Deadly Desires

by Ann Christopher

  He hadn’t seen her in a couple days, though, and he preferred to keep a close eye on her.

  Option 2: wake her up and risk either not being recognized at all, which had happened twice in the last month or so, much to his dismay, or being called by his father’s name, her brother’s name, a random cousin’s name, or the name of the orderly who most recently brought her a meal.

  Nice choices, eh?

  Brady, would you like your shit sandwich on whole wheat or white bread?

  Maybe the best thing to do was just sit and hang out for a few minutes and see if she woke up on her own. It was Friday night, true, but his social calendar had a lot of blank spaces on it these days, and God knew no one was waiting for him to show up and get their party started. In fact, once he left Pine Lake, that swinging hub of social activity and entertainment, the chances of him speaking more than two words to another human being between now and Monday morning when he went back to work were somewhere between 0 and 1 percent.

  So yeah. Why not sit his ass down in a chair and stay with his mother for a while? Maybe if he looked pitiful enough, they’d scrounge up an extra plate of turkey tetrazzini and orange Jell-O for him come dinnertime.

  That was something to look forward to, oh, yes, indeedy.

  He loosened his tie and sat, wishing he had a beer or thirty to drown his sorrows in. Well, sorrow, anyway. Singular. Because other than Mom here losing her memory inch by inch and there being way too many dealers still on the streets despite all his best efforts (and he was, sadly, used to both of those situations by now), he had only one source of sadness in his life:

  Kira.

  Even the name ... the image ... the mere hint of her weighed him down, an anchor of loss and longing around his soul, pulling him under just a little bit more with every day that passed. Exhausted with the wanting, he rested his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands, letting the woe-is-me wash over him until it was up to his chin.

  Come to me when you’re ready, he’d said, like some goddamn freaking new age guru. What kind of thing to say was that? Come to me when you’re ready? Please. The thing he hadn’t considered, when he was spouting shit from the mouth the way fountains spout water, was this: what if she didn’t come? Huh? What now, genius? If you set a butterfly free and it didn’t come back to you, were you allowed to go after the little fucker with your giant net?

  Why had he said that? Come to me when you’re ready. Brilliant. Why hadn’t he put a shelf life on it? Come to me when you’re ready, but don’t take longer than sixty days, because I’ll become unhinged if you do. Wouldn’t that have made more sense? Why hadn’t he said that?

  Well, he knew why. He’d been trying to do the right thing and not pressure her, for one. For two, he’d wanted to give her the space she needed to get her ducks in a row, just like he’d said. Third—and this was the thing that really stuck in his craw—he’d been so sure, so absolutely, eerily, inexplicably sure that she was into him, too, and the chemistry between them wasn’t all coming from him. There’d been something in the way she looked at him during that last conversation, something in the brightness of her eyes, or maybe it was that she’d blushed....

  Wow. Did he have superlative analytical skills, or what? Something in her eyes. What a stunning mind he had. All those years of training hadn’t been wasted on him, buddy, no siree.

  He squeezed his skull between his palms, wishing he could pop it like a melon or at least make his eyes shoot out and bounce against the far wall. Then he’d be excused from further obsessing about Kira, and wouldn’t that be nice?

  So, okay, he’d made this bed of nails for himself, and now he was lying in it. The question was—what now? Did Kira’s extended silence mean that she wasn’t ready yet? Or did it mean that, God forbid, she wasn’t into him after all? And what should he do to verify her position one way or the other? What if he kept giving her more time and discovered in, say, a year or so, that she’d remarried? Wouldn’t that be a nice kick in the teeth for his trouble?

  Sitting on his hands and waiting just wasn’t in his nature; he’d been stupid to think he could manage it even for a month. Hell, he hadn’t managed it—who did he think he was fooling? Thus far, he’d illegally used his law enforcement resources to find out where she was working (in the OB/GYN department at one of the university hospitals) and where she was living (in a rented house on a nice street with mature trees and a fenced yard for Max), and he’d done five or six drive-bys of her home, just to make sure she was still alive (she was).

  Yeah, he’d sunk to new and humiliating lows.

  But he hadn’t approached her, and of that he was proud. He might be a stalker, but he was a stalker with principles, dammit, and he could walk tall with his head held high.

  Now what? The question reverberated inside his skull, clattering like a dozen skillets dropped ten feet onto a tile floor. Now what ... now what ...

  “Now what?” he asked of no one, rubbing his hands over his scalp and raising his head at last, too tired to deal with his exhaustion for another second. “Now what?”

  “What’s wrong, D?”

  Rattled, he looked over to Mom. She was awake now, sitting straight in that damn chair with her eyes open wide and as clear and focused as they’d been that long ago time she and dad caught him sneaking back into the house via the basement window after a night of partying. His heart contracted because these moments were far too rare and would soon go the way of the dodo and the passenger pigeon.

  But she was here now, and for that he was grateful.

  He tried to smile. “Hey, beautiful. How are you?”

  Tutting, she shook her head. “Don’t try to sweet talk me, boy. What’s wrong? And don’t tell me nothing.”

  Okay. Now he was freaked out. Because their conversations these days, such as they were, consisted mainly of him asking how she felt, if she was hungry, and if she needed another pair of pajamas or a velour warm-up suit to wear while sitting there and waiting for the rest of her mind to go.

  He was wondering how to begin when her mother’s instinct kicked in to higher gear and saved him the trouble.

  “It’s a woman, isn’t it? Have you finally found someone ?”

  Found someone sounded more momentous that he wanted to make it, but, on the other hand, his interest in this one particular woman now spanned a couple of years and had reached a fever pitch in the last several months, so why split hairs?

  “Yeah,” he admitted.

  She beamed, no doubt envisioning all kinds of grandchildren bouncing on her knee in the near future. If he’d thought there was a snowball’s chance in a Sahara summer that she’d remember the conversation later, he’d really be worried.

  “So why the long face?”

  “I’m not sure she’s ready, Ma.”

  “Ready for what?”

  He shrugged, trying to put it into words. To get it right. “Ready for me.”

  Mom studied him with those wise old eyes and then cut right to the heart of the matter, whether he was prepared to hear it or not. Which, as a matter of fact, he wasn’t. “If she doesn’t know a good man when she sees one, son, then she’s not the one for you.”

  Yeah. That was what worried him.

  What if Kira was one of those adrenaline-addicted women who always went for a bad boy? Hell, maybe she had her eye on another felon right now. Maybe she’d already struck up a pen pal relationship with some dude at Lucasville, or maybe she’d hooked up with some local professional athlete. A Bengal, maybe. That was a nice image to take to bed with him tonight, one guaranteed to cause him screaming nightmares: Kira wrapped around some oversized linebacker who drove a flashy car worth more than Dexter made in two years.

  After all, if she’d fallen for a bad boy like Kareem, wasn’t it a safe bet that Dexter wasn’t her type? Could never be her type? And, if so, then Mom was right, wasn’t she? And moms were almost always right; everyone over the age of twenty-one knew that.

  Except this time.


  The tiny little voice, rock hard with certainty, crept through his doubts, drowning them out. She’ll come to you, the voice continued. Have a little faith. Wait a little while longer. What have you got to lose?

  That’s when it got weird.

  “Just wait,” Mom said, right on cue, like she’d done in the old days, when she’d peeked inside his head and read his thoughts before he had them. “Give her a little time. Why don’t you do that?”

  “Maybe I will,” he said. “Thanks, Ma. That really helps.”

  “Good.”

  With a final and decisive pat on his knee, her eyes sliding back out of focus, she put her hands on the arms of the chair and tried to press herself up even though it’d been months since her body forgot how to follow the commands to walk.

  His heart, knowing what was coming, broke again. It never stopped hoping and therefore never stopped breaking.

  “Now help me get going,” she said. “I don’t want to be late for my shift at the hospital.”

  Kira knocked on the door, hoping several things in no particular order.

  She hoped Dexter was home because she’d taken weeks to gather the courage to show up at his house, and she didn’t think she could do it again anytime soon. On the other hand, she hoped he wasn’t home because what the hell did she think she’d say to him? Wouldn’t it be better to slink off into the night without him ever knowing she’d come?

  Maybe.

  Still, she hoped that, if he was home, he was alone. If he was home and alone, she hoped that he also wasn’t in the middle of getting ready for some hot date, but what were the chances of that for a handsome man on a Friday night after work? Why didn’t she also hope she’d find a stray bar of gold bouillon on the sidewalk while she was at it?

  And what if he was in some committed relationship now? Or engaged? God, she hoped he wasn’t engaged but, let’s face it, men didn’t like to be alone and they all got married eventually. What if he barely remembered her? Surely he hadn’t thought she’d take six freaking months to get her act togeth—

  Without warning, the door swung open.

  Brady stood there in his white shirtsleeves, dark slacks, and a loosened red tie around his neck. She’d apparently caught him in the middle of a postwork drink, because his head was leaned back for a long pull on a bottle of beer, and his brows were lowered with apparent annoyance at the interruption.

  But then he realized it was Kira, and two things happened: his eyes widened with surprise.

  And he choked.

  Oh, man. See? She shouldn’t have come.

  As he hacked and sputtered, trying to clear his airway and holding up his index finger in a give-me-a-minute gesture, she chattered with the uncontrollable and nonsensical enthusiasm of a cage full of parakeets.

  “Hi! I didn’t mean to startle you like this. I should have called first. I knew I should have called. But I just thought that, you know, I’d be spontaneous and see if you wanted to, I don’t know, maybe have a drink with me or something because it’s, ah, Friday night, and that’s a fun time for drinks because it’s the end of the week and I thought maybe you wouldn’t be busy. But I can see that you’re busy—you probably just got home from work, right?—and you already have a drink, so I’ll just”—she gestured vaguely over her shoulder, in the general direction of her car parked at the curb—“go and leave you in peace. Okay? Great. Bye!”

  She took a quick step away, reminding herself not to break and run, because that would just be pathetic, but he’d recovered after her ridiculous monologue and put a hand on her arm to stop her.

  “Wait.” His voice was strained and hoarse, about like Louis Armstrong moments after a tonsillectomy, and he had to pause and clear his throat. Enduring his piercing gaze was like submitting to nude X-rays in front of a studio audience. “It’s been six months.”

  “I know. But I had to get my life together, like I said, and I have. I passed my boards, and I’m working at the hospital now, and I’m renting a really nice little house and saving the money to buy it at the end of the year.”

  For crying out loud. Why couldn’t she shut up and stop yammering out her résumé? He was only a man. That fact alone, by definition, meant that he wasn’t perfect, right? So why did she feel this relentless drive to prove to him that she was worthy of his interest? Was this what her shrink meant when he kept wondering where she’d gotten her feelings of inadequacy?

  Just shut up, Kira. SHUT. UP.

  “And of course I’ve been in therapy.” Lovely. The blathering continued, with no signs of stopping. Really, he should just slam the door in her face right now and put them both out of their misery. “Because I know I have some stuff to work on—”

  “Six months, Kira.”

  “I know, and I—”

  “I haven’t slept. What are you trying to do to me?”

  Opening her mouth again, she started to say something about it having been too long, of course, and she realized that whatever offer he’d made had long since expired—duh!—and she was sorry for disturbing him.

  Except that his words sank in, their gazes connected, and she couldn’t look away from the quiet intensity in his eyes or the sudden, vibrating urgency in his body. Instead of apologizing and scurrying off with her tail between her legs, she found herself saying something altogether different—the thing she wanted to say and he, clearly, needed to hear:

  “I didn’t mean to take so long.”

  “You look like a new person.”

  What did he mean? He was talking about more than her hair, which she’d let grow to her shoulders, evidently. Could he see her new peace and serenity? Did it show on her face along with her shimmery new lip gloss? Or did he intuitively know that she could eat like a longshoreman and sleep like a comatose baby now that her husband had done her the courtesy of getting himself blown to kingdom come?

  Could he see how happy she was these days, and how she’d done everything she could think of to get herself ready for this next phase of her life? And, incidentally, to make herself worthy of an honorable man rather than a drug dealer?

  “I feel like a new person,” she told him.

  Without looking away, his slid his hand down her arm and took her hand between both of his, encompassing her in so much strength and warmth that she wondered if she could let him go when the time came.

  “Good.” His eyes crinkled at the edges, and there was more warmth. A bigger welcome. “Are you ready now?”

  There was no doubt, no hesitation, even though it might have made sense to pause for a moment and clarify: ready for what? A drink? Dinner? More? What did more look like?

  And while she was at it, she probably should have taken the time to wonder why her being here now felt inevitable. The whole time she’d known Brady (up until that last day six months ago, when he’d made his declaration), she’d thought that he either didn’t like her or, at best, barely liked her. She, meanwhile, had been so busy trying to survive and disentangle herself from Kareem’s toxic web that she hadn’t had the chance to think about the exact nature of her feelings for Brady.

  All she’d known was that the air prickled with electricity when he was around, and she’d always felt the dizzying intensity of his personality. Now, finally, she knew what that meant, and she was ready to explore it. More than that, she had the unshakable certainty that she was supposed to be here, now, with him.

  Crazy, huh?

  So why did this feel so good? Why was she filled to bursting with a deep, quiet peace she was sure she’d never experienced before, not even once—as though she was, finally, arriving at the place where she was supposed to be in her life?

  Why did her hand feel so great wrapped inside his?

  Maybe it was too soon, and maybe they’d crash and burn before their drinks arrived at the table tonight, and maybe Brady would have to be insane to think about spending time with a woman with her track record, which could best be characterized as abysmal.

  But she didn’t think so. She
really didn’t think so.

  “Yes,” she said. “I’m ready now.”

  “Good.” He paused, drifting closer now, close enough that she smelled the starch of his shirt and the soapy clean of his deodorant. “And you should know—I was planning to give you another thirty-six hours or so, and then I was going to show up on your doorstep.”

  Chapter 16

  They went inside, where Brady ditched his tie, ducked into the bathroom, and then grabbed his car keys, all before she could blink or digest what was happening, and how quickly.

  “How have you been?” she asked, not sure what to do with herself now that she wasn’t holding his hand. Plus, they had so much catching up to do, it was tough picking a topic to get them started. “How’s work—”

  “Shh.” Taking her hand again—yeah, she could seriously get used to this—he tugged her back out of the house and to the driveway. “Wait.”

  “Wait?”

  “Yeah, wait. I don’t want to miss anything while I’m driving.”

  With that, he deposited her on the passenger side of his car, which, she noticed for the first time, was a truck, and opened the door for her. Whereupon she grinned at him with the uncontrollable delight of a cat that’d been presented with an extra large bowl of buttery rich cream.

  He paused, arrested. “What?”

  “I’m really glad I’m here.”

  “Jesus,” he murmured. A quick beat passed, and then, without warning, he caught her smiling face between his hands and lowered his head even as she tipped her chin up to meet him.

  They came together so naturally it might have been their thousandth kiss rather than their first, except that the gentle brush of his lips against hers melted her up against a thrilling body that was as foreign to her as the dark side of the moon. His forearms were hard beneath her fingers, bunched with muscles thrumming with tension, and his lips were firm and demanding, and yet, somehow, tender. Beseeching.

  He touched his tongue to her lips, seeking permission, but she was already opening for him, already surging, and if she’d been able to speak she’d have told him he didn’t need to ask. His hands slid into her hair as the kiss deepened, caressing her scalp, and she tasted his hunger for her as strongly as she tasted the mint of the toothpaste he’d used. She found herself shifting closer, fully into the rock solid strength of his arms, and that, finally, was too much, just as it wasn’t nearly enough.