by Maggie Price
He pulled a layer of bills from the wad in the pocket of his jean jacket and handed it to her. “Here’s the first installment on the bail money you and Bran fronted me.”
Tory glanced at the bills. The bail had not come with Bran’s blessing. She’d told him after the fact she’d used a thousand dollars of their savings. In her mind, her doing so without telling Bran first had been justified—she’d had to bail Danny out of the jail’s infirmary. He’d been beaten so badly she was afraid he would be permanently scarred without good, fast medical care.
Even now she could still feel the heat of Bran’s anger over what she’d done. Still hear the harsh words they’d exchanged. Still see the grim look on his face as he packed his bags.
Water under the bridge, she thought. Right now she had Danny to deal with. She jammed the bills into the front pocket of her jeans then leaned a hip against Bran’s workbench.
“Listen up, pal. If you get arrested again, the money I used for your bail goes down the drain. That happens, it won’t be Bran who comes after you, but me.”
Danny looked at her car. “I guess you’re plenty steamed right now.”
When she didn’t answer, he rocked back on the heels of his scuffed running shoes. “I was hoping you’d give me a ride to Jewell’s apartment. She’s probably mad, too, over me being out all night.”
“You think?” Tory asked. All she knew about the woman Danny had moved in with was that she danced at some bar under the billing “exotic performer.” Stripper was more like it, Tory suspected. “You want a ride, call your pal Rocco.”
“Yeah.” Danny moved to the door that led into the kitchen, then paused. “Tor, I didn’t mean to make you mad.”
“You never do.”
She fisted her hands as he stepped into the house. Considering the way he’d been raised, she couldn’t totally fault Danny for assuming he could forever shirk responsibility.
Their mother had been brought up by overindulgent parents who had never seen the need for their only child to learn to deal with whatever complications life tossed at her. They’d just handled them all for her. And unwittingly raised a daughter who was codependent in every aspect.
Tory had no trouble picturing their mother clinging to their father, the air of helplessness hanging around the woman almost palpable in the air. Just as easily she could see her father’s face, transforming over the years until the only thing left was unbridled disgust for his wife’s pathetic weakness. He hadn’t even stayed around long enough to see his son born.
Tory had been nine years old when her father walked out, a young girl to whom her mother transferred as many burdens as possible. It was Tory who’d been saddled with making decisions about everything from finances to meal planning. Tory who’d learned everything there was to know about responsibility while their mother raised Danny into the mirror image of herself.
Then, when Tory was eighteen, their mother had died in a car wreck. Their father had passed away several years before. Since they had no blood relatives to turn to, Tory had stepped in to raise her then nine-year-old brother. That’s who she also saw when she looked at Danny: the grief-stricken boy who’d clung to her while sobbing over their mother’s grave. The boy who’d collected and recycled tin cans and bottles to help earn enough money to buy a stone to mark that grave.
No one had questioned Tory’s ability to raise her brother. After all, she’d been shouldering responsibility for years and had grown into an independent young woman. A woman who’d vowed never to make herself the kind of burden her mother had been. Growing up, it had taken all her energy to deal with the people who needed her, so she’d never let herself need anyone. Not even the man she’d run off and married.
How ironic that she’d lost her head over a cop for whom it was run-of-the-mill to deal with other people’s problems. A broad-shouldered, gorgeous man very willing to let her shift her burdens onto those impressive shoulders. A dream made in heaven for most women, Tory conceded, but not her. Never her.
And that was the crux of her and Bran’s problem. According to his youngest sister, his first wife had been a slim, shy brunette who’d welcomed having a husband who shielded and protected her. She’d been happy to have him manage the problems life had to offer. From all accounts, Patience McCall had lived contentedly in Bran’s shadow, quiet, deferring to him without conscious thought.
A visceral little pang of envy for the happiness Bran had shared with another woman tightened Tory’s heart. As did the knowledge that Bran had spent the entire time they’d lived together comparing her to his first wife. Oh, he’d done so in silence, but Tory was well-versed at reading people, and she had seen the comparison being made in Bran’s face often enough. Just as she’d seen it last night in the kitchen when his expression went distant with what she knew had been memories of another time, another woman.
A happier time with a woman who’d shown him in every way how much she needed him.
A woman whom Tory knew she could never come close to emulating. She just didn’t have it in her to allow herself to lean on a man. On anyone, for that matter. Not when just the thought of her mother’s clinging neediness put a sick feeling in her stomach.
Her gaze settled again on the workbench, sweeping over the tools that had gone untouched for months. Before she could block it, her mind flashed a picture of Bran standing there, his hands and muscled arms covered with a fine mist of sawdust, a lock of sandy hair falling over his forehead as he worked with the tools.
She felt the ache of loss through every bone and muscle. She’d felt that same sense of loss last night, lying crushed beneath his weight while everything that was female in her responded to the feel of his corded biceps, his hard chest against her breasts, the scent of his musky cologne. The damn chemical signals that sizzled through her whenever Bran got near had started nerves and needs pulsing through her in fast, greedy waves.
For the first time she allowed herself to open the door in her mind that she’d locked tight when Bran walked out. Even at the beginning there had been more between them than just that basic attraction. That physical pull. There’d been a shared affection, and what she thought had been love. All those feelings had gotten swept into the background by the conflict that had so quickly developed between them.
A bright, swift pain twisted in her heart, and the mental door she’d opened slammed shut. It hurt too much to think about how swiftly their marriage had crumbled. It was over. They were over.
Outside, the muffled honk of a horn sounded, and she figured Rocco was there to pick up Danny. Seconds later, the front door slammed.
Shoving away the memories, she glanced at her watch. She had paperwork to deal with and equipment to check before starting what would probably be a week of nighttime surveillance on one of her new cases.
While out tonight, she also planned to connect with some of her street contacts. Most of the individuals she knew who fell into that category would rather eat dirt than talk to a cop. It was possible one of her contacts had heard something about the killer who might possibly come gunning for Bran.
The thought of that happening sent a twinge of icy premonition drifting through her. Just the thought of Bran getting hurt made her throat go dry. So, while he watched her back, she intended to watch his.
One week later, Bran steered his patrol car into the driveway of the house he’d shared with two very diverse women. One calm, serene and elegantly quiet. The other wouldn’t know calm, serene and quiet if they kicked her in the head.
It was that woman he’d come to see. The fact he wasn’t sure why had him scowling.
Sure, he needed to update Tory on what the cops had found regarding Vic Heath’s associates. It was vital she have the latest info in case the escaped killer sent a pal by to exact his revenge. But Bran had already e-mailed her some of that information. And he could have driven by and slid the paperwork he’d put together last night into the mail slot. Instead, he’d called to make sure Tory was home.
So, why was he here? he wondered as he sat in the idling black and white, staring at the two-story Victorian white frame house with green shutters and a wraparound porch. After he’d walked out, he and Tory had gone three months without any contact. He hadn’t even called her on Christmas Day when thoughts of her were weighing heavily on his mind.
Their latest encounter had changed things, he conceded. It wasn’t the dismal state of their marriage that had clung like a burr in his brain over the past week. It was how it had felt to have her lying under him again. Granted, his plowing her over in the dark and her winding up beneath him had been an accident, still, it had reignited a fire inside him he had thought dead. Had wanted dead.
He dreamed about her now. Every night since then, he’d dreamed of her. Smoky, erotic visions in which he felt her soft skin and slim body under his. Saw her desire-filled green eyes gazing up into his. Felt her shudder while their sweat-slicked bodies mated and they took each other over the edge to heaven.
Those nightly carnal fantasies had left him itchy and unsettled and irritated. Like a drug, he could feel Tory seeping into his system again, and he wasn’t sure how to deal with that.
Wasn’t sure if he even wanted to. Dammit, why the hell did the woman have to be such an exact match for him in bed, and so unsuited for him in every other way?
The thought of how she had never hesitated to debate him when their discussions turned to music, politics, TV shows or even at what restaurant they should eat dinner had him shaking his head.
That wasn’t why he’d left, though. In truth, he admired the way she could hold her ground and take him to the wall in a debate. What he couldn’t handle was a wife who would rather choke on her stubborn independence before she turned to him for anything. A wife who’d totally shut him out when it came to handling problems about her brother, leaving Bran battling feelings of impotence and hot fury. Their final confrontation over her bailing Danny out of jail without giving one thought to calling her husband—a cop—had led to the type of verbal argument that could be broken up only with a fire hose.
Dammit, her concern over her reprobate brother hadn’t been the issue. He had understood her need to get Danny out of jail fast—in the holding cell, the kid had gotten on the wrong side of a skank drug addict and gotten the fire beat out of him. Bran would have done whatever it took to get his own brothers or sisters out of there and into the hands of a doctor. What he’d no longer been able to swallow was that he had a wife who refused to turn to him. To need him. So he’d walked.
That had been three months ago, but the thought of what had transpired between him and Tory still stirred his temper.
As he had so often in the past, he gritted his teeth against those stirrings. No matter how he felt about what had happened between them, she was still his wife. Because of that she could wind up an unintentional target of Heath’s vengeance.
So, here he was, Bran thought as he climbed out of the patrol car into the cold bite of the January day, coming to see the woman he’d married in a sexual haze, then months later walked out on.
And still tugging at his mind were those damn divorce papers, sitting on the coffee table in his shabby apartment. Maybe the fact he had yet to sign them wouldn’t be such a constant irritant if he could explain why the hell that was.
His breath cloudy on the freezing air, he hunched his shoulders beneath his insulated uniform jacket and took the steps up to the porch two at a time.
He bypassed ringing the doorbell and slid his key into the lock. When he’d called earlier, Tory had told him she’d likely be in the garage checking her surveillance equipment and for him to use his key to get in.
He strode down the hallway, its dark oak floor scattered with colorful rugs. Veering right, he moved through a living room that resembled a comfortable, cluttered English study. He and Patience had picked out the leather furniture, the thick wooden tables, the brass accessories, the artwork. Sweeping his gaze around the room, Bran determined that Tory hadn’t changed a picture or moved a chair.
He was glad of that, he conceded. Although he’d clung to his grief, it had faded under the demands of everyday living and the passage of time. Memories of Patience now brought more pleasure than pain and he found comfort in having a visual reminder of the wife he’d planned to grow old with.
His spit-shined black uniform boots sounded like gunshots against the kitchen’s ceramic-tiled floor. As he neared the door leading to the garage, the air began to pulsate with music. Or with what Tory termed music. To him, the stuff she blasted out of speakers was nothing but unintelligible noise that slammed the eardrums.
Blowing out a breath, he tossed his hat and leather gloves on the nearest counter. He pulled open the door to the garage, wincing against the blast of head-pumping rock and roll.
When his gaze landed on Tory, he froze midstep. His last cognizant thought before the blood totally drained from his brain was that he had never seen a more erotic sight than the leggy blonde leaning under the open hood of her car, her jeans-clad hips performing a bump and grind to the pulsing beat.
When the music swirled into a crescendo and her bottom did a quick, snappy twitch, his mouth went dry. His gut clenched. And instantly he was swept back into the erotic dreams that had plagued him over the past week.
Dammit, he wanted to touch her so badly that the ache in his body spread all the way to his fingers. Fingers that wanted to shove into that long blond hair so he could tug her head back and feed on the mouth that had taken him to heaven more times than he could count. Yet he held himself back. He’d had good, sound reasons for walking out on their marriage. Too bad those logical reasons couldn’t stop him from wanting the woman worse than he wanted to breathe.
At first, Tory thought it was the hot, pulsating sound-track that had shifted her nerve endings into vibrate mode as she attacked the corrosion on her car’s battery cables with a wire brush. Seconds later, a flash of awareness hit her. With her instincts blaring the warning she was no longer alone, she jerked her head up hard enough to thud against the hood of her car.
“Easy!”
She heard the shout at the same time she whirled, the wire brush raised like a weapon. Her heartbeat faltered when she saw Bran. She’d known he was coming by. But for the past week she’d schooled her thoughts toward the possibility of Heath or one of his pals showing up. Going into defense mode with the wire brush had been knee-jerk reflex.
She swallowed hard. “I didn’t hear you come in.”
Bran cuffed one hand behind an ear. “What?”
Turning, she leaned across the span of the car’s engine toward the portable CD player propped on the fender. When she flipped the switch, silence dropped on the garage like a stone.
“I didn’t hear you come in,” she repeated.
“Go figure.” Unzipping his insulated jacket, he hooked a brow at the wire brush she still held defensively. “You planning on making a run at me with that thing?”
In his sharp-pressed uniform, he looked much the same as he had on the night he’d stepped into her life, hauling Danny home from a shadily-run poker game. Whipcord-lean and ramrod-straight, chiseled jaw and thick, sandy hair, Bran McCall had quite literally made her mouth water. Now, without warning, a lot of complex sensations surged up out of the past, washing over her in waves.
“You’re a good guy, so you’re safe,” she said, pleased that her voice sounded cool and calm. “But this wire brush would do a wicked job on some bad guy’s face.”
“True.”
Hoping to jettison her jangling nerves, she turned back to the battery and tackled a small spot of corrosion still left on one terminal. Maybe the sight of Bran in his uniform wouldn’t have had such an effect on her if she hadn’t spent the past week trying to rid her mind of maddening thoughts of how it felt to lie beneath him again, to look up into his face while his body molded against hers, to feel his sure, firm weight while the musky scent of his cologne filled her lungs.
When he stepped beside
her and stuck his head under the hood, her belly tightened. Blood warmed. The slouchy red sweater she’d pulled on that morning was suddenly doing too good a job at keeping her body heat contained.
“Did your battery give out?” he asked. “Or are you just making sure it doesn’t?”
“Making sure.” He smelled wonderful, like soap and something musky and male that hinted of sleep and sex. While a rivulet of sweat trickled between her breasts, she continued scrubbing, even though the corrosion was gone. “I’m working a case involving nighttime surveillance at the downtown library learning center. The guy I’m watching is a slime. Last night when I left there, my battery barely kicked in.”
She was babbling, but couldn’t make herself shut up. “It’s supposed to get even colder tonight. Didn’t want to risk the battery giving out. Decided to do some maintenance.”
“Good idea.”
When he leaned in for a closer look at the engine, the knots in her stomach tightened.
He gave a hose a testing squeeze. “This feels a little hard. You might want to replace it.”
“I’ll put it on my to-do list.” She slanted a look at his profile. Hero-perfect with a hint of rugged. Why did just looking at him cause those damned chemical signals to zip through her? Flash red alerts?
A second later he had the oil dipstick out. “Oil’s a little low.”
“I planned to check it.”
Nodding, he replaced the dipstick, then leaned in farther. “How about your power-steering fluid?”
“You know, I really don’t need….” Her voice caught when she turned her head and found they were eye-to-eye and mouth-to-mouth. Her throat tightened when his warm breath skated across her face. If either of them moved in, their mouths would touch. The heat coiling inside her belly streaked up into her cheeks.
She knew that heat had turned to a flush when his Viking-blue eyes darkened. A second later something sharp and reckless slid into those eyes and his gaze dropped to her mouth. The ache in her belly turned into a throb.
