Shiver

by Karen Robards

  Except for the whole everyone-wants-to-kill-us thing. But Sam didn’t say it out loud. She gave Marco a narrow-eyed look instead.

  “We’ll make it a vacation,” he promised, sliding a significant look in Tyler’s direction.

  Given her son’s presence, what could she reply to that?

  “Sounds good,” she said.

  “Is it okay if I go check out the backyard, Mom?” Having finished his breakfast, Tyler slid from his seat. From where she was sitting, through the not-quite-completely-drawn blinds, Sam could see several slices of well-cut green lawn and a large, leafy tree. The backyard looked like the perfect place for a four-year-old to play. The whole thing seemed to be surrounded by a six-foot-tall wooden privacy fence, but she had no way of being sure it was safe.

  Automatically she looked at Marco for guidance. Tyler did, too. Annoying to realize that they both assumed he was the one with the authority to decide, to tell them yes or no.

  “Why don’t you check out the rest of the house first?” Marco suggested. “I bet there are all kinds of nooks and crannies you haven’t seen.”

  “Okay,” Tyler agreed, and hopped up from his seat. With a quick look at Sam, he picked up his plate and glass and carried them to the sink. She smiled at him: that was something he always did. She gave herself a mental high-five for having raised him well.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “I’ll be back in a minute,” he told her, and ran off.

  Left alone with Marco, Sam felt every bit of discomfort she’d managed to push out of her mind earlier return in a rush. Desperate to find something to do, something to focus on besides the two of them alone at the table, she started to gather up the plates and silverware, preparatory to standing up and carrying them to the sink.

  She was just reaching for the syrup bottle when his hand descended on hers, closing around it, holding it trapped against the smooth wood.

  Her eyes shot to his.

  “We need to talk,” he said.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Talking was not what Sam wanted to do. Escaping was more like it. But Marco picked her hand up from the table, holding it in such a way that she doubted she could have pulled free without a determined jerk.

  A jerk that would reveal how uncomfortable she was with having him hold her hand.

  Even as she hesitated, she very unwillingly registered the size and strength of his hand—way bigger and stronger than hers—and its masculinity, and the warmth of it. She remembered the way he had kissed her knuckles in the trunk. Then he ran his thumb over the silky skin on the back of her hand—shades of that thumb running over her nipple!—and her insides turned to mush.

  Sam’s heart was beating a mile a minute. She was breathing way too fast. She was so focused on the way his thumb moving against her skin was making her feel that she didn’t even realize she was staring at their joined hands until he said, “Sam,” and she looked up to meet his eyes.

  He was regarding her with a rueful expression that immediately made her brows twitch together.

  “What?” Her tone wasn’t quite snappish, but almost. The way he was holding her hand, the way he was kind of leaning in toward her, the intensity of his gaze, was throwing her for a loop. A relationship with this guy was the last thing she wanted, or needed, but something about the way they were together kind of felt like they were sliding down the slope of starting a relationship. Oh, no. Not happening. Reverse course. She wasn’t making any more bad decisions where men were concerned. She had already screwed (and screwed was definitely the operative word) up enough in that department. She wasn’t doing it again. No how, no way.

  Even if just having him hold her hand like this was making her go all jittery inside.

  “About last night,” he said. That wasn’t a surprise—from the second he’d picked up her hand she’d had a pretty good idea about what the topic of conversation was likely to be. But his expression wasn’t jibing with the racing of her pulse, or the buttery warmth that was starting to spread deep inside her. It wasn’t saying, I want to take you to bed. It was saying—what?

  Not anything she was going to like, she was starting to feel pretty sure.

  “I’m sorry, okay?” He was playing with her fingers now, which were long and slender but not elegant, not perfectly manicured—actually, not manicured at all—a working woman’s hands. “I shouldn’t have done what I did. It was a mistake. I blame it on the pain pills. You were right, I was high as a kite.”

  Talk about your wake-up call. He definitely wasn’t going all gooey inside. And sure as God made little green apples she wasn’t going to be going all gooey inside any longer, either. To hell with how he interpreted it; she gave the determined jerk necessary to free her hand from his.

  “Let me get this straight: you’re saying you only kissed me because you were high?”

  “I kissed you because I wanted to. But I wouldn’t have done it if I hadn’t been loopy from those damned pain pills.”

  She felt affronted. She felt—okay, face it, a little hurt. It was all she could do not to get up, turn the appropriate part of her anatomy in his direction, say something like kiss this as she smacked it, and then stomp away from the table, but she didn’t, because above all else she was determined to keep her (outward) cool. The slight edge to her voice that she couldn’t quite seem to help notwithstanding. “Good to know. Thank you very much for telling me.”

  She got the impression that he almost smiled. If he had, the way she was feeling right at that moment, she would have decked him.

  “Sam.” He reached for her hand again. Forget that. Curling her fingers into fists, she crossed her arms over her chest. And did not glare at him, although it cost her a real effort. “Look. You’re beautiful. And sweet. And sexy as all hell. I want you. I’d give my right arm to sleep with you, but we’re in a dangerous situation here. I need you to be able to trust me. I don’t want sex to get in the way of that.”

  Affronted didn’t even begin to cover how she was feeling. Try—damned mad. For starters. “Me trust you? Probably not going to happen. Me have sex with you? Definitely not going to happen. So it’s looking like you strike out on both counts.”

  His expression turned rueful. “The thing is, I can’t afford the distraction.”

  “You say that like you think us having sex was actually a possibility. It wasn’t.” She seethed (invisibly, she hoped). “It isn’t.”

  If that was humor she saw springing to life in the backs of his eyes, she would—she didn’t know what she’d do, but it wouldn’t be pretty.

  Impossible to tell. But there was a suspicious glint in those dark brown depths that made the glare she finally directed at him feel extra good.

  “Don’t give me a hard time, okay? I want you so much I’ve got a hard-on right now, just from sitting at this table looking at you. But I’m trying to do what’s best for everybody here.”

  She made a rude sound. “You know what? I don’t want to know about your hard-on. You ever hear, too much information? Anyway, I don’t care. You could have a baseball bat in your pants and it wouldn’t mean anything to me.”

  “I’m just trying to explain—”

  “Explain what?”

  “Why I’m backing off here. Why us having sex isn’t going to happen.”

  Sam almost sputtered. “Like I thought it was? Like that was even a possibility? Listen, Mr. Criminal in Federal Custody, you seem to have a pretty skewed idea about how much you appeal to women. Maybe you ought to try getting real.”

  “Come on, Sam. After the way we were last night, of course you would naturally expect—”

  “Naturally expect? I didn’t naturally expect anything. So last night we made out. So what? No big deal. It was an accident, practically, and it was never going to go any further than that. Believe me.” So she was lying, probably; he couldn’t know it.

  He fixed her with a level look. “Now who needs to get real?”

  She bristled. “Meaning?”
<
br />   “Meaning it was completely obvious where last night was going. If we hadn’t gotten interrupted, we would have wound up in bed. I figured today you’d be expecting us to pick up where we left off, and I wanted you to understand why that can’t happen.”

  Sam wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that steam was coming out of her ears. “I understand why that can’t happen, all right. Because there’s no way in hell I’d ever wind up in bed with you. Not last night, not today, not ever.”

  “We’re on the same page then.”

  Now, that calm statement was infuriating. Sam tried not to let it show.

  “Absolutely we’re on the same page.”

  A smile just touched his mouth. “So why are you so mad at me?”

  “What makes you think I’m mad at you?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe because last night you kissed me like you were dying to crawl into my bed and when I showed up in the kitchen this morning you made big bedroom eyes at me and now here you are spitting fire and yelling at me?”

  “I am not spitting fire. And I am not yelling.”

  “Yes, you are.” His voice went very soft. “And just for the record, baby doll, I think it’s cute.”

  Sam saw red. “You know what you can do with that, right?”

  “Easy.” He actually had the gall to smile outright at her. “All I’m trying to do here is make sure you and Tyler stay safe.”

  “You keep talking like you’re the one who’s supposed to do that.” Sam was practically speaking through her teeth by now. “News flash: you’re the reason we’re in danger, remember? Keeping us safe is why there’s a U.S. Marshal in the next room.”

  “Sam—”

  Whatever he had been going to say next was lost as Tyler came bouncing back into the room. Marco quit talking. His mouth closed into a firm line. Sam tried to wipe all negative emotion from her face.

  Luckily, Tyler seemed happily oblivious to the tension between the adults. His gaze slid past Sam toward the sliding glass doors as he asked, “Mom, can I go outside now?”

  Hostilities instantly—and very temporarily, at least on Sam’s part—set aside, she found herself instinctively shooting Marco a quick, inquiring look.

  “Hang on a minute,” Marco said to Tyler. Scooting his chair back, he spoke to Sam. “I don’t see why not, but I’ll check out the backyard.”

  “Shouldn’t we be getting Sanders—the U.S. Marshal—to do that?” Okay, so there was still some bite—a lot of bite—in her voice.

  If Marco heard, he ignored her, getting to his feet with the combined help of the table and the chair back. From the way he grimaced, Sam was sure he was in pain, and found herself wondering sourly how many pills he was going to have to swallow to control it. Enough to make him “loopy” again? Even thinking about that was infuriating—and, if she was honest, a little humiliating. The idea that while she’d been going up in flames in his arms he had been too bombed out of his mind to know what he was doing made her nuts.

  I want you so much I’ve got a hard-on right now . . .

  Arggh. She could still almost hear him saying it.

  I’m not going to think about that. I’m not going to think about him. And I am not going to look at the front of his pants. I’m going to be smart for once in my stupid life, and keep sex out of it, just like the rat bastard said.

  “Here, Trey.” As Tyler darted into position to hand over Marco’s crutches, one at a time, clearly eager to be of help, Sam turned her back on them and crossed to the sliding glass doors to look outside for herself. Pushing the blinds aside, she saw that the backyard, while not overly large, was indeed surrounded by a six-foot-tall solid wood privacy fence, at least as far as she could see. There was a concrete patio complete with lawn chairs and what looked like a grill, with a basketball goal set into the ground at the far end. The grass had been cut recently, and was thick and green. Sunflowers towered in a corner. Best of all, hanging from what proved to be a big, leafy red oak, was a tire swing. Tyler’s going to love that. Instantly transported, she reached for the handle to open the door.

  “Sam. You want to wait for me.” Marco’s warning was soft and almost casual. Glancing around at him—he was getting the crutches into position under his arms, while Tyler (got in the way) assisted—she understood from his expression that the warning was serious, although he was doing his best not to make Tyler think there was any reason to worry about what might be waiting outside.

  Instant visions of snipers on the roof, assassins hiding behind the tree, murderers of all types and stripes and in all possible locations ready to blast the first person who appeared sprang into her head, making her heart lurch, and she quickly sheared away from the door. Beneath the dangling blinds, it was one big panel of glass, after all.

  “Shouldn’t we all wait for Sanders? Having you go outside first seems a little silly, considering everything.” Meaning considering that he was the one the killers were really after, although with Tyler listening in she didn’t want to be too graphic. She couldn’t help uttering the warning, however, and never mind how irate she was feeling toward Marco at the moment. She might not want him to die, but a lesser bad fate, like having him fall flat on his face on the kitchen floor if one of his crutches caught on, say, a table leg, suited her just fine.

  “Oh, right.” Something about his tone struck her as a little odd, like his mind was having to switch gears to acknowledge that he was the primary target. But then she forgot about that as their eyes collided. Instantly she felt the flash of (oh, so unwanted) attraction between them, and caught herself wondering—damn it!—if there was something wrong with her, that she was consistently drawn to men who turned out to be total losers, Tyler’s father and this guy being two obvious cases in point.

  Before she had a chance to follow that thought through to its obvious conclusion—something in the nature of, you’re an idiot—he added, “Cover your ears,” to Tyler. As Tyler obeyed without question he bellowed, “Hey, Sanders, you’re needed in the kitchen, pronto,” before maneuvering out from behind the table, careful and slightly awkward on his crutches.

  Tyler’s hands dropped away from his ears as he scrambled to pull a chair out of Marco’s way. “You yell really loud.”

  Watching Marco smile down at her boy, Sam felt her chest tighten. Hero worship shone out of Tyler’s eyes. Clearly she and Marco were going to have to have another talk, only this time she was going to be the one to spell things out: bottom line was, she didn’t want him getting too friendly with Tyler. Because soon, she hoped, Marco would be out of their lives. Really out of their lives, as in, on his way to prison or something. The downside to that was that Tyler would be the one who was left behind, hurt by the ending of the association. If she could prevent it, Sam vowed, that just wasn’t going to happen.

  Marco’s expression as he crossed the kitchen left Sam in no doubt that he was indeed in considerable pain. This time she absolutely refused to feel sorry for him. Instead, despite the nervousness brought on by the idea of possibly exposing herself or Tyler to the danger that might be lurking outside, she followed Marco and Tyler to the door and looked out over Marco’s broad shoulder through the glass.

  Everything she could see looked peaceful and serene.

  “What’s the problem?” Sanders entered the kitchen fast, his footsteps loud on the tile floor, his hand reaching beneath his jacket, which, Sam knew, was where his gun was kept in a shoulder holster. She, Tyler, and Marco all looked sharply around at his appearance.

  Sam answered him first. She’d had it with being told what to do, and absolutely refused to find the burly marshal—or any of the men around her, for that matter—intimidating. “Tyler wants to play in the backyard. Before I just let him go, I thought somebody should check it out.”

  Hand withdrawing from beneath his jacket, Sanders looked at Marco with disgust. “That’s what you were yelling about?”

  Seeming unbothered by Sanders’s barely veiled antagonism, Marco shrugged. “S
eemed smarter to check than not. And as the lady pointed out, I’m probably not the one to do it.”

  “Worried about catching a bullet in the head?” Sanders’s tone made it almost a sneer. Sam’s mouth tightened as she watched Tyler’s eyes widen, watched him cast a quick glance up at Marco. Sensitive Sanders was not. “What does the kid need to go out for, anyway?”

  “I don’t have to.” Looking abashed, Tyler sidled a little closer to Marco’s side.

  “Sure you do.” Marco looked down at him. “It’s a pretty day. I want to go out, too. No point in us staying locked up in the house.” He looked at Sanders. “You can check out the backyard or I will.” His voice had hardened just enough to be noticeable. His quick assumption of authority reminded Sam once again that he, too, had been a federal agent before he had betrayed everyone who had believed in him. That, she realized, was the guy she was attracted to. The other part of him—the weasel—well, she didn’t know that part. Or maybe she just wasn’t very good at recognizing it.

  Whatever, for now she and Marco were on the same side.

  “You’re supposed to be protecting us, aren’t you?” Sam’s eyes challenged Sanders before he could growl back at Marco, which she could see from his expression he was getting ready to do. So Marco was the bad guy, and Sanders was the good one. Much as it annoyed her to face the truth, she liked Marco more. “So protect already. Make sure the backyard’s safe.”

  Sanders’s face tightened as he looked at her. “I wouldn’t push it, if I were you, Ms. Jones. Left to me, you wouldn’t be here.”

  As he was already moving toward the door to do as she’d asked, Sam didn’t reply. Unlatching it, sliding it open, Sanders stepped outside, looked around, took a quick walk to the left out of sight, and came back.

  “Should be fine,” he said, stepping back into the kitchen. “Just stay in the yard and don’t unlock the gate.”

  “Yay! Come on, Mom.” Skittering around Sanders, Tyler darted out the door, with Sam a few steps behind him. As she slipped past Sanders, who was now closest to the door, Sanders said to Marco, “We’re here to keep you alive, not baby-sit a damned woman and her kid.”