Rodney nodded and headed out of the house.
Sean pursed his lips, unsure he was equal to the task of comforting Julie Jones. He knew he had to try, though. He took time to place a fast call to Jax’s cell phone to ask for any new information, and then he went up the stairs to Dawn’s bedroom, stood in the doorway and looked inside.
Julie was sitting on the floor, hugging one of her daughter’s sweaters to her chest, rocking back and forth slowly, rhythmically, tear tracks burned into her cheeks.
He tried to speak, not even sure what he was going to say—her name, maybe. It didn’t matter; no sound came out. His throat had closed off. Talking wasn’t going to help, anyway. What the hell could he say that could free her from the nightmare she was living through tonight? It was real. Nothing could change that—not until they found Dawn.
No, words just weren’t going to do it. He shook off the stillness and walked into the room. She didn’t look up, maybe didn’t even know he was there. He crouched beside her, slid one arm around her back and the other beneath her folded legs, and rose again, lifting her with him as if she were a small child.
* * *
Julie wasn’t paying a lot of attention to what was going on outside her. There was pain, throbbing insistently. It was centered in the left ankle but radiated outward, encompassing the entire foot and half of her lower leg, as well. It was nothing, though, compared to the pain of not knowing what was happening to her precious daughter. She’d gone to Dawn’s room on sheer instinct and the need to be as close to her as possible. But once there, Dawn’s absence was so powerful that Julie had gone weak and limp, and ended up huddled on the floor in the corner.
She wasn’t there now.
As she forced herself to focus on the real world, she knew she was resting in her own bed. She heard water running somewhere, and she smelled something that made her stomach rumble. She felt cold and shaky, and she sat up, looked around, thought she ought to get on her feet and find out why she was alone. She didn’t want to be alone. She wanted…
“Sean?”
He appeared the second she called his name, almost before she had a chance to wonder why the hell it was his name on her lips at a time like this. But she didn’t need to wonder about that. She knew. There was no one else. God, she’d probably even alienated dear old Rodney, the way she’d barked at him a while ago. How long? God, how long ago was that now?
Sean was leaning over her. The water had stopped running.
“Hey. How are you doing?”
She stared into his eyes and wondered why the hell he was on her side. Why him?
“Here, take these.” He opened a palm, where two coated tablets rested. “Strongest pain reliever I could find in your medicine cabinet, and this is a double dose. It ought to ease the pain in that ankle.”
She took the pills from him, popped them into her mouth. He handed her a dewy water glass, and she drank, washing the tablets down.
“Good girl. Now, come on.” He scooped her up and carried her into the bathroom.
“What are you doing, Sean? What—”
“You’re a mess. Chilled to the bone, bruised to hell and gone, and you still have weeds in your hair and God knows what else, from your little Adirondack adventure. I ran you a nice hot bath with epsom salts.” He set her down on the toilet seat, knelt in front of her, untied her running shoe and pulled it off, then peeled off the sock. “I’ve been on the phone with Jackson. She’s agreed to contact us the second they get a hit on where the bastard might be. I have everyone at the newsroom working on it, as well as every source I’ve ever used. They’re all under instructions to call us here with any information. Until they do, there’s not much we can do.”
She sat there, searching for words, while he gently unwound the Ace bandage from her sprained ankle.
“Can you get up, just for a sec?”
She nodded and, bracing her hands on his shoulders, stood on one foot. Then she just held on to him as he undid her jeans and slid them down her hips. There was nothing salacious in his eyes, not a single smart-ass comment on his lips. He just pushed the jeans down, then lowered her until she was sitting again and knelt to pull the jeans off, careful not to jar her sore ankle.
“Why are you doing this?”
He had set the jeans aside and was unbuttoning her borrowed shirt this time. She wasn’t wearing a bra underneath it. Lieutenant Jackson hadn’t offered her one, and she hadn’t asked.
“Because you need me to do this.”
She frowned, staring at him, puzzled, until he met her eyes. “Sean, I can’t even think about—about—anything but Dawnie. Not now.”
“You think I can?” He’d finished unbuttoning the blouse, but he didn’t take it off. He left it hanging, kept his eyes on hers. “Look, you’re a mess. It’s only a matter of time before we get a lead, I promise you that, and you need to be ready when we do. You need to get cleaned up, take the edge off the pain, get some food into your belly and rest, so you can come up swinging once we find out where that bastard took our girl.”
“Oh.” Our girl. It reminded her of the way she and Lizzie used to refer to Dawn when she was just a little baby.
She studied him.
“I just…don’t know why.”
He looked right into her eyes, and for a second her belly tightened into a knot of yearning so powerful she almost gasped. “I think you do,” he said. “But this isn’t the time.”
He started to push the blouse off her shoulders, but she clutched it in front of her. “I…I can do the rest.”
“Yeah?”
She nodded.
“And how are you going to get into the tub on one foot?”
She thought about that, frowning, realizing he was right. She couldn’t very well hop on one foot and then leap over the side of the tub one-footed, as well.
“This is no time for shyness, Jones. I promise, I’ll be a perfect gentleman.”
Thinning her lips, she sighed and lowered her arms. Sean pushed the blouse down off her shoulders, off her arms. She sat there in nothing but her panties, and he knelt in front of her. His eyes lowered, maybe against his will. He looked at her, and she saw his Adam’s apple swell and recede before he forced his eyes level with hers again.
“Sean?”
“Yeah?”
“What if the phone rings?”
“What?” He looked confused for a moment, then blinked it away. “I mean, I thought of that.” He nodded toward the counter, where she saw a cordless phone resting. “Even double-checked to be sure it was working. Good strong dial tone. The ringer’s set to ‘loud.’”
“Oh.”
He put his hands on her waist. “Up you go.” His voice seemed a little hoarse.
She held to his shoulders and got up on one foot again. Sean slid his hands lower, pushing her panties down as he did, letting them fall to the floor, off her injured foot, which she held up. They pooled around the foot on which she stood.
He stared for a moment, and her body stirred down deep. Then he rose again, lifted her up and lowered her gently into the bathtub. “How’s the water? Too hot?”
“Just right,” she told him, and he lowered her farther. The heat wrapped around her, soothed her. She felt guilty as hell for the relief. The pain eased bit by bit. That she should be feeling physical relief while her daughter was still in danger seemed wrong, somehow.
“Relax, will you? Dawn wouldn’t want you torturing yourself. She’d prefer you strong enough to come and get her.”
She closed her eyes and knew he was right. Sighing heavily, releasing the pain as she did, she lay back in the water, let it do its work. Around her there was only silence, but she knew Sean was kneeling there beside the bathtub, staring at her. She opened her eyes to see that she was right. He was staring, and his face was odd.
“I lied before. When I said I’d be a gentleman. I’d have to be six months dead not to have a few impure thoughts running through my head right now.”
She f
elt her face heat and wondered how long it had been since she’d blushed. She couldn’t remember the last time. She wasn’t the blushing type.
“Is that a compliment?”
“To put it mildly.” He was kneeling beside the tub, her loofah in his hand, and he dipped it into the water, squeezed it, and then ran it over her neck and shoulders. He lifted her right arm and ran the sponge along it to the very tips of her fingers.
She sighed in pleasure. “I can do this myself, you know.”
“Yeah, but you don’t really want to. Do you?” He dipped the sponge, ran it down her other arm. He moved it over her palm, washing finger by finger, then back up the sensitive underside.
“No.”
He had her lean forward, washed her back, his touch utterly magical. It seemed every stroke of the sponge eased some of the pain, some of the tension, even while creating tension of a different sort. When she leaned back again, he put a dollop of her scented body wash on the sponge, rubbed up a lather, then began moving the sponge over her chest. He ran it over her breasts, lathering them, using slow, deliberately arousing strokes over her nipples, and he was probably very pleased with himself to see them stiffening in response. He spent a lot of time there before rinsing the suds away and moving the sponge lower, running it in small circles over her belly, her abdomen, her thighs.
He lathered the sponge again and ran it between her legs, and for some reason she couldn’t have named, she just relaxed her thighs open and let him. It felt good, the rough texture of the loofah, softened by the suds, rubbing back and forth beneath the steady pressure of his hand. She let her thighs fall wider, let her head fall back against the tub, let her eyes close, let the sighs of pleasure escape her lips.
His touch changed. The sponge, she realized, had fallen away, and there was only his hand now. His fingers spreading her, exposing her and finding the sensitive places—the places no hand but her own had touched in a very long time. Up until last night, at least. He touched those places. His fingers were not like her own. They were bigger, rougher at the tips. They were foreign, and yet they seemed to know just where to move, how deeply to probe, how hard to pinch, how fast to rub.
Her breath came faster, and the tightening began. God, he was going to get her off, right there in the tub. What the hell was she thinking?
She opened her eyes, clamped her thighs tight around his invading hand. “Sean…”
“Shhhhh.” He pinched gently, and waves of pleasure rolled through her body. “Relax, Julie. Lay your head back, close your eyes. Let me make it better. Let me do this for you. Come on, relax. Open for me, Julie. Just let it go.”
She relaxed. Her legs fell open. Her eyes fell closed.
“Good girl.” He rewarded her obedience by sliding his free hand to her breast to knead her nipple, tugging it and letting it snap, pulling and pinching. His other hand continued exploring every recess of her core, two fingers sliding inside her, moving in and out and wriggling around in her depths, while his thumb pressed and rolled her clitoris harder and faster.
The orgasm came like a hurricane, and when it hit, he increased the pressure of his touch to the very edge of pain, intensifying it. She shivered and trembled, and his mouth moved very close to her ear, whispering things to her that made it even stronger. Sexy, forbidden things, promises of what he would do the next time.
She cried out, his name perhaps, several times over, and he kept moving his fingers inside her, squeezing her nipple, pushing her further and further into mindless pleasure. And finally, when the waves began to subside, he eased his touch, reading her body and its signals as clearly as if it were printing them out in his mind. His touch became a caress, and then a massage, and then he was moving on and the sponge was back, and he was washing her legs and her feet as if nothing at all unusual had happened. He moved to her head, while she was still trembling with aftershocks, and began working shampoo into her wet hair, his touch on her scalp as erotic and arousing as it had been before. He washed and rinsed and conditioned her hair, and she lay there in the water like putty in his hands.
Finally he scooped her up out of the water, wrapped her in a towel and carried her back into her bedroom. He lowered her to the bed and returned to the bathroom. Her head was clearing now. The pain meds were kicking in. The throbbing in her ankle had eased, and her blood was reaching her brain again. Part of her wanted to lie back and pull him to her. But the rest was back in control. She remained sitting up, fixing the towel around her sarong-style. Then she took a towel from the stack he’d placed on the bed beside her and used it to rub her hair dry.
He came in again, the telephone in his hand, his jeans poking out in front. He saw her noticing, met her eyes, swallowed hard. “I’m not expecting anything, Jones. I wouldn’t take it if you offered. Not now.”
“But—you just—”
“I just gave you a little release. You were like a pressure cooker, woman. Something had to give.”
She lowered her eyes. She didn’t know what the hell to think, what the hell to make of any of this. She’d thought…she didn’t know what she’d thought. It didn’t matter. Only Dawn mattered.
He was at her dresser now, rummaging in an open drawer, taking out underwear, then jeans from another drawer.
“I…I can dress myself.”
He went still, his back to her. “Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.” She didn’t tell him to get out and give her a minute to pull herself together, but she thought he heard it in her voice.
He sighed, nodded. “Okay, then. I put some leftovers in the oven to warm. Why don’t you come down when you’re ready, get something to eat? Can you manage the stairs?”
“I managed them on the way up.”
“Okay.” He turned, sent her a searching look. “Your crutches are there, beside the bed.”
She returned his gaze but kept all expression out of hers. “Okay.”
He lingered in the doorway for a moment, but when he turned and started to leave, she said, “Sean?”
He turned back.
“I—I’m glad you’re here. I’m not sure I could get through this alone.”
He smiled a little crookedly, gave her a nod and turned to head down the stairs.
CHAPTER TWENTY
She cursed herself for foolish pride every time she banged her tender ankle or lost her balance as she awkwardly put her clothes on. She repeated those curses as she learned, by trial and error and damn near hurling herself to a painful death, the correct way to go down stairs on crutches.
Finally she arrived in the kitchen, breathless and probably red in the face from exertion, which she supposed was better than from embarrassment, both over what had transpired between them upstairs and over allowing herself to become so dependent on him during the past several hours.
Sean was removing a tinfoil-covered casserole dish from the oven, so she hobbled to a chair and sat down, leaning the detestable crutches against the table. They promptly fell over.
“Not exactly at pro status with those things yet, are you, Jones?”
“No, and I hope never to get there.”
He set the dish on the table, using a folded towel instead of a trivet. There were plates and forks for each of them, and he’d even brewed fresh coffee. She peeled the tinfoil off the dish to see her own leftover macaroni and cheese, with two fried chicken legs lying on top of it. She lifted her brows and looked at him.
He shrugged. “Why dirty two dishes when one will do?” He helped himself to a piece of chicken, dropped the second one onto her plate, then used a large spoon to scoop enough macaroni and cheese onto his plate to feed three of him. Then he handed her the spoon.
“That’s very efficient of you.” She added a scoop of the macaroni to her plate.
“You want coffee?”
“I can get it.”
He sent a disparaging glance at the crutches on the floor, then at her, and quickly got up and filled a mug with coffee. He went to the fridge to add a splash o
f half-and-half, then spooned in some sugar, without being told, then set the cup down in front of her.
“Thanks.”
She took a sip, amazed that the coffee was good. Then again, she supposed a man living alone would have to learn to make decent coffee or die of caffeine deprivation. Her hands moved on autopilot, picking up the fork and scooping up some of the food, but she stopped halfway to her mouth, her stomach going queasy at the thought of eating.
“I know it’s hard,” Sean said. “And it seems like the coldest thing in the world to do something as self-involved as eating when we still don’t know where Dawn is. But you have to try.”
She took a breath, knowing he was right, and forced the food into her mouth, chewed without tasting and swallowed. Her stomach lurched, and she pressed a hand to it until the spasm passed.
“Okay?”
She met Sean’s eyes, shook her head. “No. I can’t eat, not now. I’ll throw up.”
“It’s okay. Can you at least manage the coffee?”
“I think so.”
He reached across the table, pushing the sugar bowl toward her. “Add some more of this, then. It’ll help.”
She did as he suggested and slugged back the coffee. “I should call Rodney. I was short with him before. He didn’t deserve that.”
“I apologized for you.”
“I ought to do it myself, though. He adores Dawnie. I should tell him he’s welcome to wait it out with us.”
“We won’t be here long. We’ll have a lead to follow soon.”
“You think?”
He nodded. “Jax got the feds to send her their list of every piece of real estate ever owned, rented or borrowed by Mordecai Young and his closest cohorts, a handful of whom are still alive and doing time. Most of the property was confiscated by the government and sold at auction after the raid. But some had been sold just prior. Those are the ones she’s most interested in.”
“And what is she doing about that interest?”
“Right now they’re just going over the lists, prioritizing. As soon as they’ve got the most likely sites, they’ll have local authorities drive out to those places and report back on what they see.”
Thicker Than Water Page 29
