Shiver

by Karen Robards

  “It’s Halo, Mom!” Tyler threw at her, barely taking the time to glance in her direction. Instantly refocusing on the TV, he bounced up and down in excitement. “Shoot, Trey, shoot!”

  But after one look at Sam’s face, “Trey” apparently had enough of a sense of self-preservation to know when to call a halt.

  “Time we took a break,” he said to Tyler, hitting a button that froze the action.

  “Mom, you’re interrupting the game!” Tyler howled, looking around at her for real now.

  “I got you some cars.” As a mother, one of Sam’s guiding principles had become that distraction works. That’s how she had gotten through the terrible twos with her sanity intact, as well as the troublesome threes and almost all of the fearsome fours (Tyler’s fifth birthday was in three weeks). Crouching, rummaging through the bags, she came up with the promised package of toys. Like her, Tyler was something of a car buff, and when she stood up with the pack and said, “There’s a Mustang Cobra in here, and a Dodge Charger, too,” he was off the couch and running over to take it from her. For a moment he just stood there looking raptly at the cars in their little plastic rectangles.

  Then he glanced up at her. “Thanks, Mom.”

  “You’re welcome.” She smiled at him. It didn’t take much to make him happy; he was such a good, sweet-natured kid. Truth was, he deserved better than her, but she was what he’d gotten. “Why don’t you take them up to your room”—it felt odd to refer to the room he slept in here the same way she did to his bedroom at home, but she did it—“and get them out?”

  “Okay.” He looked around at Marco. “You want to come and see?”

  “Thanks, but I think I need to talk to your mom for a little bit.” No fool, Marco was clearly able to read the signals she was sending. As in, you’re toast.

  “’Kay.” Holding the package of cars so that he could study them through the plastic wrap as he walked, Tyler headed for the stairs.

  Fixing Marco with a gimlet gaze, Sam waited until her son was out of sight. For his part, Marco hit the remote, which turned off the TV, then set the remote down on the coffee table beside the controllers. As if he were a guilty kid trying to hide the evidence of his wrongdoing, Sam thought.

  “That game is totally unsuitable for a four-year-old. What were you thinking?” She said it as soon as she was sure Tyler could no longer overhear.

  Marco had relaxed back against the couch cushions and turned sideways a little so that he could look at her without craning his neck. “Come on, Sam. It’s Halo Reach. One of the best video games from one of the best video game series ever. A classic. I play it with my nephews all the time.”

  “How old are they?”

  He had the grace to look a little abashed. “Eleven. Twelve. Fourteen.”

  Sam filed away the fact that he had eleven-, twelve-, and fourteen-year-old nephews for future reference. “That’s still too young for a game like that, if you want my opinion, but it’s a lot better than four.”

  “My sisters don’t have a problem with their boys playing it. All their friends play it, too. And Tyler likes it.”

  Sisters? He had sisters? Something else to ponder later. Not that she meant to spend any time thinking about him. Anyway, she had more important fish to fry.

  “Of course he likes it. He loves guns, and pretending to shoot things, and playing army, and all that stuff. That doesn’t mean it’s good for him.” Sam’s mouth thinned with exasperation. “He’d love having candy for breakfast, too, if I’d let him.”

  “He was pretty good at it, for such a little kid.”

  “I don’t care! I don’t want him playing a violent video game.”

  Marco held up both hands in mock surrender. “Okay, my bad. I’ll disconnect the game console and put it back in the cabinet where I found it.”

  “Good.” She gave him another stern look and bent to pick up her bags.

  “Sam.”

  Straightening with bags in hand, she glanced at him in answer.

  “He is a boy, you know. Boys like guns, and shooting things, and violence. It’s normal.” At the look she gave him, he added hastily, “Just saying.”

  “Do you have any children?”

  “No.” Something that looked suspiciously like a twinkle appeared in his eyes. She was still looking closely at it, trying to decide what it meant, when he added, “No wife, either, if that’s where you’re going with this.”

  What? “You know that’s not where I was going,” she said crossly. “Where I was going is, if you don’t have children, you don’t know anything about them, so I’ll thank you to let me raise mine the best way I can.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He was openly grinning at her now.

  Sam turned her back on him and headed for the stairs. Maybe it was her imagination—she didn’t think so—but she could almost feel his eyes on her butt. The thought did not please her, but it did make her step quicken. Along with her pulse.

  Which also did not please her.

  “Sam.” She heard him trying to get up, heard the thump of a dropped crutch, heard a curse. “Wait a minute. Ow!”

  That ow did it. She couldn’t help herself. She glanced back at him. He was balancing beside the couch, one crutch beneath his arm, the other flat on the carpet at his feet. The foot of his injured leg barely touched the ground, and he was grimacing with pain.

  Her inner worrywart got the best of her.

  “What, have those stupid pills quit working or something?” she asked him sharply.

  His grimace was overridden by a gleam of amusement in the glance he shot her way as he gave a single negative shake of his head. “I quit taking them. They got me in trouble.”

  She absolutely refused to go there. “So you’re just going to hurt.”

  “Seemed like the best idea.”

  Sam realized that she hated the idea that he was in pain, and then hated that she hated it. It occurred to her then that, much as she disliked having to face it, she and Tyler needed him. If, for example, he should have to go to a hospital to get his leg reoperated on, they would be left alone with the marshals. Or not. Because every single one of their guardians had made it clear that their job was to protect Marco, and she and Tyler were nothing more than excess baggage. Sam was pretty sure that she could count on them only as long as Marco was around to insist they protect her and her son.

  All the more reason for the insurance policy she’d tried to put in place.

  “Did you change the bandage on your leg?” If she sounded irritable, it was because she was feeling irritable. Constantly battling back fear did not have a good effect on her, she was discovering.

  “Not yet.”

  “You’d better do it.”

  “Everything I need is upstairs, and I’m not going upstairs again until it’s time to go to bed. Getting up and down those stairs on crutches is too damned much work.”

  He bent over, swiping at the crutch on the floor in a failed attempt to pick it up. Lips compressed, Sam watched as he finally snagged it, in two minds about whether or not she should offer to help him with the changing of his bandage. She pictured the location of the wound and the degree of closeness to him that would be required, to say nothing of the hands-on nature of the task, which she had already experienced. Then she remembered last night—and this morning. No way in hell, was her deciding thought on the subject as at last he got the crutches situated beneath his armpits. With that she turned and went upstairs without another word, ignoring him as he called after her. Whatever he wanted to say to her, she was in no mood to hear.

  By the time 11:00 p.m. rolled around, they’d had no more private conversation, and she was wiped out. She’d done several loads of laundry: Tyler’s and her clothes, their bedding (because who knew who’d been sleeping on those sheets before they had arrived), some towels. She had cleaned her room and Tyler’s, and dusted and swept and run the vacuum over the entire house. She’d played cars and hide-and-seek, made a garage out of a shoebox, and baked
brownies because Tyler loved them and there was a box of mix in the pantry. All the activity served the admirable goal of keeping her busy, which prevented her from worrying too much about more bad things that might be coming their way. But also, under the guise of cleaning in particular, she had contrived to learn where every window and door (possible exits) were located and how they operated, where an extra house key was kept (on a hook inside a cabinet, along with another, nearly identical key, which she thought might be a key to the town house next door), where the car keys were kept (inside the drawer closest to the garage), as well as where the garage door opener was stashed. As Sanders went off guard duty and was replaced by Abramowitz, she’d learned the code to the security system by watching Sanders type it into the keypad beside the door in the kitchen that led to the garage. When they’d grilled hamburgers for dinner, Abramowitz had sat in a lawn chair and kept guard, Marco had done the actual grilling, Sam had formed the patties for him and made a salad, and Tyler, beaming with excitement about grilling out, which was something he had never experienced because they didn’t have a grill, had been in charge of opening the buns. While they were outside, with everyone else pretty much occupied, she had taken the opportunity to check out the backyard gate, how it worked, what it opened onto. And she had done all those things just in case. Just in case the bad guys should find them, or just in case she should decide to take Tyler and go it alone. Or—well, just in case.

  Having supervised Tyler’s bath and then read a chapter in their new book to him, she stayed with him until he fell asleep and then emerged, yawning, into the hall. Except for being barefoot, she was still fully dressed, in the jeans and tank she had been wearing all day, with her hair still in its single fat braid that fell over her shoulder now. What she was looking forward to doing next with an eagerness that bordered on greed was soaking in a hot bath before falling into bed.

  That required use of the second bathroom, because the bathroom off the master bedroom only had a shower stall.

  Of course Marco would be emerging from that bathroom at precisely the same moment as she stepped out of Tyler’s room. Looking big and broad shouldered and way too hot for her peace of mind, he was once again wrapped in the white robe, wearing nothing else that she could see (although hopefully he had boxers on under there somewhere). Just the sight of him (un)dressed like that brought a whole raft of sizzling images to her mind that she kicked out at once.

  Scowling at him, she would have passed on by without a word—although it was slightly difficult getting past him when, on crutches, he took up most of the hall—but he reached out and caught her arm, stopping her.

  Her eyes snapped up to meet his. He smiled at her. She absolutely distrusted everything about that smile.

  “Got a minute?” he asked.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  The correct answer to that question where he was concerned was no. A thousand times no.

  What Sam said was a truculent, “What?”

  “Something I need to know?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Seriously. She didn’t. But she did know that she didn’t want to talk to him at all. Especially not now, when he was obviously just out of the shower and half naked and she couldn’t keep her heartbeat from quickening or her body from tightening with excitement stoked by absolutely nothing at all except memories and his proximity. Who would have thought that the smell of soap and toothpaste could turn her on so? But it did. At least, when it was associated with him.

  When she tried to pull her arm free, he leaned toward her, crowding her back toward the wall. His chest brushed her breasts. His pelvis nudged hers. She could feel the whole long length of him corralling her, trapping her, and knew that he was doing it deliberately. His body heat surrounded her, making her feel hot in turn. Suddenly she was finding it harder to breathe. Stubble that was way past five o’clock shadow darkened his chin; doing a lightning mental recap of the last few days, she was pretty sure he hadn’t shaved since she had met him. His eyes were dark and slightly bloodshot, but alert. His hair was damp, and a few tiny drops of water from his shower still beaded his skin.

  Sam couldn’t help it; her pulse started to race.

  “Do you want something?” She kept her cool, kept her chin up, and kept her voice low so as not to wake Tyler as Marco backed her all the rest of the way up against the wall until she was totally pinned in place by his weight.

  “Oh, yeah.”

  Their faces were so close that she could feel his breath feathering her cheek. One crutch slid down the wall to hit the carpet with a soft thud as he let it go. The other stayed upright, propped against the wall beside her, but he was no longer using it. Instead he was favoring his injured leg but standing on his own, preventing her escape by absolutely misusing his superior size and strength. He wrapped a muscular arm around her, snaking it into the space between the wall and the hollow of her back, pulling her hard up against him. Then he started to grope her butt. Squirming at the surprise of it, wedging both hands against the solid wall of his chest and shoving, she didn’t manage to either extricate herself or budge him by so much as an inch. Injured or not, the man was strong.

  The bad news was, she discovered that she liked being plastered up against him. And she liked the feel of his hand on her butt. Way too much. Her body tightened deep inside in the most pleasurable way possible. OMG, I can’t let him know.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she growled in pure self-defense. Only after she said it did she realize that she wasn’t shoving at him any longer. Instead her hands had fisted in the front of his robe and were gripping the thick toweling for dear life.

  “What do you think I’m doing?”

  Her pulse pounded. Her breathing quickened. Defiantly she threw back her head to glare up at him even while she was acutely, pleasurably aware of how big and strong and masculine his hand felt as it continued its intimate exploration. “It’s obvious, isn’t it? Copping a feel.”

  Looking at him had been a mistake. His mouth wasn’t that far from hers; its curve was—sexy. Just like the heat in his eyes as they met hers was sexy.

  “If I was copping a feel, I’d have my hand inside your pants.”

  That melted her bones. Her knees went wobbly, just like that. All because she could picture it—feel it—as vividly as if he really was delving inside her jeans and panties to caress her bare skin.

  Just thinking about it was enough to make her squirm.

  “So maybe you’re subtle like that.” But she said it without conviction. As much as she wanted to think copping a feel was what he was doing, the real answer was, it didn’t seem like something the Marco she knew would do. But then, selling out his fellow agents and joining forces with a drug cartel, and then selling them out in turn, didn’t seem like something the Marco she knew would do, either. So the conclusion she reached was, she actually didn’t know squat about him.

  “You really think that?” His voice was low, and a little husky.

  “That you’re subtle? Probably not. That you’re copping a feel? Sure feels like it to me.”

  “Guess again, baby doll.” He splayed his hand wide over her butt and pulled her closer still in a way that left her breathless. Her nipples reacted instantly to the sudden close contact with his chest. At the unexpected jolt of pleasure that resulted, her mouth went dry. She liked the strength in his grip, she realized, liked the sensation of being female to his male. The way he was holding her, she was practically being squashed into the cushiony layer of his robe. She could feel the bulky knot of the belt tied at his waist. Beneath the toweling, she could feel the firm muscles he had everywhere.

  “Let go of me!” She squirmed in a halfhearted attempt to get away. “Are you on those stupid pills again?”

  “Nope.”

  Whether his purpose was to cop a feel or not, that was definitely what he was doing. She could feel his hand palming first one cheek and then the other—and her body’s instantaneous reaction d
id not bode well for her determination to leave sex out of the equation where he was concerned. He caressed the rounded curves, slid his fingers along the indentation between them all the way down between her legs, and as she felt him touching her there she was rocked by a flash of desire so strong it shocked her. Her lips parted as her breathing went all uneven. She could feel her body softening. She could feel his hardening.

  “Then what the hell, Marco?” The objection probably would have been more effective if it hadn’t sounded so breathless—and if she had been trying harder to get away from him. She wasn’t even squirming in protest (or otherwise) any longer, not that the squirming she had done there for a minute really counted as an attempt to get him to stop. If he had been anyone else in the world, if she had meant business, she would have kneed him. Or, second option, grabbed his injured leg and squeezed. One thing she had learned over the years was how to take care of herself. If she had really wanted to get free, she could have made it happen like that.

  Instead she was going all buttery inside even as she let—and face the truth, let was the right word—him get all touchy-feely with her butt.

  “Did you really think I wasn’t going to notice the brand-new addition to your ass?” he asked on a note of grim triumph.

  That was so unexpected that Sam frowned. Then she realized: he hadn’t been feeling her up. He’d been patting her down. As he spoke, his fingers were digging down deep inside her back pocket, and he was pulling out her cash.

  “Way to prove you’re spending way too much time staring at it!” Indignation stiffened her spine. When his hand came into view holding the ninety dollars she had stashed away in her back pocket, then waggled the tightly folded square in front of her nose, she met his gaze belligerently.

  “Want to explain this?” His eyes would have been hard if it hadn’t been for the heat at their backs.