On that cheering thought, she rinsed the soap from her body, turned off the taps, and stepped out of the shower. The towel she'd found wasn't thick, it wasn't new, and it wasn't particularly large. But it smelled clean, and it was large enough to dry with and then wrap around herself and tuck in while she brushed her teeth. She was in the midst of doing that when her gaze just happened to travel sideways. And that was how she discovered that the bathroom door was open a few inches, and Tom, clad in a dark toweling robe and leaning against the wall opposite the bathroom, was watching her through the opening.
Kate almost choked on her toothpaste.
By the time she had rinsed and thus rendered herself able to speak, he had pushed the door the rest of the way open and was standing in the aperture, grinning at her.
"The latch is broken," he said by way of an explanation when she narrowed her eyes at him. He propped a shoulder against the door-jamb. His arms were crossed over his chest. "The damned door never stays shut. You notice I didn't come in, though."
Okay, she guessed she had to give him that. He could have if he had wanted to, but at least he had that much respect for her privacy.
"Good call," she said.
"When I woke up and you—and all your things—were nowhere in sight, I thought you'd gotten cold feet and run out on me. But then I heard the shower, and when I came up, steam was pouring out of the door here, so I knew where you went."
He'd clearly had a shower, too, a much faster one than hers. His hair was glistening wet and brushed back from his face, and there were stray water droplets here and there in the vee of hairy chest she could see and on his bare calves and feet.
Water droplets or not, he looked so handsome he stole her breath.
She was suddenly way, way too aware that all she was wearing was a thin and skimpy white towel that was tucked in between her breasts and didn't even reach to mid-thigh. He wasn't ogling her—he was way too smart a man for that—but she knew he was taking in the view just the same.
She put up her chin, figuratively speaking. "I was actually meaning to put my PJ's on and go find a bed to sleep in for the rest of the night."
"You got three to choose from. Two spare beds—or mine."
Her throat dried up. Her heart began to pound. Their eyes met. He was still leaning against the doorjamb, no longer grinning but with the hint of a smile still lingering at the corners of his mouth. He still looked totally relaxed, but she got the impression that he was watching her carefully.
For one of the few times in her life, she was absolutely devoid of speech.
When she didn't say anything, his eyes darkened and the smile went away. She stood beside the bathroom sink, one hand on the counter, looking at him mutely. Behind him, the hall was dim. The bathroom was steamy but relatively bright. Only a few feet of space separated them.
Heat—and not from the shower—seemed to shimmer in the air.
She knew what he was asking. For the life of her, she couldn't come up with an answer.
He gave her a level look. "Okay, I know you didn't want this to happen. I'm not exactly overjoyed that it did, either. But the thing is, it did happen. I guess we could just walk away and pretend it didn't, but how stupid would that be? There's something—a connection—between us that's been there from day one. How about we give it a shot?"
Kate realized that the thumping she was hearing in her ears was her suddenly pounding heart.
There were so many reasons to just walk away from him, from what had happened between them tonight. Ben, for one. Did she want to let a man—this man—into his life, for however long their "connection" might last? And there was her career. Getting where she was determined to go was going to take every ounce of drive and time and focus she could muster. And there were the lies she had told him, and the things about her and her past that he would never know.
And then—and she had to admit it, this was the biggie—there was her.
People you loved left. And that hurt. Did she really want to prove that to herself one more time?
Then she looked at him standing there, so sexy and strong and absolutely rock-solid in every way, and she felt her heart thudding and her stomach going all fluttery and, yes, her toes curling against the warm, slick tile, and she remembered wondering the other day if, in all this new life-building she was doing, she was maybe forgetting about herself.
"The suspense is killing me here," he warned with a slight smile.
She had to smile, too, and it was then that she knew she was going to go for it, whatever the future cost might be.
"I guess we could give it a chance," she agreed.
Then he smiled, and straightened away from the doorjamb and opened his arms to her. And she walked into them.
C h a p t e r 25
OF COURSE, THEY ENDED up not getting much sleep at all, even though they did spend the night together in his big, rumpled bed. They made love, and talked, and dozed off, only to awaken and do it all again. She told him some things about her early life, about how she had met Ben's father when they had both worked at the same casino, about falling crazily in love with him and marrying him in a quickie, impulsive Atlantic City wedding chapel ceremony and then getting pregnant with Ben, only to discover that the last thing Chaz White wanted was a family cramping his style. She told him the truth about Chaz, and why he left, and how he died. And she told him about finding herself broke and alone with baby Ben; about Chaz's associates coming around looking for money he'd lost gambling and still owed them, and demanding she pay it back; about taking a good, hard look at the life she'd led up until that point and deciding that it wasn't the life she wanted for her precious son. She told him about packing up her old car and driving away with baby Ben and their few possessions, about ending up in Philly, where she'd gone on welfare at first to survive, where she'd started college, where she'd started calling herself Kate. Where she'd become Kate. For Ben.
What she didn't tell him was how she'd come to leave Baltimore, or about David Brady.
He told her about his father, who'd been a cop. About his death from a sudden heart attack, how he went to work one day and
boom,
he just keeled over. About trying his best to be the man in the family after that. About getting married young, to his high school sweetheart. About becoming a cop even though Michelle objected. About her getting pregnant and him getting shot on the job—of which the scar on his abdomen was a permanent souvenir. By the time he was fully recovered, Josh had been born and the marriage, torpedoed by Michelle's insistence that he quit the force, was kaput. Josh was only six weeks old when Michelle left Tom for good, taking the baby with her.
What he didn't talk about, not another word, was his son's death. And that Kate completely understood.
Whenever possible, the worst, most painful memories were best left to lie undisturbed.
They must have fallen asleep again at last, because when Kate finally opened her eyes, the room was gray instead of black and she realized that it was from light streaming in around the drawn curtains. There was a weird buzzing sound that she couldn't place, so she lifted her head to look for the source, pushing her hair, which had come out of its knot almost as soon as she'd walked into Tom's arms the previous night, out of her eyes as she did so. The bed, complete with black comforter, mismatched sheets and pillowcases, and a pine headboard, stood in the center of the room. An oak chest with a small TV on top of it was directly opposite. A worn brown armchair sat in a corner. A round table of the sort that was supposed to have a tablecloth thrown over it, but without the cloth, served as a bedside table, with a clear glass lamp on it. The buzzing sound seemed to come from the table.
At about the same time that Kate figured out that the buzzing sound was coming from his phone, which was vibrating away on the table, Tom opened an eye, cocked it toward the table, then stretched a long arm out to pick it up.
"Tom Braga," Tom said into the phone a moment later, as Kate blinked at the digital numbers on the clock beside the lamp—7:42 A.M. With an inner groan, she dropped her head back down in its previous spot on Tom's chest. His arm tightened around her shoulders.
"You need a ride to work or what?" Kate could hear the other man's voice coming over the phone perfectly, although she didn't recognize it.
"I'm taking a personal day," Tom said.
"A personal day?" The voice sounded astounded. "You haven't missed a day of work in ten years." " 'Bout time then, wouldn't you say?"
"This wouldn't have anything to do with the red Civic that's parked in your parking space, would it?"
Tilting her head so that she could see Tom's face, Kate watched him frown.
"Where are you?" he asked.
"Circling the block. Your car's at the Roundhouse, remember? I was going to give you a ride in?"
"Oh, yeah. Sorry, I forgot. Thanks for coming by." "She got you, didn't she? The smokin' little prosecutor got you." Tom slanted a glance down at her. "Her name's Kate, Fish." "Goddamn it, Tom—"
But whatever else Fish had been going to say was lost, because Tom disconnected. Then he punched a number, and told the woman who answered that he was taking a personal day. By the time he finished that call, Kate was making twisty little curls out of the hair on his chest.
"'Smokin' little prosecutor,' hmm?" Lifting her head, she gave him a severe look.
He grinned at her. "I wondered if you could hear that. And I would say, definitely smokin'."
They were tangled together in the middle of the bed with their legs entwined and only a sheet for covering because they'd gotten hot in the small hours of the night. She was sure they looked very intimate. Very involved. Like a couple, which she guessed they now kind of were. Falling asleep for the last time before the ringing phone woke her, Kate had wondered if she would panic in the morning, if she would regret the night before in the worst way, if it would all seem just horribly wrong by the bright light of day. She hadn't gotten much sleep. Her left shoulder ached from having been wedged beneath his for most of the night. Other parts of her body were making themselves felt in interesting ways. As for her prince, he was bleary-eyed and tousle-haired and in dire need of a shave.
But he was grinning at her, with one arm tucked behind his head now and the other wrapped around her shoulders. He was naked, and the lean, muscular warmth of him felt intoxicating against her smooth skin. And he was right, there was a connection between them, something special happening here, and besides, he'd turned her on to sex for what was really the first time in her life, and she wasn't about to say no to more of that.
The bottom line was, she didn't regret a thing.
"By the way, you look beautiful first thing in the morning," he said, and rolled with her so that she was on her back and he was looming above her on his elbows.
Kate traced a teasing finger down the middle of the wide, hair-roughened expanse of his chest.
"So do you," she informed him, because it was the truth, and then, because it was obvious where this was going, she added, "I need to pick Ben up at noon."
"Not a problem," he said, and kissed her.
SO MAYBE he was stupid, Tom thought later that day as he found himself at Southland Lanes Bowling Emporium, a new, mega-bowling alley not too far from Kate's house, where Ben had been invited to a birthday party by another kid in his class, along with, apparently, the entire fourth grade. Kate had offered to let him off the hook, to let him go do whatever it was he wanted to do while she took care of the party scenario with Ben, then meet up later. But Tom was having none of it, both because he was afraid that, with her penchant for finding trouble, things might go south fast if he wasn't there to keep an eye out and because he wanted to see how he handled the family thing. The last-minute invitation involved rushing around for a present, waiting in the Civic as Kate walked Ben in, and then, two hours later, going in with her to pick Ben up. Only the kids weren't finished bowling yet. And some of the adults had been bowling with their kids. And Ben, excited, had asked Kate and him to bowl with him and his friend Samantha, just one more game. Kate had looked alarmed— once he'd seen her bowl, Tom understood, because she was lousy at it, gutter ball after gutter ball—but she did it, grace under pressure personified in her snug-fitting jeans and black pullover sweater with the sleeves pushed up past her elbows; he, on the other hand, was good, earning Ben's admiration, racking up strike after strike (okay, a couple of spares, too) surrounded by a gang of screaming kids and their parents that would have driven him out of the building in a hurry on any other day.
He even had fun. Which, he recognized, was because Kate was there with him having fun, laughing at herself as she almost went nose-first down the lane with the ball, applauding him, applauding Ben, interacting with the other adults with cheerful ease, more relaxed and carefree than he had ever seen her.
And beautiful. Don't forget beautiful.
It was sometime between bowling and dinner, which the three of them had together at Rotolo's, a little Italian restaurant Tom knew, that he accepted the fact that there was no maybe about it: He
was
stupid. He'd fallen hard for this woman, and her kid as well, which meant his heart was hanging out there, vulnerable, just like he'd sworn he would never let it be again. But this thing between him and Kate had snuck up on him, and it was now too late to do anything about it. He was along for the ride, wherever it went.
It was upon leaving Rotolo's that they ran into his mother. Of course. The day had been going too smoothly not to have a bump in it.
Not that his mother was a bump, exactly. But she was definitely nosy, definitely more than interested in his love life, and if he'd had a choice, he would have kept Kate and her son out of her orbit for a good long while to come. He was following Ben and Kate, and as soon as he stepped out the door of the restaurant he saw his mother there on the sidewalk, waiting to walk in. Their eyes widened in mutual recognition—actually, hers widened in mutual recognition and delight, his in mutual recognition and horror—and then she said "Tommy!" with a huge smile on her face, and he saw Natalia and her husband, Dean, and their two kids behind his mother the instant before she engulfed him in a Shalimar-infused hug. Then his nephew and niece threw themselves at him and he'd had to hug them and his sister and shake his brother-in-law's hand.