“While Rosa and I are here, I really don’t expect you to wait on me. I’ll do my share of the cooking. Why don’t I take breakfast?”
“Since cold cereal is your specialty?” she teased.
“I can fix more than cold cereal,” he protested. “For your information, Miss Doubter, I’m great at toast and can usually manage to boil water for oatmeal, too, without burning the house down.”
“I hope so. I’m fairly fond of my house,” she said.
The conversation reminded him of something he meant to bring up with her earlier. “If the FBI doesn’t make the offer, my department will pick up the tab for the groceries Rosa and I use while we’re here. Just keep a tally and send the bill to my office when this is over.”
Her spoon froze halfway to her mouth, then she returned it to her soup bowl with a clatter. “Absolutely not!” she exclaimed.
He wasn’t quite prepared for her vehemence. “Why not? Rosa is ultimately my responsibility. You’re not obligated to pay for her room and board, my office should be taking care of that.”
“Forget it, Daniel. I’m the one who insisted she stay here. She is a guest in my house and I will take care of feeding her.”
“You didn’t want me as part of the package.”
“No. I didn’t,” she snapped, and though he knew it was crazy, he couldn’t help feeling a little hurt. How could he burn for her so hotly when she didn’t even want him around?
“Fine, we’ll compromise,” he said. “You can pay for Rosa’s food and I’ll pay my own.”
“This is stupid. I’ve already bought enough groceries to last a week or more for all three of us. Just take your share out of the huge collective mental ledger everyone seems to be keeping, the one marked ‘Maxwell family debt’ and clearly labeled ‘unpaid.’”
She clamped her teeth together as soon as the bitter words were out and looked as if she regretted saying anything.
Is that what she thought? That everyone believed she owed her heart and soul to Moose Springs, just because her father was a crook?
“There is no collective ledger, huge or otherwise.”
“Right.” She rose, her usually fluid movements suddenly jerky and abrupt as she started clearing away the dishes. He had been considering asking for a second helping, but he forgot all about it now, struck that she could entertain such a misguided notion.
“Everyone knows you’re not responsible for what your father did, Lauren.”
“Do they?”
He frowned at her pointed question. Okay, he had to admit there might be some validity in her bitterness. The other day with Dale Richins, he had experienced just a taste of what she might encounter in certain circles. The scorn, the disdain.
It suddenly bugged the hell out of him that anybody could blame an innocent girl for her father’s crimes.
“In their hearts, everyone knows that. But some people in town are just more stubborn and pigheaded on this issue than they ought to be. How can it be your fault? You were only a girl when he first, uh…”
His voice trailed off and he wasn’t quite sure how to couch his words in polite terms.
“Go ahead and finish it, Daniel. When R.J. first starting dipping his fingers into the city’s meager financial well.”
“Right. You were just a child. Anybody who can blame you for what R.J. did is being mean and stupid.”
“Intellectually, I know that. It doesn’t make the digs and slurs in the grocery store any easier to deal with it. My father paid for my medical school tuition out of stolen money—which means, in effect, that the people of this town paid for my education. Do you think I’m not aware of that every time I look at my diploma?”
He had no idea she tied the two things together, her father’s embezzlement and her own medical school bills. Guilt spasmed through him at his own role in this whole thing. If she knew the truth, she probably would have added rat poison to the soup.
“Lauren—”
“This town owns me, body and soul. My father made sure of that. I can never leave here, no matter all the slights and slurs and whispers I have to endure. They paid for my education and I am obligated to damn well give them their money’s worth.”
She shoved a dish in the dishwasher with a clatter. “But you know, it doesn’t matter what I do, how much I give. I can pour out my soul here in my practice, work twenty hours a day, treat anybody who walks through the door whether they have any intention of paying me or not. But I’ll still always be crooked R. J. Maxwell’s daughter.”
“You can’t change where you came from, Lauren, no matter how hard you try.”
He should know. He had spent way too much time during his teenage years wishing he could belong to any other family in town except the dirt-poor Galvez family, with a mother who scrubbed toilets and a father who did every miserable grunt job that came along at R. J. Maxwell’s construction company, for usually half as much as anybody else on the crew, just because he didn’t have a green card.
Now, it shamed him deeply that he had ever considered his family inferior to anyone else.
He used to ride his bike past Lauren’s grand house on Center Street and want everything inside there—furniture that matched and didn’t come from Goodwill, a soft, pretty mother who smelled like flowers instead of disinfectant, his own bedroom instead of the crowded, chronically messy one he had to share with two annoying younger brothers.
He used to think Lauren’s life was perfect. She had everything—money, brains, beauty. He wanted the kingdom, and in his deepest heart, he had wanted the beautiful golden princess who came along with it.
Over the years, he had learned that the kingdom was built on sand, the king was a fraud and a cheat, and the castle had been sold long ago to pay his bills.
But the princess.
Oh, yeah, he still wanted the princess.
“I know I can’t change what my father did,” she said quietly. “I live with it every day.”
“You’ve done more to make things right than anyone could ever expect of you, Lauren. Anyone who doesn’t see that, who doesn’t admire and respect the hell out of you for what you’ve done here, is someone who doesn’t deserve even a moment of your time.”
At his words, something about her seemed to crumble. One moment she was looking at him with defiance and bitterness and the next, her soft mouth trembled and she stared at him out of luminous blue eyes welling with tears.
“Ah, hell. I’m sorry. Don’t cry, Lauren. Please don’t cry.”
He rose and pulled her into his arms. He couldn’t help himself.
She sagged against his chest and her arms slid around him. To his vast and eternal relief, she sniffled a few times but she didn’t let the tears loose. He held her close, burying his face in hair that smelled of jasmine and vanilla. After a moment, she stirred and lifted her face to his.
“I’m sorry. I try not to indulge in pity parties more than once or twice a month. You just caught me on a bad day.”
“Don’t mention it,” he murmured, and then he couldn’t help himself. He took what he had been fantasizing about since he walked into her house earlier.
Chapter 8
Her mouth was soft, delicious, like sinking into the best dream he had ever had. After one raw instant, his body revved into overdrive and he could focus on nothing but how incredibly right she felt in his arms.
He wanted to devour her, right there in her kitchen, just wrap his arms around her, drag her to the floor and consume every inch of her. Even as the wild need raged through him, ravaging his control, he forced himself to take things slow and easy, to hide his wild hunger behind a facade of soft, steady calm.
He hadn’t been with a woman in a long time, but he knew that wasn’t the reason why his vision dimmed and he suddenly couldn’t seem to keep hold of a coherent thought.
That reason was simple, really. Lauren.
He couldn’t quite believe she was here in his arms, the girl who had been affecting him in a strange, bafflin
g way since he was a kid.
Even when he had been sixteen and big for his age, the toughest kid in school, he had dreamed of sweet Lauren Maxwell. The mayor’s little girl, with her shiny blond ponytail and her soft, pretty hands and her wide, generous smile.
It had mortified him, this fascination with her, and even then he had known anything between them was an impossibility.
The taste of her seemed to soak through his bones and he couldn’t seem to get enough. This was stupid, he knew. Monumentally stupid. Playing chicken with an express train kind of stupid.
He had to reign in his hunger. If he didn’t, if he gave in to it, how could he ever return to the stiff politeness that had marked their relationship since her father’s death?
He drew in a ragged breath and did his best to clamp down on the wild need raging through him.
He might have even succeeded if he hadn’t heard the soft, seductive sound of his name on her lips, against his mouth, and felt her hands tremble over the muscles of his chest.
They had come this far. One more kiss wouldn’t hurt anything. That’s what he told himself, anyway.
And a tiny portion of his mind even believed it.
She was sliding into an endless canyon of sensation, surrounded by the heat and strength and leashed power of Daniel Galvez.
Somehow, she wouldn’t have expected his kiss to be so slow, so easy and gentle. Though she couldn’t say she spent a great deal of time fantasizing about men and their kissing styles, if she had to guess Daniel’s, she would have expected him to kiss a woman like the athlete he had been, fast and fierce and passionate.
Instead, he seduced her with softness, teasing and tasting and exploring. He nibbled her lips, he traced light designs on the bare skin of her neck with his fingertips, he rubbed his cheek against hers—and she found that light rasp of evening stubble against her skin far more evocative and sensual than a full-body massage.
He kissed her until every nerve ending inside her seemed to quiver, until she wanted to melt into him, to wrap her arms around his strong neck, press her body against his muscles and lose herself in him.
When she was young, she used to love it when Moose Springs held its annual celebration and the town paid for a small carnival for the children with giant inflatable slides and a Tilt-o-Whirl and enough cotton candy to power the midway lights on juiced-up kid power alone.
Her favorite was the pony ride. Once, when she was probably seven or eight, her father had slipped the carnival workers a few extra dollars to let her just keep riding that little horse around and around. She probably rode for half an hour and she had never forgotten the magic of that night, with the lights flashing and the screams of children braving the more terrifying rides and the smell of popcorn and spun sugar and spilled sodas.
This was far more exhilarating than any long-ago pony ride. She didn’t want the kiss to end, she just wanted to lock the cold, snowy world outside her kitchen and stay right here in his arms forever with this wild heat churning through her insides and this fragile tenderness settling in her heart like a tiny bird finding a nest.
The only sounds in the kitchen were the soft soughs of their breathing and the low crackle of the fire in the other room. Finally, when she was very much afraid her legs weren’t going to support her much longer, Daniel made a sound deep in his throat, something raw and aroused, and deepened the kiss.
She sighed an enthusiastic welcome and returned the kiss. He pulled her closer and she molded her body to his. This time she relished how small and delicate he made her feel next to his size and strength.
They kissed until she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, until she was lost to everything but Daniel, his taste and his scent and his touch.
Suddenly, over the sound of their harsh breathing, she heard something else. The rather prosaic sound of a toilet flushing somewhere in the house. Rosa.
Lauren froze as if she had stepped naked into that storm outside the windows. Jarred back into her senses, she scrambled away from him, her heart beating wildly.
What, in heaven’s name, just happened here? Had she really just been wrapped around Daniel Galvez?
Her face flamed and it was all she could do not to press her hands to her cheeks. What must he think of her? She had responded to him like some wild, sex-starved coed. She had all but dragged him to the floor and had her way with him.
She was fairly certain she had even moaned his name a time or two. How could she ever look him in the eye again?
“Rosa must be awake,” she said, keeping her gaze firmly in the vicinity of his chest, until she realized that probably wasn’t the greatest idea since it only made her want to smooth her hands over those hard muscles once more.
“Sounds like,” he said. Did his voice sound more hoarse than usual? she wondered.
She finally risked a look at him and could have sworn he had a dazed kind of look in his eyes—the same baffled, disoriented expression she saw in patients with mild concussions.
Had Daniel been as affected as she had by that shattering kiss? How was it possible? He disliked her. Okay, dislike might be a bit harsh. But he certainly never seemed interested in her on that kind of level.
Except once, she reminded herself—so long ago, it seemed another lifetime. More than a decade ago, he had asked her out and she turned him down. Quite firmly, if she recalled.
He had been the first guy to show any interest in her since the grim events of that spring and she had been far too raw and messed-up to even consider it. The very idea had terrified her. The details were a little hazy but she was fairly certain she hadn’t been very subtle with her refusal, either.
In all those years, Daniel had never given her any indication he might be interested in her. Things between them were always strained, always slightly uncomfortable, though both of them did their best to be polite.
That kiss, though.
That was certainly not the way an uninterested man kissed a woman.
Her stomach muscles fluttered and she didn’t know what to think. She suddenly was desperate for a little space to figure out what had just happened between them.
Distance from the man was not something she would likely find in the next few days, she realized with considerable dismay. Her house was small but had always seemed more cozy than confining to her. With Daniel here—six feet three inches of him and all that muscle—she suddenly felt like the walls were squeezing in, sucking away every particle of oxygen.
“Uh, Lauren—” Daniel began, but whatever he started to say was cut off as Rosa came into the kitchen, looking much more rested than she had when they arrived.
She greeted them with a shy smile, apparently oblivious to the tense undercurrents zinging through the kitchen like hummingbirds on crack cocaine.
“How are you?” Lauren asked in Spanish.
“Better,” Rosa answered.
“Sit. I’ll get you something to eat. Would you eat some soup?”
She dipped her cheek to her shoulder, looking hesitant to put anyone to more trouble.
Daniel said something in rapid Spanish, too fast for Lauren to understand, and pulled a chair out for her at the table. Rosa’s shyness lifted and she giggled a little and nodded, then obediently sat down.
“What did you say?” Lauren asked.
“I told her she had to have some of your delicious soup or I would end up eating it all and end up too fat to wear my uniform.”
He gave an embarrassed smile and Lauren stared at it, an odd emotion tugging at her chest.
She was in trouble here, she thought as she hurried to the stove to dish Rosa a bowl of soup. Panic spurted through her and it was all she could do not to drop the soup all over the floor.
Oh, she was in serious trouble.
She could probably handle the physical attraction. But she suddenly realized she had no defenses against a man who had the wisdom to cajole and tease and look after a frightened young girl like she was his own little sister.
The eve
ning that followed had to live on in her memory as one of the most surreal of Lauren’s life. While Rosa picked at her bowl of soup, the storm that had been toying with this part of the state all day let loose with a vengeance. The wind lashed snow against the window and moaned under the eaves of her little house.
Daniel threw on his coat and made several trips to the woodpile out back so they had a good supply of split logs close to the house. Lauren gathered lanterns and flashlights just in case the power went out, as it often did during big storms like this that brought heavy, wet snow to knock out power lines.
While she cleaned the kitchen and loaded the dishwasher, Daniel checked in with his department.
She listened to his strong, confident voice as he reviewed emergency storm protocol with his lieutenant and she thought again how lucky the people of Moose Springs were to have him as their sheriff. He was wonderful at his job and truly cared about the people he served.
She knew her reasons for setting up her practice in her hometown but why did he stay here? He could be working anywhere. He had spent his first few years in law enforcement as a Salt Lake City police officer and many had expected him to stay there and make a promising career for himself. Then his mother had fallen ill, his father was killed and he had returned home.
His mother had lost her battle with cancer shortly after Lauren returned to town. So why did Daniel stay all these years?
She enjoyed listening to him. It was silly, she knew, but she loved hearing him in action. Oh, she had it bad.
He ended the phone conversation just as she finished wiping down the countertops.
“If you need to go on a call or something during the night, I’m sure we’ll be fine here,” Lauren offered.
“I’ve got good people working for me and I’m sure they have everything under control. But if something comes up that nobody else can handle, one of my deputies can come here and relieve me for a while.”
“Does everyone know you’re staying at my house?”
His mouth tightened and his expression cooled. It took her a moment to figure out how her question must have sounded, as if she worried about her reputation.
Shelter from the Storm Page 9
