With Extreme Pleasure

by Alison Kent

  Cady and King had been on the road in his newest Hummer for nearly an hour when she was poleaxed by a paralyzing hunger pang and a sudden idea. She glanced at his profile and asked, “Do you think we can find a spot for breakfast where we can pick up free WiFi?”

  King frowned, whether at the idea of her eating more food or her question about WiFi, she couldn’t know, but he answered quickly enough. “If you don’t mind a side trip out of the boonies and into civilization, I’ll see what I can do. Why the WiFi? More banking to do?”

  “I want to look up the courier service. See if it’s a legitimate company. And the insurance agency’s office, too.” She turned her attention back to the road. “If I use a free network, the search can’t be traced. And, yeah, I know what McKie said, but a lot of things are still bothering me.”

  “You’re not the only one who’s bothered. This whole thing stinks worse than that smoke bomb.”

  “I don’t get that either.” Though she wouldn’t doubt King having suspected as much, she kept her suspicion that she’d been bugged to herself. Fitz was probably helping himself to the Hummer’s GPS broadcast even now, so whether he’d been tracking her individually was moot.

  “The smoke bomb doesn’t make sense,” she said, continuing her thoughts aloud. “If I’m being watched, it would be easy to come after me the second I step onto the street. Are they on some kind of schedule? And they knew the ticking package would get us out of the room at a certain time?”

  King reached for the sunglasses he found tucked in the visor. “Best guess? This Coral kid didn’t want to hang out all day waiting to finish what he started. He wanted you out of the way ASAP.”

  And if not for Jarrell Bradley…

  Cady shuddered, pushed free from that thought and the others she didn’t have time to deal with. No doubt everything that had happened the last few days would rush in and devour her the moment she let her guard down.

  But she couldn’t do that now. She had to keep her mind clear to think. “Since Fitz didn’t know anything about the package, it had to be Coral or Malling who sent it. It just seems way too sophisticated a plan for those bozos to put together. Especially on such short notice.”

  “It wasn’t so short. Think about it,” he said, adjusting the rearview and side mirrors. “We were out of commission before noon yesterday. That gave them a good twenty hours to rig the bomb, fake a delivery receipt and uniform, and hire some guy with a van to drop off the package.”

  She supposed he was right. “You don’t think the courier service was real?”

  “The service, maybe. The driver, maybe not.” He inclined his head toward a parking lot packed with tractor trailer rigs. “You want to give this place a try?”

  It was a truck stop, but it advertised free WiFi and blueberry waffles. It was enough to make her heart—and her stomach—go pitter patter. “Works for me.”

  “You remember enough of the details for your search?” he asked, as they parked and headed inside.

  She’d handed the delivery receipt to the first Statie on the scene, but she remembered enough.

  “I want to call the courier before the cops do,” she said once they’d settled into a booth and King had signaled for two coffees. “As soon as law enforcement’s involved, the service will clam up. But as the consignees, they should give us some details, yes? If they really did send it?”

  “Find me a number. I’ll call them.”

  When the coffee arrived, King ordered waffles and bacon for both of them, then waited patiently while she booted the computer and reconfigured the wireless permissions per the instructions they’d been given.

  “Yay, I’m in,” she said two minutes later, bringing up a browser window and typing her search terms into Google.

  King rolled his eyes. “You and that machine.”

  “Trust me. If I had the money, I’d have a cell with a data plan. I’m lucky to have this. Even luckier that a lot of people don’t password protect their networks,” she said seconds later, adding with a wink, “Got a pen?”

  She found the courier’s Web site, gave him the phone number, went searching for information on the insurance company while he doodled with the numbers he’d jotted on his napkin. Once she came up with the second set of contact details, he went to use the pay phone outside the truck stop’s front door.

  The call to the delivery service and insurance agency’s office netted him the same information. Both were legitimate outfits—but neither one had any record of a package being sent to Cushing Township, Pennsylvania.

  It was clear that someone out there had contacts they could tap at a moment’s notice—or at least within twenty hours’ time. That description fit Tuzzi and McKie both. Did they trust McKie that he’d had nothing to do with the bomb? That he would never send them a package?

  “Well, that sucks the big one,” King said, shredding the napkin he’d carried with him.

  “Does it mean that McKie was telling the truth? That he didn’t send the package? Or does it mean he buried his lie in all sorts of red tape and bribes?”

  King stacked the strips of torn paper one on top of the other around the rim of his plate. “I’m going to go with the package being Coral’s way of getting you out of the house.”

  “Okay. Now explain how he pulled it off.”

  “He found the shirt at Goodwill, printed up the delivery receipt and manifest at Kinko’s, bought the clipboard at Office Max, and paid the guy with the van by the hour. He told him what time to drop off the box, and here’s a hundred bucks not to worry about what might sound like a clock. It’s just a joke between friends.”

  It made too much sense to blow off. “And that means we do what?”

  “The only thing we can. Pack up the laptop and hit the road. There’s a farm out there with your name on it.”

  She laughed. “You have no idea how true that is.”

  “Let me guess. Cady Jo?”

  “Cady Josephine,” she corrected him, sliding the laptop into its padded compartment and securing the backpack’s buckles and straps. “Don’t forget either, because there will be a quiz.”

  He dropped several bills on the table to cover their check and the tip, gave her a wink. “You mean you’re the answer to a test as well as the answer to my prayers?”

  She wanted to grin, to think he meant it, to hold close the feeling that he did. But she’d been stupid enough for this lifetime already, so she said, “If I’ve been sent down as an answer, you’ve been praying to the wrong gods.”

  Thirty-one

  Cady hadn’t been to her grandmother’s farm in years. As kids, she and Kevin had come here with their parents for summer vacation. They’d traipsed through the nearby woods after Redcoats. They’d prayed their tiny fishing hooks would hold should they snag any of the human bones rotting at the bottom of their grandmother’s five-acre lake.

  They’d romped through the pastures where cows plopped patties the size of baseball diamonds. They’d ripped the skin off their knees, shins, and elbows climbing trees. That had all stopped, of course, when they’d become teenagers with concerts, friends, and parties calling their names.

  Cady had been eighteen when Josephine Kowalski had died, two summers after her last vacation here. Thinking back now, she regretted not choosing family over material things, but hindsight was always twenty-twenty, and even more acute when looking back with matured eyes.

  Though the house was empty and the property unused save for that one time each year, a caretaker checked in regularly, keeping the yard mowed, clearing away storm debris of downed limbs, repairing broken windows, deterring vandalism by local kids with nothing better to do.

  Squatting to lift the heavy iron flower pot that sat beneath the front window looking out over the porch, Cady slid her hand along the damp and dirty board, searching for the key. She gave it to King when she found it, and eased the pot back into place.

  He hadn’t left her side since they’d parked. It was cute, really, his attentiveness,
his protectiveness, but there was nothing out here she needed protection from. No footprints but their own marred the dirt on the porch or the front steps, and there were no recent tire tracks on the road leading in.

  More than likely they’d been seen driving onto the property, and the caretaker would be over before Cady had time to find sheets and make the bed. Or beds, if King decided he really did need a good night’s sleep since he and she both were going on two days now without one.

  The door squeaked on its hinges as he forced it open, the noise and the stickiness two more of her memories, as were the family pictures on the fireplace mantel and the rack of hunting rifles hanging above. The smells, on the other hand, weren’t quite the same.

  She was used to food being cooked at all hours, from bacon and maple syrup to toasted cheese sandwiches to fried chicken to her grandmother’s never-ending supply of cookies—chocolate chip, peanut butter, frosted sugar, and oatmeal raisin.

  Her stomach growled, and King looked back. “Don’t even say it. We ate two hours ago. You cannot be hungry.”

  “Wanna bet?” she said, and pushed past him. She tossed her backpack to the sofa and headed for the kitchen.

  The refrigerator, of course, was empty, and would stay that way until they got the power turned on and cooled it down. They needed the electricity, too, to get the well pumping water to the house, to cook, heat water, even to see after dark. There had always been oil lamps around, but she had no clue where they were now.

  She pulled open the curtains over the window and peered out. The shed that served as a garage sat directly behind the house. When she felt King at her shoulder, she pointed it out. “You can pull the truck in there if you want to keep it out of the elements.”

  “The way things have been going, I won’t have it long enough for the elements to do any damage.”

  Still facing the window, she smiled to herself. “Well, if you want to keep it out of sight, then. I don’t know if that matters or not. If we were followed, it’s too late. But if we weren’t…”

  She let the sentence trail, thinking King would pick it up and offer some reassurance. He went in another direction instead. “I know you said this place is stocked, but we need food that doesn’t come out of a can.”

  She wondered if he wanted to forget about McKie and Tuzzi and Malling for now, or if he just preferred not to borrow trouble or speculate on who might or might not have been trailing after them—not hard to understand since she was worn out from doing too much of both.

  And though he hadn’t yet looked in the pantry, he had no trouble making a shopping list. “Eggs, milk, bacon. Steaks, potatoes, sour cream, cheese.”

  She liked that they were on the same food wavelength. “The last part of that sounds like someone else is hungry, even though he just got through eating, too.”

  “You’re right about two hours being nothing,” he leaned close to her ear and admitted, trapping her between his arms, his hands braced on the lip of the sink. “I could eat a horse and a cow.”

  This time she turned, looked up at him, and shared her laughter. “Let’s check the breaker box and see about getting the electricity going. I’d like a hot bath later if I can get one. The water heater’s ancient, and will have to be drained before doing its thing.”

  His brows drew together as he met her gaze. “Roughing it doesn’t bother you? You don’t miss having a bodega on every corner and three meals delivered a day?”

  She blew him a raspberry. “You’re obviously thinking about another stowaway. I’ve never had three meals delivered a day. And this sort of roughing it is a whole lot better than what I’ve been doing, having nothing of my own but a bedroom.”

  She turned around again and looked out the window. “Here when I look over my shoulder, I can see for miles. I have acres of land and trees and ponds surrounding me, not to mention the lake. And best of all, I can breathe.”

  “You’d probably like Le Hasard. Different climate. Different geography. Definitely different trees. Cypress. Spanish moss. Magnolia. And being in the Mississippi River Delta, most of our ponds are swamps.”

  “Le Hasard?”

  “My place in Vermilion Parish.”

  “Oh, right. Louisiana.”

  She wasn’t sure why he was telling her this. Did he want her to see his home? Did he want to see his home? Was homesickness causing him to regret being here?

  After all, he was doing a favor for a stranger—a dangerous favor at that, and look at what it had cost him. In exchange for what? He wasn’t getting anything out of it—except for the sex.

  She would never believe the sex was keeping him here. Kingdom Trahan would have no trouble getting sex in any of the fifty states. As much as she would’ve enjoyed the ego stroke, his sticking with her in Pennsylvania or New Jersey or New York was not about her body.

  “King?”

  “Cady?”

  “Why are you here?”

  “Because every man’s life could use a little adventure.”

  She swung her elbow backward, connected with his gut, got a lot of satisfaction out of his, “Oomph.” “I want a real answer. You could’ve told me to bugger off in the parking lot after the explosion. Or at the hospital when you realized you were collateral damage in Tuzzi’s hunt for me.”

  “What’s a Hummer or two between friends?”

  She elbowed him again.

  “Hey. I need those ribs.”

  “And I need an answer.” She did not enjoy feeling as if she’d been thrust into the role of damsel in distress, tied to the tracks by some dastardly villain, and had to be saved by a knight on a white horse or a lawman with a badge.

  She was used to saving herself. Yeah, she hadn’t done the best job in the world, but relying on someone else hadn’t worked out for her at all. Better her half-assed self-reliance than being dropped on her head by others. “Please?”

  King moved his hands from the sink and wrapped them around her midsection, pulling her back into his body. He tucked her head against his neck, rubbed his chin at her temple. She listened to the scratch of his whiskers against her hair stiff with product.

  “I want to be here. Isn’t that enough?”

  It should be, but she needed more because this was no cake walk for him either. “No. You have to have a reason.”

  “You mean you have to have a reason.”

  “Semantics. Whatever.” She closed her eyes, enjoyed his strength. It was so damn easy, so damn tempting to let her own seep away. “I’m not your responsibility, King. I stowed away with you, yes, but all you had to do was drop me at the bus station like I asked. You didn’t have to come this far, or go through so much. You didn’t have to do anything. I have to know why you have.”

  “Why?” he asked, after a moment’s hesitation that was pregnant with emotion. “Are you thinking you’re going to repay me? That I want you to repay me?”

  “I can never repay you,” she said, shaking her head. “You’ve done so much.”

  “You must have me confused with some other Good Samaritan, chère. I gave you a ride. That’s all.”

  Why could he not answer this one simple question? “That’s not all, and you know it. For one thing, you stuck around. If not for me, you would be home by now instead of playing farm boy.”

  “I happen to like playing farm boy. And I happen to like playing it with you. Yeah, I thought early on about dumping you at the bus station, or buying you a one-way ticket to Anchorage to get you out of my hair. And if all this shit had gone down a year ago, I’d’ve done just that.

  “But I’m not the same man now I was then. I’d like to think I’m a better man, but maybe I’m just old. So if you need me to sum all that up, well, I’m here because you’re here, and because not being here isn’t an option. And then there’s the fact that my dick hasn’t been this happy in years.”

  She would’ve elbowed him again, but she was crying now. She didn’t want him to know, and it was getting hard not to give in and sob, to sniff ba
ck her tears. And then she thought, to hell with it.

  With her voice quavering, she asked, “Who do you get to write your speeches, because you’re definitely not paying him enough?”

  “Hey, what’s with the disrespecting? That was one of my finer moments.”

  “I loved your finer moment,” she said, turning in his arms and fighting her heart that was telling her she loved so much more. She clutched the front of his shirt in both hands. “I just feel like I have ruined your life.”

  “Oh, Cady, chère. My life was ruined a long time before I met you,” he said, and she laughed. Then she cried. She couldn’t hold in the emotion a moment longer, and the dam broke to an exhausting flood.

  He cupped the back of her head and kept her there in the circle of his arms, rocking her gently while she sobbed like a heartbroken baby. Her shoulders shook. Her throat swelled. Her lungs felt on the verge of collapse. She ached from head to toe, and she wanted to stop, but she couldn’t.

  A groan rumbled through King’s chest. He bent and scooped her up as if she weighed as much as a pillow, and carried her through the house until he found a bed. The mattress was bare, but he laid her on top of it, then curled up behind her and held her while she cried.

  “I’m sorry,” she finally got out, amazed she had the energy or the breath left for any words at all. “I’m just so tired. I’m so tired.”

  “I know, chère. I know,” he told her, stroking her arm from shoulder to elbow until she fell asleep.

  Thirty-two

  Once he was certain Cady wouldn’t miss him, King eased off the bed. He’d seen a linen closet in the hallway, and found pillows, sheets, blankets, and quilts stored there in protective plastic bags.

  He chose a well worn and soft as cotton balls quilt, and tucked it around Cady as best he could without moving her. He then pulled the curtains closed, shut the bedroom door, and went in search of the breaker box.

  His plan was to get as much done as he could while she slept, and for her to sleep as long as her mind and body would let her. She’d been going strong for two days, going up against shit that could easily wear good men to nubs, going like that battery bunny that never stopped.