She turned, slipping slightly on the bottom of the tub, so she could see his face. Hard and dangerous with a splotch of bubbles dripping off his chin.
Oh, if the bad guys could see him now.
“You have such pretty eyes,” she said, staring into that blue-gray spectrum.
“Don’t change the subject,” he said. “It seemed serious.” He lifted his eyebrows and took another swig from his bottle.
She laughed. “Serious because I didn’t sleep with you when you came through town three months ago?”
“Yeah,” he said, point-blank. “It’s been ten years, Sam. And you’ve never said no—”
“You haven’t either.” She didn’t like that she was so easy for him, but loved that he was so easy for her.
“No.” He shook his head, so solemn. “I haven’t. But you did for that guy.”
She’d actually said no for a lot of reasons, the least of which was Bob. After ten years of this confusing, no-strings, no future relationship, she’d decided enough was enough.
And now look at you, she thought. Back in the bathtub with him. But she couldn’t work up much self-flagellation. She’d been screwed silly.
“He wanted to get married,” she said, surprising herself by confessing the truth.
J.D. cocked his head, his face giving away nothing. If he was surprised he didn’t show it. He didn’t show much. “You don’t?” he asked.
She shook her head and turned around, gliding right back into that spot between his legs, his pubic hair feathering against her lower back. His chest the best pillow for her head ever made.
“Well, then,” he said, his voice low and right in her ear and suddenly it wasn’t just pubic hair at her back. “Too bad for Bob.”
His hand slid under the water, his arm vanishing into the realm of bubbles and secrets. He cupped her breast and she sighed. His fingers grazed her scar and she tensed.
“You okay?” he asked and she wanted to kick herself. She forgot about the scar for the ninety-eight percent of her life when he wasn’t around. It was like her nose or something, just one of the parts that made up the whole.
But when J.D. was around that scar bisecting her belly seemed to be lined in neon.
A regret about her decision nine years ago danced around her periphery. Would things be different if she’d told him? Would there be more between them? Did she want more between them?
But, she reminded herself, yanking herself away from those thoughts. She didn’t want more. This was perfect. Those other things—kids, marriage, family—were cards she didn’t even want in her deck.
She’d made the right decision. In fact, she made the right decision every time she let J.D. walk back out of her life.
“I’m fine,” she said.
His fingers found her under the water, slick and swollen from just being near him. She jumped slightly at the electrical pulse between his fingers and her clitoris, so J.D. hooked his legs around her, spreading her open, keeping her still while his fingers worked their magic.
Sam made them ham sandwiches. She always made them ham sandwiches. He always sat on her counter, wearing his boxers. And she wore her Chinese silk robe, feeling very Rizzo and sexy and lady of the world as she sliced ham and broke off pieces of iceberg lettuce.
“Do you eat when you’re not here?” she asked, handing him his third sandwich. She eyed his wiry strength, his lean-cut muscles that bordered on skinny.
“Not much,” he said, grinning at her.
“How’d you get in without me hearing you?” she asked.
“I have a key, remember? You gave it to me.”
“I meant,” she said, shooting him an arch look, “how did you get past Daisy?”
“Every private investigator knows how to deal with dogs.”
“Oh, no, not treats.” She groaned. “I told you it makes her sick—”
“She knows me, Sam,” he said. “She used to be mine, remember?”
Of course. J.D. brought Daisy to Sam when Eva and her daughter had been killed by her ex-husband eight months ago. Eight months ago when she’d lost her mind in grief and worry and called him, not for business, but because she’d needed him.
And he came. He brought Daisy. Stayed for three days. On the fourth morning she woke up alone. Well, not entirely alone. Daisy snored on the floor by her bed.
Serenity’s first guard dog.
A few weeks later Sam finally agreed to date Bob.
The reasons for that decision she didn’t really like to think about.
“So what’s the story with your Jane Doe?” J.D. asked, his eyes shifting slightly into focus. Loverman was fading as J. D. Kronos, P.I., took over.
Which was good, because the memories she worked so hard to pretend didn’t exist were playing like a movie in her head. Half-naked Loverman, with the wicked fingers and beautiful eyes, made her wish things were different.
“Came in tonight. No ID. She’s lying about her age. She’s six months pregnant and scared out of her mind.” Sam sat down at her red-and-silver dinette and bit into her own sandwich. She reconsidered the mayo and added some.
“Drugs?”
“Not that Deb or I could tell.”
“Abuse?”
She shook her head. “Again, not that we could tell. I imagine I’ll get more from her tomorrow morning. She’s smart, though. And she doesn’t look like a street kid. She’s got a diamond around her neck that would keep her in meth for a month. Or at a suite at the Hilton, if all she really wanted to do was piss off her folks. But she hasn’t sold it. She’s wearing expensive jeans. She’s clean, her skin is good. She’s got great teeth.”
His eyebrows lifted as if he understood how alarming that was. Usually, the first appointment Sam scheduled for the women that came to the shelter was a dentist. Years of never visiting a dentist, a terrible diet, poor hygiene and possible drugs took a real toll on the teeth.
Not Jane Doe’s. Sam would bet the girl was fresh out of braces.
“Any sense of where she’s from?”
“Not here,” she said. “There’s an accent could be New York or Jersey. Maybe Philly. Or—” she sighed “—it could be a put-on. Dad’s involved and not in a good way.”
Something in him changed. His body flexed, his muscles alert. “How old?”
“Seventeen tops.”
“Blond?” he asked, held his hand up to his shoulder. “Hair this long?”
She shook her head, charged by whatever electrical current was running though him. “Chin-length and she’s dyed it black. Why?”
“I don’t know,” he answered, polishing off the sandwich in one big bite. “Might be nothing.” He jumped off the counter. “But I can check my laptop and—” He groaned. “How is your wireless these days?”
Sam smiled. “Same as it always is.” Which meant terrible up here. It was like the second floor was a bunker or something.
“You need a new modem.”
“I need a lot of things. But I’ll go reset the modem.”
He grabbed a shirt and she watched him shamelessly, all those muscles flexing, while he pulled it on then ran a hand through his black hair.
Bracing one hand on the table in front of her and the other on the back of her chair, he kissed her nose, licked the corner of her mouth where mayonnaise must have been caught. “You look tired,” he said. “Why don’t you stay here and get some sleep. I’ll be quiet. The women won’t even know I’m here.”
She smiled up at him, touched by his concern—actually utterly knocked out by it, since concern wasn’t something people felt about her.
He was such a good man, seeing what other people didn’t. Offering what she didn’t even realize she needed.
But this was her job. Her home. Those women her responsibility. “I’ll come with you.”
He nodded as if he approved of her decision. “Lead on,” he said with a grin that winged through her.
It was well past midnight and the chances of any of the women being up wer
e slim to none, but she couldn’t risk someone losing their minds when they saw J.D., dark and masculine, skulking through the shadows.
He grabbed his laptop and followed Sam barefoot down the stairs to the kitchen.
With him at her back, her body sore from the delicious intrusion of lovemaking, and her mind wiped clean of worry, she felt everything a bit sharper. As if a layer of skin had been rubbed away by his hands.
The night had finally cooled and a draft rolled up from the open windows in the kitchen. The smooth oak stairs felt like silk under her bare feet and the distinctive blended smell that was her home—of roses from upstairs and disinfectant from downstairs—filled the air.
The creak of the door as she pushed into the shadowy kitchen was slightly eerie, foreboding.
The fridge door was open, a bright slice of yellow light taken out of the darkness. And at the sound of Sam and J.D. stepping into the kitchen, Jane Doe, her mouth full of cake from Sue’s birthday yesterday, whirled.
Sam held up her hand, reading bloodcurdling panic on the girl’s face. “It’s okay,” Sam said, rushing around the table. “He’s a friend.”
But it was too late. J.D. was at her back and with one look at him Jane dropped the cake to the floor.
“I know you!” Jane breathed, pointing a hand at J.D. Her entire body vibrated, her eyes rolling white in fear. “He sent you, didn’t he?” Jane cried.
3
In J.D.’s line of work he often got mistaken as the bad guy. Fair enough. He often was. But not this time. He hadn’t been sent for Jane Doe. And while Sam tried to chill the girl out in her room, J.D. used his resources to suss out the real bad guy.
And he really, really hoped it wasn’t Francis “Frank” Conti.
But his gut was telling him there was a pretty good chance Jane was the daughter of the most bloodthirsty capo in the Gamboni crime family.
Sam’s luck was like that.
J.D. scanned the Polaroid of Jane that Deb had taken when signing the girl in to Serenity House, and opened his e-mail.
Greg Spili worked the FBI Organized Crime Unit out of Newark, and he and J.D. were friendly enough when Greg wasn’t being a pain in the ass about their childhood in Newark. He would be able to ID the photo and confirm or deny the rumors that had been circulating about Christina Conti’s disappearance.
Even though he wished it wasn’t true, J.D. looked at that photo and knew it was Christina.
She had her father’s nose, unfortunately.
There was no way she knew him, despite what she said in the kitchen. She hadn’t even been born when J.D. did that job for her father twenty years ago.
Fear that her father was sending someone after her and the resemblance he probably had to any one of the thugs her father had for hire, had been what she was responding to.
He just hoped Sam believed that.
Greg, he wrote, the clack of the keyboard loud in the quiet room. Friend of mine picked up this Jane Doe and I’m thinking she’s your missing girl. She is still missing, right? Contact me ASAP. I’ve got a bad feeling about this. J.D.
He hit Send and wondered who else would be looking for her. If this really was Christina, J.D. guessed there would be a reward for finding her.
If he reached out would Conti would greet him with open arms or a bullet in the back of the head? It had been years since J.D. worked for Conti, but the guy had a memory like an elephant. A big, dumb, violent elephant.
He hoped whoever was looking for Christina wouldn’t find her anytime soon.
He checked his watch and scrubbed a hand over his head.
It was 1:00 a.m. Lord, he was tired. He’d been an hour outside Baltimore when he got Sam’s message. He’d spent the past week confirming what a lawyer had already known to be true—the lawyer’s wife was screwing his best friend in shabby hotel rooms all around D.C.
J.D. had been tired then. But, as usual, the sound of Sam’s voice on his answering machine made him do things that didn’t make sense. Worse this time since she’d tacked on that bit about breaking up with Bob.
And so, instead of getting a hotel room for a few hours’ sleep then calling her, he’d pressed his foot to the floor and sped the whole way here. And with each mile he’d shed his skin, his life, his job and all the damn ghosts, until he’d arrived at her door with nothing but what he felt for Sam.
He was just J. D. Kronos and Sam didn’t ask for anything more.
He would drive for days if the destination was Sam’s bedroom.
The chair squealed under his shifting weight and he swore when his leg hair got caught in the duct tape on the side.
The woman needed to throw the thing out. But he smiled, knowing why she didn’t. It still worked, was still useful. Sam wrung every ounce of use out of things before getting rid of them. When the chair stopped operating as a chair she’d probably turn it into a lawn ornament or something.
The woman was practical right down to, but excluding, her frilly, sexy, girly underwear.
Suddenly, J.D. wasn’t so tired anymore.
He closed his computer, letting it hibernate with Sam’s modem still plugged in. He’d check mail first thing in the morning and see if they couldn’t get this Jane Doe situation put to bed.
But right now he’d like to put Sam to bed.
Out of habit he walked along the darkest parts of the shadows, his elbows grazing the wall, his feet inches from the baseboards.
The kitchen was empty, but the light in the hallway toward the bedrooms was still on. He imagined Sam was trying to stop Jane from running away, which seemed like such a waste of time. Such a lot of work to fight something that was probably going to happen anyway.
Young, pregnant Jane Does rarely had a happy ending.
But there would be no telling Sam that.
He cleaned up the cake on the floor and headed upstairs to wait for Sam.
The creak of the floor woke J.D. and he sat up as if launched by a slingshot from the couch he’d fallen asleep on. The room was dark but roses perfumed the air and he knew Sam was back.
Her scent filled his head and weariness vanished. He stepped from the couch, tracking her silently to the kitchen where she stood looking out the window over the sink.
Silver moonlight gilded her.
Her hair, all those long red waves were piled up on her head in some kind of messy, intricate knot. The cream silk of her robe slid up her muscled arms as she drank from a glass of water. The ivory of her skin matched the robe that covered her body, so tall, so perfect and strong.
I wish…
The chains of his reality, his past, his future, the bleak and dismal present, jerked him away from finishing that sentence. He had no business wishing anything about Sam. Other than that Bob had worked out for her. And J.D. really did wish Bob had.
She needed someone who could give her what she deserved. Love, a family, hearth and home and all that shit.
A woman like Sam shouldn’t go through life alone, carrying what she shouldered on a daily basis. She could do it, had done it for ten years and, knowing her, she’d go on doing it for another twenty more.
But she deserved more.
Instead, she had him, twice, maybe three times a year. Sex, sandwiches and what little help he could provide. He wished he could give her more. Was the kind of man who could be what she needed.
But he wasn’t.
Instead, he smiled, thinking of her skin, her breasts, the wonderland of her sex. He was more than happy to give her what she wanted.
He made sure to make some noise when he stepped onto the kitchen’s linoleum and she turned, startled.
She’d been lost in thought, no doubt about Jane Doe and her reaction to him, and that bothered him. Rattled the chains that bound him.
“J.D.?” she whispered, watching him with her brown eyes that appeared almost black in the moonlight. A hundred questions were in her eyes. A thousand unasked inquiries.
Guilt buzzed through him. She didn’t know him. She thought
she did, he could see it in her sometimes after they made love. She’d look at him and think he was some kind of Prince Charming. A white knight.
A good guy.
But he wasn’t. And the proof was that he never set her straight. Because if he did, she wouldn’t allow him to touch her.
Selfish bastard, a fraud, through and through.
The man she thought he was, the man she saw in his eyes, didn’t exist. J. D. Kronos didn’t exist.
As he stared at her, her lips parted. Her breath came faster. He watched as her nipples under the silk went hard.
“Everything okay with Jane Doe?” he asked, getting rid of business before he dealt with that body of hers.
The air in the kitchen was humid from the fire that burned between them.
“She’s calmed down, but it took a while. She was ready to run. She had so many questions about you.” Sam sighed, and ran a hand over her hair, her face.
And I didn’t have the answers. He knew that was what she was thinking and he felt a certain inevitability wash over him. She was going to ask the questions now. The questions they never asked. The questions that would bring this whole thing down.
Ten years. It had been good while it lasted. He would miss Sam. He would miss being her J.D.
A sizzling startling pain ricocheted through his body.
He never thought it would last forever but he had hoped… God, it didn’t matter anymore.
“J.D.,” she whispered, her gaze rock solid, unwavering. “She thought she knew you. She thought—”
He shook his head because he wanted her, one more time. Needed her. One more night. So, he stepped toward her, pressing her against the fridge, a mere inch of superheated air between them.
“Do you really want to talk about that?” he asked. “Right now?”
“J.D.—”
He kissed her, licked her mouth. Brushed her nipples with his thumbs until he felt the resistance in her melt. Pressing his hips to hers, she finally sighed and gave in, wrapping her arms around his neck.
This is the last time, he thought. It’s got to be.
The Story Of Us: A Secret Baby Romance (Serenity House Book 1) Page 3
