"You don't have to come in with me," she said when they converged in front of the Taurus's bumper. He stopped, and she kept on going, meaning to walk past him. "In fact, I'd rather you didn't. I don't want to have to explain you to Suzy."
"I just want you to answer one question for me, and you notice I'm asking it outright." He caught her upper arm when she would have dodged around him. His hold wasn't tight, and it would be easy to break free if she wanted to. But she didn't. She stopped. He was close, standing right in front of her, a solid barrier between her and the sidewalk, and she had to look up to see his face.
"What?"
"Did you have anything to do with planning or helping in that escape attempt?"
Her eyes widened. "No! I knew you were thinking something like that. I didn't. I swear it."
"That's what I needed to hear," he said.
Then his free hand slid around the back of her neck and he bent his head and kissed her.
C h a p t e r 21
HIS LIPS WERE WARM and firm and dry, and as soon as he touched them to hers, she went weak at the knees. When his tongue slid between her lips she felt dizzy. It had nothing to do with him, personally, she assured herself even as her lips parted beneath his and she pressed herself up against his hard body and wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him back. It was simply that it had been years— since before Ben's birth, actually—since she'd been kissed, years since she'd been with a man, and her body was overreacting.
The pounding of her heart, the racing of her pulse, the quickening of her breathing were simply instinctive reactions. The woman in her responding to the man in him. Nothing personal at all.
At least, that's what she told herself as his mouth slanted over hers and his arms came around her, hard and strong, and his hands splayed over her back, pressing her even closer against him.
She closed her eyes. The inside of his mouth was wet and hot and lasted faintly of coffee, and he was kissing her so expertly and so thoroughly now that she caught fire with the thrill of it.
And she kissed him back some more, with all the pent-up longing of a dieter confronted with a chocolate buffet.
Loving the taste of him. Loving the heat of him. Loving the feel of him.
Her fingers threaded through the crisp curls at his nape, savoring their texture. She rose on tiptoe, or he pulled her up on tiptoe, she couldn't be sure which, and she strained against him, dazzled by the hot prickle of her nipples as they tightened against the firm muscles of his chest, enthralled by the hard bulge that was proof positive that he was as turned on as she was, intoxicated by the urgent quickening of her body, by the fierce demand of his.
"Jesus," he whispered, as his mouth left hers to trace a fiery trail across her cheek to the hollow beneath her ear. He was breathing hard. She could feel the rapid rise and fall of his chest against her breasts. His arms were so tight around her that she couldn't have broken away if she'd wanted to.
Which she didn't. Not in a million years.
"Tom." Kate shivered as her head fell back against his shoulder, allowing him access to the tender column of her throat. His mouth crawled toward her collarbone in a chain of tiny, seductive kisses. His lips burned her skin; she could feel the rasp of stubble against the underside of her jaw, and she felt soft and shivery inside.
I love this,
she thought hazily, and then his lips were on hers again and she quit thinking altogether. Totally swept away, she tightened her arms around his neck and pressed herself against him until she could feel every hard plane and long bone and flexing muscle, and kissed him back.
Hungrily. Fervently. Feverishly
"Kate, is that you?"
The voice, calling from some little distance away, blasted them apart like a bomb. Kate jumped a foot in the air, and when she came down, Tom's arms were no longer wrapped around her. Suzy—it had been her voice, Kate recognized now that some of the heat was leaving her brain—stood on her small front porch, peering around the fat evergreen at them.
Kate hadn't even heard Suzy opening the front door.
"Yes, it's me," she called back, aware that her heart was still thudding and her toes were curling in her shoes. "I'm just on my way in."
A quick glance around confirmed that where they stood was deep in shadow. She didn't think Suzy could have seen a thing. But still she couldn't keep her face from heating as she glanced self-consciously at Tom.
He turned his head to look at her. It was too dark to read his expression, but she could just see the hot gleam of his eyes. There was tension in his stance. They were no longer touching, but electricity still hung in the air between them. Its presence was an almost palpable thing.
Suzy be damned. Kate wanted to walk right back into his arms.
"I'll wait in the car for you," he said, and turned away.
She took a deep breath and tried her best to push the last mind-blowing couple of minutes out of her mind. Suzy still waited on the porch. Now was not the time.
I'll think this through later,
she promised herself, and started walking toward the house.
SHE WASN'T
gone five minutes. But that was long enough for Tom to get himself back under control. By the time Ben came trudging down the sidewalk toward him, dragging a backpack behind him like a dog on a leash, Tom had finished kicking himself and had his game face on. It was the adrenaline rush he was operating on that had caused him to go off the rails like that, he concluded. Frustration at the run-around she was giving him and fear for her safety had combined with lack of sleep and an overdose of caffeine and everything else that was going on to juice him up until he'd exploded in that debacle of a kiss. Even before he'd gone by her office, he'd already had a hell of an afternoon. Those two charred corpses in the burned-out U-Haul both had criminal records, were known associates of Rodriguez and Soto, and were almost certainly the guys they'd been seeking. Now they were dead, killed with one neat bullet hole between the eyes each before the U-Haul was set on fire. Which meant someone had killed them. Someone who was still on the streets. Someone else involved in the escape? Maybe. It was always a mistake to assume, though. The guy who had stolen Kate's car? Another maybe, but the connection seemed thin. Still, those blackened corpses had been the first thing he'd thought of when she had told him what had happened to her. Seeing her running toward him between those parked cars looking as terrified as if the devil himself were after her, and then hearing what she had narrowly escaped from, had shaved years off his life. It had awoken his protective instincts. He wouldn't like it if she was to get hurt. He would, in fact, take it personally.
And that was bad.
It meant his emotions were involved. He never let himself get emotionally involved with women anymore. Physically, yes. He was always up for a good time, and he made sure his partners had fun, too. But he also made it clear that a relationship wasn't going to happen. When fun time was over, he was going to walk away.
For the first time in forever, walking away wasn't going to be so easy.
Was she in danger? Or was she dangerous? Or both? That's what he was trying to decide. Any way it worked out, as a cop he had good reason to keep close tabs on her. But keeping close tabs on her wasn't really what he was doing. At least, it wasn't all he was doing.
This thing—it wasn't a relationship—with Kate had snuck up on him and bitten him in the ass. He'd thought some about getting her in the sack, yes; but, given the circumstances, he had firmly rejected making any moves in that direction. She might turn him on, but he wasn't stupid. Or at least he'd thought he wasn't. Now it seemed like maybe he was after all.
As someone "under the umbrella of suspicion," as the media types in the department would no doubt put it, she should have been strictly off-limits. So she'd said no when he'd asked her if she'd been involved in the escape attempt. What had he expected her to do, confess?
And yet, he believed her—about that.
Which was still no excuse for kissing her. Kissing her was just about the stupidest thing he could have done.
He'd done it on impulse, a quick compulsion he hadn't been disciplined enough to control. The instant his mouth had touched hers he'd gone up in flames. The thing was, she'd been hot for him, too. In fact, she had kissed him back like she was dying to take him to bed. He had it tamped way down now, but he could still feel the hungry heat she'd ignited pulsing through his body. It wouldn't take much to set it off again.
What he should do is give up, give in, and get it over with. Woo the woman. Sleep with her and get her out of his system. It could be just as simple as that.
Or maybe not. Maybe she was playing him. Maybe she could tell how hot he was for her, and was hoping to use the power it gave her to get him on her side.
Despite her denials, he didn't trust her, but that didn't stop him from thinking about her much more than he should. Her evasiveness aggravated the hell out of him, but she still managed to rock his world with her smile. Lately he had pretty much wanted to shake her and kiss her at the same time. One thing was for sure: What was happening between them was a surprise. Never in this life would he have expected to feel this way about her.
Like they were involved somehow. Like there was a connection between them. Like she had become his responsibility. Hell, he even liked her damned little kid.
Who was opening the rear door and sliding into the car behind him even as he had the thought.
"Hi," Ben said as the interior light came on. "Are you here because my mom's car got stolen?"
Tom glanced at him through the rearview mirror. "Yeah." Ben shoved his backpack over and closed the door. "So, what really happened with that?"
It was such an adult question, uttered in such an adult tone, that Tom slewed around in the seat to look at him. Blue eyes regarded him unblinkingly from beneath fans of thick, dark lashes. Jeez, the kid looked like Kate.
"You need to ask your mom that."
Ben grimaced. "She won't tell me. She always tries to protect me from stuff she thinks I'm too young to know." Tom was at a loss. "Well, that's what moms do." The passenger-side door opened just then and the interior light, which had just started to fade, brightened as Kate slid in. Her cheeks were rosy, he saw, and her lips were rosy, too, and fuller than usual. The swift little glance she sent him as she settled in was almost furtive, almost shy, and it ignited all that tamped-down heat inside him so that just as quick as that he burned for her again.
Only this time it didn't feel good.
As the interior light faded again and Kate said something to Ben, Tom gritted his teeth against his own impulses and started the car.
SHE DIDN'T want to like him.
That was the thought that popped into her mind as she watched him with her son.
After Kate walked to the front door with the officers who had come to take the report on her stolen car, after the police yelled good-bye to Tom and got into their car and drove away, she continued to stand in the open doorway, her attention caught by the tableau at the top of her driveway. Ben and Tom were playing basketball in the fuzzy glow cast by the light over the garage, and the sight of the tall, dark, athletic man, still in his work clothes, grinning at her small, blond son as he passed the ball to him disturbed her in a way she couldn't quite put her finger on. The sound of the bouncing ball was muted only slightly by the rustle of wind in the leaves and the creaking of the branches of the big oak. It was full night now, gusty, and starting to get cold. The moon was hidden behind a blowing bank of clouds, which made anything beyond that yellow circle of light difficult to see. The darkness made her jittery, because she knew Mario was out there in it somewhere, and he wasn't done with her. She would have worried about Mario or his friends showing up tonight, but Tom was there, and she had not a doubt in the world that as a consequence she and Ben were perfectly safe. Tired and worried as she was, she was caught by the sight of her son's easy interaction with this man who seemed to be assuming outsize importance in both their lives, and so she continued to stand there in the open doorway with her gaze on the pair of them. As she did, Ben took a shot, missed, and Tom caught the rebound. Then he demonstrated for Ben the correct stance, showing him how to hold the ball—they were using the beginner ball, Kate saw—and stepping back out of the way. Ben shot—and made it. As Ben ran to retrieve the ball, Tom applauded. And Kate saw Ben grin, and watched his face flush with pride.
Unnoticed by either of them, Kate smiled.
The little glow from seeing Ben's pleasure radiated throughout her body like warmth from the sun. It was the most relaxed and at peace she had felt in days.
Because Ben was happy, she was happy. And she knew: The way to her heart was through her son. It was a sneaky wormhole in the defenses she'd established over the years. Until now, because she'd taken care not to become involved with anyone, because she hadn't let a man get close enough to even begin to break into the small circle that was her and Ben, she hadn't realized it was there.
Letting herself fall for Tom Braga would be just about the stupidest thing she could possibly do. Even if she wasn't doing a high-wire act with the truth, even if her past wasn't a ticking time bomb that threatened to blow her life apart at any moment, even if he wasn't a cop sniffing around all the lies she was telling like a bloodhound on a scent, her plate was full. She had Ben to raise. A career to ace. And no room in her life for anything—or anyone—else.
She didn't want a man.
Even if she was still shaky inside from the aftereffects of that toe-curling kiss.
Which, if she could help it, she wasn't going to think about ever again.
And just supposing she was softheaded enough to want this particular man, one of the reasons she didn't date hadn't changed a bit: She didn't want Ben getting attached to someone who was just going to disappear from his life.