by Debra Cowan
To whoever watched, it probably appeared that they were kissing again. Kit lifted her head, her lips brushing his. Needles of heat slid under her skin. She forced herself to follow his gaze to the left, searching for the camera.
Rafe kissed her cheek, her temple. Her heart ached with a strange combination of sadness and anger as she struggled to pretend, the way he was.
This close there was no way he could miss the way her nipples had hardened and heat—of embarrassment, of arousal—flushed her body.
He breathed in her ear again. “The camera’s in the light knob.”
Her hands flexed involuntarily, bunching his shirt as her gaze shifted to the round knob on the wall that controlled the overhead light and ceiling fan. She tried to focus on what he said, but all she could think was she wanted him to kiss her again. For real, this time.
No, no, she desperately corrected. Where was her pride?
What pride? her conscience taunted. To even be here with him, she had to pretend she had none.
She could feel the power of his thighs bracketing hers, the flat, hard muscle of his belly, the lingering taste of his mint gum on her lips.
Tears stung her eyes, and Kit stiffened her spine. He felt it, trailed those wicked fingers up her back. His touch only fanned a languorous heat, and her irritation spiked. She didn’t like how he sent her pulse skyrocketing, didn’t like the way she ached to arch into him, wrap her body around his.
Resentment flared. Did he know how he was affecting her? Was he enjoying it? His voice was cool; his eyes weren’t. In a perverse need to find out if she could still affect him the way he did her, Kit slid her hands up his chest, around his neck and pressed full against him. She took a reckless satisfaction in seeing his eyes widen, feeling the sudden flex of his body against hers.
Going up on tiptoe, she whispered in his ear, “Now what?”
The satisfaction she felt was quickly squashed when he hauled her to him, one thigh insinuated between hers and pressing against the damp heat between her legs. Her hands clamped on to his shoulders for the sole purpose of support.
His gaze lasered into hers. He kissed her again, his mouth covering hers with ruthless purpose. Controlled deliberation. A warning to back off. Now.
It triggered something wild and angry inside her. Reacting on pure instinct, she slid one hand into his thick dark hair, curled the other around his strong, warm nape.
For a moment, he stiffened. Then his restraint snapped. His hands tunneled into her hair, gripping her head as he deepened the kiss, his tongue sweeping into her mouth, claiming every part of her. She couldn’t think, didn’t want to.
It had been so long. He felt so good. Hard, hot male against her, his kiss seducing the strength from her legs. Her hands splayed across his back, pressing closer.
He pulled away, his breathing ragged, the muscles in his neck taut and straining. Surprise flickered in his eyes, then disappeared. “Get your things,” he rasped. “Let’s finish this at my place.”
She nodded, barely aware of moving down the hallway and into her room. With sweat-slicked palms, she dragged an overnight bag from the top of her closet and threw in a change of clothes, underwear. Heartbeat thundering against her ribs, she managed to remember her toothbrush and makeup.
Away from him, she could think. Yes, she needed to be away from him, she thought desperately as she dragged the back of her hand across her lips, still burning from his.
That kiss hadn’t felt like playacting to her. It had felt vividly, painfully real. Reminded her of what she’d thrown away.
When she returned to the front room, he reached for her, planting another kiss on her lips. But she felt the difference this time. This kiss was constrained, like the first one. Studied.
She tried to corral the sensations raging through her body. With one hot hand at her waist, Rafe guided her outside. She turned to lock the door, and he pressed close.
His chest felt like tempered steel against her shoulder blades. His body heat seared through the fabric of her dress. Throat tight, breasts tingling, she shut her eyes.
Only when she turned did she see that he wasn’t paying attention to her at all. He was checking out her porch light, studying the doorbell for signs of other bugs or another camera. Resentment shot through her, and she squashed the urge to knock him flat on his butt. He was doing a job, she ruthlessly reminded herself. He was here for Liz, not her. Not them. There was no them.
Still, how could he be so calm? She felt shaky, ready to shatter, and he looked fully in control. He was no longer flushed. His pulse beat slow and steady at the side of his neck whereas hers fluttered so rapidly she felt it in her throat.
He walked down the sidewalk and turned, waiting for her. Looking as unaffected as if he didn’t even know her, as if she hadn’t felt the hard swell of his arousal against her belly moments ago. It had meant nothing. It had been only for the people listening in on them.
Kit reminded herself of that at least twenty times on her way to his car. Trying to steady her thundering pulse, she walked to the opposite side of the Corvette. Across the car’s top, their eyes met.
“Sorry about that. The kiss, I mean.” He gestured toward the house with irritating nonchalance. “It was the quickest way I could think to stop you from announcing we’d found their bug and tipping them off about the camera.”
What was she supposed to say? Oh, it’s all right that you kissed the breath out of me. It wasn’t. She wondered if it was going to be.
“Sure. No problem.” Her voice caught, and she fought the urge to hide her face in her hands. “What do we do now?”
“You’re coming home with me.”
“But…” Panic clawed at her. “Is that a good idea?”
“You have a better one?”
“How about anywhere but there?” she drawled.
The glint of male satisfaction in his eyes had her clenching her jaw. “Wouldn’t it be better, safer if we—I went to a hotel?”
He slid her a look. “We can, but I can’t guarantee the security of a place like that the way I can my own house.”
“Of course.” The only thing she understood was that she needed to be away from him, and that wasn’t going to happen tonight.
His house. A dull throb built at the back of her head.
“Like it or not,” he said brusquely, “we’re stuck together.”
He obviously didn’t like it.
“And we both might as well get used to it. I’m not letting you out of my sight until we find that ditzy sister of yours.”
“You never did understand Liz,” she snapped. “Well, you don’t have to. You just have to find her.”
“That’s the plan,” he said through clenched teeth.
“Fine.”
“Fine.”
Her glare went unremarked. Panic closed across her chest as she got into the Corvette. She told herself that finding Liz would be worth risking her heart again. Worth anything, but after that staged seduction scene, she wasn’t sure she was up for even five more minutes with Rafe Blackstock.
Chapter 4
Want clawed through him. As Kit ducked into the passenger side of his car, Rafe went down on all fours, then slid under the ’Vette. If there was a bug in her house, there was possibly something on his car or hers. At first glance, he saw nothing so he stretched his arm up and felt the undercarriage.
Blast her, she’d gotten him all hot and bothered in there, plastering her lush bod against his and issuing that silent but unmistakable challenge—I can make you want me, too.
That had never been the damn issue between them, just as it hadn’t been his real intent to fire her engines in there a minute ago. It had been instinct that had fueled the way he’d hauled her to him and silenced her with a kiss, instinct to keep her from announcing to their unseen audience that they’d found the bug and camera. Now he was paying the price because it had been pure want that exploded in his veins when she’d retaliated. Pure desire that had him pulling he
r to him, wanting to wrap both those long legs around his waist and say to hell with caution.
That was stupid, and he wouldn’t do it. Not just because he needed a clear mind in order to ascertain the danger Kit faced, if indeed there was danger, but also because he wasn’t giving her another chance to stomp all over his heart.
His mouth twisting, he tried to forget how she felt against him, how she’d surrendered to his kiss for just that one beat of time. There had never been any question of the sexual chemistry between them. Their problem—her problem—had been that she couldn’t commit. Her accusation that he was too controlling had been true at the time, but that hadn’t been the whole issue.
Sliding his hands along the lip of the car’s frame, he cursed the way his gut jumped at the remembered feel of her full breasts pressed against him, the wicked slide of her tongue against his, the deep wine taste of her.
More memories crowded through his mind, memories of their days together at OU, their nights, that time in the car on the way back from his parents’ place. Rafe slammed a mental door on those thoughts, ruthlessly turned his mind to the task at hand. Around one side of the car, then to the back and around the passenger side. His fingers grazed something. Aha.
He lay on his back and scooted under the car as far as he could. There it was, a little black box with a flashing red light. The bastards. Well, this proved someone was following her. Not that he needed more convincing after finding that bug and camera in her house. How serious these bad guys were had yet to be determined.
Rafe moved out from under the car and stood, walking up to Kit’s car. Her house was relatively old and didn’t have a garage. He’d probably find a tracking device on hers, too. Sure enough, he did.
She rolled down the window. “What are you doing?”
“Looking for tracking devices.”
“And?”
“There’s one on my car.” He knelt, felt around the wheel well, up along the lip of her frame, then moved around to the front of her car. “And there’s one on yours.”
He stood, dusting his hands. He’d been right to insist she come to his house tonight. Now all he had to do was keep his hands off her.
After easing into the driver’s seat, he took the tissue Kit offered and cleaned his hands as best he could.
“What do we do now?”
“Leave the device on your car. You won’t be using it.”
“What about the one on yours?” In the fading sunlight, she looked wan and worried.
He grinned. “We’ll dump it somewhere.”
She nodded, her blue-gray eyes searching his.
“It’ll be all right,” he said, compelled to reassure her.
“I hope Liz is, too.”
Rafe had no answer for that so he started the engine and backed the ’Vette out of Kit’s drive. He turned north on May Avenue and headed toward his house in Quail Creek. Amazing how close they lived to each other. Amazing they’d steered clear of each other until now.
She sat on her side of the car, arms crossed tightly. He figured she was probably still mad about his comments concerning Dizzy Lizzy. That was for the best. The more distance between them, the better.
Still, as he slid a look at her pale golden skin, the finely sculpted profile, his whole body tightened. In all fairness, their breakup hadn’t been entirely her fault. He’d blamed her all these years for not speaking up, but back then he had been too controlling, too insistent on his own way.
Even when he’d proposed, he hadn’t asked her to marry him; he’d simply told her she would and how they would live. The realization jolted him, and he jerked his gaze to the road. That had been a valid reason to turn him down. Besides her keen sense of family responsibility, had his control played a part in why she couldn’t commit to him? The only excuse he had for his domineering behavior was that he’d been young and stupid.
As she looked out the window at passing scenery, holding herself away from him, he realized it didn’t matter now. They’d gone their separate ways.
Spying a police cruiser up ahead, he changed lanes and pulled into the small parking lot of an all-night doughnut shop. She sent him a questioning look and he grinned, slid out of the car and moved around to remove the tracking device from the belly of the ’Vette.
He walked to the black and white, slapped it on the underside of the bumper and got back in his car.
Kit laughed. “That was good.”
“It’ll keep them busy for a while.”
“Until we get to your house?”
“Yeah.”
Her smile faded, and he recognized the shadows in her eyes as memories from the past. Memories she was fighting as much as he was. The silence stretched between them, stilted and unfinished. Regret pricked at him. He was swept with a sudden urge to touch her, reassure her, but about what? The past was past. Best to leave it alone.
He put the car in gear, reversed and pulled onto May Avenue. They drove in silence to his house. His life was markedly different from what he’d planned, even aside from Kit. She, on the other hand, still appeared to be her sister’s self-appointed rescuer.
Despite the years that had passed, Rafe wasn’t willing to play second fiddle to Dizzy Lizzy. Yes, the more distance the better. And that meant keeping his hands to himself. After that kiss, which even now rattled him, he knew she could still affect him like a neutron bomb. He couldn’t allow himself to get close to her again, not physically, not emotionally.
He’d have to protect her, find her sister without letting it become personal. They were over. They couldn’t go back; he wouldn’t go back.
For the fourth time in the last half hour, Kit rose from the supple, navy leather sofa in Rafe’s living room and walked toward the sliding patio doors. He had grilled chicken and vegetables for dinner; she’d cleaned up afterward. And thirty minutes ago, he’d invited her outside, but she’d thought it would be more prudent to stay inside. Away from him.
She hadn’t been able to stop thinking about that kiss at her house. It had completely ambushed her senses. And unleashed the curiosity that had been hammering at her since seeing him this morning.
Rafe’s finding that tracking device had convinced Kit that her sister was in danger, no matter what he said. She’d gotten a chuckle out of his putting it on the police cruiser. He was still so darn cute. Which she didn’t need to be thinking about, either.
Still, if they were going to be stuck together, she wanted to know how he’d gotten back to Oklahoma City. It had unsettled her to learn that they lived within five miles of each other and she hadn’t known it.
Finally, prodded by the curiosity she’d been trying all day to deny, she stepped through the sliding glass doors onto the patio and closed the door behind her.
Flagstone tile in variegated shades of cream and terra-cotta formed a far-reaching patio and framed a small rectangular pool. Potted plants in oversize ceramic planters guarded each corner. Bunches of petunias, begonias and other annuals spilled against a tall wooden privacy fence. A six-foot-wide border of grass edged the fence and butted up against the tile. The pool, covered with a blue tarp, waited to be filled with the first water of summer. Last week’s Memorial Day had surely been hot enough for swimmers.
Light from inside the house washed across the tile, shimmered off the cushioned lounge chairs around the pool. It was a perfect early summer night, growing cooler as the darkness swallowed the last of the sun. The stars burned bright in a velvet sky. Moonlight skittered across the patio, danced with the darkness. Kit squinted into the shadows.
“Over here.”
Rafe’s smoothly dark voice came from behind her and sent a shiver over her skin. She turned, rubbing her arms. She attributed the tightening of her belly to a sudden breeze, not the delicious timbre of his voice.
About ten feet to her right, she saw the silhouette of his upper body. The muted glow of house lights behind him played against his raven hair. Broad shoulders, seemingly carved from the night, rose from the w
ater of a hot tub. Steam curled around him, and as her eyes adjusted, she saw he had leaned back against the wall of the hot tub, arms spread on either side, waiting, watching. Aggressive, male, primally appealing. He was familiar, and yet not. Her knowledge of the boy bumped into the mystery of the man.
She swallowed against the purely feminine flutter in her stomach and squashed the urge to scurry back into the house.
“If you want to join me, there’s an extra suit over there.” He inclined his head toward a storage closet partially visible in the shadowed alcove behind him, which also housed a grill and a picnic table. His teeth flashed white in the darkness. “Or you can go without. I won’t be offended.”
To cover the sudden dip in her stomach, she retorted, “Yeah, that’s why I came out here. To get naked with you.”
He chuckled, and she found herself smiling. He was over there; she was over here. She was safe.
Still, that kiss from this afternoon was fresh in her mind, and the feel of that lean hard body against hers had opened the floodgate on memories that were better ignored.
“You sure you don’t want to join me?”
“Yes,” she murmured, wondering what he would do if she actually climbed in there with him.
“Pull up a chair or scoot over and dip your feet in. Feels pretty good.” He swirled a hand through the water invitingly, stirring moonlight and shadows around his bare, glistening chest.
She hoped he had something on beneath that water. He’d done his share of skinny-dipping in college.
“You’ve got a real bachelor setup here. The hot tub, the pool, the extra suit.” She couldn’t keep the bite out of her voice.
“People leave things,” he said with a shrug.
Which answered nothing. She itched to slip off her shoes and stick her feet in the warm water, but she knew it would be safer to stay dressed, keep some distance between them. Rafe, even without the seductive softness of night, had always been able to make her do things she regretted later. Like kissing him back there at her house.
