“I don’t do drugs,” Jane said.
And where have I heard that before, Sam thought.
“Ohmigod,” Jane breathed, the little color she had in her face leaching out. “Don’t move.”
A low growl rippled down the hall from behind Sam and she smiled, trying to reassure the terrified girl before turning. “Don’t worry,” she said. “That’s Daisy.”
“D-D-Daisy?” Jane asked, sounding dubious.
A hundred-pound Rottweiler named Daisy was admittedly ludicrous but Sam thought calling the dog Killer was a bit redundant.
“Come here, Dais,” Sam said, holding out her hand to the big black beast that she loved to a stupid degree, for reasons she didn’t bother to scrutinize. “Come meet your new duck.”
“Duck?” Jane asked, still rattled by the dog. Jane Doe was not a dog person.
“To Daisy you are a duck,” Sam said, looking over her shoulder at the girl. “And Daisy takes good care of her ducks.”
Understanding dawned in Jane’s eyes and she relaxed slightly. Daisy padded up to Sam and held out her nose for a good rub. Sam made the introductions and made sure Daisy got a good noseful of Jane’s scent.
The last woman who hadn’t met Daisy at the outset found herself pinned to the wall in the middle of the night when she’d come out to use the bathroom. Daisy had stood guard until Sam showed up and called the dog off.
Since then, meeting Daisy became part of the induction process.
“She’s a good guard dog,” Sam explained. “No one who she doesn’t know gets in here. Between Daisy and the patrol car that will be outside you are safe tonight.”
“Safe,” the girl repeated. “That’s good.”
Sam knew the concept was foreign to a lot of the women who appeared here, but she couldn’t quite get a bead on Jane. Relieved but not grateful. Tough and stubborn. Smart but not smart enough to avoid the situation she was in. She had a sister in school and she knew whoever was looking for her would contact the police. And that thing about her dad really stuck in Sam’s craw.
She definitely needed to call in J.D.
Thank God.
Jane took the key from Sam’s hand and stepped into her room, a thin young wisp of a girl who was practically swallowed by the shadows.
“Where is your room?” Jane asked. “I mean…will you be here?”
Sam pointed above their heads. “Upstairs,” she said. “I’m here all the time.”
Nodding, as if that suited her, Jane shut the door and Sam waited until she heard the lock hammer home.
Sam headed to her office to call Chief Bigham. Northwoods was a small town and, outside of a few high-school boys getting drunk and climbing the water tower every summer, Serenity House was the only thing that kept the meager police force busy.
Well, that and the drugs that filtered down from the city on the very highway and train tracks that brought the women searching for Serenity.
But the chief was looking at retirement next year and he didn’t do too much about the drugs. And the few times Sam had called looking for some information or help, he’d been less than helpful.
Didn’t like to get involved in domestic situations, he said.
“Well, good evening, Samantha,” Chief said, after picking up the phone. “What can I do for you tonight?”
“I’ve got a Jane Doe, Chief.”
“You want me to check the computer?”
“No.” She knew that him checking the computer was about as helpful as him looking up in the stars for information. “We’re calling in our guy on this. I don’t want to take up your resources with what might be a wild-goose chase.”
Sam figured that if she called J.D. tonight, unless he was already involved in a case, it wouldn’t take him too long to get here.
A day. Two.
Jane needed a few days of rest. A chance to see a doctor, get her bearings before Sam dug for more information. She said she hadn’t broken any laws and Sam believed her but there was still more to her story. Usually after a night of sleep followed by a good breakfast, the silent girls tended to open up like coin purses.
“I could use some men out front, just in case,” she said. It had taken Chief Bigham a while to come around to even the idea of having a car out front when a new woman came to the shelter. But having a homicidal husband track down his family to the shelter—with fatal results—had convinced the chief of the necessity for added protection.
“No problem, Sam. I’ll send Paul.”
Sam smiled. Paul and Daisy went way back, so the dog should mind her manners. “Thanks, Chief,” she said and hung up.
She set the cell phone down on the desk, right in the pool of light cast by the lamp.
Now, she thought, staring at the phone. What to say to J.D.?
I need your help. Oh, and Bob and I broke up. I miss you so much my whole body hurts.
Shaking her head at her own folly, she dialed the number she knew by heart even though she only called him a few times a year.
“J.D.,” his strong voice said. “Leave a message.”
Sam took a deep breath while the phone beeped. “Hi, J.D., it’s me. Sam. We’ve got a little situation down here and I could use your expertise. Feel free to call me back on my cell. Anytime.” Don’t do it. Control yourself, woman. “Oh, and Bob and I broke up. That’s—” Idiot! “Yeah, that’s all. Talk to you soon.”
She disconnected the phone and tossed it on the desk, disgusted with herself and, stupidly, alive with a little thrill.
J.D. was coming to town.
It took an hour for Sam to complete her nightly walkthrough. She was worried about the pipes in the kitchen—the slow leak was becoming more than Deb could fix. And Sam’s maintenance budget was down to zero thanks to the last storm that sent a tree through the roof of one of the classrooms.
So she changed the pan under the leak and hoped it would hold until she could discuss budgets with her bookkeeper and determine if she was going to have to call her benefactor.
Glancing out the window over the sink, she saw the patrol car pull up in front of the old oak tree. Paul flashed his lights once, without the siren, then killed the engine.
No moon tonight. No stars.
The dim lights from town shone beyond the trees to the west. Other than that, it was nothing but southern black sky, as far as the eye could see.
Sam wasn’t scared of much, and the dark wasn’t on the list. But those things that lived in the dark, that threatened her shelter and the women therein, were terrifying.
Made a woman glad to have a hundred-pound killer dog on the premises.
As if reading her mind, Daisy stepped to her side as Sam entered the living room, only to find Juny and her fourteen-year-old daughter, Sue, asleep on the couch in front of the flickering TV.
Curled up like kittens.
She was reluctant to wake the two—both of them slept better with lights on and white noise. But rules were rules. These two women had been their only residents for four months. Sam knew she should have been urging them to move on sooner, but frankly, with so few women staying here these days, Sam felt lonely in the big house. As it was, Juny had gotten a job and the two of them would be leaving bright and early in the morning. Moving out.
Sam smiled, looking at them. Another success story for Serenity.
She sent them, rubbing their eyes, to their bedrooms, and turned off the TV. The darkness followed her through the house, a black cat constantly in her path.
Daisy stayed on the main floor and Sam unlocked her door and climbed the stairs to her rooms on the second floor.
If her office was her headache, her bedroom, kitchen, living room and giant bathroom were her sanctuary. Her grandmother’s furniture filled the four rooms she called home, and since her grandmother had had cash and taste, the rooms looked excellent.
She sighed, letting Jane Doe and the pipes slide right off her back along with the white scooped-neck shirt she wore. It puddled on the floor in front of h
er white-and-red twill couch and she kicked off her red flats by the oak coffee table.
In the doorway of her kitchen she pulled out the pins that held her red hair in a knot and dropped them in her grandmother’s cabbage-leaf teacup that was filled with pins and pennies.
Like Daisy after a nap, she gave herself a good hard shake.
Thinking of a hot bath, a cold beer and the possibility of J.D.’s voice in her ear by the end of the night, she unzipped her black skirt and peeled off her tights—noting, with a curse, that the chair with the duct tape had taken a bite out of another pair of black tights.
Wearing just her white bra and pink polka-dotted underwear, she pushed open the door to her deliciously pink, unrepentantly feminine bathroom. Steam spilled out over her feet. Misting over her legs.
“What—”
Her tub was full. Bubbles, a foamy frothy delight of them, spilled over the lip of her claw-foot tub. The scent of roses was in the hot, humid air.
And sitting, a bit of the dark night condensed, a thrilling spot of masculinity on the closed lid of her toilet, smiling like a man with a secret, was J.D.
2
“You called?” J.D. asked, tilting his head the way Daisy did, the corner of his hard lips lifting.
Her body absorbed him, just soaked him in as though every cell was dying for him. As the steam from the tub pooled around her feet, her body grew damp from the anticipation of what that man, that beautiful man in the worn blue jeans with the devil in his gray eyes, was going to do to her.
It had been so long, she thought, her body weeping.
She opened her mouth, but words had evaporated in the heat radiating from him. It was such a surprise to have him here. She hadn’t had time to prepare herself, to wall off her yearning for him so it would be controlled when she saw him. So now it ran loose in her, a wild animal dragging her to places she swore she’d never go again.
So she nodded. But she couldn’t move. Couldn’t talk.
She tried to restrain the beast, marshal her reaction to him into something appropriate. Something that wouldn’t change things between them.
His lips flattened and his face went carefully bland. Carefully still. “I got the impression from your message that you…ah…were…” He took a deep breath as if trying, as she so often did, to find words to apply to what they had. “Wanting me,” he finally said.
Perfect words. Exactly what she felt for him.
His forehead creased and he ran a hand down his thigh. “But maybe I got that wrong.”
His body, so lean and strong, coiled as if to move and she didn’t want that. Didn’t want him going anywhere. So she launched herself across the tiled bathroom and threw herself into his arms, across his lap.
His breath was a gust against her neck, from the force of her body hitting his chest or from relief, she didn’t know and she didn’t care.
He was staying.
That was all that mattered.
The denim of his jeans electrified the sensitive skin of her inner thighs and when her breasts landed against the taut plane of his chest her whole body lit up like a searchlight.
His hands covered her back, his rough palms holding her tight against him, as though he, too, wanted to absorb her. As though he was all too aware of the time that had passed, the distance that yawned between them, and he wanted to shrink it.
Her blood grew hot, boiling under her skin until her whole body was aflame with the feel of him in her arms. It was better than her millions of fantasies, her lurid daydreams, her raunchy night dreams.
Blood beat like a drum between her legs and she arched against him.
They both groaned at the contact and his hands didn’t hold her anymore. They swept over her from the top of her silly, sheer underwear to the sensitive skin at the nape of her neck. He branded it, owned it.
His kiss was wet against her neck, a promise of further delights.
Oh, Lord, he was a living furnace. A muscled heat lamp, so big and strong. She felt small in his arms—a rarity since she was so tall she usually felt like a scarecrow next to men. But not J.D. She could curl up in J.D.’s lap forever, tuck herself in his pocket.
“So I guess I didn’t get the message wrong?” J.D. asked, his voice warm and rough in her ear, his breath an equatorial breeze.
“No.” She sighed and leaned back, looking into his distinctive eyes. A bright blue band circled the black pupils, fading out to a silver-gray that, right now, glowed from an internal fire. She stroked the black hair off his forehead, longer than the last time she’d seen him. Running her fingers through the new silver that grew at his temples, she wondered what had brought it on.
Where he had been? What he had seen? What his life was like in the months and years they spent apart?
She shook her head, clearing the thoughts that only led down a morose path.
This relationship was of their own design. They didn’t ask each other about their lives away from these stolen moments. They didn’t ask. They didn’t tell. The relationship worked as it was, a bubble that, pressed too hard, would pop.
Feathering her hands along the wide fan of his back, admiring every muscle and bone until she got to the hem of his shirt, she pulled his worn black T-shirt up over his shoulders. He released her briefly so she could yank the T-shirt over his head and throw it on the floor behind her. She trailed her fingers over his chest, the smooth hairless muscles and bones.
“What’s this?” she asked, finding a new scar, a thin jagged line that bisected his left nipple.
“Nothing,” he said, his voice gravelly.
She hummed a negative response, knowing they’d talk about it later, and pressed a kiss to the raised cut, found his nipple and licked it.
His clever fingers unhooked her bra, tossing it away, releasing her breasts into his palms, his rough thumbs a welcome violence against the sensitive skin of her nipples. He cupped her, lifted her and, as she’d known he would, he sucked her. Used his tongue. His teeth. Nothing soft. Nothing gentle. No sweet hellos. No careful reintroduction.
It was always this way between them. Fast and faster. Hot and hotter.
She gasped, rolling against his crotch, throwing gasoline on the flames.
His laugh was dark, familiar, and it trickled right though her skin to the core of her, amping up the furnace that raged between them.
One of his big, rough hands left her breast. The backs of his fingers stroked her stomach.
He delicately traced the scar on her belly and she squeezed her eyes shut at the touch. Don’t ask. Don’t ask.
And he didn’t. He never did. His hand slid down, farther, until he cupped the damp heat of her, his fingers tracing her through her underwear.
Her legs twitched, her head rolled back on a neck too weak to support her.
“I’m glad you called me,” he whispered in her ear, taking the lobe between his teeth. His fingers continued their wicked dance. “I’m always glad when you call me.”
She gasped, words beyond her. No one ever had this power over her. One touch. One word growled in her ear and she was ready for him.
Her hips pulsed against his. Aware of his erection and the fact that he loved to tease her and would do it all night if she let him, she palmed the front of his pants, pressing the heel of her hand to the turgid length of him.
He groaned and she smiled, loving everything about this. Loving how wrong it was. How delicious it was to have this man groaning and straining beneath her.
He laughed, dipping one finger into her then pulling away when she arched toward him to take more.
She thrust her fingers through his hair, the animals of lust and yearning stampeding through her body. She couldn’t take his teasing tonight. She didn’t want games. She simply wanted him.
“Please,” she said into eyes that flashed silver with erotic understanding.
He blinked at her, leaned up to kiss her with his eyes wide open.
How can he do that? she wondered. Unable to bear the i
ntimacy she shut her own eyes with a sigh.
He pressed a condom into her hand and she ripped it open while he opened his jeans. It was a slick dance between them, flawless as if they’d done it all yesterday.
Her underwear was yanked aside, the filmy fabric ripping under his rough hands. The sound of the rending fabric utterly thrilled her.
And then, there he was, hard and heavy, a spear right through her. Erasing the past seven months, three weeks and two days since she’d last taken him in her body.
“So?” He asked, two condoms, a tub of cold water, two beers and an hour and a half later. Sam leaned back in his arms, floating slightly in the bathwater and on a cloud of J.D. A lovely little puff of boneless, I-just-got-laid contentment. “What happened with Bob?”
“Bob.” She took a sip of her beer and stalled until he rested the bottom of his cold bottle on her bare shoulder. She yipped and sat up slightly, her feet hitting the far end of her big tub.
But he pulled her back, laughing, and settled her against his chest.
“It didn’t work out,” she finally said and felt his chest vibrate from his laugh. He was always so loose after making love, as though he’d finally thrown off the chains of his job.
It made her want to cuddle him.
They didn’t often talk about his work, but she knew he took it seriously. And she knew he was good at it. A knight in denim for a lot of people who needed his services. Lord knew he’d been that and more since she took over Serenity House ten years ago. She’d found his name in her mentor’s Rolodex with the note “good guy to call if there’s trouble.”
And trouble had landed fast by way of a woman showing up, beaten, no ID, a wad of cash and claiming to have been raped by a U.S. senator.
The cops had been useless, the woman had been terrified, and unsure of what else to do—Sam had called J.D.
And, in the end, the senator had done some time thanks to the evidence J.D. was able to find.
It was the first of many times he’d come to her rescue over the years.
“Hey, Sam. I respect your privacy if you don’t want to talk about it.”
The Story Of Us: A Secret Baby Romance (Serenity House Book 1) Page 2
