Maybe literally.
Judd just didn’t see how he was going to be able to keep his hands, and the rest of him, off her, when she’d be in his line of sight no matter which way he turned. Of course, he had plenty on his mind that might cool the heat. Kace could lose the boys, and if that happened, they’d go into the system.
“This has to make things right with the social worker and CPS,” Cleo added, but it, too, was a variation of what she’d already said a couple of times.
Judd wanted to assure her that it would indeed fix the problem, but he wanted to keep his lies and bullshit to a minimum. Truth was, he didn’t have a lot of faith in the foster system. He’d been in some bad homes and knew that Nico and Callen had been in even worse. Not every kid could get a foster dad as good as Buck.
And that brought him back to the promise Judd had made to Beckham.
He’d told the boy that he wouldn’t let them be separated, and he had to follow through on that. Maybe not the way Beckham wanted, though. Judd wouldn’t run with the kids, but he might be able to convince CPS to turn over the fostership to, well, him. Maybe even Kace and him together. If that didn’t work, then he’d need to find someone acceptable to take the boys to.
“I need to talk to Audrey as backup,” Judd said. He hadn’t actually meant to say that aloud, and after seeing the surprised look on Cleo’s face, he probably should have kept it to himself.
“Dr. Holcomb?”
He nodded. “If I ask her, she might do a report that could sway CPS in Kace’s favor.”
Cleo stayed quiet a moment. “Would that cost you?”
Again, going with the nonbullshit route, Judd didn’t pretend that he didn’t know what she meant. Audrey would likely do this as a personal favor to him. Emphasis on the personal. And while she wouldn’t put any kind of pressure on him, he’d feel obligated to pay her back. That would be personal, too.
“Yeah, it would probably cost me,” he admitted.
Cleo pinched her lips together a moment, then let out a long breath. “I wish I could insist that you not go that route, but...” She left it at that, and Judd was okay with it.
“I know what’s at stake here.”
That only tensed her expression even more, and she looked to be on the verge of apologizing—yet something else she’d been doing a lot of in the past twenty-four hours—but she stopped when her attention went to the window. Judd glanced over and saw Kace and the boys making their way to Kace’s cruiser, which was parked in front of Buck’s home. Neither the boys nor Kace looked especially happy.
“Something’s wrong,” Cleo muttered, and she hurried out the door. Judd was right behind her.
“CPS arranged for us to speak to a therapist,” Kace volunteered.
“On a Sunday?” Cleo asked.
“They thought it would work better than the boys having to miss school. Donna Ezell agreed to do it at her office today.”
Cleo looked at Judd, and even though she didn’t ask, he figured she wanted to know if he knew this therapist. He did. “She’s a guidance counselor at the middle school, but she also has a private practice.”
Such that it was. Other than Gopher Tate, there wasn’t a high demand for therapists in Coldwater. Folks who needed counseling usually went into San Antonio for that so that no one would see them coming and going from Donna’s office. That would set the gossips’ tongues wagging.
“Should I go with you to the appointment?” Cleo asked.
Kace shook his head so fast that he’d obviously already considered and then dismissed that idea. “No. I don’t think it’d be a good idea for your name to be in the report, and Donna will have to send a summary to CPS.”
Cleo smiled, but Judd knew it was forced. It was for the boys’ benefit.
“We gotta talk to another lady,” Leo mumbled. He had his hands shoved in his jeans pockets, and there wasn’t much left of his usual sunny expression. Of course, the sunniness had diminished some after Mrs. Gateman’s visit.
“I don’t want to talk to her.” That from Beckham. “I don’t want to talk to any-damn-body.”
Kace gave a frustrated sigh that let Judd know he’d been on the receiving end of all the boys’ sour moods and that he didn’t approve of the profanity.
“Could I talk to Beckham a moment?” Cleo asked Kace. “Do you have time?”
Kace checked his watch. “We’ve got about five minutes.” He leaned against his cruiser while Cleo walked a few feet away with Beckham. Not far enough, though, because Judd could still hear her.
“Please keep it together for your brothers,” Cleo told him. “Please. I really need you to do this.”
“What if none of this helps?” Beckham snarled. “What if they try to take us?”
That was obviously Kace’s cue to get Isaac and Leo interested in something else. He moved them into the cruiser, putting Leo in the front seat so he could play with the police radio.
“Seeing this therapist is the way to stop CPS from taking you,” Cleo insisted. “Follow the rules and do as they say. Please,” she repeated.
“The rules.” Beckham spat out the words as if they were a profanity. “That’s why you moved in with Judd.”
“It is,” she admitted, “but it’s a small price to pay.” She shrugged. “Well, for me, anyway. Judd probably isn’t fond of sharing his space.”
Beckham looked at Judd, and since the boy seemed to be waiting on some kind of answer, Judd just shrugged, too. It was the truth. He wasn’t fond of space-sharing, but it was only temporary.
“I don’t like this,” Beckham went on. “I don’t like any of it.”
Cleo ran her hand down his arm. “I know.” She paused. “What about the letter from your mom? Did it help?”
Even with everything else going on, Judd hadn’t forgotten about Cleo giving him that letter in the barn. He’d worried about how Beckham was going to deal with it.
“I didn’t read it.” Beckham looked away from Cleo.
“Why not?” Cleo asked.
Beckham still didn’t look at her. The ground held his attention, and he took his time answering. “Because it’ll be like a real goodbye. The last one from my mom.”
“Oh, Beckham.” Cleo reached for the boy, but he sidestepped her and shook his head.
“If I don’t open the letter,” he added, “she can’t say goodbye.” And with that, Beckham moved away from Cleo as if he’d just been scalded, and he hurried to the cruiser.
Ah, hell.
Cleo had tears in her eyes, and that couldn’t be a good send-off for Beckham, either. Still, that five minutes was probably up, and Kace wouldn’t want them late for the appointment. Cleo and Judd stood there and watched Kace drive away.
Cleo kept blinking hard, no doubt fighting those tears, and Judd finally put his arm around her and led her toward the cabin. “I’m really screwing this up.” Her voice cracked over the words.
“No, you’re not.” Judd kept her moving and got her inside. “You’re just trying to make the best of a bad situation.”
Frowning, she looked up at him as if to see if he meant it. He did. Of course, words weren’t going to fix things, but he thought of something that might.
“While we wait for Kace to get back, I can offer you ice cream. Your favorite, Rocky Road. Or at least way back when, it was your favorite. Mine, too.”
Until he had told her the flavor, there’d been no sign whatsoever in her eyes that she was in an ice-cream kind of mood. “When we were sixteen, neither of us had a ‘get out of jail free’ card so you sneaked me some from the freezer after everyone had gone to bed.”
“It was a teenage boy’s version of candlelight and roses.”
“Better than candlelight and roses.” She gave him a dreamy smile, and their gazes held.
And there it was.
That heat that hooke
d him right around the neck and pulled him right toward her. Or at least it would have if Judd hadn’t forced himself to look away.
“You get us some spoons. I’ll get the ice cream,” he said.
He went into the kitchen before he could change his mind about that look, but Judd hadn’t thought of the logistics of two people being in the small space at the same time. Cleo’s hip brushed against his as she reached for the drawer next to the sink. For such a small touch, it packed a wallop. However, Judd hadn’t been expecting Cleo’s reaction.
She screamed, bolted back into the living room and screamed again.
Everything inside him went on instant alert, and Judd reached for the weapon that he kept in the high cabinet above the fridge. He stopped, though, when he saw what had caused her scream and what was causing her to bobble around on her toes and point at the drawer.
“Snake!” she shrieked.
Judd tried to tamp down the jolt of adrenaline he’d just gotten, and he took the snake from the drawer so he could hold it up for Cleo to get a better look at it. That clearly wasn’t the right way to handle this because she shrieked even louder and backed up against the wall.
“It’s not real,” he assured her. He knocked on the coiled rattler’s head with his fist so she could see there were no signs of life or sounds. “It’s one of Rosy’s taxidermy critters. She named it Sweetcakes, and, no, I don’t know what made her come up with that name.”
He’d hoped that Sweetcakes would get Cleo’s plastered back away from the wall, but she didn’t budge. “Why the heck would you have something like that in your kitchen drawer?” she demanded.
This was not going to be an easy or fun explanation, but going with his recent no-bullshit rule, he told her the truth. “It’s my distraction. Sort of a focal point similar to what women in labor use to get their minds off the pain.”
The blank look she gave him told him that his explanation was somewhat lacking.
“It’s something my sponsor came up with,” he went on. “If I get the urge to drink, I’m supposed to take this out of the drawer and stare at it while repeating a mantra of sorts. Safe words,” he added in a mumble.
That finally got Cleo moving from the wall, but she didn’t exactly move closer to him. She kept as much distance between them as she could manage in the small space. “And that works?”
He lifted his shoulder. “So far, though I can promise that I was just as skeptical as you are when Mercy suggested it. Mercy Marlow is my sponsor,” he explained.
Since she was still eyeing the snake as if it might come to life, Judd shoved it back in the drawer. He took out the ice cream and got two spoons.
“Safe words?” she asked. “You mean like sex stuff?”
If only. “Mercy prefers the term ‘safe word’ over code. In this case, neither really applies.” He debated a lie, but since this seemed to be amusing her, he went with the truth. “Dick inches. Those are my safe words.”
Her mouth quivered a little. “So, when you get the urge to drink you stare at a stuffed rattler named Sweetcakes while repeating ‘dick inches’?”
“Yep. Mercy has this bizarre belief that it’s okay to poke fun at AA and men in general. Did I mention she’s a former porn star who’s now a phone-sex operator?”
Now she laughed, and it was so good to hear it—and not see tears threatening in her eyes—that Judd figured it had been worth a little humiliation over telling her about his coping mechanisms.
“Considering Mercy’s, uh, background, I’m surprised she’d suggest a snake,” Cleo commented.
“Oh, that wasn’t her first choice. I nixed a cock ring, a nipple clamp and a pair of edible panties. At least I can take the snake out in mixed company.”
He sat on the couch, opened the pint of ice cream and handed her a spoon. Still smiling, she sat beside him and made a mmm sound when she took a bite. “How long has Mercy been your sponsor?”
“A little over a year.” Judd wasn’t sure how much Cleo knew about his drinking or if she could do the math, so he filled her in. “I haven’t had a drink since Mercy agreed to take me on.” To keep himself from babbling more, he had a bite of the ice cream and fed Cleo one.
“Then the unconventional Mercy deserves a huge thank-you,” Cleo concluded.
Yes, she did.
Cleo dug in for more ice cream and probably didn’t know that she now had chocolate smeared on her bottom lip. But Judd knew. And he felt his body do some clenching and begging to kiss it off. He wondered if distractions and safe words would work at keeping his hands off her.
“You don’t have to tell me,” she said, licking the spoon and giving his body another tug. “But did something bad happen to you when you were at Austin PD?”
Judd had a quick debate with what and how much to say. There was a simple answer here, and he gave it to her. “Yeah, something bad did. I became a drunk.”
“There’s not more to it than that?”
Obviously, she’d heard gossip. Hard not to, in Coldwater. But he doubted the gossips had gotten this one right.
“That’s enough,” he assured her. “I gave in to the flashbacks and the old stuff and stupidly decided to try to use whiskey to fix it.”
“Judd, I’m sorry,” she blurted out when he shifted. “I didn’t mean to pry.”
Cleo took hold of his arm as if she’d expected him to move away from her, but he had only been turning in her direction. He wasn’t going anywhere. Well, not too far, anyway.
Part of him considered that one way to end this uncomfortable conversation would be to kiss her. It’d do double duty of also getting that chocolate off her mouth—though that was a very minor reason. The biggest reason was that he was just plain tired of resisting her.
Judd leaned in and kissed at the exact moment that Cleo leaned into him. They nearly collided. It didn’t help that she still had the spoon in the vicinity of her mouth and that he was holding the tub of ice cream.
There were some small sounds of pain and some adjusting before they sort of leaped at each other. The spoons and ice cream clattered to the floor, but Judd didn’t care where they landed. At the moment, his mind was focused on just one thing.
Get Cleo naked now.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CLEO KNEW SOMETHING for certain—Judd tasted better than Rocky Road ice cream, and his taste was only one awesome thing about him. There were plenty of other parts other than his mouth that she planned on exploring.
Of course, Judd had kissed her before, but she could feel the difference between this one and the one in her car. That one had been a firecracker compared to this “stick of dynamite” one he was giving her now. There was a scalding urgency and the best part of all...
An erection.
She found this out almost by accident when she crawled into his lap, and the center of her body met the center of his. Hers was all soft, which made it somewhat easier to feel the long hard length of him. Apparently, that was all she needed to kick up her own need many, many notches.
Judd did even more notch-jumping by spreading his kisses down to the side of her neck, her ear and to the top of her breasts. Cleo definitely wanted more of that and worked her hands between them so she could unbutton her shirt. While she was there, she unbuttoned his, too, and got an instant treat when she ran her fingers over all those taut muscles in his chest.
The man was built. Really built. And she was going to enjoy every minute of the hard work he’d put into getting this body.
“Are we really going to do this?” she asked just to make sure. She didn’t want to strip if he was having second thoughts.
He didn’t answer, but he did move, causing her to curse herself for giving him an out and putting a possible halt to this.
“To heck with second thoughts,” she said, though the words came out garbled because at that exact moment when she’d
tried to speak, he took those scorcher kisses back to her mouth.
Judd also took her. Slinging his arm around her butt to keep her anchored against him, he stood. Not easily. With her still groping him, he got a little off-balanced and staggered. Cleo wanted him to stagger enough so that he’d drop back down on the sofa with her, but then she realized where he was going.
To the front door.
Either they were about to surprise Buck, Rosy, and the livestock and chickens by going outside, or... It was the or. Judd locked the door, something she was glad he had remembered because she certainly hadn’t.
The kissing raged on as they staggered and groped their way back across the room. Not to the sofa, though. He took her to the bed and dropped her on the feather mattress. It swelled up around her, burrowing her even deeper when she pulled Judd down on top of her.
This was the same cabin, the same bed, where she lost her virginity, but Cleo knew there was one huge difference. She didn’t have a boy in her arms. She had a man, and she was reasonably sure that was going to make this even more enjoyable.
Judd levered himself up, causing her to whimper in protest and reach for him, but he staved her off when he put his knee right between her legs. He probably hadn’t intended to create some nice pressure there while he stripped off her shirt, but it was enough that Cleo just lay back and enjoyed the ride that had already started.
She didn’t want to mention that Judd had gotten very good at undressing a woman. Definitely no fumbling, as he had when they’d been sixteen. He flicked open the front clasp of her bra, pushing aside both cups at the same time with a sweeping motion of his hands. Then he went after her breasts as if he planned on licking her to an orgasm.
Which much to Cleo’s alarm, just might happen.
Apparently, she hadn’t built up much of a resistance to Judd, and since she didn’t want to go all quick-draw alone, she did something to up his own urgency. She caught onto him and flipped him on his back. Once she had him pinned, she licked her way down his chest and to his stomach.
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