Maternal Instinct (3 page)

This was the right thing to do.

His mouth sought hers again even as he eased her trousers off. Through half-closed eyelids she saw the two of them tangled, her legs long and pale, Hugh with his pants half-down, his dark hair tousled, his every breath a rasp.

It seemed the most natural thing in the world when he parted her legs and entered her. She banged a knee against the door; he made another rough sound and readjusted their positions so that she half sat and he knelt between her legs. She looked down at where they met and realized that he was deep inside her, part of her. The past twenty-four hours were erased in the glorious flood of sensations as Hugh moved slowly, leaving her bereft, then filling her. She gripped his shoulders and rode him as he thrust harder, more desperately. Tension built and spiraled until Nell pleaded with him in a high, needy voice.

"Let go, sweetheart." He gripped her hips and drove into her. "Let go."

She went still in wonder as pure pleasure poured from her belly through every vein in her body. "Oh-h," she breathed.

"Yes!" With guttural triumph in his voice, he thrust hard and fast one last time, jerked and groaned, then collapsed on top of her.

Nell wiped inexplicable tears on his bare shoulder. "Thank you," she whispered, and didn't know if he heard her.

Hugh awakened
to an aching body and head. His mouth was dirt dry and it took him a moment to work it closed. He opened his eyes, squinted against the brilliance, and, stabbed by pain, squeezed them shut again.

Damn, his neck hurt. It was bent at a weird angle, his head wedged into a corner. Where the hell had he fallen asleep? Or had he been unconscious?

An explosion. Maybe there'd been an explosion and a ceiling had fallen on him. That would explain the weight holding him down and the headache he felt waiting to erupt the second he moved the tiniest bit. He wasn't on the bomb squad, not being suicidal by nature, but if some crazy had set one…

In a sickening wave, he remembered what the crazy
had
done. He lurched, his head fractured into a million atoms of pain, and somebody else gasped and shoved an elbow into his gut.

He swore and opened his eyes. A wild woman was staring up at him. Her eyes were big and brown and bloodshot, her face was puffy, her lips as dry as his mouth, and her dishwater blond hair was a snarled mess.

"Oh, my God!" she said in stricken tones.

His head clunked back against the car door and he shut his eyes.

Nell
Granstrom
. Naked. Lying on top of him. They hadn't… Had they? God help him, images wormed their way through the shattering pain behind his eyes. He saw her uniformed ass sticking up between the seats, his hands on it. Him falling on her. Slow hungry kisses. Him on his knees like a horny teenager at a drive-in movie, squeezing her buttocks, slamming into her. And the single best orgasm of his entire life. He did remember that.

She was apparently frozen in the same frantic effort to remember. Or maybe horror held her paralyzed. He didn't know. Just that all of a sudden she was scrambling to get off him, and to hell with which body parts she damaged on her way.

"I've got to get dressed," she said in a high frenzied voice. "Where's my bra? Oh, God. Where's my bra?"

A faint memory of tossing it tickled at him. "Try behind the seat." His voice sounded thick. Tongues needed to be lubricated to do their job.

She rose above him, and something stirred in him as he took in her long slender body and high, pale breasts. Unfortunately, she saw him looking, and she recoiled as if he were a monster.

"What are you… Oh!" Hands shaking, she put on the bra, tugged on a shirt, realized it was his and threw it in his face.

By the time he wrestled free, she was buttoning up her own, hiding the nest of dark blond curls at the juncture of her thighs.

"Get dressed!" she hissed. "You look … you look like hell!"

He reached out and fingered a mat in her hair. "Isn't that the pot calling the kettle black?"

She swatted away his hand. He caught one more forbidden glimpse as she arched to pull on her trousers and panties in one go. "Oh," she groaned. "I'm going to be sick."

That galvanized him. "Not in here, you're not."

She got open the door of the Explorer and half fell out into the alley. As he slowly, painfully pulled on his own clothes, he heard her retching. His stomach lurched in sympathy, and he gritted his teeth against a wave of nausea.

Wiping her mouth, she reappeared in the open door. The captain wouldn't have recognized his cool, disciplined officer in this unkempt woman with a half-buttoned, wrinkled shirt, tangled hair and red-rimmed eyes. "I'm going to find my car." She swallowed. "If—if I left anything…"

"Get in," he said. He climbed between the seats to get behind the wheel.

She was still standing there staring.

"Get in," he repeated, wincing at the sight of himself in the rearview mirror. "You don't want anybody to see you. I'll pull up right next to your car."

Pride made her neck long, but after a reluctant moment, she did climb in and close the door.

Hugh found the keys wedged in the crack between the center console and the seat. His head was going to fall off. He knew it was. But he'd rescue her from possible humiliation first, like the gentleman he preferred to think he was.

Turning to look over his shoulder was undiluted agony, but he managed to back up, get turned around and cruise slowly into the tavern parking lot proper. "What do you drive?"

"It's right there." She indicated a cherry-red Subaru wagon.

He got up close, his Explorer blocking any sight of her from the tavern or the sidewalk. Not that there was any traffic at…

"Oh, hell," he growled.

"What?"

"It's
noon
."

She half rose to look over the seat at his dashboard clock. "Aren't we supposed to be back on duty at three?"

"That's my memory."

The word that came out of her mouth was fitting, if not a nice one for a lady to say.

"Go home and shower," he said. "You'll feel better."

She cast him a look of disbelief. "Or not," he conceded.

Nell
Granstrom
opened the door again, climbed out, then stopped. "This never happened."

He had to turn his head to look at her. "What?"

"It never happened. Last night." Her eyes met his square, but red washed her cheeks. "This morning. You and me. I—I don't usually drink."

He wasn't much of a drinker, either, or his head wouldn't be detonating this morning.

"Do I have your word?" she asked fiercely. "You'll never tell a soul? You'll never refer to it again? You'll forget it ever happened?"

The forgetting part Hugh wasn't so sure about. The rest…

"I will never say a word." He sketched a cross in the air. "On my honor."

She sagged, bit her lip. "Thank you."

"After what we saw … maybe we needed it. Since neither of us is married…"

Her eyes sizzled. "You said not a word. We won't talk about why.
It never happened."

"Fine," he said tightly. "Now, if you don't mind, I'm kinda looking forward to getting home."

She gave a nod, flinched as if she regretted it, and slammed the door of his Explorer. He waited until she was in her Subaru and had started it. Running his hand over his unshaven jaw, he watched in his mirror as she exited via the alley. Smart.

Too bad that after a couple pitchers of beer neither of them had been smart this morning. No, what was really too bad was that his own personal history had escalated his reaction to an already horrific tragedy. Otherwise he wouldn't have had those damn beers in the first place.

Working with a woman he didn't like would have been bad enough, Hugh thought. Working with a woman he didn't like but had had drunken sex with was going to be next door to hell.

Chapter 2

«
^
»

H
ow
could she
have done something so stupid, so humiliating, so … undignified?

Nell stood under the shower with her face upturned, letting the hot water beat over her head as though it could cleanse her inside as well as out.

How could she face him again? How could she work with a man she'd let…

Nell moaned aloud at the fresh realization of exactly
what
she'd let him do. Never mind what
she'd
done.

Her head throbbed and she tilted it sideways to let the shower spray hit first one temple and then the other. The pressure didn't help.

Nell reached for the soap and
sudsed
herself for at least the third time. Then she shampooed again as well. The rinse water was turning lukewarm. She'd been standing in there for an eternity.

But not long enough.

All the while she dried, got dressed and forced herself to eat a sandwich and drink a glass of milk, Nell's thoughts raced in vicious circles.

She could only pray he was embarrassed, too, but what were the odds of that? Hugh McLean had a reputation with women. Word had it he had a different cute, petite blonde on his arm—or in his bed—every few weeks.

"A redhead once in a while," Joe Redding had said admiringly. "But, damn, he picks lookers."

Nell knew painfully well that she wasn't even close to being a looker. But she was a woman, one more notch in his belt. Hey, he was drunk and in the mood, and she'd been handy. Handy? Who was she kidding? Randy, was probably more the truth.

There in her own kitchen, she flushed hot and cold. Her behavior had been so
alien
for the woman she'd become. It was as if too many beers had thrown her back to the wild teenager she'd been sixteen years ago, before she learned her lesson the hard way. Forget consequences, enjoy the now.

You feel good.

She whimpered and set down the half finished glass of milk. Her stomach was not enthusiastic about even something as innocuous as milk.

Would he keep his word, and not tell anyone? Nell didn't know him well enough to be sure either way. The few times she'd had to work with him, they'd butted heads. She thought he was a sexist, macho jerk.
Please,
she prayed,
let him also believe in old-fashioned chivalry.

She went back to the bathroom, brushed her hair into its usual severe, workday chignon, and carefully applied enough makeup to disguise some of the puffiness and blotches. Two more painkillers, teeth brushed and she'd done everything she could short of donning a mask.

Back in the kitchen she belatedly discovered a note from Kim carelessly tossed on the counter. It read, "Mom, Colin's taking me to the spit. Call his cell phone if you won't be home for dinner. I can eat with him. Bye."

Nell crumpled the note. Great. Wonderful. Her just-turned-sixteen-year-old daughter was spending the day in the wilds with her entirely too ardent boyfriend. And what in hell could she, the single mother, do about it? Forbid a sixteen-year-old from dating? Hardly. Sign her up for summer camp? Uh-huh.

"What I wouldn't give for year-round school," Nell told the kitchen, and went out the door.

She was one of the last in the crowded briefing room at the station, for which she was grateful. She was able to stand in the back, unnoticed.

This wasn't the usual beginning of her shift. She and McLean had been assigned, along with ten of the others present yesterday, to work this case. Four detectives from Major Crimes stood behind the captain. One, she was interested to note, was John McLean, Hugh's older brother. He must have spent the night at the
Joplin
Building
, because tiredness wore lines in his face that she knew weren't always there, and his expression was bleak.