She might be personally innocent, but she knew erogenous places, knew how to tantalize them, and it dawned on him—she was a medical professional. Had to have studied all the major nuances of the human body. She’d probably had a course in human sexuality.
He wanted to know every little thing she’d learned on that subject. Wanted her to show him. To do things to him.
He wasn’t sure he had the time. Not on this first go-round. He groaned and she straddled him, settling her weight against his bulging fly. Not moving, just weighing him down.
“You’re going to get more than you bargained for down there, missy,” he told her, and she smiled.
“How do you know what I’m bargaining for?”
“How do you know so much about tantalizing a man?”
Her grin didn’t change as she continued to tease his nipples. “I’m actually playing out my own fantasy here, but I’m glad it’s good for you, too.”
Not sure whether she was messing with him or not, Tad rolled to his side, and then, with another quarter turn had her underneath him. One tug and he had her dress up over her hips and his hand down her panties. She was as wet as he was going to be in a couple of seconds.
He yanked at those panties and got them down low enough. By the time he’d tossed them, her legs were spread and she had his belt undone and was working on the clasp of his pants. He helped with the zipper, pulled himself free of his boxers, then took a condom out of his back pocket and opened it with his teeth and slid it on with one hand.
“I’m sorry,” he told her. “I wanted to take all night.”
“We’ve got all night,” she squealed as she thrust herself upward and over him. He moved as slowly as he could, wanting to remember every single sensation along the way, the tightness of her. The welcoming.
She wasn’t as gentle as he was trying to be as she answered his thrusts, and within a few seconds it was all over.
Remarkably, for both of them.
* * *
Blissfully sore, Miranda still wasn’t ready for sleep an hour later. She and Tad had made love twice more, taking more time, exploring.
“If I’d had any idea it could be like this...” Her sentence trailed off because she couldn’t finish it. Even if she’d had an idea, there hadn’t been a man in her life who could arouse these feelings in her.
Physical satisfaction came from more than just body parts. At least for her.
“I hope that means you’ll consider repeat opportunities as soon and as often as we can arrange?” Tad half growled as he curved into her, his arm around her waist, his face snuggled between her breasts.
“I was hoping you’d be amenable to the possibility,” she told him, grinning. Her hands, running lightly along his back, moved over the raised skin of his scars as they had several times during the past hour. This time they stopped there, tracing the lines. She sat up and climbed over him and then, lying behind him, began to kiss those scars. Lightly, one by one. Needing to know...
He turned, maybe uncomfortable that she was delving so completely into a different aspect of his life, but she couldn’t let him disappear—back into their world of secrets. She sat up. “How’d it happen?” she asked. “For real,” she added, letting him know she wasn’t going to be satisfied with the generic answer he’d given Danny and Marie at the clinic.
Sighing, Tad rolled onto his back, put his arm over his eyes, and she wondered if he’d fallen asleep. Then he pulled himself up against the pillows and met her gaze.
“It started with a report of stolen property. A series of home invasions in an upscale neighborhood. A single perp. He didn’t take electronics. Just jewelry, silver, some collections, an artifact. He’d hit eight homes that I knew of, in at least three neighborhoods, and at the last one, an old man was home and got hurt. There was no obvious point of entry, but the thief didn’t seem familiar with the homes. You could tell he spent time in each place, looking for things. He always hit when the owners were on vacation. In the last case, a grandfather was cat-sitting for the family while they were out of town. He ended up in the hospital with—fortunately—minor injuries. Could’ve been a lot worse. There were never any prints at these sites. No sign as to how the guy was getting into gated communities, which told me he had to have access to them.
“I checked all the maintenance people they used, down to cleaning crews and pool companies. Nothing. Until I was questioning the old guy in the hospital and he said something about getting up to have a snack and all he could find were the pastry puff things the caterer had left after the party his son had the night before they left town. Turned out that the caterer had been to many homes in each of the neighborhoods, though not all the homes he hit were his clients’. He knew how to get in the neighborhood gates, though, without alerting anyone.”
Listening to him was like watching an episode of a cop show on television. Miranda almost forgot why he was telling the story. Almost.
“The caterer denied everything, of course, but his wife said she’d seen some receipts from an antiques dealer that she’d questioned him about. They didn’t have any antiques. She was able to find one of the receipts, which she gave to me. I showed up at the address on the receipt—an upscale antique store—early one morning, on a tip from a neighboring business that the owner usually came in an hour or so before he opened. As I get there, a woman’s walking out and I held the door for her and went on in. I had a black-and-white backing me up, two officers, on the street. I was thinking I’d just question the guy, but the second he saw my badge it all went south. Fast. There was this little girl behind the counter and the man grabbed her, put a gun to her head and started backing toward this door, telling me that if I came any closer he’d shoot the kid.”
He looked so...sorry. Like it was his fault. Miranda’s heart pumped heavily. She knew this story wasn’t going to end well. She’d seen his scars.
And remembered that he’d told Danny that only the bad guy had died. Of course, what else would you tell a seven-year-old who’d just narrowly escaped a beating from his father and ended up with a serious leg wound?
“I radioed outside, and then called for hostage negotiators. I was told to stand down, to wait for backup, but I could hear the little girl crying in there. Something crashed and the girl screamed. Like she’d been hurt. I tried to get the guy to talk to me, thinking that he couldn’t hurt her if I kept him engaged in conversation. It worked for a minute or two. He told me he wasn’t going to jail. No way was he letting his wife give his daughter another father. I figured I was getting him to trust me and I motioned for the two officers to come in and back me up. Others were arriving, coming in through the rear entrance, but the negotiators weren’t there yet. I was standing right outside the door by then. I could hear a toilet flush. The guy said something about taking the girl with him, and then she screamed, ‘No, Daddy, no!’ and I burst through the door. I couldn’t just stand there and let that little girl die.
“Turns out he’d rigged a bomb to go off when the door was opened. What he told me was that if anyone came in, he and his daughter would die. I saw the wires as I was pushing through. It was too late to stop the explosion, but I dived for the girl, pushing her out of the way and landing on top of her. The guy had been going through a divorce and didn’t want his ex and her new man to have full custody of his daughter. He knew that if he was charged with a criminal offense, he’d lose her for sure. Apparently, he was dealing drugs out of the shop, too. Probably thought that’s why I was there. Up until a few months before he’d been a law-abiding citizen. Ostensibly he was doing it all to have the money to pay alimony, child support and legal bills, according to a source who worked for him.”
“Did the bomb really kill him?” He’d told Danny it had.
“It just knocked him unconscious. He killed himself in the hospital.”
Miranda smiled, a sad smile, but still... “So you saved the lit
tle girl’s life and all was well—other than your own need to heal, of course.”
Tad shook his head. “I’m not just on leave,” he told her. “I’m under an IA investigation. I tried to quit outright, but the department didn’t accept my resignation. They want me back. They just have to work out how to get my fellow officers to believe I’ve got their backs.”
“I don’t understand.”
“The bomb didn’t completely detonate when I pushed through the door. It was still active and there I was, in there with a little girl who was going to die in my arms if someone didn’t figure out a way to get us out of there. The shop owner was unconscious, dead for all anyone knew, but that girl was very much alive and aware.
“If I’d waited for the hostage team, chances are they either would’ve known there was a bomb and taken proper precautions or, best-case scenario, they’d have been able to talk the owner down. Get him to release the girl, at least.”
“Sounds like he wouldn’t have done that. Not if he knew he’d be releasing her to her mom and this other man.”
“Hostage negotiators are trained to find out what they’re facing. If they’d had no luck, they could have rigged a small camera under the door, seen the bomb. People specially trained in volatile situations would have been on hand. As it was, there were two other officers and me, and a ticking bomb.”
Mouth dry, she tried not to imagine the scene in the detail he was giving.
“So what happened?”
“Help arrived. Someone who recognized the type of bomb, the particular chemicals used, and knew how to disarm it in a way that curtailed the blast.”
And all that time he’d been lying there, in excruciating pain based on his scars, with the little girl. Probably telling her that everything was going to be fine.
She’d seen his patience with Ethan.
“It was clear after further investigation that the shop owner was uncomfortable with his illegal activity and had been getting more and more paranoid. He’d been planning his way out for weeks. The theory was that he intended to blow up the office to hide his illegal activity. They think the flush I heard was him getting rid of cocaine. I don’t know if he’d meant all along to take his daughter with him, though. I do know she wasn’t even supposed to have been there that day. Her mother had been called into work on her day off. She’s the woman who’d been leaving as I’d come in.”
“And the girl? Is she okay? With her mother?”
“As far as I know. She was treated and released the same day.”
Reaching underneath him, Miranda placed her hand on the scars. “You saved her life,” she said. “If her father was as unhinged as he sounds, chances are he wasn’t going to wait for the hostage negotiating team. He knew there was no way out for him and had already decided he’d rather die than be caught.”
“Maybe. That was my take.”
“I’d wear these scars as a badge of honor,” she told him. “Life is complicated,” she echoed his earlier words. “It’s a messy situation and definitely doesn’t follow the rules.”
His raised eyebrow made her want to start kissing him again. Life got so unexpectedly ugly sometimes, you needed to lose yourself in exquisite sensation just to survive.
“Think about it,” she continued. “Look at Danny and Devon.” Look at an eleven-year-old girl whose mother had just died and whose father got drunk the day of the funeral and backhanded her for coming to him crying—begging him for solace.
He hadn’t been able to handle his own grief, let alone hers. She’d understood. Which was why it had been so much easier for him to get her to believe that she was the problem. That she made him lose his temper. He’d never once hit her mother. Or her either, until that day.
“Rules and protocol are great for most situations,” she said, overtired suddenly. “But when they don’t work, you have to go with your gut. That’s why we’re given instincts as well as intellect.”
It was a lesson she was still learning. To trust her instincts.
“Come here.” Tad held out his arms to her. Miranda hesitated, afraid now to seek her own comfort.
She should be allowed to be happy. She had that right.
Just as she should’ve been able to seek comfort from her father the day her mother was buried. Just as Tad should’ve been celebrated for saving a life, not put under investigation because he hadn’t followed protocol. She should never have had to take her child and run, leaving her father to grow old all alone.
Tad’s arms slid under hers and he lifted her up against him, sliding the covers they’d pulled down earlier over both of them.
Life wasn’t fair. It was filled with tough choices.
And sometimes...miraculous moments, too.
Chapter 18
The sun was shining all that next week. Tad had to make a conscious effort not to get lulled into a sense of laid-back, carefree California life. Marie and Danny were living their lives, going about their normal routines for the most part. Danny was in rehab, working hard and showing progress already.
They found out at Tuesday’s High Risk Team meeting that Marie had taken Danny to make the phone call to her ex, but at the last minute, she’d felt herself being sucked in again and refused to go through with it. Danny had been upset with her and she’d just started driving. Afraid to go home. Not wanting to call the police for fear of getting Devon in trouble and having Danny hate her more. In the end, they’d driven up the coast, had lunch and talked, just mom and son. They were both undergoing counseling, but Danny was only seven; he’d witnessed a lot in his young life and the mom-and-son time had been good for both of them. When they returned home, he was no longer mad at his mom, and Marie was readier than ever to divorce Devon and get on with her life.
They’d also heard at Tuesday’s meeting that Devon had gone to a couple of job interviews. And he’d been sober for them.
Tad had difficulty keeping his hands to himself when Miranda stayed for coffee with him after the others who’d joined them had left. The two of them had been texting back and forth since they’d shared breakfast in bed Sunday morning before saying goodbye.
He’d been hoping for a dinner invitation, but hadn’t received one.
“I need to kiss you,” he told her as they sat, looking into each other’s eyes like a couple of lovesick kids.
“I know.”
“I could come over tonight.” He’d sworn he wasn’t going to push himself on her. That he’d wait for her to set whatever pace she felt comfortable with.
Disappointment hit when she shook her head, but he quickly deflected it. He’d known, going in, that they weren’t building to something more. They couldn’t, not with the secrets that stood between them.
He shouldn’t have slept with her at all. He’d known that, too. Had been determined not to. And then she’d bared her sexual self to him, told him she’d cry herself to sleep...
From anyone else that might have been a come-on, a tease. He’d been completely certain Miranda had been giving him the truth.
“I don’t want Ethan to get the wrong impression.” The intimate way she was looking at him wasn’t at all disappointing. In fact, the opposite was true.
He had to be careful. And he cared so much, he couldn’t snub her advances. “You don’t want him to know we’re anything but friends,” he surmised.
“Right. You can’t touch me or be anywhere near my bedroom when he’s around. The way he’s suddenly looking for more relationship contact in his life... I’ve told him you’re only here for a while longer, but he’s only six. Knowing that isn’t going to stop him from making more of it than there is.”
He understood completely. Knew she was right. “So, coffee and wanting to kiss you is it,” he said.
He smiled. Remembered what it felt like to touch his lips to hers.
And remembered a whole lot more when she sm
iled back.
* * *
It was one thing to know what was best. And another entirely not to want what wasn’t. When she’d had sex with Tad, she’d been in that one moment. With a need so intense it had to be assuaged.
She would never have believed that when it was done, she’d need him even more. That wasn’t generally how life worked. You built up to an event like that, had all these expectations, and even if it lived up to your expectations, when it was over, some of that anticipation was gone.
Nothing was as good as the first time, right?
That was what she told herself for days after spending all night in Tad’s arms. She couldn’t get into bed without smelling the clean, sexy scent of his body—although she’d washed her sheets Sunday after he’d gone.
It was what she was telling herself Thursday when she left the clinic at noon. It was her half day because she had to work Saturday morning, and she had errands to run. Things she liked to do while her son was still in school and she didn’t have to make him tag along.
Like checking out clothes. Buying new underwear. Stopping at a jewelry counter just to look. Girlie stuff that bored Ethan to tears.
Sometimes she did the grocery shopping so he wasn’t constantly bugging her to buy junk food that wasn’t good for him.
The current bottle of disinfectant was almost empty, which meant she’d be opening the spare that weekend. She didn’t like to be without a spare.
She thought about getting her hair trimmed. Her usual place took walk-ins. Or maybe she’d see if she could get in for a massage. Or a pedicure.
With her current salary she could afford either. Or both.
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