The Street Where She Lives (9 page)

She looked at the glorious steam rising from the tub. Did she want to get clean? Only more than her next breath. “Yes.”

“Then do it. You're shaking like a damn leaf on the first day of autumn.” He craned his neck and looked at her. “And no, I'm not leaving. I want to make sure you don't fall.”

Concern filled his eyes. She wondered if he even knew it. “Just keep your eyes closed.” She managed to pull herself up to a stand and dropped her robe, watched it pool at her feet. Black dots danced in her vision, but she blinked them away, imagining her hair soft and silky from a real washing, her skin smooth and clean from the tip of her head to her toes. Naked, anticipating, only a few breaths away from collapsing, she went to sit on the edge of the tub.

But it was terribly awkward, and put too much pressure on her healing ribs and pelvis.

“What's the matter?” His back was to her, eyes still closed.

She knew this because she kept peeking at his reflection in the mirror to make sure he wasn't cheating. “Nothing.” She tried again, and wanted to cry. Damn it, only a month ago she was in the finest shape of her life! “Ben…”

He whipped around so fast she got even dizzier, and as if he already knew, Ben grabbed her. Embarrassment chased anger, chased a bombardment of sensations…like
did the man's hands feel good on her body,
which brought her back to anger because they were
Ben's
hands, and it wasn't sexual, it was survival. He had her naked body plastered to his fully clothed one, and was
completely supporting her weight. She felt her face heat, felt her throat heat, felt everything heat.

He had one arm across her back, one lower, across her bare butt, his hand gripping a cheek.
“Ben.”
She lifted her face, and found her mouth an inch from his. But it wasn't their proximity that backed her breath up in her throat. It was the look in his eyes. Dark, intensely speculative and so hot she couldn't have drawn air into her lungs to save her life. “You…can let me go now,” she said in a funny feathery voice she hardly recognized.

“Yeah.” But she would have sworn his arms actually tightened, including the hand on her butt, before he slowly released her, sitting her back on the commode. “You okay?”

No. No, she wasn't. “Fine,” she said through clenched teeth because her body had reacted without permission. Her nipples were two hard tight points and her legs had gone mushy, not to mention what was happening between them. A shiver trailed over her skin as his breath tickled down the side of her neck, and she let out a sound that shocked her with its neediness.

Further shocking her, Ben nibbled in the exact spot he'd breathed on, nuzzling the side of her throat and the curve of her shoulder until her bones liquefied. “Should I close my eyes again, Rachel?”

Her heart jerked, then again as he dragged his mouth over her flesh. “Yes!”

He didn't. In fact he kept them wide-open and all over her. He slid one hand up her hip to her waist, then a little higher, gliding his thumb up and down over her skin, on the heavy underside of a breast. “I've seen it all before.”

“A long time ago.” She felt like a marshmallow, a
melting marshmallow over a slow, perfect flame. “Close 'em.”

“You're even more amazing now than you were then, and I remember you as pretty damn amazing.”

She crossed her casted arm over her breasts and tried to not think about the parts he could still see quite clearly. “Is…that supposed to make me feel better?”

“Well…” He let out a low, nipple-hardening laugh. “Looking at you is making
me
feel better.”

“Close your eyes,” she said through her teeth. “Or find out how hard a cast is over your head.”

He tilted his head and studied her while his hands took another slow pass at the flesh plumped out beneath the cast. “So you're going to ignore the fact that every time we're within two feet of each other we nearly spontaneously combust?”

With great effort, she lifted her bag-covered left arm warningly.

His eyes stayed right on hers instead of the breasts she'd exposed. “You're a glutton for punishment, babe.” But he sighed and closed his eyes. “Okay.”

Babe.
He hadn't called her “babe” in…well, thirteen years.

More steam escaped from the tub, swirling around them, creating an ambiance of intimacy. Ben stood right there, a breath away, hair falling over his forehead, eyes closed, a sexy little smile curving his lips. Inviting. Beguiling.

All it would take was one word from her, even a touch, and he'd jump in without looking, jump right into a relationship with her again, or at least a
sexual
one.

But she never jumped without looking, and certainly not with a man with a foot already half out the door.

All she had to do was get better and he'd be gone,
she reminded herself as she soaped her body. So that's what she'd do, she'd get better, fast as she possibly could.

 

T
HE RESTLESSNESS
was going to kill her. Early dawn light filtered in Rachel's room as she struggled to get herself out of bed the next morning. She reached for her wheelchair, then hesitated.

Her various aches and pains seemed to be lessening every day, albeit slightly, and she decided today was the day she tried to go without the dreaded, hated chair. She wanted to walk, damn it, and determined to do just that, she grabbed the cane she'd gotten from the physical therapist yesterday, the one who planned to torture her today as well.

Carefully, holding her breath, she stood. Wobbled, but held her own. So far so good. She felt unsteady and weak, ready to collapse at the slightest breeze.

But upright was upright and she'd take it. The early morning was silent as she made her slow, painful progress to the bedroom door. Opening it, she saw the hall was still in shadow. The only light came from a glow from a night-light in the hall bathroom. Shuffling her way down the hall she peeked in. On the counter sat a dark blue toothbrush. Not Emily's.

Ben's.

Funny how just one piece of plastic could cause such conflicting emotions. Late last night when she hadn't been able to sleep, he'd come into her room with a deck of cards and had taught her naughty card games he'd picked up in Nigeria. Or somewhere.

The man was something. He'd had her laughing.
Laughing.

She made it to her studio for the first time since the
accident. Just walking in here used to set her creative juices flowing. She'd yank open her shades on the wall of windows, grin with pure joy at the sight of South Village in full swing far below and go to work.

She waited for some of that joy to hit her. Even just a little.

Nothing. Nothing but a tightening in her chest that suggested panic. And exhaustion from the exertion of getting here.

Her easel was set up, with a blank sheet of paper on it. Just as she'd left it on the day of the accident. There was a note on the pad, with her own words
teachers versus administration
written on it. She stared down at it blankly, knowing she'd written that before being slammed by a car, before hitting the pavement at thirty miles per hour, knowing the words should signify what she intended Gracie's next strip to be about… But for the life of her she couldn't remember writing the words, much less what she'd intended.

It didn't matter anyway…it was just a cartoon.

Helplessness and uselessness had become old friends since that day, and they hit her again now. Suddenly she wanted to do something new, something…important. She thought of Ben's work, and how many people he'd helped, and closed her eyes. Frustration choked her. She wondered how long someone could live with so much frustration before just blowing up.

She weaved, her muscles violently trembling with the strain of being upright, forcing her to sit in the love seat. She gripped the cushions at her sides and refused to give in to defeat. How she was going to get back up and to her room without asking for help was beyond her—especially since that help would probably come in the form of a tall, sleepy, sexy man—but she wouldn't ask.

She'd stay right where she was, thank you very much.

Staring around the room that used to be her favorite haven, she fought tears and wondered how her life had come to feel like a prison. Nothing was the same. Not her job, not Emily, who didn't seem to need her anymore, not her house, not anything she'd counted on to be constant and calming and hers.

Certainly not with Ben's undeniably demanding presence. A presence she should be grateful for, as she knew what it cost him to be caged here. But because of him, even her relationship with Emily had changed. She'd watched her daughter turn to someone else for comfort and love. The loss of their closeness, which was all Rachel seemed to have at the moment, left her on shaky ground, and she covered her face with her hands.

“Rachel.”

Jerking her head up, she faced the one man who'd always shattered any control she'd had. Too bad she had none left to shatter. “Damn it, you went away once. Why won't you go away now?”

“You going to start with that again?” He pushed away from the doorway and came toward her. From the look of his messed-up hair, bare chest and low-slung sweats, at least one of them had been sleeping last night. Irrationally, she resented him for that, too.

“How did you get here?” he asked.

“Walked.”

“You did?” He looked shocked. “You should have called for me to help you. You working?”

“Yeah.” With a bitter laugh, she gestured to her empty easel. “Working away.”

“Rachel—” He broke off when the phone rang, and since it was right by his elbow, he grabbed it without so much as asking if she minded.

“Hello?” His face went tense. “I thought you were going to call me back on my cell— Yes…you've got a lead on him?” Ben glanced at Rachel, eyes grim, jaw bunching, and went quiet as he listened. Given how his eyes narrowed, the news wasn't good.

“Who is it?” she asked, only to be completely ignored.
“Ben.”

He actually put up a hand silencing her. She glared at him, furious, but somehow her gaze ended up on his chest, then his flat, ridged belly, and the way his sweats sagged nearly down far enough to see—

“I'll be right down,” he said, disconnecting with deceptive calm while danger rolled off him in waves. “I've got to run,” he said, one hundred and eighty pounds of carefully controlled temper.

“Who was that?”

“Tell Em I'll be back for breakfast.”

“Ben—”

He was already at the door, but with an oath, he came back. Cupping her head with incredibly gentle hands, he tipped her face up. “It'll be okay,” he said making a heartbreaking promise she didn't understand but wanted to.

“Ben—”

“Shh.” He let his lips meet hers in a sweet, clinging kiss. “I'll be back.”

Yes, but how to tell him that's what she was afraid of?

She brought her fingers up to her lips and watched him go, wondering why she'd let him kiss her.

Because she'd lost her mind, that's why. He'd been trying to distract her, and damn it, it had worked.

Struck by an overwhelming curiosity, she picked up the receiver of her phone and checked caller ID.

Unavailable.

Rachel lifted her head and stared at the door where Ben had just vanished.

From downstairs she heard the front door shut.

He was gone. Gone to meet someone…unavailable.

She hit star-six-nine to dial the number back. As it started to ring, her heart began to pound.

“Agent Brewer.”

Rachel stared at the phone.

“Hello?”

With a stammered apology, Rachel hung up and wondered what the hell was going on. Who was Brewer and what was the big secret?

B
EN GOT CAUGHT
in traffic on the way to meet Agent Brewer, delaying their meeting. The lead on Asada turned out to be a known accomplice, who'd been picked up in South America and was being detained and questioned.

“What did he say about Asada?” Ben asked.

Brewer shook his head. “He's not telling. Not yet. But that he was picked up in South America is an excellent indication Asada is still there. They'll find him. Soon.”

But Ben wanted more than just a promise. He wanted… Hell, he wanted this over. Unaccustomed to such fear, as he rarely got involved this personally in a story, he didn't know what to do with it all.

But this wasn't a story—this was his life. Emily's life.

Rachel's.

At the thought of her, his mind took him places he wasn't prepared to go. Like back to the sponge bath incident from the day before. Rachel had stood in that bathroom nude, wet, glorious…and glared at him. Hadn't mattered, not when he couldn't tear his eyes off her curves, shimmering and molded by the water streaming down her tall, lithe body.

He was just a man, and a weak one at that. How was he supposed to maintain any sort of mental distance under these circumstances?

Thinking about Asada on the loose helped. “Soon could be too late.”

Agent Brewer, a twenty-year veteran and dedicated to his job—evidenced by the various awards on the walls of his small office—nodded. “I know your fear. But we're doing all we can.”

Ben would be impressed only if Asada was caught. “If Asada's still in South America, with his old contacts and in terrain he knows like the back of his hand, he can hide forever.”

“Better than being the States, hunting you down.”

“He could have men here. Men willing to do his bidding.”

Brewer sighed. “We've been reviewing tapes from L.A. International near the date of Rachel's accident.” He pushed play on the remote on his desk, and images rolled across the TV on the wall, showing two dark-skinned men carrying briefcases, leaving a terminal at LAX. The date stamp was from six and a half weeks earlier. “These two men arrived from South America. We're trying to track them down. Just wanted you to know what they look like.”

Terror sat in the pit of Ben's belly like a rock. Terror and guilt. He'd brought all this on Rachel. The hospital stay, the pain, the limitations, everything…
his fault.

The weight of that crushed in on him, making him stagger, then sink to a chair. “So why aren't they making another move on either Rachel or Emily?” he asked hoarsely.

“Our theory is that with most of Asada's assets seized, they can't. He's just watching, biding his time.”

And the cat-and-mouse game continued.

 

B
Y THE TIME
Ben left Brewer's office, South Village was well on its way to another prosperous day. Having lived
elsewhere for so long, it was hard to reconcile the obvious wealth here with the world he knew, which could be full of suffering and hunger.

Stuck in traffic gridlock, he used his cell phone to set up some work for himself, writing a few stories he'd been collecting for a rainy day. He could do this from Rachel's house during the day. Had to do this, in order to maintain his sanity.

“A home base?” his editor asked in joking horror. “You mean you'll actually have an address? A land line?”

“Hard to believe, huh?”

“Well, this I've got to see. Stay in touch.”

Ben promised and turned onto Rachel's street. Blissfully unaware of his world and all it contained, Emily sat on the top step of the house. She wore black jeans with a hole in one knee and a snug T-shirt that invited him to Take a Hike in the Angeles Crest Mountains. She had Patches in her lap, sleeping, and the laptop precariously balanced on her knees. Her head was down as she concentrated, her fingers flying over the keys. He could see the twenty-five-foot phone cord attached, running beneath the front door and back into the house.

Was it possible for his heart to squeeze any tighter? How could it be that this beautiful, sweet creature didn't have friends except for her computer? The urge to hide her, to protect her from the big, bad wolf of life was overpowering, and for a moment he simply watched her, feeling such an ache he didn't know what to do with himself.

When she noticed him standing there, she closed her computer and grinned, and just like that, his aching heart tipped on its side. God, he loved her. And except for the
grace of God it could have been
her
Asada had gone after. Could still intend to go after.

That hardened him, made him determined to see that nothing,
nothing,
happened to this child of his heart. He came closer and scratched the groggy Patches on the head. He got his hand licked for his effort.

“I tried to tell Mom about Patches,” Emily said. “But she's always sleeping. Or grumpy.”

“She's hurting. Emmie, don't wait outside for me.”

“South Village is a safe place, Dad.”

“Please, Em.”

“Jeez, okay.”

“And about the dog. You tell your mom today, or I will.”

“Man. You've gotten strict.” She glanced at her purple sparkling watch. “We don't have enough time for artery cloggers.”

Strict? He was strict? Hell, he hardly knew how to be a dad and she thought he was
strict?
She didn't know the meaning of the damn word. “How about McDonald's on the way to school?” he asked.

She put her face next to Patches—who'd been scrubbed in the downstairs bathroom and brushed until the puppy practically shined—wordlessly asking for a sloppy doggy kiss. Patches obliged happily. “Mom hates McDonald's.”

“So, I'll pick her up something disgustingly healthy on the way back.”

She let out a slow grin that went a long way toward dissipating the chill he'd had since the early morning phone call. “Okay.”

“Seriously, though, you're going to have to tell her about the puppy, Emily. I'm tired of hiding her.”

From smile to frown in a heartbeat. “I know.” She kissed the puppy right on the mouth, making him wince.

“Now,” he said.

“Oh, Dad. I can't tell her now, she's sleeping again. But I promise to do it first thing this afternoon.” For added effect she blinked her big, huge, adoring eyes at him.

Ah, hell. Strict? That was a joke. He was a sap, a complete sap. “The minute you walk in the door.”

“Promise. Dad?” She tilted her head and studied him more closely than he usually let people study him. “You care about Mom, don't you? You know, like you used to, when you first had me?”

He'd been long gone by the time Emily had been born, though he'd come back right afterward for a rare visit to South Village. Rachel had refused to see him, but even now he could remember standing in front of the glass partition of the infant nursery, hands wide on the glass, nose pressed to it, staring at her, his baby. “Emily—”

“Because I know you used to love each other. I can see it in the picture Mom has.”

He blinked. “She has a picture?”

“In her jewelry drawer, beneath her ring box. You guys look really young, and you have your arms around her. She's laughing.” Her gaze went wistful. “She's laughing really hard and you're looking at her like you really love her.”

Rachel had kept a picture of them. Hidden. Why would a woman who'd told him to go far, far away do such a thing? It made about as much sense as Emily hoping they still loved each other. “That was a long time ago, Em, you know that.”

“But that doesn't mean your feelings have to change. Did you love me when I first was born?”

“Very much.”

“Do you love me now?”

Ben closed his eyes. “Of course I do. Em—”

“See? It could happen. You guys could make it happen, if you wanted.”

He sat down next to her, his long thighs brushing her shorter ones. Patches put her little head on his knee and looked at him with hero worship that matched his daughter's. “Emily, I'm only here because—”

“Because I called you,” she said earnestly. “And I know I kinda fooled you, but you came. You came really fast. That means something, Dad.”

Ben thought of why he'd
really
come, and of what he'd learned this morning. “And I'm staying.” For as long as it took, no matter how badly he needed out. “I'm staying to help you both out. But that's it, Em. That's it.”
Liar.

Emily's eyes told him the same thing.

 

B
ALANCING THE
squirming puppy, some sort of green cucumber protein shake, and a container of a very un-appetizing-looking soup that the pretty redheaded owner of Café Delight had sworn was Rachel's favorite, Ben walked toward Rachel's front door. He'd dropped Emily off at school and now needed to face Rachel with the knowledge of what he'd done to her burning a hole in his gut.

And he wasn't talking about just the damn puppy, which he somehow had to keep quiet for a few more hours.

The front door was unlocked, which just about stopped his heart. Damn it, he'd talked to her about this,
about being careless. He dumped the puppy on the foyer floor. “Stay,” he said firmly, and rushed through the house toward the murmur of voices in the kitchen.

Rachel sat at the table looking whole and unharmed, and Ben stopped short, drawing an unsteady breath. “You unlocked the front door, damn it.”

“Oh, I did that.” Adam came in from the walk-in pantry holding an old-fashioned, decorated tin. “Cookie?”

Ben stared at Rachel's accountant. “No.” He turned to Rachel. She was dressed in a long slip of a sundress he imagined she probably could have gotten on herself with effort, but he couldn't help but wonder if the saintly Adam had helped her.

If so, had her pulse raced the way it had when Ben had had his hands all over her? Had her lips parted, inviting his?

Goddamn it, it didn't matter. And he had to make this quick before the puppy did something more stupid than Ben had done leaving the thing alone in the foyer. “You can't just leave the damn door unlocked.”

Rachel's face was utterly closed off to him. “Would that have anything to do with your phone call that had you rushing off at dawn?”

He stared at her for one long beat before Adam came to the table and set the tin in front of Rachel. “And anyway, she wasn't alone.” Adam smiled. “Did you know this is actually a very low-crime district?”

A headache began right between Ben's eyes. Asada didn't give a shit about low crime districts; all he wanted to do was destroy Ben. Nothing could do that except by bringing more pain and suffering to Emily or Rachel.
Again.

Not that Rachel understood that, because he hadn't
told her, and honest to God, the depth of his own deception was going to bury him. “Look, Adam, I appreciate that, but—”

“You appreciate that?” Rachel marveled, pure fire in her eyes.

Whoa. Had he thought her emotions closed off to him? She was furious. At him.

What had he done now?

“Why do you
appreciate
that, Ben?” she almost purred. “You don't own me, you don't even belong here. You don't have responsibility over me at all.”

Ben carefully set the food he'd brought in front of her. Put his hands on his hips and tried to figure a way out of this mess.

But there was no way out.

Inanely, he wondered what the puppy was up to and how much damage she could cause in the two minutes she'd been alone.

Adam opened up the containers from Ben and smiled at Rachel. “Your favorites. Maybe now you'll eat.” He looked up at Ben. “She's lost weight.”

Given that Ben had had his eyes and hands over every single bare inch of her body only yesterday, he thought she was pretty damn fine. But he was going to forget that, forget the feel of her, the scent of her. Everything. “Adam's right, you should eat.” He went to the swinging doors to recapture the loose puppy. “I'm outta here.”

“You always have one foot out of here,” she said. “You've had one foot out of here since the day you showed up.”

Wasn't that the truth? It was ironic, he thought, to be using Adam as an excuse to vanish, when just days ago he'd wanted to knock Adam's socks off for kissing Ra
chel on the cheek. Even more ironic when one considered what Ben himself had done to Rachel since he'd been back.

A lot more than a kiss on the cheek.

Ben glanced back. Rachel had her casted leg up on the adjacent chair, casted arm resting on the table. The bruises on her face were fading, but the scar over her left eye was not. She wore a handkerchief on her head but he knew that her hair, while still a beautiful light gold, had barely begun to grow back. For that alone, he hated himself. She'd suffered so much because of him, and suddenly he couldn't even stand to be in the same room with her. He didn't
deserve
to be in the same room with her, and pushing through the doors, he left the kitchen.

Once in the living room, he scooped up the errant puppy, who was cheerfully chewing on a black sparkly sandal he figured to be Emily's. He brought both the ruined sandal and Patches to Emily's room. “This afternoon, your secret is out,” he warned. “Until then, you'll go outside when I take you, and sleep when I tell you. No trouble, no messes, no accidents, you hear?”

Patches panted her agreement.

Emily had made a dog bed out of a box and an old blanket, but he knew Patches preferred Emily's bed. Only problem, she wasn't big enough to climb up by herself. She stood on the floor at the side of the mattress doing flips to try to get up, to no avail. When she saw Ben looking at her, she started in on the aren't-I-adorable wriggle, her entire hind-end moving back and forth so fast she could hardly walk.

“Let's hope Rachel finds you half as cute as you think you are.” Ben squatted down to stroke her head.