by D. D. Ayres
Scott sat in the silent darkness and finished a third and then the fourth beer.
He felt bruised deep down in the most tender parts of himself. And he knew he didn’t hurt as much as she had. He wanted her back but he needed to face facts. She didn’t love him. She was over him. And he couldn’t promise her, even if she’d listen, that he wouldn’t make any more mistakes with her.
But the need inside him didn’t diminish with these thoughts. That deep-rooted need for her wasn’t rational or to be reasoned with. That need made him wonder how much longer he could go on without showing her in a very real and physical way just exactly how he still felt about her.
Whoever said love conquers all didn’t know shit.
* * *
Cole lay awake wondering why she hadn’t just kept her mouth shut and drunk another beer. She had behaved like a bitch. And she really didn’t mean any of it. Not anymore. They had hurt one another, badly. She understood that now. She wanted only to comfort him, and herself, and she didn’t know how.
She was afraid. It was dangerous, what she was thinking. Dangerous to her pride, and her sanity. She wasn’t like some of her friends who could just contact an old boyfriend for a quick booty call. If she got in Scott’s pants, she was going to want to stay there, and then return on a regular basis. And if he didn’t want that, too, she’d die inside.
She knew what it was like to be made love to by him. Her body was aching even now with the need to be touched by him. And there he was, just on the other side of the door, closer than he’d been since she left him or ever would be again. All she had to do was open that door. He wouldn’t make her beg. She’d seen the need in his face. He would welcome her. It was real. He felt it, too.
Ego be damned! She needed him, needed him deep inside her, moving with that body-slamming rhythmic push-pull so uniquely his own that made her cry out in ecstasy.
She sat up and tossed off the sheet.
Once upon a time she knew just what to do to bring him to the brink, so close that he would beg for it in his deep voice made ragged by lust. It had been so long. Too long.
She opened her door.
The sounds of deep sleep rumbled through the dark. She moved to the front screen door and looked out.
He was still stretched out on the porch where she’d left him. He’d removed his shirt and bundled it under his dark head to make a pillow. His lean muscular torso gleamed in the moonlight. He could have been a toppled Greek statue, if statues wore jeans. Those jeans gaped at his waist, leaving enough space between them and his bare skin for a hand to slide in. She knew that because she’d done it often enough in the past.
Cole sucked in a careful breath and wrapped her arms about her middle as goose bumps pebbled her arms. She wasn’t cold. She felt her hunger for him rising. This time she let herself feel it and many other things for a change.
His face was turned away so that moonlight played along the lobe of his ear and the slope of his cheek, and brought into relief the corded muscles of his neck. With his hair ruffled and eyes closed she could almost see the little boy he had once been.
She’d been a little shocked the first time she had watched him sleeping. They had been together for weeks but it was their first time to spend the entire night together. It stunned her to realize how innocent and vulnerable he seemed with his eyes closed. The man so vividly alive no person passed him without feeling it had let down his guard with her. He was the protector, a criminal’s worst nightmare, the first and last defense. But not then, and not now.
She pushed open the screen and came forward on bare feet to squat down beside him. She wanted to touch him but didn’t dare. Fascinated by every breath that caused his chest to rise and fall, she fell in love all over again with every separate bit of him, the hard places and the softer smooth ones. They had been playing games for days. Finally, he was real and mortal to her again. This was the man she once loved.
She also saw the shadow of sadness in the furrow of his brow. He never talked about that. Things she could only guess at, yet had once tried to protect him from.
A pang of regret shot through her. She had failed him. And now it was too late.
Cole returned to her room but didn’t go back to bed. The restlessness that had driven her to the brink of temptation could not be put back in the box so easily.
She moved to the window of her room, propped an arm on the jamb, and rested her head against it. She must be nuts. Nothing had changed since Scott came back into her life. Nothing had been said to change one unalterable fact.
Cole lifted her head to stare out across the field to where night escaped into the impregnable black of the forest. He had simply let her go.
Most divorces were messy. She’d seen it up close when her parents uncoupled when she was ten. There were fights and accusations, digressions, petty ugliness, strategies large and small. All done to wound the partner in the break. At the time, she had thought the fighting and screaming and ugliness was the absolute worst way for a marriage to end. Now she knew otherwise. Silence was worse.
Scott hadn’t bothered to fight with, or for her.
That’s what hurt the most, what she hadn’t thought she could forgive. She might have been the one who walked out, but he’d let her go. Because it was what he’d wanted.
The reason for walking out had dimmed after two years. But the knowledge that he wanted out had not.
That’s why she hadn’t tried to go back, couldn’t offer a reconciliation. After everything else, she couldn’t bear to hear him tell her face-to-face why and when their marriage had disintegrated to the point he no longer wanted her.
That’s what made the desire tugging at her now so hard to deal with. They might want each other again, for now, but there would come an after. And if she gave in to the reckless raw need raging through her and then he walked away? It might just stop her heart.
Cole wiped a tear from her chin, surprised to find it there. She wasn’t a crier. She never cried. So whatever was leaking out of her didn’t have her permission. And neither was she a quitter. She’d chosen to do this. She was just going to have to find a way. But how?
She thought about the weeks ahead, being forced to be constantly in Scott’s company. Look but don’t touch was already stretching her nerves to the limit. Even her anger was taking more and more effort to keep up.
She was tired of fighting. Tired of being on guard. This wasn’t going to work if she didn’t figure out a way to get past this constant aching need for him.
Hugo nudged his big head under her hand. She turned toward him. Blacker than the darkness, only his eyes gave away his presence.
“Love you, too.” But sometimes, like tonight, it wasn’t enough.
CHAPTER NINE
“That’s it. This is impossible. I can’t do this anymore.”
Cole wheeled away from the table of people who had been coaching Scott and her on their new undercover roles for the past three days.
Scott reached out and grabbed her wrist as she passed his chair. “Wait up, Nikki.”
Cole swung around on him. “My name’s Noel. Remember? Noel Jenkins. God! Even you. Total fail.” She jerked her arm free and stalked away.
Her head ached and her chest felt too tight. If she didn’t get away from Scott and the two DEA agents who had been sent from Texas to prep them for going undercover she would explode from shame and anger.
Head down, she hurled herself forward out the doors of the Harmonie Kennel classroom complex and into the late afternoon where the sky was turning golden along the rim of the Shenandoah Mountains to the west.
Three days. Three days of prep and she couldn’t even remember her own alias: Noel Jenkins.
They had said choose something close to her real name because it would be easier to remember.
They said think of herself as being in a play. Real time, live, but not only on a stage.
They said be spontaneous, the character was hers to create. Elementary school children
playacted every day. It came naturally to most people. Not to her.
“Unnatural acts. That’s what they should call this mission.”
Cole wiped the sweat trickling down her forehead with the heel of her hand. It wasn’t as if she wasn’t giving it everything. It was all she thought about when she wasn’t in the ring working Hugo. But this was like trying to learn Greek from a Dutchman.
She was too self-conscious to let go and “inhabit the role” as her high school drama teacher would have said. Maybe if she’d been dealing with total strangers she could have pulled it off. But she was also dealing with Scott.
Sam Lott not Scott Lucca. Noel Jenkins not Nicole Jamieson. Not hard to remember. Except that keeping her volatile feelings under wraps around Scott was keeping her from being able to pretend anything else when he was being Sam.
If one more person said, “Loosen up and show us how Noel feels about Sam,” she was going to lose it. No, make that, had lost it. Unprofessional or not, she was done.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, there was a worse disaster looking to spoil their plans. Hugo had decided to balk at the Weave Poles obstacle.
The ability to weave in and out of a set of poles spaced fourteen inches apart usually took a dog weeks to learn. Like a skier learning the zigzag of a slalom race, speed and close maneuvering were the key. But Hugo didn’t like the idea of moving back and forth. After three weaves, he was done. Trouble was, there were always ten to twelve poles in the competition. And so that was that. Deal off.
She could not do this. Absolutely could not. That’s what she was going to tell them. But first she needed to get away from here to cool off.
Cole glanced around, surprised to find herself in the parking lot near the truck she had been loaned by the DEA. First law of undercover, separate yourself from your personal life. She reached for her keys but they weren’t in her pocket.
“Damn!” She kicked the front tire with her boot.
“That’s a lot of temper.”
Cole looked up, prepared to do battle with Scott.
“Don’t snarl at me, little lady. I’m just the messenger.” It was DEA agent Jeff Richards, one of their pair of tutors. He must have followed her.
She bit back the angry words that had rushed to the tip of her tongue. She’d made enough of a fool of herself. She stiffened into a professional pose. “Sorry, sir.”
“No need to be professional out here. I don’t see any cops, do you?”
Cole wilted. Right. She was supposed to be playing at not being a cop. Epic fail.
Richards leaned against the front fender of her truck and pulled out a cigar. “I’m not supposed to have this. My wife thinks I’m into vaping these days. But once in a while, when I’m away from home, I cheat. It’s okay because she knows I do it, but we pretend she doesn’t so I can have my guilty pleasure.”
He stacked one heavy scarred cowboy boot over the other as he reached for a lighter. He was tall and broad. With his shirtsleeves pushed up to reveal burly forearms bristling with the same red-gold hair that sprouted in a buzz cut from his scalp, he looked more like a day laborer than a government agent. That didn’t explain why he was out here.
Cole bit the inside of her lip to control her emotions as she waited for him to finish lighting his cigar. She expected him to lay into her about her performance. She had it coming. He might even be about to fire her. Not that she’d give him the chance. She was going to quit.
He exhaled a perfect doughnut ring of smoke before he spoke. “You know what your problem is?”
“I have a problem? How about that. I had no idea.” Okay, she couldn’t control the snark.
He chuckled. “I’m going to tell you, anyway. The trouble is you see Scott when you’re supposed to be dealing with Sam.”
Cole opened her mouth to shut him down but his words echoed in her head. You’re supposed to be dealing with Sam.
“You got to buy into the story about Noel and Sam. They’re in love. Hot sweaty heat for each other. Can’t keep their hands off each other. That’s why he’s following her around like a puppy on a leash. The man’s got it bad. You’re in charge, pretty lady. So cowgirl up.”
She stared at him, a dozen thoughts whipping through her mind. But in the end, there was only one. “I don’t know how.”
“That’s because you’ve been trying to reason your way to Noel. A good cover is all about feeling. That means knowing deep inside you that Noel’s actually a part of you.”
Cole looked down and to the right as something flickered to life in the back of her mind. Part of me. That was the trouble. Nothing felt like part of her anymore, except the ache of being in the same room as Scott and doing nothing about it.
Richards blew out another ring and watched it float away. “You’ve just graduated vet school and are waiting to see if you passed your exams so you can get a license to practice. Meanwhile you’ve decided to try your hand in ring competition.”
She nodded. “That’s my cover story.”
“Doesn’t that strike you as atypical behavior? Here you are an animal doc, spent all those years on schooling, but suddenly you’re just kicking back and doing nothing. Why would you do that?”
“Because she’s—I’m dog tired of school. I’ve sacrificed everything for so long, worked so hard. I just want to have a little fun.”
He nodded. “Makes sense. I suspect there’s a whole other personality inside Noel Jenkins that hasn’t been let loose in a while. Probably even a wild streak. Otherwise, how could you explain Sam’s interest?”
Cole blushed as he winked at her.
“He’s a hellion, that Sam. Yet, he’s sniffing at your heels. You got something that man wants bad, sweetheart. Figure out what it is, and you’ll do just fine.”
He pushed off her vehicle and bent to carefully break off the ash of his cigar against the road gravel. When he was satisfied the tobacco was out, he stuck the remainder of the cigar in his pocket. “I don’t have to smoke it all to enjoy the experience. This way, I save a bit of fun for later.”
He reached into his pants pocket and pulled out several keys. When he had unhooked one, he looked her up and down, from her tee to her jeans to her patrol boots. “You got a license to ride?”
Cole gazed in amazement at the motorcycle key he held out to her. “If I say I know how to ride?”
He grinned. “Close enough.” But as she reached for the key he snatched it back. “Only one rule. Don’t scuff the chrome.” He pointed out his motorcycle before handing her the key. “Helmet’s hanging on the back and there’s a jacket in the saddlebag. Be back before dark.”
He didn’t even look back once to see what she was going to do.
Cole laughed when she had swung a leg over Agent Richards’s bike. It was big, a little bigger than anything she had driven before. It had been years since she even straddled a motorcycle. When they were married, Scott seldom let her drive his bike. Most often she was the unhappy and totally intimidated chick on the back.
“But not Noel,” she whispered under her breath. And her boyfriend Sam would be cool with her borrowing his bike.
She tightened the strap of her helmet and zipped up the too-large leather jacket she’d pulled from the saddle back. Finally, she turned the key in the ignition. The engine thrummed to life between her legs. Yes! Suddenly, she felt the possibility of having fun. The worries and concerns of Nicole Jamieson might even take a backseat for a while. She was Noel Jenkins, and Noel was a bit of a badass.
Harmonie Kennels was located in the hills of Shenandoah National Park. Traffic was sparse on the back roads that led in and out of the compound. Even so, concentration was in order. Once out on the empty two-lane blacktop, Noel let out the throttle a little more.
Riding a bike was about confidence. Noel had confidence for days. Noel rode with Sam regularly. They loved the open road and being together.
Sam was ex-military and now manager of a motorcycle shop in New Jersey. They’d met six months ago at
a mutual friend’s wedding in Baltimore. She had learned to ride to be with him. In turn, he was supporting her desire to compete in Agility competitions. They share a love of dogs, and the wicked urge to keep their freedom. Oh, and a wild desire for one another that ran so hot that people sometimes felt closed out in their company.
Cole’s body quivered under the vibrations of the engine locked between her thighs. Yes, Sam would be hot and heavy and thumping just like this. When she got home to him.
A small smile began.
After that, Noel stopped thinking and just concentrated on the ride as the gorgeous scenery of Virginia flew past her in a hundred shades of forest green and late-afternoon blue-gold sky.
* * *
Scott began to worry when Cole didn’t show up for dinner. No one seemed to know where she was. No one but he seemed particularly worried. She’d been very angry when she ran out on the meeting. He checked his watch. No, his empty wrist. He hadn’t been able to find his watch this morning. He pulled out his cell phone to get the time.
Cole had been gone four hours. She hadn’t taken Hugo or her cruiser. How far could she have gone on foot?
For the fourth time in an hour he stepped out onto the porch of the bunkhouse that he and Cole now shared. It was almost dark, the sky streaked by deep purple fingers that seemed to point to where stars twinkled into view. That air was still and warm. Mosquito weather.
Hugo padded out onto the porch beside him and stared off into the distance.
Scott looked down. At least they had come to some sort of truce in the past couple of days. “Where the hell is your owner?”
He was answered by a brusque bark that sounded remarkably like a doggy imitation of his own gruff tone.
Izzy lifted her head from her sprawl on the porch. The trio had formed an uneasy truce when Cole hadn’t returned in time to feed Hugo.
Irritation whipped through Scott. If this was her way of forcing him to deal with her K-9 at least she could have warned him.
He glanced at his wrist. “Where the hell is my watch?”
