In Too Deep (24 page)

She saw, in her mind's eye, the runnels of soapy water trail slowly down his chest. The satin gleam of wet, tanned skin. She imagined him running his hand briskly over his body as he soaped himself… and then replacing his hands with her own, and imagined the skim of her own hands down the hard plane of his belly.

Soapy. Smooth. Slippery.

Tally leaned against the closed door and cupped her breasts, then pressed down firmly with her palms. Her hard nipples ached. Not for her own touch, but for Michael's. She was in big trouble here. No matter what she'd told herself, the last couple of days had been little more than prolonged fore-play. She was in a constant state of readiness.

Determined to rein in her lascivious thoughts, Tally shook herself free of thoughts of Michael, and started getting ready for bed. Her favorite blue jammies had been a casualty of Leli'a's temper tantrum. Rather than sleep in the scratchy muumuu, she traded it for one of the white T-shirts Michael had given her this afternoon.

Because she didn't like the constriction of anything around her neck when she slept, she'd cut the neckband off the shirt. The stretched neckline slipped off one shoulder as she applied moisturizer to her face. Tired but wired, she was about to burst out of her own skin. Damn. Maybe she should've taken Michael up on the offer of the euphemistic massage.

Sometime between the kiss on the beach and finding Lu's body, Tally had decided she wanted to sleep with Michael again. Life could be so short. Why deny something they both wanted?

She was a big girl. She didn't need the promise of a ring on her finger to enjoy great sex.

On the other hand, given the tumultuous events of the day, her judgment might not be so hot.

She checked the night-light by the door, and turned off the bedside lamp, then stood, staring out the window at the reflection of the moon on the water. Down the hall, the shower turned off. No doors opened or closed. She didn't hear any footsteps. Lord, the man was quiet. She tried to imagine what he was doing in his room. She could see the square of light cast by his window as it fell across the lanai outside their rooms. The slight breeze ruffling the fern fronds didn't reach inside the room.

Tally opened the French door to the lanai, hoping to draw in cooler air. She breathed in the fragrance of the tropics before stepping cautiously onto the slatted boards of the balcony. If she'd been back home in America, where every craftsman had to answer to half a dozen governing boards, she'd have felt a great deal more confident on what looked pretty darn rickety.

The light next door turned off. " 'Night, John-Boy," she said under her breath. A large, comfortable-looking rattan rocking chair hunched in the corner of the lanai. She made her way across the splintery boards and sat down. The chair creaked as she pulled her legs up beneath the T-shirt and rested her chin on her up-drawn knees.

A soft, rolling meow sounded, and she glanced down to see Michael's cat looking up at her.

"Can't sleep, either?" she asked softly. Green eyes stared back unblinkingly. Tally curled her legs to the side and patted her lap. "Let's not go through your entire repertoire of hating me, okay? One creature a day is about my limit. Come up here and pretend to be civil."

Lucky narrowed his eyes and cocked his head as if he understood what she'd said. He jumped lightly onto her lap. "There's a good boy."

Tally lay a tentative hand on the cat's head. His short fur felt soft beneath her fingers. He butted his head against her hand with a low growling purr of pleasure, then sinuously draped his body over her thigh. The weight of the cat felt comforting in her lap.

"I think I'm going to get a cat when I get home," Tally told Lucky, scratching him behind his half-chewed right ear. She rested her head against the wing of the chair and felt a familiar hollow ache in her chest. Felt the longing deep inside.

She was lonely. Aching to have a connection. To someone.

"I'm hoping it's with my father," she told Lucky. "It's strange, you know. I don't call him anything when I talk to him. Not Trevor, or Father, or Dad. Not that we talk often, God knows. We're like strangers, really. Maybe I want too much from him. Maybe I want too little. What do you think? Too much? Yeah, I was afraid of that." She stroked her fingers down Lucky's supple back. "Too many commercials with pretty families all looking happy, that's my problem. I know that's not reality, but there's always been that stupid little part of me that wanted to sit at the breakfast table with my parents and siblings and pass the English muffins."

She had plenty of friends, several of them close. Her best friend, Marty, kept telling her she'd feel better if she got laid more than once every five years. Tally smiled. Not quite the same.

She knew all the pop psychology about absentee fathers and lack of love. But, damn it, she was twenty-seven years old. When was she going to get over the feeling Trevor had abandoned her? Lots of women didn't have fathers, and they turned out pretty normal and well-adjusted.
She
was normal and well-adjusted. For an adult woman who wanted her daddy.

Why did she want this relationship so badly?

Everything else in her life was great. Good job, great circle of friends, a beautiful condo, nice clothes… okay, her love life was flat, not fluffy, but all
that
would take to fix was saying yes, instead of no, when someone asked her out.

Tally rubbed Lucky's neck. "How about this?" she said softly to the disinterested cat. "I see how things go with Trevor in the next couple of days. Either it'll be great, or it'll be a bust, and I'll go home to my life and give up the idealized fantasy once and for all. That sounds reasonable, doesn't it?"

Lucky, limp as a noodle, snored.

He could hear her out there.

The chair creaking each time she moved, her soft voice as she talked to Lucky, and of course her under-the-breath singing. Stretched out naked on the sheets, Michael stacked his hands under his head and hoped for a breath of air to cool off his shower-damp body and raging libido.

He wasn't going to cool off lying on his bed alone. He got up and pulled on a pair of shorts, then stepped through his open French doors onto the moonlit patio.

His neighbor was singing, "I'm going to wash that man right outta my hair," very softly. Michael shook his head at how off-key she was. "You've had a full day. Why aren't you sleeping?"

She gave a little shriek. "God, you scared me. Why are you lurking?"

"I don't lurk, I prowl. It's too hot to sleep." He'd been in hotter places and had slept just fine. "Are you okay?"

She shivered in the heat of the night. "I can't stop thinking about that poor man."

"Your first corpse?"

Tally Ho gave him a wry look. "There aren't that many in my line of business."

"Guess not."

"Not
your
first dead body, apparently."

"Guess not."

The T-shirt had slipped off her shoulder. Her skin looked translucent and pale in the moonlight. Michael wanted to touch his mouth to the curve where her shoulder met the swell of her breast.

He'd wanted women before. Hell, he'd wanted women
badly
before. When he returned from an op, he was always horny as hell. But this… this pull with Tally was different. Not quite as easy to tag and file. Yeah, he wanted to fuck her brains out, and come back for seconds. And thirds. But he also wanted to delve into what made her so damned happy. So accepting of what life dished out. He wanted to know what she was thinking when her blue eyes got that faraway look. What she dreamed about when she curled on her side asleep.

He wasn't sure he liked that she was getting under his skin. Or that he might, somewhere in the deep, dark, murky depths of his subconscious, not want her hurt. Even if it was by him. Especially if it was by him.

He refused to have second thoughts. Tally Cruise had been dropped into his lap for a reason.

Vengeance.

But there was nothing saying he couldn't take what was being offered.

"It's a little cooler out here," Tally said softly.

He smelled her floral shampoo on the balmy night air. The scent of her shot in a direct line from his nose to his dick.

He strolled over and leaned against the railing, his back to the ocean, his arms extended and braced on the wood railing on either side of him. "Yeah," he said dryly. Sweat collected in the small of his back.

Tally looked up at him, eyes narrowed. The pulse in her throat made Michael feel like a vampire; the urge to sink his teeth into her soft, delectable flesh was almost overwhelming.

She stroked Lucky's arched back. The cat subsided once again, his head hanging off Tally's knee. Moonlight shone on her face and picked up small circles of light on the pearls she wore around her neck. He glanced into her room, lit by the glow of her night-light. Her bed hadn't been slept in.

"How long have you been afraid of the dark?" he asked softly.

She did a small self-conscious shrug. "It's so irrational. I've had this stupid phobia since I can remember. I have no idea why. It's just always been… there."

"Irrational or not, phobias aren't stupid."

She smiled. "I bet you've never been afraid of anything in your life."

"You'd bet wrong."

Her smile slipped. "Seriously?"

"Dead serious."

"Will you tell me?"

No one knew. No one. Logic had nothing to do with it. Irrational fear was just that—irrational. Hell, he was embarrassed by the fear, embarrassed he hadn't been able to conquer it. Humiliated that he couldn't get the fuck over it. Now. Today. Yesterday.

"I'm shit scared of the water." Where had that come from? He stared at her sitting there like an angel in the moonlight, and wondered what magic spell she'd cast that had him admitting his deepest, darkest nightmare.

"But you live on a boat," Tally pointed out softly. "Why?"

"Because I won't let the fear win."

"That's incredibly brave."

"No, it's not," Michael said, his voice suddenly raw. "It's incredibly stupid. Every minute of every day I'm waiting for the ocean to take me. I can't even goddamn go swimming anymore, for Christ sake."

"Oh, Michael."

"No different from your fear of the dark, Tally. No different. Except I should be able to overcome it, and for some damn reason I—can't. I just can't."

"What happened?"

None of your business. None. Of. Your. Damn. Business. "My best friend… drowned."
Blood and guts, and bits and pieces of Hugo floated in the inky water of his mind's eye
.

"Hugo?"

Jesus. How did she know—hell. The other day when he'd spilled his guts. "Yeah. Hugo."

"Were you with him when it happened?" Her gentle blue eyes captured his and wouldn't let go.

"Oh yeah," Michael said thickly. "I was right there."

"And you did everything in your power to save him, didn't you?"

"It wasn't enough."

"Somehow I'm sure your friend would disagree. If it had been humanly possible to save him, you would have."

"Moot now. He's gone, and I'm paying for my mistake." Michael shook off the black despair he always felt when he thought of Hugo. "Let's not waste a pretty moonlit night talking about past mistakes.

"I can practically hear your mind working. Still worried about this meeting with your father?"

She shrugged, and his T-shirt slipped a little farther down her shoulder and caught in the bend of her elbow. "I want too much, I think." Her skin had the same sheen as the pearls.

"What do you want from him?"

"Love. Acceptance… acknowledgment." She exhaled softly and ran her fingers down the filbert-size beads. "I can't seem to get the little girl waiting at the window separated from the woman I've become."

"Some men have no interest in kids. Sounds like your father is one of those guys." Michael kept his tone impersonal. He'd rather talk about her angst than his own. And the sad truth was, many men had no interest in becoming fathers but they made kids, anyway. He felt a sharp pang. He missed
his
dad. They'd been close… before Church screwed over his world.

"Intellectually, I know that. We've certainly never been close." She gave a small laugh. "Okay, that's an understatement. I've seen Trevor exactly sixteen times in my entire life. Mostly when I was a kid, and only then because I was with my mother when she'd track him down. A couple of times I met up with him in Vancouver. Once in London. I more or less forced the meetings. Stupid, huh?" She twined the pearls around her hand.

"Want to hear something terrible? My father isn't a very nice man. He treated my mother like crap, and he's pretty much ignored me my entire life. On the rare occasions we've met, it was awkward and uncomfortable. I know it, and yet I still believe that because we share blood, there should be some sort of… bond. A connection.
Something
. I
want
us to love each other, because parents and children
should
love each other.

"When I got the ticket to come, I forgot all about reality. Illogical, I know. If the bond isn't there, it just isn't there, no matter how much I want it. But there's nothing wrong with wanting to give it another shot. Right?"

"Maybe it'll work out."
Church "wasn't a very nice man"? Jesus. No shit
. "When did you say he'd be back?"

"Tomorrow afternoon sometime. God. I'm excited, and nervous, and"—she gave a small, choked laugh—"terrified. Must seem strange when you're so close to your family."

"Used to be."

"Did you have a falling out?"

"No."

"Do they know where you are?"

"Only which hemisphere."

"You're not terribly talkative, are you?"

"Not usually, no. And particularly not at two in the morning." He'd said far more than he'd wanted to, and felt raw and exposed because of it. There was every likelihood she'd use the information to stab him in the back if the opportunity presented itself. He was a fool.

"Go to bed, then. I was perfectly happy out here by myself."

"No, you weren't. You were wishing I'd come out here and ravish you." Michael crossed one foot over the other, and spread his arms wide on the railing behind him. He remained quiet, and the silence stretched until she hurriedly filled in the void as he'd known she would.