Colorado 02 Sweet Dreams (63 page)

His fingers fisted in my hair, his head turned and his lips slid along my neck until his mouth was at my ear. “All right, Ace, I’ll give you that.”

Arrogant, but… whatever.

I lifted my head and looked down at him. “And never, never, not even with my boyfriends who were nice to me, did I feel safe enough with them, safe enough with how they felt about me, to throw attitude.”

His body went still but his face registered surprise and I continued.

“I was scared of losing them. I was scared of them not thinking I was good enough.” I bent and touched my lips to his and then said there, “See? You bring out the best in me.”

He rolled us so I was on my back, he was on top and he was looking down at me.

“Not sure I’m big on the best in you bein’ attitude,” he said but I knew he was teasing, I knew it because his face was warm and his eyes were dancing.

“I am since it’s the real me and I feel safe being just that with you.” My hand went to the side of his head and my fingers slid into his thick hair. “It was exhausting, trying to be perfect. It feels good being able to be just me.”

“Laurie –”

“Kiss me, Tate,” I demanded softly.

“Baby –”

I lifted my head and put my lips to his, encouraging on a whisper, “I wanna catch fire, honey, and only you can bring that out for me.”

I watched up close as Tate’s eyes went intense then his head slanted and he muttered, “You got it, Ace.”

Then he kissed me.

Then he made me catch fire.

* * * * *

Two days after that, Tate was back out on the road, the blinds guys were up in our bedroom installing Tate’s new, cool as heck, dark wood venetian blinds and I was in his office sorting through his stuff.

I was coming to the realization that I could spend four, sixteen hour days organizing his office and I still wouldn’t have it in hand when a thought occurred to me, it involved the computer, the computer was right there so I followed through with that thought.

I turned on the computer, typed in the password Tate gave me, pulled up the search engine and typed “Tatum Jackson”.

Then I hit enter.

A listing of sites with Tate’s name in them instantly appeared.

The top listing was an online encyclopedia entry. I held my breath and clicked on it.

At the right top side was a photo of Tate, surprisingly not from his football days, relatively recent. It was torso and up, mostly his side, his neck was twisted and he was looking in the direction of the camera. In shot, but turned away, his back to the camera, Tate’s hand wrapped around his bicep, was a blond man in handcuffs. Under this photo was a caption that said, “Jackson, after apprehending now convicted murderer Cleeg Johansson” and under that were Tate’s stats.

The rest of the site contained a good deal of description mostly of Tate’s short-lived football career but also Tate’s accomplishments as a police officer and bounty hunter with some alarming information about the fugitives he’d found, a goodly number of them being very high on the armed and dangerous scale.

There were photos of him playing football but they were small so I clicked backwards to the search results and randomly chose a site further down the list.

It came up with a black background, “Tatum Jackson, God” in green writing at the top with blue footballs dancing on the left side of his name and red hearts dancing to the right by the word “God”.

I stared at the page and the two side by side photos of Tate prominent on the front of it. One was of him walking from the field what appeared to be at halftime or after a game, helmet held by the faceguard dangling from his fingers, hair wet with sweat, eyes still intense with residual focus on “the game”, body lean and fit and spectacular in his Penn State jersey and football pads. The other was a black and white, taken from the back, a football field with a bunch of equipment was in front of him. Tate was standing on the sidelines wearing a pair of loose-fitting athletic shorts that hung down his thighs and he held a t-shirt bunched loosely in his hand. His muscled back was bared and the eagle tattoo was on prominent, glorious display. His neck was twisted, his head slightly tipped down, you could see his profile and he was grinning at someone out of shot.

Wow, but he was something.

“Cool!” I heard Jonas cry from behind me, I jumped and turned to see him rush into the room. “You found Loretta’s site.”

It was way too late for me to hide the fact that I’d internet searched his father and I knew this because Jonas had pushed my hand away and was clicking through “Loretta’s site” with what looked to be great familiarity of what it held.

“Loretta?” I asked him.

“This page is my favorite,” Jonas said and looked at me as I looked at the page and he went on, “Yeah, Loretta. She’s Dad’s stalker.”

I knew my mouth was hanging open but I couldn’t close it because I was staring at a page that was a mélange of photos of Tate from what appeared to be high school, through Penn State (not just playing football but also walking to class and sitting on barstools and the like) – I shoved Jonas’s hand out of the way, commandeered the mouse and scrolled down – through Tate at awards ceremonies, his short-lived career with the Eagles (mostly shots during practice) – I scrolled down further – and shots of him in Carnal and doing bounty hunter things, like dragging fugitives into police stations or standing over them with their bellies to the pavement and their arms cuffed behind their backs.

“Oh my God,” I breathed.

“She’s harmless,” Jonas told me.

“Oh my God,” I repeated.

“Dad’s talked to her. She’s agreed not to put pictures of me on there but I think that sucks, since the kids at school thought it would be cool. Hey, wait!” he cried. “She’s got a new page.”

He pushed my hand away, clicked on the “3” at the bottom of the page which was next to the “Pages 1 2” and then a site came up with one picture.

Tate and me on his bike.

We were waiting to pull out of Bubba’s parking lot, Tate’s booted foot was to the ground, his head was turned to look down the street and I was tucked close to his back, my arms around him, my thigh against his, my chin to his shoulder.

The caption under it said, “Tate’s Flame, love her or hate her (and I hate her), she’s got great legs.”

I shot from the chair and squealed, “Oh my
God!
”

Jonas grinned up at me. “You’re famous, Laurie.”

I didn’t hear him. I was too focused on my horrified panic.

I tore my eyes from the screen, reached out to where my cell phone was on top of a pile of scattered papers on Tate’s desk, snatched it up and called Tate.

“Laurie, it’s cool. Loretta’s awesome. She went to school with Dad at Penn State. They had some class together. He knew her. Dad says she’s harmless,” Jonas, reading the atmosphere, assured me.

I looked down at him and didn’t answer because Tate said into my ear, “Everything okay, babe?”

“You’ve got a stalker!” I shouted into the phone.

“She found Loretta’s page, Dad!” Jonas yelled to be heard by his father.

“Ace –” I heard Tate say in my ear.

I interrupted him. “There’s a picture of me.”

“Fuck,” he muttered. “There is?”

“She said she
hated me!
” My voice got shrill on the last two words.

“Honey –”

“Oh my
God!
” I shouted.

“Babe, calm down and listen to me. I’ll talk to Loretta –”

“No,” I cut him off. “I can’t deal with this. Too much. I have officially had too much. There’s a serial killer on the loose! I don’t need to deal with your
stalker!
”

“Lauren, quiet down and listen, all right? There’s bad stalkers and then there’s stalkers like Loretta.”

“She’s taking pictures of me! And saying she hates me! On the internet!” I screeched.

“She would say that ‘cause you’re with me. She hated Neeta too.”

“Oh my God,” I whispered and then looked down at Jonas. “Jonas, go to the alarm panel and activate it,” I ordered, too frenzied to notice Jonas didn’t move a muscle and I said into the phone, “Where do you keep your guns?”

“Babe –”

“What if she’s out there?”

“Lauren –”

“What if Loretta
and
her camera are out there?”

“Laurie, Loretta and I have a deal. She doesn’t come to the house.”

I didn’t hear him. I kept panicking.

“What if she snaps? What if she snaps when Jonas is here? Oh my
God!
”

“Lauren, shut it, take a deep breath and fuckin’ listen to me.” Tate’s voice was firm and unyielding in my ear. “Loretta is harmless.”

“Right,” I snapped.

“She lives in Pennsylvania. She works there too. She’s married and has three kids. She takes her vacations in Carnal or wherever she finds out I’m gonna be. Sometimes, she even brings her husband and kids with her.”

“That’s crazy,” I breathed.

“I’m her hobby,” he told me.

“That’s crazy,” I repeated.

“Some women get hung up on movie stars, some on sports stars, Loretta’s stuck on me. She lives her life normal. I’ve met her husband and her fuckin’ kids. She’s completely harmless.”

“She tracks you down!”

“She likes me.”

“She’s devoted a website to you and she says on it she hates me!” I reminded him.

“She doesn’t mean it. Other people devote websites and blogs to shit they get off on. She started puttin’ pictures of Jonas on there, I called her and told her I didn’t like that, they were gone in an hour. She’s got a good life but that don’t mean she can’t fantasize and she does, usin’ me. There’s nothin’ wrong with that.”

“I fantasize too, Tate, but I don’t stalk hot guys, take pictures of them when they don’t know I’m around and spend my free time building websites devoted to them.”

“You fantasize?”

Uh-oh.

I had the feeling from his tone that our conversation just took a drastic turn.

“Tate –”

“Who do you fantasize about?”

“It doesn’t matter. This matters. This freaks me out.”

“Who do you fantasize about, Lauren?”

“It doesn’t matter!” I shouted.

“I got shit to do and I know Loretta’s website matters to you so I’m takin’ my time talkin’ to you about it. I’ll call her, tell her to knock it off with pictures of you and comments about you. She’ll probably call you and apologize, that’s the kind of person she is. Now, who you fantasize about matters to me so you’re talkin’ to me about it.”

I looked down at Jonas and informed Tate, “Jonas is in the room.”

“Tell him to get out, close the fuckin’ door then you answer my question.”

“I’m not going to tell Jonas to get out!” I snapped.

“I’m gone, Dad!” Jonas, the little traitor, yelled into the room, smiled at me and then left, closing the door loudly behind him.

Tate heard the door close, I knew this because he ordered instantly, “Answer my question.”

“Why does this matter to you?”

“I got my cock in you, Ace, you’re moanin’ sweet for me, you close your eyes, I
still
wanna know I’m all you see.”

“Are you nuts?” I asked.

“Answer my fuckin’ question.”

Oh no. He was mad. Really mad. I knew it and I also knew I had to stop it before it got out of hand.

Therefore, I whispered, “You.”

“Come again?”

“You. I fantasize about you.”

Silence.

For some stupid reason, I kept talking, “Before we were together and um… when I… when you’re gone, I…”

He cut me off, muttering, “Fuck me.”

“Though I wouldn’t build a website devoted to you,” I added idiotically.

“Our nighttime telephone conversations just changed,” he announced.

“Sorry?”

“You’ve been holdin’ out on me. You touch yourself thinkin’ about me when I’m gone, babe, you’re not so high-class and too good a girl not to let me listen.”

Pretty much every erogenous zone in my body started to hum.

“Tate –” I breathed.

“Startin’ tonight.”

Oh my God.

“Tate, I’m not –”

“And you’re gonna describe to me everything you’re seein’ in your head.”

Oh my
God.

“Captain –”

“In detail.”

“Tate –”

“While I listen to you makin’ yourself come.”

“Um…”

“I’ll call Loretta, tell her to get in touch with you, she’ll apologize. You call me tonight I want you ready to put your hand between your legs.”

“Uh…”

“We done?”

“I don’t think so.”

“We’re done.”

Then he hung up.

I stared blankly at nothing. Then I stared at my photo on the screen of his computer. Then I took my phone from my ear and dropped it on the desk.

An hour later, Loretta called and apologized. I checked the website as she invited me to do and saw my photo was gone. She chattered to me for another twenty minutes about life in general, hers, mine and a little bit of Tate’s. Not in a stalker-esque way, in a normal-esque way. I’d long since realized she was nice when she said she’d call next time she was in Carnal and we’d have coffee “at that place where that hippie makes great lemon poppy seed bread”. I got the courage to ask if she would e-mail me the photo she’d taken of Tate and me. She agreed, sounding delighted to do so. Then she rang off.

An hour after that, I checked my e-mail to see that Loretta not only sent me the picture of Tate and I on his bike, she sent me another one of us standing by his bike, his hand to my jaw, my hands were at his waist and we were kissing. Her hilarious commentary was, “Girl, you are so lucky! Isn’t he hot?”

She’d never know just how hot he was.

Poor Loretta.

A number of hours after that, part anxious, part scared and part turned on, I climbed into bed, called Tate and five seconds later I had my hand between my legs.

The anxiety and fear melted a second after that.

I melted ten minutes later.

* * * * *

Four days after that, I was dead asleep when Tate came home.

He woke me and this was the first part of the first fantasy I described to him over the phone.

He then proceeded to help me live out the rest of it.