CHAPTER 9
What was wrong with him?
He had spent a week telling himself he had no business being attracted to his lovely neighbor. Hell, more than that, he’d spent a lifetime keeping women like her at a safe distance. Women with soft, needy eyes and trunks full of emotional baggage and children.
And now here he was tangling tongues with the woman. Tasting the sweet minty traces of toothpaste in her mouth, inhaling the scent of violets that clung to her, basking in the warmth that surrounded her in a soft, hazy cloud.
One part of his brain knew it was a mistake kissing her like this—knew damn well that he would be swamped with regret just as soon as he could manage to wrench his mouth from hers—but the rest of him wanted nothing more than to tug her onto his lap and fill his hands with her softness and heat.
He couldn’t remember the last time he had tasted anything as sweet as Lisa Connors. If he ever had.
With a soft, erotic moan, she kissed him back with an enthusiasm that took his breath away.
Had he imagined that first quick flash of panic he thought he had glimpsed in the depths of her blue eyes just before their mouths connected? He must have.
She didn’t seem anything close to panicked now—her hands were wrapped around his neck, her small, unbound breasts pressed against him, and her mouth kissed him with a hunger that matched his own.
It was easy to lose track of time. He had no idea how long they stayed that way, tangled together in his kitchen while the night breeze fluttered the kitchen curtains through the open window and the only sound was their rapid breathing mingling together and the occasional erotic murmur she made against his mouth.
As long as he could continue to pretend he didn’t hear the warning bells in his head, he would have been content to spend all night kissing her. But suddenly she shifted position—not much, but enough to softly bump against his left leg, the one with the compound fracture.
The quick, sharp stab of pain worked better than jumping into a cold, mountain lake to yank him back to his senses.
What in the hell is wrong with you?
This time the voice barked harsh and loud, and he knew he couldn’t ignore it any longer. He drew back, wishing he could put more distance between them than merely to slide a few inches farther into the blasted wheelchair. He could taste her on his lips, still feel her heat surrounding him like seductive chains.
He wanted to run for the door, to jump into his Jeep and head as far and as fast as he could. Since he was stuck in the damn chair, he forced himself to face her with a studied casualness at strict odds with the torrent of emotions surging through him.
“You’d better hurry back next door before your girls wake up and find you gone.”
He might as well have just picked her up and tossed her into that mountain lake he’d been thinking about earlier. At his casual tone, she stared at him, her blue eyes wide and her mouth still swollen from his kiss.
“Wh-what?”
“Your kids. You shouldn’t leave them alone at night, even for the few minutes it takes to rescue your idiot of a neighbor who can’t even manage to get a midnight snack for himself.”
He forced himself to ignore the baffled shock in her eyes at his cool dismissal of their kiss, and the flash of hurt and dismay that followed it.
“You…you’re right. I need to leave.” She bounced up so forcefully the kitchen chair she’d been sitting in toppled backward with a crash that would have made him jump if he hadn’t already been holding himself in such tight control.
With her color high, she righted it again, her gaze focused everywhere in the kitchen but him. “Um, your hand should be fine. Just try to keep it clean. I…good night.”
Without another word, she rushed out of the kitchen. A few seconds later he heard the front door click shut, and he screwed his eyes shut, painfully aware of the tantalizing hint of violets lingering in the air and the hot craving in his gut.
He wanted her. Desire churned and bubbled through his blood, and he was hard and aching. He could have gone on kissing her forever. Worse, in a heartbeat, he would have taken things beyond kissing. If he could have figured out a way to work around the blasted casts, he could have shimmied her out of those shorts and had her on top of him, around him.
He groaned just thinking about it. He was damn lucky things hadn’t progressed that far. If kissing her was a mistake, making love would have been utter disaster.
Lisa Connors was soft, tender, nurturing. And he was a complete son of a bitch.
He had wounded her by his casual dismissal of their kiss. He knew it, had seen the shadows of hurt in those expressive blue eyes. What else could he have done, though?
Things were better this way. If he had to pretend those heated moments had left no effect on him, he could fake with the best of them.
Maybe he had fooled her enough that she would forget the hunger in their kiss and think he hadn’t been affected by it. He didn’t want a repeat of those few incredible moments. He couldn’t afford it. She was already sneaking her way under his defenses, softening him in a way that scared the hell out of him.
He would just have to make sure their mouths never tangled like this again. Even if the thought of never again sampling that sweetness left him restless and hungry and filled with a vast, empty ache.
* * *
“Mommy, why doesn’t Mr. McDonalds like us?”
Gaby’s question came out of the blue. One minute she was shaping a wad of play dough into something roughly the shape of a dinosaur, the next she was looking intently across the kitchen table at her mother and throwing something like that at her.
For a moment Allie didn’t know what she was talking about. Who was Mr. McDonalds? An instant later, realization hit. She winced and sent a quick look down the hallway to make sure Gage’s bedroom door was closed and he was safely out of earshot. “Do you mean Mr. McKinnon?”
“Yeah. How come he doesn’t like Anna and me?”
“I’m sure he does, sweetheart.”
Gaby shook her head hard enough that her thick, glossy braids swung in every direction, whapping her on the side of the face. “Does not. I don’t think he likes little girls very much.”
Or their mothers. Especially the ones who baby him and moon over him and kiss him in the quiet hush of a late-night kitchen.
She sighed. Since their kiss the night before, Gage hadn’t exchanged more than a few words with her, just enough to inform her tensely that he didn’t want breakfast. He had work to do in his room, he said, and didn’t want to be disturbed.
It was now close to lunchtime and he had effectively ignored her most of the morning. This stalemate couldn’t possibly go on all day. He needed to eat and he also needed her help with his home regimen of physical therapy exercises.
Eventually she would have to beard the cranky lion in his den but she had delayed as long as she could, especially when just being in the same room with him left her nerves raw and her thoughts scrambling.
She turned back to Gaby and forced a smile. Children could be remarkably perceptive to the subtle nuances flowing around them, far more intuitive than most people gave them credit for.
“I’m sure he likes you and Anna just fine, honey. You know how when you don’t feel well it can sometimes put you in a bad mood? Mr. McKinnon’s broken legs hurt him a lot.”
“So he’s grumpy to me and Anna because his legs hurt?”
“And maybe because he’s not used to being around little girls much. He’s not lucky enough to have any of his own.”
Gaby appeared to think this over, her hands busy with the play dough. “Maybe we could play some games with him, like you do with me when I’m sick. Do you think he would play Chutes and Ladders with us?”
Heaven forbid! “Maybe when he’s feeling a little better, okay? In the meantime, you and Anna can help by doing just what you’ve done already—being the best girls you can be. Can you do that?”
Gaby nodded, then poked her sister until Anna looked up from the blue snake she was rolling out and nodded, too.
“Good. Now I’m going to go see what Mr. McKinnon wants for lunch, okay?”
“Okay,” Gaby said cheerfully. “I hope it’s S’ghettios ’cause me and Anna really, really want S’ghettios.”
She smiled, imagining Gage McKinnon’s face if she showed up at his door with canned pasta for lunch. “Even if he wants something different, I can still fix Spaghettios for the two of you if that’s really what you want.”
Both Gaby and Anna nodded vigorously and Allie couldn’t resist tugging their shiny dark braids. “It’s a deal, then.”
If she had her way, she would stay right here in this sun-warmed kitchen and roll out play dough with her girls for the rest of the day. But she knew she couldn’t hide out here like a scared little mouse. Avoiding Gage would only make matters worse, only delay the inevitable and make their eventual confrontation that much harder.
With a deep breath for courage, she rose from the table and walked to his bedroom door. Inside she could hear the low murmur of CNN and the clicking of computer keys. Before she could talk herself out of it, she rapped on the door.
After an excruciatingly long pause while she wondered if her knock had been a shade too timid, he finally spoke, his voice gruff. “Yeah?”
She eased open the door and found him in the recliner, his legs in their bulky casts outstretched and his laptop propped on a pillow across his lap. He met her gaze and her stomach started that darn trembling again. Really, this was ridiculous!
“I’m sorry to interrupt but it’s nearly lunchtime. I have some turkey cold cuts and can make you a sandwich or there are some chicken enchiladas left over from yesterday. Whatever sounds better.”
“I don’t care. Anything is fine.”
Despite the nerves fluttering through her like a flock of meadowlarks in the backyard, she couldn’t help a teasing smile. “How about Spaghettios, then?”
He raised an eyebrow. “A sandwich would do.” After a moment he added, “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
She paused, gathering her thoughts and her courage while she tried to figure out how to face the topic they were both circling around as if it were a feral wolverine. Her silence dragged out long enough that he finally sent her an impatient look. “Was there something else?”
This shouldn’t be so hard. It was only a kiss, for heaven’s sake. She should just let it rest—let the wild creature they had unleashed crawl back into his hole on its own—but she was afraid this awkwardness would continue between them if they didn’t deal with what had happened the night before. How was she supposed to do her job if the man couldn’t bear to be in the same room with her?
With a heavy sigh she settled onto the edge of the bed that he had somehow managed to make neatly, even from a wheelchair.
“Do you want me to quit?” she asked bluntly.
He stared at her. “What?”
“I like working here but I will go back to cleaning houses for Ruth if you don’t want me around anymore.”
A muscle in his jaw worked. “I don’t want a keeper. It has nothing to do with you.”
“What about last night?”
“What about it?” he asked with a wariness that would have made her smile under other circumstances.
“It’s going to be a little tough to help you with your physical therapy exercises if you can’t bear to be in the same room with me because of this…awkwardness between us.”
“Is that what you call it?”
“We both made a mistake last night. Can’t we just leave it at that and go back to the way things were before?”
Gage studied her sitting on his bed with her little wire-rimmed glasses perched on her nose and her long legs crossed at the ankle. A mistake. Yeah, he would definitely call their kiss a mistake. One that had haunted him and left him tossing and turning all night long—as much as he could toss and turn with two casts on his legs.
He wanted nothing more than to repeat the same damn mistake right this moment—to capture that soft mouth under his, to taste her sweetness again, to press her back on that bed until both of them were hot and sweaty and sated.
Her next words yanked him out of the fantasy. “I would like to think we could be friends,” she murmured.
He gazed at her, surprised by the shade of vulnerability in her columbine eyes. She meant her words, he realized. All this talk wasn’t just about keeping her job.
To a man who kept most people at arm’s length by choice—who had only a few people he considered more than acquaintances—the idea of mourning a friendship that had never really begun seemed alien.
“Friendships are important to you, aren’t they?”
Her smile was small and a little sad. “I haven’t had the chance to make many of them since we’ve been in Utah. I would hate to lose one of the few I’ve found.”
He wasn’t sure he was capable of being friends with a woman who had the power to fire his blood. But if she was willing to try after he’d been such a bastard the night before, he didn’t see how he could close the door to it. “There’s no reason for you to quit over a kiss unless you’re uncomfortable working for me.”
“I’m not.” Though she sounded confident enough, she managed to avoid his gaze.
“Good. That’s settled, then. End of discussion. We don’t need to bring it up again.”
She opened her mouth as if she wanted to say something else but she closed it again just as the doorbell rang out front. She rose from the bed with her typical fluid grace and looked as relieved as he was that their awkward discussion was over. “That’s probably Ruth. She talked about stopping by today to work on her flowers.”
What ever happened to his nice, solitary life? Suddenly he found himself with a houseful of people, entertaining visitor after visitor and collecting friends he didn’t know what to do with.
Lisa gave him a quick smile then hurried from the room to answer the doorbell before her girls could get to it.
A few moments later, just when he was trying to force himself to focus on the computer screen again, she reappeared at his bedroom door, an odd expression on her delicate features.
“Um, Gage. Sorry to disturb you again but it wasn’t Ruth at the door.”
“Who was it?”
She stepped aside, and a tall, lanky man moved forward. For a moment Gage could only stare at his brother, Wyatt, the last person on earth he expected to show up at his house.
Just as they did every time he saw the brother who had become a stranger to him in the past twenty years, a torrent of emotions washed over him.
Love and regret and loss. Above all, a vast, overwhelming guilt.
He was helpless to keep them away and he hated it. That was one of the reasons he avoided these tense encounters whenever possible, why he had maintained a careful distance between them since their parents’ divorce, a year after Charley’s kidnapping, when he was thirteen and Wyatt was a gangly, awkward ten.
He had seen his brother on only a handful of occasions since then, the last time two years ago at their father’s place in Las Vegas when one of his visits with the old man happened to coincide with a visit of Wyatt’s, who had been in town researching another in his string of bestselling true-crime books. It had been an awkward and uncomfortable few days, and Gage had been grateful when a break in a case had called him away.
So why was Wyatt standing in the doorway to his bedroom looking like some kind of cowboy scholar in worn Tony Lamas and wire-rim glasses and ready to spit nails?
“If your legs weren’t already broken, I’d be tempted to do it for you,” Wyatt snapped.
Gage blinked at the unexpected attack. It didn’t escape his attention that Lisa had tactfully slipped away, leaving him completely at his brother’s mercy. “Good to see you too, bro.”
“What the hell is wrong with you?”
“Too many things to count.”
“So I make what I expect to be a routine stop at the FBI office in Salt Lake City, trying to track down some paperwork for the latest case I’m writing about. While I’m there minding my own business, somebody mentions the name Gage McKinnon. Imagine my surprise when not only do I find out that my only brother has been transferred to Utah and has been living just an hour away for the past two months but I also learn he suffered a major injury in the line of duty, all without saying a single word to the rest of his family.”
“It’s no big deal.”
“Maybe not to you but it sure would be to Mom. You should have called her, at least to let her know you were living just over the mountains. She would have wanted to know. Hell, Gage. How many times do you have to break the woman’s heart?”
He didn’t need this. His relationship with their mother was even more complicated than the prickly one he had with Wyatt. He knew he hurt Lynn with the careful distance he maintained between them but he just couldn’t bear being around her and seeing the soft hurt in her eyes.
“Back off, Wyatt.”
“You should have called her,” his brother repeated. “Would it have been that tough? A simple phone call once in a while to let her know you’re still alive?”
While talking to Wyatt might spark this storm of emotions, seeing his mother was like standing in the eye of a hurricane. If he thought she really wanted to see him, he would have made more of an effort over the years to stay in touch with her. But he’d long ago accepted that their brief, tense encounters were as painful for Lynn as for him. No, this self-imposed exile was best for everyone concerned.
“I’m doing fine.”
Wyatt studied him for a moment then plopped onto the edge of the bed. “What happened to you, anyway? The guys at the Bureau weren’t feeling exactly chatty.”
Gage sighed, recognizing the signs of someone settling in for the long haul. “A stupid rookie mistake. I was an idiot and let myself get injured by a suspect trying to flee an arrest. But I’m just cruising right along now on the road to recovery. You can tell Lynn that.”
“Why don’t you pick up the phone and tell her yourself?”
“Fine. I’ll call her.” Though he dreaded the idea, he would be willing to do it just to get Wyatt off his back. “How is she doing, anyway?”
“Good. She misses teaching but seems to enjoy being the big, bad Liberty Elementary School principal.”
“Small-town life still agrees with her, then?”
“She’s happy in Liberty, with her old friends and family around her. Most of her family, anyway.”
Gage ignored the jibe just as he tried to ignore the headache brewing at his temples. “I read your latest book. Shadow of Fear.”
“Yeah?”
For one painful instant something about the quick expression flitting across Wyatt’s features reminded Gage of the skinny kid in the thick horn-rim glasses showing off a bug he’d identified or his newly acquired skill at riding a two-wheeler.
Before that August day when everything safe and secure in their life had sheared away like wet sandstone crumbling into the sea, Wyatt used to follow him everywhere. It had been a pain in the neck, really, for a twelve-year-old punk who considered himself too cool to have a nerdy kid brother for a constant shadow.
Wyatt didn’t make friends as easily as Gage had in those days. He’d been gangly and bookish. A little shy, maybe.
When they moved to Vegas at the beginning of the summer so their father could open his own cabinet-making shop, Gage had no trouble hooking up with the neighborhood gang.
Wyatt hadn’t been so lucky. Gage could remember his kid brother following him and his new buddies to the movies, to ball practice, to their hideout in Joey Scarletto’s basement, where they spent most of their time sneaking Mrs. Scarletto’s filtered cigarettes and talking about girls.
Maybe because he had treated Wyatt with such scorn back then, he wanted to atone a little for the smart-ass punk he’d been.
“I can see why it was on bestseller lists for so many weeks,” he said now. “Why they all have been. Eight so far, right?”
Wyatt nodded, looking faintly embarrassed but pleased at the same time.
“You’re good. I worked the fringes of the Highway Killer case in Sacramento. In your book, you managed to crawl inside Barry Sommers’s head better than the profilers who helped catch him.”
“It wasn’t a very pleasant place to be.”
“So why do it?”
“Why are you the FBI’s bloodhound, always working crimes against children?” Wyatt countered.
He had no answer to that but he was fairly sure his brother wasn’t really looking for one. To his relief he was spared from having to come up with one when Lisa showed up in the doorway again. Gage had to admit he didn’t like the way his brother sat a little straighter and watched her with undeniable masculine interest in his eyes.
“Lunchtime,” she said in her low, musical voice.
She had two plates, he saw with resignation, brimming high with sandwiches, pasta salad and chips, which meant he wouldn’t be able to get rid of his brother anytime soon.
“Can I get you something to drink?” she asked, smiling at Wyatt. “There’s cola, bottled water and I think there might be a few stray bottles of beer in the back of the refrigerator.”
He returned her smile with an engaging one of his own that reminded Gage painfully of their mother. Apparently Wyatt had inherited all of Lynn’s charm.
“A cola would be terrific,” Wyatt said. “This all looks delicious. Thanks.”
Lisa set the lunch tray on the table, then left again, leaving behind that sweet, alluring scent of violets.
“You’ve certainly become domesticated since the last time I saw you,” Wyatt said after she had walked out. “Quite a cozy setup you’ve got here. Room service and everything.”
Gage gave his brother what he hoped was a warning frown. “She’s my next-door neighbor and hired baby-sitter until I can get around a little better. That’s it.”
“You sure? I’m definitely picking up a vibe here.”
Their kiss the night before whispered into his mind, lush and sensual and intense. Yeah, there was a vibe between him and Lisa Connors. He didn’t want it and sure didn’t like it but he couldn’t deny it was there, simmering and percolating between them every time they were together.
He wanted her with a fierceness that scared the hell out of him, but he wasn’t about to share any of that with the kid brother he barely knew.
“The only vibe you’re picking up is the one warning you to leave it alone. She’s a nice lady with a couple little kids who’s been dealt a tough hand.”
Wyatt looked as if he wanted to press him, but she returned with their drinks before he could. When she left again, Gage moved in quickly to distract him from the topic. “You said you stopped by the Bureau researching your next book. What are you working on?”
Though his brother obviously wasn’t a naive nine-year-old anymore and didn’t look fooled by the transparent ploy, he answered readily enough. “The Hunter Bradshaw case.”
“The Salt Lake City cop who killed three people last summer?”
“Yeah. That’s the one. I’m just doing the preliminary research right now. It’s a fascinating case.”
“I was in San Francisco at the time but even there it made headlines. It’s not often a decorated police detective winds up on death row.”
They spent the next half hour over lunch discussing the details of the Bradshaw case and other cases where the orbits of their respective careers had collided, however briefly. Gage was surprised to find himself actually relaxing in his brother’s company, for the first time he could remember as an adult. He was almost sorry when Lisa came back in.
“Can I get you anything else? Another sandwich, maybe? There’s still some cherry pie left and I’ve got chocolate chip cookies, too.”
Wyatt glanced at his watch. “I’ve actually got to run. I have an appointment back in the city. But thanks. Everything tasted great.”
“No problem.” She smiled at him again, then started to collect their lunch dishes.
“Thanks for stopping by. It was good to see you,” Gage said, a little surprised that he meant the words.
“You should call Mom.”
Okay, maybe he spoke too soon. “Yeah, yeah.”
Wyatt narrowed his eyes at him. “Would it be so damaging to your lone wolf image to let your mother know you’re still alive once in a while? Not only alive but living just an hour from home.”
“Liberty might be your home but it’s not mine.”
“You lived there for the first twelve years of your life. That’s got to count for something.”
Gage had a sudden memory of his grandfather’s cattle ranch where he’d lived until that summer his folks had moved them all to Las Vegas. It had been a great life for a kid—horseback rides, floating on inner tubes in the irrigation canal, overnight fishing trips into the Uintas with Wyatt and their father and grandfather.
All before a jagged tear had been ripped through their world.
“You’re going to be late for your appointment,” he said with a pointed look.
“Right. I’m going. Thank you again for the lunch, ma’am.” He smiled at Lisa once more, all lanky cowboy charm, then walked from the room.
Gage told himself he was glad that awkward visit was over, but still he felt a little pang in his heart for the nine-year-old kid who used to look at him as if he was a hero.