Don't Let Go

by Marliss Melton

  Who was she to have that kind of power over him—a warrior, a salty dog who’d seen it all, a callous lover who circled women watchfully, went in for a bite now and then, got his fill, and moved unfeelingly onward?

  Jordan was his riptide.

  The realization had him missing a stride as he led Silas into the racks of little boy’s clothing.

  Riptides could be deadly. Powerful, invisible, they sucked unsuspecting swimmers out to sea.

  But he was a SEAL. He knew what to do when caught up in a riptide. Let it carry him where it would, all the while swimming parallel to the shore so that when the current finally weakened, he could break free and swim to safety.

  He liked the analogy. It gave him the freedom to indulge again in mind-blowing sex while leaving an escape route.

  The question now was, what would it take to convince her to be with him again?

  Eyeing the sea of boys’ clothing, he felt daunted by the prospect of shopping for a fall wardrobe. Jordan would do a better job of it, he decided, putting the chore off till later.

  For now, he’d prefer to return to the houseboat, just in case she’d opted for an early start on Silas’s lessons. “Jordan can take you shopping tonight,” he decided, realizing at the same time that he was shamelessly using his son to keep Jordan near to him.

  “Okay,” said Silas, shrugging. A gleam then entered his eyes and he added, “Hey, you wanna go home and blow up them balloons?”

  “Jordan, something’s wrong with you,” Jillian observed, propping the rake against the barn wall. “Are you going to tell me what it is, or do I need to pry it out of you?”

  Hanging a horse bridle on a peg, Jordan didn’t dare meet her sister’s worried gaze lest she see too much. “I’ve got financial problems, that’s all,” she murmured convincingly.

  “So ask Doug to give you a loan,” Jillian suggested. “God knows the bastard owes you more alimony than he pays.”

  “No,” Jordan retorted flatly. She didn’t want a cent of Doug’s money. “I’ve decided to rent my condo.” She’d read a flyer that came in yesterday’s mail: Military couple seeks short-term, furnished rental. The timing had seemed too auspicious to pass up. She’d given them a call, and they’d already made preliminary arrangements.

  “Where would you live?” Jillian asked with startled concern. “With me?”

  Jordan risked a peek at her. She’d been planning to, assuming all along that Jillian could use her help, but her sister sounded less than thrilled at the prospect. “No,” she heard herself answer. “I’ll stay in a cheap motel, or split an apartment with another teacher.”

  With the therapy horses nickering in their stalls, Jordan went back to sorting through riding tack, all stuffed haphazardly into a single crate. She heard Jillian push the wheelbarrow toward the exit but instead of sliding the door open to admit the hazy heat, she came back to stand in front of Jordan till she looked up.

  “You’ve bitten off more than you can chew with this Miguel thing,” Jillian conveyed with sisterly concern. “Just look at you, Jordan. You’re falling apart. You look like you haven’t slept in weeks, and now you’re telling me that you’re broke.”

  “I am not broke,” Jordan insisted, bristling. “The money’s a little tight, that’s all.”

  “Look, I can’t take care of anyone else,” Jillian cut in, her voice wobbling. “My stress level is high enough without having to worry about you, too.”

  “I never asked you to worry about me,” Jordan retorted, tempering her tone with compassion. “Forget I said anything, all right?” Her sister would probably pass out to know that Jordan was heading back to Venezuela in a matter of days. Was it better to forewarn her or spare her the anxiety?

  The ringing of her cell phone kept her from making up her mind. She glanced at the caller’s number, and her heart skipped a beat. Solomon. Now she regretted suggesting that he get a cell phone.

  She stuffed her own phone back into her pocket.

  “Who is that?” Jillian asked, astute as ever.

  “Nobody.” Just an annoying Navy SEAL who made her blood flash hot, then cold, as she remembered her abandonment last night. How could she have let herself have sex with him? And not just any sex—explosive, orgasmic, earth-shattering sex, which he’d called fucking.

  His crudeness appalled her, and yet—God help her—she wanted to be with him again.

  Was this simple biology? He’d said so, and yet she’d never experienced anything like it—not with Doug, not with any man. Only Solomon ignited in her the irrational impulse to burn in the fire, like a moth drawn to flame.

  Jillian persisted. “It’s the Navy SEAL, isn’t it?” she exclaimed with wonderment and delight. “You’re avoiding him!”

  “I really don’t want to talk about it,” Jordan snapped, turning away to hang another bridle.

  Jillian gasped. “You slept with him!” she guessed, knowing her sister better than anyone. “Oh, honey, I’m so happy for you!”

  Jordan whirled in disbelief. “Happy? You’re happy that I got laid?”

  Jillian winced. “Don’t say it like that, Jordan. I’m happy that you’ve moved on, that’s all. Maybe you’ll realize now that not all men are like Doug. There are still some decent guys out there.”

  “Like Rafe Valentino,” Jordan countered, turning the tables with a meaningful look.

  Jillian blinked and visibly drew back. “Well, yes, I suppose,” she conceded. “Just because Doug betrayed you doesn’t mean that every other man out there is going to do the same thing. Maybe you need to give this guy a chance.”

  Jordan shivered. Giving Solomon a chance was like trying to turn a shark into a pet fish. Her cell phone rang again, its jaunty tune rising to the barn’s rafters.

  “Answer him, Jordie,” Jillian coaxed.

  Jordan’s mouth went dry.

  “Maybe he’s the man of your dreams. You like his son, right, little Silas? Why not be his mother instead of Miguel’s?”

  Jordan raised a hand to her chest. “How can you say that?” she exclaimed, wounded by the suggestion. “Like I can just substitute one child for another and never look back?”

  “I’m sorry,” Jillian apologized, immediately contrite. “I didn’t mean that like it sounded, honey. I just worry about you.” The cell phone stopped ringing. “Why can’t you be content with what’s in front of you? Watching you grieve for a child so far away, hearing that you’re running out of money—it breaks my heart!”

  Jordan’s eyes stung at the honest admission. It was breaking her heart, too.

  Her cell rang again. Damn the man! Why couldn’t he leave her alone? She snatched it open, stewing for a fight. “What do you want?” she snapped, irately.

  A sizzling silence followed her greeting. “When were you planning on coming back?” he testily inquired.

  Just the sound of his voice made her knees weak and her breasts tingle. “I haven’t decided yet,” she replied.

  “Funny, I hadn’t pegged you as a coward,” he taunted.

  Bristling, she spun away from Jillian’s watchful eye and marched toward the exit. “I am helping my sister get her new horses settled. There’s a lot of work to be done,” she added, thrusting her way into the sticky heat.

  “Well, Silas goes to day care tomorrow morning since I’m going back to work, and he needs new clothing.”

  “So take him shopping,” she suggested through her teeth.

  “I don’t know what kind of clothes to buy him. You’re the teacher.”

  She threw her free hand into the air. He knew just what buttons to push, damn him. He certainly couldn’t send Silas to day care in the ragged shorts and T-shirts he currently owned. “Fine,” she conceded, for Silas’s sake. “I’ll take him shopping this evening, if I have the time.”

  “The mall closes at six,” he pointed out. “And I want him in bed by seven. He’s getting up with me at four in the morning.”

  “Four in the morning? You can’t wake him up at four in
the morning.”

  “Why not? The child-care center’s open.”

  Jordan sputtered, “It’s inhumane to drag a child out of bed when it’s still dark outside!”

  “Well, what else do you suggest, Miss Bliss?” Solomon demanded, sounding frustrated.

  She realized, too late, that she was setting herself up. “You need a nanny,” she gritted, “and, no, I’m not volunteering my services. I’m leaving the country, remember?”

  “Not if I find another way to get Miguel out.”

  “Solomon.” She sighed, kicking the ground with her booted heel. “You know that’s not going to work.”

  “Don’t underestimate me, Jordan,” he retorted. “I have a lot of contacts. There’s bound to be a way.”

  For a second she let herself hope for a miracle. If Solomon did that, she would owe him her eternal gratitude. She wasn’t sure she liked that idea.

  “Listen,” he added, his voice turning low and seductive. “I have a thought. Why don’t you spend the night on the houseboat? You could sleep in one of the bunks downstairs with Silas.”

  “No,” she said, quickly cutting him off.

  “This isn’t for me,” he insisted. “It’s for Silas. That way I wouldn’t have to wake him up so early like you said. You could tutor him, take him shopping, get him ready for school.”

  And she could rent her condo to that couple that so desperately needed it.

  “No,” she repeated, but it made too much sense. She could even pay her bills off with their first month’s rent and deposit.

  “Jordan, I won’t pressure you to sleep with me if that’s what you want to hear,” he surprised her by adding.

  She frowned, sensing a trap. “Really,” she scoffed.

  “I promise,” he purred with far too much confidence.

  He thinks I’ll cave in to my desire and beg for it, she realized. Well, wouldn’t it be a blow to his ego to call his bluff?

  God, she couldn’t believe she was actually considering living on a houseboat!

  “I’ll think about it,” she relented, withholding her final answer. “Right now my sister needs me, and family comes first.”

  She got deep satisfaction out of hanging up on him.

  Chapter Ten

  The sun was dropping fast behind the big house, casting cool shadows on the hill, when Jordan made her descent to the houseboat. Spying Solomon on the foredeck, standing over a smoking grill, she suffered a moment’s doubt. Her tug on the heavy suitcase, as she rolled it through the thick grass, flagged. It didn’t help matters that she could see his self-satisfied smirk beneath the lift of his moustache, visible even from a distance.

  “Took you long enough,” Solomon called down as she stepped onto the pier. His gaze slid to the enormous suitcase. Every personal item she owned was stuffed inside of it. The couple renting her condo would be moving in tomorrow.

  Jordan didn’t deign to answer. She hauled her bag along the planks, making as much noise as a freight train till Solomon met her at the gangplank and took it from her, swinging it aboard effortlessly.

  Silas stood at the doorway grinning. “Hi, Jordan,” he said. “You’re going to spend the night!”

  Jordan’s stomach cramped uncertainly. She didn’t know if she could actually sleep on the water. “That’s right.”

  Solomon disappeared down the steps with her suitcase, appearing to keep his end of the bargain that he wouldn’t pressure her for sex. When he returned, he sent her an innocent look, and asked, “Are you hungry?”

  She was ravenous. “Yes.”

  “Good.” He went to fetch the burgers off the grill.

  They all sat in the cozy nook in the kitchen and gorged themselves.

  Jordan’s heightened awareness and her innate distrust of Solomon’s motives kept her edgy. This was clearly an arrangement that would take some getting used to, on everyone’s part.

  “I’ll get the dishes,” she volunteered, when Solomon stated that he needed to run Silas a bath.

  “No need,” he argued. “You’re the guest.”

  “No,” she corrected him. “I’m not.”

  “Then what are you?” he asked her with that infuriating look of his.

  Was there a right and a wrong answer to that question? “I’m . . . an employee,” she said, sensing a trap. “As such, I’m earning my keep by cleaning up the dishes.”

  “Ah,” he said, with a gleam in his eyes. “Are there other ways you intend to earn your keep?” he innocently inquired.

  “Stow it, Solomon,” she warned, flicking an uncomfortable glance at Silas.

  With a chuckle, Solomon stood and ruffled his son’s hair. “Come on then, tadpole. It’s time for your bath.”

  Once Silas was scrubbed and dressed in hand-me-down pajamas, Solomon asked Jordan with that same bland smile and laughing eyes, “Would you like to see where you are going to sleep?”

  She trailed the two males down the steps to the bunkroom in the boat’s belly. Silas had already chosen which bed was his. Jordan elected to sleep across from him, on the lower bunk. Once they made up their beds with linens neatly folded in a closet, Silas clambered into his bunk and Solomon opened a worn copy of Treasure Island, in what was clearly their established, nightly routine. With a shoulder propped against Silas’s bunk, he began to read.

  Jordan kicked off her shoes and squeezed into her bunk to listen. Solomon’s rough baritone, his intonation and quaint pronunciations captivated her. As he lost himself in the story—one he’d professed to reading dozens of times as a child—his dialect grew more distinct.

  She envisioned what he must have looked like—just like Silas, probably, minus the sweet disposition. Who were his parents? she wondered. Did he still have family in New England? And how had he become a man of both brawn and intellect?

  Realizing the magnitude of her curiosity, she shut down her thoughts and rolled out of her bunk. To know Solomon any better was asking for heartache, certainly.

  Snatching her own pajamas from her bag, Jordan slipped away beneath Solomon’s watchful regard. “Good night, Silas. I’m going to take a shower so I can sleep with you,” she interjected into the story.

  “’Kay.”

  She scuttled up the stairs and showered briskly, dropping the bar of soap, her fingers clumsy. It was only eight o’clock at night. Would Solomon really let her get away with going to bed so early? Or would he entice her in some way to stay up with him? His bed, she couldn’t help but recall, was at their full disposal.

  The water’s spray caressed her sensitized skin, heightening her awareness. How had she gone from a divorcée with no sexual urges at all to a liberated woman with the sexual appetites of a twenty-year-old?

  It had to be Solomon’s fault. With his mesmerizing eyes and seductive, raspy voice, he’d brought out latent desires she had no business feeling.

  If only she could be sure her desire was based just on biology, then she’d indulge again. God knew she wanted Solomon again—in every possible position, for as long as she could stand it.

  But biology wouldn’t give rise to confusion afterward, not to mention regret, and a feeling of stark emptiness, every bit as frightening as the feelings she was left with in the wake of her divorce.

  God forbid she might do the stupidest thing she could ever do and fall in love with a heartless man, a man who didn’t even believe in love!

  It wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility. She’d loved Doug at one time, despite his wandering eye. Solomon McGuire was crude and forceful. But she’d seen another side of him—the side that had written that poem; the side of him that made him tender with Silas. That side of Solomon scared her more than the rebel army had.

  Emerging from the bathroom in her nightclothes, her teeth scrubbed and her hair damp, Jordan drew up short to find the object of her obsession lounging right outside the door. For a heart-thudding moment, she wavered at the invitation in his eyes. Her body clamored for his possession, her skin felt flushed. “I’m going t
o sleep,” she announced, in an unconvincing voice.

  His gaze drifted downward to where her nipples poked out the fabric of her tank top. “If that’s your choice,” he said, his low voice giving rise to goose bumps that chased up and down her thighs.

  “Yes,” she whispered. Her insides clutched with yearning and regret, and her feet seemed pegged to the floor.

  He gestured toward the stairs. “Sweet dreams, then.”

  That prompted her to turn away, but not before glancing longingly down the hallway toward the inviting expanse of his captain’s bed. “Good night.”

  Following the tiny lights inset into the floor, Jordan found her way to her bunk, tossed her old clothes alongside her suitcase, and squirmed between the sheets. Silas was already sleeping, his soft snores a balm to her fraying nerves.

  With the blanket pulled to her chin, she listened to Solomon’s stealthy tread as he moved around the living area, extinguishing the lights. She listened to the water sloshing against the hull, separated by mere inches of steel and wood. Dear God. However would she sleep like this?

  She heard Solomon retreat to his bedroom and envisioned him stripping down to nothing. He struck her as the type to sleep nude. She gave a faint moan at the thought. But pride and self-preservation kept her back against the mattress. In just one week—provided Miguel’s dossier arrived on time—she’d be gone, and Solomon wouldn’t have the power to tempt her or to trample her fragile heart.

  Squeezing her eyes shut, she practiced breathing in and out, in and out, in a vain attempt to relax her body and cool her overheated imagination.

  It was going to be an impossibly long night.

  Father Timothy Benedict waited for Miguel to fall asleep before attempting to slip out of the cathedral’s rear exit. He’d been called to administer last rites to Fatima, who lay so ill with fever that the family keeping her was certain she would die.

  Heart heavy with the task before him, Timothy was halfway up the steps that gave access to the rear gardens when the door yawned open behind him. He turned to see Miguel dashing up the steps in his wake, his face a reflection of terror.