by Mary Stone
But he’d been wrong.
And now it was time to right that wrong.
As he drove to town, hoping to catch her before she left work, his hands tightened on the steering wheel. He’d reel it back. If she wanted just sex, then fine. That’s what this would be. He could do just sex. It was better that way. She was good in bed. Even better in the hay. He could get what he needed and give her what she needed, no strings. Perfect.
When Linc drove past the Starr Investigations office, he saw the light on and caught a glimpse of her through the storefront windows, sitting at her desk. He quickly found a parking space down the street and jumped out, motioning Storm, his German Shepherd, to follow.
He had it in his head that he’d just stop by to ask her how her shoulder was, but when he went inside and saw her, sitting there with a skirt riding high on her shapely legs, her blouse partially unbuttoned to reveal a hint of cleavage, and her dark hair spilling sexily over one eye, he didn’t want to talk. She’d made changes in the last few days. Good ones. Ones that made him want her all the more.
“Well, hello, stranger,” she said in a low, sexy voice. “Where have you been?”
He shrugged, trying to be cool and noncommittal. “Where I’ve always been. Why?”
She gave him a small smile. “Why do you think? I’ve missed you.”
Linc walked over to her, wrapped a hand around her small waist and pulled her out of the chair. Being careful of her shoulder, he dragged her against him. He cupped her face in both hands, and nipped at her lips, feeling her pulse fluttering under her skin.
When she moaned, he smiled. Yes, this would be fine. Just sex. Fine.
Linc tore himself away before he turned her over her desk. “I like the outfit. The shoes.”
She twirled, looking delighted with herself. “Well, I figured I should start acting the part, so I spent a whole week’s pay on clothes that make me look like an actual adult.”
He fingered the soft material of the cardigan. “You look very adult. But you were supposed to be resting, like your doctor said. Not shopping.”
“Shopping is my relaxation,” she said with a wink.
His eyes caught on her heaving chest. “You still not wearing a bra?”
She gave him a saucy wink. “Can’t. The strap hits exactly on the sore spot.”
He growled low in his throat. He’d missed this. Missed her.
“Come over to my house when you get off,” he said, kissing the tip of her nose. “For pizza. And dessert.”
She shook her head, playing with the buttons of his shirt. “Can’t. I have to finish this report, and then I promised my mother I’d go to dinner at her house.”
Damn. That threw a little wrench in his plans.
“You can come with me?” she suggested, sitting down at her desk and petting Storm. “She made her lasagna again. I’ll be done in fifteen minutes.”
His mind whirled, trying to make sense of this. She didn’t like the idea of always, but she wanted to bring him home to mom. She wanted just sex, and yet she was fine letting him get closer to her family. Why did she have to be so difficult to read? Why did it feel like a game?
Game or not, there was only one answer to her question as far as he was concerned…
Hell yes.
A home-cooked meal took precedence over just about everything.
She sat down and started to type, very slowly with one hand. He frowned. “Is your shoulder still hurting?”
She shook her head. “Not bad. It’s just with this stupid typewriter sitting up so high, the angle is awkward, so it’s just easier to hunt and peck.”
He glanced at the paper stuck between the rollers. “What are you working on?”
“Boring,” she said, yawning. “Background checks. Companies will hire Starr Investigations to do their pre-employment screening, especially for jobs that require handling sensitive information. So, Greg will go and interview the people, and I need to make it into a pretty report.”
“Ah. Interesting.”
She gave him a you’ve got to be kidding me look. “Under no circumstances is this interesting. I promise you.”
She was right. He hadn’t been paying attention to that as much as he was paying attention to her curves in that tight skirt, and the way her nipples kept pressing up against her cardigan every time she breathed. “Well, I sure think it beats you getting shot at. Need help?”
She looked up, hope in her pretty eyes. “Can you type?”
He nodded. “I can, but I’m not sure how I’ll do on that ancient thing.”
She practically leapt from the chair and motioned for him to sit. He sat down and began taking dictation from her.
A few minutes later, he was finished, although his knuckles had begun to hurt. You had to use a lot of force with that stupid thing.
She pulled the paper out of the typewriter, then placed it on her boss’s desk. “Thanks. That wasn’t so terrible. I think it means I was meant to be the boss. I shouldn’t be typing piddly little reports like this. I’m wasting my abilities.”
She looked at him, clearly waiting for him to agree, so he nodded. He knew enough that when Kylie Hatfield went on a tear about something, it was best to just agree with her. She should’ve been a lawyer, because she could win any debate.
“I mean, seriously. There’s got to be a happy medium. Because I swear, I might go brain-dead if I have to do forty hours a week of this for the rest of my life.” She reached for her purse. “Ready? Should we take your truck?”
“Yeah.”
They got the dogs into the back seat of Linc’s truck and drove in comfortable silence to her mother’s small townhouse, parallel parking down the street. Her mother wasn’t a dog person, so they had to leave their pets outside, tied to the front porch.
Her dislike for dogs aside, Linc liked Ms. Hatfield. She was bubbly and warm like her daughter, and looked like an older, blonde version of Kylie. She’d made him feel right at home from the first moment he’d met her. He didn’t get along with many humans these days, but Ms. Hatfield was, like her daughter, hard to dislike. He thought he might’ve liked her so much because she was the only person he knew who could make Kylie blush.
When they climbed the stairs, she was already waiting for them, wine glass in hand. “Oh! What a surprise!” she said.
“Mom. I texted you we were on our way,” Kylie muttered, rolling her eyes at Linc.
She ignored her daughter, linking an arm through his, leading him down the hall. “Linc, I swear, you’re just the most handsome dollop of whipped cream I ever did see. Gosh, I just want to eat you up! How have you been?”
Kylie groaned.
Linc could feel himself turning a shade or two darker himself. “I’ve been great. Thank you, ma’am. And yourself?”
She sat him down in the living room, which had been set up like a shrine to Kylie. There were pictures of her on almost every surface. She’d been blonde as a kid, with pigtails, a big space between her teeth, and glasses. But she’d grown out of all of that. His eyes caught on a picture of a much younger Kylie. In this one, she was wearing a long silver gown and stood beaming beside a tall, lanky kid with acne. She was wearing a crown and sash that said Prom Queen. This didn’t surprise him.
Ms. Hatfield noticed him looking and smiled. “Oh, yes. Kylie was Homecoming Queen, Prom Queen, Student Council President, Pep Squad President…” She glanced over at Kylie, who was standing there, the very definition of mortified. “Weren’t you, sweetie?”
“Go me,” she said, less than enthusiastically, grabbing something off the fireplace mantel and hiding it behind her back.
“Oh, show him!” Ms. Hatfield said, motioning to the item she was doing such a bad job of concealing.
Kylie was shaking her head furiously.
Now, Linc was curious.
“Mom, it’s humiliating enough that you have pictures from every year of my life in this room. I should be able to pick and choose what I show our guests. And this
one is not fit for public viewing. He might turn to stone.”
“Oh, come on. You’re obviously quite lovely now, so none of these pictures really matter. You should be able to look at them and laugh,” Ms. Hatfield said, motioning Kylie forward before looking at Linc. “Kylie had a…um, how shall we say it? She had a rough period during her tweens.”
Kylie’s nostrils flared, and she made a ha-ha-ha sound that was rather scary. “See, I’m laughing.”
Now, he really wanted to see. So much that he dared to hold out a hand. “Hey, I had it rough all through high school. I promise, I won’t laugh.”
“Fine,” she sighed, pulling the frame from behind her back and placing it on the coffee table in front of him. “Behold. Yoda.”
The version of Kylie in the picture wasn’t so bad. Yes, she had an unfortunate, too-short haircut, freckles, a mouth full of metal…but she was still cute.
“What’s wrong with that? You’re adorable.”
“Liar.” She snorted and grabbed it from him, doing her best Yoda impersonation as she said, “Eyesight you must have lost.” Then she promptly tossed it into the little trashcan sitting at the end of the sofa.
“You wouldn’t know it looking at her now, but Kylie was kind of a late bloomer,” Ms. Hatfield said, retrieving the picture and dusting it off. It seemed to Linc that she’d done this very thing once or twice before. “She was flat as a board until she was about fifteen.”
Kylie shouted, “Mom!” her face turning even redder. “Isn’t it time we had dinner?”
She waved her daughter away. “Don’t rush me! Let me enjoy some conversation first.”
Kylie scowled, and Linc could almost see her in those pigtails. He smiled, amused.
“Now, Linc…I’ve been meaning to ask you, what do you think of Kylie’s job?”
He wasn’t sure what she meant. “Well, clearly Kylie—”
“I mean, it’s awful, isn’t it? Getting herself shot like that!”
“Mom…it’s just a flesh wound, in and out.”
Ms. Hatfield narrowed her eyes. “Darling, your shoulder contains the subclavian artery, which happens to feed the brachial artery, the main artery of your arm. The subclavian artery also feeds the brachial plexus, the large nerve bundle that controls the function of your entire arm. You could have lost function or even had to have it amputated. It could have been very serious.”
Kylie just stared at her. “Did you get a nursing degree in the past couple weeks or what?”
Ms. Hatfield smiled indulgently at her daughter. “And what would be wrong with that? I keep nudging my sweet child to go back to school. She really would only have to put in another year to get her degree. But she keeps fighting me on that. Seems to think that this job is her calling.” She paused and took a sip of her wine. “So, what do you think? Truthfully?”
Linc looked over at Kylie, who was wincing as if in physical pain. “I think she’s very good in investigations, and it’s rare for a person to find a job she likes. She could go back to school nights, if it’s that important to her. But—”
Kylie smiled at him as her mother waved a hand at her daughter’s arm. “But she got shot!”
“Kylie has probably told you that was just an anomaly. Not every case will be so dangerous. In fact, she spends a lot of time behind a desk.”
Kylie nodded, even though she couldn’t keep her nose from wrinkling just a bit. “I do tell her that. She just chooses to forget it. And my loans are already bigger than my butt, Mom. I don’t want them to be any bigger. Time for dinner yet?”
Her mother frowned, her eyes a mixture of pleading and reproach. “Nothing is so important as your education, sweetheart. And you were so close.”
“I’m getting more of an education on the job than I ever did at school, Mom.” Linc was surprised that she didn’t stomp her foot. “Besides, if I remember correctly, it was you who told me to call Starr Investigations in the first place. Take a break from school, were your words, right?”
Rhonda Hatfield snapped her mouth shut, and Linc was relieved when the conversation turned innocuous for a few moments. But even though the topics were innocent, he could tell that Kylie sat on the edge of her seat, cringing in anticipation of more embarrassment.
Finally, her mother announced that it was time to eat. They went out to the dining room, where the table was once again set for royalty, complete with fancy china and crystal goblets. Ms. Hatfield sat at the head of the table while Linc sat across from Kylie. It was a perfect vantage point to gaze at the nipples he planned to be feasting on later.
To think, those babies had been flat as a board just a decade ago. Kylie was gorgeous, but the sexiest thing was that she didn’t know how gorgeous she was. She was sweet and self-deprecating, funny and bubbly, and he wanted her more than he’d ever wanted anything in his life.
Which still surprised the hell out of him.
“Well,” Kylie said to him as her mother served the lasagna, “I’m waiting for my mother to break out the old photo albums of me in the tub. Those are always a good time.”
“We could,” Ms. Hatfield said thoughtfully. “I know just where they are.”
“I’m game,” he said, giving Kylie a wink.
“I hate you both.” She glowered, pouring herself a glass of wine. “Deeply.”
“Hey, how about this? Maybe I’ll take you to meet my parents one day. Then we can be even,” he said to Kylie, mostly as a joke. “All right?”
She blinked. “I don’t know if that’d make us even. Is your house a shrine to you? Does your mother live to humiliate you every chance she gets?”
Kylie’s mother snorted. “All out of love, dear.”
Kylie rolled her eyes and looked at him expectantly, waiting for an answer.
“Not exactly. But dinner with my family is a…production.” That was the most civil way he could think to describe it in present company. Most of the time, he just called it hell.
Ms. Hatfield patted her daughter’s hand absently and said to him, “Do your parents live in the area? What do they do?”
Linc nodded. “My father is the founding partner of Coulter and Associates, the big legal firm downtown. You can’t miss the building. It has the gold eagle on the front. My brothers work there with him.”
“Oh! Of course, I know that building. An attorney, hmmm?” The elder Hatfield gave him an assessing look. “That’s impressive. So, your brothers are in law too?” At his nod, she plowed on, “You never wanted to follow in your father’s footsteps too?”
That was the question he usually got after people found out what his family was into. The answer was a firm hell no. “No, ma’am. Started down that trail then decided it wasn’t for me. Went into the service directly after that.”
Rhonda Hatfield narrowed her eyes, and he could almost see her scrolling through her memory banks. “Right. Kylie mentioned that you were overseas. Marines?”
“Army. Military Police K-9 Squad.”
“Oh, I see. Where were you stationed?”
Her mother was definitely like Kylie. They had a way of making him feel talkative. He didn’t think he’d ever said so much at one time. He shifted in his seat. “I did two tours in Syria. Well, one and a half. I was injured during the last one and sent home, honorably discharged.”
Her eyes grew wide, and those wide eyes scanned him for an obvious injury. She, thankfully, didn’t ask. “I can’t imagine. You’re so brave.”
He dove into the lasagna, stuffing his mouth until he could think of a change of subject. He didn’t like to think too much about Syria. Whenever he got talking about it, it usually haunted him with a suffocating, claustrophobic feeling that got him right in the chest.
Then it filled his nightmares.
Shit.
In the past couple weeks, it seemed those dreams had been getting worse. He didn’t want to think of that now.
Linc forced thoughts of it out of his head. But, of course, the more he wanted to not think about it, the more
it started to invade, like spilled water, seeping in all the cracks in his head, making it impossible to pull out. He needed to change the subject, and quick.
“This is great lasagna,” he said as Kylie eyed him curiously. By now, she’d probably guessed he didn’t like talking about his time overseas.
“Yes, Mom. It is,” she agreed. “You’ve done it again.”
Ms. Hatfield gave them coconut cake for dessert and sent her daughter home with an entire shopping bag full of leftovers, so she wouldn’t have to “starve because of her injury.” She hugged her mom and said thanks, and then Ms. Hatfield reached up and hugged Linc tight.
“Kylie,” she said, still holding his hand. She grabbed her daughter’s hand and joined their hands together. “Hold on to this one. He’s a keeper.”
Kylie’s face turned bright red. “Mom!” She looked at him, that cute little pink flush crawling over her cheeks. “Don’t listen to her.”
Yeah. Right. Just sex.
Leashes in hand, they walked down the street to his truck. She leaned heavily against the side while Vader sniffed the tires and Storm sat like the good girl she was.
“Just another awesome, embarrassing dinner with my mom.” She was still embarrassed, but Linc could see the love fighting for domination.
“I like her,” he said, opening the back door and letting the dogs in.
“You would.” She frowned up at him as he closed the door. She looked damn good in the moonlight, like something he would want to keep. But she’d made it clear. This was just about sex.
Which was all he wanted too, he reminded himself.
Linc pushed a lock of her hair behind her ear. “You’re beautiful.”
A smile appeared on her pink marshmallow lips. “You still think that, even after seeing that picture?”
He rubbed a thumb over that bottom lip. “I think that especially after seeing that picture. Because you’re so damn cute when your mom puts you off-balance like that.” He pressed his mouth to her ear. “Let’s go to bed.”
