The Keeper

by Rhonda Nelson

  “Are you all right?” Jack asked, a concerned line between his brows. “I’ll replace your butter,” he said. “I’ll call Audwin right now and go get it if you’d like.”

  Mariette blinked, trying to pull her thoughts together. “That’s all right,” she said. “If you don’t mind if I work for a little while, I’ll go ahead and get everything ready for tomorrow.” That way she could save a portion of it anyway.

  Jack swore. “Aren’t you tired?” he asked. “You’ve been up since three and I was under the impression that you hadn’t slept very well.”

  That was true, she’d admit. After their marathon kissing session in the kitchen she’d been even more wound up than she’d been before she’d gone in there. His fault, she thought, heaving a fatalistic sigh. She imagined lots of things in the near future were going to be his fault. She smiled anyway and hopped down from the chair.

  “That’s true,” she said. “But I find myself strangely energized.”

  His lips slid into a slow grin. “Really? Sex energizes you?” He shook his head. “Could you be any more perfect?”

  “No,” Mariette quipped. She dipped a finger in the warm butter and sucked it off her finger, her eyes widening appreciatively. “That’s good stuff. Everything is better with butter.”

  She looked over at Jack and his mouth had gone a bit slack. He blinked. Swallowed. “I’m sorry. Could you do that again?”

  She laughed. “Men are so visual,” she said.

  “I know,” he told her with a pointed look. “That’s why I asked you to do it again.”

  She pulled a bowl from the rack above her head and started measuring out ingredients. “Don’t you have anything to do?” she asked. “A file you should be looking over or something?”

  He hopped up on another counter, crossed his arms over his chest and studied her. “No. I know who our culprit is,” he said. “I’ve just got to try to convince him to come clean before anything happens to him.”

  “Why do you have to wait?” Mariette asked. She dumped a pound of sugar into the bowl. “You know who’s harassing him. Go whack ’em or whatever.”

  He chuckled softly under his breath. “Whack ’em? I’m not a mob boss, Mariette.”

  She measured the butter and dumped it the bowl, then shoved it under the mixer. “I know that, smart-ass. I just meant do to them what you’ve already told him you’d do. Make them leave him alone. Once you’ve done that, then he’ll trust you and he won’t have any reason to continue doing whatever it is he’s doing.”

  Jack was thoughtful for a moment. “You know,” he said after a minute, “that’s a good idea.”

  She shot him a droll smile. “Occasionally, I have them.”

  He grinned. “I didn’t mean it like that. Making Uncle Mackie and his muscle back off of Bobby Ray would certainly take the pressure off, that’s for sure.” He winced. “I don’t know what he’s taken from Audwin, but that’s probably not going to be anything I can fix.”

  Mariette added eggs and vanilla into the bowl. “Like me, Audwin has a soft spot for Bobby Ray. Whatever it is that he’s done, I think Audwin would ultimately forgive him.”

  Jack paused, snuck one of Livvie’s Specials and chewed thoughtfully. “I think you’re probably right. But Bobby Ray isn’t used to being given any grace. Convincing him to tell the truth isn’t going to be easy.”

  Mariette started measuring the flour in. “If anyone can do it, I’m sure you can.”

  He was quiet for so long she turned to look at him. His expression was strange, a mix between wondering and haunted.

  Mariette frowned. “Did I say something wrong?” she asked.

  He chuckled, cleared his throat. “No,” he said. “You said something so right it took me off guard, that’s all.”

  Mariette smiled tentatively. “I have no idea what you mean by that,” she said.

  “Good,” he quipped, passing a hand over his face. “Because I don’t understand it, either.”

  “You seem to be adjusting well,” she remarked, hoping that she wasn’t crossing some invisible booby-trapped line that was going to blow up in her face.

  “To what?”

  “Being a civilian,” she said. She continued to work, purposely didn’t look at him.

  “I suppose,” he said, casting her a speculative look that made her unaccountably nervous. “What all has Charlie told you?”

  Mariette darted him a look. “What makes you think she’s told me anything?”

  “Please,” he said, as though she’d insulted him. “You’ve met my sister. She’s bossy, opinionated and has no brain-to-mouth filter.” A dry bark of laughter erupted from his throat. “She’s filled your ears full, hasn’t she?”

  Damn, she should have kept her mouth shut. She had no desire to start a war between brother and sister. “She’s sung your praises,” she said. “If that’s what you mean by filling my ears full.”

  He swore. “She told you about Baghdad, didn’t she? Come clean, Mariette. What else did she say?”

  “She said that you were valedictorian of your class, the star quarterback for your high school football team and that girls threw their panties at you when you walked down Main Street.”

  He guffawed, filched another cookie. “Bullshit.”

  “Well, I might have interpreted that last part based on her ‘town golden boy’ comment, but otherwise it’s all true.” She withdrew a cupcake pan and started popping liners into the cups. “She adores you, you know. She thinks the sun rises and sets on you.”

  Still smiling, he got up and poured himself a glass of milk. “I know she loves me,” he said. “And I love her, too. We’ve always been close.”

  Mariette sighed. “I can tell,” she said. “I’m envious.”

  He paused. “I guess family was a little thin for you, wasn’t it?”

  “Just me, my mother and my aunt. My grandparents died when I was three—car accident. My aunt was so busy taking care of me and my mother that she never married or had children of her own. She’s got a boyfriend now,” she said, shooting him a smile. “It’s cute. They play bingo together and are in the drama club in their retirement village.”

  “That sounds nice.”

  “I miss her,” Mariette said and could hear the wistfulness in her own voice. “I go down for the holidays, usually.”

  “What part of Florida?”

  “Tampa.”

  “I’ve always heard that’s a nice area.”

  “It is. I love the ocean. Breathing it in, tasting the salt in the air.”

  “I haven’t been in years,” Jack said, a touch of disbelief in his voice.

  Mariette looked up. “Why not?”

  Another smile. “No time,” he said. He grimaced. “War is hell.”

  She pulled a cup from the rack and started dipping the batter up. “I guess your family would have objected to you coming to the States and going to the beach instead of home.”

  “Er, yes,” he said. “That would have gone over like a lead balloon.”

  “You’ve got time now,” she pointed out.

  “I do, don’t I?”

  She shot him another look. “Yes, you do. Being home is going to have its perks.”

  His gaze drifted over her face, lingered on her lips. “I’ve found one already.”

  Holy hell, Mariette thought. That look was hot enough to melt that butter all over again. She released a shuddering breath and made herself turn back to the task at hand. She felt his heat before he touched her and it was all she could do not to lean back and sink into him. And then she wondered what the hell was wrong with her. Why couldn’t she lean back and sink into him? He lifted the hair off her neck and pressed a kiss to her nape.

  “I
love the way you smell, Mariette. It drives me crazy.”

  She shivered, relaxed more fully against him.

  He placed another kiss just behind her ear, his breath fanning against her, then reached around and filled his hands with her breasts, massaged them through the shirt, tweaking her aching nipples. She pressed her rear end against him, arching up and felt him harden, his sex riding high against her rump.

  She went boneless, her head becoming too heavy for her neck. “Jack, I—”

  He shushed her, dipped a finger into the butter and put it to her mouth. “Suck it, Mariette,” he whispered. “I want to feel your lips around me.”

  Oh, sweet hell.

  She opened for him, taking his finger into her mouth.

  He groaned into her ear, pressed against her. “Damn, woman, you’re killing me.”

  She slid her tongue along the bottom of his finger, mimicking what she’d do to another part of him. “You asked me to,” she said.

  He chuckled softly and she turned her head, and found his mouth. The kiss was slow and deep, deliberate and thorough and the need she was certain was never going to leave her boiled up inside so quickly that she wondered if something was wrong with her internal thermometer. It couldn’t be good for her to be this hot.

  He sucked at her tongue, slid his big hands beneath her nightshirt and palmed her breasts once more. She rubbed her rump against him again, arched like a cat, then turned around, twined her arms around his neck and jumped up, wrapping her legs around his waist.

  “Take me over there,” she said, indicating the small love seat against the wall. “And then just take me.”

  AND THEN JUST TAKE ME…

  God help him, she was going to be the death of him, Jack thought as he did as she asked. He strode over to the little sofa and tumbled her onto her back.

  “Oh, no,” she said. “Like this.” She nudged him into a sitting position and then straddled him. She dragged her shirt over her head, revealing pert, puckered breasts that begged for his kiss and a pair of panties that were so small they might as well be nonexistent.

  He slid his hands over her back, relishing the feel of her and pulled a rosy bud into his mouth, suckling her deeply. She squirmed on top of him, then reached down and freed his shaft from his pajama bottoms and positioned it at her entrance. She slid her wet folds against him in a move so provocative, so bold and so damned wonderful he almost came right then. His eyes widened.

  “Mariette, I don’t have a condom down here.”

  “Neither do I,” she said. “But I’m clean and protected. You?”

  “Clean, yes.”

  “Works for me.” She lifted her hips and slowly anchored herself on top of him, her tight, moist heat closing deliciously around him. She hissed low and slow, her eyes fluttering shut as though he felt too good, as though she needed him as much as he needed her.

  She lifted again, sank again. Her ass was ripe and wonderful and he slid his hands over it possessively, fed at her breasts while she rode him. It was slow at first, deliberate and purposeful. But the harder he sucked on her, the harder she rode him and before long her hips were moving faster than he could suck. He squeezed her backside and bucked beneath her.

  Her fingers scored his chest as she writhed on top of him, dark hair spilling over her shoulders, brushing her breasts, a thatch of equally dark curls at the apex of her thighs. The gentle flare of her hips, the concave belly, the firm thighs…

  She was a goddess, a dream, a present he didn’t even know he wanted.

  And when she’d blithely told him that if anyone could convince Bobby Ray to do the right thing, then it would be him… Jack didn’t know what had happened or why her vote of confidence had meant so much.

  But it had.

  She didn’t doubt him. Believed in him.

  He knew that his family still believed in him. Hell, even his fellow soldiers had after the accident. Any one of them would have gone out with him again. But until that moment Jack hadn’t realized that he hadn’t truly trusted himself, hadn’t fully believed that he was still the same man. Still strong, still capable.

  Still him.

  Until she’d believed in him.

  She swore and rode him harder, her tight little body closing around him. Her breath came in frantic little puffs, her face flushed pink. She sank her teeth into her bottom lip and then arched back and let go a sound that was so personal, so primal and so uninhibited, it set him off like a Roman candle. The release blasted from the back of his loins, shot through the heart of his dick and spilled into her.

  He quaked with the strength of it. Shook.

  It was the single most magnificent sensation of his life.

  The world receded, time slowed to a crawl and even though he could hear his heart racing in his chest, even that seemed suddenly sluggish.

  Jack Martin had been stealing kisses since kindergarten, making it to third base in junior high and had been regularly hitting it out of the park, so to speak, since his freshman year of high school.

  He had never, not once, had unprotected sex.

  His seed had never seen the inside of a woman.

  Until now.

  He wanted to beat his chest and roar, wanted to scoop her up, haul her upstairs and do it all over again. He wanted to brand her somehow, let the world know that she was his and only his.

  She framed his face with her hands, slid her fingers reverently along his jaw. Her gaze was tender and replete and rife with affection and something else…something more significant.

  “You’ve ruined me for other men,” she said, releasing a fatalistic sigh. She dropped her forehead against his. “I hope you’re happy.”

  And he was.

  13

  MARIETTE WATCHED DILLON and Livvie from the doorway of the kitchen and felt a lump inexplicably swell in her throat. Both of their heads were bent low, almost touching, as Dillon hooked Livvie up with the promised ink. They were so sweet, so pure and so completely innocent it made her chest ache with joy.

  She cast a glance at Charlie, who looked back at her with tears in her eyes. She laughed quietly and fanned her face. “I’m an emotional wreck,” she said. “Bloody hormones.”

  Livvie laughed at something Dillon said and the boy leaned back in his chair, his chest puffed out, practically preening. He adored Livvie and the sentiment was wholly reciprocated.

  Because she suspected she might be on to something like that herself—dare she even hope?—she knew her emotions were riding high on the surface.

  And she didn’t have any pregnancy hormones to blame, either.

  She just had a hot former Army Ranger spending the night with her, bellying up to her back, making her middle go warm and squishy and her heart melt like a popsicle on the Fourth of July.

  “What happened to all the butter?” Maggie wanted to know.

  Mariette blushed, remembering the bit she’d licked off Jack’s finger. She’d never look at butter the same, that was for damned sure.

  “There was a problem with it,” Mariette said evasively, unable to look anyone in the eye, most definitely Charlie who would know that something was up.

  She was too perceptive by half, Mariette thought. And, while she didn’t expect Charlie to be too broken up over the fact that Mariette had been sleeping—in the literal sense, as well—with her brother, it was nevertheless a conversation she didn’t want to have.

  “I need a bit more for the bread,” Maggie told her. “Just to brush on the tops before I put the loaves in the oven.”

  “All right,” Mariette told her. “I’ll run upstairs and get some from my fridge.”

  She’d called Audwin this morning and told him she was going to need a delivery this afternoon and he’d promised to send Bobby
Ray over later in the day. He’d apologized to Mariette—as though it were somehow his fault—and told her not to hesitate to contact him if she needed him. Dear man. He seemed so lost without Martha. No doubt Bobby Ray had been good company for him.

  Mariette snagged all that she had and hurried back downstairs, then handed it over to Maggie. “This should tide us over until Bobby Ray comes by,” she said.

  Mariette had just made it to the door when Maggie made a disgusted harrumph. “There’s something in this,” she said.

  Mariette whirled around, her heart pounding. “What?” She rushed forward and took the block of butter from Maggie’s hands.

  “Give me a knife, would you?” she asked.

  Maggie handed it over and Mariette carefully cut away the part that housed the object. She set the rest of the block aside and worked on clawing away the remaining butter until she’d managed to see well enough to know what she had.

  “A coin,” Maggie said, surprised. “It looks like an old one, too.” Her gaze met Mariette’s. “Guess we know what the Butter Bandit was after.”

  Yes, she thought. They certainly did. She hollered for Charlie and snagged the phone to call Jack.

  JACK HAD SPENT THE BETTER part of the day trying to find Uncle Mackie’s goons, but had finally lucked out and found Uncle Mackie himself.

  Behind a Porta-Potty, getting blown by a scrawny woman with bad skin.

  “Leave,” he told her. She scrambled up and darted away.

  His sister had given him all the ammunition he needed on Uncle Mackie to bring the fat bastard to heel. Mackie was tall, but soft, with a beer belly, buckteeth—the few that he had, anyway—and mean, shrewd eyes.

  It was almost better that he wasn’t stupid, Jack thought. Perhaps he’d be smart enough to be scared.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he blustered, stowing his limp dick.

  “Are you Mackie?” Jack asked. He knew he was, of course, but the man was so fond of the Uncle moniker, Jack knew he’d correct him.

  “It’s Uncle Mackie,” he said.