One Good Man (12 page)

She was shaking her head where it rested on the bed between his arms, and he thought she was reassuring him that things were okay, but the sliver of what looked like uncertainty, maybe even regret, left him hanging.

He couldn’t do this if she wasn’t sure. “Jamie, what’s wrong?”

She squeezed shut her eyes, and when she pulled in a breath, it caught as a sob she couldn’t laugh away. “I’m sorry. This is so humiliating.”

For her or for him? He rolled to the side, left one leg on top of hers to keep her beside him. He wasn’t going to let her get away until he knew why she was falling apart.

And then it hit him, the things she’d been through today, the things she’d relived and remembered. Her emotions had to be ragged, and all he could think of was rutting.

He was a toad. “Are you cold?”

She wiped her eyes. “I’m fine, really. I don’t even know what happened. I was thinking about being in danger, and you making me feel safe.”

Yeah. Not a good thing. “And that made you cry?”

She tried to laugh, managed what came out sounding like a hiccup, covered her mouth and turned her head, their gazes connecting. “If I tell you the truth will you promise not to run away scared?”

Why would he run away scared? “I promise not to run away, but I can’t promise not to worry.”

She stroked her thumb over his mouth, then rolled onto her side to face him. They were so close that her nipples brushed against his chest when either of them breathed.

“You don’t need to worry about anything,” she said. “I’m not going to fall apart on you, more than I already have, anyway. Or try to trap you into a relationship just because we’ve slept together.”

Now he was simply confused. Was she crying because she wanted a relationship, or because she didn’t? “You trying to trap me hasn’t crossed my mind even once.”

“Good, because that’s not who I am.” She wedged both of her arms between them, plucked at his chest hair with her fingers, twisted her mouth to one side as if trying on the fit of her next words. “It’s just…”

That was all she got out before she started twisting again, plucking again, plucking harder. He grabbed her busy fingers, kissed their tips, then held them still instead of transferring them to the part of his body that, even softened, ached for her touch. “It’s just what, Jamie? You feel this is a mistake?”

She frowned, and cuddled even closer to him, her lips grazing the skin just this side of his armpit. “Why would you think that?”

“I don’t think that, but when a woman starts crying on me in bed…”

“I accepted a long time ago that I was going to live my life alone.” She pushed out the words in a rush, as if it was the only way she could let them go. “I’ve tried on a few men, found them comfortable enough, but none of them were men I could see myself still wearing at the end of my life.”

A strange dressing-room metaphor, but he got it. He’d decided to remain a bachelor for much the same reason. Dates offered him company and conversation, and occasionally the chance to share his release instead of flying solo in the shower at the end of the day. But sex wasn’t a relationship. At least not the sex he’d had before.

And that was the problem here, wasn’t it? What he and Jamie had going on was more than physical involvement. “So you don’t want me to run away scared because I feel like I could turn into an old shoe. Is that it?”

She giggled as if picturing a funny image. But then she sighed, growing pensive again. “That’s part of it, yes. But the other part is knowing that after this, we’re going to get up and dress, and hopefully eat, and then you’ll be taking me home. You might touch base every few months to keep me posted on the investigation, but that’s it. I’m never going to get the chance to break you in. I feel like I finally found the buy of a lifetime, and the store closed its doors before I could get inside.”

Because she’d seen the same potential between them that he had. Because she’d quit the idea of exploring it before starting the climb. He had, too. Neither of them wanted to risk screwing up their perfectly good lives. But both feared the real screwup would be in letting this go.

What to do? “You really know how to make a guy feel like a bargain. And how to stretch a metaphor.”

“Hey, at least I didn’t compare you to a piece of meat,” she said, and winked, winding her legs in and out of his. “Thank you for not running away. For letting me spill all of that.”

“Is that it, then?” he asked, though he knew “it” was a whole lot more complicated than getting things out in the open. They were still there to be dealt with. “You stopped me from finishing what I started because of your shopping woes?”

“I was overwhelmed.” She draped one arm around his waist, slid her hand lower, spread her fingers over the cheek of his ass and nuzzled her nose to his throat. “Since living in Weldon, I haven’t done much shopping. It can take a lot out of a girl.”

She’d been living in Weldon ten years. A waste of so much time she could have been doing whatever twenty-somethings were doing then. But he couldn’t think about that now, not when her fingers were walking into places he’d never before allowed anyone access. “I’ve got something to put in you, if you think it’ll help.”

“I think you’re exactly what I need right now.” That was all she said as she urged his lower body closer with the press of her hand to his hip.

The thought of a future with many such days spent in bed beside her…As he rolled on top of her and lowered himself into her welcoming cradle, Kell forced the thought from his mind. They were here together now, and he didn’t want their shared longing for anything else getting in the way of making this memory unforgettable.

Threading his fingers into her hair, he held her still for his kiss, blinding himself to all sensation but that of her mouth. His tongue found hers waiting, eager to please, found it bold. They pressed against each other, rocking, seeking, her lips tugging at his to keep him from moving away.

He moved anyway, kissed her jaw, her neck, from her shoulder to her collarbone to the hollow of her throat. To her breasts. She kneaded his biceps and kept him there, pulling him up her body when he tried to go down. He smiled against her skin, then returned to nuzzle his face to hers as he slid his sheathed cock inside her.

When he hit bottom, he stopped, feeling her tighten around him, feeling her shudder, still and release. She pulled her hips away, withdrawing to make him follow, pushing down into the mattress, and he did. He didn’t want to lose the feel of being cloaked within her, of being lost inside her, of being one, and he surged deeper.

Jamie gasped, and he wanted to kick himself for not thinking of her comfort, focused only on the things he craved, but then she shifted, tilting her hips to accommodate him more fully.

And then she whispered hoarsely, “Give me more.”

He laughed, growled, a deep gravelly noise that felt as rough in his chest as it sounded in the air. “How much of me do you want?”

“How much you got?” she came back with, digging her heels into his rump and holding him tightly in place.

It was no longer a question. In this woman, he had met his match. He crawled farther up her body. “How much do you think you can take?”

She arched her back, ground her clit against the base of his shaft, her hips rolling beneath him and drawing shuddering groans from them both. “I think we’d better just stick to the sex.”

He laughed again, this time as a cover-up, because knowing it was too late for just sex, he was going to lie. “That I can do.”

“Then do it,” she told him.

With his forearms above her shoulders bearing the bulk of his weight, he began to stroke, his mind on what his body was doing, his thoughts centered on his cock, on her sex, his concentration on nothing but physical pleasure. Or so he told himself as he drove deeper, harder, pumping long and slow, a piston firing, sparking to life.

Her breathing told him how close she was, and he moved where she told him to with a nudge of her knee, a bump from her fist, a bucking up of her lower body into his. She made sounds, anxious sounds, moans of desperation, mindless huffs and grunts, squeaks of impatience as she reached for the end.

She found it, crying out as she came, her head and shoulders pushing into the bed, her chin lifting. He watched her face; tension drained in a rush, and the smile that followed sent him over the edge. His orgasm ripped through him, a blast of sensation that staggered him, pulsing waves that flattened him. Even his knees betrayed him. He collapsed like a rag doll, spilling himself in a flood.

Jamie held his weight, held him, soothing him with her hands that rubbed his back and shoulders, quieting him and bringing him back with her voice that whispered, “Shh,” over and over again.

As if he had the energy to speak, the brain to search out coherent thought, the need to say anything besides words of emotion he knew were best left silenced. For now, anyway. Telling her what he was feeling while her body still claimed his was cliché. Sex talk. Heat of the moment. Endorphins tickling his tongue. Not truth.

He wasn’t ready for the truth. The truth scared him. He’d known since childhood what he wanted to do with his life. He accepted that chasing bad guys brought him into harm’s way more often than he liked.

He’d decided that was a risk he was willing to take, but not one he was sure was fair to ask a partner, a lover, a wife, to take on. He wasn’t going to give up his calling, so he’d given up hoping to share his life.

He came with a lot of heavy baggage, though that wouldn’t stop him from taking on the baggage of someone he loved. He’d just never thought he’d find someone in similar circumstances, a partner, a soul mate, someone who understood, who could take on all his baggage in return.

And so it scared him to think that he had. In Jamie.

He didn’t. He couldn’t. She knew that. He was her Texas Ranger and she was his case. More fraternization than they’d already engaged in was asking for more trouble than they were already in. And she was pretty sure that they were in a lot. A very big lot.

With his SUV idling beside her, she stood watching his garage door slide closed, then climbed up in the passenger seat of the vehicle. He’d been sitting there waiting, the engine running. She’d had to talk herself into going home. Being here with Kell…she felt closer than she had in years to Stephanie Monroe.

And how weird was that? she mused, buckling her shoulder strap into place. She’d made her life in Weldon, had felt safe in Weldon, knew the lay of the land there, the people in town.

Was that the problem? As much as she loved her home, was it more the place she’d run to escape her past? More a prison instead of a harbor? Being with Kell made her feel safe, secure, as if she belonged, instead of as if she’d had to forge a good fit. This was strange, wrong, so very—

“Shit!” Kell slammed on his brakes, adding, “Sorry, sorry,” when she surged forward and choked on her shoulder strap. “I almost backed into that car. Across the street. I knew I’d cleared the mailbox, but…shit. Sorry. Guess the Feagans have guests.”

He shifted from Reverse into Drive and they traveled toward the intersection. There they stopped, and Kell readied to turn. Jamie checked her side mirror, and saw the car’s headlights come on before it pulled away from the curb.

Her nape tingled. “Would their guests be waiting for any reason for you to leave?”

“What?” Kell looked into his rearview and saw the car approach. “Hmm” was all he said as he made his turn, watching to see if the car followed. It didn’t, heading in the opposite direction. Still, Jamie couldn’t look away, staring until the car’s taillights vanished.

So much for feeling safe. Suddenly, the reason for her being in Midland to begin with came rushing back, and she wished they were returning to Weldon in broad daylight, not in the dark of night that made her think too much about the memories refreshed during hypnosis.

Maybe if she talked it out? “Once you drop me off and get back to work tomorrow, what’s your first step? On the case? Assuming you don’t have new evidence come in on another. Since I gave you nothing to work with on this one.”

He reached across the console and took hold of her hand. “I’m not writing off this case just because the hypnosis didn’t give us as much as I’d hoped.”

“As much? It didn’t give you anything.” A tattoo. A Nike swoop. Orders issued in Spanish, a language she had a better grasp of now than she did then, but not enough of one to make sense of what the killer had said.

There were more Hispanic men in this part of Texas than there were Caucasian, and all she’d seen of the killer was his wrist, the ragged hem of his jeans and the shoes that had left bloody footprints on the diner’s freshly mopped floor.

She closed her eyes, leaning her head back against the seat. “I wanted so badly to give you the answers you needed.”

“Jamie, listen to me. What you gave the investigation was exactly what it needed. You gave it the details of what you saw. You can’t be faulted for not seeing more than you did. God, woman.” He squeezed her fingers. “The fact that you had enough in the way of wits to see that much is nothing short of amazing.”

“You’re just being nice.” She wished she could believe him, but she felt like a failure. She’d failed Kell, herself, her friends who’d lost their lives that night.

“You’re right. I am nice, but that’s not what I’m doing.”

“What are you doing?” Because, if he had a magic answer, she wanted to know.

“I’m telling you how I really feel. About the outcome of the hypnosis. About how you’ve handled living with this all these years. I don’t think I’ve known another woman as brave as you are.”

“Is that ‘known’ in the biblical sense?”

“No,” he said, and laughed. “Though I’d include those in the total.”

“What about your mother? She raised three boys.” She paused, pictured Kell as the oldest of three adolescent males running through the Harding family home. It made her smile, and she bounced their joined hands on her thigh. “A woman would have to be brave to take on more than one like you.”

“My mother is brave, but trust me when I say I gave her and my dad less hell than my brothers combined.”

“What, were you the perfect son? Bossing your brothers around? Ruling the sibling roost with an iron fist?”

“Something like that,” he said, pulling his hand from hers to turn the steering wheel. She tried not to feel bereft, but the contact made such a difference, so she reached across and laid her hand on his thigh.

Kell went on. “I was six when Brennan was born, and Terry came along the next year. The two of them being so close in age was like having twin heathens running wild. As they got older, they looked to me, rather than to our parents, for answers, like having been there already, I would know what they could get away with before someone with real authority put down a foot.”

Cute. A mini Texas Ranger, ordering the younger two boys to stand at attention. She could imagine the respect and admiration shining in their eyes. “You were their role model.”

“I guess so,” he said, shrugging as he guided the SUV onto the highway that would take them back to Weldon.

The man was too modest, but then, she liked that about him, the way he saw no need for braggadocio, machismo. He was a man secure in who he was, the best sort. “What do you mean guess? A big brother who knew the lay of the land? Whose parents afforded him extra privileges and responsibility because he’d earned them?”

He chuckled. “Assuming a lot there, aren’t you?”

She was, but she knew she was right. “Am I wrong? Were you not a younger version back then of who you are now?”

“Yeah, I had a thing about rights and wrongs. I stood up for more than one bullied kid in school. Also lost some friends because I wouldn’t go along with their pranks. Papering houses was about as criminal as I ever got.” He checked his mirrors, changed lanes, set the cruise control and got comfortable. “I wanted to play ball, have the respect of my coaches and team, and not have my college admission threatened by the stupid stuff teens do. Not sure if that made me a wet blanket or a Goody Two-shoes.”

“I’d say it made you perfect for what you do.” Surely he saw that. “There are lots of people who like to straddle the line between right and wrong, to see what they can get away with, or pull off as long as no one gets hurt.”

“But that’s the thing,” he said, launching into something she could tell he felt passionately about. “Someone always gets hurt. Pranks, pyramid schemes, public intoxication, whatever. There’s always a victim. Even if it’s just the sanitation worker hosing away the drunk’s vomit. Or the guy who has to clean the damp toilet paper out of his yard the next morning.”

Huh. He’d kept that memory with him for a while. She shifted in her seat to better see him, the amber lights from the dash catching his jaw, his cheekbones. “You went back and helped, didn’t you?”

“Went back?”

“And helped him with the toilet paper. You drove by on your way to school or football practice, saw the unholy mess, and your conscience made you stop.”

He snorted. “Like I said. Goody-Two shoes.”

“No, Kell Harding. You’re a good man,” she said, and meant it more than he could ever know.

He, of course, had to share the credit for his becoming the man he was. “I had a couple of role models of my own.”

“Your father, and who else?” she asked, letting her eyes drift shut. She was beyond exhausted. The sex, the hypnosis, the identification of Kass’s body, her cold case once again hot…It was amazing she hadn’t fallen asleep while she and Kell ate their reheated food.

“Captain Warren Sheets,” he told her. “My first supervisor as a Ranger, and a longtime friend of my father’s. He convinced me to go into law enforcement just by being the man that he was. Respectful as well as respected. Upstanding and honest. A man you could count on.”

Warren Sheets. It sounded so familiar. “I know that name. Why do I know that name?”

Kell paused, letting the question hang several seconds before answering. “He was the original investigator on the Sonora Nites Diner case.”

Jamie’s eyes popped open. Her heart blipped, and she was suddenly wide, wide awake. “Oh my God. He was. But you didn’t work it then, did you? I don’t remember you being there at any of the interviews.”

Kell shook his head. “Not officially, though I spent a lot of late hours with Warren combing through evidence.”

“So when you said you were familiar with the case—”

“I wasn’t kidding. Finding the killer has been a personal crusade, I guess you could say. Warren swore to see the man behind bars if it was the last thing he did. The crime scene…it really got to him. All the years I knew him, he never could let it go. The department might’ve called the case cold, but Warren Kell shook his head “-he never did. He died with this case still haunting him.”

And Kell had sworn to finish his mentor’s work, Jamie realized, realizing, too, that he had his own stake in this case, one driving him that had nothing to do with her. For the first time she wondered how this thing between them would impact him doing his job.

Would he make choices he might not have made otherwise? Would it be harder for him to put it away if it grew cold again? Would he suffer more guilt should he not be able to close it because of what they’d shared? Would she always wonder if this interlude had been, for Kell, a professional misstep?

God, her head hurt from thinking of all the ramifications of what they’d done. “You’ve taken up where he left off, then.”

“I’m doing my job, Jamie,” he reiterated. “If Kass Duren’s body hadn’t been found and identified, I’d be working on whatever case had the newest leads. It might’ve been this one, it might’ve been another.”

It sounded good. She just had trouble buying it. He’d said Warren Sheets had influenced his life as greatly as his father. Finishing what the other man had started would be more than a job. It would be a calling. A vow.

“Why don’t I believe that?” she asked softly.

He huffed once, twice, then cursed under his breath, the words self-directed, not meant for her. “Because somehow you’ve learned to read my mind? Or at least read me?”

“At the very least,” she told him, because even
she
hadn’t yet figured out the depth of their involvement.

“I used to be better at keeping my mouth shut.”

“With women, or in general?” she heard herself asking.

He gave her another of his laughs that she loved hearing, then sighed. “Always back to the women with you, isn’t it?”

She felt as if she had a vested interest in him now. And with the Weldon city limits looming, her time with him was too swiftly coming to an end. She wasn’t ready to lose him.

She wasn’t ready to let go. “You’re staying over, aren’t you? You’re not driving back to Midland tonight?”

They hadn’t talked about their parting, whether he’d drop her off at her front door, or tell her goodbye in the morning. They hadn’t talked about keeping in touch, whether he’d check in with her on a regular basis, or if she should just wait for his updates as they came.

They hadn’t talked about the end at all. Did that mean neither one of them wanted it to come?

Finally, Kell broke the silence that was eating her alive. “If you want me to stay, I’ll stay.”

Oh, she did, she did, but…She twisted her fingers together; she didn’t want to reach for him too soon. “Only if that’s what you want.”

He leaned over, settled his hand at her nape, threaded his fingers into her hair and kneaded her there. Tingles of longing tightened her breasts. “I want it more than anything.”