“Caleb,” she whispered and he raised his head to look at her. “I want us naked,” she said, as if she’d read his mind, as if she knew his need.
“Me, too,” he said. He rolled away from her and tore off his briefs at the same time she removed her panties. When they came back together his body ached with the feel of her nakedness against his.
He slid his hand up her inner thigh, heard the slight gasp of pleasure that she released as his fingers found her heat.
She arched her hips up to meet him and, at the same time, wound her fingers around the hard length of him. Intense pleasure crashed through him as she moved her hand up and down. She seemed to know just how much pressure to use, what kind of touch evoked the sharpest response.
He wanted, needed to take her over the edge before he found his own release. He gently pushed her hand away from him so he focused completely on bringing her as much pleasure as possible.
As he continued to stroke her intimately, he felt the rising tension in her. Her breathing grew more rapid and she began to moan, the deep, throaty sound increasing his desire. Her legs tensed and she cried out his name as he brought her to climax.
Almost immediately he rolled away from her and fumbled in his nightstand drawer for a condom. He ripped the foil package with more force than necessary and rolled the protection into place.
She was ready for him as he eased between her thighs and entered her. She welcomed him by clutching his buttocks and pulling him deep within.
He closed his eyes and refused to move, afraid that if he did it would be over before it began. They fit together as perfectly as they had years ago and the scent of her, the familiar contours of her body against his, caused a wealth of emotions to crash through him, emotions that had nothing to do with the physical act itself.
He opened his eyes and looked down at her, surprised that her features swam as tears filled his eyes. She, too, had tears glittering in her eyes. He quickly closed his again and began to move his hips against her.
She moaned again and it was a sound that stole all thought from his mind. He stroked into her faster and faster and felt her tightening around him as she once again reached her peak.
As she cried out and shuddered, he climaxed, the force of it stealing every breath from his body. For a long moment they remained unmoving, gasping for breath, then he crashed to his back next to her, the only sound in the room their efforts to find a normal beat of their hearts.
“Wow,” she finally said.
“My sentiments exactly,” he replied. He closed his eyes for a moment, willing the emotions that had momentarily gripped him away.
He got out of the bed and padded into the bathroom and almost immediately was struck with a thousand kinds of regret.
He washed up and then stood in front of the mirror over the sink and stared at his reflection. “What the hell are you doing?” he asked the man in the mirror.
This was going to end badly. The emotions he felt for Portia scared the hell out of him. Portia was everything he desired and everything he refused to have in his life. Making love to her now had been one of the biggest mistakes of his life.
As always a knot of anger twisted in his gut. Twice he’d put his heart on the line for a woman and both times it had been trampled into the ground. He’d be a fool to put his heart out there again.
Caleb was a man meant to be alone and even though making love to Portia had been beyond wonderful, it didn’t change his mind.
He returned to the bedroom and was slightly disappointed that she hadn’t gotten dressed but rather remained naked in his bed. He grabbed his slacks from the floor as she sat up and clutched the sheet to her breasts.
“Caleb, we need to talk.”
“Why? Portia, what we just did was pretty stupid.” He pulled on his pants and refused to look at her, afraid that he would do something even more stupid.
“Funny, I don’t feel stupid,” she replied.
A wave of shame swept over him as he heard the faint tinge of hurt in her voice. He sat on the edge of the bed and looked at her. She looked incredibly hot even with the faint bruising around her throat and the red area on her jaw. “Sorry, I’m being a jerk.”
She smiled. “Yes, you are, but you get points for recognizing it.”
“I just don’t want you to make this into something bigger than it is,” he said and reached down to grab his shirt.
“Don’t worry, I’m not planning my wedding announcements. I don’t even know if I’ll be alive tomorrow. I don’t want to talk about the future, Caleb. I want to talk about the past.”
“Why? We can’t go back and change anything.” He tensed, wishing she would just leave it alone.
“You’re right, I can’t change anything, but I can tell you that I was wrong not to believe you. I was wrong not to trust you. I allowed gossip and innuendo to screw up my head.”
He hadn’t realized how much he’d wanted, needed to hear that from her until now. It was as if he’d carried a weight with him for the past ten years and her words finally banished it.
“That night that you were out of town for your grandfather’s funeral I went to the café to hang out with a bunch of kids. Jayme Cordell was there alone and I sat in a booth with her. It wasn’t a big deal. In fact, I spent the whole night telling her all about you, about how much I missed you and how I knew you were the right girl for me.”
He looked toward the window where the sun had disappeared. The forecast that morning had been for hot and humid and with a chance of late-afternoon thunderstorms, but the weather was the last thing on his mind as he gazed back at the woman he’d once loved with all his heart, with all his soul.
“It was nothing but innocent conversation and to tell the truth I think I bored her to death with all my talk about you. When I decided to head home she left the café, too. I walked her to her car and I guess enough people saw us leaving together that they got the wrong impression.”
“And I heard the gossip and thought the worst.” She frowned, the gesture doing nothing to detract from her loveliness. “It didn’t help that I had my mother pounding it into my brain that all men were alike, that all of them were cheaters. I heard the rumors and instantly believed them.”
She left the bed, magnificent in her nakedness, and crouched down in front of him. “I’m sorry, Caleb. I’m sorry that I hurt you, that I screwed things up between us. That’s what I wanted to tell you.”
He wanted to kiss her again. He wanted to take her back into his bed and make love to her all over again, with the weight of anger gone from his chest. But his head refused to allow him what his heart desired.
“Thank you for telling me that,” he said. “And now I need to go make some phone calls and see what we can do to catch the man who wants you dead.”
He didn’t know what she expected from him, but he could tell by her expression that this wasn’t it. She gracefully rose to her feet and moved away from him.
He left the room without a backward glance.
A rumble of thunder accompanied Portia as she left the guest room after she’d showered and dressed. Caleb was on the phone in the kitchen and she curled up on the sofa with only her thoughts as company and her cell phone in her hand.
She needed to call her mother. It was possible that the story of the break-in at Portia’s house had made its way around the town. Doris would be worried if she couldn’t get hold of her daughter.
She punched in the number that would connect her to her mother and steeled herself for the conversation to come. “Hi, Mom,” she said when Doris answered.
“I was wondering when I was going to hear from you,” Doris said. “I heard there was trouble at your place last night. Where are you now?”
“I’m staying with Caleb. He’ll keep me safe from whoever is after me.”
There was a long pause. “And who is keeping you safe from that womanizing man?”
With her heart still filled with the lovemaking she and Caleb had just shared, wit
h her head still reeling from the brief discussion they’d had, Doris’s words aggravated Portia to the breaking point.
“Stop it, Mom,” she exclaimed with a harsh tone. “If you can’t say anything nice, then just don’t talk. I’m sorry Dad left you years ago and I’m sorry you never got over it, but that doesn’t mean that all men are bad. Your bitterness has driven everyone out of your life except me, and if you continue, you’ll end up driving me away, too.”
“I didn’t raise you to talk to me that way,” Doris said, but her voice was filled with more hurt than anger.
Portia drew a deep, steadying breath. “I love you, Mom, but I won’t let you beat up on Caleb or any other man I might date. I won’t let you ruin what happiness I might find with your bitterness.”
“I love you, too, Portia. I just don’t want you to get hurt. I don’t want you to go through what I did.”
“I won’t, Mom. Oh, I might get hurt, but I’ll never allow any heartbreak to keep me from seeking happiness again.” She softened her voice. “You have to let it go. You have to let your bitterness go, Mom.”
There was another long silence. “I’ll think about what you said,” Doris said grudgingly. “Although after all these years I’m not sure I know how to begin to do that.”
“I just wanted to let you know that I’m all right, that I love you and I’ll talk to you later.” Portia hung up as Caleb came into the room.
“Everything all right?” he asked.
“Yes, I was just checking in with my mother. I knew she’d be worried.”
Caleb sat on the opposite end of the sofa from her. “I checked in with Sam McCain. He’s been sitting on the Stemple place since we left earlier but there’s been no sign of Dale. When Sam’s shift is over Dan Walker is going to take over and continue surveillance.”
“Maybe he’s staying someplace else around town,” she said. “Maybe he has a friend or a relative we don’t know about.”
“It’s possible, but I still think he’s been staying at his parents’ place. Art acted shady, like a man who was hiding something, and I know I smelled cigarette smoke.”
“But we still can’t be a hundred percent sure it’s Dale who is after me,” she said.
“True, but it doesn’t matter who it is, I just want them under arrest.” A rumble of thunder sounded overhead and the room got increasingly darker. Caleb got up from the sofa and went to the window. “Going to storm,” he said.
“We could use some rain.” She watched him as he remained staring outside. His shoulders were rigidly straight with tension and when he’d come out of the kitchen his eyes had held a guarded expression that brooked no intrusion.
Her heart expanded with an emotion she’d tried to deny, but in that moment she was faced with the truth. She was still as deeply, as profoundly in love with him as she had been years ago.
The knowledge didn’t surprise her; it only sent a small edge of pain through her.
She’d hoped that by making love with him again, by telling him that she’d made a mistake before, that somehow he’d profess his love for her, but that hadn’t happened. The only thing it had managed to do was broaden the distance between them.
There were moments she felt his love, saw it shining from his unguarded eyes, felt it in his simplest touch, but there was also an inexplicable darkness, an anger in him that she didn’t understand.
“Tell me about Laura,” she said.
He turned from the window and looked at her, the dark shutters in his eyes firmly in place. “Why do you want to know about her?”
“Because she’s a part of your past. Because I’m curious.”
“We dated, we broke up, end of story.” He shrugged as if to dismiss the issue, but there was something raw and unbridled in his voice that let her know there was far more to the story.
“She hurt you,” Portia said softly. His jaw tensed as his mouth compressed into a thin slash. “You must have loved her very much,” Portia added.
A burst of laughter left him, the sound bitter and harsh. “I’m not sure love had anything to do with it.” He sighed and moved away from the window at the same time thunder rumbled once again.
He sat in the chair opposite the sofa and gazed at her for a long moment as if deciding whether to say more or not.
“It was nothing but lust that Laura and I initially shared,” he finally said. “She told me she wasn’t looking for anything permanent and neither was I, so we started dating with no expectations of it going any further than that.”
He paused and broke his eye contact with her, instead focusing on the wall over the sofa as the room darkened with the storm overhead. “We’d been dating about four months when she came to me and told me she was pregnant. We’d gotten careless one night and apparently it hadn’t been without consequence.”
Portia’s heart twisted in her chest. Laura had been pregnant? Did Caleb have a son someplace? Maybe a daughter whom Laura had taken away from him? Certainly that would explain the anger Caleb seemed to carry.
“Even though I didn’t love Laura, I cared about her and I thought love would come so I asked her to marry me. The idea of being a father blew me away. I wanted that more than anything I’ve ever wanted in my life.” His hands clenched into fists at his sides. “I had it all figured out. I knew I’d be an awesome dad and I could make myself be a good husband.”
“So you and Laura got engaged,” Portia said.
He nodded. “And as we planned the wedding I committed myself and my heart to Laura and the baby. It was going to be a quick, simple wedding. I wanted it to happen before the baby arrived. Family has always been important to me and I was determined that we’d be a happy family. The wedding was all set for a Sunday afternoon a month away when she came to me and told me she couldn’t go through with it.”
A flash of lightning lit the room, followed closely by a thunderclap that shook the windows in their frames. Portia jumped but stayed focused on Caleb, whose features were tortured by incredible pain.
“She left and you don’t know where your child is?” Portia asked, guessing that’s what had happened.
Again that bitter laughter burst from him, shooting an arrow of sympathy for him through her heart. “No. I wish that’s what had happened. She not only didn’t want to marry me. She didn’t want to have my baby. She aborted it without telling me.”
“Oh.” The single word leaped to Portia’s lips as tears blurred her vision. She couldn’t stay on the sofa with him across the room, his heartache so big it filled the entire house.
As she got up and walked toward him, her tears spilled down her cheeks. His grief burned hot and painful in her throat as he stood, his body vibrating with emotion.
She wrapped her arms around his neck, vaguely surprised when he didn’t push her away but rather gathered her close to him.
As she began to cry harder he held her by her shoulders and looked at her. “Why are you crying?” he asked.
“For you, Caleb. I’m crying for what you lost and because I wish it would have been me who was carrying your baby. I’m crying because I would have cherished your child.”
He pulled her against him once again and outside the storm unleashed itself, pelting rain against the windows as they grieved for what might have been.
Chapter 11
He had to get her out of his house, Caleb thought three days later as he stood at the kitchen window to drink his morning coffee. Portia was still asleep and he relished this moment that held no tension.
Every since he’d told Portia about Laura’s betrayal he’d felt vulnerable and had compensated by keeping his distance, which had created a nearly impossible, uncomfortable tension between himself and Portia.
For the past three days they had been in a wait-and-see pattern, waiting for Dale or whoever was after Portia to make his next move, wondering if and when another attack might come.
It was time to take the game to the next level. He knew the person who wanted to harm her was just waitin
g for the right opportunity to strike, and tonight Caleb intended to present that opportunity.
It was a dangerous gamble, but he couldn’t allow things to go on as they had any longer. She’d touched him too deeply with her tears for him. She’d floored him with her statement that she’d wished she’d been pregnant with his child. She was getting beneath his defenses and he couldn’t allow that to happen.
It was time for action, but the risk he was going to take made him feel slightly sick to his stomach. If anything went wrong, if anything happened to Portia, he didn’t know how he would ever be able to live with himself.
“Good morning.”
He whirled around from the window at the sound of her voice. “Good morning,” he replied. “Coffee’s made.”
She was already dressed for the day in a turquoise sundress that made her eyes more blue than green. She poured herself a cup of coffee and sat at the table. “I think it’s time I find another place to stay,” she said.
He looked at her in surprise. “And where would that be? Who could keep you as safe as me?”
“I don’t know, but we can’t go on like this. I can’t handle the tension anymore. Besides, I can’t stay here forever and it doesn’t look like anything is going to happen while I’m here.”
“I know, and that’s why I think it’s time to up the stakes.” He joined her at the table and his heart beat just a little bit faster as he thought of the plan he’d spent half the night going over in his mind.
“Up the stakes how?” She curled her fingers around her coffee cup, as if his words had created a chill she needed to banish.
“I think probably our potential killer has been watching the house. By now everyone in town knows you’re staying here, so he knows that, as well. My car has been parked in front the whole time so he knows I’ve been with you every minute of the day and night. I think whoever is after you is nearby. It’s just my gut instinct, but my gut is rarely wrong,” Caleb said.
“So, what’s your plan?” she asked.
She was so beautiful with the morning light splashing on her features, and a new fear clutched his guts as he leaned back in the chair and eyed her intently.
The Lawman’s Nanny Op Page 12
