Carolina Blues

by Virginia Kantra

  Would she?

  Jack, in contrast, was all grown up. Fully adult, fully functioning, all male. She smiled. Hard to miss that, with the impressive evidence right there in her face.

  She started to reach for him and then stopped. “I have birth control. In my purse.”

  “I’ll take care of you.”

  Yeah, she’d heard that before. “I’m not on the pill.”

  “I said I’ll take care of it.”

  He slid out the drawer under the bed and pulled out a box of condoms. A new box. Not that she was reading anything special into that, but . . . Cellophane crinkled as he broke the seal.

  “When did you buy those?” she asked.

  His mouth quirked in that wry half smile. “After I didn’t follow you to your room the other day.”

  Her breath went as something in her chest expanded, pushing out the air. Maybe he hadn’t called her. But he’d wanted—he’d planned—for this.

  He met her gaze, his eyes dark. “You are so damn beautiful.”

  Heat rushed through her. She blushed and opened her arms. He joined her on the bed, pulling her close, shaping her breasts through her blouse, pushing his knee between her thighs. The friction made her crazy. She wanted the texture of his chest on her breasts, his hot sleekness everywhere.

  Clumsy with desire, she struggled to raise herself, yanking at her top. Jack’s warm hands moved deftly to help her, sliding her top over her head, working her skirt down her legs. While he was down there, he kissed her ankle and then the inside of her knee and then . . .

  Her hips jerked against his mouth as he worked her, as he kissed and sucked and stroked, reading every hitch of her breath, every twitch of her body like a blind man reading Braille. She panted. So close.

  “Jack!”

  He dealt efficiently with the condom and then moved over her, his heavy legs tangling with hers. Her hands fell from his shoulders and grabbed his ass hard.

  He laughed low and rubbed against her, his hot sex gliding where his mouth had been. He slid the first little bit inside her, the feeling so good, so intense, she contracted and moaned.

  His eyes gleamed. “Is this what you want?”

  She arched helplessly against him, trying to take him in, desperate to have all of him inside her.

  “Here you go, baby. Take it.” He pressed deeper, his dark voice filling her head, his hard sex filling her below. “Jesus, you’re tight.”

  Carefully, he began to move, each thick, deliberate thrust followed by an achingly slow withdrawal. She clenched around him anxiously, hoping to help, trying to hurry him up, but he was too strong for her. Too much. His control was absolute. Indecent. Arousing. I’ll take care of you. Slide and withdrawal, over and over, heavy and relentless. Until his rhythm caught and overtook hers like the rise and fall of his breath in the bakery. Until she moved to his tempo, until she pulsed to his beat, absorbing his cadence in very fiber and tissue. Until everything in her swelled and broke, and she came, again and again.

  He turned his face into her neck and followed her into the depths.

  * * *

  JACK STARED UP at the twilight sky through the windows in the bow, his body heavy and replete. Satisfied. He stroked his free hand lazily down Lauren’s back, and she made this little sound and burrowed against him, her head on his shoulder, her fingers exploring the hair on his chest like she was testing the curls for spring. His arm tightened around her reflexively.

  She tilted her face up, her hair tickling his jaw. “You’re smiling,” she observed. “That’s good, right? It was good.”

  He slanted a look down at her. He’d figured a woman like Lauren—smart, articulate, college educated—would be a talker during sex. Obviously, having skipped the play-by-play, she was ready for the post game analysis.

  Her hair was mussed, her lips swollen. He wanted her all over again. Wanted her hot and slippery, yielding under him . . .

  “There is no bad sex,” he said. “But there are different kinds of good, you know?”

  She nodded, her eyes dark and dilated like she could see inside his head. God, she was so fucking beautiful.

  “Like sometimes you’re hungry, you get a steak and a nice bottle of red,” he explained. “And sometimes you’re on the go, you grab a hamburger. Either way, you get fed, you’re lucky.”

  Her expression shifted subtly, the warmth more projected, less personal. A therapist’s face. “So, are you saying this was like fast-food sex for you?”

  “No.” He cupped her jaw. His thumb traced the arch of her eyebrow, skimmed the soft pout of her lower lip. “I’m saying that it’s like all my life, I’ve been going to the wrong restaurants.”

  Her smile started in her eyes and grew.

  Her glowing look kindled something inside him. Not only heat, but warmth. And what he thought was simple appetite became a hunger for something else, for her smiles and compassion, for her quick, questing intelligence, for the optimism and empathy that made her brave.

  Something—pleasure, misgiving, a cop’s instinct for danger—raised the fine hair on the back of his neck, shivering over his skin. Shit. He could be in trouble here.

  He pushed the thought away. It felt too good to lie here with her squashed and warm against his side.

  Squashed and warm and naked. That was nice.

  He ran a hand down her smooth, bare arm and patted her hip. In the evening glow of the skylights, the jewelry in her navel glittered like stars. He flicked the stones gently with his finger, making them dance against her skin, surprised by this unexpected kink in his psyche. It turned him on, how they made her tough and vulnerable at the same time, the contrast between the hard, polished metal and her sensitive skin. Like the ink on her back. Or the cuff in her ear. Or that tiny, winking nose stud.

  He frowned, his detective’s instincts stirred. As if he were staring at a big, fat clue and missing the vital information that would put the puzzle all together.

  “When did you get this?” he asked.

  “Hm?” She roused. “Oh. When I went away to college.”

  “And this?” His finger traced the scrolling tattoo on her back.

  “I’ve had that for ages. After my dad died . . .” she said and stopped.

  Jack’s finger stilled. He studied her upturned face, her mouth closed on a secret, her eyes cloudy with memories.

  And then she blinked at him and smiled. “How come you don’t have any tattoos? I mean, you were in the Marines, right?”

  She was deflecting again, the way she always did when the focus turned to her.

  He didn’t carry his memories on his body. He wanted to forget.

  But he had buddies who wore their losses in their skin, the wives and sweethearts they’d left behind, their comrades fallen on the battlefield.

  “You got it to remember him,” he guessed.

  “Not really.” Her smile quirked, full and infectious. “I mean, it’s not like I got the date of his death tattooed on my arm or my ass or anything. I’m from the Midwest. The suburbs. When somebody dies, you send flowers and a nice covered dish. You don’t get a tramp stamp.”

  She made him smile. But she made him wonder, too. He’d spent the past hour learning her body, deciphering her responses. There was more, for a man who cared to look for it.

  “You can tell me,” he said. Like they were in an interview room and he was asking her to confess to some crime. “Why did you get a tattoo after your father died?”

  For a minute he thought she wasn’t going to answer. But then she shrugged. “I didn’t really have a chance to grieve, you know? My mom was falling apart, and Noah was flipping out, and somebody had to deal with shit, Dad’s shop and the insurance and the funeral arrangements. Somebody had to be the calm, responsible one.”

  Jack thought of the girl he’d seen on TV, the one who kept her head in t
he face of threats and deprivation. Who’d bargained her own life to save others. “You shut down your feelings so you can get the job done.”

  Her glance was surprised and grateful.

  “Like a sniper. Or a hostage negotiator. Emotion fucks things up,” he said. He was living proof of that. “So you stay calm. You stay in control.”

  “Right.” She tilted her head, studying his face with those too-aware eyes. “Except eventually you have to accept your emotions. You need to express them somehow.”

  Or you could hit a punching bag until they went away, Jack thought.

  “You didn’t have this on TV.” He touched the tiny jewel, bright and defiant, on the side of her nose. “You call that self-expression? Or a disguise?”

  Her humor lit her face. “Are you interrogating me, Detective?”

  “No more than you’re analyzing me. Doctor.”

  She smiled her crooked smile. “I’m not a doctor yet. Maybe . . . A little of both? I did want to change my appearance. I was so numb after everything happened. I needed to feel something. Even if it hurt, even if it was only temporary, at least I’d know I was alive.”

  Even if it hurt, even if it was only temporary.

  “Is that what this is?” Jack asked suddenly. “You being with me?”

  “Would that bother you?”

  That she was using him to make herself feel something? To make herself feel better? “No.”

  He wanted her to use him. And then maybe it would be okay if he used her, too. If he let himself feel something, too.

  Even if it was only temporary.

  He grabbed another condom and rolled with her, pinning her to the mattress. “I feel something now.”

  Their bodies pressed together, length to length. There was no disguising what she did to him.

  Lauren’s breath caught as he rocked against her. Her eyes crinkled. God, he loved her smile. “Funny, I feel something, too.”

  He scowled down at her in mock outrage. “You think it’s funny?”

  She grinned up at him, twining her arms around his neck. “What I think is this isn’t going to hurt at all.”

  Nine

  “GOOD NIGHT, SLEEP tight,” Jane said to Aidan. She ran her hand over her son’s straight brown hair, already outgrowing its summer haircut. “Don’t let the bedbugs bite.”

  “Mom.” He rolled his head on the pillow, annoyed at her touch. Asserting his independence, protecting his male dignity. A six-and-a-half-year-old version of his grandfather. “There’s no such thing as bedbugs.”

  She didn’t correct him because she wanted it to be true. No bugs in the bed, no bumps in the night, no monsters in the closet in Aidan’s world.

  Not anymore.

  “Well, sleep tight anyway,” she said and bent to kiss him.

  He rewarded her as he did most of the time, flinging one skinny arm around her neck in a brief hug. She gave herself a moment to savor his unique little boy smell, baby shampoo and Aidan, before she straightened and turned out the light.

  “Mom.” His voice caught her at the door. “Can I go to Christopher’s tomorrow after camp?”

  Jane swallowed. “Tomorrow’s Thursday, buddy,” she reminded him gently. “You come to the bakery on Thursdays.”

  “But Christopher’s mom is taking him to the water park.”

  Christopher had two working parents. His mom, Gail Peele, was wonderful about including Aidan in her family’s plans. But with only a single salary and no benefits, there was no money in Jane’s budget for weekly visits to the water park.

  “How about when I finish at the shop tomorrow, we go to the beach?” Jane suggested.

  “The beach is too sandy. And I won’t have anybody to play with.”

  His whining drove her to distraction and made her want to laugh at the same time. “Maybe one of the many, many children whose families brought them to the beach on vacation might want to play with you,” Jane said. “What do you think?”

  Aidan sank under his covers, defeated. “Maybe.”

  She smiled. “Night, buddy. God bless. I love you.”

  She left the door open exactly two inches, enough that she could hear him in the night, not enough for the light from the bathroom to disturb him. She was almost at the top of the stairs before she heard his muttered reply.

  “Love you, too.”

  Like a whispered absolution, the words eased the muscles in her shoulders, the anxious ache of her heart.

  Seven hours before she had to get up and go to work again, she calculated. She started down the stairs. Nothing left tonight but to ready Aidan’s cooler for camp tomorrow, move the laundry to the dryer, wipe down the kitchen, check her phone messages, and go to bed.

  She walked past the living room, where her father sat every night after dinner in the flickering glow of TV. Twenty years in the same recliner.

  When she was nine, twelve, fourteen, sometimes she would sit with him, hoping he would look over and . . . What? Talk to her?

  Now she was relieved when he turned away, thankful not to see the disappointment in his eyes.

  In the kitchen, while she waited for the water in the sink to run hot, she checked her cell phone. Four calls in the time it took to shepherd Aidan through his shower and into bed. Jane scrolled through them. The dairy, confirming tomorrow’s milk order. One CALLER UNKNOWN. And . . .

  Her heart slammed. Two calls from Island Security Systems. Oh, God. Travis, she thought. But no. He’d said—he’d promised—he was on his way to Florida. But her fingers trembled as she pressed the contact button.

  Please, please, please, she thought as the phone rang on the other end, but what she was praying for, she couldn’t say.

  “Island Security.”

  “This is Jane Clark?” She hated the way her voice rose at the end like a question. Like her identity was suddenly in doubt. Jane Tillett. “You called me?”

  “Hey, Ms. Clark. Can I have your password, please?”

  “My password.” Her mind blanked. What was her password? “Cupcakes. Is there a problem at the bakery?”

  “Thank you. Don’t worry, everything’s fine.”

  She could barely hear him, she couldn’t think, over the water rushing in the sink and the pounding in her head. She shut off the faucet.

  “. . . false alarm,” he was saying. “But since she didn’t have the code and we couldn’t reach you, we had to notify the police.”

  “The police.” Thank God her father wasn’t on duty tonight.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  There was more, but in her relief, she hardly cared. Something about resetting the alarm and a nuisance charge because Jack Rossi had to respond to the call. She missed some details because her father chose that moment to walk into the kitchen.

  “Yes, yes, I understand,” she answered distractedly as he opened the refrigerator and pulled out the pitcher of water. “Thank you. I will. Good night.”

  She disconnected the call.

  Hank stood watching her, clutching his glass. “That the security company?”

  She pulled herself together. Of course he would have heard her mention the police. At fifty-eight, there was nothing wrong with his hearing. Or his understanding. “Yes. Lauren—my new hire?—went back to the shop to get her laptop and set off the alarm by accident.”

  His deep brown eyes remained fixed on her face. “So everything’s all right, then.”

  For one wild moment she was tempted to tell him everything, to throw her fears and troubles on her father’s broad chest and beg him to take care of her.

  But he’d already done so much, taking them in after the wreck of her marriage. She’d already let him down so badly. Let herself down.

  She couldn’t ask him to do more.

  She found a smile somewhere and pasted it on. “Everything’s fine.”
>
  He nodded, accepting her assurance as he always did, relieved to be spared the necessity of dealing with her feelings. She listened to his footsteps in the hall, waiting until she was sure he was settled in his recliner before she checked her phone again.

  CALLER UNKNOWN. A wrong number, maybe. Yet a whisper ran like a spider over her nape, all the little hairs rising in its wake, stirred by the call from the security company, teased by an instinct. Something left over from her marriage, like the queen-sized sheets or the scar on the back of her head.

  Travis. She felt it in her bones, a remembered ache. If she ignored him, would he call again? And again. Or maybe he wouldn’t call. Maybe he’d drop by at the bakery, at her house. You want to have this discussion in front of Aidan and your daddy? Or we settle things now.

  He picked up after the first ring. She recognized his voice, a sense of inevitability sinking her stomach.

  “Janey, Janey.” His drawl was reproachful. Familiar. “Took you long enough to get back to me.”

  She resisted the urge to apologize. She grabbed the trash bag from the kitchen garbage can, carrying it outside, where there was no risk her father would overhear her call. “What do you want, Travis?”

  “Maybe I just want to see my wife. My family.”

  Standing by the Dumpster, she let the trash bag slide to her feet; clutched the phone tighter. “I thought you were on your way to Florida. You had a job, you said.”

  “Yeah, about that . . .” A pause, while she felt sicker and sicker to her stomach. “I need some traveling money to get down there.”

  “I gave you money already.”

  “Enough to get on. Not enough to get gone.”

  “It’s all I can afford.”

  “I seen your place. You’re doing all right.”

  “I have . . .” A child to provide for. No, don’t say that, don’t remind him of Aidan. “Expenses.”

  “New security system.”

  “How did you hear about that?”

  “New air conditioner, too.”