“I’m gonna go talk to him,” Trevor said.
Ty wasn’t sure whether to follow Trevor or stay with the women.
Jordan eventually graced him with a look. Not a particularly affectionate one. “Why don’t you go with them?”
“I thought maybe you’d like me to stay—”
She narrowed her eyes. “Don’t be silly. Go talk with Trevor and your dad. I certainly don’t need you.”
***
Jordan watched Ty sulk out of the kitchen.
The ass-hat.
Still, she couldn’t help feeling sorry for him. The energy in the room told her everyone was still trying to recover from Tara’s death. But while Trevor, Ty, and Maggie seemed to be coming around, Ty’s dad, on the other hand, was struggling big time.
The hole that death left took time to fill again. She knew that better than anyone. And murder left a particularly wide and vicious hole. Tara had been murdered less than a year ago, so all of them would still have bad days.
“I’m sorry.” Ty’s mom dropped down into a chair and looked at Jordan as though she wanted to crawl under the table and curl into a ball. “This is the first meal we’ve had as a family since Tara’s been gone. I thought he could handle it. This was my fault; I was the one who insisted we do this.” Tears began to swim in Maggie’s eyes.
Hells bells,
what a fucked-up day. Jordan had let deception and lies screw with her for more years than she cared to think about. She might as well let the truth yank her around for a while. “Has Ty told you anything about my family?”
Maggie met Jordan’s gaze and shook her head.
“My dad, my mom, and my sister were murdered when I was ten,” Jordan admitted quietly. “I was in the house when it happened. I only survived because I was hiding in a closet.”
Maggie’s eyes widened, but instead of speaking, she lightly squeezed Jordan’s wrist.
They sat in silence for a long quiet moment. As uncomfortable as it should have been, strangely it wasn’t uncomfortable at all. Jordan supposed nothing bonded strangers quite like sharing a horrible, murder-filled past.
“I would never recommend two people meeting the way Ty and I did, but as unfortunate as they were, our pasts are one link that makes us understand each other so well.”
Ty’s mom broke. “I miss her. Every minute of every day. I just can’t live in the isolation that Rick wants to live in. I miss my boys. I miss cooking for them and having family dinners. I miss going to church. I miss my stupid part-time job at the flower shop.”
Jordan felt Tara’s presence sweep through the kitchen like a wild, whirling twister.
Tell her. Tell her I’m okay. Tell her to be happy, I want her to be happy.
Jordan sucked in a breath. Tara was a force she couldn’t deny.
To appear normal to the living, Jordan blocked all communication with spirits during the day. In the night, she let them come, tell her what they needed her to know. But the daytime hours were hers, and the spirits seemed to understand that.
Except for Tara.
She had never been able to block Ty’s little sister because . . . Hell, she wasn’t even sure why. Maybe because she liked the girl. Tara had helped Jordan save Ty’s life. A little sister spirit was all around Jordan when Tara was near. After losing Katy, there was something about Tara’s spirit that was comforting.
This situation, however, was
not
comfortable.
“Rick makes it sound like I’m betraying Tara if I do anything. It’s making me crazy. He wanted to have the boys sell the farm while we stayed in Florida. He never wanted to come back. How could he not want to come back? This is home.”
They don’t have to sell the farm. They love the farm. Tell her I’m okay.
Nothing like juggling competing conversations in your head at the same time. Tara’s thoughts were overlapping with Maggie’s words, and the tension . . . God, the tension was making it hard to breathe.
“This was Tara’s home,” Maggie sobbed. “I’ll never leave.”
Tell her. Tell her I’m still with her and always will be. Why won’t you tell her?
“Tara, stop it.” Jordan spoke louder than she’d meant to.
Maggie’s gaze whipped toward her.
“Not you.” Jordan looked at Maggie, mortified. “I mean . . . Well, see, what I meant is that I think Tara would want you to stop feeling that way. I don’t think she’d want your life to come to a screeching halt. Ty has told me what a sweet, loving girl she was.”
Please tell her I want her to be happy.
“Maggie, whether Tara is here or in the next world, you’d always want her to be happy, right?
Maggie nodded and dabbed her eyes with a tissue.
“I don’t think she would want any less for you.”
Jordan wondered if her mom and dad were rolling in their graves from the irony. She was pretty sure they had tried to communicate that same fact for the last twenty years, only she had just never gotten it. It had taken Ty’s sister to drive the point home.
Ty’s mom’s eyes widened, and her face went white.
“I can’t believe I just sat here and unloaded on you like this.” She swiped the tears from her cheeks. “Ty is such a good man. Please don’t let tonight and all our issues scare you off. I can see in his eyes what you mean to him.”
Jordan almost laughed. “It would take a lot more than what happened here tonight to scare me off. And if you tell Ty I said that, I will flat out deny it.” She shot Maggie an amused smile. “I’m usually the mental charity case that Ty gently tolerates. It’s kind of nice to know the tables can turn once in a while.”
Maggie smiled. “Somehow, I doubt that he has to put up with you. I’m just sorry tonight didn’t turn out quite like I’d hoped.”
Now, here, with all of Ty’s family, Jordan realized just how many years she’d spent in selfish isolation. Ty was the first person who had ever made her feel that she wasn’t suffering alone. Maybe if she had ever bothered to look around and help someone else before tonight, the bitter knot in her own chest would have loosened sooner.
“I know what losing someone to murder does to you,” she said. “You don’t ever have to apologize for your reactions. Not to me, anyway.”
Chapter 6
On the way home, Ty kept glancing over at Jordan sitting beside him in the truck.
Both of them preferred a balls-to-the-wall knock-down-drag-out to the silent treatment. Which, he figured, was precisely the reason she was ignoring the hell out of him.
“There’s a good ice cream shop about a half mile from here. You want dessert since dinner was kind of a bust?”
“No. I’m good.” She never looked up from her phone.
He knew damn well there wasn’t anything on it interesting enough to keep her from speaking. “So I got the feeling you wanted to talk to me about something when you came by the office today.”
“Nothing that can’t wait until your case is over.”
“Come on, what was it?”
She shrugged. “Bahan came over. He brought my dad’s file. Confirmed my dad was undercover for the FBI when his cover was blown. Someone from a drug cartel murdered my family—the same cartel Arlo and Warren Buck were working for on our last case.”
The air caught in his chest. Her news was a huge fucking deal, and she hadn’t said a thing. “Holy shit.” He reached for her hand. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
They were stopped at a four-way stop. She shot him the Jordan Delany death stare. “I came to your office right after Bahan left, but you had your hands full. Remember?”
No way was he wiggling out of this one. A car behind him honked, and he stomped on the gas. “Fine, if you’re pissed about Isobel, let’s have it out now and move on.”
“Gee, Ty,” she said, “I was talking about the murder you caught this morning. Funny how your mind jumped right to Isobel. Why do you feel like your hands are full because of her? Maybe because you banged her?”
He blew through the narrow gate of their ranch and stopped in front of the house. Jordan jumped out of the truck as if it were on fire and bolted inside. He followed her, praying that the day would end soon. Or that someone would just end him. Either option worked.
Jordan was already halfway up the stairs. He stomped up behind her, followed her into the bedroom. “You want the truth. Yes, I slept with her. One time. One night. We parted ways and that was it. It was no big deal.”
She brushed past him with a disgusted shake of her head. “I
really
thought you were smarter than that.”
“Are you going to stand there and tell me that you’ve never had sex with another cop you were working with? Not one time? Not one slip-up?”
When she whirled around and stepped toward him, he realized the look she’d given him in the truck was just a warmup.
“Yes, I’m going to stand here and tell you in no uncertain terms that I have never,
ever
, slept with another cop. That I have never slept with anyone that I’ve worked with. And then I’m going to tell you why.”
She moved closer and jabbed a finger into his chest. “Because I’ve worked my ass off since day one in that fucking academy. I was one of three women in a group of thirty-five men. Two days before I graduated, I was asked to participate in an undercover op and I’ve never looked back. And I will be damned if one fucking man is ever going to say I earned my cases or my rank because I slept with the right guy.”
“Really? ’Cause you slept with me.”
Her whole body jolted back in surprise.
With every fiber of his being he wanted to grab the words and yank them back. In all honesty, he preferred seeing anger in her expression to the hurt.
“I slept with you because for the first time since my family was gone, I felt something that I didn’t know how to turn away from. Is that what it was between you and Isobel?”
He scrubbed his hands up and down his face. “Of course not. She came on to me after a long draining case. We arrested a guy for killing a little kid, and we were both feeling kind of . . . raw. Reckless, I guess. We went to a bar, had a few beers. I slept with her one time and never saw her again.”
Jesus, he was tired. He trudged to the end of the bed and sat. “In Longdale, we’re just a handful of country cops, and no one gives a shit about rank or who you sleep with. We don’t have a team of detectives, or a separate vice unit, or drug team; we do it all. And when something big happens, highway patrol gets involved.”
Jordan sat next to him. “I know you’ve slept with other women, and I don’t care about what happened in your past. I don’t care if you’ve been with ten other cops. But you tried to hide it today. That tells me there was more to it back then . . .”
When her voice trailed off he knew, just fucking knew, what she was implying.
“. . . and maybe there’s more to it now.”
He stood and stomped away because the only other option was to go postal. Only Jordan could draw such a fucked-up line from point A to point B. How the hell could she
still
doubt what was between them?
“I don’t even know what to say to that. There wasn’t really time to explain a one-night stand with Isobel in the two minutes you stopped by my office. And this conversation”—he motioned between them—“right here? This is exactly why I didn’t offer up the information. I had a brief encounter with her that lasted roughly as long as it takes to brush your teeth and wasn’t quite as exciting. Oh, screw it. I’m taking a shower.”
He stripped, walked to the bathroom door, and then turned back. “I’m not gonna lie, I’ve have had sex with a lot of women. But I’ve only ever been in love with one. Let me know if you ever figure out the math.”
***
How did he always do something completely stupid and then make her feel like
she
was the idiot? Of course, he had to go and say something that made her whole chest ache. How could she stay mad with him being so . . . so Ty?
Plus he’d walked past her buck naked. It would be a whole lot easier to stay pissed if he wasn’t built like a god.
The ass.
Maybe she
was
an idiot, but the thought of going to bed while they were still mad at each other made a dull ache settle in her stomach. In the short time they’d been together, she’d become shamelessly dependent on having him wrapped around her at night. She’d slept better in the last few months than she ever had.
She blew out a giant sigh and flopped back on the bed. Navigating a relationship wasn’t her specialty. Maybe there were times when she needed to suck up her pride and apologize. Times like tonight.
After peeling out of her clothes, she went into the bathroom and stepped into the shower behind him.
His big arm was propped against the wall and his head was hanging down. Steamy water trailed along the muscles in his back. It was embarrassing how fiercely her body responded to the sight of his. In awe of the picture he made, she laid her hands on his back and then smoothed them up to his shoulders and squeezed.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
After pumping out a few handfuls of soap, she massaged it over his back. The tension in his shoulders eased. Ironically, her insides began to coil tightly.
She remembered the first time she’d felt the sensation.
The very first night she met him, he turned to walk away and her body had physically ached with something so unfamiliar she had no words to describe it. Nothing much was different now. Except that now she recognized the sensation to be so much more than the simple lust she first dismissed it as.
“Nothing pisses me off more than you doubting how I feel about you,” he murmured through the steam and the water.
“I know. I don’t doubt you, and I don’t want to fight.” She also didn’t doubt that Isobel Riley wanted him, but it was time to let that go before she caused more damage to their relationship than Isobel ever would. She slid her arms around his waist, lowered her hand to stroke him, and found him steel-hard already. Fighting didn’t appear to be top on his priority list, either. She pumped her fingers up and down his length until all the muscles in his back tightened again.
He groaned and spun around, then lowered his lips to the curve of her neck and licked all the way up to her ear.
God
, there was just something about the way Tyler McGee used his tongue that made all of her bones turn to liquid.
Placing a hand under her knee, he lifted her leg and propped her foot on the edge of the shower seat. He opened her, gently teasing her clit with one clever finger before spearing it inside her.
“Ty,” she cried out, arching against his hand. She wrapped an arm around his neck and brought his mouth to hers. His tongue moved and teased just as shrewdly as his fingers. In and out. In and out. An erotic rhythm causing a deep thrumming pleasure to pulse from her core.
She wanted to touch him. Needed to touch him. Now. Right now. She ran an unsteady hand down his chest, down his stomach, straight down to his shaft with the intention of gently stroking him. But he tightened his big hand over hers and urged her into a tighter, quicker rhythm.
When his mouth moved back to her neck, his breath rushed in and out. He added another finger to the one already inside her and rolled the pad of his thumb around and around her clit.
Not to be outdone, she fisted her hand up and down his length until he groaned against her ear.
He moved his hand away, and she thought she might lose her mind. She wanted to scream, wanted to beg. “Please,” she ended up whispering. They both had to be just seconds away from . . .
He caught her thighs, pinned her ass against the wall, and drove inside her.
The orgasm ripped through her the second he sank in. “Thank God. Oh, thank God.” She was vaguely aware of the gasping chant rising from her chest, but damned if she could quiet it. Her fingers clenched in the dark silk of his hair and held on while her body continued to vibrate and splinter.
It was as near a religious experience as she’d ever come. If heaven offered anything close to the blinding orgasms Ty delivered, there wouldn’t be so many spirits driving her crazy at night.
Still, she hung on. Wrung out. Breathless.
“Again,” he growled, never slowing the pace. Faster. Harder. Deeper with every thrust. “Again,” he demanded.
Too sensitive and too spent, she knew she couldn’t come again so soon, but the determination in his voice warmed her veins like an expensive shot of tequila. Damned if her body didn’t begin to tighten a second time.
Okay then. Hell, yes, again.
She thought the words, couldn’t begin to speak them through the tight clench of her lungs. The hot water heated her skin until she was mere seconds from combustion. Clenched muscles in her arms and legs burned with the exertion of clinging to him.
But her core, her core raced, begged, pleaded for another release.
“Come for me, baby. One more time. Squeeze that pretty body around me over and over,
Oh God, yes. I fucking love that . . . ohhh . . .”
His erotic plea drop-kicked her into another vicious climax. That and feeling his huge body pound hot and wild inside her. She pulled his mouth to hers and devoured him until he drew back for air.
“Holy shit.” His breath heaved in and out. He flipped them so that his back was leaning against the wall. Then, like the rivulets of water, they slid down and onto the shower floor. “Holy fucking shit,” he grumbled against her neck again.
She laughed. Neither of them were poets, but Ty’s words pretty well summed up the moment.
After a minute or two, he opened his eyes and looked at her. “Did we just have make-up sex?”
“Not sure.” She was still wrapped around him, straddling him on the shower floor as hot water sprayed around them. “I think we just had
I’m going to look past your tumble with Skanky-bell but if you touch her again I will cut your nuts off
sex.”
He chuckled. “Fair enough.” He brushed the wet hair back off her face. “You can’t logically believe after the last ten minutes that there’s any chance I’d look at another woman.”
“Since when has logic ever entered into this thing between you and me?”
“True.” His head dropped back against the shower wall. “Although right now, I can’t even stand up. How the hell do you think I’d have the energy to juggle two of you?”
She narrowed her eyes but couldn’t help grinning at the jerk. His smartass statement touched off an idea that wasn’t half bad. Another round or two of sex like the one they’d just had, and she was quite certain he wouldn’t have the energy to get out of bed in the morning, much less give anyone else a second glance.
“I’m just saying that maybe whatever happened between you and the redhead didn’t mean anything to you, but I have eyes. Skanky-belle wants a round two with you.” Afraid she might be on the verge of heatstroke, she scooted back and reached up to adjust the water temperature.
Ty cupped her breasts as she fiddled with the nozzle. “In my own twisted way, I find it kind of hot that you’re jealous and all. I just think you might want to be jealous over someone I actually wanted a round one with.”
“Not helping.” She wrapped her hand around his dick and gave it a warning squeeze. “Just remember, I own this. Don’t you ever forget it.”
He surprised her by pulling her close for a soft, tender kiss. Then he lifted her hand and laid it on his chest, right over his heart. “
This
is the body part you own. And don’t
you
ever forget it.”