Beneath the Silk (12 page)

“Don’t do the guilt thing, okay? You’re suppose to be a snake with no morals, remember?”

“I shouldn’t have left you alone.”

“You can’t be with me every minute.”

That was where she was wrong. But Jackson kept his thoughts to himself as he reached for the light next to the bed and turned it on. As he glanced around the room, the first thing he noticed was the massive iron canopy overhead and the sheer curtains at each corner, then how beautiful and sexy Sunni Blais looked lying on the pale green comforter.

The walls had been washed with a textured colorless paint. The main color in the room was a pale green. White roses in a tall vase were reflected in the mirror on the vanity. The carpet was as pale as the walls and the painted iron bed. A paneled mirror along an entire wall doubled as doors to what must be her closet. Like the one that encompassed the ceiling inside her shower in the bathroom, this mirror captured the bed like a wide-angle camera lens.

Jackson had never been so aware or so affected by a woman, or her sexuality, before he’d met Sunni Blais. The truth was his senses had sharpened in all directions where she was concerned. And everything about her turned him on—her body, the smell of her skin, her husky voice, her slippery clothes, her home full of mirrors.

He stood and removed her silver shoes. “You missed dinner, right?”

“No. I had a sandwich brought into my office around five. I don’t usually do that but… Well, I just felt hungry. But not now.”

“I’m going to have to call your father.”

“I wish you wouldn’t. He’s supposed to leave the hospital in a few days. This could set him back.”

“Keeping secrets isn’t a good idea, Sis.”

“Sometimes it’s better than the truth. In this case, I know I’m right.” She winced as she tried to sit up.

“Don’t move. You don’t have a reason to get up. I’m your legs tonight, remember? What do you need?”

“I need to call Mary.” She sank back against the pillows and closed her eyes. “I want to tell her I won’t be in to work tomorrow until afternoon.”

“I’ll call.” Jackson rounded the bed. “But I’ll tell her you’re not coming in for at least two days. Maybe three.”

Her pretty gray eyes popped open. “I have to work.”

“Mary’s more than capable of running the store. I’ll keep an eye on her for you. Here, let me help you out of your clothes.”

He reached out to slip open the top button on her jacket, but she stopped him by grabbing his hand. “I can manage.”

“Come on, Sis. I’ve seen you before, remember?”

She pushed his hand away, her own floating upward to cover her cleavage. “We’re strangers, Jackson, I—”

“A stranger couldn’t automatically find a frying pan in your kitchen, or a towel in the bathroom without a search. I can. A stranger wouldn’t be aware of your little problem, either.”

“My problem…”

Jackson pointed to her hand, which she was using to shield her breasts from his eyes. “The
twins.
You don’t like drawing attention to them.”

“The
twins?
You’ve named my—”

“They’re twins, right? One isn’t weird or a pound or two larger or smaller.” Jackson shrugged out of his jacket and tossed it to the floor.

“A pound or two larger or smaller?”

“Yeah. I knew this girl once who… Well, never mind. Where’s that robe you were wearing this morning? Do you hang something like that or drawer it?”

“Hang. But—”

He found the small knob that buckled the mirrored closet doors and folded them accordion style out of the way. When he spied the blue robe he remembered from that morning, he reached for it. The minute his fingers wrapped around it, he was reminded of how super-soft and sexy all of Sunni’s clothes were.

“Can’t you find it?”

“I found it. You like silk, I take it?” He closed the closet doors, and when he turned, Sunni was sitting up.

“Silk is my business. It reminds me of the petals on a rose.” She paused, gazed at his hand holding her robe. “Just lay it on the bed. I’ll take it from here.”

“First, prove to me you can stand up.”

“Of course I can stand.”

Jackson offered her a doubtful raised eyebrow, then tossed the robe over his shoulder. Hands on his hips, he said, “Show me.”

“I’m not helpless.”

“Show me.”

She inched herself off the bed, her toes reaching for the floor. As they made contact with the carpet, Jackson knew her legs weren’t going to hold her up. He saw her left knee buckle just as he reached out to her and she reached out to him. He heard her swear softly as he caught her around the waist and dragged her up his body and held her close.

“Don’t you dare say anything,” she muttered against his chest.

“I wasn’t going to.”

She kept her face tight against his chest, her hands gripping his forearms. “This is embarrassing.”

“Don’t waste your energy being embarrassed, Sis. It’s just you and me here. And I never kiss and tell.”

His comment brought her head up. “I don’t even know you, and here you are, in my bedroom. Going through my closet. And—”

“Don’t forget this morning I was in your kitchen and your shower.”

His teasing made her cheeks turn pink. “I’m sorry about … you know, bursting into the bathroom. I really thought Mac was going to break my expensive lamp.”

Jackson winced inwardly, keying on the word
ex
pensive.
He had figured it was something special. He pushed the lamp from his mind and concentrated on putting Sunni’s mind to rest about the bathroom ordeal. He reached up and brushed his thumb over her still-swollen lower lip. “Like now, Sis, this morning was just you and me. No one’s going to hear any of it from me.”

“But I barely know you, and—”

“You know me,” he said softly. “I’m the guy you called tonight when you needed someone you could count on. I’m the guy who raced to the hospital. The guy who tipped the cab driver fifty bucks to get me there in ten minutes.”

She let go of his arms, forced her legs to hold her up. “Fifty dollars?”

Jackson nodded. “Looks like I’m going to have to tighten up my leash on you from now on, or go broke tipping cabbies.”

“And what does that mean, exactly?”

He brushed his knuckles across her cheek. He shouldn’t be touching her so much, but he couldn’t stop. “I want you close from now on,” he told her. “What happened tonight can’t happen again.”
Or he was going to start growing ulcers like Clide.

“Close? What does that mean?”

“Tonight was no accident. We both know that. I want you to agree to whatever I think is necessary from here on out.”

“Without knowing what it is first?” She shook her head. “I don’t think I can do that.”

“I need to know your every move until I learn more about this case.”

“You think I’m next, don’t you?”

The worry in her eyes slipped into her voice. Jackson wrapped his arms around her, trying to be as brotherly as possible. He felt her shudder, and he drew her closer. As he offered her more of his body, she curled her arms around his waist and exhaled shakily. They stood that way for several minutes before he gently set her away from him. “I don’t know you’re a target, Sis. But I don’t know that you’re not, either. Now, you change and get into bed. I’ll go call Mary, then check on Mac and make sure that he’s behaving himself. If you need me, yell. I’ll leave the door open.”

* * *

It was the headache that woke her, but it was her tingling lips that forced Sunni into action. Ignoring her sore, protesting muscles, she sat up and turned on her bedside lamp. Seconds later, she had her second drawer open and she was assessing her snacks.

It was no surprise that she was fighting bouts of hypoglycemia. Routine-wise, her body had been on a roller coaster ride for days.

She withdrew her glucose sensor and record book from the drawer, then tested her blood.
In
a matter of minutes she had her answer and a small box of raisins in her hand. Resting her head and back against a pillow, she patiently munched on the sweet fruit.

A short time later, feeling better, she glanced at the luminous face on the crystal clock next to the light. It read 2:00 a.m. She’d slept close to four hours—fitfully, but she had slept.

The apartment was quiet, which was normal, but she couldn’t help wondering if Jackson and Mac were still there. Determined to find out, she eased herself out of bed—stifling a moan as she straightened in small doses. Pressing her hand to her lower back, and in a movement that resembled Edna’s famous slipper-shuffle, she retrieved her blue robe draped across the bed, then gritted her teeth as she forced her arms up to slip it on over her white chemise and matching panties.

She left the bedroom taking baby steps, tying the belt around her waist. Light drew her eye to the kitchen, and to Sunni’s surprise and relief, Jackson was seated at the table with a laptop computer in front of him. A pile of papers was stacked on one side of the computer and a
man-size
coffee mug—resembling nothing in her kitchen cupboards—was on the other side.

“Do you know what time it is?”

He looked up from the computer. “Time for you to be fast asleep, Sis. Why aren’t you?”

“It’s my back. It’s killing me. I can’t get comfortable.”

He shoved the chair back and stood. That’s when Sunni noticed his shirt was unbuttoned. The tails were out of his jeans, and it allowed her a grand view of his sun-bronzed hairy chest and flat, slab-of-steel belly. He wore a silver chain around his neck with a stylized cross of some kind hanging from it. His feet were bare, and his jeans were unbuttoned.

Even feeling as lousy as she did, she couldn’t help but admire his rugged body, or the fact that each and every time she saw him, she had this incredible urge to reach out and touch him.

“Probably a pulled muscle. Got an ice pack?”

“Hmm… Oh, in the freezer.”

He sauntered to the fridge and opened the freezing compartment, and was back in a few seconds with the cold pack and a towel he’d fetched from a drawer.

“Do you know where everything in my kitchen is?” she asked.

“All except the popcorn popper and the blender.”

“I don’t use either of those items.”

“No popper?”

“I use microwave popcorn. And
I
gave my blender to Edna. I never used it.”

Sunni dismissed the cold pack when he held it out to her, and shuffled past him to the table. “This is the case information you’ve collected so far?”

“That’s it.
I
hope you don’t mind that
I
turned your kitchen into an office for tonight. I went back to my apartment and picked up a few things.
I
didn’t leave you alone. Mac stood guard.”

“Where is Mac now?”

“Asleep on the terrace. He likes it out there.”

Sunni eyed the impressive stack of papers. To have this much information on a case in such a short time took a huge amount of work. “You haven’t slept much since you got here, have you?”

“Why do you say that?”

“I’m a cop’s kid, remember? It takes hours of leg-work to come up with all this.”

“I’ve never needed much sleep. Five hours and I’m good.”

Sunni turned to look at him. He was
good
all right. Good-looking, a good cook… And from what she’d seen of him below the waist that morning, she now knew that Jackson Ward had potential in another area as well.

“Sis?”

“Hmm…?”

“Come on. I’ll put you back in bed with this ice pack.”

Sunni blinked out of her naughty muse. “I can’t lie flat. It hurts too bad.” She pressed her fingers into her backbone at waist level and grimaced. “Maybe
I
could sleep in a chair.”

“You can’t sleep in a chair. Here, let me take a look. Maybe a vertebra was injured in the accident.”

“No. The doctor took an X ray. He said it was just bruised.” She turned to read the laptop screen. “Vito Tandi’s worth sixty million?”

“That’s what he admits to.” His answer was right next to her ear. A second later one hand settled on her hip, while the other reached around her and laid the cold pack on the table next to the stack of papers. “What do you think is going on … with your back?”

He may as well have asked what do you think is going on with us? Because they both knew something had changed between them since she’d called him on his cell phone and he’d raced to the hospital.
“I
don’t know” was her staid answer. “It just hurts.”

“Let’s see what I can see.”

Sunni’s hands instinctively gripped the edges of her robe. “No!”

He covered her hands, pulled them away from her body and laid them palm-side down on the table, “Relax, Sis,” he whispered, then gently moved his fingers up her spine, pressing gently on each vertebra as his hand climbed slowly upward. “No pain in your neck?”

“No.”

His fingers started back down, again checking out each vertebra. Sunni could hear him breathing, feel his heat. Her own heart was pounding faster than normal.