Redemption's Touch (Kimani Romance)

by Ann Christopher

  So she didn’t resist when he cupped her butt in his big hands and ground that rigid erection against her. “God,” she said, panting, because this man, and no other, made her mouth water, her brain freeze and her heart yearn for the impossible. “More. I want more.”

  Reaching up, she sank her fingers in the cottony fluff of his hair, bringing him tighter, closer. He tasted minty and comforting, familiar and disconcerting, and like her salvation and her ultimate destruction, all wrapped together in one body.

  Yes. Yesss.

  “Arianna.” He ran his lips down the side of her neck, licking her overheated skin and lifting her off her feet. “Please.”

  Apparently she’d already decided with no input from her dazed brain. Crazed now, dizzy with lust, she reached for the bottom of his shirt, ready to get it out of her way. He laughed, the sound hoarse and triumphant. Even that didn’t put the brakes on. Only when she felt the flaming heat from his velvety skin did reality rear its ugly head and show its gargoyle face, insisting that she see it.

  What? God, what was she doing? She was not this stupid. She refused to be.

  “No.” She broke away and wished she’d put a little more bite in that no.

  Sure enough, the whispered word had no discernible effect. His lips hunted her down, following as she turned her head, catching her again for another starved taste. And she…yeah, she let him, because she was weak, her desire was strong, and she’d only managed to grow about half a backbone where he was concerned.

  But she was working on it.

  “No.” This time, she said it in a range audible to human ears. He paused, blinking in confusion, and she used the moment to her advantage. “No.” She pulled back. “No.” She slammed her palms against his chest and shoved him with all her might, which backed him up a full millimeter.

  “Arianna—” he began, frustration rolling off his body in tsunami-sized waves.

  “We’re not doing this.” She fumbled with the door for the umpteenth time and made it, for the first time, over the threshold. Just so he fully got the message, she ran the back of her hand over her mouth, swiping his kiss away the way she’d do if she kissed a muddy leech. “You broke trust with me last night. That’s it. I don’t need any more men in my life that I can’t trust. Been there, done that. Sorry.”

  That, he heard loud and clear. His face contracted, and it didn’t look like the irritation of a man who’d really wanted to get laid and now wouldn’t. It looked like the abject despair of a man who’d fought his way to rainbow’s end only to be denied the pot of gold.

  “How can I get the trust back?”

  Great question. Too bad she didn’t have any answers.

  “You can’t,” she told him.

  The second Arianna hit the porch in the morning, late for the trip to the hospital as part of Bishop’s welcome-home party, it hit her: the wondrous, delicious, welcome smell of hot chocolate.

  But where—

  Snuffling around, reminding herself of a bloodhound, she looked and…there it was! On the little wicker side table. Hot chocolate! In a white paper to-go cup, sitting next to a white paper bag that could only hold some type of delicious bakery treat.

  Hurrying over, she snatched the bag up, totally understanding how strangers with sweets lured children into cars. Inside was a chocolate croissant, buttery fresh and flaky—

  Wait. There was a card, with a single handwritten A, for Arianna, on the envelope.

  Oh, no.

  This was terrible. Only one person would make this kind of effort for her—the one person she needed to avoid: Dawson. Joshua. Whatever his name was.

  Well, that did it. No way could she eat this, notwithstanding her stupid stomach, which was now rumbling hopefully. She would throw all of this away. Yes. That’s what she would do.

  With a guttural noise that would embarrass her when she remembered it later, she shoved half the croissant into her mouth, smacking like a cow chewing her cud.

  Oh, man. Better than sex.

  Taking another massive bite—in for a penny, in for a pound, right?—she read the card, which was written in a spare hand with slashes and long tails rather than loops.

  Dear A—

  One of the things I’d like to know about you is what you eat for breakfast. Until you tell me, I’ll have to guess. I’m an oatmeal guy, but that doesn’t seem right for you. I do know that you’re a chocoholic, so I hope the croissant is a good start.

  Other things I’d like to know about you:

  What you’ve done every day of your life up until now;

  Where you got your iron core of strength from; and

  Your favorite television show.

  “Oh, God.”

  Licking her fingers, she put the remaining bite of the croissant down. Eating, it turned out, was impossible when you were too stunned and heartsick to breathe.

  Back to reading the note, not that it was a good idea to finish the damn thing.

  Can I tell you something?

  No way. The last thing she needed was any more of his confessions contaminating her brain. She was going to march inside and flush this note down the toilet right now.

  I can’t get you out of my mind.

  Yours,

  Dawson

  One reading wasn’t enough, so she read it again. And again.

  He just killed her, touching her with his thoughtfulness and vulnerability. Why did she read the stupid note? Why? Well, she’d read it, but that didn’t mean she had to keep it. No. She’d tear it up and put it in the recycling bin.

  She tucked it into her purse.

  Jerk. Why was he doing this to her?

  Well. She’d read and kept the note and eaten the croissant, but at least she hadn’t drunk the hot chocolate. See? She could resist him, after all. As long as she stood firm on one tiny issue, she was good.

  Newly confident, she took two long strides to the porch steps.

  Hah. Easy as pie.

  On the third step, she looped back around, snagged the cup and took a long swig. Delicious. Damn him.

  That afternoon, Dawson sat on the library sofa, which unfortunately put him in the direct path of Bishop’s glare, and tried not to fidget. Maybe this whole visit thing wasn’t such a hot idea, especially since the temporary peace they’d established before the procedure yesterday seemed to have gone up in smoke.

  The old man had been home from the hospital for about an hour, which was enough time for him to commence being mad at the world. Sitting on the love seat next to Arnetta, he’d hated, in no particular order, the Welcome Home sign Arnetta had hung over the front door, the cheery flowers and the boxes of sugar cookies, his favorite. Also on his shit list: Andrew, Eric and their wives, all of whom had fussed over him once too often and been banished from the room in punishment.

  “Good luck,” Andrew muttered to Dawson, as they were filing out. “You’re going to need it.”

  “No shit, Sherlock,” Dawson hissed out of the side of his mouth. “Too bad they didn’t send us home with a tranquilizer dart for the old guy.”

  Andrew snorted and Eric laughed outright. For a minute the three of them shared a moment—Dawson was reminded of the time Bishop had caught them trying to transfer some of Eric’s fish from the lush saltwater tank into the swimming pool, just to see what they would do—and it was so much like the old days that Dawson felt a sharp pang of nostalgia.

  Man. He almost wished—

  Some unspoken and invisible signal zapped them all at the same time, snapping them out of it. They seemed to realize the slippery slope of being nice to each other and looked away, embarrassed. Dawson watched them disappear down the hall with an unexpected lump in his throat.

  Not cool, man. Not cool at all.

  Then they were gone and only he and Arnetta were left to absorb the brunt of Bishop’s considerable temper.

  The old man was in a foul-ass mood.

  The glaring continued while Dawson tried to remain placid.

  “Go ho
me, Josh-a,” Bishop told him, a dismissive hand flap tacked onto the end of his sentence just in case Dawson didn’t get the message. “Bye.”

  Arnetta tutted and shot Dawson an apologetic look, which was funny since she’d never been that big a fan of her late husband’s bastard son number two. “Bishop,” she said, rubbing his thin shoulder, “you don’t mean that.”

  While Dawson appreciated the attempts at diplomacy, they were pointless. “Of course he means it, Arnetta. But I’m not leaving. I’m staying at Heather Hill now, Bishop.”

  “Why you come back?” The old man’s brows dropped to a fuzzy and intransigent line above his flashing eyes. Dawson almost laughed. It was wild the way Bishop’s spirit was still so clearly there and undamaged, despite the speech problems that would require therapy. “Make fun of me tease? Cause trouble?”

  Fair questions.

  Dawson shrugged and tried to put his former life’s purpose in twenty-five words or less. “I came back to get what’s coming to me: my place in the family. If that caused a little trouble, I didn’t really care. But now—” His face flushed and he swallowed back a bit more of that unwanted emotion that kept throwing him off. “I thought I’d stick around a while and make sure you go to therapy and take it easy.”

  Uh-oh. Wrong thing to say. Big time.

  Bishop’s lips went hard and flat, and he cracked them open just enough to speak another mangled sentence. “You feel sorry for me pity. Get—”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “—out gone. Bye-bye.”

  Dawson started to get the picture. He should have realized sooner that no man, especially a proud and stubborn old fart like Bishop, who’d run this household since before Noah started collecting animals two by two, would want people either helping him or feeling sorry for him. Dawson understood; God knew he’d feel the same way if it were him.

  “I don’t feel sorry for you, old man.” This wasn’t entirely true, but what else could he say? “I’m here to make sure you get back to a hundred percent before Heather Hill falls down around your ears. We all know no one can run this place like you can, so I plan to kick your ass up one side and down the other if you don’t follow your therapist’s instructions.”

  Bishop’s eyes widened with obvious surprise, and Arnetta said, “Oh, my.”

  Now that he had their full attention, Dawson leaned back and crossed one of his ankles on his knee. “And I want to make sure you don’t terrorize the rest of the household while you’re rehabilitating. Got it?”

  Bishop shook his head, his expression stormy. “Don’t need y-you. Y-you like me don’t hate.” Another head shake, violent with frustration at the garbled sentences. “Y-you hate me.”

  “I don’t hate you, old man. But we’ve got a couple things to work out, don’t we?”

  Huh. A couple things. Big-time understatement.

  Bishop seemed to take it as such, judging by the continued glowering.

  Arnetta, meanwhile, divided her anxious attention between them, vibrating with the readiness to spring up and quash any violence that might break out. Maybe she was worried that any further interaction between father and son would lead to Bishop having another attack, but Dawson wasn’t concerned. At the moment, the old man had enough iron in his spine to pick the whole mansion up and move it six inches to the left.

  Bishop opened his mouth, determined to force out another sentence or two. “N-not ‘old man.’ Pops. Call me. Pops. Unner…unner…unnerstan?”

  Was this funny, or what? It’d take more than a mere health crisis to take the stubborn out of Bishop. Dawson and Arnetta exchanged a tiny wry glance, and Dawson tried not to smile.

  “Pops,” he conceded.

  Looking somewhat mollified, Bishop held up a shaky and gnarled index finger and wagged it at Dawson, then Arnetta, with a stern warning. “N-no pity sorry. Okay fine I’m.” He scrunched his eyes closed and breathed in a long breath that was clearly meant to help him past this roadblock.

  Then he tried again.

  “I’m,” he said with perfect clarity, “f-fine.”

  “I know,” Dawson said.

  Bishop turned to Arnetta for her agreement as well. Starchy as always, she hitched her chin up, as though she needed to keep the invisible crown on her head balanced.

  “First of all,” she told Bishop, “you’re not in charge of this house. I am.”

  Both Bishop and Dawson snorted at this blatant lie, since everyone east of the Mississippi knew, and always had known, that while Arnetta was the money behind the Heather Hill operation, Bishop was the heart, but she ignored them both.

  “Second,” she continued, “I am perfectly capable of running this house until you’re back up to speed—”

  “Shit crap bull,” Bishop muttered; Dawson swallowed his burst of laughter.

  “—and third, you’ve taken care of all of us since dinosaurs roamed the earth—”

  “Before,” Bishop interjected.

  “—so why don’t you let us take care of you for once?”

  This impassioned speech didn’t make so much as a chink in Bishop’s intransigence. “I. Run. House.”

  “Oh, fine,” Arnetta huffed with exasperation. “You run the house. You, you, you. And if I find so much as one speck of dust on the furniture, I’m going to fire both you and the housekeeper. Does that make you happy?”

  Apparently it didn’t, because Bishop kicked that glare up into fifth gear, narrowing his eyes until it was a wonder he could see anything other than his own lashes. “No rolls junk.”

  For the first time, Dawson had no idea what the old man was talking about, but Arnetta obviously got his meaning loud and clear. You’d think she’d have a crick in her neck from keeping her royal nose stuck in the air for so long, but no. Damned if she didn’t notch her chin a little higher.

  “I will have Cook make me some cinnamon rolls if I want them. You couldn’t stop me when you were at a hundred percent, and you won’t stop me now.”

  O-ho. That old fight. Bishop had been trying to get the old girl to eat healthy since before Nixon thought about breaking into the DNC, and that tendency had no doubt intensified since her heart attack a few years ago.

  “Not healthy bad.” Bishop stared her down, his brows knit with fury. “I stop you.”

  This could go on for a while. Though Dawson was mildly interested in the outcome—if Batman and Wonder Woman went head-to-head, you wanted to see who emerged victorious—he had work to do and calls to make.

  “I’ll check in with you two later,” he said.

  They ignored him, and Arnetta was just getting wound up. “I’ll thank you to remember that I’m—”

  Chuckling, Dawson headed down the hall and around the corner.

  And ran directly into Arianna.

  Chapter 10

  Instinct took over.

  Spurred by the desire not to knock this poor woman down for the second time in twenty-four hours, and by the stronger desire to touch and hold her, even if it was for some trumped-up reason that should make his pride hang its head in shame, Dawson caught her.

  They rocked together for a minute, long enough to regain their footing and for him to hear, and enjoy, the sharp hitch of her breath. She felt so freaking good, and he soaked up every unforgettable detail in that one second. The curve of her waist and the way the soft cotton of her dress slid over her toned flesh. Her compact strength, the mind-numbing heat of her. The delicious tropical scent of whatever she used on her hair and, finally, the silky slide of her bare arms as she stepped away.

  “Sorry,” he said.

  Too flustered to look him in the eye, she covered by tucking her hair behind her ear. “Maybe I should start wearing protective gear around you.”

  “I don’t think that’s necessary.”

  “I’m starting to feel unsafe.” She hesitated, risking a quick peek up at him. “In more ways than one.”

  Dawson tried not to lose another little piece of himself to her, but there it went. Something
about her unabashed vulnerability and honesty—and most everything else about her, frankly—had wormed its way into his blood and was now drumming a steady beat. There was no hidden agenda or game playing with this woman. What you saw was what you got, which was quite the refreshing change. Pretty much everyone else in his life, and certainly everyone here at Heather Hill, was duplicitous enough to work for some covert branch of the CIA, but not Arianna.

  “I can see why you’d think that,” he said softly. “But I’m planning to be much more careful with you in the future.”

  That made her bristle. “I’m not some fragile little—”

  Arianna? Fragile? Yeah. And he planned to be the first human to flap his arms and fly to the sun and back. “I never said you were. All I’m saying is that if something is special to someone, he should take good care of it.”

  A slight widening of her gorgeous but wary eyes was the only reaction he got, and then she changed the subject. “Thanks for the, ah, hot chocolate this morning.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “And the croissant.”

  “My pleasure.”

  Ducking her head, she took a step toward the library. “I’ll see you later.”

  “I wouldn’t go in there if I were you.” He put a hand on her arm to stop her, his urgency fueled by a ten-percent desire to give Bishop and Arnetta some privacy, and a ninety-percent desire to keep Arianna around for as long as possible. “The old folks are bickering.”

  “So what else is new?”

  “It reminds me of the way he was with Mama, actually.”

  “Oh.” Concern flickered in her eyes. “That must be hard.”

  “Yeah, well.” He shrugged, but there was no keeping it light, not when he was talking about Mama. “She’s been gone a long time.”