Chapter Eight

Well, this was a strange turn of events. Here he was holding Lacy and talking like he had an army to back up the big talk coming out of his big mouth. Hell, Jake didn’t even have Jamaal at the moment, not like his buddy was much help when it came to a fight anyway. Mostly he just caused trouble. Jamaal tended to talk a good story, but he usually went down with the first punch when it came to fists. But still. A man didn’t let a woman go unprotected, especially not one shivering up against him like Lacy was doing. If she needed help, by hell, Jake would stay by her side and fight to the last drop of his blood.

“What do you want to do with it?” he asked, nodding at the lock box. He’d seen Dr. Presley plenty. She wasn’t the type to get rattled very easily, but the box didn’t look strong enough for the kind of secret Lacy thought was in there.

“For tonight, I’m putting it under my bed,” Lacy answered as she crouched over to shove the box far beneath her bed. “It’s not like I have a safe to hide it in. I think Marlee just wanted it out of her office anyway. It should be safe here until she wants it back.”

Lacy shouldn’t have done that, not stuck her butt up in the air while she watched where the box went under the bed. Like she didn’t know what that position did to a guy? A woman should never bend over in front of a hungry man, not with her butt clad in tight stonewashed denim like Lacy’s was.

He licked his lips and pulled his mind out of the gutter. At least, he tried. Real hard. “You’d think she’d give the evidence to a lawyer or someone instead of to her nurse,” he said hoarsely.

“I know, huh?” Lacy agreed as she came back to his eye-level. “That’s what I was thinking. Why me? I’m just her assistant. Why didn’t she give it to her buddy, Dr. Anderson?”

“She must trust you more than her lawyer or Anderson.”

“Maybe, but it’s scary having something in my house that could convict someone like Rafe Poindexter.”

He nodded. Conversation stalled. All he could think of was the tight curve of her ass in those jeans. The seam between the cheeks of her ass. The heat that was sure to be there. Her scent.

“What’s next?” she asked, her voice a pitch lower than he’d ever heard it before.

He had a few ideas, but she probably meant something besides what was going on in his head. “I know how to cook,” he admitted weakly, like that solved a damned thing. Thoughts of her plump round backside still enticed. He took hold of her arm ready to pull her to her feet. “I could fix dinner since, you know, you worked all day. You’re probably tired.”

She scrunched her shoulders, but didn’t attempt to get on her feet. “I have a kielbasa in the fridge. I could slice it up and make spaghetti.”

His stomach growled at the thought of sausage simmering in tomato sauce. A home-cooked meal was a rarity for a guy from the hard streets of Anacostia. “You got any garlic cloves? Oregano? Parmesan cheese?”

“I do,” she whispered.

He heard her swallow, and that simple sound of her throat working hard against the lump of fear broke something open deep inside his hard jarhead heart. All she had on was a light blue, short-sleeved scrub top over those jeans, not even a winter jacket. Her bicep felt warm and vulnerable beneath his fingers. This woman wasn’t made to fight the world, and she shouldn’t have to.

“What’s a nice girl like you doing in the middle of nowhere Anacostia?” he asked, the feel of his hand on her arm the perfect narcotic for the constant ache in his heart. Something was happening between them, and it wasn’t the lure of his first decent dinner in a long time, although it did have something to do with appetite. Whatever it was, he didn’t want it to end. Not yet.

“Same as you,” she murmured. “I was a Marine. I got out and came home three years ago. My parents, they—” She gulped a noisy gulp again. “I might as well tell you because you’re bound to find out. I, umm, had a nervous breakdown. I freaked one day. Funny. I don’t even remember what set me off, but by the time I was through, I was... I was....”

He tipped her trembling chin up with the tip of his index finger so he could see into the depths of her eyes. Lacy had the softest green eye color, the color of the tips of pine tree branches in early spring when they were new and tender, but still not tough enough to face the world.

“I had one of them myself,” he admitted to another human being for the first time ever. She needed to know she wasn’t the only Marine who fell apart after they came home. Hell. He had his good days, but he had plenty of bad ones, too. “’S why I live here, I mean, over on Fifteenth Street. It ain’t perfect, but it’s good enough.” Like me. I’m good enough for the ragged streets of Anacostia, and Anacostia’s good enough for me.

“You and Jamaal hang out in the old IGA store?” she asked, her lower lip trembling. And moist. And lush. Her eyes seemed to shine with an open invitation he didn’t want to accept, but he couldn’t make his eyeballs move out of those shimmering pools of mossy green comfort. The more he looked, the more he wanted to look. Hell, he wanted to touch. This woman was heating up under his fingertips.

How could she possibly look at him like that? Like he was worthy? He didn’t deserve one taste of her bottom lip much less all the other body parts he was thinking of tasting. Taste nothing. He hadn’t allowed this feeling in years. This appetite. This craving. He licked his lips. Lacy was sugar and cream with a hint of wild clover honey. Those succulent lips tempted. The uniquely feminine scent of her wafted up in the warm draft between their bodies. Pay dirt. If they didn’t get out of this bedroom, he was in trouble. Big, hard trouble.

“They had me committed,” she confessed, her eyes not blinking despite the tears streaming out of them. “They… they… put me in a straight-jacket, and they took me away, and they… they strapped me down. They did this shock treatment thing to my head.”

His heart melted into one angry, sad blob at her feet. “Who did that to you, baby?” he asked, his hand suddenly cupping her jaw, his now clean thumb good enough for her, wiping those tears out of the forest in her eyes. How could anyone do such a thing?

“My mom. My dad. The doctor.” She blinked then, her lashes full of tiny drops of pain and betrayal. Again with the noisy gulp. He kept soothing, but she kept crying, and now, damn it. Right here and now, he wanted her to let it all out so she’d never have to think about it again. Not the pain. Not the barbaric treatment she’d endured. Not none of it!

“Tell me about it,” he begged.

“I hated them for a long time, but now…” She leaned more heavily into him, and he didn’t think twice when he wrapped her up tight and safe in the circle of his arms. She snuggled in under his chin like a lost child. He wasn’t much, but damn it, he was there, and she seemed to need what little he had to offer. “But now that I’ve had time to think about it, I know I probably just frightened Mom and Dad when I flipped out. I mean, it’s not like we could talk about what happened over there. They didn’t know what to do with me, and there are lots of treatments for hysteria, and it could’ve been worse, and—”

“How could it have been worse?” He begged to differ. Her parents did something like that to her? She must’ve been out of control for them to resort to such drastic measures, but restraints? Shock treatments? What flaming morons!

“They could’ve drugged me,” she said softly, her breath moist against his Adam’s apple. “They could’ve made me forget. You know how it is, Jake. As bad as it was over there, I don’t ever want to forget what happened, not any of my friends, either. They’re who made me what I am today. They brought me here.”

To me.

She sighed as if she agreed, the most perfect music to his ears. He dared lower his nose into her hair and warmth suffused his heart and soul. Heaven couldn’t compare. He’d used her shampoo, but it smelled so much better on her. Jake closed his eyes and wished with all his heart they didn’t have to get up off their knees and leave her bedroom. That he didn’t have to let her go.

“I might not be rich like my parents,” she said as she glanced over her shoulder and above her brass headboard. He followed her gaze to the wooden crucifix on the wall. “But I know who I am, and I make a difference in this world. I help people. They might not know it, but the people of Anacostia need me.”

“You’re just like me,” he murmured. Maybe it was the guy hanging on that crucifix or maybe it was the fact they were still kneeling, but a reverent feeling joined them right then and there. Or maybe it was just—her.

The day he’d finally caught up with his drunken buddy, Jamaal, was the day Jake had decided that if he could help one guy in need, he could help a couple others, too. Jamaal wasn’t much work. Mostly he just needed a friend to steer him out of the line of fire when his mouth got him into trouble. Jamaal picked fights for nothing when he got drunk, but he seemed to listen to Jake. That was how Sector 18 happened into existence. It wasn’t a whole lot different than that other Sector 18. Only no one was going to die this time.

Jake had watched out for Lacy since the day he’d seen her at the clinic. So what if her apartment wasn’t within the self-assigned boundaries of Sector 18? He’d made an exception.

Built just southwest of Barry Farms, so named after the flamboyant and controversial former mayor of D.C., her place was as rundown as the rest of Anacostia. But Lacy wasn’t. She’d had a bounce to her step that day, like she’d just moved into the up-scale Hilton across the river instead of a two-bit dive. Like she hadn’t gone to war at all.

When her arms circled his waist and her cold fingers drifted under the back of his shirt, he knew better. He should’ve jerked away from her, but he didn’t. The lure of her rounded, heaving breasts stole what common sense he had left. This woman was different. He’d wanted to get closer to her from the first day he’d seen her.

As if she could read his mind, she stretched up and placed one gentle warm kiss into the hollow of his neck. Just his neck. She was short after all, but she might as well have set it directly on his heart. It burned. A million gigawatts of need tripped his last circuit breaker, melting the eternal damper of his negativity. Jamaal could wait. The world could wait. Jake lowered his chin, never more certain of anything than the woman in his arms. He was good enough, damn it. He was.

His fingers daring to explore the curve of her slender back. Her graceful neck. The way her skull fit perfectly in the palm of his hands. The feel of her head in his big rough hands set his heart to trembling. As a fellow Marine, she knew damned well what a man could do with a neck as dainty as hers, and yet she’d willingly let him hold her life in his hands. This woman trusted him.

“Lacy,” he growled, wanting so much to believe he belonged here in this perfect place and time. With her.

She met his gaze, her eyes swimming with soft emotions. “Yes,” she said clearly, only it wasn’t a question. It was an answer, the perfect answer to the question he hadn’t asked yet.

Pushing off the floor, he gathered her up with him and slowly lowered her onto her bed. The time was finally right. The woman was perfect. There would never, could never be another. Only Lacy. Only now.

He’d no more than pressed his lips to her lips, when out of the deep dark pit of despair in his soul, Fantine’s soul-rending plea for mercy from Les Misérables burst forth, drenching him in bone-chilling waves of regret. The melancholy spirit of her song lapped at his core. Life had killed his dreams as sure as it had killed sweet Fantine’s. God wasn’t forgiving, and Lacy was truly as pure, if not purer than Fantine.

What the hell am I doing?

The reality of his ugly, smelly male body doing what it was doing to her very delicate and exquisitely feminine self, stalled every good intention, every impulse. Even her skin was clean and white, not marred by the sun. But Jake wasn’t pure, nor could he ever be again. And he knew it. He was scarred in so many ways. His face. His hands. His soul. There wasn’t one part of him that had not sinned. I haven’t even shaved.

Her bedroom walls closed in like a trap, his throat along with them, and this was wrong. He couldn’t draw a breath, so he pulled away before he ruined Lacy like all those evil men had done to poor Fantine so long ago. She’s too good for me.

He could’ve sworn Fantine argued, “Don’t, Jake. Please, don’t.”

“Don’t?” he asked, afraid he’d gotten lost in Victor Hugo’s tragic love story, that he’d already committed the unforgiveable sin of humiliating this woman. Afraid he was on the verge of losing his mind.

“Jake. Look at me.” Two hands came into his dream and pulled him back through the swirling vortex between nineteenth century France and into the reality of modern day Anacostia. It was Lacy beneath his body, not poor broken Fantine. It was Lacy’s slender fingers knotted into the sides of his shaggy head, pulling him back until they faced each other, nose to nose. It hurt. She wasn’t gentle, but up he came, face to face with her depths of emerald wonder, instead of lingering in Fantine’s bleak grays. The pristine truth shining in Lacy’s eyes stopped his heart. I’m not the noble Valjean, but neither am I the devious Thénardier.

“Stop thinking so damned hard,” she growled, holding him fast. “Don’t you dare quit on me, Jake Weylin. Not now. Not here. I know you probably think I’m ugly and crazy, but—”

“I do not,” he cried out, suffering to his core that she could ever mistake his repulsion of himself for rejection of her. “It’s not you. You’re not ugly. You’re the most beautiful creature in the world, and you’re not crazy. It’s me. I’m the beast. I never should have—”

“No, you aren’t!” Her eyes brimmed with tears that couldn’t fall because she was flat on her back. They welled up like soft green pools in her amazing eyes, and he was looking through a shimmering mirror into the soul of the most perfect creature he’d ever seen. Lacy was a well of mercy, and he was on the verge of falling into her. Of believing.

“But I’ve done things,” he murmured, trying to understand what it was she saw in him, why she’d looked twice at him that first day in the alley, much less how she could allow him to touch her now.

“So have I,” she growled, her chin up in a Devil-dog dare. “I’m a Marine just like you. I’ve been there, only I…” She hiccupped, her body shaking with emotion. “I need you so damned much, Jake. Don’t you get it? I can’t live the rest of my life being sorry for what happened yesterday. I can’t stand coming home to nothing while you watch me from the shadows across the street. Let the past go. Push it away. Kick it off. Stay with me.”

He couldn’t bear that she, a woman so rare and sweet, was begging him, of all the men on the planet, to stay.

“I’m sorry,” she said softly, the tender pads of her thumbs wiping away the trickle of moisture leaking out of his eyes.

“For what?” Jake ground out through too much regret. He blinked hard, not wanting to ever stop watching her or basking in the glow of her acceptance.

“For making you cry,” she whispered. “It’s just that—”

“I can’t do this.” With one last shudder he pulled his hands off her and lifted to his knees. Then to his feet. He was already falling for this woman, and he had to leave before it happened all over again. The last time, she’d died. Fantine was Emile and Emile was Lacy and...

Where am I going with this?

It didn’t matter. They were all the same story, the same beginning and ending, and if Fantine and Emile died...

It had to stop. Lacy had to live.

Jake closed her bedroom door behind him.