by Julie Miller
“Robin.” He had to save her.
He couldn’t think through the heat and the pain, couldn’t claw his way out of the darkness to get to her.
“Don’t hurt her.” Now the gun was in his hand and he was running. His lungs were burning, his shoulder bleeding. He wasn’t fast enough.
He wiped the sweat from his eyes and caught a glimpse of pale skin and rich brown hair. She reached out to him, but those sweet, gray-blue eyes were so afraid.
“Jake?”
Shadows from every corner of his mind rushed at her, knocked her down, consumed her. “Robin!”
He raised his gun, stroked his finger against the trigger. But he had no target. He was losing her. He was too late. He couldn’t save her.
“Ken?”
The darkness exploded around him. Fire seared through his flesh. Terror ripped through his heart. He moaned through his despair.
She was gone. Everything that mattered was gone.
And then he heard the baby crying. He crawled toward the sound. He peered into the flames of his burning world and saw the shadows again, emerging, one by one, darting toward that heartbreaking cry.
Jake pushed to his feet. They couldn’t have her. He was the man who saved people. He couldn’t fail again.
“Otto? Please.”
He followed the baby’s cries through the flames and the darkness. “I’m coming,” he muttered. “I’m coming.”
He reached the shadows and dove into the heart of their blackness. They shifted their target and came at him—pummeling, pulling, cutting, killing.
“Go,” he whispered, taking on death itself to save that innocent life. “Be safe.”
“Lonergan!”
Jake came awake on a voiceless roar and lunged at his attackers. He caught one by the shoulders and flipped him to the ground beneath him.
“Jake!”
He knew that voice. Not a threat, but a hope. A wish. He shook his head to clear the shadows from his mind and orient himself in the hazy darkness. Red-and-white checks. Short, dark hair. He blinked. “Robin?”
He blinked again and saw her slender body pinned to her sofa by his big hands and lower body. He saw the fading bruise on her collarbone peeking out beneath the baby-blue pajama top she wore and feared he’d just put similar marks on her.
“Are you okay?” she whispered, brushing her fingertips against his bare, damp chest. She was petting him again, taming the instinctive fight response out of him while he...
“Oh, hell. Oh, honey...” Jake swore at what he’d done, at the violence that seemed to be a part of every heartbeat. He shifted his hips off hers and sat up, scooting to the far end of the couch. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
He tried to push to his feet, but she got up on her knees and threw her arms around his neck before he could stand. “You can’t run and hide this time.” Her knees found a spot on either side of his left thigh and she pulled herself against his chest, sliding her soft cheek against his and hugging him close. “You’re all right. It was a nightmare. Let’s deal with it. Let’s face this together. You’re all right.”
“I hurt you.” He gripped the back and arm of the couch, fighting what his body wanted to do. “I didn’t mean...” And then her warmth and strength and stubborn spirit moved past the guilt and fear, and Jake wound his arms around her, squeezing her tight. “Oh, God, honey, I need...” He needed the warm human contact to ground himself back in reality. “I just need to hold you. Can I hold you?”
She nodded, rubbing her cheek against his. “It’s okay. You’re safe.”
“Safe?” He swiped at the tears that stung his eyes and buried his face in the fragrant softness of her hair. “I’m supposed to protect you.”
Her palms slid up against his scalp and across his back, wrapping him up in her shielding strength. “You’re not going to win this argument. Just talk to me.”
He almost laughed at the idea of her bossing him around. But it had been too long since he’d laughed, too long since he’d shared any part of himself with another person.
She pressed a kiss against his grizzled cheek and pulled back enough to stroke her fingers beside his eyes and beside his mouth. “Your face was contorted in such pain. You were thrashing and moaning. You scared me.”
“I’m sorry.” He leaned forward and stole a quick kiss. “I didn’t mean to. Usually, I just deal...” Her hands settled atop his shoulders and she waited expectantly for him to continue. “That’s why I was there that first night you were attacked.” He reached down to pull her legs from around his and settled her squarely on his lap. “I’d had a nightmare, and I thought a cold, long walk in the rain would clear my head. At first I thought...” He tangled his fingers into her sleep-mussed hair and tucked it behind her ear. “When I heard you scream, for a split second I was reliving...something. I had to save you. I’ve got this thing about saving people.”
“I know.” Her hands never left his skin; her gaze never left his face. “Was it the same nightmare tonight?”
Jake nodded. She asked a question—he tried to answer. That was the deal. Every time Robin forced him a little closer toward that civilized behavior she kept insisting on, the easier it became. “In my dreams, I have to kill someone or I’ll be killed.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know. I’m killing shadows—stabbing, shooting, strangling with my bare hands—any way I can.” She gasped softly at the graphic images he described, but let him continue. “I think I’m saving lives but maybe I’m just saving my own skin. Either way, I’m failing. I’m bleeding. I’m...”
“Do you think it’s a memory trying to surface?”
“It sure feels real.” He clenched his teeth so tight against the images he’d seen that the muscles in his jaw were shaking. “You and Emma were there tonight, mixed up in all the violence. I couldn’t save you.”
“Oh, Jake.” She squirmed against his groin, waking something far more basic than the gentle warmth she stirred in other parts of his body as she lay her head on his shoulder and wound her arms around his waist. He felt the bead of a firm breast brush across his skin and every muscle she leaned against quivered in response. “Shh. We’re okay. Both of us are okay.”
Jake didn’t want to be feeling this desire heating his blood. Robin was lean and soft, wearing cotton pajamas that were far too thin for her not to notice the swelling response of all this touching and talking and tenderness. He pulled his fingers from her hair and set her on the rumpled sheet beside him. He pushed to his feet and stalked across the room, scrubbing his hand over his face. “I damn near snapped you in two. How is that okay?”
“I’m still here, Jake. I’m in one piece. I think you must have some kind of post-traumatic stress. I know you didn’t mean it.” He silently cursed the face reflected in the mirror above the empty fireplace. But Robin came right after him. She pulled his hand back to her cheek and turned her face into his palm. “I’m not any part of your nightmare. I’m real. I’m now.”
With that much of an invitation, his fingers inevitably wound into the silky waves of her hair. “I wish I could remember. The doctors said with an injury like mine, the memories sometimes never come back.” The moon outside filtered through the windows, casting a cool light over her beautiful face. “I wish I knew if I was a good guy who deserved you, or some murdering S.O.B. you need to be running from.”
“I can’t imagine what that’s like, to have lost so much of yourself. But I do know this. To me, you’re Jake Lonergan. You’re the man who saved my life and my daughter’s. And that makes you a very good guy in my book.”
“But what if—”
She pressed her fingers over his lips and cut off his argument. “No what-ifs. Only certainties tonight, okay? Maybe you’ll never get your past back. But you have the present. And you have a future. A man gets to choose who he wants to be every day of his life. Decide who you want to be right now. Choose to be a hero. Choose to be with us. Forget about whether or not you killed so
meone, whether you did it out of self-defense or... Oh.” A pink blush stained her cheeks as she pulled her hand away with an apology. “Forget was a poor choice of words but—”
Jake cupped her face between his hands, pulled her onto her toes and kissed her. Hard. She tumbled into his chest and he kissed her again. “I get it. I choose you.” He thrust his tongue into her mouth, surrendering to her stubborn faith in him, claiming the compassion and understanding she gave. “I choose here. Now.”
Her lips chased after his, parted, welcomed. He took anything she offered, and damn, the woman was generous. She braced her hands against his chest and curled her fingertips into his skin, igniting ten hot spots of desire that fed the need simmering deeper inside him.
“I need you, Robin.” One more kiss and his body was just as hot as it had been during the throes of that nightmare, but in a very different, much more pleasurable way. “I need to hold on to you. And reality.” She nodded, understanding, and Jake swung her up into his arms and carried her back to the sofa. “I need you.”
“Yes.”
The single word was a gift he didn’t deserve, but one he needed to hear as he laid her on the overstuffed cushions and slid on top of her. His jeans and shorts were uncomfortably tight and he couldn’t help but rub against the juncture of her thighs. She held on to his neck and kissed his throat, his jaw, the corner of his mouth, fueling the fire that was already burning dangerously beyond his control.
Jake pushed up the hem of her shirt, running his hands over her smooth skin, exposing her pretty breasts to the moonlight and feasting his eyes on the tight, rosy peaks. “I need you to keep the nightmares away.”
“This is you and me. We’re real. I want—” He closed his hungry mouth over her breast, suckled the pebbled tip against his tongue and she bucked beneath him, gasping his name.
Oh, damn. He’d hurt her.
“It’s too much, isn’t it. Too intense.” Denying his own raging need, he pushed himself up, carefully pulling his body away from hers. “You don’t have to do this. I can take a cold shower.”
“Don’t you dare.” With a determination that shouldn’t have surprised him, Robin pushed him against the back of the sofa and climbed into his lap. She straddled his arousal and reached for the hem of her pajama top, stripping it off over her head and shaking her hair loose around her face as she tossed the shirt aside. She was the most glorious thing he’d ever seen. “I need you, too. I’ve been on my own a long time, Jake. It’s hard to be alone—even if you can manage it. And I’ve never been drawn to anyone the way I’m drawn to you.”
He groaned at the need pulsing through him and fisted his hands on the couch. “I haven’t been with a woman since... I can’t remember.”
She reached for his hands and placed them over her breasts, showing him with her body that he hadn’t hurt her at all. “Then we’ll rediscover how it’s done—together.”
There were no more words and not nearly the finesse this woman deserved. In a flurry of bumping hands and stolen kisses, they shed the rest of their clothes. He found a condom in his go-bag and she rolled it onto him. Jake palmed two handfuls of her round, beautiful bottom and lifted her over his lap, nudging at her entrance before pushing into her tight, welcoming heat.
Her fingers dug into his shoulders as he moved beneath her, sliding in faster, deeper—growing impossibly harder with every feverish thrust. He captured her nipple in his mouth again and drew on her until she moaned his name and her moist sheath began to spasm around him.
“Jake.” She leaned back, rocking her hips against his. He palmed her breast, tunneled his fingers into her hair. “Jake.” He tightened his grip around her buttocks and thighs, anchoring her to him as he thrust up inside her. Everything in him rushed to the spot where they were joined—all the guilt, all the doubt, all the need, all the fire. He could scarcely breathe. He could barely think. But he could look. He could feel. Her body gripped him like a firm, urging hand and he shook with his release deep inside her. “Jake!”
He’d never forget the wondrous look in her eyes as she flew apart in his arms.
He’d never forget her cuddling close as he stretched out on the sofa and pulled her down beside him afterward. He spread the quilt over them both as their bodies cooled, and he savored the skin-to-skin trust of Robin dozing off beside him.
He’d never forget how right and humbling and perfect it felt to be fully in the here and now, making new memories with Robin to store in his mind and heart.
“You need to sleep, too,” she whispered some time later, perhaps sensing that he’d been awake, trailing lazy circles along her hip, watching over her. She snugged that perfect little bottom against the cradle of his thighs and laced her fingers together with his, pulling his arm across her stomach. “Were you thinking about the nightmare again?”
Jake ignored the leaping impulses of his body, waking again at the intimate contact. There was something more than sex he needed from Robin tonight. He needed the peace this woman brought to his fractured mind. He needed the light she brought to his frozen heart. He needed to be the man—that good man—she believed he could be.
“No.” Jake pulled her hair aside and pressed a kiss behind her ear. “Can we hear Emma in here if she wakes up?”
Robin nodded. “I brought the monitor with me when I came to check on you.”
“Good.” He nuzzled the nape of her neck. “Because I don’t think I’m a strong enough man to let you go right now.”
“I’m not going anywhere, Jake. Promise me you won’t...go anywhere, either.”
He could guess she wasn’t just talking about staying with her physically. “I’ll do my best.”
After checking to make sure his knife was beneath the pillow, and his gun was within easy reach beneath the coffee table, Jake let his eyes drift shut. With his body sated and Robin tucked safely against him, he slept through the rest of the night.
Chapter Ten
Jake pulled a T-shirt on over his jeans and reached for the pair of socks he’d laid out on the sofa. “Hey, you.” One of the socks had tumbled over the side onto the blanket where Emma lay beneath an arched baby entertainment center. But instead of batting at the plastic animals dangling overhead, she’d found the plain white sock and was noshing on that as if it was her favorite toy. “Trade you.”
He knelt down to gently pry the sock from her fingers. She fussed a little, and while he was beginning to learn that the soft coos and protesting noises were just her way of communicating, Jake still got a knot in his stomach at the sound of distress and quickly guided her hands up to the blue cat hanging over her head. When she buzzed her lips in satisfaction, Jake smiled.
Jake Lonergan, babysitter. Not a job title he ever would have imagined for himself.
He tilted his head toward the soft humming coming from the shower in the master bedroom. “Your mama’s pretty skin must be pruning by now. Good thing you and I ate breakfast before she got in there.”
Emma’s blue eyes looked right at him and he imagined her smile was a “yes” to his conversation. With the Carter girls both temporarily occupied, Jake finished dressing.
He’d already showered and come back to the family room in his shorts and jeans to watch Robin sleep for a few minutes until he heard Emma fussing over the baby monitor and he’d leaned down to wake Robin with a kiss. He could see she was tired, despite a smile and a “Good morning.”
If surviving his nightmare and a round of lovemaking with him on a couch didn’t wear a woman out, then single parenting did. She’d pushed her hair out of her eyes and glanced at the antique clock on the mantel with a weary sigh. “Is she awake already?”
Jake heard the words coming out of his own mouth even before he’d fully thought them through. “If you get a bottle ready for her and trust me to change a diaper, I’ll feed Emma breakfast while you take a bath or whatever you need to do.”
“Really?” Robin had sat right up, clutching the sheet to her naked breasts. “A long, hot
, private shower where I don’t have to have Emma in her carrier in the bathroom with me? You’d do that?”
“If you trust me with her.”
“Always.” Robin had gathered the sheet around her like a sarong, stretched up to kiss him and run down the hallway to the nursery before he fully comprehended what his offer might mean to the woman.
“Take your time,” he’d called after her. A man couldn’t turn down a response like that any more than he’d been able to turn down Robin’s whispered request a couple hours earlier. She’d rolled over on the sofa just before sunrise and asked if he had another condom in his bag. Making love that second time had been slower, sweeter, saner, yet no less earthshaking than that first wild ride on the sofa had been.
For a man who didn’t want to care about anything or have any connections to anyone, he was already in pretty deep with these two.
The phone in Robin’s kitchen rang before he got the first sock on. With a quick glance down the hallway to verify that the water was still running in the shower, he got up and went to the kitchen to answer it. “Yeah?”
“Is this the Carter residence?” The man’s voice sounded familiar, but Jake wasn’t taking any chances that this was one of those harassing phone calls like Robin had received at her shop.
“Who’s asking?”
“Spencer Montgomery, KCPD.” Jake carried the cordless receiver back to the family room so he could keep an eye on Emma. “I take it this is Mr. Lonergan?”
“Yeah.” He didn’t bother explaining why he was at Robin’s home this early in the morning. Nor was he going to tell the detective that she’d been soaking in the shower for the past twenty minutes. “She isn’t available right now. Can I take a message?”
“Actually, I’m looking for you.”
Spencer Montgomery didn’t strike Jake as a man who did polite chitchat, either. “What do you need, detective?”
“I just got a call from the DEA asking about you. The database search I ran on you flagged in their system.” Jake pulled out his beat-up black satchel and unzipped the pocket that held the badge with J. Lonergan emblazoned on it. “Your picture in the morning paper put you on somebody’s desk.”
