Divorced, Desperate and Deceived

by Christie Craig

  She reached behind him to set the bottle of rubbing alcohol on the table. Her stretch brought soft feminine flesh within inches of his mouth. He entertained the idea of pressing his lips to that naked cleavage, but she pulled back and the tiniest bit of willpower had him rethinking the urge.

  He opened his mouth to tell her to go. He really needed to tell her to go before he forgot that come next week he’d be dead to her. Gone. It would be too late. But she reached out and touched him: a gentle finger to his chin, lifting his face. He hadn’t been touched like that in a long time, and it made his chest ache.

  “Does it hurt?” She smoothed the tips of her fingers over his jaw, and he imagined her touching other places similarly.

  “Like hell.” But he wasn’t talking about his face. He’d gone hard the moment he first laid eyes on her.

  “I’m so sorry.” She pressed the damp cloth she carried to his swollen lip.

  He reached up and held a finger to her mouth. Her lips were so soft, it made his body throb harder. He imagined they would taste sweet, like peaches or raspberries. “Don’t,” he whispered.

  She jerked back, as if afraid she’d hurt him. “Don’t what?”

  “Don’t apologize. This wasn’t your fault.”

  She started again with the washcloth, her touch so gentle that he remembered seeing her doctoring her son’s knee after he’d fallen off his bike. Luke remembered that day so clearly because it had contained an epiphany: He could never, ever forgive his ex-wife. But now wasn’t the time to go down that dark alley.

  “If I hadn’t gone out there to talk to you, none of this would have happened,” she remarked.

  He couldn’t argue with that, but: “They were jerks. Needed to be taught a lesson.”

  “Maybe,” she agreed. “But you didn’t have to be the one to teach them.”

  If it got me this close to you, it was worth it, he didn’t say.

  Her gaze locked with his. “You’re a good guy, Stan Bradley.”

  He wasn’t sure if she said those words to him or herself, but Luke answered. “Don’t put me on pedestal, Kathy. It will be hell falling off.” He’d made his share of mistakes. And right now, letting her stay was likely among them.

  She moved her washcloth to the corner of his eye. “Can I ask you a question?”

  He stared up at her through his lashes. “Is it personal?”

  “Yes.” A smile whispered across her lips.

  Her tone sounded so coy that he smiled. Pain reminded him of his swollen lip, but he ignored it and focused on the look in her eyes. “Good,” he said. And just like that, they were back at the comfortable niche their relationship fit into: teasing, flirting. He loved that place, and, damn, he would have loved to take it a few steps further.

  “Actually,” she clarified, “I have several questions.”

  “Shoot,” he said.

  She leaned back and considered him. “The perfect segue into one of my questions.” She folded three fingers back and made a pretend gun, then took a deep breath. “But I’ll start with this one: Why did you tell me I’d have to find someone else to fix my leaky pipe?”

  He stared at her hand. Shit, Luke realized. His gun was under the bathroom sink. “I thought it was the faucet,” he replied, remembering their telephone conversation, remembering how hard it was to suggest finding someone else. That he was the wrong guy. Something he should be saying right now but couldn’t.

  “Faucet, pipe—doesn’t matter,” she said. “Why didn’t you want…my business? Or is it my company you didn’t want? I guess what I’m asking is…if you’re not…interested anymore? And if there’s a reason that you stopped being interested.”

  She reached again toward the table, bringing her soft cleavage a breath away from his face. When she pulled back, she had the bottle of alcohol in her hands. She unscrewed the top and doused the cloth. A stinging medicinal smell filled his nose, while his eyes saw only her breasts.

  “Maybe I just got tired of being told no.” The words slipped out before he could stop them.

  He forced himself to look at her face. She nipped at her bottom lip with her straight white teeth and said, “This might sting.” Then, after shifting to set the bottle back on the table, she touched the cloth to the side of his brow. It did sting.

  When he flinched, she leaned in and blew softly on the hurt. The feel of her warm breath brought a dozen or so erotic images to his mind: her mouth in other places doing wonderful things to his body, while he returned the pleasure. He’d never been selfish when it came to sex.

  “Maybe you shouldn’t have given up so soon.” Her words were merely a whisper, but the invitation rang loud and clear. And it wasn’t an invitation he could refuse.

  He reached up, curled his hand behind her neck and brought her face to his. But before he let himself take it further he asked, “So if I kissed you right now, you wouldn’t go Texan on me and freak out?”

  “Haven’t I told you? I’m originally from Alabama.”

  She didn’t pull away, so he kissed her, tasted her for the first time. Just a little taste, he told himself, something to take with him. To remember her. But the moment his mouth touched hers, he knew he’d screwed up Royally with a capital R. Because a little taste of Kathy wasn’t going to be enough.

  He slipped his tongue between her lips, knocked the lima beans from his lap and pulled her soft behind into place. The sweet weight of her backside pressed against his hard-on, and he forgot all the reasons he shouldn’t do this. He just let himself enjoy what he’d wanted for too damn long.

  Chapter Three

  Stan tasted so good. Like dark chocolate with a touch of mint. Even better than he smelled.

  Kathy didn’t hesitate when he pulled her onto his lap. Didn’t hesitate to open her mouth to allow his tongue inside. Didn’t hesitate to move her tongue against his. All her senses seemed heightened.

  Taste.

  Smell.

  Touch.

  Especially touch, both on the receiving and the giving ends. She brushed her hand across his stomach and shifted on his lap, and the hardness between his legs told her she wasn’t alone in that wonderful place called passion. A place she had missed. A place she had longed to visit for a very long time.

  The ache between her thighs intensified and before she realized it, she pressed herself harder against him. The wanton movement almost brought her out of the moment. Wanton wasn’t her normal mode of operation. She started to move away, but he pulled her even closer, held her extra tight and then released only to pull her close again. The gentle back and forth fueled the fire burning inside her—the heat burning hottest between her thighs. Maybe she could get used to wanton.

  She threaded her fingers through his dark hair, then moved down to touch his bare chest again. She felt the tiny nubs of his nipples, flicked them lightly with her nails, stroked the hardness of his muscled chest and smoothed her palm over the tightness of his abs. Oh, goodness, she had forgotten how good it was to touch and to be touched in return!

  His lips moved from her mouth to her neck, suckling, nipping and lowering until his mouth was on the tops of her breasts. Her nipples tightened, and she leaned her head back, allowing him room to do his magic.

  His hand slid around her back, slipped under her tank top, and he expertly released the hook of her bra with a gentle twist of his fingers. Her breasts fell forward with the bra’s release, and his face moved lower into the swells of flesh. The hand against her back moved to her waist, slipped between their bodies and underneath the loose bra to cup her right breast. He caught her taut nipple between his fingers and teased it into an even tighter bud. The touch, not too rough, not too gentle, brought a moan from her lips and had her shifting her hips to assuage the ache between her legs.

  She felt the bra being slipped from her shoulders and then the satin material sliding across her abdomen. He gently pulled it from under her shirt and let it fall to the floor. Somewhere deep in the cortex of her brain she heard the s
lightest warning that she was supposed to ask him something before she let things go this far, but that warning wasn’t nearly loud enough to stop her and was nowhere near as loud as what came next.

  A pounding against the front door startled them both. The banging shattered the oh-so-perfect moment, and all the wonderful things he was doing to her breast came to a sudden halt. Stan shot a look at the door and yanked his hand free. Then came the sound of keys being jangled.

  “Shit,” he muttered, and in less than a second he picked her up and set her down on her own feet as if she weighed little more than feathers. Her knees were still jelly, and he caught her around her waist. Then, pulling back, he raked a hand over his face. “It’s Claire.” He pushed Kathy toward the hall. “Look, could you step into the bathroom? I’ll get rid of her.”

  Just like that, the truth ran over Kathy with all the weight of an eighteen-wheeler carrying lead bars. “I’m the TOW!” she gasped, and put a hand over her mouth to keep her cry of anguish from escaping.

  He stared. “What?”

  “I didn’t want to be a TOW! Never, ever wanted to be a TOW!”

  His gaze shot to her feet. “A toe? What’s wrong with…?”

  The doorknob rattled again, and she grabbed her bra and tore down the hall into the bathroom. She slammed herself inside, not so much for effect as from bone-deep anger. Anger at herself. Anger at him.

  I’m a TOW.

  She dropped her bra to hug herself, to offer just a bit of comfort. It didn’t work. Then, because she thought she heard voices, she put her ear against the door.

  The damn thing was solid, and much more soundproof than she would have liked. Closing her eyes, she took a deep breath and tried to decide whether she should storm out in all her glory and let his other woman know just what kind of a man Stan Bradley really was, or stay put and save herself the embarrassment. Decisions, decisions. And this one was a real doozy. She hated making them in the spur of the moment.

  Kathy had no sooner slammed the door to the bathroom when Luke’s front door opened and Claire stepped inside.

  “Oh,” she said. “I knocked. You didn’t answer. I didn’t know you were home.”

  And my truck and Kathy’s damn florist van weren’t a hint? He almost spat the words out, but bit them back. True, he liked the homemade meals Claire provided, but the woman needed to stop using her key whenever she wanted. Taking a gulp of oxygen into his lungs, Luke vowed not to take his mood out on the old woman.

  She stared at him. “I was just going to leave some of my famous turkey meatloaf on the counter.”

  Claire was short, barely reaching the middle of his chest, and seventy if she was a day. He generally liked his landlady, who happened to be a damn good cook and lonely enough to want to feed strays like himself. But right now, turkey meatloaf was the last thing on his mind. Not with the feel of Kathy’s breast still in his hand.

  When the old woman took another step, Luke met her by the door and took the plate. “Thank you so much. I…was sleeping. Not feeling well. Wouldn’t want you to catch anything, so…” He coughed into his hand. “Maybe you should just—”

  “What happened to your eye?”

  Shit. “A tree. I ran into a tree. Damn—er, dang tree.” Claire didn’t tolerate bad language, and he could only guess finding a braless woman in his home wouldn’t sit well with her either. He put the plate on the coffee table and motioned to the door.

  She eyed him. “Those men. They came back again, didn’t they?”

  It took a moment for her words to register. “What men?”

  “Those men who came here this afternoon looking for you. Big guys. Not very friendly looking.”

  Luke tried to figure out if James Johnson could have somehow made it here before him. But no, he’d left all those men flat on their backs when he’d taken off, and he’d come straight home. Then her words “big guys” hit a nerve. Surely they weren’t—

  “Yankees,” Claire finished with a sniff of displeasure.

  Yankees. The hair on the back of Luke’s neck stood up. “Did they leave their names?”

  “Nope, and I asked them for one, too. Didn’t much care for them. They did that to your face, didn’t they?”

  “No. Uh…” His mind reeled. He needed to call Calvin Hodges and check in. Putting a hand to Claire’s back, he nudged her toward the door. “Thank you for the meatloaf.”

  Unfortunately, she took one step, then stopped. “I can’t eat much of it myself. Irritable bowel syndrome and all.” She took a step out the door, then looked back. “You’re a good man, Stan. You pay the rent on time, and you never complain about screwing in a lightbulb for an old lady. But I don’t want hoodlums hanging out here.”

  “I understand,” he promised. He watched until she got down the steps, then shut the door and ran for his cell phone.

  Calvin’s line rang once…twice…

  “Come on, Calvin—answer, damn it!” Luke’s head told him he was overreacting, but his gut told him different. He’d known Lorenzo’s men would track him to the ends of the earth to prevent him from testifying. Unfortunately, they’d only had to manage Piper, Texas. And they weren’t here to buy him a beer. He breathed in a deep gulp of air. “Answer, damn it!”

  Only, Calvin didn’t pick up. And Calvin always answered his freaking phone.

  Luke paced, trying to decide what to do. “Think!” He couldn’t stay here. If the men who’d come were Lorenzo’s, he was a sitting duck. He knew damn well he could take out one or two, but Lorenzo would have sent a whole crew of his best men, each with bigger guns than Luke. Lorenzo wanted him dead that bad. And while Luke wanted the asshole Lorenzo behind bars just as much, well, dying didn’t appeal to Luke anymore. He supposed there had been a time…

  He redialed, praying this time Calvin would answer, that Calvin would tell him everything was fine. That he would feel silly for working himself up over nothing. But as the line rang once, he spotted Kathy’s purse. “Damn.” He’d forgotten all about her. He hung up and shot for the bathroom door.

  “Kathy?” He drew in a breath and forced calm into his voice that he didn’t feel. He knocked on the door. “You can come—”

  The door swung open. She pointed a finger at him. “Why? Why do men do this?”

  He studied her, confused. “Do what?”

  “Cheat. I never would have let you…let you touch me if I’d known you were seeing someone else.”

  He shook his head. “Seeing…?” She thought Claire was his girlfriend? “That wasn’t…” But it didn’t matter what she thought. He needed to get her out of here and as far away from him as possible. Now. “You should go. I’m sure Tommy is worried about you.”

  “Damn right I should go. I should have never come here in the first place!” She stormed past him and snagged her purse. “And I’m taking my lima beans with me!” Stooping, she snagged the bag of veggies and stuffed it into her purse. She took one step and then touched her chest. “Oh. My bra. You wouldn’t want me to leave it, now would you? Claire might see it!” She took off for the hall, sweeping past in a wave of cold fury.

  And that’s when his phone rang. Calvin? He answered as the bathroom door slammed. “Hello?”

  “Stan?” Luke recognized Claire’s voice. She sounded worried. She was worried a lot about health issues, but something told him this wasn’t bowel related. “I think they’re back. Those men…I just saw a car pull into your driveway. They’re just sitting there. I think it’s the same car as earlier.

  “Fuck,” he muttered.

  “Stan! You know I don’t approve of such language.”

  “Lock your doors, Claire. And call 911.”

  “But—”

  “Just do it, Claire.”

  He snapped his phone closed, stormed over to the bathroom, burst inside and ignored the “Do you mind?” snarl from a half-naked Kathy, who was standing with her shirt off and her bra half on. He dove under the cabinet for his gun. Turning around, he took her by the arm.
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br />   “Listen to me, and listen good. You need to get out of here. The back door is through the laundry room.” He pulled her out of the bathroom and shoved her toward it. A noise echoed out front—a car door? He looked down the hall, then back to Kathy. “Run. Don’t come back. Hide in the woods until you see the police.”

  “Police?” Her eyes were wide, and she stared at the gun he held. He knew he owed her an explanation, but damn it, he didn’t have time.

  “Stay away from the house, Kathy. Go. They’re bad men.” He gave her a shove. “Damn it, go!”

  He started down the hall, his gun aimed, not really giving a damn if he took a bullet. His mind was on Tommy, Kathy’s seven-year-old son. A boy needed his mother, Goddamn it. Kathy had to make it out of here alive. Unlike him, she had a whole hell of a lot to live for.

  But what if…? His heart thundered in his chest. What if one of the men had gone around back? He almost swung around to check. Then he remembered Claire’s words: They’re sitting in their car. He prayed she was telling the truth. He would gladly die ten times over if Kathy got away safely.

  He’d barely cleared the hall when bullets exploded through his front door.

  Chapter Four

  Shit! Was that gunfire? Kathy’s heart started to pound, and she felt her chest tighten. No. It couldn’t have been gunfire. That didn’t make any sense. Except for Stan carrying his own pistol. So—

  Run. Don’t come back. Hide in the woods until you see the police. Kathy hated taking orders, especially from men, but right now getting the hell out of the house sounded like a good idea. And she would, just as soon as she got dressed.

  She’d been so wrong, she thought, yanking her bra into place and slipping on her top; Stan Bradley wasn’t her rooster. He was a cheating no-good louse like all the rest of the male population. Why had she thought he was different? Oh, and he was also a psycho freak! Or at least he hung out with psycho freaks, because illogical or not, that sounded a hell of a lot like bullets popping off in the other room. The sound echoed childhood memories, which she shoved back.