Key West (17 page)

“That’s all you care about?” And that was absolutely the last thing he should have said “Getting my help?”

She shook her head. “All I care about?”

“You don’t feel anything.” Sometimes clearing the air was a good, if dangerous, idea.

“I don’t understand” She looked puzzled.
“Feel?”

“Forget it.”

“No. I feel, Chris. What do you mean?”

“Nothing. You’re convalescing. You should be at home in bed.”

“Ι’m not convalescing. Still mending, maybe—and scars take time. But as far as I’m concerned, I’m past convalescence.”

He swirled his drink and watched the pale liquor catch the light. He could smell its fine, pungent aroma. He felt Sonnie get up. She stood beside him.

Pushing back his hair, he looked up at her. He thought he saw a woman poised between wanting to flee and wanting to stay. Not sure what to expect, he pressed a hand to her stomach. Flat and instantly tense at his touch. Setting his drink aside to grip her hips came naturally. He smoothed his thumbs up and down the dips in front of each bone.

She pressed her elbows to her sides and held the glass with both hands.

“Stand closer,” he told her, and eased her between his thighs.

She raised her arms higher, as if to protect herself.

“Relax.” Why did he sound threatening, even to himself? “Say the word, and I’ll put some space between us.”

Sonnie didn’t say the word.

He felt a fine tremor where he held her.

Chris slipped a hand around to the small of her back and rubbed his fingers back and forth. He took her glass and set it aside, then traced the scars on her face and neck. “They’re fading,” he said, and smiled. “If you were a man you’d probably think they added to your sex appeal.”

She pursed her lips.

“Geez,” he said, shaking his head. “I mean, men and women look at their own scars differently. I’m so grateful you were thrown out of that car.”

“Are you?” Now she even sounded shaky.

Later he was going to wonder what he’d thought he was doing here. Later. “I’d have hated not to meet you, Sonnie. You make me feel calm.”

“You’re a strange man. Being around a woman whose skating a fine line herself makes you feel calm?”

“Yeah,” he said, and knew his response was belligerent. “Yeah, it does. With you. I’ve skated that line, too. That’s how I got here. Everything I believed in blew up in my face. In a way I crashed and burned. Maybe I should rethink that comment. Ι lost my focus; then I dropped out. I’m not sure I’ll ever be ready to step back in again.”

“It’s easier to give up than it is to fight,” she said quietly. “But if we all give up, what then?”

“I don’t know. Or maybe I do and I don’t want to think about it. I’m lucky; I’ve got Roy, and he never lets me forget I owe him. Gives me some focus. Why are we getting so deep here?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“You’re being polite. You know I started it.”

“I need a friend, too.”

Α
friend.
She needed a friend—preferably one with investigative skills—to help her. “You need a friend you can trust,” he said. “But I don’t appeal to you.”

Instantly he felt her stiffen. She looked at her hands, then slowly set them along each side of his head. Her serious eyes regarded him so intently, he swallowed and heard the sound.

He didn’t resist, didn’t want to resist when she pulled his face against her and gently stroked his hair. “Is this what you mean?” she asked. “You don’t think I’ve thought of holding you, and of being held by you?”

“I guess.” His face rested on her ribs. She smelled faintly of lemons.

“Υοu do appeal to me, but you shouldn’t. And I shouldn’t do anything about it anyway.”

“You feel so good. I’m not—” No, he would not tell her he was more muddled than he remembered being, ever. “Can it be dangerous for us to find some peace with each other? Some comfort?”

She moved in closer and massaged his shoulders. When he made to raise his head, she pushed it to her again. “Υou know the answers to your questions,” she told him. “It’s dangerous, Chris.”

“Do you care?”

One of her knees pressed where he might like it to press, but not where it did anything to help him think clearly.

“Do you care if this is dangerous, Sonnie?”

“I don’t want to analyze what I feel, or what I think. It would take too long to tell you all about my marriage. And even if it wouldn’t, I’m not ready. This is strange. You and I don’t match. At least, I don’t think we do. You’re a man who should be with someone...someone like Billy, I guess.”

He put both of his arms around her and hugged. “Oh, no. Shows what lousy instincts you’ve got. I know my type, and she’s not it. You are.” Maybe if he’d met her...if he’d met her years ago, she’d have been too young for him, and he wouldn’t have been ready for her.

“So strange,” she murmured. “Frank was—is a good-looking man, but I know why he chose me. What he needed in a woman—no, a wife—was different from what he needed...”

When she didn’t finish what she’d begun, he let her be. He could figure out the rest on his own. Frank Giacano’s reputation with women was a legend all its own. Chris held her even tighter.

She held him firmly, yet gently.

“You need comfort,” he said. “That’s what this is all about. I can give you that, so take it.”

She leaned away enough to urge his face up. Her first kiss skimmed his forehead softly. Before his eyes had completely closed, her lips touched his. When he could think straight again, he’d tell her that any man who didn’t find her sexy was beyond help. She opened his mouth slightly, passed the tip of her tongue along the underside of his upper lip, and breathed in an uneven rhythm that made him sweat.

Chris pulled the bottom of her shirt out of her pants and smoothed her skin. He felt the raised edges of intersecting scars, and she froze with her mouth fused to his.

He removed his hands and held her upper arms instead.

He’d be happy to die with this kiss on his lips. He didn’t want it to stop.

It didn’t stop, but Chris knew the instant she felt how hard he was. Gripping his shoulders, she dug in her fingertips and was careful to keep her legs still.

When she paused for breath and he could see her face and her blush, he said, “Sorry about that,” and grimaced.

She said, “ I’m not sorry, but I don’t know what to do about it.”

He didn’t feel like laughing, but he laughed just the same. Time to do some kissing of his own. With a hand behind her neck, he kissed her hard enough to be pretty sure she wasn’t thinking what she should do about anything. And while he kissed her, he undid her shirt and tucked his fingers into the cups of her bra. A little skin to skin in there and she forgot to hold still. If he didn’t want to forget himself altogether, he’d better be careful.

“You’re something,” he told her, and pressed kisses into the delicate swell of her breasts above the bra. The small, heart-shaped locket rested against her faintly freckled skin. He fingered it briefly, then delved a little deeper inside her bra. “Is this okay?”

He couldn’t see her face, but she said, “Mm.”

Once more he put his hands on her back. She jerked away.

“Okay,” he said.  ‘Let’s get this out of the way.” He took hold of her waist and spun her around. Before she could do anything to stop him, he tossed up her shirt.

She struggled to break free.

“Stop it,” he told her. “Stand still and let me look. I guess if that window had been all the way open you’d be less messed up, but you’d probably have hit your head a whole lot harder.”

“Please don’t.”

“Grow up,” he said, and regretted each word. “Sorry. That wasn’t anything I wanted to say. But stop overreacting, will you? You’ve got a lovely body. You turn me on, just looking at you. Scars and all.” And he tried to prove his point by mapping those scars with the tip of his tongue and his lips.

And he shifted his hands to her ribs, then around to cover her breasts.

The glass in that window had left a wide swath of wounds, healed to bumpy red, over the left side of her back. And he didn’t give a damn.

“I never look at it,” she whispered. “It’s not important, but I know it isn’t pretty. Please don’t touch it. I don’t want you to feel...You’re a good man, Chris Talon, but no man wants to touch that. He certainly doesn’t want to kiss it. But thank you.”

The anger he felt unnerved him. He rested his brow on her spine and worked at stopping himself from snapping at her. “Chris?”

“For this moment...I know we shouldn’t do anything about it. At least not now. But for this moment could we stop second-guessing what we think and just enjoy being with each other? You feel so good to me. And you look so good to me.”

He didn’t care if she answered him. He stood up and pulled her shirt from her arms. Then he unhooked her bra and tossed it aside. Her breasts fit into his hands like dreams. Kissing the back of her neck brought him too close to the edge for comfort, but he kept right on inching closer.

Sonnie raised her arms and reached back to put her hands behind his neck. She rested her head against his shoulder and arched her back.

“Yes,” he said, passing his thumbs over her nipples, “this is you, isn’t it? The real you. And I’m the lucky schmuck who gets to be with you when you come alive again.”

“I never was alive before,” she said. “Except for Jacqueline.”

“Jacqueline?”

She stayed where she was, leaning against him, but grew so still. “No one you know. I don’t know why I said that. We’d better stop.”

Why, oh, why?
He wanted to keep right on going. “If that’s what you want.”

“It’s not what I want. It’s what’s got to be.”

“Okay.” Chris turned her to face him and managed not to smile when she showed signs of wanting to cover herself. “What a pretty lady. What pretty breasts. I’d love to kiss them, but I guess that doesn’t come under the headin’ of stoppin’ this.”

She met his eyes. “Νο, it doesn’t.”

“Think you’d like tο start it again soon?”

“What I’d like and what I’m going to do are two different things.”

He lifted one corner of his mouth. “I expected you to say that.” She had dimples in her cheeks, close to the corners of her mouth, and he tapped each one. “But you won’t try to run away from me, will you?”

She took a deep breath. He was just a man and he appreciated seeing her small breasts rise. God, give him the strength to resist.

“If we can forget what we just did, I’d really like us to be friends. I like you, Chris.”

He managed a cheery smile and didn’t say the first thing that came into his head: that he was never going to forget the way she looked, naked to the waist in front of him. He also wouldn’t say that the only thing that would be better would be to get rid of the rest of her clothes—and his—and stretch her pale body out, beneath, beside, on top, or any other way as long as it was against his on the bed.

“Chris?” With οne fingertiρ, she touched first οne, then his other nipple. She pinched lightly—and looked surprised when he sucked air through his teeth. “You don’t believe me, do you?”

Concentrating didn’t come easily while she finger-combed the hair on his chest.

“You don’t believe there’s really anything for me to be worried about. You think I’m still messed up from the accident. In my head, I mean.”

He took firm hold of her hands, held them up, and kissed each palm. “If I thought that, I wouldn’t have decided we’re going to work together on figuring out what’s going on, would I?”

Sonnie checked out his eyes. Right now they were more green than hazel, and they were concentrating so hard on her that she found it hard not to look away. “You’re going to take me on.”

His one-sided grin brought a flush to her skin—her naked skin. “Thank you,” she said, and tried to figure out a graceful way to retrieve her bra and shirt. “I don’t know how to thank you enough.”

The grin was there again. He was laughing at her. She tried to scowl, a warning scowl.
Don’t say what you’re thinking,
was the warning.

“Okay,” he said. “Don’t worry about thanking me—yet. Let’s see how things progress first, shall we?”

Before she could even attempt a smart comeback, a scrabbling came from the door.

Chris crossed his arms. “Killer.”

In the act of sweeping up her clothes, Sonnie faltered. “What did you say?”

“It’s Killer. Alias the moocher. He’s adopted me.”

He went to the door and Sonnie managed to get into her bra and start putting on her shirt before a rangy orange cat erupted from the darkness, bringing a strong gust of warm wind with him.

Sonnie heard a voice call, “Chris, Chris. Hold it right there.”

Chris looked at her and she struggled to finish putting on her shirt and stuffing it into her pants. He smiled at her, and her legs, predictably, felt weak.

“We’ve got a lot of talking to do,” he told her. “Can I take you home and get started?”

She’d be a smart woman to say no. “Sure.” If being reserved and alone was smart, then she’d been too smart for too long. Look where it had gotten her.

“I hung up and said I’d come find you,” Roy said, bursting into the little guest house. “We’ve got to get a move on. I’ll drive.”

“Hey, bro,” Chris said mildly.

“Can it,” Roy said, looking not at Chris, but at Sonnie. “Got a call, Sonnie. There’s a fire at your place.”

Thirteen

Roy met them across the street from Sonnie’s house. “What the Sam Hill took you so long?”

“You know I don’t believe in breaking laws,” Chris said in what sounded like a strained voice.

Still sitting behind him, and hanging on to his jean jacket, Sonnie felt too wobbly to move. The helmet she wore was too heavy and caused every sound to reach her through a fuzz. Chris had also insisted she put on one of his jackets for the ride. Even rolled up several times, the sleeves covered her hands.

Firemen, their heavy coats flapping, scuffed between hoses that stretched from three trucks to lie like discarded umbilical cords. Little groups of people stood watching and whispering. Α searchlight shone on the upper right area of the house where the stucco was charred black and peeled away in chunks from the timbers beneath. The tiled roof sagged at the corner, and a jagged hole had opened to the sky. Pieces of burned and shattered wood protruded from what had been the storage room window.