Lucky Charm (30 page)

He wouldn’t make any excuses for himself.

Even worse had been looking Darrin in the eye afterward. It had happened not long after his mother had died and they’d both been still grieving. Darrin, though, had never flinched, his support unwavering. He’d stood by him, his arm around Matt’s shoulders when he needed it.

Miserable, Matt had asked him about it.

Darrin had looked at him. “Marrying your mom didn’t make me your dad. Blood didn’t either. You did. The day you took my name made you mine. You learned a hard lesson but you were trying to do the right thing.”

It had been a tough time but they’d gotten through it.

Ariel shook her head. “I don’t believe it. A terrible accident, maybe. You might have been drunk but I can’t believe you meant to kill.”

Matt looked up at her, met her eyes. “You barely know me.”

Meeting his gaze in return, Ariel shook her head. “I know that about you. It takes a certain amount of meanness to kill someone deliberately, even drunk, even in the heat of the moment. A cruelty I can’t see in you. Maybe you misjudged how much you needed to restrain him but you were only a teenager. I can’t believe you did it consciously. The man who came to help me a little while ago isn’t a killer. You could have killed those men, I suspect, but you didn’t.”

Such faith. Once given, it seemed she gave it all the way. No, he hadn’t misjudged her. His mother had never doubted him either. Other than her, though, only two other people had ever had that much faith in him. Darrin. And Bill.

Matt kissed her cheek. Her skin was so soft.

“Yes, I have the skills and I could have. I didn’t and wouldn’t have unless forced to it. I don’t believe I did then, either. I know I didn’t intend it to happen. I did get brought up on charges. After all, I was drunk and someone was dead. My stepfather, Darrin, managed to convince the judge that going in the service would straighten me out. Darrin didn’t believe I needed it since he knew I didn’t have a problem with alcohol. Neither did Bill. He was there, so he knew what happened. Anyway, if I did my four years, then my sentence would be expunged. Bill said if I was going in the service, he was. He stuck by me through it all. I did my four years and then some. Spent some time in Special Forces. After Afghanistan I decided to get out of the service. I took night classes and got my degree. So did Bill. Afterwards we went our separate ways. I went to work for Darrin. Bill got married, then got the job at Marathon and moved to the coast but we always stayed in touch.”

It didn’t take much for Ariel to understand why Matt was so determined to find out why Bill died or what he would do when he did. In the worst of times, Bill had stuck by him but Matt hadn’t been able to reach him in time to do the same for him.

Matt looked down at her small, fragile hand, the slender fingers that entwined with his own.

“Are you sure you want to do this?”

Tilting her head a little, Ariel waited until Matt looked at her squarely with those clear green eyes.

“A man, your friend Bill, is dead. If the folks at Marathon had something to do with it, then they should pay for it. Then there are those men.”

That memory burned. She remembered how helpless she’d been, how frightened. The threats they’d made. It infuriated her now to have been made to feel so helpless.

She looked at Matthew and smiled a little tightly.

“When I was in sixth grade I had a problem with this bully. I had had problems with bullies before. It’s something to do with my height, I think.”

Her smile turned a little wry.

“I’ve always been one of the smallest in a room. This bully, though,” she paused, shaking her head, “was pretty bad. He’d already been held back two or three grades so he was a lot taller and a lot bigger than most of the kids. I couldn’t avoid him. It got pretty rough. It got bad enough I hated going to school.”

Matt simply listened, seeing a pretty little girl being pushed around by a much bigger kid. He’d dealt with his share of bullies as a kid. Who hadn’t? It had been he and Bill, though, an unbeatable team in those days. Ariel had been alone.

Those blue eyes flashed up to meet his. “I challenged him to a fight.”

“You’re kidding,” he said, starting to smile.

Now he saw the woman with the two-by going after three much bigger men to bail him out.

Shaking her head, Ariel grinned ruefully. “No. I knew he was going to beat the heck out of me. It didn’t matter. I was tired of it and I was going to defend myself. I didn’t know anything about fighting. That didn’t matter either. He hit me. I fell down and then I got back up. He knocked me down again and I got back up. No matter how many times he hit me I was determined to keep getting back up. Eventually even he was telling me to stay down. I wouldn’t. We got suspended from school because I wouldn’t tell who started the fight. He never hit me again.”

She looked at him. “If someone at Marathon was responsible for Bill’s death, I’ll help you.”

Matt looked back. She was amazing. If she had the courage to try it, the least he could do was let her. And keep her safe while she tried.

He shook his head and smiled. “You know, my life would have been much easier, I would have been a lot less frustrated and wasted a lot less time if I’d talked to you earlier.”

Gently, he combed his fingers through her hair, brushed it back from her face. His eyes took in the rest of her, with the time now to appreciate it.

That dark wavy mass curled around her elfin face, the dark-fringed blue eyes, and the flush of rose coloring her cheeks, the swollen softness of her mouth.

That mouth looked so inviting with that grin. Matt couldn’t pass that up and didn’t. He did like kissing her because she so enjoyed kissing him back. God, it was sweet, the way her mouth moved under his.

Ariel let the sheet fall as she reached out to run her hands up over the muscles of his chest and down his arms.

Sitting beside him as she was now, it reminded him of the first time they had made love. Like some art-deco fairy cast in ivory and ebony, with a touch of rose in cheeks, lips and breast, with her hair spilling over her breasts and down her back in thick waves, she was enchantingly lovely.

Her body was beautiful. High and firm, her breasts were creamy white, full and tipped with rose-colored nipples. Her stomach was smooth, pale white and toned. In sharp contrast to her skin, the dark triangle of hair at the mound between her thighs was striking. He laid a hand on the soft skin of one firm and lovely leg, the one curled beneath her.

Like an art-deco fairy, she seemed at once ethereal and earthy, innocently erotic.

It seemed he was staying after all.

Ariel tilted her head back to look at him and was struck by the intensity of those amazing green eyes. This close, she could see them much more clearly. Light green, surrounded by an edge of darker green, the lighter shade seeming to glow with its own interior light, flecked with gold.

“Do you know you have beautiful eyes?” she asked.

He smiled and kissed the tip of her nose. “So do you, beautiful blue ones fringed with black lashes. And a lovely mouth.”

Struggling against it, she tried to smother a yawn and then grinned sheepishly at the look in his eye when he noticed.

“It’s not you,” she said.

With a grin, Matt ran his finger down her nose, fighting off a yawn himself. If he was beat, he couldn’t imagine how she felt after what she’d been through.

It had been a long and very eventful day. There was another, tomorrow. A day for him to figure things out, do some planning. A day to spend with Ariel.

“So what were you planning to do here this weekend?” he said, drowsily.

“Swim in the pool, sight-see,” she said, “but I guess all of that’s out, with the stooges out there waiting.”

Matt laughed sleepily.

Tilting her head at him, the lids of her eyes heavy, she said, “What?”

“The three stooges,” he said, “that’s what I call them, too.”

Ariel said, smiling, “Great minds think alike.”

“There’s that,” he said, lowering his head to brush his mouth against her lips. “There’s much to be said for staying in here for the rest of the weekend… If that’s all right with you?”

Her expression became more serious and she laid her palm against his cheek.

“I think we’re past that.” She swallowed hard. “At least if I’m with you…”

She would know, at least she would be there. She couldn’t say it. Her heart twisted. Suddenly the fear was back, swamping her, washing away the tiredness.

“I can take care of myself, Ariel,” he said, drawing her closer, looking into the shadowed pools of her eyes.

Her arms tightened around him. She couldn’t speak, couldn’t voice her doubts and fears against the rush of remembered pain and grief. If she took this chance, if she lost him, too… It would destroy her. She didn’t know if she could survive that again. That danger was there and it was real.

Matt watched her mobile face, saw the emotions chase across it, felt the shiver that went through her. For a moment, he simply held her, stroking her hair.

“Will you tell me about it?”

She took a deep breath, let out a gusty sigh.

“My fiancé.” Scott. She couldn’t say his name, not here, not now, but saying it brought back the memory of his face after so long. “We’d just gotten engaged. He was a police officer. He pulled a car over for a speeding ticket. A drunk driver hit both him and the car.” She took a shuddering breath. “I was in Atlanta when it happened, traveling on business as usual. His father called me. He was hanging by a thread, they said, he was dying. I tried to get home in time but I was too late. By the time I got there, he was gone. I couldn’t tell him… I never knew…”

She hadn’t been able to tell him she loved him. She’d never known if he knew she hadn’t been there in his last hours or how hard she’d tried to reach him.

Matt could hear the old grief in her voice. He held her tightly, one hand cradling her head against his chest.

Oh, hell, he’d been a cop, so he’d known how to take care of himself, too. In the end it hadn’t made any difference at all
.

“I’m not going to die, Ariel,” he said, his cheek against her soft, black hair. “I’m not. After all, you’ve saved me at least twice. You seem to be my lucky charm.”

Maybe three times, if you counted Moe. Matt probably could have handled it but he still couldn’t believe she’d done it. She had guts, he had to give her that but he’d known that from the moment she’d picked up the piece of two-by-four all those weeks ago. That, though, hadn’t taken as much courage as this had, letting him get this close.

He could see it in her eyes, just as he knew she held some part of herself back, tucked away behind the fear. Drawing her close against him, he pressed his mouth to her hair.

“I have no intention of dying, Ariel,” he said, quietly.

No one did and there were no guarantees in life. Ariel knew that but she curled into the warmth of his body, breathed in his scent in reassurance. He was here now. All she could do was take it one day at a time and fight the fear.

With her cheek against his shoulder, Matt held her close, his hand cradling her head against him.

A fierce rush of emotion filled him.

Where had that come from? He knew. It came from the weeks of watching her. Her warmth and her charm, her courage and her fear. It would take him some time to conquer that last but somehow he would find a way.

Here, at last, was the chance to find the answer to the mystery of Bill’s death. To do that, he would have to put this tough yet fragile woman in harm’s way. Someone else he cared about and didn’t want to lose. He wouldn’t. Whatever the cost, he would keep her safe until they had answers.

Soon, he would know what Marathon was hiding. Soon he would have the answers to Bill’s death.

Ariel woke first and lay for a moment looking at Matt. Just looking at him made her heart twist. His green eyes were closed, the thick, straight, blonde hair mussed from her hands and sleep was striking against his tan. He had a handsome face, rugged, with strong features. Straight nose, firm mouth. Such lovely things he’d done to her with that mouth. His body was amazing with all those firm muscles, those broad shoulders and strong arms. She loved his chest, the tight muscles in his abdomen and the solid muscles in those long legs.