7. Jimmy
Mixed signals, her body language was all over the place. First she was doing all but showing him the door, telling him he needed to get back to wherever the fuck he was staying to soak his damned shirt, and then: Stay a bit?
It was normal, he knew. He’d seen it a hundred times before, the emotional swings from one extreme to another. Her body’s fight or flight mechanisms were all over the place right now. She’d been attacked, she’d been threatened and terrified, found herself confronting possibilities he hoped she’d never had to encounter before, and never would again.
Right now, her body was coming down from that adrenaline peak, but couldn’t come down fully: she wouldn’t feel safe again for a long time.
Even when you’re properly trained, and when you’ve been in far worse positions than this, your body’s response is likely to be all over the place.
Mel had none of that.
All she had was him.
Talk about getting the shitty end of the stick.
§
“I’m not going anywhere,” he said.
She nodded, but said nothing more.
He remained standing by the window, arms folded.
It broke his heart to see her like this – what heart he still had, at least. Hugging her legs to her chest, rocking a little. She was clearly in shock. Her nose was swollen, particularly across the bridge. There was a scrape on her chin. Probably bruising elsewhere, but no breaks.
When he’d examined her he’d done his best to be cold, distant, even as his fingers pressed – her nose, her eye sockets, her spine, her ribcage. Done his best to ignore the look in her eyes as he’d gazed into them, checking for any odd dilation or responses that might indicate concussion.
He’d had to bite down, turn away, make a show of checking the room. Anything but look into those eyes again. Anything to blot the sensations of touching her, the recollection of holding her earlier in the park, how she’d fit so well into his arms, as if ten years hadn’t turned them into different people.
He focused on the girl. Harriet Rayner.
It was hard to tell how much weight to put on the things that were playing most prominently on Mel’s mind. The use of names – that her attacker knew Harriet’s full name, and that Glenn had called Mel what her friend had. Mels.
The first could easily be explained. Glenn had sent the guy to scare Mel, and Glenn clearly knew more about Harriet than he was giving away. Using her full name meant nothing.
And the latter was easily explained by the fact that Glenn and Harriet had been in contact before her disappearance. Jimmy knew about the calls and text messages, but Mel didn’t. Harriet could easily have referred to her as Mels at some point, and Glenn latched onto it. All it proved was what Jimmy already knew: Glenn and Harriet had communicated.
What did seem significant was that someone – presumably Glenn or someone close to him – had wanted to scare Mel off. Maybe she’d stumbled onto something, or it could simply be that someone like Glenn never liked people digging around his activities, regardless of whether they involved the missing girl or not. Of course he’d want to stop her asking questions of the dancers and anyone else she might be able to approach.
It was hardly news that Glenn had things to hide.
Frustrated, Jimmy turned and peered out of the window again.
Right now he hated Doug Conner for dumping him into this, for deliberately concealing key information for fear he wouldn’t want to get involved.
Whatever his controller’s reasons had been, it meant Jimmy was operating at least partly blind.
He bit back on his frustration, compartmentalized it for now because it would gain him nothing. At this moment, it was all about Mel: make sure she’s okay, make sure she’s safe, get her away from all this so it doesn’t get any more complicated than it already is.
She was watching him, and he hated what that did inside his chest – the leap of the heart, the catch of the breath. All that shit he didn’t do anymore.
“Sit with me?”
Bitch.
She couldn’t do this to him. The eyes. The voice. The being her.
She wasn’t doing it deliberately, he knew.
She was just scared. Out of her depth.
He sat, and the resulting sag of the mattress tipped her toward him, momentarily, before they adjusted, straightened, re-establishing a small space between them.
He kicked his shoes off, moved so his back was against the headboard too, his legs stretched out, the space between them carefully maintained.
“You okay?” he asked.
In his peripheral vision he saw the nod, but wouldn’t look. He had to keep his distance.
“You?”
Of course he fucking was. He nodded too. Was aware of his arms folded tightly, knew how defensive a posture that was.
She leaned in, rested her head on his shoulder. It couldn’t have been comfortable, but it was the contact that mattered, he knew.
Awkward, he unfolded his arms, raised one so she could settle in more comfortably, her cheek against his pecs and trapezius, his arm across her shoulders, the hand resting lightly on her upper arm. At least she wasn’t still bleeding, not that the shirt was going to survive this anyway.
He reached down, and felt her tense for a moment as she must have wondered what he was doing, then he eased his hand inside his jacket, freed his SIG Sauer from its concealed holster, and placed it on the bedside cabinet.
“What are you?” she asked. Then: “No. Don’t tell me. I’m not sure I want to know.”
“I’m still me,” he said, then stopped, realizing that might not be the most reassuring thing he could say. Still Jimmy Lazenby, the man she’d told to get out of her life all that time ago.
They’d only been kids, nineteen and twenty. It would have ended anyway.
As if she’d been thinking along the same lines, she said to him now, “I don’t think that’s true. You’ve changed. Since then.”
He couldn’t help feeling intensely aware of the physicality of this situation, of sitting here, holding her, of the way she pressed against him. He could smell her hair and a hint of perfume. Could feel every tiny movement as she breathed, and as she adjusted position.
He thought then of what she’d said earlier when she’d joined him in that greasy café across the road from the strip club.
You walked away. His reply, his defense, that she’d told him to go, and then: And you believed me.
What had she meant? What had he missed?
Again, as if she’d been following the same track of thought, she said, “I didn’t expect you to just go like that.”
“You told me to.”
“No resistance. No attempt to fight for me. You just went.”
It was true. That night she’d found him in the Flag and Flowers, come looking for another fight with him. He’d been sitting there with Glenn and their father and a couple of other regulars, he couldn’t recall who. She’d asked to talk with him and, confrontationally, he’d said okay, and waited, making it clear she could talk right there, not boss him about.
And so she had. She’d told him it was over. That she couldn’t take all this – a gesture, a sweep of the chin to indicate the pub, the people in it, and all that implied. The whole Lazenby thing.
“You hated me by then,” he said, not wanting that fight even now. “You hated what I was becoming.”
Even now, he remembered it so vividly. The look in her eye. That gesture, the all this of it.
He couldn’t do it, back then. Put her through it. He was a Lazenby and there was no changing that.
She’d hated that.
And so had he. He’d hated it all, and he’d hated himself, and he’d hated the slippery, inevitable path he was on, and he’d hated what he could see it doing to her.
So he’d got up and walked out. Didn’t take a thing – just left.
He was a Lazenby, and he set about changing it.
But now... he couldn’t tell her that. Couldn’t tell her the hatred he’d seen in her eyes was only a dim reflection for what he’d felt himself.
Now, she didn’t deny it. She’d hated him by then.
“I’ve changed, you’re right,” he said. “I’m not like them anymore.”
She shifted, pressed her cheek against him a little more firmly, and one hand came to lie flat against his chest. It was natural to press his own cheek down on the crown of her head, even if only briefly – a reassuring contact, a comforting one.
Again, he was intensely aware of every point of contact between them – the press of her face and head, that hand on his chest, her thigh against his; the way his hand rested so comfortably on her arm; the way she fit so perfectly beneath his arm.
He hoped to god she wasn’t looking down at the way his pants stretched tight, his physical response to her painfully obvious. He moved his other arm so it lay across his belly, cutting the line of sight, and simultaneously making sure his hand didn’t brush against her.
He didn’t need this.
Hadn’t come here for this. There genuinely had been no ulterior motive to insisting on coming to her room with her. He was being professional. Doing his job, the duty of care and all that shit.
He swallowed, controlling his breathing and cursing biology.
Her hand moved down, closed around his forearm, and he tensed. He’d never understood how so delicate a touch as her fingertips against the inside of his forearm could be so intimate.
“Thank you,” she said.
He didn’t know how to interpret anything right now. That touch. The words. Didn’t know if there were layers of meaning or if there was nothing below face value.
She shifted against him, and again he was so incredibly aware of all those points of contact, but also of her body, the softnesses, the firmness, the hardness of bone.
He should get up. Move. Check the perimeter, or some such shit.
Not just sit here, every muscle in his body tensed, battling to work out if his interpretation was...
She lifted her head, turned, pressed against him again, kissing his chest through the thin fabric of his shirt.
The soft heat of her lips was so intense. The tightening grip of her hand on his forearm. The pressing of her body.
Biology. The damned biology of his responses. The thump of his heart, the snatched breath, the hardening of his erection.
She pushed against him, with a languorous roll of the pelvis, clawed her fingers and slid that hand up his arm to his neck, his jaw.
Kissed harder, so he could feel the wetness of her mouth through his shirt.
Pulled at his head, turning him as her mouth moved up to find his.