Perfect fit, he thought, closing his eyes as her inner muscles hugged his shaft, her strong arms around him as tightly as he was holding her.
Ben moved slowly, rocking his hips back, then forward, nice and slow, drawing it out for them both. A soft cry escaped her lips as she tried to speed him up, but he stayed steady.
Instead, he whispered every single thing he found lovely about her until words started blurring in his mind as pleasure took over. He couldn’t stop kissing her, maintaining the steady, slow surging of his body into hers until she tensed, shuddering, warmth flooding their bodies where they were joined, her low moan echoing through him.
Only when he felt her body slacken slightly did he let himself go with a few, short, hard thrusts that launched him over an edge he’d never quite reached before.
It was…powerful.
Their bodies were still connected, wrapped around each other as the passionate haze cleared.
He’d been with a lot of women, but none had ever shaken him to his core the way Joanna did. He couldn’t let her see how she affected him. Not now. Not yet. So he took a few deep breaths, cleared his head, got control of himself again before he rose up, looking down into her flushed face.
“Hungry?” he asked, suddenly starving.
JOANNA LAUGHED AT THE unexpected question, but was also thankful for it after the intensity of what had happened between them. She wasn’t great with the “afterward” part of sex, usually just heading to the shower, sending her lover on his way or leaving, if she was the one at his place. But this was different, and for one moment after things cleared, she was unsure what was going to happen.
“Yeah, actually. Starving.”
It was true, she was suddenly ravenous, and food was the perfect distraction from the messy emotional thoughts that followed her lovemaking with Ben.
Sex, she reminded herself quietly as she rose and grabbed her dress. Not lovemaking. Some people used the terms interchangeably, but on a deeper level, she knew they were different. Joanna was very good at one and hadn’t had much experience with the other.
Until now, that satisfied, feminine place inside her chided. She ignored it.
“Um, do you mind if I clean up a little while you deal with food?” she asked as he tugged on his jeans. His hair was mussed from her hands, and he looked good enough to eat.
She filed away that thought.
“Sure, the bathroom is at the end of the hall, and I have a few clean shirts on the counter if you want to change into one of them,” he said, approaching her and planting a short kiss on her mouth. “Actually, I’m going to run over to the bar for a second, to get some beers, and I’ll be right back.”
“Sounds good.”
Joanna walked toward the bathroom, pausing, waiting until she heard the door shut behind Ben.
This was her chance. Walking quickly to the main room, she made a beeline for the desk, and quickly searched the drawers. She clicked on the laptop, though that required a password.
No time for that. Maybe if she could get in here again, she could grab a USB and try to download what he had and crack it open later, or send it over to Don.
Guilt hovered as she lifted up the blotter, searched for anything that could indicate that Ben was either in trouble or in cahoots with the people after him. She found nothing.
He’d be back in an instant, so she headed for the shower.
In the bathroom, she hit the light and groaned at her own reflection in the mirror, finding it nowhere near as attractive as Ben’s mussed look. Her hair was pushed up on the back of her head and stuck to her face—sex hair—and her lips were too red from his kissing. Her eyes were soft, blurry and reflected the satisfaction he had given her. She refocused on towels, washing up and getting her hair back to something that looked normal.
She chose a light flannel shirt folded on the hamper; it was huge, but she rolled up the cuffs and the tails hit her below her butt, providing just enough coverage. As she did so, she noted his running clothes from the night before thrown into the basket by the sink, and her eye landed on what seemed to be a blood stain. Picking the shirt up gingerly, she figured the stain could have come from one of his abrasions, though wouldn’t the shirt also be damaged in that spot, then?
Frowning, she bent her head forward, picking up the faintest scent of gunpowder, which made her stomach drop. She should get the stain analyzed, but how could she get his shirt out of the house without him noticing?
Eyeing the window on the other side of the room, she thought about dropping it outside to pick up later, but he’d surely miss it, and she was probably the only other person to be in his bathroom in the past day or so.
Joanna didn’t want to believe that Ben could be keeping secrets from her; she didn’t think he was in bed with the bad guys, but she wasn’t sure how far he’d go to protect himself and the people he cared about. If someone had made a move, had Ben disposed of the threat himself?
“Joanna? You ready to eat?” he called from the hall. She closed her eyes and walked out, shirt in hand, smiling.
“Yeah, sorry. That smells great. How come leftovers always are better than the meal itself?” she asked, arriving in the kitchen to see he had also pulled on a shirt and was busy filling plates with heaps of the Italian food they had ignored at the restaurant.
“There’s time for the flavors to set. And good sex makes everything better,” he added, looking up at her with so much heat she thought she might wither on the spot. His eyes landed on the shirt in her hand. “What are you doing with that?”
“Oh, I noticed it had a bad stain, probably from where you fell. You shouldn’t let it set like that, it’ll be permanent. I can take it and get it out for you. Believe me, growing up with two males in the house, I’m an expert in lifting stains, and this is too nice of a shirt to ruin,” she commented with a smile, almost ashamed of how easily the lie came.
Ben shrugged, and laughed lightly. “I’d appreciate that, though there’s really no need. I can send it out to the cleaners.”
“Why spend the money? Let me have it for a few days, and it’ll be as good as new.”
“Sure,” he said casually, triggering her doubts. If he were trying to hide something, would he be so easy to let her take the shirt?
Unable to find a good response, she settled for smiling as she took some plates of bread and butter from him, returning for wine and glasses as he carried plates to the small dining table in the next room.
Ben’s home was simple, square and masculine. Everything was constructed of wood, brick and earthenware, and what was painted was done in basic, warm shades.
She liked it.
Antique firearms were on display in a glass case in the small dining room, and she took in the picture in a nice frame on the mantel of a man standing with a young boy, both of them handling a very large fish, obviously taken somewhere near the coast.
“Is that your grandfather and you?” she asked, digging into her food.
“Yeah. He’d head down to Galveston for a fishing trip once a year, and that was the first time he took me, for my thirteenth birthday,” Ben said, smiling affectionately at the memory.
“My father and brother would go fishing sometimes,” she said with a smile, forgetting herself.
“It doesn’t sound like they included you in much,” he said sympathetically. “It must have been hard not having your mother.”
She took a large bite of her pasta, delaying any response to the question. She wished she hadn’t said anything; she didn’t want to lie about her family any more. They didn’t deserve it, the unflattering portrait she’d painted to go with her cover, and because she didn’t want to lie to Ben any more than she had to.
“Well, I never really wanted to go,” she said, and at least that was the truth.
She steered the conversation more toward him as they ate, enjoying the stories of boyhood adventures and his grandfather, Cash Callahan, who sounded like a character straight from a Hemingway novel from
the way Ben related his grandfather’s adventures.
Joanna could tell Ben missed him. She put her hand over his and picked up her wine for a sip.
“You’ve had your share of adventures, too, I bet. What was it like, being a SEAL?”
“It was everything. My life, who I was. When I was gone, I hardly thought about home, everything was about my team, the missions. I knew I wanted to be a SEAL the minute I saw a documentary on cable when I was a kid. The extreme training, the missions. It was all I cared about until I could get out of high school, even graduated early so I could join up.”
“All you cared about? No girlfriends, no sports?” she inquired, really wanting to know.
“I played baseball for a bit, but nothing serious. Any sports I did were to keep training for the military, much to my parents’ dismay. Girls, sure. No teenage boy can ignore those.”
She smiled at that, and could only imagine him as a teenager. He would have driven girls wild, for sure. “Your parents didn’t want you to go?”
“Not really. Granddad started this ranch when he got back from the war, and my dad took it over with Mom when they got married. I guess he thought Granddad, after serving in the war, had built a legacy that was supposed to keep us here on home soil, but I needed to go. At first Dad and Mom really resisted, but Granddad helped them see that it was something they should let me do.”
“It sounds like you had a special relationship with him.”
“Yeah, which is why I can’t quite forgive myself for not being here when he passed,” Ben said, raw pain flickering in his expression.
“I’m sure he understood—was proud of you,” she offered, feeling that it was hardly enough.
“I know that, but you know, sometimes life just hands us regrets, and there’s nothing we can do about it. Just have to carry them along with us, I suppose.”
She slid her chair over to sit closer to him. She didn’t say anything, lifted his hand to her lips, kissed his fingers. The gesture was meant to be comforting, supportive, but his eyes lit with desire and she felt the answering stir in her own body and didn’t resist when he slid his hand into her hair and pulled her in for a wine-saturated kiss.
Passion spiked quickly, which surprised her, given the satisfaction they’d provided for each other only an hour or so ago. As he pulled back from the kiss, Ben’s gaze traced her face.
“I don’t want you to have any regrets about this,” he said, and for the first time, she was tempted just to tell him everything before this all went too far.
But she couldn’t. Maybe he would be okay with it—maybe he would accept and understand—but instinct told her that wasn’t the case. If he pushed her away, if he told her to leave, more was at stake than her love life. If she left, she would have failed at her job—which wasn’t even the most important thing to her, she realized with mild shock.
The more important issue was that she could lose Ben. If someone came after him, if she lost him because she wasn’t here, even with all of his skills, that was a regret she wouldn’t be able to live with.
For now, she wanted him. Wanted to be with him, wanted to keep him safe.
She moved her hands down to release the buttons of the shirt she wore, enjoying how his gaze followed her actions, his face softening with desire.
“No regrets,” she said, and was almost able to convince herself it was true.
7
WITH A LUMP IN HIS THROAT Charlie watched Lisa exit the kitchen’s walk-in freezer. He loved her so damned much, it was nearly killing him. She put down the huge pork roast she’d carried out to thaw over the weekend for Monday’s pulled pork specials, and beamed a smile at him that made him feel like a million bucks.
And lower than dirt.
“Hey, you okay?” she asked, walking up and putting a soft hand to his face, concerned. She was always more concerned about everyone else than about herself. That’s why he had to do anything necessary to protect her.
Risk his life, lie to his friends. Whatever it took.
He turned his face into her palm, planting a kiss there, closing his eyes so that she wouldn’t see too much.
He’d find a way out of this mess. He loved her, and he loved the kids. He had to protect them, too. He had a ring. He was going to propose as soon as they were out of this, and then they would be a family.
Buying himself more time, he leaned in and kissed her soft and long, but also because he needed to remind himself what he was fighting for.
He’d been tempted to tell Ben that he knew, but that would only make things worse. Ben would insist on telling the Feds, and Charlie couldn’t risk that. He had to deal with this on his own.
Pulling back, he studied Lisa’s sweet face and kissed her on the nose, smiling.
“I’m fine. Just distracted, thinking about you wearing that dress I bought you for the party tomorrow,” he said, playing along. He could never let her suspect what danger she and her kids were in.
Because of him.
“I thought you might have been more distracted by the idea of taking it off,” she said with a wink.
He groaned, gathering her in close. “Now you’ve done it,” he teased back, pushing his worries away. “I won’t be able to think about anything else now.”
She pulled back, planting a sweet kiss on his mouth. “Good. Now I’d better get two more of those roasts out. One will never be enough for the Monday crowd.”
Reluctantly, he let her go, whistling appreciatively and making her giggle as she walked away from him with a little shimmy. He walked out back for a minute to get some air, and noticed Ben’s parked car and the lights on low in his front room.
He’d thought his friend would have been over at the ranch tonight, helping get the party organized, but maybe Ben had decided to turn in early.
Ben had always been the better man. A real, honest-to-goodness hero. Charlie’s armor was a bit tarnished, but Lisa made him feel all shiny. Like a real man, not one who had secretly had a drug problem for the better part of a year as he recovered from his surgery just three years before. It seemed like a long time ago.
War had been hell, and coming home had been harder. He took the loss of his leg as well as he could, though the pain was overwhelming at times, the physical therapy excruciating, as he learned to use his prosthesis. Worse had been the worry that he’d never be a complete man again. Never have a complete life. Military duty had been the only time he’d ever really belonged somewhere, and losing that had hit him hard.
They’d stepped him down off the pain meds and anti-depressants in the hospital, but he’d only lasted a few weeks on his own. It had been easy enough to find the same stuff, better even, on the street.
When Ben had come to his apartment in Houston to offer him a job, a purpose, he’d been higher than a kite. Ben had noticed that Charlie was using, of course, and Charlie had concocted a story about mistakenly mixing up his prescriptions, which Ben had accepted easily enough.
Charlie had always tried to live up to his friend’s standards, to be like him, but he had never quite made it. He loved Ben, and he resented him. Everything always seemed to come so easily for Ben Callahan, but this was one time when maybe Charlie could come out on top for a change.
Charlie had assured him the drugs were prescription and that he would be off them soon. It was the last lie he’d told his best friend until now.
Charlie had stopped taking the drugs as soon as he’d stepped foot into the Lucky Break, knowing Ben would kick him right back out the door if he suspected he had a habit. So he’d worked hard to put it all behind him. Prove himself.
And then there was Lisa. He’d thought she was his reward for fighting his way back, for doing the right thing.
Until Joe had come around a few weeks back. Joe was Charlie’s former street supplier. Charlie had told him to get lost until Joe arrived at the house, beaten pretty badly. The men who were after Ben had discovered Charlie’s past, and used Joe to make contact. They threatened to tell Li
sa about his drug habit, and, perhaps, hurt her—or the kids—if Charlie didn’t find a way to make Ben refuse to testify. Or he could kill Ben—they didn’t care which. They’d laughed at him, saying that at least they’d given him a choice. Apparently though, Charlie wasn’t moving fast enough, and they were getting antsy. It was why they’d sent the goon to the bar and to Lisa’s house—to remind him.
But Charlie’s hands were tied. He knew there was no way to get Ben not to testify. He wasn’t a guy who would stand down.
Charlie certainly didn’t intend to kill him, either.
Killing himself had crossed his mind, but that wouldn’t stop these guys from coming after Ben or Lisa. He couldn’t stand to think of losing everything he had. Ben would want nothing to do with him, and neither would Lisa, once they found out. Time was getting short. It was only a couple of weeks until the trial, and Charlie’s time was running out. The guy who’d come to the bar had made that clear.
He would find a way out of it, he thought, taking a second glance at the lights in Ben’s windows before opening the door to the bar, hoping Lisa was almost done with her weekend prep.
If he could find a way to get Ben to change his mind, and no one would get hurt, then he could be the hero for a change, and he could ask Lisa to marry him. No one would be the wiser, but Charlie would know he’d saved them.
He just had to figure out how. Joining Lisa near the door, he caught her smile and knew he would find a way out of this that would keep them all safe.
He had to.
“WOW, IT’S PACKED,” JOANNA said as she found a spot on the side of the unpaved road that led to the main house of the Double C Ranch. The place was named for Ben’s grandfather, Cash Callahan. Today, it was the site of Ben’s father’s birthday party. “I guess Ben wasn’t kidding when he said this wasn’t a small family gathering.”
Hank and Rachel Callahan—Ben’s parents—were the second generation to work this ranch, Joanna knew from the profile report she’d memorized, and Ben was now the third.
Straight to the Heart Page 9
