Morgan nodded. “Thanks for the heads-up.”
“I couldn’t help but notice the accent,” Trent commented. “How long have you been in California?”
“A little more than two and a half years,” Morgan answered.
“What brought you here? Other than the weather, I mean,” Trevor asked. He ran a restaurant that saw a good deal of traffic, both native and tourist, and people and what motivated them interested him perhaps almost as much as sports did Mike.
“My car,” Morgan replied.
The answer drew a laugh and drained away some of the residual tension still hovering around the room. The response was, Morgan thought, the better choice. Initially he was going to say he came here because it was as far away from “there”
as he could go in the continental United States. But that would only give rise to more questions. Questions he didn’t want to answer. Conversation at the table continued in a more relaxed vein. Perforce dinner lasted longer than Morgan was accustomed to. Ordinarily, dinner was something he ate in snatches while doing something else—sitting on a stakeout, working on a car or watching something on TV. Dinner was not something that required his sitting down formally at a table and concentrating on what he was consuming.
But he had to admit, his guard slipping just a fraction of an inch, he found sharing the meal with the Marlowes different and maybe, just maybe, somewhat enjoyable, as well.
When it was over and Morgan rose to his feet, offering to clear the table and “take care of the dishes,” Kate merely patted his hand and told him not to worry about it.
“You’re a guest here, Morgan. That means no work. Besides, I have sons, daughters-in-law, a future daughter-in-law,” she nodded at Shana, “and a dishwasher to handle what you see here. None of them would mind helping me, right?” Her bright, animated eyes swept over the other occupants at the table.
“What about Kelsey?” Travis wanted to know. “Why isn’t she included in this
‘willing’ group?”
“Kelsey came to the hospital, so she’s off the hook,” Kate said serenely.
“We would have come to the hospital if we’d known,” Trevor protested. It was obvious that he wanted her to know that. To remember that each one of them loved her dearly and that she was important to them.
“Water under the bridge, boys,” Kelsey said cheerfully.
“I can think of something else that, with very little effort, could be in the water under the bridge,” Mike commented, eyeing Kelsey pointedly.
“Don’t threaten your sister with a policeman here, Mike,” Bryan said, doing his best to sound serious. “She disappears, he’ll remember.”
“Kelsey, why don’t you take Morgan into the living room?” Kate suggested.
Shana, Venus and Miranda were already stacking the dinner plates while Laurel was busy cleaning up the minute crumbs that encircled Cody’s plate. Miranda nudged Mike, indicating that the effort was not restricted to a single gender.
“Perhaps offer him a drink?” Kate added, looking at her daughter.
“If he has to put up with Kelsey on a one-on-one basis, he’s going to need more than one,” Travis told his mother, joining his fiancée. He looked at Morgan. “The liquor cabinet is over on the left as you walk in.”
“I’m sorry about that,” Kelsey apologized as they went into the living room.
Morgan assumed that she was referring to the conversation at the table. It had gone on for a while. Somewhat amused, he asked, “Which part?”
She watched him for a long moment. “I was referring to when Cody asked you if you really had no one.”
Morgan merely shrugged. “He’s just a little boy. He doesn’t know better.”
Well, that was forgiving of him. He’d surprised her. He didn’t seem the type to differentiate between children and adults.
“I’m also sorry that you don’t have anyone,” she added in a lower voice.
Again he shrugged, but this time he glanced away. The lack of eye contact bothered her. “It happens.”
His tone was dismissive, but her gut told her that he was withholding something.
“How did it happen to you?”
“Isn’t this what you were just apologizing for?”
“I apologized because Cody said what he did out in the open. This is in private.”
She nodded, indicating the room. “Between you and me.”
Their eyes met. “What if I don’t want something private between you and me?”
A lesser person would have flinched, if not backed down altogether. But she had grown up in a love-torment relationship with her brothers and it had hardened her a great deal. Kelsey returned his gaze, never wavering for a moment.
The tension was back. But it was a different kind of tension that crackled and sizzled between them. It made her acutely aware of just how close he was standing. She took a breath. “Don’t you?” she asked in a quiet voice.
Damn, where had this sudden need come from? He neither expected it nor welcomed it. He certainly didn’t want it. Simply being aware of it was disconcerting enough.
“You don’t want to get mixed up with me, Kelsey,” he warned her.
Kelsey knew a challenge when she heard one.
Oh God, she loved a challenge. Just hearing Morgan say the words heightened the warm, fluid desire suddenly and capriciously flowing through her veins.
“Maybe I do and maybe I don’t,” she said philosophically. “The point is, you don’t know me well enough to say that.”
“No,” he admitted, granting her that, “but I know me well enough to say it.”
Had he come right out and said that he was attracted to her, it would have most likely made her step back—although she wasn’t a hundred percent sure about that. The fact that he was pushing her away for her “own good” had just the opposite effect. It utterly intrigued her. She’d always wanted what she couldn’t have.
“Maybe,” she allowed. “But I like making up my own mind, Officer Donnelly.”
He knew where this was going. And part of him wanted it to. Still, because he had a conscience, he warned her again. “You’re going to regret this.”
Not at first. I’d bet my life on that. She could feel her pulse accelerating at the promise of what was to come.
“We’ll see,” she murmured.
Morgan couldn’t really say if he was the one who ultimately made the first move or if Kelsey had. He vaguely believed that it was him, but he couldn’t have sworn to it. Whatever space there had been between them evaporated completely. Within the confines of an erratic heartbeat, his lips were against hers. He was also aware that for however long the kiss went on, time stood still. The moment was filled with an incredible rush of warmth and a surge of desire, desire that had not been aroused or even so much as nominally nudged for the past two and a half years.
Ever since he’d buried his wife and child, and his heart.
Kelsey’s heart slammed into her rib cage with the force of an aimed ground-tomissile rocket. For perhaps the first time in her life, she’d gotten more than she’d bargained for.
Kelsey drew her head back, all but completely overwhelmed by what she’d just experienced. She had to glance down to reassure herself that the ground was still there beneath her feet and that it hadn’t been fried to a crisp, the way she’d thought it—and she—had.
“What’s your pleasure?” she heard herself ask in a shaky voice. The look on Donnelly’s face told her that she needed to elaborate. It took massive control to keep a telltale color from creeping into her cheeks. “To drink,” she added with a bit too much emphasis. “What would you like to drink?” As an afterthought, she waved her hand toward the honey-colored liquor cabinet.
“Nothing,” he answered. “I don’t think I should have anything.” He hadn’t told her about his father, and now wasn’t the time. Instead, he fell back on a typical explanation. “I’m leaving soon and—”
Kelsey stopped him before he could finish.
“You leave ‘soon’ and I’ll never hear the end of it.”
“I don’t understand.”
“My brothers’ll tease me that I chased you away.” Even though they were all grown-up, there was no end to the things her brothers found to tease her about. Kelsey had a feisty element to her. He’d tasted it in her kiss. Even when she’d leaned into him, there hadn’t been a hint of surrender. He had a feeling she was hell on wheels in any situation.
“You do that often? Chase guys away?”
She laughed shortly. “Most of the time, my brothers were the ones who chased guys away.” And then, because she was highly protective of them just as they were of her, and she didn’t want Donnelly getting the wrong impression of her brothers, Kelsey added, “They tend to be overprotective.”
“I didn’t get that impression.”
“That’s because they probably think you have the good sense not to want to go out with me.”
Damn but this woman was sexy, and just about the last thing he needed in his life.
“Is that what it is—good sense?”
“According to my brothers,” she emphasized, her words emerging slowly.
“I seem to recall you offering to go to a ball game with me,” he reminded her.
She couldn’t take her eyes off him. Things she’d promised herself to avoid melted away. “They don’t see that as a date.” Her mouth got exceedingly dry. Like cotton in single-digit humidity. “What do you see it as?”
He heard a sigh and abruptly realized that it had come from him.
“Something that’s not going to happen,” he told her matter-of-factly. “The vice president is arriving in Orange County for a fund-raiser. Every available man and woman in blue is being asked to turn up to make sure that the visit goes smoothly.”
Otherwise, he thought, there was more than a fifty-fifty chance that he’d wind up proving her brothers wrong, despite his own common sense and logical intentions. Disappointment skewered her. Kelsey did her best not to show it and even succeeded in sounding somewhat nonchalant. “Why didn’t you just say so earlier?”
He shrugged, as if his interest in the subject was barely engaged. “Maybe I was just curious to see how it would play out.” His eyes met hers. “I did say I couldn’t go,”
he reminded her.
Was he just jerking her around? Or was there something else at work here? Kelsey was familiar with self-preservation. Was that what he was trying to do? Was he afraid to make a connection?
Welcome to the club, Donnelly, she thought.
Out loud, she said, “Because you said you’d still be working on my mother’s car. That meant you were making a personal choice and choosing not to go. A work detail isn’t personal.”
“So you don’t mind being rejected if it’s because the VP is coming, but you do mind if I say I can’t make it because I’m busy.”
For reasons of pride, Kelsey was about to deny his assumption, then thought better of it. Better to keep things simple, she decided.
“Something like that.” And then, seeing his reaction, she laughed. “Don’t look so concerned, Officer Donnelly. I’m not measuring you for a formal tuxedo and looking at matching rings. I just want to have a little fun at a ball game.” And maybe a little more afterward. “The last thing in the world I want to do is become emotionally involved with a policeman.”
She said the last with a finality that caught his attention.
“Mind if I ask why?”
This time she was the one who shrugged carelessly. Or tried to make it look that way. “Let’s just say that I discovered that Newport Beach’s ‘finest’ didn’t live up to its name.”
“How so?”
“You get to ask questions but I don’t?”
“I do this for a living,” he replied solemnly. “But you can ask questions, too.”
Looking into his eyes, she could see what wasn’t being said. “You just don’t have to answer them, right?”
His mouth curved. God help him, but he liked her. Liked her spirit. “Right. Neither do you.”
She rolled that around in her head for a moment. “Sounds fair,” she pronounced.
“So you’re really working next Friday?”
“Yes, I’m really working next Friday.”
“Dodgers are in town the following weekend.” She remembered Mike mentioning that. “Anyone need guarding the Friday after next?”
He didn’t know what it was about this woman, or why he felt this fire lighting inside of him. He knew this wasn’t going to go anywhere. Couldn’t go anywhere. For a number of reasons. It only made sense to back away right now. Make up some excuse and pull the curtain down. And yet…
“Need guarding?” he repeated. “I’ve got a feeling that I might.”
The answer delighted her and she laughed. A deep, throaty laugh that he felt go right into the center of his gut, tightening it.
“You don’t know the half of it, Officer Donnelly,” she said.
That, he realized, was just what he was afraid of. Or should be afraid of if he had half a brain, Morgan corrected. But right now, heaven help him, he was intrigued. And so powerfully drawn to this petite, dynamite stick of a woman that he felt completely tied up in knots inside.
“I’ve got this strong feeling,” he said, just before he gave in to the urge to kiss her again, “that you’re going to show me.”
Chapter Nine
“M aybe I’d better go,” Morgan heard himself saying eons later when he finally forced himself to end the kiss that geometrically grew in intensity with every moment that passed by.
Had they been alone…
But they hadn’t been alone and that was a very good thing. Otherwise, mistakes would have been made. More mistakes, he silently corrected, because this shouldn’t have happened, either. Despite the fact that the kiss had rattled him down to his very toes, it had opened a door that should have remained closed if he was to have any peace.
Okay, what was going on here? Kelsey silently demanded. Why did she feel like some schoolgirl who’d just been introduced to her first grown-up kiss? She wasn’t exactly a novice at this kind of thing, and the fact that she hadn’t been dating recently had been of her own choosing, not because no one was asking. But goodness, she couldn’t recall anyone ever stirring up her soul like that. No one had ever completely sapped away her breath or made her pulse race in the same way.
Stunned, trying to focus on a world that had suddenly gone utterly out of focus, she nodded in response to Morgan’s announcement that he should be leaving.
“You’ll call me?” she asked, her voice low and husky. “About my mother’s car, you’ll call me?” she clarified after a beat, realizing that, left standing alone, her original question sounded as if she wanted him to call her for a date.
“The minute it’s done,” he promised.
It was difficult to sound distant when his breath kept cutting out on him. He hadn’t been close to winded when he chased down a perp last week. So why would he be so breathless from kissing Kelsey?
Morgan cleared his throat. “Tell your mother thanks for dinner. Your father, too,”
he added as an afterthought. “It was…nice.” Nice was a paltry word, but right now he didn’t trust his voice to say anything lengthier.
“You can tell them yourself,” she suggested, gesturing toward the dining room. Judging from the noise, she’d guess that the table was still being cleared away. But Morgan already had the door open, eager to make his getaway. “Gotta go.”
The next second, he was gone.
Amusement curved her mouth as Kelsey stood staring at the closed door. Had she just frightened off the big, strong, strapping policeman? Certainly looked that way. Makes two of us, Donnelly.
Travis looked in, glancing around the room. “Where’s Morgan?”
“Gone,” she told him simply, then turned around to face her brother. “He went home.”
The news surprised him. “God, Kelsey, what did you do to the man
?” Travis asked. He jerked his thumb behind him. “He didn’t even come back into the dining room to get his jacket.”
“I didn’t do anything to him,” she informed Travis, breezing passed him. “He kissed me.”
“Well, that explains it,” Travis commented. “You can be pretty scary when your lips are moving.”
She didn’t bother answering her brother. Instead, she walked into the dining room.
Morgan’s jacket was hanging on the back of the chair just where he’d left it. She made straight for it and went through the pockets. Watching her, Travis and Trent, the only other occupants in the room at the moment, exchanged looks and grinned.
“Usually you’re a little more subtle than that,” Trent observed.
Kelsey glanced up for a moment, pulling her lips into a quick smile before continuing with her examination. “No, I’m not. You’re just not around that much anymore.”
And then, so they wouldn’t start up about how snoopy she was, she explained, “I’m just making sure Morgan doesn’t have anything in his pockets that he might need.”
She drew out the last word as her fingers came in contact with something she judged Officer Morgan Donnelly needed a great deal. Withdrawing her hand from the jacket’s inside pocket, Kelsey held the prize triumphantly aloft. “He left his wallet.”
“He’s going to need that,” Trent commented.
Kelsey tucked the wallet back into the inside pocket and draped the jacket over her arm. “My thoughts exactly.”
Travis put his hand out to her. “I could—” He never got to finish his statement.
Anticipating what he was going to say, Kelsey cut him off. “So could I.”
“You know, this isn’t like you, Kelse,” Trent observed. Travis nodded in agreement.
“What?” she asked innocently. “Being thoughtful?” And then her eyebrows narrowed as she warned, “And, if I were either of you, I’d think very carefully before I answered that.”
Travis held up his hands in a symbolic surrender. “Wasn’t going to say another word.”
“Me neither,” Trent chimed in.
[Kate's Boys 05] - A Lawman for Christmas Page 8
