Secretive Stranger

by Jennifer Greene

  “You wear very silly glasses,” he said as he corrected her. “And you’re not wearing them now. When I’m around you, you seem to forget to wear them more and more. Which tells me-”

  “That I only need them for close reading?”

  “Nope. It tells me that you don’t feel you have to hide around me as much as you did before. And speaking of hiding, what kind of underwear are you wearing today?”

  “I don’t think I should answer that question.”

  “I think you should. I think it’s a very important question. All we’ve been talking about for days are questions that aren’t going to change the world. Questions that are disturbing and unsettling and ugly. Let’s try to start this whole thing from the beginning, you and me. Let’s just stick to the important questions. Like what kind of underwear you’re wearing at this very minute.”

  “Yellow.”

  “Yellow?”

  “Daffodil-yellow. White lace edges. I can’t remember where or how it happened. But somehow en route, I got a little embarrassingly addicted to useless, pretty underwear.”

  “Don’t even think about giving it up. This is probably the best addiction I’ve ever heard of. I think you should go with it. Forever.”

  “Um…” All right, her good sense and common sense had completely deteriorated, and she’d answered the underwear question. But one of them had to get a grip. Their tummies weren’t just rubbing together. Their pelvises were locked tight. He was harder than petrified wood, and yeah, his erection was sealed against her, no one could see or know…but she knew. Fever shot through her bloodstream, making all that blood rush until she felt light-headed and dizzy.

  “How come you don’t tell me about your work?” he asked, out of the complete blue, as if they’d actually been having a serious conversation.

  “Because I’ve never had a chance?”

  “See? That’s exactly the point I’ve been trying to make. All this crap with my brother has screwed up everything. We’re not getting the chance to talk about what matters. What you do. Why you do it. Your yellow underwear. Your addictions.”

  “Cord?”

  “What?”

  “The music stopped playing. The bartender’s wiping glasses. There are only two other people in the place.”

  “Hell, I don’t see why it matters if there’s music, when a person can’t dance anyway,” he remarked.

  “Whew. I wasn’t sure if you realized.” Not that she wouldn’t dance with him again, Sophie mused. But the next time, she’d wear steel-toed shoes.

  “You know what I do realize?”

  “That we’re going to get kicked out of this bar?”

  “That you’ve never seen my place. It’s a house. Rented, which isn’t my choice, but I didn’t buy when I first moved here. I wasn’t sure how long I was going to stay. It’s in Arlington, toward Falls Church. A drive, but I had to have some country, some trees, some green. And that’s the thing. We can go there, to a place where we can both feel…clean. Away from the dirt around my brother’s life. A place that’s safe. A place where I can see that yellow underwear.”

  “I’d like to see it, Cord. But…I can’t believe you’d feel…safe…leaving your brother’s place completely deserted for the night.”

  “I wouldn’t. But I keep trying to tell myself it doesn’t matter. Someone breaks in, finds more answers, more stuff-why should this be any skin off my nose? I’ve been cleaning up my brother’s messes since I was born. This one’s making me sicker by the day. And I hate it. That you’re close to it. At risk because of it.”

  “That’s not your fault.”

  “Maybe not my fault. But it sure as hell feels like my responsibility.”

  “But that’s only because you’re stuck being one of those alpha guys, Cord. I totally understand that you can’t help it. The only one who’s really responsible for the mess is the mess maker. And that’s Jon.”

  This hour, these last hours, he’d been so playful and crazy and fun. Seductive. Dangerous in the most seductive and luring of ways. But now he pressed his forehead into hers, said quietly, “Soph. I want you to leave town. Get away from this. You said you had two sisters. You could go visit one of them, at least for a couple weeks. Until this is…safe.”

  He waited, but when she didn’t immediately answer, he jumped back in. “All right. You’re not saying yes-much less ‘yes, Cord, you’re so right, I’m going to call my sisters this very minute.’ So, at least promise me you’ll think about it.”

  “I promise I’ll think about it,” she said, but the way she looked at him…he knew she didn’t mean it.

  Eventually, he forked over a pile of bills at the bar, found her jacket and raced with her to the car. The night had turned sweet black, a frisky breeze shivering the leaves; traffic had thinned out this late.

  He glanced at her. “We’re going…?”

  “To my place. Not yours. And definitely not your brother’s.”

  He nodded. “And as far as what you meant by that ‘we’…?”

  Sophie leaned back against the neck rest, studying his profile. She said with a bluntness she didn’t remotely feel, “I don’t know where this is going, Cord. I don’t know what you want, what I want for sure, where either of us will end up after Jon’s business is over with. But what I do know is that I don’t do one-night stands. Ever. So you’re coming to my place for the night. And that’s that. Don’t even try arguing with me.”

  He liked that answer, she could see from his start of a grin, the easing of his shoulders, the spark of fire in his eyes.

  He liked it even more when she climbed the stairs, unlocked her door and then just wagged her fingers in an unspoken order for him to hand over his jacket.

  He liked it the best when she threw both jackets on the couch, kicked the door closed and reached for him. Off went the sweater. Then his shirt. Her hands, on his naked chest, climbed up, over, around-everywhere. She kicked off her shoes at the same time her mouth latched on his and locked.

  Caviar leaped on the couch top and plaintively meowed. She heard him.

  She knew he counted on a heap of love and attention whenever she came home, but right now…her other tomcat needed it more.

  She wasn’t sure of anything with Cord…except that beneath the good looks, the brain, the alpha set of ethics, and yeah, the sexiness, was a sad man. A lonely man. He was around people all the time, but not people he could personally connect with.

  That wasn’t something she knew. It was something she sensed, from the symptoms he kept showing her, the symptoms that kept wooing her heart. His surprise at being jumped. His groan of vulnerability when she whispered in his ear, when she stepped back, took his hand and led him down the dark hall.

  He might not know the way, but she did. Being her bedroom, naturally the carpet was littered with everything from books to cat toys to abandoned socks. But she knew precisely where the fluffy comforter was. She sank down first, pulling him with her, but she’d twisted half on top of him before he knew what hit him.

  Cord clearly wasn’t used to surprises-not surprises in life, not surprises from women. He wasn’t used to being wanted…well, like crazy. He clearly wasn’t expecting a woman who would yank and tug until she had him naked. A woman who would bite, then kiss with tenderness. A woman who could teach him to dance, nowhere near a dance floor. More than anything, he seemed completely unprepared for a woman who focused all her attention, all her heat, all her need, all of everything she had, just on him. Only on him.

  Only for him.

  He liked it.

  He liked it all. But eventually, he seemed to feel there was a thin, very thin, line between pleasure and torture; at that point, he shifted her beneath him smoother than the slide of butter. The yellow bra, her favorite, was long gone. Her legs snugged tight around his waist, her skin a silken sheen as he plunged into her, hard and deep.

  Until then, Sophie thought she’d had complete power over the situation. In a single second she discovered
she was wrong. She’d always been afraid of needing someone too much, of counting on anyone or anything. She’d never thought she could let it go, allow a man to find her vulnerability. Prove it. Use it…for her. With her.

  In another universe, a fire siren screamed and lights flashed and pale moonlight slivered through the windows on a cold, dark night. A cranky furnace came on, steamed dry air through the vents. She heard it all…but not really. There was only Cord in her world. At some point, a picture fell from the wall, startling them both into sudden laughter. They weren’t just making the bed rock. Pillows tumbled to the floor, then her puffy white comforter, and then neither were laughing, because she needed too much. Wanted too much.

  Yearned for far, far too much.

  She hissed his name, then called it desperately, just as she started that long, long orgasmic soar. When the ride was over, she was gasping for air. He pulled her on top of him, where she poured like a mindless puddle.

  He was breathing as hard as she was, damp with hot sweat, as she was. He yanked some kind of cover over her cooling body, but otherwise didn’t move. Eventually, they both started breathing normally again, or close enough.

  “It isn’t real, you know,” he murmured.

  “I know.”

  “Nothing’s this good. I’m going to wake up any minute and give myself credit for the best fantasy I ever had.”

  “Hey! It’s not your fantasy. It’s mine.” She said, eyes still closed, muscles still like noodles, “Just so you know, normally I don’t like this all that much. I mean, I’m okay with the cuddling part. I just don’t like all the sweat and messiness.”

  She heard his choke of laughter. “All right. If you’re going to bare your soul, I’ll bare mine. Sex is important to me. Abstinence completely sucks. But seriously stupendous sex takes so damn much time that I wish I didn’t have an overdose of testosterone. It’d make life easier. It’s not as if I really like it.”

  It was her turn to choke with laughter.

  They both felt a thump at the bottom of the bed. Cord looked at her, rather than the source of the thump. “I know we closed that door.”

  “He can open it.”

  “How? He’s a damned cat!”

  “He lifts up and turns the knob.” She wouldn’t have thought either one of them was capable of fast movement, but Cord suddenly swooped her into him, spoon fashion, so smoothly and completely that she never finished the thought.

  “I’m not into sharing,” he announced.

  “Um…does that mean he can’t sleep on the bed?”

  “It means that nobody, but nobody, is sleeping between us.”

  That was totally okay with Sophie.

  The dream was old, familiar, awful. A cold, dark night. Sophie, huddled between her two sisters, sitting on the curb, bare feet freezing. A fireman had draped a blanket over the three of them. The dread in her stomach was louder than a drum, so loud she couldn’t hear anyone or anything else.

  They were all crying, crying, crying. No one had told them their parents were dead. Sophie was crying loud enough so that she wouldn’t be able to hear anyone tell her that, wouldn’t listen, and no one could make her. But no one was even trying, until three strangers came up to them, two in police uniforms. One picked her up. She screamed. He carried her away from her sisters, even though she kicked and squirmed and hit. She had to have her sisters. Maybe she knew about her mom, her dad, but she had to have her sisters. She had to have someone. Everyone she loved couldn’t abandon her, could they?

  But then she realized, as loud as she thought she was screaming, she was making no sound. No one could hear.

  Sophie woke in the darkness. She always woke at that same point in the dream. Always felt that first punch of unbearable loss…then exasperation.

  After all these years, she was tired of the nightmare. All it ever did was bring the haunting sadness back. Throughout her life, she expected to be abandoned whenever she cared too deeply. It was old news, just like the nightmare was old news.

  And of course, she knew why the dream had seeped into her consciousness tonight. She closed her eyes, snuggled closer to the long, warm body next to her. For once, she wasn’t going to let her fears get in the way. Cord felt good. More than good. Even in sleep, his lips found her brow and his arm draped protectively around her.

  It seemed that only seconds passed, yet the next time Sophie opened her eyes, dawn light filtered through the film of curtains. She loved it, watching the light sneak over the carpet, up on the bed, then over the strong orb of Cord’s shoulder, his neck. She found herself smiling. Goofy or not, she felt as if she were purring on the inside.

  One of his eyelids lifted, then the other. “You can’t be perky this early in the morning.”

  “It’s one of my faults,” she admitted.

  “What a shame. I thought our relationship could last a little longer, but now I’ll have to give you up.”

  It didn’t feel that way, judging from how enthusiastically Mr. Big Boy was pressing against her leg. Or, for that matter, from the sleepy glitter of arousal in his eyes.

  “I don’t kiss without brushing my teeth,” she warned him.

  “Oh. So now you give me the rules?”

  “And I get the shower first.”

  “I should have known. The greedy, selfish side was bound to show up eventually. I’ve been waiting for it. What’s the rest of the bad news?” He heaved a comical sigh.

  She smiled…but then that soft, lush smile disappeared. She didn’t want to think about old nightmares or current dangers, but with daylight, she couldn’t avoid coping with either for long.

  “Cord,” she said quietly, “I know you’ve held back from telling me some things. You didn’t mention Jon’s autopsy results. You’ve never mentioned any details about your meetings with the police, or what you chose to tell them about what we found in Jon’s apartment.” When he started to answer, she put a soft finger on his lips.

  “You know what?” she whispered. “It’s okay. You could have all kinds of good reasons why you don’t want me to know certain things-starting with the obvious. We’ve only known each other a short time.”

  He hesitated before responding. His eyes searched hers. She searched right back. Finally he said, “You woke up mighty serious.”

  “I did,” she agreed. “And since you asked about the rules, cookie, I figured I’d give you the big-picture bad news.” Her tone was still teasing, but she wasn’t. Not about this. “I really only have one rule.”

  “Which is?”

  “For you to be honest with me. That’s the only thing I really need from you. Just be honest. See, I’ve always had a hard time believing in forevers. I’m not in a rush to count on anyone or anything, so I can sure understand if you feel that way, too. I don’t need promises. I’ll even survive if you choose to take off. But I really need you to be straight with me. And that’s it. The only rule I’ve got. You don’t have to tell me stuff you’re not ready or willing to share. But don’t mislead me. Don’t lie to me. Okay?”

  His cell phone chose that second to ring. She saw his look of irritation, but he scrambled to find the cell in his shirt pocket. Sophie could pick up most of the conversation from just hearing Cord’s side.

  His brother’s car had been broken into. Like most around D.C., Jon had primarily used the metro-and his feet-for transportation. But Jon had a car, had one of those kill-your-mother-to-get-a-space rental parking garage spots with extensive security.

  After Cord hung up, he yanked on his clothes. “I knew about the car, obviously. I hadn’t forgotten it, but the rent charge was paid up for several months, so for a few weeks, I just left it alone. There seemed far more important things to look into than that.”

  “It seems increasingly obvious that whoever wants information still hasn’t found it,” Sophie said.

  “Exactly.” He bent down, kissed her on the brow-and without thinking, gave Caviar a stroke between his ears. “Soph-”

  “Don’t.
I understand. The car thing is more important at this instant. We can talk later.”

  But when he left, moments later, Caviar climbed up on her lap, as if sensing she needed something warm and secure to hold. The cat snuggled under her neck and let out a thunderously reassuring purr. She snuggled right back, but it wasn’t the cat on her mind as she scooped him up and aimed for the kitchen.

  It was just Friday. A major workday ahead. She was finishing up the final interview with her Danish war survivor, after which she’d need to pour on the coals to do the intensive translating work.

  But even as she started the day at a full gallop, her heart was on Cord. She really did understand why he hadn’t readily shared certain things with her. A murder and murderer were at stake, for heaven’s sake.

  But Sophie was at risk, too, and she knew it. Not from a murderer. But from the man she knew damn well she’d fallen in love with.

  Chapter 9

  Cord battled traffic to get to the garage, fielded a cell call from the faculty office-a student was ill, was going to miss an exam, needed a resolution-and then another call from the rest home. His dad had fallen, nothing serious, nothing broken-but could Cord stop by that day? So. It was going to one of those nonstop days when he couldn’t catch a breath.

  Back when he worked overseas in some mighty perilous, touchy situations, life had seemed far simpler.

  Two policemen were still at the garage, fussing with Jon’s car. Cord didn’t recognize either of them. The car, typical of Jon, was an overpriced foreign model with a fancy paint job. It didn’t look quite so pretty with the trunk jimmied open by a crowbar, its wires dangling like wet noodles from the security system. Leather seats had been slashed. The lock on the glove box was ripped open, all its debris spread over the seats and console.

  Ferrell was hanging at a distance, looking as if he’d taken root against a cement pillar with his steaming cup of joe. Cord talked to the cops first, but they didn’t reveal more than what he could already see. The garage had lights, cameras and a live security guard 24/7. Someone had still managed to get in, break down the car’s security system and pretty much take the car apart, stem to stern. Even though Cord didn’t care for the ostentatious car, he had to wince at the damage. After a good look-too good a look-he lumbered over to Ferrell.