by Kylie Brant
A sob ripped out of her. Her fingers were clutching the edge of the counter and she rubbed her hips against him, aiding his entry. He gulped in a deep breath, took her hips in his hands and drove into her with a harsh groan.
The rhythm he set torched any thought of control. She climaxed in moments, her body convulsing around him, milking his own response. He exploded an instant later, pouring himself inside her. And for the first time in more years than he could count, he felt complete.
Chapter 12
Nick and Kim were at the breakfast table when Sara got up the next morning. She slipped into a chair next to him, strangely reluctant to meet his warm gaze.
“You slept late.”
“Must have been all the dancing you made me do.”
“Nick danced?” Kim’s voice was incredulous.
He gave the woman a quelling look. “I can dance.”
“Can, yes. It’s your willingness to do so that’s surprising.”
Sara reached for the coffeepot and poured a steaming cup. She felt oddly in need of fortification this morning.
“So did you find out anything of interest last night?”
Kim’s question was surely meant for Nick, but it reminded Sara of something she’d wanted to mention. “I got a bad feeling when Mannen was talking about Connally, McKay and the women.” She screwed up her brow, trying to remember the man’s exact wording. “The way he said ‘laid to rest.’ I got a distinct impression he was talking about more than allaying their suspicions.”
“He has some scores he intends to settle,” Nick agreed grimly. “There’s too much public scrutiny right now for him to move against his enemies, but he’s definitely planning something. I’m more convinced than ever that he won’t be hanging around much longer to see what charges stick.”
“Just long enough for the big score,” Kim said. She stabbed her fork at the last bite of waffle on her plate and lifted it to her lips. After swallowing, she added, “How much longer before you move on him?”
Sara caught Nick’s sidelong glance her way. “That depends on what we get from the disks. And I’d like to get him recorded at least once more.”
A shaft of pain lanced through her. To cover it, Sara reached for a piece of toast. She didn’t need any reminders that their time together was rapidly coming to an end. With Mannen in custody, Nick’s job would be over. The danger to her wouldn’t lessen appreciably, but protecting her had never been his prime duty. And despite his promises, she couldn’t see a reason why he’d bother to keep his vows. She wasn’t his problem. He seemed to want her, but she didn’t fool herself into believing that would last. Before long, she’d be on her own again.
The wave of desolation that overcame her at the thought was hard to battle. She steeled herself against the feeling. There was always a price for letting oneself want. She’d known that, just as she’d known she’d have to deal with the resulting loss. She’d kept her expectations low all her life so as to cushion herself from just this sort of disappointment.
She washed the toast down with a gulp of coffee, barely noticing when Kim left the table. With Nick out of the picture, there would no longer be a choice between him and Justice. The agency would be no less a threat to her then, with the mole Mannen had inside. It was time, past time, for her to begin making plans for how she was going to deal with it.
Nick reached a finger beneath her chin, turning her to face him. A soft kiss was pressed to her mouth. He tasted like coffee sweetened by maple syrup. “Good morning.”
“Good morning.” It was an effort, but she managed to meet his gaze, and immediately recognized the look of lazy male satisfaction apparent in it.
“I let you sleep. I thought you needed it.” A smile crooked his mouth. “Or rather, I thought I owed you some.”
She reached for her coffee with a hand that wasn’t quite steady. “I’m fine.”
“I didn’t use protection the first time last night.”
His bald statement had her hand jerking, sending coffee sloshing over the side of the cup. Setting it down quickly, she used her napkin to soak up the resulting spill. “I know. I mean…it’s all right. I’m on the pill.” She’d escaped Carson’s attack without a pregnancy to further complicate her life, and she’d started taking precautions shortly after she ran away. It would have been hideously irresponsible to bring a child into the kind of life she was forced to lead.
It wasn’t a topic she felt at ease discussing with Nick, not now, not last night. Perhaps if she could even come close to matching him in experience, such an intimate discussion wouldn’t have her feeling awkward and inadequate.
The feelings were intensified when he said, “That’s never happened before. Ever.”
The words had her gaze flying to his. “I’m a bastard,” Nick stated quietly. “My teenaged father didn’t care enough about my mother to marry her, and she didn’t care enough to keep me.” His mouth twisted self-deprecatingly. “A Doucet could be born outside marriage, but one could never be raised outside the family.”
Sara was fascinated despite herself at this tiny sliver of his past. “Your father raised you alone?”
“My father let my grandmother raise me, and he went about doing what he does best—running through women and money with equal fervor. Though I am the only child he had. He’s a great disappointment to my grandfather,” Nick added.
“And to you?” she dared to ask.
He took the soaked napkin she was clutching in her hand and set it aside. “I never allowed myself to be disappointed.” The words were such an eerie echo of her earlier thoughts that she could only stare. “I’m telling you this just so you know. I’ve never let that happen before. Not when I was seventeen…not ever. And no child of mine would ever be raised without me in its life.”
She strove for an even tone. “Well, like I say, there’s no reason to worry.”
“You misunderstood me, chérie, if you thought I was worried.”
She was saved from replying to his cryptic comment when he raised his head, listening. A moment later, she heard the sound, too. His cell phone was ringing.
“Excuse me, would you please?”
She nodded and he went into the next room. Because she discovered her fingers were shaking, she curled them tightly into her palms. She didn’t know what to make of the information he’d just given her. Knew only that his reference to his loss of control last night was doing a fine job of shredding her own composure.
“Dammit, what did I tell you?”
The lash of Nick’s voice startled her. She turned to look into the next room. He was pacing with the phone clutched to his ear, and the expression on his face was thunderous.
“I already told you how this was going to be played.”
Sara was listening unabashedly now, slipping from her chair to move closer when he paced farther away. Was he talking to Mannen? She discarded the thought in the next moment. He wouldn’t speak to the man in that tone. He was too well trained to slip out of his role. So it was someone else, someone he was truly angry at.
Doubts circled, gnawing vicious little holes in her stomach. The caller could be Whitmore. Did he have Nick’s number? Was he still trying to convince him to turn her over to the department? There was no way to be sure. It could just as easily be someone else he worked with, although if it were any of the staff he had helping him out on this job she doubted they would use a phone to contact him.
She doubted that he’d sound that furious, either.
He listened for a long time. When he spoke again his tone was no less terse, but there was a note of acceptance in it. “You may be on to something. I’m not saying I approve of your disobeying orders, understand, but I’ll take a look at what you’ve got. Noon. There’s a bar on Thirty-fifth and Troost called the Horseshoe Grill. Be there.”
As she heard him prepare to end the conversation, Sara slipped back into her chair. A few moments later, when he came striding into the room again, she was sipping coffee. “Who wa
s that?”
“No one important.”
It had sounded important to her, but it was obvious he wasn’t going to share the conversation with her. “Can I convince you to come along to the bookstore with me today? Kim and I found one that has something for every taste.”
“Not today.” As if realizing how abrupt he sounded, he added, “I have a meeting. But tonight…you and I need to sit down and have a long talk.”
Anxiety rose in a wave. “Sounds serious.”
He came up behind her and rested his hands on her shoulders, kneaded gently. “It is.”
“I don’t see a bookstore anywhere near here. Are you sure you have the address right?”
At Kim’s question, Sara acted confused. “I thought so. Do you mind if we look just a bit longer? Then if we don’t find it in the next block or two we can go back to that place we found yesterday.”
“Bookstores aren’t my idea of shopping,” the other woman muttered. “Now, a shoe sale marked fifty percent off—that’s shopping.”
Sara barely heard her. Her focus was on the sign two doors down: The Horseshoe Grill. Uncertainty churned in her stomach. It was ridiculous to feel like she was betraying a trust. Nick hadn’t seen fit to explain himself to her, so was it so wrong to check things out on her own? She wanted, she needed, to be sure he wasn’t meeting someone from Justice.
She needed to believe that he wasn’t dealing with Whitmore.
The man had been full of assurances when she’d met him six years ago, but things had gone wrong, horribly wrong, anyway. He might have risen higher in the department by now, but that didn’t mean the agency was any safer, at least for her.
They were drawing even with the restaurant. In a nonchalant tone, she said, “Okay if we stop in here for a soda?”
Kim looked at the place, then scanned the street. After a moment, she shrugged. “All right by me.” They entered and Sara’s gaze immediately went in search of Nick. Unerringly, she picked him out at a rear table. With his back to the wall he was able to see all arrivals. It would only be a moment before he noticed them.
The other man’s back was to her.
The hostess approached them, blocking Sara’s view. While Kim spoke to the woman, Sara took a step closer, stared harder. It wasn’t Mannen with Nick. The man was shorter, broader, with brown hair. Whitmore had brown hair. At least he had the last time she’d seen him. But hadn’t it been streaked with gray?
Kim was looking at her curiously. The hostess was walking in another direction, leading them toward their table. Sara took another step, and then another. If she could just see the man’s profile, she could be certain. Whitmore had a hooked nose that would be impossible to…
Nick picked that moment to look up, and the expression on his face stopped her in her tracks. In the next instant his lips were moving in what she somehow knew were curses, and he was rising from the table. Kim saw him, and grabbed Sara’s arm. Nick’s guest turned and Sara was finally able to get a look at him.
It wasn’t Whitmore at all. But recognition slammed into her all the same. The battered features, the square jaw, those pale gray eyes… Sara staggered back as reality hit her with the force of a death blow.
It was the man who’d tried to kill her in New Orleans. The man Nick had assured her she’d never see again.
Nick’s expression was a tight hard mask as he strode toward her. Kim was talking, but Sara couldn’t make out the words. She couldn’t hear anything above the roaring in her ears, the pounding in her blood.
Instinct took over. It had been dulled perhaps in the last several days, but it rose inside her now, sharp as a spear. She whirled on Kim and curved her hand into position, dealing her a blow guaranteed to neutralize her.
Nick yelled something she couldn’t make out, and lunged toward her. Sara pushed Kim’s doubled-over body toward him and spun away. Running a few steps, she grabbed a tray of food from a shocked waitress and threw it in Nick’s direction. Then she ran full out, not bothering to look back. She slammed through the kitchen door. She’d worked in enough restaurants to know building codes guaranteed a second exit.
There was a chorus of angry shouts from the cooks and the wait staff in the kitchen, but Sara didn’t hesitate. Dodging people and counters, she sped out the back door.
She knew better than to turn around, to slow. She darted down the alley and into the back door of another store, then out the front of it. And when she got on the street, breath heaving through her lungs, she sprinted to one of the taxis lining the curb and yanked the door open.
Leaping inside, she leaned forward and yelled, “Drive!”
The last thing she saw as they moved into traffic was Nick standing in the cloud of their exhaust.
“Where to?” The driver leaned forward, turned on the meter. Its ticking sliced through her panic-induced haze, delivering yet another realization.
She didn’t have any money.
Lowering her head to her hands, Sara forced herself to think. She didn’t even have a purse. With no keys, money or identification, she’d hardly needed one. Nick had seen to that.
The thought of him summoned a wave of nausea. Reaction was setting in, shudders racking her system. Confusion clouded her thinking. Nick had told her…what had he said? That the scene in New Orleans had been a ruse. That the man who had pretended to attack her had left the country. But that didn’t explain why Nick had been arguing with him on the phone this morning. Or why the man was here, in Chicago, when Nick had said he wouldn’t be returning to the States.
“Lady, you gotta give me an address.”
She drew a breath, tried to concentrate. “Give me a minute to think.” When she’d seen the man with Nick, she’d reacted, thought receding, to be replaced with survival instinct. Logic was returning now, and with it, emotion. She wished she could talk to Nick, hear his explanation. There may well be a simple reason for…
Even as the thought formed, she regarded it with shock. Was she actually making excuses for the man now? That should show her just how close he’d gotten to her, how completely he’d destroyed the defenses she’d spent years building. It really didn’t matter if he’d lied to her about the attack in New Orleans or not. She’d allowed him to get too close to her. Sara took a deep breath. She couldn’t chance trusting him again, and she certainly couldn’t trust her own feelings.
There was really no decision to make here at all. The thought slyly slipped through the welter of emotion. This was a bigger matter than whether or not she could trust Nick. If she could allow herself to. She was free. A curious sense of calm settled over her then. There had been no way out of the situation she and Nick had been engaged in. No way to escape Mannen in this lifetime, except by death. Fate, perhaps, had finally balanced out the cards in her life and decided she was owed a break. Regardless of the ache in her heart, it was one she wasn’t going to waste. “Take me to a pawnshop,” she told the driver. “A reputable one.”
The small storefront the driver pulled up to twenty minutes later was tucked away in a building that had seen better days. But the neighborhood seemed decent enough, if slightly deteriorated. Sara had a heated discussion with the driver, who was unwilling to wait for her, even with the meter running. When he learned she didn’t have the money to pay him, wouldn’t until she’d conducted her business inside, the discussion increased in volume. It cost her a promise of triple the fare to convince him to let her out of the car.
A bell rang as she pushed open the door to the shop. A tall thin man with a fringe of gray hair looked up from the betting sheets he had spread across the glass counter. “Can I help you?”
Sara reached up, took the earrings from her ears. “I want to sell these.” Because there wasn’t a bare spot on the counter, she set them on the paper.
After giving her a sweeping glance from head to toe, he picked up one of the earrings and gave it a cursory look. “I ain’t no jeweler. But I could take a chance. Give you two hundred for them.” He smiled, revealing nic
otine-stained teeth.
“They’re worth twenty times that.” She had no idea of the value, but she’d lived on the streets long enough to know when she was being hosed.
“So you say, but there ain’t no way for me to tell for sure. Three hundred’s as high as I can go.”
“Fine.” She snatched them out of his hand and turned to leave. “I’m sure I can get a better deal from your competitor down the street.” The threat was a stab in the dark. She had no idea how far it was to the next shop, but from the man’s reaction, there must have been another in the vicinity.
“Hey, now, where ya going in such a hurry?” Those yellow teeth were bared again. “There’s no use wasting your time with Pete. Guy’s a thief, even if he is my cousin. C’mon back here,” he coaxed, as she halted on her way to the door. “Let’s take another look.” This time he reached beneath the counter and pulled out a jeweler’s loupe, taking his time examining the earrings.
When he lowered it, he hitched up his pants with his free hand and said, “Look high quality, but they could be stolen. I’m taking a big risk here, if they are. Cops come to my place, accuse me of receiving stolen property—”
Sara interrupted him unapologetically. “Two thousand.”
“With the risk I’m assuming here? If you want that kind of money you came to the wrong place. One.”
The cab driver tapped his horn impatiently. Sara looked at the earrings in the man’s somewhat less than sanitary hand. A mental image flashed across her mind, a mirror reflection of her figure wrapped in Nick’s arms, naked except for the earrings. The memory seared like the stroke of a hot blade. “All right,” she said, cutting short both the negotiation and the mental picture. “One.”
The driver was measurably happier when she returned, the fifty she handed him curbing most of his impatience. She mentally flipped through her options. The airport was out; tickets were too difficult to obtain without identification, and she wasn’t up to the elaborate ruse she’d have to construct to try and purchase one.
