One More Night with You (9 page)

“I want you to be careful.”

She reclaimed her hand because it'd be easier to concentrate if she wasn't preoccupied with urges to work her fingers into his dangerous mouth or yank free the rest of the buttons on his shirt. “How did you think this whole ‘protecting Joey' plan was going to work?”

“Get close. Be a temporary fixture in your life. Since you're single now—”

“Are you?” she blurted.
Way to go there, slick.

“Single? Yeah. I can't do to someone else what I did to you, Jo.”

“It gets lonely. Sometimes.”

He didn't agree, or admit that sometimes he was lonely, too, and that left her feeling at some strange, vulnerable disadvantage.

“Since I broke up with my last boyfriend, I mean. Things were good with Parker.”

“Yet you went to a dating expert to find someone new.” There was no blatant hostility in his words, but she felt hotter in the face, anyway.

“Just a way to occupy the lonely nights. Plus, I was hoping for someone who'd stick around to be my date for my friend Charlotte's wedding.”

“So Romeo and Juliet end up with a happy ending, after all,” he said quietly. “The wedding's next month.”

She also thought of Nate and Charlotte as Shakespeare's star-crossed lovers. How could it be that after so much time apart, so much destruction between them, she and Zaf were still in sync with each other? “You know a lot about it. Keeping up with the society pages?”

“Research. What you said before—I can do that for you.”

“You'd be my wedding date?”

“I'll do that for you, Jo.” The seriousness, the unhidden want, acted as a magnet, pulling her hand across the table again until her pale fingers were stroking along the veins on his arm. “I'll stick around. I'll occupy the lonely nights. Let me protect you.”

Oh. My. God. An emotionally tortured secret agent taking up the role of boyfriend to shield her from a sadistic crook? This didn't qualify as the daily happenings of an average small-town girl from Texas. Except, she
wasn't
an average small-town girl. She'd lost that part of herself.

“I can't do this, Zaf,” she said, withdrawing her hand and standing up. “I can't give you an answer on the spot. Let's walk.”

He joined her outside but once they turned onto the Strip, they lost all illusions of privacy. People—from giddy tourists to bored-looking locals to eager street entertainers—were all enmeshed.

“What's a man got to do to get you all to himself?”

Joey jabbed her cane down, stopping, letting sidewalk traffic coast around her. She stared at Zaf, watching him move easily with the crowd, completely unaware that she was no longer at his side. As pissed as she was at his bold question, she was amused that she could give him the slip. If she wanted to, she could disappear again and let him spend another sweltering Sin City night trying to track her down.

Several feet ahead, he did a double take, and folks shoved past him then edged out of his way as he cut through the stream of passersby until he was directly in front of her.

“Josephine, what the hell was that?”

Joey slid the end of her cane on the sidewalk in front of her. “Don't cross this line, Zaf. If you do, you'll be in my personal space and I won't like you much. If it helps, I got a great look at your butt. It's a nice butt.”

He drilled his fingers through his dark hair, wrecking his
GQ
millionaire look. Actually, the unbuttoned collar had done that. And the heat he was packing in his holster. And, yeah, that edge about him that had nothing to do with boardrooms and everything to do with hunting a threat.

A threat targeted at
her.

“Jo,” he pleaded quietly, and she slid her cane back a few inches. “I'm here to protect you. How can I prove that?”

“One question at a time,” she said. The cane retreated a few inches more, and then it was at her side, and she was letting him into her personal space. “You want to know what a man has to do to get me to himself?”

“We need privacy if we're going to agree on a plan. A sidewalk on the Strip doesn't say privacy to me.”

“What does, then?” She watched him cross her invisible border, was suddenly and irrationally impatient for him to touch her the way he had before the violence had separated them. “Your hotel suite?”

“We could go with that, Jo. Nothing says privacy more than a Do Not Disturb sign on the doorknob.” Zaf leaned forward, knocking back her curls from her face. “But I've got something else in mind.”

“What?” They began their trek back to the street that held their vehicles.

“Invite me into your house. I want to sweep for bugs, tighten up the security. But I won't cross that line unless you ask me to.”

“So we
have
changed, haven't we?” She stopped, but this time didn't let him leave her. “You used to know what I wanted without me needing to ask.”

“I can't take risks when it comes to you. I've made mistakes. I've been wrong before—hurt you before.”

“Archangel made me a victim,” she said pointedly. She had to do this, dredge up how his clouded judgment had failed them both. Who stood so close to her this moment? Zaf, the man who could laugh at a joke and fill her up with joy? Or Archangel, the messenger, the black-ops genius with a vendetta to settle?

“I'm not him,” Zaf said. “I'm not the other guy. You need to know that I wasn't really in league with that group. I wasn't going to move drugs for them, but they had to think I was on their side because they were going to lead me to the sons of bitches who killed Raphael.”

Raphael, his younger cousin from Pakistan who'd been murdered during a trip to the US.

“You didn't turn? But no one told me it was a cover.”

“Only our team leader knew, Jo. It had to be that way.”

“You didn't trust me with your plan...”

He hadn't trusted her, then she hadn't trusted him, and devastation had wound up touching them both.

“I messed up,” he said with regret. “Lying to you. Firing that weapon. I didn't want to come back and reopen the wounds. I swear to you, I didn't want this for you.”

But here he was, in spite of himself.

“What about what
I
want, Zaf?” Did he know? Did it even matter to him? She couldn't find the words to guide him, but she ached, standing there unfulfilled and torn to pieces inside.

“I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, Jo.” The words grabbed her, yanked her closer until she was curling an arm around his waist. His mouth descended on hers. She didn't care that they were on the street, in the way and on display for the mass of folks shopping and jogging and hurrying along.

Someone bumped them and they parted.

Breathing hard, she stared at the tears collected in his eyes. There was a war inside him. Remorse versus lust. “I believe you,” she told him. She wanted this—proof that he cared.

“After what happened to you, I let go of the hunt.”

Then he'd let go of Archangel, too, and was only Zaf.

Joey kissed him—that sullen mouth, that lean bristly bearded jaw, his tears. Arousal made her limbs too heavy, but she couldn't care about that when he lifted her just enough to transport her out of the middle of the sidewalk.

The robust sound of accordions and some indiscernible wind instruments grew louder as he set her down. Polka music.

But she couldn't care about that, either.

If this moment with Zaf was what she could get, then she would take it.

The kiss was bruising and his hold too tight, however, she wanted to emerge on the other side of hurt because she couldn't let herself be a victim any longer. She was a survivor. She'd survived a bullet, lies and losing the man she loved.

He turned her to face the window. They were still on the sidewalk, with cracked concrete under their feet, but in front of a store she was greedy for the semblance of seclusion.

The sun shone bright and she saw their reflection in the glass. They weren't the people they'd been five years ago. Now they were too guarded and too hungry for something the other possessed.

Neither of them in love.

This was about arousal. It was about need and it was about desire. But it wasn't love.

I can't care about that. I can't want that.

Joey heard the footsteps and voices of passersby, but she stood her ground, remained reflected in a storefront's glass with a hard man behind her.

If he paid attention, if he really tried, he'd know what she wanted.

Zaf's hand rose to her ear, tracing the shell as he leaned over her to take the lobe into his mouth. “After DiGorgio's dealt with, I'll stand back. I'll let you live your life in peace. Swear to God.”

“Then this is all temporary?”

“It's—” he kissed her neck and she arched into his touch “—an early jump on occupying those lonely nights. You good with that?”

“Good.” To demonstrate, she rested her cane against the store's brick facing and pressed her backside to the wall of his body.

Zaf held her around the waist with one strong arm, and the other hand moved down the front of her with unmistakable intent. “What you said yesterday—keep your word. Don't forgive me, Jo. And don't love me.”

Yesterday when she'd touched him, pain and mixed-up feelings had prevailed over all else. Today she needed passion to be victorious.

Focusing on them and not on what or who was on the other side of the window, Joey watched the muscles in his arm leap as his hand curved underneath her short skirt, and was only mildly aware of traffic and pedestrians and polka music.

Parting her legs, she gasped at the impression of his erection against her ass. Give and take was what they did. Giving, she pressed into him and got a hoarse moan in return. Taking, she accepted the invasion of his fingers beneath her thong.

He didn't test her with one before introducing the other—just twisted two in, withdrew, then went in deeper. Each thrust of his fingers inside her and brush of his palm to her clit was a shock to her entire anatomy.

I shouldn't watch
, she chastised herself. But then, why not watch? They were Zaf and Joey again, together again, and it was a miracle.

Even if time and violence had irrevocably changed them.

Owning this, she looked at the glass. She was a horny, wild mess. And Zaf was just as horny, wild and messy.

Clutching the arm that supported her, she watched herself ride his fingers until an orgasm brought her up high then dropped her down fast.

Euphoria made Joey dizzy, drunk, but she owned that, too. Unable to apologize or feel shame, she could only catch her breath and wear a tremulous little smile as people who'd paused in rapt voyeurism now scattered and someone stomping across the sidewalk behind them condemned them: “People banging on the street. This is
exactly
why it's called Sin City!”

When Zaf let her go, she pulled him back for a kiss. Indulging, she sucked in the taste of his skin. It was too soon to say goodbye to this...to the one thing that had always been right between them. “Come home with me.”

Chapter 6

“Y
our house smells like a party.”

Zaf meant the words to cut away some of the tension in Joey's living room, but she hadn't heard him.

Or she was ignoring him.

Standing stock-still in the open foyer, her skin pale and her eyes angry, she'd retreated.

She wasn't the same woman who surrendered to him on an overcrowded street. The heat, the submission that had set his blood on simmer, was gone.

Now he was cold, and he was pissed off that while she was in his arms, an intruder was in her house. If he could roll reality back a couple of hours to when they were close, connected, damn it, he would.

Then he might have a chance in Hades of sparing her the shock of coming home to find her place so altered.

Nothing was missing, but she insisted so many small things had been touched—mail removed from the box on the curb and filed in the quirky little holder on the entryway table...the mismatched sofa pillows neatened...dishes retrieved from the dishwasher and stacked on the counter...a pile of lingerie transferred from the coffee table to a laundry basket.

It was a message sent, that the “top-rated” security company's decal and rudimentary configuration were as deterring as the welcome mat on the porch.

Zaf hadn't made matters better by asking the fatal question, “Are you sure this isn't how you left it?”

“When have I ever been known to organize my mail in alphabetical order?” she'd cried. “
Of course
I'm sure. And before you ask, no, I don't usually receive visits from obsessive-compulsive cleaning fairies.”

“I just needed to be certain.”
Before I pay that bastard DiGorgio a visit of my own.

Then and there he would've staked his life that Gian DiGorgio, a tyrannical man as greedy for control as he was for money, had given Joey's home a personal touch. But when she'd moved into the next room and reemerged holding a piece of paper with a tissue, his gut instinct had been confirmed.

“I took my gun out of storage to clean it,” she'd said. “This was sitting on top of the box.”

A note, with two words written in careful print. “Be careful.”

Taking off, Joey had burst past him and out the door, her cane stabbing the ground. He'd followed, taking no chances on leaving her alone, and had watched her cut across the lawn to a neighbor who'd been unbuckling a couple of jabbering children from an SUV.

“Aggie?” she'd asked. “Hey, did you notice anyone in front of my place today?”

The woman's gaze had stalled on him, taking a moment to strip him and get her fill, then she said, “The kids had activities all over the city, so I've been in and out of the house chauffeuring them around. Oh, but hang on.” Aggie had sent her kids inside and continued. “They forgot their floaties for the pool, so we doubled back not too long ago. I saw a car idling across the street. Can't say how long it'd been there. It was black, very expensive-looking, kind of like the one in your driveway.”

“Can you give me more details? Make? Model? License plate, maybe? What about the driver?”

“Well, no, none of that. I've never seen a car like that in my life. And on a single-mom income I didn't want to look too closely because I'd end up totally jelly that I can't afford it.” Concern had crossed Aggie's face, but it had given way to something crackling and sexual as she looked to Zaf. “Seriously, I
cannot
express how frustrating it is to want something the second you see it, and know it can't be yours.”

“If everyone can keep their eyes open—”

“Definitely. I'll email the POA and we'll get a neighborhood watch alert sent to the loop. Now that school's out, we need to be especially watchful.” Aggie added cheerfully, “And when are we going to catch up, anyway, Joey? Looks like you're living the dream, with the sexy car and the even sexier guy.”

Joey had seemed thrown off guard by the woman's comment. “Oh—the car's something I'm trying out, and this is Zaf. We used to work together.”

“Mmm. Guess you deserve the perks. I'm not tough enough to be a crime-fighter.”

“You're a mom, Aggie. You're plenty tough.”

And the women who took on the duties of both—they were damn tough. But he'd kept the thought to himself.

When he and Joey had returned to her house, he'd gotten a hold of a security specialist who owed him a solid and was able to disable the vulnerable system and install a wireless one.

Now they were alone and Joey refused to sit down or touch anything.

“It smells like sweets in here,” he said, coming into the foyer and trying again to reach her to some degree. “Like a bakery.”

“I bake.” Finally, a response.

“Oh, yeah? You didn't when I knew you.”

Joey had blanched further, as though tighter security had done absolutely nothing to restore her sense of safety. “There was quite a bit of downtime, with post-op and PT. I didn't want to take it easy, so I found something to keep me busy and help me handle stress.” For the first time in several minutes, she moved. Standing in a tense position for so long must've stiffened her hip joint because a halting stride brought her into the kitchen. “The other night I made key-lime tartlets. It smells like I just pulled them from the oven.”

“I would've guessed cake. Would've been wrong.”

“Well.” She went to the counter, reached for a stool but, as though DiGorgio was sitting on it, she drew back. “Well, maybe I'll make cake tonight. Yellow cake. Marshmallow buttercream frosting. That'd be good, right?”

“Cake tonight. Yeah, that'd be fine with me. If that's what you want?”

She shook her head. “When did it become about what I want?”

“Jo—”

“Zaf, I swear you don't want to discount what I'm saying right now. I can't remember the last time my life has been completely under my control. I obey and make concessions to please people, and when I don't, I feel guilty. DiGorgio has been in my house—my
home
, Zaf, my kitchen and my bedroom—and why? Because he wanted to run corruption in this city and I got in his way.”

“He won't touch you.”

“You can't promise me that. He's openly intimidating me.”

“Want to call the cops, put something on record?”

“And report that someone came here, tidied up and left a
be careful
note on a strongbox where I keep my weapon? We have nothing concrete to attach this to DiGorgio. Our only witness is a person who loosely remembers seeing an expensive black car across the street. All that's going to be is paperwork the PD doesn't want to be bothered with.”

“What about your cop, Parker?”

“I'd rather not plant any ideas in his head that I'm fabricating reasons to reel him back into my life. He's not my own personal protector. You are.”

“You told your neighbor Aggie that we used to work together. I thought our story put us in a closer relationship than ex-coworkers.”

Joey rubbed her eyes. “I was thrown off. Damn it, it's strange to call you my boyfriend.”

“I don't remember you having difficulty taking on a cover before.”

“This isn't just another assignment. It's the two of us pretending to be who we used to be. We were together for two years, but you and I haven't seen each other in five. In all that time, I have tried to forget we loved each other.”

Tell the lie. Protect her. You're here to protect her, nothing more.

“Josephine...”
Say it. Say it to protect her.
“I didn't love you.”

Hell, it burned to watch emptiness flood her eyes. But it had to be done. Love was like a baby's lullaby, soothing them as it weakened their instincts. He couldn't let it happen again. She wouldn't be tempted to believe they could recapture love if she thought they'd never had it to begin with.

“You said the words, Zaf. I heard them.”

“When you were down. You were shot. Bleeding. I needed to keep you focused on something. I said what I did to engage you.”

“But we were into each other. It felt real.”

“It was sex. Friendship, too. But those things, they're not love. Have you loved every man you've slept with?”

“No. But I thought—”

A head shake interrupted her. “It wasn't what you thought. You're capable of that. I'm not.”

Oh, God, he wished that were true. The damning truth was he might've loved her from the second he met her in Mexico, and it had taken time for him to let himself realize it. He cursed himself for not leaving her in the past where she belonged, but right now, in her kitchen with lies and screwups tugging them apart, he loved her.

As she glowered at him as if he was the vilest bastard to have ever walked this earth, he was sure she wouldn't form some attachment that might be impossible to break when the time came for him to walk out of her life again.

Because, as much as it seared the place inside him that should've housed his heart, he couldn't stay.

“You cared about me, Zaf,” she persisted.

“Yeah. As a friend, somebody on my unit, somebody I liked having in my bed.”

“Great talk, then,” she said crisply. “This place is too quiet. A man gets access to my house and now it's a tomb? No, not okay. I'm putting the TV on.”

He knew she was storing the hurt away. She would process it later and there would be tears. He hated being the reason for them.

Noise swirled through the air but didn't overtake the friction. She came back into the kitchen with the Samuel Adams Light he'd brought in from his truck.

It was the beer he carted to her door last night, intending to sweep the premises and hash out a plan, but she'd evaded him, and DiGorgio had gained entry before Zaf could find her again.

Trust was an integral component of a mission. They both knew it. Love complicated things and made them careless.

“Dios.”
Joey yanked on a card that had been pinned to the refrigerator with a sunflower magnet.

“What is it?”

“It's from my parents. An invitation to the Esposito
and
de la Peña family reunion.” She opened the card, kissed it and closed it.

“Sounds like a big deal.”

“It is. Their parties are legendary. My parents' families were rivals, believe it or not. When my mother and father got married, the bad blood started to go away. Thirty-six years later and they're hosting family reunions together.” She set the invitation on the counter and reached for a packet of Jelly Belly. “I'm not going, but it's a beautiful card.”

Zaf's hand ventured forward, and when she didn't slap it away he picked up the invitation. Second week of August at the Yellow Hawk Ranch in June Creek, Texas.

Chewing the candy, she spied him quietly. Then, “If DiGorgio or one of his men were in this room, stacking dishes on this counter, then they probably saw the invitation. And I'm mad as hell about it.”

“Call your parents. Warn them to be vigilant.”

Not that they exactly needed the warning. They were nothing if not vigilant...

“They're going to go crazy worrying. Mamá will insist that I come down to Texas where I'll be safe with the family. That's her way. And then Papá will agree with her and I'll lose my mind.”

“It's what you do for family,” he said. “They'll do what's necessary to protect you, Jo.”

“Don't I know it,” she said on a sigh.

Her family was not a typical hovering group. Anita Esposito de la Peña wasn't an ordinary mother hen.

But to reveal to Joey what he knew would be not just counterproductive; it'd obliterate what he'd come to Las Vegas to accomplish.

“You remind me of them—of the family,” she said thoughtfully. “Maybe that's why I got hooked on you the way I did. Y'all have that ‘family first, family only' mentality.”

He had thought Joey didn't understand his quest to find the drug lord who'd held his cousin prisoner before murdering him. Ransoms had been paid, press conferences held, pleas for mercy broadcast across nations, but ultimately a young man who believed in the good in folks had lost his life.

Zaf had failed Raphael, a college-bound Pakistani kid on track to become an environmental activist. During Raphael's trip to the States, Zaf had been responsible for him but had accepted an undercover assignment midway through Raphael's stay. He'd felt uneasy about leaving the kid.

“I'm sending you up to Jersey, Raphael. Mom and Dad will keep your ass out of trouble.”

“No, let me stay in Washington. It makes sense. I'm going to college here. I'm going to work here, too.”

While Zaf was gone, his cousin had joined a counterterrorism group and ended up a target then a victim.

From the moment Zaf had found out, he'd been on a hunt. He wanted to find the killer, isolate him and confront him face-to-face. He wanted to see justice firsthand—hand it down himself.

Today he'd told Joey he had given up the vendetta. But that had been a lie in exchange for her trust.

With trust came cooperation, and he needed both to keep her safe.

“You don't particularly like that detail about me,” he said to her, sitting on a stool.

“Zaf, your cousin's death ate you alive. It distorted your thinking. You hid it well when we were first together, but eventually everything you did was motivated by some master plan to avenge him. I was hurt because of it.”

He wanted to avenge that, too. Which was why he couldn't give up now.

“Do you know how Raphael was killed? What they did to him?”

She relented, her face pinched with pain. “I was informed.”

Nodding, he twisted the silver ring on his middle finger. It was Raphael's, left behind the day he'd been abducted. Zaf's aunt had insisted he keep it. She'd never blamed him, but he blamed himself.