U.S. Marshals: Prey (U.S. Marshals Book 3)

by Laura Marie Altom

  “Sure?”

  She nodded.

  He released her, and once again she could breathe.

  “I left my cell in my truck, so let me run out and get that and I’ll place an order on my app. What do you want? Our usual?”

  “I guess.” Look at them. They were like an old married couple—without the sex. Only, if Adam were hers, she’d want to—well, you know—every night of the week!

  “You’re grinning again.” He pulled on a brown leather jacket before heading out the door. “When I get back, you’d better tell me what happened today, or else.”

  If by “or else,” he meant he’d tickle her again? Charity would gladly take her chances.

  Saturday night, Frederika, a Puerto Rican swimsuit model Adam met Friday afternoon while she was doing a promo thing at his favorite sporting goods store, glowered across the table at him. “Are you purposefully trying to ruin our evening?”

  “Um, no,” he said, putting down his menu. It’d been two days since his shrink-mandated order to find himself a date. He’d done just that, and look, on his very first try, not thirty minutes into the evening, already it was a disaster. At least Ralphie was having a fun time at Bug’s. “Why?”

  “First,” she said, slapping down her menu, as well. “You show up dressed like…” With exaggerated Latin flair, she waved her hands. “A hobo—”

  “A hobo?” He glanced down at his jeans and T-shirt. “This is one of my best tees. I even ironed it.” Sort of. Seeing how he’d yanked it out of the dryer while it’d still been warm.

  “And this place…” she said with a roll of her tongue, eyeing Ziggy’s red walls lined with sports memorabilia and the light fixtures that’d been rigged from basketball halves. She probably wasn’t much into the all-sports radio blaring, either. “Could you not have afforded better? And now, you tell me we must have beer with dinner, not wine? And your car was…how you say? Fill-thee.” Her speech’s grand finale was a theatrical shudder.

  “Sorry,” he said, nose back in his menu. Cheeseburger or ribs? Tough call. Maybe ribs? Bug always got the ribs when they came here. She loved Ziggy’s.

  “You should be sorry. Do you know how lucky you are to be with me? I could get another man just like that.” She snapped her fingers. “I deserve better. You show me a good time or I’ll call my brother Rico. He’d tell you how to treat a woman.”

  Adam inwardly groaned.

  “Well?” his date said, lifting razor-thin eyebrows. “You ready to take me to a nice place?”

  Where Adam wanted to take her was straight back to her apartment—strictly to drop-off so he never had to see her again.

  A vision of his glowering shrink made him try to please.

  But after fifteen minutes of incessant complaints, he followed through with his plan take her to a classier joint then to ditch her faster than that time he and Bug had a contest to see who could finish their Ziggy’s hot wings faster.

  “Adam?” Charity opened her door as wide as the security chain would allow. “What’re you doing here? It’s the middle of the night. I thought I was keeping Ralphie for the night?”

  “You still can. It’s only late for homebodies like you. Hey buddy…” He patted the dog’s head through the partially open door. “For normal people it’s eight p.m. So? You going to let me in?”

  She closed the door to unfasten the chain, then opened it again, wishing she’d had the foresight to put on real clothes.

  Once he’d helped himself to her sofa, then flicked on the end table lamp, he asked, “What’re you wearing?”

  “It’s a nightgown.”

  “No,” he said with a wink. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say it was negligee. Your sis give you that to go with the Victoria’s Secret lotion?”

  “Yeah, what of it? I wouldn’t even be wearing it if all my sweats weren’t in the washer.”

  “I’m not complaining,” he said. “Looks good on you. You should wear it again sometime.”

  “F-for you?”

  “Like friends with privileges?” He winked. “Hell, yeah!” A jab to her ribs showed her he was just joshing. So why wouldn’t her pulse slow down? “Hey, you wanna order pizza? I’m starving.”

  She dropped onto the sofa, pulling her knees up to her chest, then wrapping her arms around bare legs, wishing the ivory satin-and-lace baby-doll-styled number had a couple more yards of fabric.

  Ralphie curled alongside her.

  Charity asked, “Thought you had a swanky dinner date tonight with that swimsuit model?”

  “I did. But she didn’t like Ziggy’s Burger Barn, so I ended up having to take her to Swenson’s—and you know how pricey that place is. I shelled out fifty bucks a head for an ounce of beef and a few mystery green squiggly things. Oh, and there was some freaky mushroom pile, drowning in gravy and carrot sprinkles. But she didn’t like that, either. I was going to stop back by Ziggy’s after taking Freddy home, but after all that mind-numbing talk about her hair, clothes and nails, I found myself craving pizza—and you.”

  “Flattery like that will get you everywhere,” she teased, fussing with ten or so insect catalogs on her other side. “Well? You going to order from your app?”

  “Sure. Our usual?”

  “You know it.”

  He snatched his cell from the coffee table, placing an order for a large pan pizza with the works. Wandering into the kitchen, he grabbed a bag of potato chips from her snack cabinet. For an average person, this might’ve seemed odd, but Adam ate more than anyone on earth, so chips after a swanky dinner and before pizza was pretty much his norm. After popping two Hostess cupcakes, as well, he said, “And, hey, while we’re waiting for the grub, I’ve got something I’d like to run by you.”

  “Shoot,” she said, returning to the stag beetle she’d been pinning before Adam’s interruption.

  “Here’s the deal…” He sat beside her, then reached for her hands. As focused as she’d just been on pinning her new acquisition, the shock of him again taking her hand so intimately jolted her to a whole ’nother place—the fantasyland she’d spun of the two of them. Her first instinct was to yank herself free, but instead she froze, like the last time he’d pulled this stunt, selfishly indulging in the decadence of being held. “In the middle of this date with a strange, high-maintenance woman I knew after being alone with her for five minutes I never wanted to see again, I had a great idea.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Glad you asked,” he said with a grin so potent, it took Charity a second to find her next breath. “The company shrink told me I had to date, right?”

  “Yeah.” He was still massaging her hands, flooding her with tingling pleasure.

  “Well, the doc didn’t say a thing about who I had to date—just that I had to go out with someone.”

  “And?” Charity blamed trace formaldehyde fumes for the sudden dizzying heat.

  “And—you’re going to love this—so I figure, why don’t I just go out with you?”

  Charity hadn’t yet recovered from Adam’s first ludicrous statement, when he kept going. “The beauty of this plan,” he said, “is that not only do I get the doc off my back, but you’re not going to expect anything of me, right? We can hang here. Or have nice, cheap dinners at Ziggy’s. The way I see it, it’s a win/win for both of us, seeing as you’ll get free grub.”

  Charity snatched back her hands.

  “No” She pushed herself up from the sofa. “I’m too busy.”

  In front of the now-dark view of Mount Hood that’d been the reason she’d forked over too much for this loft, she crossed her arms and tried hard not to give in to the knot swelling at the back of her throat.

  Ralphie joined her, melding against her right leg.

  “Too busy?” Adam laughed, leaving the sofa to join her and his dog. “What do you do besides hang out with Ralphie and me?”

  “That’s my point,” she said, good and mad not only at his presumptuousness, but at herself for letting their relati
onship—or lack thereof—get to this level. She was tired of being his buddy. His pal. His dog’s mom. Dammit, she wanted to at least be his girl. And if she were totally honest with herself, in her wildest dreams, what she really wanted was to someday be his wife. Have his babies. And for Ralphie to be legally hers. “Is it so wrong of me to want more?”

  “More?” He coughed. “What’s that mean?”

  “Want me to spell it out?”

  “Might be nice.”

  “Okay. First off, do you have any idea how long it’s been since I’ve been on a date?”

  “No.”

  “Well, I’ll tell you. Over three years. And that’s just sad. Night after night, I sit here, listening to all your problems, Adam, and never once do I saddle you with mine.”

  “You could.” Grinning, he landed a friendly slug to her upper arm. “You know I’d be here for you—anytime. Come on, give me a few. I’m all ears.”

  “All right, for starters, I’m around men all the time, yet they don’t see me as a woman, but just another guy. I know I’ve got to do something to change that perception, but just the thought is overwhelming.”

  “Huh?” Sitting again, he leaned against the sofa back. “Are you PMSing? You’re acting a little mental.”

  “Thanks,” she said. She was really on a roll. “That helps a lot. Okay, next problem—since you mentioned PMS—I just had a physical, and my doctor asked if I plan on starting a family. Next, she launches into this speech on how if kids are something I want in my future, I might want to get on with it. She then proceeded to point out just how drastically the odds of fun stuff like birth defects increase the older women get. Geesh, I’m only thirty-five, so I ask, aren’t women having babies at fifty? But then—”

  “Whoa,” Adam said, making a T with his hands. “Time out. You? Want babies? As in someone a couple feet tall calling you ‘Mommy’?”

  “Is that so hard to believe?”

  He sobered. “Not at all, it’s just… Well, I never thought of you in that way.”

  “What way?”

  “You know…nurturing. Tucking little humanoid beings in for the night. Making sure they take their vitamins in the morning, helping with homework. When are you going to have time for you? And work? Let alone me?”

  “Adam?” The laugh crinkles at the corners of his eyes had her smacking him over the head with her ladybug throw pillow. “You’re such a jerk.”

  “Sorry,” he said. “But you’ve always been one of the guys. It never even occurred to me you’d go the family route.”

  “Family route? You think a dream I cherish is some stupid route?”

  “I never said that—and I sure as hell never said it was stupid. You’d make a great mom.” Gesturing to the dog, he added, “Ralphie loves you. But, dude, how do you expect guys to think of you as anything other than a guy when all you ever do is guy stuff? Play video games and watch ESPN. Slave over your bugs. I mean, if you want some stud to like you—in a baby-making way—maybe you should put on a dress. You know, let him know you’re interested. Speaking of which, got anyone special in mind for the daddy?”

  Someone knocked on the door. The pizza guy?

  “That was fast.” Adam’s raspy voice reflected relief at the interruption. As long as Charity had known him, he’d never been all that keen on sharing emotions. Lucky her, it looked as if he wasn’t about to change tonight. “To show how sorry I am about the baby crack, I won’t even ask you to pay half the bill.”

  “Maybe it’d be best if you just left.”

  “What do you mean?” he asked, expression dumbfounded. “The pizza just got here.”

  “Just go.” Arms crossed, Charity had a devil of a time trying not to cry as the realization of what she’d just done hit her. Blurting out she wanted a baby like that. Nuts. That’s what that was. “I seriously want you to leave.”

  “But—”

  “Please,” she said. Before I not only spill my deepest, darkest secret about loving you, but start blubbering, too. “Go.”

  Adam stood, pizza in hand, in front of the open door. “Sure that’s what you want?”

  Swallowing hard, Charity nodded.

  Ralphie didn’t budge from his spot beside her.

  For the longest time Adam just stood in the chilly hall, staring. The cool air raised goose bumps on her miles of bare skin, but she didn’t care. Why, she couldn’t say, but something about her asking him to leave had been akin to drawing her own personal line in the sand.

  She’d only just now realized it, but enough was enough.

  She couldn’t go on this way. Doing the same old things. Following the same old routines. If she was ever going to make more of her life—stop being the son her father wanted and discover the woman she knew herself deep in her soul to be—now was the time.

  She marched toward him, Ralphie following.

  With his free hand, using just tip of his index finger, Adam stroked heat from her shoulder to elbow, causing her to shiver both inside and out. “I’m worried about you. But if it’s space you want, you got it.”

  Dying a thousand tiny deaths over his unexpected kindness, she almost called him back inside. Almost. But what would that have served other than prolonging her pain? They’d never be a couple—not the way she wanted. The sooner she got that fact through her head, the better off she’d be.

  He wagged the pizza box, shot her a heart-stoppingly handsome grin, then said to Ralphie, “Come on, boy. I’ll give you the crust.”

  The dog looked from Charity to Adam, but eventually the lure of pizza must have wooed him toward the dark side. The two headed down the long hall.

  Closing the door, sliding the chain lock into place, lingering scents of Adam and sausage-and-mushroom pizza flavoring the air, Charity finally gave in to her tears.

  Sunday afternoon, Adam was drowning his sorrows in football and a bowl of canned chili—he’d wanted queso, but Bug wasn’t answering her phone and he couldn’t remember the recipe—when the doorbell rang.

  Ralphie leapt from the sofa, charging to greet their guest.

  Opening the door, Adam said, “Bug?”

  “Sorry.” His dad barged his way in with a bag overflowing with green stuff. “Better luck next time.”

  Ralphie still jumped and wagged his tail, but he didn’t howl like he did with Bug.

  “Yeah, right.” Adam muted the TV, then reclaimed his usual end of the sofa. His dad, a retired marshal, set his bag on the small table in what the official apartment complex guide called the dining nook, then lowered himself into the recliner. “What’s up?”

  Ralphie helped himself to his grandfather’s lap for a cuddle.

  “Just curious how your trip to the head doctor went. You were supposed to call.”

  “Guess I forgot.”

  “Well?”

  “Want chili?” Adam reached to the coffee table for his empty bowl, taking it to the kitchen for a refill.

  “No, thanks. I spent the morning at the Briar Street Farmer’s Market with Cal and Victoria. You remember her? Allie’s mom.” Cal was his oldest brother Caleb’s son—the son he hadn’t met till the kid was eight! Allie was Caleb’s wife. Caleb, also a marshal, had recently discovered he’d fathered a child when assigned to protect Allie, a judge. It blew Adam’s mind to think the woman had kept Cal from his father all those years. Still, seeing how the two of them had long since worked it out, Adam wasn’t one to interfere, or to dwell on the past.

  Ha! His conscience had a field day with that one. Other folks’ pasts didn’t plague him. His own, however, was a burden he feared he might always bear.

  Focusing on his old man rather than his own shortcomings, Adam raised his eyebrows. “Was this a date?”

  “No, no.” His dad looked away and coughed before rubbing Ralphie’s head. “Just a friendly outing with our grandson. That sack over there’s packed with veggies. Victoria says us men need more antioxidants.”

  Adam grinned. Who knew the old guy still had it in him
to charm the ladies?

  “It’s your date I’m here about,” his dad said. “How’d Saturday night go? Caleb and Beau said this Frederika was a real looker.” Count on his nosy brothers to be the ones spilling Adam’s private life to the one person he didn’t want knowing about it. His second oldest brother, Beau, was also a marshal, and carried the Logue family trait of sticking his nose where it didn’t belong.

  “Should be a looker,” Adam said with a grunt. “She’s a swimsuit model.” He turned the volume back up on the game. Seahawks vs. Jets. Sadly, the Jets were ahead by three touchdowns.

  “And…you going out again?”

  “Not that it’s any of your business, but no. She’s pretty high maintenance. Not my type.”

  “What’s Bug say?”

  “Huh?”

  “You know,” his dad pressed. “About the date. Does she think you should ask Frederika out again?”

  Adam turned up the TV.

  At work Monday, Charity did everything in her power to steer clear of Adam. Which was tough, seeing as how their team had just been assigned to a major drug case being tried in federal court. The defendant had been caught with more than thirty-two kilos of cocaine in his vehicle. As a statement to the jurors, the prosecution displayed the mounds of neatly packaged coke in the courtroom.

  The boss wanted marshals on hand to dissuade anyone who’d calculated the drug’s street value and thought it worth the risk to steal.

  All day, Charity stood at the back of the courtroom, dressed in her baggy black suit that, okay, did probably come across as a trifle masculine. But geesh, was she supposed to have shown up to guard the goods in a miniskirt? Trying to avoid eye contact with Adam, who’d been posted behind the judge, had only added to the fun.

  Talk about awkward.