[When SEALs Come Home 04] - Heated (7 page)

The lack of room beneath the hood meant she ended up pressed against him. She bumped him with her hip.

“Move over.” Her car, her engine.

He raised his gaze to hers, treating her to another look at his sinful eyelashes. “I’m working here.”

“Doing what?”

“Checking your fuel filter and then the pump to see if either is clogged.”

She had no idea what he’d just said, but she’d learn. “Give it to me in steps.”

He adjusted something gadget-y. “I can’t just fix it?”

“I need to know how to do this myself,” she said. “Otherwise, what happens the next time my car breaks down?”

He frowned. “Maybe you should buy a new car.”

“Do you have any idea what they pay deputy sheriffs in these parts?”

He considered her words for a moment. “Good point. Maybe you should come work for me at the garage. I’ll pay you a living wage.”

She gave him another look, and he launched into a complicated explanation of how to check a fuel line. She had to give him credit. He actually seemed like he was trying to explain what he was doing, but her fingers itched for a pen to write it all down. Writing helped her make sense of things, and she didn’t think she could wallpaper her fuel line with colored Post-it notes corresponding to the different steps in Joey’s long-winded process.

In the middle of his explanation, Bob meowed demandingly from the car. Her Siamese was done with the sitting-around-and-waiting portion of the night’s events. She’d been feeling the same way until she cozied up underneath the hood of her car with Joey.

Joey wiped his hands on a bandana he’d produced from somewhere and offered it to her. Her car might not produce much speed, but it apparently was an overachiever when it came to engine grease. “You’ve got company. You going to introduce me?”

She straightened. God, her back was killing her. “Meet Bob.”

He grabbed her fingers before she could rub the small of her back and wiped the grease off them. “Bob as in bobcat?”

“Bob as in battery-operated boyfriend.”

He blinked. “Wow.”

“And Bob as in better than.” She might as well be totally honest.

“The ultimate Bob, huh?” He gently bumped her out of the way and dropped into the driver’s seat. Holding out his hand, he waggled his fingers. “Key?”

“I can do it.” The rest of tonight’s repair job was out of her league, despite his attempts to explain, but the turning-the-key-in-the-ignition part? She had that much covered.

“And I can help,” he said easily. In no hurry to get going, he held out his fingers in front of the carrier so Bob could sniff him. “I’ve got a loaner cat.”

“Now it’s my turn to say
wow.
I never imagined you were a cat person.”

“I like cats,” he said easily. “In fact, I like all sorts of—”

“Don’t say it.” She reached in and slapped a hand over his mouth. She could feel his smile growing beneath her fingers, and then he nipped her.

“You need to pull your mind out of the gutter, Deputy. What kind of pet do you see me with?”

A jaguar. A big mountain cat. Something exotic that might take your head off and your throat out.
He simply didn’t seem like the kind of guy who cozied up with nine pounds of house cat love.

“How can a cat be loaner?”
Deflect.

“He belongs to my sister, but she’s off honeymooning with Mr. Medina and attempting to make a two-legged replacement for the cat.”

“You can have a cat and a baby.”

He sighed. “I’m better with cats than babies.”

She couldn’t afford to think about babies and Joey in the same sentence, because that led to thoughts about
making
babies.

“Where did you learn to fix cars?” she asked instead.

“I have a garage where I restore and fix bikes in the off-season from jumping.” He turned the key in the ignition, and her motor purred to life. “Problem solved. Now you owe me.”

That’s what she was afraid of.

“Out.” She tapped him on the shoulder.

“Ungrateful,” he countered, his eyes laughing at her. Before she could react, he tugged her down onto his lap. She drove a Honda Civic, which meant she’d sat on benches with more room. Joey’s caveman tactic had her jammed between the steering wheel and a hard male chest. She stared down at the arm wrapped around her middle and wondered if he could tell through her clothes that she liked cookies too much and sit-ups too little. Just in case he thought she was okay with being manhandled (and honestly, right now? She didn’t mind), she wriggled in token protest and discovered a whole lot of
happy to see you
beneath her butt.
Oh
.

“This is not what I had in mind.” She made a grab for the key. Not that she had any idea how that would help, but she needed to do something.

“Shhh.” He leaned forward and covered her fingers with his. Grease and pine trees and a scent that was wholly, indescribably Joey surrounded her. She could have happily sat there smelling him—pathetic—but he was doing more with his mouth than just trying to shut her up. He brushed his mouth over her ear, and she shivered, getting goose bumps in all the right places. “You think too much.”

Thinking too little caused problems. Right now, for example, she wanted to blurt out
take me, big boy
, and that had to be one of the stupidest ideas of the century.

“Get out of my car.”

“In a minute. I’m perfectly comfortable.”

“This is completely inappropriate.”

“Maybe.” He didn’t sound like he minded.

“There’s no maybe about it, Joey Carter.”

***

H
e was crazy. He’d never slapped that label on himself, but maybe he’d suffered a head injury on that last tour of duty. God knew, he’d run headlong into one dangerous situation after another. Playing with Mercedes Hernandez,
Mercy
, was crazy. Absolutely, unequivocally crazy. She squirmed on his lap, and instead of letting her go, he tightened his arm. She felt so damned good. Curvy and soft—and wriggling. Jesus. He hadn’t thought that through when he’d tugged her down onto his lap. He’d just known that he’d get a rise out of her.

And himself apparently.

Her ponytail whipped him in the face as she made another halfhearted move toward the open door. She couldn’t have minded her current position too much though because she could have broken free. Not without hurting him, however, because at close quarters, inside a car and alone with a man his size, his cool, standoffish deputy sheriff was vulnerable.

Damn. It sucked that he was apparently a nice guy after all.

“Jam your elbow in my gut,” he said gruffly. “Or slam your head back and aim for my nose.”

“You want me to hurt you?” She sounded adorably confused.

“I’m not into pain.” Enough happened accidentally, and he’d never understood seeking it out. “I just want this to be your choice.”

Which didn’t explain why he wasn’t letting go. Or what
this
was.

“Huh.” She huffed out a breath and stopped moving. “You’re a strange man.”

He’d heard that before.

“And I have a handgun in the glove compartment. I’m licensed for concealed carry.”

Great. If he pissed her off, she could shoot him. At least she wasn’t entirely defenseless. He wasn’t a long-term guy. He didn’t stick. And the only acquaintance he wanted with marriage was watching his friends walk down the aisle. Mercedes Hernandez, on the other hand, was a keeper. She was a forever-after kind of woman, even if, he suspected, she didn’t know it. Bob the cat mewed plaintively from his carrier, unhappy at being left out. Hell, even her cat had an opinion about what they were doing here in the front seat of her car.

“Go out with me,” he heard himself say. He buried his face in her hair, fisting her ponytail and drinking her in. It was a good thing she couldn’t see his face.

“Joey—”

She was going to say no.

He didn’t like that answer, and he didn’t have to play fair. So he kissed the side of her neck, running his thumb over the soft curve of her jaw. She was all soft underneath, his Mercy.

“Say yes. One date,” he said. “I think you owe me that much.”

“That’s the price of car repairs today?” He loved the laughter in her voice. “I’ll have to remember to swing by the garage more often.”

He dragged his hands down over her ribs, finding her waist. “Say yes,” he repeated.

“I can’t.” Regret replaced laughter in her voice.

“One date,” he coaxed. He pressed his lips against the pulse that beat in her throat. Her breathing hitched.

“I have a morals clause in my contract.”

“Are you questioning my morals?”

“It’s happened before.” She shrugged, and the move sent her sweater—one of those fuzzy, soft-colored things—sliding off her shoulder. The red bra strap that peeked out was, he decided, far more interesting than her morals clause. He needed to kiss her there, taste the sweet little hollow of skin and thumb the strap down. Strip her bare. And—

She was still talking. “I love my job. I really do. I know that’s hard for someone like you to understand.”

He had no idea what
that
meant, but maybe she really believed he was a hardened criminal. He made a noise, but she kept right on talking, on a roll.

“I grew up in a poor Hispanic neighborhood,” she said. “Orange County.”

“I’ve been through there a time or two.” He knew the kind of neighborhood she meant. Clean and pretty, with working-class trucks parked end to end and yards full of potted plants, the houses busting at the seams with extended family, and all the drama that came with close quarters and high occupancy.

She smiled but not at him. Nope. She was taking an extended walk down memory lane, and he was fairly certain he wasn’t invited. “My neighborhood could put on one hell of a party. Many of the girls never went past high school, and having the first baby was their major milestone.”

“But you didn’t do that.” Surely if she had a kid, he’d have known?

She shook her head, and he exhaled in relief. Not that he minded kids, but dating a woman with kids was a whole new level of serious.

“I did one year at UCLA then dropped out because the money ran out and I couldn’t study and work at the same time.”

“So how did that lead to law enforcement?”

“We saw the police plenty on our block. I lost two cousins to drive-by shootings. We were never sure if it was a case of wrong time, wrong place or if they had been involved with the local gangs. It didn’t really matter, because they were dead,” she said quietly. “Although my auntie found thinking about them as innocent victims easier than the alternative. I wanted to do something to stop it. I couldn’t undo what had happened to my cousins, but maybe I could prevent the shooters from getting their hands on the guns, from doing it again. Going into law enforcement gave me that first chance, and I loved the Los Angeles Police Department.”

“So why did you come out here?”

“I’d been seeing someone since high school,” she admitted. “And there was no question but that he eventually joined a local gang. He got into trouble, got arrested and convicted. We corresponded for a few months while he got started on his sentence, and I even went to see him twice. I didn’t realize that I was risking my job. He’d been my high school sweetheart. We’d talked about getting married. We’d grown apart, and that wasn’t going to happen anymore, but we were still friends and I...”

Mentally, he filled in the dots. She’d still cared. She’d been there for the guy because that was the kind of person she was. She was loyal, and she’d had his back, even when he’d fucked up and gotten his ass thrown in jail.

“I got fired,” she said quietly. “I was still on probation when my new police department finished doing my background check and came asking questions. They should have asked sooner, but they were behind in their paperwork, and so they took a chance on me and everyone lost. I got fired and I learned a valuable lesson.”

“Did you see him again?” It was none of his business, but he needed to know.

She shook her head. “We’d grown apart, and then I came out here because I had a second chance at a job. So I can’t blow this chance. You understand that, right? It’s a small town, and the department has already lost one officer, so everyone else has to be even more careful. There can’t be any appearance of impropriety.”

He wasn’t a criminal. He also wasn’t a Boy Scout, and he knew all about small towns. Strong was already gossiping about their supposed dating life, and it was a short hop from there to either talking about their sex life or filling in the blanks if he and Mercy didn’t make a public spectacle of themselves. People were supportive in small places like this, and you could trust your neighbors with your stuff. It was only your secrets that were at risk, because those same neighbors talked. And talked. So she was right that the two of them had no more business being together than she and the Los Angeles gangbanger, but he hadn’t even had a chance at her, unlike the other guy. And he wanted that chance. Badly.

***

“I
know how to behave.”

She had no idea how Joey managed to sound both virtuous and naughty at the same time. The man was an evil genius.

“Uh-huh.” And that was her, Ms. Suave and Witty. She sighed. Later tonight, when she was alone in her rental house, she’d think of half a dozen brilliant responses and regret the missed opportunity. She racked her brain, trying to remember the small talk tips she’d read in last month’s
Cosmo
. Unfortunately, nothing came to mind. Right now, she was tongue-tied. And likely making a bad impression.

Not that she wanted to make a
good
one.

Just a sexy one. Or an attractive one. She was off-duty, and he was... here.

“I’m a fine and upstanding citizen,” he protested.

“Prove it.”

“Okay. Will and Abbie were planning on building their dream house,” he said, picking up their conversational slack. He looked serious, which was even cuter than his grins.

“I don’t think Abbie’s going to be building anything on her own. And that’s not a character testimonial for you.”