top of the washing machine and brought her arms around his neck, closing his eyes at the touch of her heated skin on his.

  “Hang on.” He lifted her to the towel.

  His sodden pants joined the pile on the floor, and he found a condom.

  “Let me,” she whispered.

  “I better.” He’d give her a chance to do what she wanted later. He sheathed himself, and she wrapped her legs around his waist.

  He slipped inside, his breath catching. He needed this. He needed her. More than she would ever know. He began to move. She closed her eyes, the sweet concentration on her face spurring him on.

  She moaned again, and he hoisted her higher on his hips. He planted kisses down her neck, slid his tongue across her shoulders and lower, breathing in her scent. The slip of their bodies against each other sent him to the edge. He couldn’t think, only feel.

  Annie pressed her lips to his ear. He loved the way she gave herself over to him, the way—she shifted, and his control shattered.

  They clung to each other for as long as he could hold her and eased her onto the towel.

  “I can’t believe we did this on the back porch. With the light on.” She hopped off the washer.

  “You needed the light to understand me. I didn’t know we’d be—” He rolled his hand.

  “Me, neither.” She bit her lip.

  He rubbed that lip with his thumb. “Don’t worry. The azaleas do a good job blocking the windows, and we have no close neighbors.”

  She clutched her clothes to her chest. “But one of your brothers could have walked in on us.”

  Hal rapped his knuckles on the inside door that separated them from the kitchen. “They’re asleep upstairs. We could have been beating gongs, and they wouldn’t have heard us. Aunt Edi runs an air filter in her room that’s like white noise. Let’s throw our clothes in the dryer.”

  “And walk through the house naked?”

  “Put your clothes on if you want, but I’m drying mine.” He piled the towels from the machine on top and handed her one. “You can wear this instead if you want.”

  “We have to climb the stairs,” she protested. “Walk past your brothers’ bedrooms.”

  “That’s not my plan.” He emptied his pockets, and touched her
knit top. “In or out.”

  She handed over her clothes and anchored the towel under her arm.

  He lifted her filmy brassiere. “You spent my money wisely.”

  “That was the tamest style the store had, but let me have that. The heat will ruin the elastic.”

  “What about these?” He lifted her silky panties.

  “Better keep those out, too.” She took them, too, and looked around the porch. “I don’t see any place to hang these.”

  “We’ll find a place.” He set the cycle, unlocked the inside door, and groped for the light.

  “What’s your plan?” She clutched her purse and towel to her chest.

  He strode across the hall and opened the pocket doors of the TV room. “Make yourself at home. I’ll be right back.”

  He left and she dropped her bag on the floor beside the couch. A folded newspaper and pen lay on the table next to the big chair. A rumpled handkerchief peeked from the innards of the easy chair.

  Hal returned, closed the doors, and set his cell and wallet on the table.

  “This is Aunt Edi’s room. I don’t feel right being naked in here.”

  “I spent the last two years of high school in this house. Auntie let me entertain my friends in here with the door closed. We’ll be out before her morning soap operas start.”

  “Can I put these here to dry?” Annie asked.

  “That’s perfect.” Hal spread a patchwork quilt over the cushions, turning his perfectly sculpted and very naked backside to her.

  She draped the towel over the arm of the vinyl recliner for her underwear.

  “Come here.” He beckoned to her.

  She clasped her arms over her chest, shivering inside at his tone. “What do you want?”

  “You’ll get cold over there.”

  “It’s summer. I’m not cold.” Neither was he.

  His body broadcasted exactly how hot he was, but his serious gaze suggested he had something besides sex in mind right now. Another revelation?

  What he’d already revealed filled her heart with gratitude.

  He propped the pillows on one end of the sofa. “Let’s sit. I want to sink my hands into your hair.”

  “Would that give you a thrill?”

  “I think so.” His dimple winked at her. She sat between his muscular thighs, and his fingers got busy unraveling her braid.

  She rested her cheek on her knees, and the hearing aid pressed into her scalp. “I need to take off my aid.”

  He caught her hand. “I want to tell you something first.”

  She faced him, her stupid insides clenching. “What’s on your mind?”

  He pressed his lips together and a groove dug between his brows. “My dad gave me a hard time when I was a kid.”

  “About the dyslexia?”

  He nodded. “He didn’t think I worked hard enough in school. My friends on the swim team knew this, and we all studied together. I also got extra tutoring from the school, but I still barely graduated. My father didn’t understand. He insisted I should have done a lot better.”

  Oh, Hal. “Is he the one who wanted you to be a doctor?”

  “No, but he laughed at my ambition. Told me doctors had to be smart.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with your mind.” She squeezed his hands and turned her shoulder into the couch to face him. How sad that his father had never accepted him. “I can’t imagine how much that hurt.”

  His mouth thinned, but he said nothing.

  She cupped his whisker-roughened cheek to smooth a thumb over his lips. Every cell in her body ached for him. “Don’t tell me there’s more.”

  “There’s more.” He stretched against the pillows. “After classes, I used to go to a little neighborhood store to buy snacks with my teammates before practice. One time I saw my dad get out of a car next door with a woman who wasn’t my mother and go inside the house with her. I should have looked away because he caught me staring before the door shut.

  “That night when I left practice, he was waiting in his police car and made me get inside. We drove to an empty playground where he threatened to kill me if I ever told my mother what I’d seen. That’s when I started to hate him. That’s why I didn’t go to his funeral. Even though it was Mom’s, too.”

  She rubbed his clenched fist. “Nobody should have to grow up with an abusive parent.”

  “He never hit me.”

  “What he did was still abuse.”

  Hal’s brown eyes glistened. “I wanted you to know I had reasons.”

  “I’m glad you told me.” She opened his clenched fist and twined her fingers through his. “You’re a wonderful guy. No matter what happens, never forget that.”

  The blond and her bodyguard were still alive, a loose end he needed to sever.

  Bruce and the others had gotten caught, despite his help. He should never have suggested they take over the dirty work. They knew the gambling tables, and Bruce could play any part he needed to, but otherwise, they personified incompetence. Even Shawn, the silent guy who took orders so well, had been arrested.

  How fortunate he already had a plan B in place.

  The burner phone displayed no missed messages, and he still had time to kill. From the open suitcase on the polished wooden rack, he pulled his pistol and smoothed his fingers over the steel barrel.

  The front door opened. A man’s voice followed by a woman’s floated down the hallway to the guest bedroom. Footsteps clicked on the oak flooring, and he dumped the newspaper in the trash can. His host didn’t need to know of his interest in the arrests. He only needed to do what he was told.

  The man stopped in the doorway, his shoulders slumped, his suit rumpled. He stiffened at the sight of the pistol. “Do not use that in my home.”

  “Wasn’t planning to.” The weight of the weapon in his hand, the hard smoothness of the barrel under his fingers soothed his nerves. He indicated the dark bags under his friend’s eyes. “You need to get more sleep.”

  The other man twisted his lips. “Easy for you to say.”

  “You never did tell me what happened yesterday.” For some reason his host had gotten home very late. “At the restaurant.”

  “We convinced them you’d left town. The bail recovery guy should back off now.”

  “And you’ll be compensated appropriately.” Randy dropped into an easy chair and slipped the cartridge into his palm to count the bullets. “What’s your maid got going for dinner?”

  “You need to listen to me.” His host kicked the wastebasket against the bureau.

  “Go ahead. You have my attention.”

  “If you want to stay under the radar, you shouldn’t leave this house until it’s time.”

  “I had something to do and bought a paper while out. Simple as that.” He’d been getting the lay of the land to find the best place for ambush.

  “I don’t know exactly what you’re involved in because you won’t tell me, but it needs to stop. I have to tell you your first dumb move was not showing up in court when you were supposed to.”

  His host had a lot of gall. He had personally supported this man from the beginning, throwing clients his way and even making a loan or two—both still unpaid. As long as he could keep the man beholden, he’d stay loyal. As long as he stayed loyal, there was no need to reveal the end game. “I’m disappointed you didn’t take care of the judge.”

  “Hard to convince him of your sincerity when you couldn’t even bother to make an appearance.”

  “There is such a thing as a bribe.” Randy slammed the cartridge into the handle with a snap, laughing at the way his host jumped. “Don’t forget you need to be available to take me to the airport.”

  “You’re making a mistake running.”

  If he’d wanted advice, he would ask. “I do believe I’m paying you to do what I require.”

  20

  “That was the contractor.” Hal ended the call and set his cell to vibrate.

  “That’s a relief.” Annie steppe
d into the shade of the live oak in front of the Lemoyne mansion. “What did he say?”

  “He doesn’t know when he can meet you, but he’s going to try and remove the padlock so you can get your stuff.” Hal pressed the street intercom and pushed open the gate when the buzzer sounded.

  “That’s progress.” They walked toward the front door. “Why do you think Mattie’s housekeeper didn’t tell you why she called?”

  “I don’t want to guess.” He patted her hand and watched the doorknob turn. She might have a lead on his fugitive. With his deadline closing in, he needed more ideas, fast.

  The door opened, and the housekeeper backed into the hall. Hal urged Annie into the hall.

  “What took you so long?”

  “Sorry.” He schooled his features to look apologetic. She’d sounded fine on the phone, but he would work with her defensiveness the best he could. “We ran into traffic.”

  The housekeeper took a leather purse from the coat tree and looked at Annie. “I think this belong to you? If it’s yours, you should have it.”

  “Oh, my gosh. Thank you.” Annie examined the designer-label handbag the other woman handed her. “This is wonderful.”

  He looked over Annie’s shoulder to see the folded copies of paperwork. “I made copies of the attorney’s emails. And look, my wallet is here, too.”

  She handed him the purse and checked for her driver’s license before turning to the housekeeper. “I am so relieved. I really need this stuff. Thank you so much for calling.”

  The housekeeper beamed and clasped her hands over her slight paunch. “I am right. It is yours.”

  The housekeeper reached for the doorknob.

  Hal braced his feet. “Do you have a minute more?”

  “A little one.” She pressed her thumb and index finger together.

  “Have you seen Matilda’s brother lately?”

  “Randy?” Elena’s face brightened. “He’s such a nice man. He remembered my birthday. Brought me such a pretty sweater.”

  “Happy Birthday.” Hal beamed. She might just make his day. “When was your birthday?”