This man hadn’t taken Jimmy’s place. He claimed his own place. What she was experiencing right now had nothing to do with breaking up with Jimmy. It was an encounter all its own, detached from Monica’s past and her future, a suspended reality, a moment out of time.
She rolled away from him and rummaged in the drawer until she found the box of condoms. Her trembling fingers struggled to tear off the cellophane, and he took the box from her, deftly opened it, and pulled out a rubber. In an instant, he was suited up. He eased onto his back, pulled her on top of him, and whispered, “Ride me.”
The only two words they’d spoken since they’d entered her apartment. Demanding words. Wild words.
She straddled him, his hands cupping her hips, his thumbs reaching to rub her. She was wet, needy, hurting. Shifting forward, she poised herself above him. He guided himself inside.
She came almost at once, her body throbbing as he arched into her. She moaned, shocked by how quickly she’d succumbed and how immeasurably good she felt. He moved his hands back to her hips, giving her his rhythm, helping her to keep moving when all she wanted was to collapse against him. She dared to open his eyes and viewed him beneath her, looking both helpless and profoundly powerful, pumping hard, breathing hard. Somehow his thumbs found her again, and she felt herself building to a higher peak.
They reached it together. Her body shook; his wrenched. His breath stopped, then started again, broken, carrying a quiet moan.
Wild, she thought. Wild sex. Like nothing she’d ever experienced before.
She settled on top of him, her respiration shallow, her heart pounding frenetically. His skin was warm, his body surprisingly comfortable. He softened, unrolled the sheath and dropped it onto the foil wrapper on her night table. Then he stroked his fingers aimlessly through her hair. Her eyes came into focus, and she saw the small tattoo on his shoulder, four neat, indigo block letters: LIVE.
She traced the letters with her finger. “Live?” she asked, pronouncing it as an adjective, with a long I.
“Live,” he corrected her, pronouncing it as a verb.
“What does it mean?”
He hesitated, then said, “There was a time when I should have died, but I lived.”
He should have died? How? Why? Who was he? That last question seemed at once the easiest and the most complicated, so she asked it. “Who are you?”
“Ty.” He must have seen her puzzled expression, because he elaborated. “Tyler Cronin. People call me Ty.”
“Ty.” She tried out the simple nickname and decided it suited him. His name didn’t tell her who he was, but it was something. Something that made this encounter marginally less anonymous. “I’m Monica Reinhart,” she said.
“Monica.” He curved his arm around her, cuddled her to himself, and closed his eyes. After a moment, his breathing grew deep and steady. He had fallen asleep.
She couldn’t imagine sleeping. She had just made love with a man whose name she hadn’t even known until a minute ago. He was still a stranger to her. Just a name, a tattoo, a tall, strong body, a beautiful face. A golden stubble that had left beard burns on her skin. A man who might disappear in the morning, who might vanish from her life without ever really having been in it.
She felt wicked. Wanton. A little bit worried. And very wild.
Chapter Four
She must have fallen asleep at some point, because in the middle of the night he woke her and they made love again, soft, sleepy love. He loved her first with his mouth and then with his body, and she climaxed so many times she wondered if her legs would function when she tried to stand. But he hadn’t crippled her. After that second go-round, they’d hauled themselves out of bed in order to wash and to turn off the lamp in the sitting area, and then they’d slid back beneath the covers, curled up against each other, and drifted to sleep. In her dreams she saw his tattoo, four crisp letters, dark yet resonant with hope, with survival, with life.
She arose, as she usually did, at seven. Opening her eyes, she found him beside her and felt a pang of uneasiness. Last night was last night. This morning was…reality. The reality of a strange man taking up most of her bed. He had kicked off the blanket overnight, and she pushed herself to sit, stared at his rangy, beautiful body, and felt a queasy sensation roil her stomach. She couldn’t blame it on too much wine last night, because she hadn’t even consumed a whole glass. Less than one glass of wine couldn’t have made her drunk enough to explain last night’s little sexual escapade, either.
It wasn’t a little sexual escapade, she thought anxiously. It was a very big sexual escapade. The best sex she’d ever had.
What did that say about her? Was this her first step down a tawdry path of encounters with strangers? Was this the start of a nasty new habit of picking up unknown men in bars and bringing them back to her apartment?
Good lord. Her parents lived in the suite just three floors above her.
She reminded herself that she was an adult. She no longer lived with them. She didn’t have to obey them. She didn’t have to check in with them, or justify her choices to them.
This hadn’t exactly been a choice, though, had it? He’d shown up at the inn, and the night had proceeded with a certain inevitability. He’d found her and they’d made love. Last night couldn’t have happened any other way.
That was bullshit, she told herself, swinging out of bed and stalking to the bathroom. She adjusted the shower to a scalding temperature, stepped under the spray, and did her best to scrub her mind as her washcloth scrubbed her body. There had been no inevitability to her inviting Ty into her bed. She’d made love to him for no good reason, nothing she could wrap her rational brain around. She was a slut. Cheap. Foolish. The one thing she’d never been: irresponsible.
Well, it couldn’t be undone. She could wash all traces of him from her skin, but not from her soul.
Sighing, she stepped out of the shower and dried herself. The rough texture of the towel reminded her of his hard, callused hands and his scruffy facial hair. The blast of air from her hair dryer made her hot. Tears burned her eyes. She’d cried yesterday evening at the bar before she’d seen him, and here she was again, crying. Tears could be the bookends of this reckless, crazy night.
She stepped out of the bathroom—and there he was, standing by the door, waiting for her. Naked.
Looking at him only made her want to cry even more.
He gathered her into his arms, and her towel dropped to the floor. There was nothing sexual in his embrace, even though they were both naked, their bodies pressed together, the heat of his flesh warming her. She batted her eyes, hating that her tears might be dampening his chest. “Hey,” he murmured.
“I’m sorry—”
“No.”
“I mean—crying like this—”
“It’s okay.”
“It’s just that—I mean—I’ve never done anything like this.”
He didn’t respond right away. She supposed he had done things like this—one-night stands, sex with a stranger. But he stroked his hand soothingly through her hair and brushed a kiss against the crown of her head. “Last night was amazing,” he said. “I don’t know what it means or why it happened, but it was incredible.”
True enough. A smile teased her lips in spite of her tears.
“I’ve got some stuff to take care of today,” he said. “I’ll be free this evening. Maybe we could do something normal, like have dinner together.”
Her smile expanded to a laugh. All right, this was not going to be a lifelong romance. He was not going to occupy the next ten years of her life the way Jimmy had occupied the last ten. But dinner tonight offered a glimpse of a future for them, however brief. “Okay,” she said.
“We could meet at that bar with the jukebox. Six o’clock?”
“Okay.”
He loosened his hold on her, dipped his head to kiss her lips, and said, “Have you got a towel I can use?”
While he showered, she fixed breakfast. Usually she ate a
bowl of oatmeal or corn flakes, but she doubted that would satisfy a big man like him, so she prepared a batch of French toast, sweet and eggy, and sliced up some oranges. By the time he was dressed, she had her table set and the coffee brewed.
“Last night you told me you worked here at this inn,” he recalled.
She nodded, inordinately pleased that he remembered that detail about her.
“What do you do?”
“I help to manage the place,” she said. “I do a little of everything. My family owns it. If all goes well, I’ll be running it once my parents retire. I’m learning the business, one area at a time. Right now, I’m in charge of maintenance.”
“You should be in charge of the dining room,” he said, devouring a chunk of French toast. “This is delicious.”
“I’m not that good a cook. French toast is easy.”
He shook his head. “I’ve been living on sandwiches and freeze-dried food for a week. This is really good.”
She extended the platter toward him. “Take as much as you want. I can always make more.” Once he’d forked another slice of French toast onto his plate, she asked, “Have you been camping?”
“Sailing up the coast,” he told her. “Transporting a boat for a friend.”
That sounded ridiculously sexy. “For a whole week? Where did you start?”
“Key Biscayne, outside Miami.”
“Do you do that professionally? Transport boats?” She bit her lip as soon as the question was out. Professionally? She sounded so stuffy.
He didn’t seem to mind. “I’m a carpenter,” he told her, “I work mostly in buildings, but I also do restoration work on boats. I love to sail. This guy who docks in the winter at a marina where I do a lot of work asked me to bring his boat to Brogan’s Point for him, so I did.”
“A nice little vacation for you,” she said.
“A paid vacation,” he added, then grinned.
“So…I guess you live in Florida.” She gave herself another mental kick. Asking him about his profession, then grilling him about where he lived… She must sound like a pushy, needy girlfriend, trying to pin her footloose lover down.
He didn’t seem to mind. “At the moment,” he said. “I move around.”
Great. If he lived in Florida, he would be gone from Brogan’s Point and her life sooner or later—probably sooner. If he moved around…he would also be gone from her life. Apparently, her future with him wouldn’t extend much beyond dinner tonight.
She would accept that. She would be wild now, while he was here, and once he was gone she could reclaim her old, tame existence. Hopefully, after he departed, she would be left with happy memories and no ugly scars.
***
She spirited him from her apartment, down the hall at the back of the inn and out the back door without encountering anyone. He wasn’t offended by the notion that she might be embarrassed about his presence in her room overnight. She was dressed for work in clean, stylish business clothes, while he was wearing the torn jeans he’d had on yesterday, and his beard was a day longer and thicker. Of course she didn’t want anyone to see them together.
He had to get onto the boat. He needed his toiletries, his clothing, his laptop. He hoped to God that damned police tape was gone and he could board.
He ought to be focusing on the trouble he’d viewed at the Freedom’s slip last night. But as he sauntered down the driveway, away from the inn, he could think only of Monica, her soft hair and her soft body, the way she’d peaked and peaked and peaked in his arms. She was astonishing. Beautiful, gentle, smart, sensitive…and hot enough to leave third-degree burns on his psyche.
Today, he’d get his gear, hopefully resolve whatever had merited a visit to the boat from the cops last night, and then find a motorcycle to rent. He’d tool around the area, check out some back roads, fill the day until he could meet up with Monica and fill the night with her. Maybe he’d hang around Brogan’s Point a little longer than he’d planned. Maybe she could get a day off from her job at her parents’ inn and they could ride up the coast to Maine, or travel down to Boston and be tourists. Or they could spend the whole day in bed, screwing themselves silly. He wouldn’t object to that particular plan.
Nearing the yacht club, he saw more cars in the parking lot than before. Two of those cars were gray sedans with “Brogan’s Point Police” spelled out along their sides and bars of lights stretched across their roofs. Their lights weren’t flashing, but it didn’t matter. The police were still present, and the boat was still cordoned off in police tape.
Shit.
Once again, he wanted to U-turn and run away. But he couldn’t. He had to get his stuff.
He reminded himself that he hadn’t broken any laws or done anything wrong. He had no reason to fear the police. Whatever had happened to the boat—vandalism, a robbery, someone trespassing and injuring himself—wasn’t his fault.
Steeling himself, he continued past the main building, down the sloping gangplank to the slip where the Freedom was moored. A uniformed officer stood near the boat, guarding it. He measured Ty with his gaze, then said, “Are you Tyler Cronin?”
How did the cop know who Ty was? Ty recalled that he’d signed the marina’s log when he’d arrived. “Yeah,” he said, tamping down his apprehension. “What’s going on? Is something wrong?”
Behind the cop, he saw the sailboat rocking gently on its rippling cushion of water. A man dressed in civilian clothes emerged from the cabin. He was tall, with a square face and hair the color of tempered steel. “Tyler Cronin is here,” the uniformed cop told him.
The other guy stepped off the boat onto the dock. “Detective Ed Nolan,” he introduced himself, then handed Tyler some papers. “We have a warrant to search the boat.”
Tyler unfolded the document Nolan had given him. A bunch of legalese; he had no idea what it said, but he’d take the man’s word for it that it was a search warrant. “Why?”
“Maybe you should come down to police headquarters with me,” the detective said. “We can talk there.”
“I’ve got some stuff on the boat I’d like to get,” Ty said, hoping he sounded innocent. He was innocent, but the way these two officers were staring at him made him feel guilty as hell. “My clothes, my laptop—”
“Your possessions are all in police custody right now,” the detective said. “Let’s go down to headquarters and see if we can straighten this out.”
Straightening things out sounded good to Ty. But he wasn’t naïve. He was in deep shit, and he had no idea why.
Refusing to accompany the detective to the police station was not going to get him out of that deep shit. “Fine,” he said. “Let’s go.”
Chapter Five
Rose Cottage had a problem. A water stain had mysteriously appeared on the wall of the first-floor parlor.
Monica should have been upset, stressed, just this side of frantic. The cottages—four small, self-contained buildings nestled into the woods on the western side of the pool patio—were among the inn’s most popular accommodations. They were often booked in their entirety by reuning families, wedding parties, corporate executives on a retreat, or any other group that wanted access to the amenities of the resort but also a private enclave for its own intimate circle. The cottages weren’t in high demand during the winter months, but as soon as the summer season started, they got reserved very quickly.
Rose Cottage was no exception. It was booked for every weekend from the Memorial Day weekend through Labor Day, and more than a few of those bookings were for an entire week. A couple whose wedding would be held at the inn over the Memorial Day weekend had reserved the cottage for their bridal party and out-of-town friends.
But if there was a water stain on the parlor wall, there was a leak somewhere behind that wall. When Frank from the maintenance crew phoned Monica’s office, he warned her that locating the leak might require the plumber to cut through the wall.
“We’ve got the Kolenko party arriving in a week and a half
,” she reminded Frank.
“Then I guess we’ll have to find the leak, fix it, and repair the wall quickly,” he shot back.
“I’ll contact Parnelli’s,” she said, naming the plumbing service the inn used. “I’ll tell them it’s an emergency.” It might not be the sort of emergency that required every available staff member to grab a bucket and bail out a flooded cottage, but with the Memorial Day weekend only ten days away, Monica considered it critical to find and fix this leak ASAP.
Yet she was smiling when she called the friendly dispatcher at Parnelli’s and explained the situation. She was still smiling after she left her office and strolled around the pool to Rose Cottage to view the water stain. Still smiling as she studied the oval darkening the parlor’s cream-colored wall.
Tomorrow, or the next day, or Memorial Day, or some time in an undefined future, she might start crying again. But today she was a woman who had spent a night having splendiferous sex with a hunky guy with whom she was going to have dinner in just a few hours. She was going to sit across a table from him and feast her eyes on his gorgeous face while her mouth feasted on whatever food filled her plate. Maybe he’d shave and she’d have an unobstructed view of his chin. Maybe she’d reach across the table and trace his cheeks with her fingertips.
Maybe she would learn more about him. Maybe not too much more. That he was a mystery to her added to his sex appeal. If she found out that he bickered with his parents and complained about the barking of his neighbor’s dog, that he was a slob and that salad dressing made him flatulent, his sex appeal would plummet. The impetuousness of last night had heightened the experience for her. The understanding that modest, well-behaved Monica could behave wildly with a man she didn’t know was the main reason she couldn’t stop smiling, even as she touched the water stain and discovered that the wall was wet enough to feel almost pasty.
“What do you think is causing the leak?” she asked Frank.
Wild Thing (The Magic Jukebox Book 3) Page 4
