Lauren was standing on the front porch of the Pirates’ Rest deep in conversation with some guy in camouflage. Army, not Marines, Jack saw as he parked by the gate.
Which meant the guy, whoever he was, wasn’t a buddy of Luke’s.
Jack got out of the SUV just as Lauren threw herself into the guy’s arms.
What the hell?
The soldier grinned and patted her back awkwardly.
Young guy, Jack observed. Seventeen? Eighteen? Not much older than the bored rich kid he’d left sitting at the station.
Jack stopped at the bottom of the porch steps—See? Nothing to prove—and caught the kid’s eye.
The soldier dropped his arms in a hurry.
Lauren turned, her face shining. “Jack!”
That glowing look made him feel better. Not that he was suspicious or anything.
“Lauren,” he acknowledged. He looked at the soldier. “Who’s your friend?”
“This is Joel. Private Joel Johnson,” she said, patting him on the arm with as much pride as if she were the kid’s mother. “Joel, Chief Jack Rossi.”
Johnson. Jack’s shoulder blades tightened. He kept his face impassive. That was the name of the bank robber. The one whose family she was sending money to. And wasn’t Joel the kid who’d been pulled in on the job by their uncle in the first place?
“What brings you to Dare Island, soldier?” he asked.
“Just finished Basic at Fort Jackson, sir. I’m on my way to Virginia to start AIT and stopped by to see Lauren.”
Advanced Individual Training.
Jack narrowed his eyes. “A little out of your way, isn’t it?”
“Yes, sir. Five and a half hours. My mom drove us up.”
Lauren started. “Your mother’s here?”
Ben’s mother blames me, she’d said to Jack that first morning on his boat. Because the woman’s brother was dead and her older son was in jail and she had to blame somebody.
A deeper color swept under the boy’s sunburn. “Not here. She’s waiting at the restaurant. The Fish House. I walked up from there. But she brought me, all the way from South Carolina. That says . . . That means a lot. She knows what we owe you.”
Lauren shook her head. “You don’t owe me a thing.”
The young soldier’s jaw set. “Beg pardon, ma’am, but I figure we do. I talked to Ben. He told me what you’ve been doing for him. For us. That’s why I’m here, to thank you.”
“I don’t need thanks. I want to help.”
“No more,” Joel said. “That’s the other reason I came, to tell you face-to-face. My family is my responsibility now. We don’t need your money anymore.”
Which sounded good to Jack, but he was watching Lauren’s face. She looked like his sister-in-law Tricia watching his nephew get on the school bus the first time, like Ma the day Jack left for Basic, and for one bad moment he was afraid she was going to talk to this kid, this soldier, like he was five years old.
But she didn’t.
Her mouth wobbled briefly before she bent it into a smile. “I always felt . . . I told Ben it’s only fair that some of the money from the book goes to your family.”
“I appreciate that, ma’am. I know you made him a promise to look out for us. But I figure that’s my job now.”
Silence fell.
The kid had said his say. And Lauren, who always knew the right words to smooth an awkward situation, looked lost.
Shit.
Jack cleared his throat. “Where are you staying tonight?”
“We’re heading out after dinner. I report tomorrow.”
“Don’t you get time off to be with your mother?” Lauren asked.
“Thirty-six hours.” Joel met Jack’s eyes. “We wouldn’t even have that if I took the Army bus.”
And in return for her son’s company, Jack guessed, his mother was willing to give at least her partial blessing to his mission. “Semper fi, soldier.”
Joel grinned. “I’ll take that in the spirit it was offered, sir.”
“Will you . . . You’ll at least let me buy you dinner,” Lauren said.
Joel hesitated.
Jack remembered what it was like making ends meet on an E-1’s pay. But having steeled himself to make the big gesture, to take responsibility for his family and himself, the new soldier’s dignity would make it hard for him to accept charity.
“Hop in,” Jack said easily. “I’ll run you back to the Fish House. Unless you need the exercise.”
Joel smiled. “No, sir. I mean, yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”
Jack stood back while the two of them said good-bye, Lauren’s face wavering between smiles and tears.
He met her gaze, thinking, I’ve got this, don’t worry, and maybe she read his eyes or his mind because the smiles seemed to win.
“I’ll be back,” he said.
She nodded. “I’ll be waiting.”
The moment seemed to call for something more, but he didn’t know what. Even if he’d been able to think of something, Joel was watching them.
He brushed his lips over hers. “Pack a toothbrush,” he said and left her.
* * *
AFTER DINNER, LAUREN sat with Jack on his boat, leaning against him as the sun went down. “Thank you for taking care of Joel and his mother.”
Jack shrugged, making her head rock against his shoulder. “No big deal. I bought them dinner. You took care of them.”
“I tried.” Had she done enough?
“Hey.” Jack’s arms were warm around her. “You saved that kid.”
She pressed closer, grateful for his reassurance. “Ben saved him. And now he’s saved himself.”
“Because you bought him time to grow up.”
“Joel did all the work.” She tilted her face to smile at him. “You know how many therapists it takes to change a lightbulb?”
Jack arched an eyebrow.
“Only one,” she said, straight-faced. “But the lightbulb has to want to change.”
His lips twitched.
Satisfied, she settled against him, letting herself sink into the solid rightness of the moment. To the west, the sky flamed and the water blazed and the clouds sank down to purple haze. “I heard from my agent today.”
His arms tightened around her, but his voice was as calm as ever. “How’d that go?”
“Good.” She smiled over his arm at the setting sun. “Really good. She likes the chapters.”
“That’s terrific.” He kissed the top of her head. “Congratulations.”
“Thanks. I need a blockbuster ending, though. A happy one.”
“Well, that’s easy,” Jack said.
She twisted to look at him again.
“Joel,” Jack said. “The story starts with him, right? With him wanting to do the bank job with his uncle.”
She nodded. “And Ben taking his place.” The idea sparked. Okay, yeah, that could work. She sat up, wiggling around to face Jack. “And Ben and I bonded because we were both trying to take care of our brothers.”
Jack was watching her, his dark eyes alert. “There you go. So if his brother’s taking care of himself now . . .”
“Then the story comes full circle.” She beamed at him, feeling that dizzy lightness return. “You’re brilliant.”
Another half smile. “I’m not the one writing a book.”
“I’m not writing tonight, either. I’m taking the night off.” She spread her arms wide. “To celebrate.”
“There’s an idea.”
“I have many ideas,” she said grandly.
“Do they involve you getting naked? Because those are the kind of ideas you should share with me.”
She grinned. “You share first.”
“Okay. I think about you naked all the time.”
�
��No, I meant . . .” She expelled her breath, caught between laughter and lust. “We should talk about you. How was your day?”
“It was a day.”
She waited, giving him space to talk, her heart beating as if she had something at stake here, something more than conversation, something more than sex. Good communication was important for developing intimacy in a relationship. And they were in a relationship, even if she didn’t change her Facebook status anytime soon.
I’m in this thing with you, whether it fits your theories or not.
She really needed to start leaving a toothbrush here.
And he needed to talk.
“A long day,” she said, to help him out.
“Yeah.”
She narrowed her eyes.
Amusement gleamed in his. But then he said, “I had this kid in with his dad this afternoon. Summer people.”
She nodded encouragingly. Go on.
“Turns out there’s not enough for the kid to do on the island, so he decided to make his own excitement. He set off a bunch of alarms around town.”
Lauren thought of the blaring sirens at the bakery and shuddered. “Well, that’s a cry for attention. What did you do?”
“Collected the fines and let him go. You can’t get too tough on tourists’ kids in a resort town. It’s not good for business. But maybe I wasn’t doing him any favors.”
“Would the outcome have been any different if he went to court?”
“Not really. But it might have been a wake-up call for him. Or his folks.”
He was such a good man, she thought. Careful. Conscientious.
“I don’t think there’s one right answer,” she said. “What do you want? What’s the behavior that’s going to get you what you want?”
He smiled faintly.
“What?”
“You sound like a therapist.”
“Is that bad?”
He shook his head. “It’s who you are.”
Which didn’t quite answer her question. “Did you ever see a therapist?” she asked curiously. At thirty-eight, a cop, divorced . . . It was a reasonable assumption.
“I’m looking at one now.”
“To talk to, I mean.”
His dark eyes turned opaque. “The department back home had a shrink on call for intervention, fitness for duty evaluations, stuff like that.”
She waited, but that was apparently as much as he was ready to share. “What about down here?”
“You looking for a job after graduation?”
Answering a question with a question, she thought. Deflecting. No, dodging.
But she didn’t want to spoil the mood by calling him on it. She wasn’t his therapist. Only his . . . girlfriend? Lover? Fuck buddy?
She sighed. The problem with living in the moment was it didn’t help you talk about the future.
“I don’t need my doctorate to work as a therapist,” she said. “Although it would certainly give me more choices. Once I finish my dissertation, I’ll probably look around for a postdoc fellowship—a research position. We say, psychiatrists write prescriptions, psychologists do testing, and counselors talk. But there are a lot of mediocre counselors out there. I don’t want to be mediocre.”
“You’re not mediocre.”
“But people don’t know that.”
“When did you start caring what people think? I thought you just wanted to help.”
“I’d still be helping people. Research on psychological models is necessary to developing effective therapies.”
“But you’re not on the front lines.”
“No,” she admitted. “But I’d be doing important work.”
“If that’s what you want. Is that what you want?”
His words struck at her heart. She hadn’t bothered to ask herself that question in a very long time. She’d been so focused on getting through each day, one task, one step at a time, that she never lifted her head to see where she was going.
Was she lost?
Or had she simply changed direction?
“Now who sounds like a therapist?” she asked breathlessly. Covering.
He shrugged. “I’m a cop.”
She arched her eyebrows. “‘We have ways of making you talk’?”
“You got a problem with that?”
“No. No, how could I? I’m the same way.”
He got her meaning immediately. “Cops and shrinks. Both observers.”
She nodded. “Listening for hidden meanings, watching for nonverbal clues.” Trying to get confessions.
His eyes were almost black. She could not read his thoughts. “So you’re saying we both play mind games.”
“That’s not a bad thing,” she said. “Exactly. Not as long as we understand each other.”
“And don’t get stuck in our heads.”
She smiled ruefully. “I do have a tendency to overthink things.”
He put his hand on her ankle. Warmth stole upward, traveling along her veins. “I have a cure for that.”
Her pulse fluttered. Her smile spread. “I’m in your hands.”
“That’s the idea.”
Holding her gaze, he slid his hand up her calf to her knee. His palm was warm and calloused, scraping her nerves to life. She opened her mouth to breathe, and he leaned in to kiss her, taking her mouth in soft, greedy bites that raised the fine hair on the back of her neck and tightened the tips of her breasts. She wanted to rub over him like a cat.
She twined her arms around his neck, scooting closer, and he kissed her again, lazy and deep, taking full possession of her mouth as his finger traced tiny circles on the inside of her knee, the curve of her thigh. Sliding under the hem of her skirt, moving higher. Her excitement rose with each small incursion, every warm advance, until she made a sound in her throat, and he reached under her with both hands and gripped her bottom. He half pulled, half lifted her toward him, astride him, her legs straddling his thighs on the padded bench seat. His hands stroked down her back, fitting her curves against his lean, tough body, breasts to chest, sex to sex.
This. Liquid desire. Here, now, only this. Only him. She shivered, overwhelmed by the delicious contrast between the cool breeze on her bare arms and the solid heat between her thighs, by the scent of salt and man.
“What are you thinking now?” A breath against her lips.
She blinked. “What?”
She felt his chuckle warm against her cheek, deep in her belly. She ground against the hard bulge of his erection, loving the way he felt, the way he made her feel, aching and trembling and hot. He inhaled sharply, his fingers curving, pressing in her flesh, moving down, delving into her ready sex. Her flesh swelled. She trembled, hiding her face against his hot throat, rising on her knees as he thrust one big finger inside her. Two. She gasped.
He released her. She cried out in disappointment, raising her head.
But he was yanking at his buckle, button, zipper, pants, digging in his pocket for a condom. Yes. This. She reached for him—stiff and hot—as his hips arched off the seat. He covered himself with quick, jerky movements. She stretched her panties out of the way. Grasping her hips, he positioned her above him. His dark gaze, heavy-lidded and intent, caught hers. He pulled her down and impaled her, filling her in one heavy, upward thrust. Oh, hell, yes. Her body closed around him, milking the sensation of him deep inside her, solid and thick inside her.
They were locked and moving together, fused with sweat and heat. She pulsed and steamed. He pumped and thrust, working her with short, strong digs, push and retreat, push and retreat, bringing her to the edge again and again. Her breath sobbed. She labored to rise. Fought to fall. And still he never quite let her go over, holding her off, catching her back, pressing, always pressing.
Until the question he was asking with his body pounded through
her, the demand he was making imprinted on her brain, the admission wrung from her flesh.
“I love you.”
And that must have been the confession he wanted, the words he was waiting for.
He slid and held inside her hard, and the echo of her words, the shock of him at the center of her, was enough, was everything. She shuddered and came so hard she saw stars. He held her through the spasms of her release and then took his own while the night tumbled down around them.
Sixteen
LAUREN WASN’T LOOKING for commitment. Not after three weeks. But reassurance? Yeah, she could use some of that.
Especially after her blurted admission last night. I love you. She winced.
Especially since Jack hadn’t said it back.
That was okay, she told herself the next morning. She was in touch with her emotions. She’d been honest about her feelings. She wouldn’t take the words back if she could.
But she had never before said them to anyone outside her immediate family. She was having enough trouble processing her own feelings.
Maybe it was a good thing she didn’t have to deal with Jack’s.
At least silence was better than some of the things he could have said. Like Don’t. Or Thank you. Or I love you, too.
She sucked in her breath, suddenly light-headed. Her insides churned. Okay, she definitely wasn’t ready to cope with the implications of I love you, too.
And Jack had been very solicitous this morning, waking her with a kiss when he got out of the shower, bringing her coffee in bed.
Tiger trotted at his ankles, tail in the air, a bend in the tip making a fuzzy question mark. What are you doing here? What are you doing?
Jack, already in uniform, handed her a mug.
She seized it gratefully. “Thanks.”
He straightened at the foot of the bed, in the center of the room, the only place he could stand fully upright. Looming over her. Her insides clenched and relaxed helplessly.
It wasn’t just the sex and the sunset, she realized with a tremor. Even in the cold light of morning, she was in love with this guarded, principled, complex man with his sharp-edged face and eyes like knives.
His black gaze sought hers. “How are you doing?”
Carolina Blues Page 20
