Night Watch

by Suzanne Brockmann

  He turned to her then, and the look on his face was one of complete confusion. “I thought… You don’t want to—” He stopped himself and started over. “I do have a double bed. Is there some reason you suddenly don’t want to share it with me?”

  “No,” she said. “I just thought that you might not want to… You know, that seeing Lana might’ve…”

  “Might’ve what?” he asked. “Made me stupid? I don’t think so, babe. Come on, let’s get out of here so Andy can take Dani to the hospital.” He started for his car.

  Brittany followed. “I wish they’d let me go with them.”

  “I know you do,” Wes said gently, opening the car door for her. “But you can’t. Andy’s no fool, Brittany. He’s got my cell phone number. If he finds out he’s in over his head, he’ll call.”

  She got into the car, and he closed the door behind her.

  “Hey, the sun’s about to come up,” he said as he got behind the wheel. “What do you say we go to the beach and watch it rise?”

  “Sure,” she told him. “That’s a good idea. I probably couldn’t sleep now anyway.” She was thinking about way too many things. Andy. Dani.

  Lana.

  He started the car and, as they pulled away, she looked back to see Andy helping Dani out of the house. The girl was moving slowly, gingerly. It was hard to tell if the worst of her injuries were physical or emotional.

  Either way, her road to recovery was going to be a rough one. And Andy, God help him and God bless him, would be there, for the entire bumpy ride.

  It was all she could do not to cry.

  “THIS IS MY FAVORITE BEACH in San Diego,” Wes said as he parked, and Brittany burst into tears.

  “Whoa,” he said. “Hey, it’s not that great a beach.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m so sorry.” She bolted out of the car.

  It was a dumb move—his trying to make a joke when she was obviously not in any kind of a joking mood.

  He chased after her, dashing pretty far down the beach in the spooky, foggy light of predawn. She was faster than he would have guessed just looking at her and knowing what he knew about aerodynamics, but that was typical of Brittany. She was full of surprises. He had to hustle to catch up. “Hey!”

  “Leave me alone, okay?” she said. “Just for a few minutes. I have to cry now, and I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.”

  He laughed. “So what if I’m uncomfortable? Jeez, Britt, don’t you ever stop thinking about other people and focus on yourself for a change?”

  She sat down in the sand and buried her face in her arms. “Please, just go away.”

  “No.” Wes sat down next to her and pulled her into his arms. “Baby, look, it’s okay if you cry. This has been one tough night.”

  Brittany resisted for about a half a second, and then she clung to him, her arms tight around his neck.

  He just held her and stroked her back and her hair as the sky slowly grew lighter. The fog was rolling in with a vengeance now, thick and wet and cold against his face and arms.

  Britt didn’t seem to notice, and he just let her be—let her grieve.

  “God, you must think I’m such a wimp,” she finally said, wiping her eyes with the heel of her hand.

  He pushed her hair back from her face. “I think you’re amazing. I think Andy’s the luckiest kid in the world to have you for his mother. You know what would’ve happened in my house if I had a scholarship for college and I stood a chance of losing it because of getting into a fight?”

  She shook her head.

  “My mother would have gotten really grim, and my father would have barely even looked up from his dinner. He would have said—and God knows I heard this often enough,” he imitated his father’s voice, “The only surprise about this, Wesley, is that it took three months to happen instead of two.”

  Tears filled her eyes again. “That’s a terrible thing to say to your own child.”

  He kissed her. “Hey. Shhh. I didn’t tell you that to make you cry all over again.”

  “You told me that your father didn’t hit you,” Brittany said, “but he might as well have. Telling you that he expected you to fail is tantamount to a vicious beating, in my book.”

  “Yeah, well,” he said. “Easy with the accusations there, because, you know, I really was a screwup.”

  “See?” she said. “You believed him. You still believe him.”

  He gently changed the subject, still running his fingers through her hair. Somewhere on her dash down the beach, she’d lost her ponytail holder. “What are you going to do if he does lose his scholarship?”

  She settled back against him, her head on his shoulder. “Exactly what I told Andy. We’ll figure something out.”

  “Such as you put your nurse practitioner degree on hold?”

  Brittany nodded. “I am going to school on the money I saved for Andy’s education,” she told him. “He was planning to go to Amherst—it was a pretty short drive from our house in Appleton, you know, in Massachusetts. He wanted to live at home. In fact, he was adamant about it. I kept trying to talk him into living at college. First-year dorm. Lots of fun. Roommates and parties and all that stuff, but he just laughed and told me he spent years in the foster-care system, living with strangers. Why would he want to go live with strangers again when he was just getting used to having a real home?”

  “Smart kid,” he said, as aware as hell of her hand on his thigh.

  She smiled, playing with the zipper pull on the pocket of his cargo shorts. “Yeah, I guess so. Then when he got the full scholarship at the college in L.A.—a baseball scholarship—God, he wanted to go so badly. But he was going to turn it down. And I suddenly thought, shoot. I’ve been wanting to go back to school for a long time. Surely I could find a nursing school in L.A. We could move out here together. It’s kind of weird, you know, Andy and his mom go to college together. Like some kind of bad teen comedy movie. But it’s what he wanted and it seems to be working.” She took a deep breath. “It’ll work just as well without the scholarship. With the nursing shortage, I could get a full-time job at the hospital in a heartbeat.”

  “That would be a shame.”

  “No, it would be life. Life happens, you deal with it. I’ll get my degree, it’ll just take a little longer than I’d hoped.” She noticed the fog for the first time. “Oh, my God, who turned on the dried ice machine?”

  It was kind of spooky, as if they were the last two people in the universe. Spooky, but nice. They couldn’t see anyone else who might’ve come to the beach at this early hour, but no one could see them, either. He kissed her.

  “California has the weirdest weather,” she said.

  “I love this kind of fog,” he told her. “It’s good cover for black ops.”

  “What are black ops?” she asked, kissing him this time. Oh, yeah. The fog no longer seemed quite so cold. He pulled her back with him, so that they were both lying in the sand.

  God, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d made out on the beach.

  Probably for good reason. Sand and sex really didn’t mix too well.

  “Black ops are operations—missions—that are ultra top secret,” he told her eventually. “They’re usually so secret your immediate superiors on your chain of command don’t know what you’re up to.”

  She smiled down at him, pressing herself intimately against him. “I bet your immediate superiors don’t know what you’re up to.”

  He laughed. “That’s for sure.”

  “You know, if I were wearing a skirt instead of jeans…”

  “Damn you, Levi Strauss.” She laughed, and he reached up to touch her face. “Britt, you know I love it when you laugh, but don’t ever think I don’t want you to cry in front of me, okay?”

  She nodded, her eyes suddenly so soft. “The same goes for me.”

  He laughed. “Yeah, thanks, but…”

  “But tough guys don’t cry?”

  “No,” Wes said. “I’ve see
n plenty of tough guys cry. I just… I try not to make a habit of it, myself. I’m a little afraid…”

  She waited.

  “That if I start I won’t be able to stop,” he admitted.

  “Oh, Wes,” she said softly.

  The fog had soaked them both so thoroughly by now, that water beaded and ran down her face. Her T-shirt was practically transparent. Too bad she was wearing a bra.

  “You should enter a wet T-shirt contest,” he said. It was a stupid thing to say—he would bet big money that Britt disapproved of such blatantly sexist exhibitions. But he was desperate to change the subject.

  She looked down at herself and laughed. “Yeah, right.”

  “I’d vote for you.”

  “Thanks,” she said. “I think. Although I’m not sure I should thank you for suggesting I humiliate myself and all women everywhere by standing on a stage in front of an audience of howling men and being judged for the size and shape of my breasts.”

  Ding. Correct for ten points.

  She narrowed her eyes at him. “How would you like to enter a ‘who’s got the biggest penis’ contest? Okay, boys, drop your drawers and face the crowd!”

  “Yeah, okay, at least women get to keep their T-shirts on.”

  She snorted. “Like that really makes a difference when a T-shirt is wet.” She reached up under her shirt and, like a magician, she managed to unfasten her bra and pull it off through the sleeve of her T-shirt. “See?”

  Oh, yeah. He saw. She was soaking wet and hot for him. It was unbelievably sexy.

  Or maybe she was cold from the fog. He sat up and kissed her and she shivered. He couldn’t quite tell if it was from desire or the fact that she was freezing her butt off.

  “Want to go to my place and take a hot shower?” he suggested as he licked her nipple into his mouth and suckled her, right through the cotton of her T-shirt.

  She moaned as she rubbed herself against him, through his shorts and her jeans.

  And then he could feel her fingers, working to unfasten his shorts. The top button was tricky, but… Ah, she got it and the zipper was easy and…yes.

  “Two questions,” she said. “Do you have a condom in your pocket, and when the fog’s this thick, how long does it usually take to disappear?”

  He laughed but it came out sounding more like a groan as she touched him. “Yes,” he said, “and it’s a crapshoot. When it’s like this it usually doesn’t burn off til midmorning or even noon. But I’d be willing to bet the fog’ll last at least five more minutes—which is about four minutes longer than I’ll last if you actually do take off your jeans and—”

  Brittany let go of him and unzipped her jeans. They were wet and pulling them off was a challenge. She was up for it, though, and by the time she got one leg out, he’d covered himself with the condom he was carrying.

  And then she covered him, too, driving him so deeply inside of her he nearly lost it right then and there.

  She moved on top of him, hard and fast, as if her need for him consumed her completely.

  Obviously, it did. She wanted him so much she was willing to make love to him on a public beach.

  God, what a total turn-on.

  “Britt, I was serious,” he gasped. “I’m so crazy for you, I’m not going to last.”

  Her response was her immediate release. Hard and fast and powerful as hell, it shook her and shook her as she cried out his name.

  And he was undone. Game over. He couldn’t have stopped himself from climaxing if his life had depended on it. He crashed into her with an explosion of pleasure that was so intense his eyes actually watered.

  “Thank you,” she gasped as she clung to him. “Oh, my God, thank you. You always know exactly what I need.”

  Wes had to laugh. She was thanking him. “Right now, I think you need a hot shower. And a cup of tea.” Man, did he even have any tea? He hoped so.

  If he didn’t, he’d get some from somewhere.

  Hell, if she wanted the moon, he’d figure out a way to get that for her, too.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  BY MONDAY MORNING, Brittany’s jeans had finally dried and they could—if they wanted to—go out.

  Wes had been a little nervous when they’d first arrived at his apartment early Sunday morning. The place wasn’t exactly neat and tidy. And even if it had been pristine, it completely lacked all of the warmth and cheerful personality of her apartment back in L.A.

  He’d gathered up his laundry and quickly washed the dirty dishes and emptied the ashtrays while she was in the shower. He uncovered two packs of cigarettes and tossed them into the sink, getting them good and soggy before he put them in the trash.

  The thought of smoking one while she was in the bathroom didn’t cross his mind. At least not for longer than two or three seconds. Which was pretty damn amazing.

  He’d looked around instead, wondering what to do to make the place more acceptable in Brittany’s eyes. God, his apartment was ugly. And there was nothing he really could do about the science fiction movie posters taped to the walls without frames, or the worn and faded secondhand furniture—including a purple-and-green plaid chair that now seemed to scream that not only did its owner have no taste, but he had no life as well. Because, really, no one could spend any significant amount of time in that room with that chair without going insane. It announced that this apartment was really just a place Wes came to sleep now and then. It wasn’t his home.

  But his worries hadn’t been real. They’d spent all of Sunday in his bedroom.

  In his bed.

  Brittany had called both work and a colleague from school to tell them what had happened with Andy, and that she wouldn’t be back in L.A. for several days. So there was nothing to do but wait for Andy to give them an update.

  The kid had called several times on Wes’s cell phone, the latest just this morning. Dani had an appointment with her family doctor in San Diego, late this afternoon. On Tuesday, they were returning to L.A. The district attorney there wanted to meet with Dani and discuss the possibility of her pressing charges. They currently had another complaint against Dustin Melero, and Dani’s testimony would make that case more solid.

  Of course it was always a crapshoot in the instance of sexual assault. It tended to come down to a “he said, she said” battle. Dani’s reputation and sexual history—in fact, her entire personal life—would be scrutinized by people attempting to show that she willingly consented to having sex with Melero.

  Sure. She willingly consented to getting her rib broken. She must’ve liked that a whole lot.

  The good news was that Dani didn’t have any skeletons in her closet. She was, as Wes had pointed out days earlier, a “public virgin.” She’d been quite vocal in her decision to wait to have a sexual relationship. And she hadn’t just discussed that with other kids. She’d talked to her doctors and her college mentor about it, as well.

  Because she was a “good girl,” there was a chance that her testimony would help convict Dustin Melero.

  Brittany, however, was pretty steamed. After she got off the phone with Andy, she vented. “So I could go back to L.A., and in a week, when your leave is over and you’re gone, say I’m walking home from the hospital late one night, and I’m attacked. Say I’m pulled into an alley, and I’m raped.”

  Wes winced, sitting down next to her on the bed. “I don’t want to say that. Why don’t we say instead that you don’t ever walk home alone at night?”

  She sighed in exasperation. “I’m just using myself as an example, but no, you’re right, it’s not going to happen, because I’m careful. I get a cab if it’s too late to call Andy for a ride.”

  “That’s good to know.”

  “Okay, say instead that I finally agree to have dinner with Henry Jurrik—he’s a pulmonary specialist at the hospital. He asks me out about once a month.” She laughed. “He must put it into his calendar or something. It’s like clockwork.”

  “He’s a doctor?” Wes asked, trying not to soun
d jealous, and failing miserably.

  Brittany kissed him. “I have a no doctors rule,” she told him. “But just for the sake of argument, let’s say I lose my mind and agree to have dinner with him. We go out, he drives me home, walks me to my door. You know. Wants to come inside, but I won’t ask him, of course, because it’s only a first date. He’s about as perceptive as a two-by-four, and he tries to kiss me, so I turn my head—you know, I’m completely giving him all the no sex tonight, you idiot signals. But he persists, and I finally have to tell him flat out, no. But Andy’s not home, so he pushes me inside where he forces himself on me.”

  “This is a really unpleasant conversation,” Wes said.

  “Yeah, well, it happens to women all the time,” Britt told him with that stern look he’d come to recognize and love. She wanted to talk about this, so they were going to talk about it. It was hard to imagine anyone forcing anything on her when she got like this, but Wes knew too well that despite her tough attitude, he himself could overpower her with one hand tied behind his back.

  “It happened to Dani,” she continued. “She said no, and Melero said tough luck. She fought him hard enough to get a broken rib. It happens, Wes.”

  “It better never happen to you.”

  She kissed him again. “Don’t worry. I’m careful. If I ever did go out to dinner with someone, I’d either drive myself, or I’d make sure Andy was home.”

  “You weren’t that careful with me,” he countered. “You just invited me into your house.”

  “Don’t change the subject. My point in this is that afterwards? I could go to the police and press charges, but the D.A. might not take the case, because the doctor’s scumbag defense attorney would dig up all kinds of dirt on me—including the fact that I haven’t exactly lived like a nun these past few years—in particular these past few days. I slept with you willingly. And you weren’t the only man I had a short-term relationship with after my divorce. They’d find out about Kyle, too. And, oh yeah, before I got married, back when I was in college, I had two different relationships. They were more intense—a few months each, but they make the list even longer. So they would try to prove that I was some kind of loose woman, sleeping around. Surely, I’d wanted Dr. Jurrik, too.”