Truth and Consequences (16 page)

Kathleen lay against Jason’s chest, her mind drifting in drowsy circles. She drew a pattern on his arm with one finger and tried to repress a satisfied giggle. She’d always been drawn to ambitious men and Jason’s brand of ambition suited her just fine.

His arm tightened on her waist. “What’s so funny?”

Sleep slurred his words and Kathleen shook her head. Exhaustion tugged at her, but she didn’t want to sleep. The real world would intrude all too soon and she didn’t want to waste a moment of this time with him.

She rubbed the pad of her index finger across the puckered scar on his shoulder. The rough, round mark was paler than the rest of his skin. “What is this?”

“Battle scar. Kuwait.” He mumbled the words against her hair. “Not important.”

Her hand slid down his side. A similar wound marred his hip. His heart thudded under her cheek and she pressed closer, aware once again of time’s passage. He winced, and remembering his wounded side, she pulled away and rolled to lie on her back.

He followed, as if he couldn’t bear to not touch her. He relaxed, his face nestled in the crook of her neck. Her chest squeezed and she closed her eyes, fighting the rising fear. This one night in his arms wasn’t going to be enough. She wanted this, wanted him, forever.

The last time she’d tried forever didn’t bear thinking about.

She stroked hesitant fingers across the thin lines on her stomach. She knew without looking they were pale and silvery. Her eyes closed, the phantom weight of a baby in her arms. Only this time, not Everett. Another baby, Jason’s son. Wanting clenched her empty womb and a self-derisive laugh hurt her throat, the sound verging on a sob.

What was she thinking? Forever and babies? Never again.

Jason stirred. “What?”

She swallowed against the tightness in her throat and struggled to sit up. “I’ve got to go.”

“What?” He pushed to a seated position and rubbed a hand over his hair. He blinked, eyes heavy with sleep. “It’s the middle of the night.”

“I’m going home.” She scooted to the end of the bed, fighting the sudden urge to cry. Lord, her clothes were scattered everywhere. She stepped into her panties and tugged her camisole top over her head.

“Kathleen.” He snagged her wrist and pulled her back onto the bed. She fell over his legs, her thighs lying atop his. “What’s going on?”

The concern darkening his green eyes made the tears push harder in her throat. She shook her head and dropped her gaze. Drops of blood seeped through his bandage. “You’re bleeding.”

“I’ll live.” He caught her chin in his fingers and forced her gaze to his. “Talk to me.”

“I just…I need to go home.” She swallowed again and tugged away. She speared both hands through her hair. “This is too much, too fast. I don’t know you, don’t know anything about you—”

He captured her mouth in a long, sweet kiss. “You know what’s important,” he whispered against her lips. “You know what’s real.”

“I don’t know anything anymore.” That lost voice didn’t belong to her. It couldn’t. Feeling the worst kind of weak, she let him lower her to the bed once more.

He leaned over her, his eyes stormy and intent. “Look at me, Kathleen.” She couldn’t pull her gaze away. He rubbed a finger across her swollen lips. That finger traveled down her throat to lie against her pulse. “This is real, sugar.
We’re
real.”

The desire to believe him bordered on desperation. They stared at each other, the only sound in the tiny room their soft breathing. The emotion on his face went deeper than passion, thrilling her and scaring her to death at the same time.

She didn’t want to name that emotion. It whispered of forever, happily ever after and other expectations she couldn’t live up to.

Lord, don’t let him see that in my eyes, too.

A truck rumbled into the yard. Jason stiffened against her, his head jerking toward the window. He pulled away. “Stay here.”

“Jason—”

“Stay here. I mean it.” He tugged on a pair of faded jeans and pulled his gun from the holster on his duty belt. He tucked the gun into the back waistband and walked into the hall.

Kathleen listened to his cautious footsteps in the living room. A moment later, the front door opened and closed.

“Hey, cousin.” Jim Ed’s voice filtered through the heavy plastic covering the bedroom window, taking the place of the missing glass. “How you feeling?”

“Sore.”

“Palmer still here?”

“You see her car, don’t you?”

“Where is she?”

“Asleep.”

Jim Ed’s all-male laughter crawled over Kathleen’s skin. “Wore her out, did you?”

“Guess so.” If Jim Ed’s laugh had been bad, Jason’s was worse, clenching her stomach, turning something beautiful ugly and sordid. “Told you I’d find a way to distract her.”

Acting. Remember—he’s playing a role.

Yes, but which one? Which Jason was real?

She was sure the corrupt deputy was a fraud. That left two options. An undercover agent who cared for her, but needed to convince his cousin she was nothing more than a sexual conquest. Or an undercover agent who’d do whatever it took to keep her out of his way.

No. Stop. She touched a finger to her lips, still tingling from his kisses. Her body ached, a sweet, feminine ache, from the passion and fire of his lovemaking. His throaty whispers echoed in her head. Earlier, she’d seen promises in his eyes.

No one was that good an actor.

Was he?

Conscious of the two men outside, she slid her jeans and shoes on with as little noise as possible.

“We’ll deal with Johnny,” Jim Ed said. “You won’t have trouble out of him again. I don’t know why you didn’t just shoot him, though.”

“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe because I was breaking the law and didn’t want to add murder to it?”

“The guy tried to kill you. I’d say it was justified. It’s not like you ain’t done it before.”

Kathleen’s lungs constricted.

“Maybe that’s the difference between you and me. I’ve had enough.”

“Maybe.” A jovial laugh. The sound of a slap on the back. “See ya tomorrow. Keep that woman satisfied and out of our hair, you hear?”

She closed her eyes, listening, keeping her mind a deliberate blank. If she thought about it, she’d attack him as soon as he set foot back in the house.

The truck fired to life and rumbled away. The front door opened, closed. Soft footsteps ventured down the hall.

Kathleen, sitting cross-legged on his bed, opened her eyes and waited. He appeared in the doorway, his expression closed and wary. He scratched at his bare chest, and she hated herself for letting that expanse of skin send a curl of desire through her again. The ache between her legs pulsed.

She narrowed her eyes and watched him, waiting.

His chest heaved with a breath and he rubbed a hand over his nape. “Kathleen, don’t look at me like that.”

Fury erupted in her chest. She smothered it. “Is that what this was all about? Keeping me out of things?”

His brows lowered. “It was about us. About keeping you safe.”

She laughed, a short, derisive snort. “You can’t even keep yourself safe.”

“Would you hear me out?”

She unfolded her legs and rose. “I’ve heard enough. I’m going home.”

Not looking at him, she brushed by him into the hall. In that narrow space, he grabbed her arm and pulled her against him. “Not yet.”

She pushed away, putting her back against the wall. Anger pulsed in her throat. “Let go.”

“Damn it, Kathleen.” He jerked his head toward the front of the trailer. “I don’t know where he is. He could be waiting at the road. Or maybe he ditched the truck and is walking back up here. I’m not letting you go out there.”

Shivers trailed over her at the pictures he created. Fighting off the fear, she tilted her head back and glared. “I don’t need you to take care of me.”

He traced the curve of her ear with his thumb. “Too bad. Because I really need you.”

Men and sex. With an irritated huff, she closed her eyes and tried to ignore the need he created in her.

His hands slid to her shoulders and he gave her a slight shake, pulling her gaze back to his. “Kathleen, you believe me, don’t you? About us?”

“I don’t know what to believe anymore.”

“Believe this.” He brushed a gentle kiss along her jaw. “And this.” Another teasing kiss at the corner of her lips. He pressed her hand to his chest, his heart pounding against her fingers. “And this.
This
is real.”

“
This
is just sex.” She tried to push a hearty dose of disdain into the words. They emerged breathy and hesitant.

“No.” His mouth played with hers and he tugged her against him, backing toward his room. “
This
is more.”

“Jason.” Her weak protest was lost under his persuasive kiss. She stroked his neck, his shoulders, his chest. One night. What could one night hurt?

“Believe, Kathleen,” he whispered, stirring the fiery passion again with his hands and mouth. “In me. In us.”

One night. One night to allow herself to believe in a future that wouldn’t come true. The truth and its consequences could some later.

Winding her arms around his neck, she let him wrap her in beautiful lies once more.

Kathleen located her shoe behind the bedroom door. Dust motes danced in shafts of early morning sunlight. While she tugged on her shoe, she tried not to look at Jason and failed.

Lying on his stomach, he slept with the total abandonment of a child finally succumbed to a nap after playing too hard. The urge to climb into bed with him and wake him with kisses attacked her. No. She’d promised herself one night. She had to be satisfied with that.

Even if that one night made her an official inhabitant of the too-stupid-to-live category.

Even if the unbelievable satisfaction she’d found with him made her want more, like an addict craving another fix before the original high faded.

She slipped from the room and froze once when the floor creaked a loud protest under her steps. No sound came from the bedroom, and she crept through the living room and outside. In the car, she let out a long, slow breath and fired the engine.

She eased the car down the pitted driveway, trying not to remember Jason’s fears that Jim Ed might be lying in wait for her.

His scent lingered on her skin, filling the small interior space, and she sighed on a wave of reluctance and despair. She was leaving behind what she wanted most.

She wanted more, not just the physical connection, but more of what made him the man he was. She wanted to know everything—his favorite foods, why drama first piqued his interest, who’d first broken his heart, what had happened in Kuwait to leave two bullet wounds on his body.

Battle scars.

The fire had destroyed her father’s Purple Heart as well as their home. Jason’s background file didn’t mention any awards, and if he’d been injured in battle, he should have a Purple Heart. Another hole, real proof she could hold on to.

The back roads winding from Haynes County into Chandler County held few other vehicles. She passed a tractor and, when she entered Chandler County, a sheriff’s unit parked under a tree just off the road. A few minutes later, she pulled into her own driveway. The ducks chattered and fussed around the dock, and she scattered food for them.

This early on a Saturday morning, the lake lay still and deserted. Later, the surface would ripple with bass boats and jet skis.

She didn’t have to work today. The idea of lying around on the dock in a bikini, napping and soaking up rays, appealed, but another duty called. Sometime today she had to drive over to Lenora Calvert’s house to see her parents. Her father coped with the tragedy by throwing himself into insurance forms and cleanup efforts. Her mother remained quiet and stoic, her demeanor an eerie echo from the dark days following Everett’s death.

Her fingers brushed her stomach. She’d lost a child, her parents their only grandchild. Like her mother, she’d locked him away in her heart, refused to talk about him, refused to consider ever putting herself at that kind of risk again.

Jason made her dream those dreams again—a chortling laugh, the warm curve of her baby’s head beneath her chin, tiny fingers wrapped around hers. Watching the man she loved cradle the child they’d created.

“No.” The raw word sent startled ducks scrambling into the water, squawking and quacking.

She wouldn’t be anyone’s mother again.

And she wasn’t going to fall in love with Jason Harding.

Oh, man, he’d do it again in a New York minute, too, major pain or not. Warm contentment settled in his chest and, eyes closed, he reached for Kathleen.

His bed was empty. Fully awake now, he sat up and listened. Silence hovered in the trailer and he didn’t bother to call her name. The quiet emptiness was familiar, but her absence intensified it.

The void settled around him, pressing in, as he walked to the bathroom, then to the kitchen.

Already, he missed the warmth of her touch, the shimmery quality of her rare laughter, the way she loved him as if her life depended on it.

She’d made love to him without knowing who he really was.

He didn’t know what to make of that. The passion could have been nothing more than a strong physical attraction on her part. He didn’t want to accept that, but had no choice. He wanted to believe she felt something deeper for him.

For the first time in his life, he wanted it to be more than just great sex, but about the connection he’d felt.

He needed her to know who he was. Last night, the truth had trembled on his lips and he’d bitten the words back. Too many years of following orders, too much indoctrination by the Bureau. He couldn’t just spill the details without permission. Heck, he couldn’t even call his superiors and ask for that permission.

But he knew someone who could.