Guilty Pleasures (23 page)

“You’ve got a right to,” Dusty said. “I know you don’t want to talk about this much, but we’re going to work it through. Please trust us.”

The two men sat, one each side of her, and rubbed her back. “I must go to the condo now. He’ll make contact there.”

“I’m sure you’re right,” Nasty said. “But first we’ve got to have a plan.”

“The police.”

“They’re on the case. There’s too much hard evidence for them not to admit you’re in trouble.”

“Because my son’s been kidnapped.” She lifted her head. Fury pumped blood through her temples. “Bobby had to be kidnapped for them to take real notice.”

“They wanted us to go to Dusty’s,” Nasty said. “I think he should go there. I’ll stay with you.”

Polly fell against the back of her chair and glanced around. She felt wild. A splash of bright yellow separated from the people milling in front of the movie theater. She clutched the edge of the table.

“Mom! ” Waving an ice-cream cone in one hand and a bulging sack in the other, Bobby dashed toward her. “Hey, Mom, you’ll never guess what happened.”

Sixteen

“
S
am Dodge doesn’t have the right to kidnap my son.”

Nasty met Bobby’s eyes. The boy looked away and buried his face in his dog’s fur. He laced his arms around the animal’s neck.

Polly couldn’t stay in one place. She’d roamed Dusty’s living room, sitting in one place, then another, since they’d brought Bobby back from Park Place.

“Feel like a walk?” Nasty asked her, attempting to load his words with the warning that she was pushing the boy too far.

“I’m not leaving him alone. From now on, where I go, he goes.”

“What happened was my fault,” Dusty said. “I shouldn’t have let him go.”

“How were you supposed to stop my sister from taking him to the movies?” Polly snapped. “It’s nice of you, Dusty, but this isn’t your fault or your problem. It’s mine. And the police’s.”

Nasty didn’t remind her that since they’d informed the police that Bobby had been with his father, and that he’d been brought back from, “just going for an ice cream,” they were unlikely to jump too fast the next time she called.

“I went with my dad.” Bobby’s voice was muffled in Spike’s neck. “He said he misses me.”

Polly made fists. “He misses you? He—”

“Hey, Polly,” Nasty said, stepping immediately in front of her. “You and Bobby need to have a long talk on your own.
But you promised me you’d give me some advice on that other thing. Could we do that first?”

She ho
oked a strand of hair from the c
o
rn
er of her mouth. Her hand shook, and he knew she was as much angry as recovering from shock.

He raised his brows. “The papers I told you about are in my study.”

Without a word, she left the living room and preceded him into the study where he closed the door.

“He never cared about him,” Polly said, pacing again. “When I told him I was pregnant, he told me to get an abortion. Once. He saw him once, about four years ago.”

“He came here?”

“I was working at Hole Point. The place my mother runs now. I don’t even know how he found me.”

If she knew what he felt, she’d either be confused or—as he’d managed to make her too many times already—frightened. He hated Sam Dodge, wherever he might be tonight. He hated him for having been part of this woman’s life. He hated him enough to want to know they’d never breathe the same air. He hated Sam Dodge enough to wish him dead.

People who preyed on weaker people. People who always had to win, no matter who else suffered. He felt hot. Sticky. His ankle hurt. He’d had the impression of a dark scene again earlier in the afternoon—when he’d been trying to decide how to search for Bobby. There’d been the sound of palm trees rustling and someone calling him
.
Then the flash of gunfire before he struck with his knife and saw blood gush from the retreating man’s back. Then blackness.

“What is it?”

The sound of Polly’s voice startled him. “Nothing,” he lied. “I was thinking I wish I’d been the one who met you when you were a kid in need.”

Her lips came together and trembled. She lowered her lashes. “When he came to Hole Point he wanted money. I had very little to spare. We got our lodgings for nothing. I did the
cooking, and we ate there. Bliss paid me, too. She’s always been so good to us. But there wasn’t much left over.”

“Damn him,” Nasty said softly. He tried to hold her, but she shook her head. “He won’t bother you again.”

“He is bothering us again. D’you know what he told my little boy on the one occasion he saw him?”

“Don’t, Polly, please.”

“He told him he didn’t like fair-haired boys. Bobby was blonder then. When Sam was leaving, Bobby followed him out and Sam gave him a candy bar—and a dollar of the money he got from me. That’s all he ever gave his son. Bobby’s still got that dollar. I know because I know where he keeps it.”

Nasty did hold her then. He took her rigid, shuddering body in his arms and hugged her. “I keep my promises,” he told her. “I promise you Sam Dodge is never going to hurt you again.”

“Bobby wants a father.”

He smiled over her head, a smile formed from all the bitterness of too many years of trying to forget. “Every boy wants a father. And every girl.”

“Sam’s told him he wants to be a father to him. He’s told him he wants us to be together. What can I say to Bobby? How can I make him understand, without telling him his father didn’t want him?”

Her hair smelled of whatever faintly rose perfume she wore. Nasty rubbed his cheek back and forth over the top of her head. “I want to get you and Bobby away from here for a few days.”

“The show—”

“Leave the show to me. I’ll talk to Jack about it. I don’t like the guy, but I think he’s okay.” He wasn’t sure about anyone in this scenario. “I’m not telling him where I’m taking you, just that you need a little time off. These things happen. If you were sick, they’d film a lot of stuff they don’t need you for, wouldn’t they?”

She leaned more heavily against him. “Yes, I guess so.”

Gradually, her arms stole around him. “Bobby won’t want to go. Sam told him he’s going to call me and arrange to come and see us at the condo.”

Nasty made himself ask, “Do you think he could have changed? Could he have realized what he’s missed and want to try to mend fences?”

“He’s seen me on TV and realized it means I’ve got some real money now. Sam doesn
’t know anything about love—or
needing people for anything except what he wants from them.”

He shouldn’t be glad to hear her disgust for the other man. “Okay, sweetheart. Then I know what I’ve got to do.”

She grew still.

“Dusty and I have a friend who lives not so far from here.
In the foothills of the Cascades. She’s very special. Different, but special. You and Bobby will enjoy being with her, and you’ll be safe because Dusty and I can control things better
there.” He couldn’t be totally sure of that, any more than he could be sure of keeping her safe anywhere, but at least he had a fighting chance of getting her away from Kirkland without anyone knowing where she was. That could be the key.

“I can’t stop thinking about it,” she said. Her fingertips dug into his back.

“Sure. Of course you can’t. But once I get you away, you’ll start to relax. Then we’ll see what it takes to draw this guy out.”

“Sam?”

“Sam and anyone else who thinks he’s got a right to get in your way—or mine.”
j

“Nasty, Sam’s not
a threat. He’s…
pathetic.”

“But he makes you feel threatened.”

She looked up at him and frowned.

Nasty closed his eyes and kissed her forehead. He ran his fingers into her hair. She began to have the expected effect on him. Never, he’d never been this susceptible to a woman before.

“You’re different, aren’t you? Different from other men?”

“Mmm.” She was warm, and soft, and fragrant—and everything about her spoke to everything he was, everything he wanted. “We’re all different.”

She tilted her head to let him nuzzle his mouth down the side of her neck. “Not different the way you are. Xavier, you’re a trained killer.”

His lips rested at the base of her throat. He kept them there, but his eyes opened, and narrowed. Slowly making circles over her shoulders, he listened to her breathing, waited for what she would say next.

“You’ve killed people.”

“I don’t remember telling you that.” He should have anticipated this. There’d never been anyone close enough to him to wonder what it meant for a man to be able to kill another man—for whatever reason.

“But you have.”

She wasn’t asking questions here. “Let’s say I’ve done what I had to do in the line of duty.”

“You aren’t on duty now.”

“Maybe not the way you mean. But I’m a man who takes duty seriously.” The instant he finished speaking, he knew he’d been too hasty. She was edgy. If he wasn’t very careful, he’d lose her before he’d ever really had her. And he wanted her very much.

“I’m a peaceful person.”

“So am I.”

Their cheeks bumped. He looked into her eyes and at her mouth. Her chin raised slowly, as if she’d stop it if she could. But she couldn’t stop it.

Air flowed softly from her lips to his. Nasty swept his mouth lightly over hers, and lightly again, and his eyes closed.

He was erect, and filled with possessive, protective tenderness at the same time. Controlling the urge to press for much more took inhuman effort. Her breasts teased him through her thin dress and his cotton shirt. Her hips, automatically tipping toward
his, made him swallow a moan. She was testing, testing her own feelings—for him, and about what she thought he was.

A killer.

Nasty tore his mouth from hers and pushed his face into the curve of her neck.

She held him, and st
roked his hair. “I want to…
Xavier,
I want to be with you. I
want
y
ou. I’m just not sure I ought
to.”

“Hush,” he told her, feeling for her mouth and pressing his thumb against her lips. “I know what you’re trying to say. All I can promise is that I’m an honorable man.”

“An honorable man who can justify taking lives.”

For the first time since he’d been a boy looking at his future and fearing he saw nothing, Nasty wanted to shut out all feeling. “I can justify protecting those who need to be protected.”

“And you want to protect me.”

“I have to protect you. You need me.”

She eased his face to hers and kissed him again, long and slow and deep. “I need you,” she said, very quietly. “But what if what you are takes you away from me one day. Or i
f it ends up hurting Bobby.”

“I’m never goin
g to let anything hurt Bobby.”

“But you can’t promise that you
…
I’m not ready to say I can take what I can have of you, then get over losing you.”

This was his crash course in the meaning of bittersweet
.
j
“Nothing’s guaranteed.”

Polly rubbed the backs of her fingers along his jaw. S
tress
and too little sleep had made their dark stains beneath her eyes. He couldn’t be sure any longer, but he still had more than a hunch that she was paying for something he’d been part of.

“I could be an insurance agent. Or a shopkeeper—I am a shopkeeper in a way—and you wouldn’t be able to be certain I was safe.”

“You’re no shopkeeper. You’re marking time until you find something else that lets you push the edges of everything.”
j

Was he? “Would it be such a bad idea to live for the day? For a while? Could you try that?”

She shook her head and eased away from him. “I don’t know. I’ve got to do something to get through these bad times.”

“I’m not backing out of your life,” he told her. “No matter how definitely you tell me to get lost, I won’t.”

“We could find out this is simple old infatuation.”

“You might. I won’t.”

A pen rolled from the desk, and she gathered it up. “If I agree that it’s a good idea to get out of Kirkland, my mother and Fab will have to b
e told—at least that Bobby and I
are going.”

“Of course.” The shapes and patterns began to turn for Nasty. The men who had tried the underwater capture had been professionals. Sam Dodge played no part in that equation. But he couldn’t be ruled out as a possible crank caller.

“Bobby has his heart set on having a dad in his life.”

“You know as well as I
do that Sam Dodge isn’t here because he wants to be a father to Bobby.”

Polly pulled the cap off the pen and made dots on her left palm.

“Sometimes it’s kinder to be honest,” Nasty told her.

“As in telling a seven-year-old boy that his father—the man he’s fan
tasized about—doesn’t give a darn
about him? That he lied today when he said he did? Am
I
supposed to tell Bobby Sam will use anyone to get money because he’s probably still got an expensive drug habit?”

Nasty rolled onto his toes, testing his left ankle. “There are ways to let people down easy. Let me talk to Bobby.”

“You hardly know him!”

“I’m going to know him very well.”

She threw the pen on the desk and rubbed at the dots on her skin. “You’re so sure you can have what you want. What you think you want.”

“I know what I want.”

“Look”—she scrubbed at her temples—
"Crumb,
this is awful. What shall I do?”

He didn’t fool himself that she was asking him for any other reason than that there was no one else to ask. “Trust me. Trust Dusty and me. We’ll get you and Bobby to a safe place. Then we’ll figure out a way to pull in whoever’s been terrorizing you.”