Healing Hearts (The Challenge Series)

by Liz Crowe

  Even when they hit dark days, when the second restaurant struggled in the early years and they were alternating credit cards to buy the family groceries, he never let it get him down. It made her crazy, but it was how he rolled. By the time they’d tucked their first million in the bank and labeled it “college fund,” it had become a running joke. She’d stare at the profit and loss statements and make worried noises, and he’d pour her a beer and kiss her out of her funk.

  But now…Abigail—she of the wild, curly hair and curvy, womanly perfection. And that scent—it made him dizzy, a crazy combination of spicy floral—almost overwhelming but perfect at the same time. He shoved his hands in his pockets when she took the five steps toward the door after his sarcastic outburst and let the yearlong need for a connection with someone other than people who pitied him force his action.

  Christy, baby. I’m so sorry. The familiar words, the mantra that had imprinted on his brain like a hot brand rose again, but he shoved them away and let his body take over. He touched Abby’s shoulder, tugged her away from the door, and kept pulling until he held her close. A woman, not his wife, in his arms—he felt himself shaking but clenched his jaw and spoke. “I’m sorry. Abigail Powers, you are amazing. And I…want to kiss you.”

  “I’m good with that.”

  Her words turned the small pile of kindling in his gut into a blazing roar of need so hot and loud he had to suppress a groan as he slanted his lips over hers and drowned in her. The images he’d lived with for so long were gone in the time it took to bury his hands in the thick fall of her hair. He parted her lips with his tongue, relishing her taste, loving the way her body fit into his. She met him halfway, and he pushed her back so she leaned against the wall, roaming all over the luscious landscape of her body.

  Pain bloomed in his chest, his gut, his head pounded but he had never felt such an urgent need for physical contact. He shoved her shirt up and flipped open her bra. The fullness of her breast filled his palm and he groaned when she sucked his tongue into her mouth as he passed his thumb over the stiff peak of her nipple.

  His brain kept up its steady beat of wrong, wrong, wrong, stop, stop, stop, But he silenced it with a firm yank of her skirt up around her waist. He needed this, damn it. His body was a huge pulsing nerve ending centered right at the tip of his cock, held in her hand. She’d divested him of his jeans at some point along the way. He broke from her lips, kissed his way down the delicious, brown-skinned line of her neck. She tilted her hips toward him, encouraging the finger he had hooked in her silky panties. With a quick twist of his wrist, they were in two pieces on the floor and his entire palm pressed against her bare, warm, sex.

  “Jay,” she whispered, gasping when he touched her. “God, I need…yes….” Her hiss turned into a low moan of need that made his aching cock leak against her belly. He filled all his senses with her—her lusty smell, her sweet noises of satisfaction, the soft touch of her sex, the taste of those lips. Dear Christ in heaven help him, he could not stop kissing her.

  He grunted when she ran her thumb across the over-sensitized head of his cock. “I need to….” He sighed into her hair, his hips already thrusting as she fisted his length. “I want…shit…I can’t do this.” He ripped himself away from her when his brain finally won the war over his weak flesh. He stared at her, saw the fury creep into her eyes.

  She stood, her skirt hiked up and her amazing breasts exposed, nipples hard and inviting. Putting her palms on her hips and tossing that incredible mane of hair back she glared at him.

  “What’s the matter, Jay,” she said, still breathing heavy. She pulled her skirt down then, to his utter surprise, she yanked her shirt off, dropped it to the floor, and closed the small gap he’d put between them. He sucked in a breath. “I won’t bite.”

  “I know.” He shivered, mesmerized by the smooth, deep hue of her skin. She took his hand, put it back on her breast, and the small shred of control he’d brought to the table in an attempt to spare her his drama shredded and fluttered down to his feet. He picked her up, carried her to the small bedroom, and dropped her down on the old-fashioned quilt.

  “I can’t promise anything more than the here and now Abigail.” He peeled off his shirt, watching her wiggle out of her skirt.

  “That’s all I’m asking you for,” she whispered. He lowered his lips to her sex, letting the smell and taste of her shove out the pain, the agony, and the guilt for a few minutes more. His heart almost stopped beating when he worked his way up her lush body and propped himself on his arms. He had not had sex in over a year. And hadn’t had anything but a perfect sex life with his spouse of fifteen years. His throat closed up as he gazed down at the polar opposite of his tall, angular, blonde, and now dead wife.

  She put a palm to his face, the deep pools of her eyes shining. “It’s okay,” she said, her voice strong. Then she wrapped her legs around his hips and took him inside her. The warm glove of her body held him, pulled him deep, and he closed his eyes and let it happen, leaning down to kiss her at the last minute. She tensed, then pulsed, then spasmed up and down his length.

  “I need to…should I…?” He started to pull out of her as his orgasm made itself known in no uncertain terms. His vision blurred and his body shuddered with the effort of holding back.

  She held him tighter without a word, met his thrusts, and he exploded into a million pieces.

  Their breathing calmed, she lay back, a beautiful smile on her face. He stayed still, loving the intimacy of their connection so much he dreaded the moment he had to end it. Because now that his immediate physical need was met, a sickening onrush of raw guilt threatened to choke him to death. He pulled out, sat back, and ran for the bathroom. Then slid to the floor, his back against the door he’d slammed like a loser, not even saying anything to the woman who’d rocked his world and allowed him a few moments of sheer bliss for the first time in over a year.

  Chapter Six

  Abby glared at the ceiling for a count of thirty, then sixty, then ninety. Her entire body tingled and pebbled as the residual pleasure of a bone-deep orgasm whirled through her. A moment of pure fear shot through her. She had just had unprotected sex with a near stranger. The ramifications of that stupid, irrational decision shot through her.

  She had not had sex since a half-hearted attempt at it with an old friend from high school about a month after her husband bolted from their marriage. She made a mental calculation as she lay there, trying to square the extreme anger at Jay’s weird behavior with the exquisite aftermath of an amazing lay. That made her an eighteen-month celibate, but for the occasional foray into some of the sexier books Lynn shared with her that ended with physical release via vibrator. And that did not give her any excuse whatsoever. No wonder the man had run off. God only knows what he thought of her.

  After a solid three minutes alone, she stood and found her clothes. The dog snuffled around the outside the door Jay must have shut when he carried her in here—carried…. Jesus, no man had ever done something so romantic in her life. No, not romantic, efficient. He was horny and carrying you proved a quick way to get you on the bed Abigail. Get a grip.

  Her teeth chattered as she found her shirt and shoved her arms back into it, trying to hold off the dog’s needy, insistent bumping against her leg. “Sorry, boy, hang on.” She patted him while looking at the closed bathroom door. The silence spoke volumes. She ran a hand down her face, and wandered out into the living room to locate her hair band, ignoring all the voices in her head calling her a slut at best and a stupid one at worst.

  By the time she found it and had the mop of hair under control, she’d allowed anger to win the emotional battle being waged in her chest. That asshole—no matter how tender he’d been, how vulnerable he’d appeared to be while they were intimate, he was acting like a selfish and now guilt-ridden male. She took a deep breath to still her pounding heart. After locating the bag of dog food and a leash, she whistled. The animal stopped his worried observation of the closed door an
d bounded toward her. She slipped her feet in her shoes and looked back one more time. Nothing had changed.

  “Fine.”

  Wishing for that moment back, the one where she’d given in and let him kiss her, she cursed under her breath when she recalled with knee-melting reality the damn kiss.

  “Asshole.”

  She rubbed Dexter’s head then grabbed her keys and the cooler from the kitchen. Her ears buzzed with fury and embarrassment but her thighs still shook as she made her awkward way to the door dragging a cooler—now full of dog food—and a giant canine.

  “Fucking shit.” She snagged the cooler wheel on the couch, tripped over the leash.

  “Hey.” She jerked her arm away from Jay’s touch. He stood in his jeans and polo shirt, his thick blond hair standing straight up as if he’d been dragging his fingers through it. She wrestled away her inner caretaker and fixed a righteous bitch in its place. “Don’t touch me.”

  “Abigail,” he said, then stepped back when she pulled Dexter and the cooler past him. “Listen, wait, I—”

  “No, I’m good. Thanks for the quickie. Truly, I needed it.” She tried to keep her voice level and calm, not thin and pissy like it sounded to her.

  “Okay, so, when you get home, after you walk him, Google ‘Jefferson Longmire family tragedy, Ann Arbor’ and see what you find.”

  Abby froze. Dexter whined and started tugging away from her, trying to get back to Jay, as if sensing his distress. She turned, reluctant to face him, but needing to see his eyes. She dropped the leash and the cooler handle and stared, slack jawed.

  He clipped every sentence off at the end as if reading a news report rather than relaying the horror he’d lived through. His eyes were bright, red rimmed but devoid of emotion. She sensed a wall around him, the same one she’d noticed when he sat at the coffee shop for hours.

  “So,” he finished, when she didn’t think she could take another detail, “I’m going to Ann Arbor tonight to take my daughter off life support. Then I will go to the arraignment of the former employees who did this to my family.” He dropped into a chair, shaking.

  Abby bit her lip. Even her need to take care of people had shrunk from this confession. She groaned and leaned back against the wall. She’d been celibate since her marriage ended. But this man, this gorgeous, wounded, class-A kisser of a man had been celibate since his wife had been raped and murdered in front of his eyes.

  “I gotta go.” Tear blinded her. “Sorry,” she muttered, fumbling for her keys again. Jay held them out to her. She took them without meeting his gaze.

  He reached out and wiped her cheek with his thumb, the gesture at once tender and tormenting.

  “I can’t believe it’s you. I mean, that I…that we…oh God, I gotta go.”

  She somehow made it out the door, down the wobbly step, and into the car, after tossing the cooler in the trunk and shoving the dog in the backseat. She gripped the steering wheel and gulped in air, trying not to burst into tears. It had been the top news story in the whole state, shit, the entire Midwest for six months, and then had roared back to life when the culprits were caught somewhere down in Florida.

  A knock on the window made her yelp and the dog start barking wildly. She turned the key and opened the window, still keeping her eyes straight ahead. Dexter leaned over her shoulder, slobbering down her shirt trying to get to Jay. He rubbed the dog’s lopsided ears and compelled her to turn and meet his gaze.

  “I wanted this today. I wanted to kiss you and I meant it. I’m not sure we should have….” He glanced down but then went on before she could interrupt. “I’m a wreck, Abigail. As you might expect. I’m nothing like I used to be. But for a few minutes today, you made me happy. And that is something I have not felt in a damn long time.” He leaned in and kissed her forehead then stood and walked back to the rundown cabin he’d been hiding in, right under her nose, for a year.

  She pressed her lips in a thin line, choking back the urge to call out to him. The oddest sensations swirled in her at that moment. What was she to him, other than the girl who made his unwanted coffee, let him fuck her without the foreplay of a date, and dog sat? She had no business being anything more. He didn’t need the complication. She put her hands in her lap, white-knuckling them together.

  Dexter woofed in her ear, dribbled more drool on her shoulder. “I know, boy. I know. It’s okay.” She shifted into reverse, backed out of the secluded driveway, and pointed the car toward home.

  ***

  Abby sat on the couch and rubbed Dexter’s belly, a pastime he encouraged pretty much twenty-four seven. Her aging, unreliable laptop sat on the coffee table with any number of Internet tabs open to the story. The Jefferson Taylor Longmire empire had been built from the ground up, with a small pancake restaurant he and his wife, Christy, had opened the first year they were married, right out of grad school. They’d had such success with it, when the opportunity arose to buy a failing downtown Ann Arbor nightclub they’d done it, leveraging Christy’s well-paying job as certified public accountant and their house in the process. It proved touch and go but after five years, two giant bank loans, and the birth of a little girl, Mia, their downtown bistro became a raging success.

  She clicked over to the tab with the People magazine story from right after the assailants had been apprehended, dredging the whole horrible thing back up again. Jay, Christy, Mia, and Jason Longmire were like Barbie, Ken, and the blond kids in one large holiday greeting photo, their smiling, perfect faces not reflecting the turmoil that went with owning several businesses and depending on them for groceries, clothing, health insurance, and everything in between.

  It would appear that all had been good with the marriage, other than the normal stresses. Christy quit her job with the big corporation to run the books for the Longmire Group, LLC when Jason was born, which made their income position even more precarious. But all the people interviewed claimed that Jay and Christy were a team, joined at the hip, soul mates and all of the above, which made an already life-shattering episode that much worse.

  People had also broken the salient scoop that the Longmire family had tried to keep quiet but had been leaked at the expense of some editor’s bribery budget. Christine Longmire had been pregnant again, almost five months, when the disgruntled and meth-addicted former warehouse employees had broken into her home on a Sunday afternoon.

  Tears sprang to her eyes. The photo of Jay, bed bound and in a coma after the men had jumped him from behind, seared her psyche. The gruesome details of the day, when he ran into the house after hearing his wife’s scream while he worked in the garden—the one thing he did to relax—made her shiver. The assailants already had Christy at knifepoint but seemed unaware of the two kids in the house until five-year-old Jason launched himself at his mother’s attacker. Witnesses claimed they heard noise from the Longmire house, but chalked it up to the rambunctiousness that always went on with the loud, athletic family. One neighbor admitted to being a little concerned when the family dog barked so loud and long he got hoarse then went silent.

  It was supposed that eleven-year-old Mia had hidden under her bed. But when she tried to sneak down the hall to call the police, one of the attackers who was ransacking her parents’ bedroom looking for a non existent safe full of cash found her.

  Jay had been kept in a medically induced coma so his swollen brain and injured spine to heal. When he was allowed to wake, he’d given his testimony. Which had been retold in horrific black-and-white in a follow-up story in USA Today. He awoke with a full memory of the entire incident. Two of the four men had jumped him and taken turns punching him in the gut, and jaw, stomping on and breaking several bones in his feet, dislocating his hip, breaking five ribs, and giving him a concussion before one of them kicked him so hard in the back it forced a vertebrae out of joint, nicking his spinal cord. Then they delivered a hard blow to his temple, which should have finished him off.

  It hadn’t.

  He’d lain on the floor, eyes open in
what the drug-addled murders perhaps assumed was a death stare, and watched them gang rape his pregnant wife then slit her throat. He’d heard them chase his daughter around upstairs, then the steady thumps against the floor of her bedroom, directly over the kitchen, as they took turns assaulting her. By the time the hysterical animal had punched his way through the screen door, Jay had been unable to move, or help in any way.

  One attacker had torn up the first floor seeking the money they claimed they came for. He located the small bag of one hundred dollar bills the Longmires kept in the freezer. It had only been a small amount, not even close to what they had in the bank. But then the dog knocked him to the floor and proceeded to try and rip his throat out.

  One of the attackers came down from Mia’s room and in the way of people high on drugs and unable to judge for themselves, had tried to wrestle the giant animal off his friend’s chest. That man lost three fingers. But when all four of the men surrounded the dog as he growled and snapped and tried to protect his family, sirens announced the approach of the police. One of them had tried to kill him, but had only managed to mangle his ear.

  Once caught, they pleaded insanity, drug addiction, and claimed to be remorseful and willing to rehabilitate themselves. They asked on television for the Longmire and Harrison families’ forgiveness. After the initial police interview, Jay Longmire had disappeared, leaving daughter Mia on life support back in Ann Arbor, visiting her once a week, but otherwise shunning media and work. His business partner and brother-in-law Ken Harrison handled the day-to-day management of the three restaurants and the beer distributorship where the accused murders and rapists had been employed for about six months before getting fired for smoking pot on the job.