“Thanks. I enjoy tinkering in the kitchen, and the grill I bought last summer is pretty much used year round.”
Ryker nodded. “You can grill a mean slab of meat.” He took another swig of his drink. “So besides whatever it is you have going on with Ms. Brooks, what else has been happening with you? How are things with work?”
Declan smirked. “Shit. Jobs may change, but I still have the same headaches with subcontractors not wanting to show up on scheduled days and clients making last minute modifications.”
“But you get a kick out of it, or you’d be running some fortune five hundred company.”
“I suppose.” He figured it was far past time to put his brother in the hot seat, especially since he wanted some clarity on what was up with him. His time away from home was turning into longer stints in another state or a whole other country. “I ran into Molly the other day when I was leaving the bank. She asked about you.”
Ryker reached over and placed his beer on the coaster on the side table as if the mention of her name was no big deal, but Declan knew better, or at least he thought he did.
“Yeah?”
“Yep.”
“What did you tell her?” Ryker asked.
Keeping his eyes trained on his brother, he said, “Nothing other than I hadn’t seen you in a few months, and you’ve been busy traveling for work.”
“That one is needy,” Ryker said. “She texted me a hundred times a day when I left last time. When I finally stopped answering, she stopped the text bombs.”
“Maybe if you didn’t string her along—”
“I told her from the start we’d never have anything long term. She didn’t want to hear the truth.”
Declan leaned forward and put his forearms on his thighs. “She’s been in love with you since high school, Ryke. And, I venture to say, she’s still in love. So what’s the deal?”
“She’s always wanted commitment. You know, all hearts and flowers and a ring on her finger.”
“You’re not getting any younger. Maybe it’s time to start thinking about a ring on a woman’s finger.”
“Screw you,” Ryker said with only a hint of teasing in his tone. “If I’m not getting any younger, neither are you, and, besides, I don’t do love and the whole picket-fence thing where I get up in the mornings and carpool the kiddos to school.”
“That’s messed up, and you know it,” said Declan.
Ryker gave his brother a sly grin. “This coming from Mr. Tap-Their-Ass in the restroom of the Razor Club and move on.”
Declan shook his head. “Not anymore.”
“Why? Does this Tiffany woman have buttercream nipples and a pussy full of sunshine or what?”
“Shut the hell up,” Declan said.
Ryker held up his hand, mea culpa. “Alright. Damn. I get it.”
“Molly Monroe has always been a sweet person,” said Declan. “You need to either put a decisive end to whatever it is you two have going on or grow up and see the woman she’s become.”
“Oh, is that right, Dr. Phil?”
“Yes, shithead. She’s not going to put up with your crap forever, man.”
Ryker shrugged. “You see, you’ve got it all wrong, Deck. I’ve never asked her to.”
Chapter Seventeen
Tiffany briefly looked up and squinted. The day was sunny and bright, and the sky was a pale shade of blue with white clouds scattered about overhead in puffy cotton-candy configurations. As days went, she didn’t think they could have picked a better one for lounging around and eating the fried chicken and potato salad she’d packed away in the picnic basket. Pleased and completely at ease, she set the wicker container on the bright-red throw blanket. Lying in the tall green grass growing beneath the oak tree, the scarlet cloth popped in vivid contrast. Declan rested against a tree, watching her with stormy eyes.
“Come here,” he said, holding out a hand for her to take.
She did, and he yanked her down onto his lap, where she landed in a soft plop, giggling.
He rolled until they were a tangle of limbs before he tugged her body onto his, and she was strewn across his massive chest. She traced the line of his nose with her fingertips then caressed the curve of his lips and the top of his ear before resting her palm on the side of his neck, feeling his excited pulse thump.
“I love you,” she said freely.
His eyes glittered. One of his palms rested in the small of her back, the other stroked her long hair.
“I love you, too,” he said.
The sun blinked out in a sky turned an ominous shade, and the wind rose to a gale force that blew the basket beside them away like a tumbleweed. It rolled in a wobble down the slight embankment they’d walked up earlier, dislodging the contents in a scatter of wasted food.
She rose to her feet, her hair whipping around her face fiercely, almost stinging her when it slapped at her flesh. She fought to clear those strands from blocking her eyes. She needed to see. Fighting with them and turning in the direction of the oncoming wind, she finally freed her vision, her hair thrashing out behind her as though she were in a wind tunnel.
The branches of the tree shook violently. The bright green leaves dissolved into drops of sludge. They hit the ground and turned the grass into a barren wasteland beneath her feet. To her further shock, one branch reached out to her in elongated twisted fingers, knotted into an angry snarl.
“Declan!” she screamed.
She went to her knees, escaping the swing of the gnarled tree branch, and tried to find him. He was gone, vanished. Had he ever existed in flesh and bone, or was he only a figment of her imagination?
Panicked, she stood, and tried to run from the dead bark of the tree stretching toward her. She hadn’t been quick enough. It tugged at her shirt, holding her within its rough grasp.
There was a sound—claws across a blackboard. She placed her hands to her ears, but the noise didn’t stop. It scratched along the nerves of her spine. The wind moaned, and a tornado broke loose. The tail bounced up and down until the storm reached the velocity it required and touched down, sucking the tree up into the wicked swirl. The red blanket flapped above her head in a taunt, resembling a venomous tongue as it dangled from the roots until the tree and the blanket disappeared into the eye of the massive rotating storm.
Wake up. Wake up, Tiffany.
Her eyelids flew open, her breathing labored, her feet tangled in the mangled clump of her bed sheets. The sound she’d heard in her dreams was coming from the direction of the windows in her room.
Get the phone, she told herself, trying not to feel the residual fear of the dream turned nightmare, but the lingering sensation mixed into the horrid screeching sound, which was indeed real. Move. She freed her feet and rolled out of bed.
Her body shook as she snuck on tiptoes from her room, but she found her spine and straightened. She was a grown woman. Not a whimpering kid. There must be some sort of reasonable explanation for the sound. Perhaps a plumbing pipe ran through the wall, and a strap or something let loose? Maybe there was a bad ball bearing or faulty motor in her central heat and air unit.
The screech changed to a heavy kerplunk on the wall. Every bit of reason slipped from her hold. She ran up her hallway. The night light protruding from the wall plug gave her enough illumination to see, so she reached for the receiver of her cordless. The little lighted screen on the handset of the phone gave her the time. Two-sixteen a.m.
She took a breath. Cleared her scrambled thoughts. She recalled the non-complicated set of numbers she needed to dial, pissed at herself for being so rattled she’d momentarily forgotten them. 911. She started tapping the digits on the phone, unsure why she dialed….
“Hello?” He sounded sleepy and barely awake, but then again it was several hours before the butt-crack of dawn.
“Declan,” she said in a low but panicked tone.
The sound of his yawn buzzed in her ear.
“Sugar?”
“There’s someone out
side my bedroom window.”
This must have awakened him fully if the strength in his voice was to be any indication. “What? Did you call the police?”
She heard his breath come hard.
“No. I called you. I’m not one hundred percent—”
“I’m out of bed now and putting my pants on, but hang up and call the police.”
“I can’t imagine someone squeezing themselves in the narrow space, but—”
“Tiffany,” he said, sounding stern. “Hang up now and call the police. I’m headed for my door, and I’ll be there as fast as I can.”
“Okay,” she said and disconnected the call in time to hear something or someone scurrying around on her front stoop.
Carefully, Tiffany backed into the shadow, her terrified gaze planted on her front door, and with shaky fingers, she pressed the numbers on the phone. Nine. One. One.
***
Red. Blue. Red. Blue. The colors of the police strobes lit up her living room in an alternating ballet of primary colors, and a sense of relief came over her in a soothing balm.
Thump. Thump….
“This is the Denver PD!”
A deep voice called through her front door. She was glad she’d worn her Mickey Mouse T-shirt and matching pajama bottoms to bed instead of something skimpy. She released the death grip she maintained on the cordless phone and took the few steps to place the handset back into the receiver before answering.
“Hi,” she said to the stern-faced officer, feeling almost silly for being the cause of the commotion she knew was waking her neighbors at a god-awful hour.
“Ma’am. Are you alone, or is there someone else here with you?”
“There’s no one here but me,” she said and stepped aside to let the officer in.
She glanced out her living room window, seeing other officers walking the property, talking into their little CB-looking handset hooked high on their right shoulders, and that’s when she saw him.
Declan’s truck sped past, heading for the parking lot of the apartment in a lime-green blur. He’d come when she needed him the most. And really, hadn’t he been doing the whole knight-in-shining-armor thing all along, swooping in to her rescue in more ways than one, even when she didn’t want him to? The knowledge did funny things to her stomach, or conceivably the sensation walloping her was happening in her heart. Tiffany scampered around the policeman inside her apartment, leaving him behind to protect and serve no one, and went outside in haste, feeling the cold cement chill the bottoms of her bare feet.
“It’s okay,” she said to the officer who stopped Declan at the end of the walkway, his hand poised on top of the gun on his hip. She had to admit, Mr. Cage was an imposing guy with a pissed-off scowl who looked as if he were going to take out the whole lot of officers with one swing of his balled up fist. Not for the first time, her heart found the rhythm of a specific pitter-pat reserved only for him. He was her own personal Superman, and she had no doubt he was capable of leaping tall buildings, or at least tall Denver P.D. officers, in a single bound. “Please. Let him through. He’s my boyfriend, and he’s here because I called him.”
An hour and forty-five minutes later, the drama and commotion were over. The officers hadn’t found a prowling deviant in a ski mask, but there was evidence of the low-line shrubbery outside her window being tromped. The problem was there was no way to know what might have caused the damage since animals had been using the space between her building and the one next door as their own personal stomping grounds.
The officer took a report and gave Tiffany a business card with his name and the report identification number written on it before he and the others cleared out, leaving her and Declan to their own devices.
“Thank you for coming,” Tiffany said to Declan in her soft voice. She was lying on her bed, facing the mirror hanging on the wall with her back and ass tucked perfectly into the curvature of Declan’s much larger body. He stroked his hand through her hair. “It means a lot to me.”
“You don’t need to thank me for coming, Tiffany.”
“I do,” she said. “I was freaked out, and—”
“Shh…,” he soothed. “If you ever need me, I want you to call.”
“I can’t be sure, but I thought I saw movement outside my window last night, and then I woke to noises coming from the same direction. It was freaky.”
“You did the right thing by calling me and the police. You can never be too careful.”
“I suppose you’re right about never being too careful,” she said.
She liked the way they looked there, reposed on her bed, their framed reflection bouncing back the intimacy. Intimacy she’d never experienced with anyone, let alone a man.
He propped his head up on his hand. She followed his gaze in the mirror. “Who sent the flowers?”
He was looking at the vase of white daisies Mr. Stoub had sent. She’d placed them on top her dresser instead of leaving them in the living room.
“Mr. Stoub sent them after my car accident.”
“That was nice of him.”
“Yeah, it was.”
“I should have bought you some flowers, too,” he said.
“You did something much better than flowers.”
“I did?” His brilliant white smile shone within the mirror.
“Yes, Declan. You stayed with me in the hospital and took care of me when I came home. Having you is far better than getting flowers.”
His right palm slicked along the contour of her side, wrinkling her shirt with the passage. “For the record, I liked being called your boyfriend,” Declan said in his low, sexy voice.
She giggled. “I liked saying it.”
In a masterful move, his body came over her, and he positioned himself between her legs. Taking her face between his warm palms, he kissed her with tenderness.
This kiss was good, as she imagined any kiss from him would be, but different. She considered the uniqueness of the sensation. The spicy scent of his cologne filled her senses, and his familiar body grounded her into the reality of Declan. He called forth the need in her, not with the spearing penetration of his tongue, but with whisper-soft lip-on-lip caresses.
Her good hand meandered down his T-shirt covered back while the gentle swipes of his tongue with hers in sweet advances stirred her sex; not into a frenzied need to be taken hard and fast, but in a slow building throb that said she wanted to have him in the way true lovers experienced more than physical love.
Declan lifted his mouth from hers and gazed down into her eyes. They were connected.
“I’m going to make love to you.”
Please skittered through her mind—a pebble skipping across the top of a still pond, causing ripples of longing to lap against the rocky shore of her soul. She was begging for him to love her.
“Not fuck. There is a difference,” he said.
Yes. Make love to me. No one ever has, she thought, but said, “Okay,” in a breathy voice.
Chapter Eighteen
Tiffany’s early-morning wake-up call had scared the shit out of Declan. The thought of someone lurking around her apartment and trying to peek inside pissed him off to the point of him doing serious damage if he caught the bastard. But, now, he was in her bed, tucked between the heaven of her thighs, keeping her safe within his embrace while he kissed her. And this time, well, this time he had every intention of showing her his softer side.
The feel of her mouth against his was extraordinary, so much so a shudder racked his frame when he took her breath with his. Much about their personalities were a perfect fit for each other, but while he did see a glimmer of hope, he still wasn’t sure he could convince her to trust him completely.
Declan released her, and lifted to his knees, kneeling. The way she looked almost stopped his heart. Her sable hair fanned across the white pillows in a silky configuration, her lips were wet from his attentions, and her sparkling topaz eyes gazed back at him from beneath a dark flutter of lashes. She was utter
ly breathtaking. For the first time in his life, he found that he not only wanted a woman’s body, he wanted her heart, a heart not easily obtained.
“What?” she asked, her cheeks flushing the perfect shade of rose.
“I wish you could see how beautiful you are to me.”
She sat up and pulled her shirt over her head. Those silky strands of hair went along for the ride with the material of her T-shirt and then fell in a wanton tumble around her when she threw the shirt over the side of the bed. He reached out and gently touched the pert tip of a nipple playing peek-a-boo from beneath the long locks covering her breasts.
Tiffany closed her eyes. Making love would be as new to him as he knew it would be to her, but he wasn’t going to let her hide from him, hide from herself, or the feeling between them.
“Don’t,” he said. “Look how stunning you are.” Her lashes lifted in time with the rise of her chin then she locked her gaze with his. “Look.” He turned his head in the direction of the wall mirror. She followed suit. “See.” Their eyes met in the reflection. Her lip slipped between her teeth when he brushed her hair aside and palmed her breast, taking the weight of her into his hand. “Keep watching.” He bent and kissed the scar marring her, wishing he could take away the mark and erase the memories of how she’d acquired it. A little moan escaped when he sucked. He swirled her nub around his tongue, and she slid her fingers through the stubble of his hair and down the back of his head, holding him against her bosom while he lightly bit and tugged at her flesh. “Can you see the flush of your skin?” He lifted his head and traced the crimson hue meandering up her neck with his fingertips.
“Yes.”
“This,” he said, “is beautiful.” He cupped her hot cheek and turned her face toward him. “You,” he pressed his palm against her chest, feeling the beat of her heart thump-thump against him, “are beautiful.”
“Take your shirt off, too,” she whispered. He did. She went to her knees. They kneeled toward each other. She reached for him with a trembling hand. He experienced the warmth when she placed her hand on his heart. Felt the slide of her fingers splaying against the hard plane of his chest. “I think, perhaps, I’m only beautiful to you, and….”
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