He didn’t back down. “You purposely dressed provocatively—”
“There was nothing provocative—whatsoever—with what I was wearing out there in the field today, Roger,” she told him. “It wasn’t skintight—it wasn’t even close. It was made of lightweight, loose fabric designed for athletes to stay cool in severe heat. I bought it after . . .”
After she’d nearly keeled over from the heat in Washington, DC, and Starrett had had to come to her rescue, dousing her with bottles of water from a nearby hotdog stand to cool her down. And mere hours later, she’d heated to a near boiling point all over again. In the man’s bed.
Because she’d been drunk, she reminded herself as she found herself inches from his well-muscled, half-naked, sinfully attractive body. Too drunk to know that inside that deliciously wrapped package lived a complete and total jerk.
“If I wanted to piss you off by purposely dressing provocatively,” she told him now, “I’d have to come here, to the swimming pool, and wear this. It’s the closest thing to provocative I have in my wardrobe right now. And this is the only place I could wear it without getting arrested.”
And it’s a Speedo, you fool. It was the kind of suit Olympic swimmers wore. As far as swimwear went, it couldn’t be more utilitarian.
But Starrett was looking at her as if she were wearing tassles and a G-string. As if, if they were alone, he’d peel both of their suits off so fast, she wouldn’t have time to kiss him more than once before he’d be inside of her.
Oh, God. She actually wanted him inside of her. But she wanted him the way he came to her in her dreams. Funny and sweet and gentle, with a softness in his eyes and a smile warming his face.
“And here you are, right on schedule. Pissing me off,” he drawled. “What do you know?”
She scoffed. “That’s assuming I care enough to want to piss you off. You know, it’s entirely possible, Roger, that I simply wanted to go for a swim, that the world doesn’t revolve around you.”
“Okay,” he said. “Great. You win this round, babycakes. You’ve managed to annoy the shit out of me. Now do me a favor. Be a good girl and come back later, so I can finish my swim.”
Her answer was a clean surface dive back into the pool.
Teri heard the knock on the door and knew it was Stan even before he spoke. He probably hadn’t even made it down a single flight of the stairs before he’d turned around and headed back here.
He’d surprised her completely this afternoon—mostly by leaving when she’d asked him to. She was so sure he’d stay until he somehow made everything all right.
Except he couldn’t this time. There was no way to make this right.
“Teri, I know you’re still there,” he said from the other side of the door. “Let me in, okay?”
She didn’t move, didn’t answer. God, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d been this embarrassed, this . . .
Disappointed.
“Teri, come on.”
Devastated. That was a better word for what she was feeling.
“Please open the door.”
Stupid. Yes, she definitely felt stupid, too.
What was she thinking? The senior chief had been working overtime to set her up with Mike Muldoon. She should have realized right from the moment he’d asked to come into her room that this was another of his kindhearted lessons in confrontation. Instead, the moment he’d put his arms around her, she’d kissed him.
No, kiss was too nice a word for it. She’d inhaled him. Attacked him.
Thrown herself at him.
Oh, God.
The door opened with a click, and Stan came in. Figures he wouldn’t need a key.
Teri didn’t look up, but she knew he was repocketing whatever tool he’d used to pick the lock. And then he sat down beside her, his back against the wall. The miracle worker to the rescue.
She wanted to cry, but she wouldn’t. She couldn’t. Not with him here.
“I shouldn’t have done that,” he said quietly. “And I can’t just walk away and assume you’re going to be all right now.”
“I am all right,” she lied. No, she wasn’t. She wanted to kiss him again. She wanted to wrap her arms around him and . . .
“I honestly didn’t intend to kiss you like that,” he told her.
“I know.” Teri wiped her nose on her sleeve. “Believe me, I know.”
He sighed and turned slightly to look at her, but Teri kept her own eyes focused on her boots. Don’t cry.
“I was watching you today and thinking about what you said about being intimidated by men who were . . . I don’t know, older. Authority figures. And I thought if I came in here and acted like some kind of asshole, like Joel Hogan, you could practice standing up to me, and Christ, I hear myself say this and it sounds like the most asinine idea in the world. I mean, it was an asinine idea before I lost my freaking mind and kissed you.”
He took a deep breath. “I don’t know why I did that. I have no real excuses—”
“It’s all right,” she said. God, he thought he’d kissed her. He didn’t realize she was the one who’d jumped him.
“I could give you some bullshit about stress and fatigue and the amount of adrenaline that goes through a man’s body during an op like this and what that does to the male anatomy. But that’s just crap. Or I could tell you that you’re the most attractive woman I’ve ever known but that’s not news to you either.” He sighed, rubbing his forehead. “And it doesn’t make it any better—as if your being beautiful means you deserve it when other people lose control. You know that’s not true and I know it, too. The best I can do, Teri, is apologize and assure you that it won’t ever happen again.”
Teri rested her head against her knees and tried not to laugh. Or cry. She wasn’t sure what would come out if she made so much as a sound.
“Your turn,” he said. “Talk to me. God damn, slap me across the face if you want to. Say something.”
She took a deep breath. “It wasn’t your fault.”
“The hell it wasn’t!”
I kissed you. But she couldn’t say it. She couldn’t bear the thought of sitting here while Stan gently explained that, yes, although he found her attractive, he wasn’t in the market for any kind of emotional attachment, especially not with a complete headcase like her.
She still didn’t know if he had a girlfriend back in San Diego. She hadn’t managed to ask him, and now wasn’t the time to do it.
“I forgive you,” she said instead. “I know what you were trying to do. Really. I understand. And it’s all right. It is.”
She could feel him watching her for several long moments. “Has it occurred to you that you might be a little too understanding?”
She lifted her head at that. “You want me to stay mad at you? Fine. I’m mad at you.”
He laughed softly. “Yeah, I guess maybe I do want that. I’d feel a whole hell of a lot better if you called me a jerk.”
“You’re a jerk,” she told him obediently, her voice muffled. He was a jerk—for not realizing she’d wanted him to kiss her, to keep on kissing her. For not being on the verge of falling in love with her, too.
Stan was quiet then, for at least a minute. Maybe longer. But finally he cleared his throat. “At the risk of messing up our friendship even more than I’ve already messed it up today,” he said, “I’m going to ask you something I’ve been wondering abut for a while, about something that I think happened to you when you were a kid. Because you said something before that made me think—”
“Don’t,” she said.
He was silent for a moment. Then he asked, “You ever talk about it with anyone?”
“No.”
“Not ever?”
“No.”
“Not with anyone?”
She lifted her head as anger coursed through her. She didn’t want to talk about this. Not now. Not ever. “No.”
He scratched his ear. “That’s not good.”
“You ever talk about any of your bad shit, Senior Chief?” She purposely used his rank even though it suddenly felt strange for her to call him that instead of Stan. When had that changed for her?
But his eyes were gentle, and she couldn’t look at him for long.
“I don’t have any bad shit, Teri.” His use of her name was intentional. Obviously he’d noted her attempt to bring them back to a place where they were mere colleagues instead of friends, and was rejecting it. “Not like yours.”
“Then how come you’re not married?” she asked. “How come you’re alone?” There, she’d asked. Sort of. If he had a significant other, he’d tell her now.
“I’m alone because I choose to be alone.”
In other words, he’d rather be alone than be with her. That stung.
So Teri snorted. “Yeah, right. You’re really happy living in that empty house. What, are you afraid if you get married, she’ll die like your mother did?” She couldn’t believe the harshness of the words that were coming out of her mouth.
But to her surprise, Stan nodded. “Okay,” he said. “Fair enough. And yeah, maybe I am afraid of that. Or maybe I saw how hard it was for her every time my father left for another tour in ’Nam. I don’t go to war, but I go away, sometimes for months at a time. So it’s my choice to be alone. But you didn’t choose what happened to you.”
Oh, God, she didn’t want to talk about that. But he kept coming back to it, relentlessly.
“You didn’t choose your mother’s dying,” she countered.
“That’s true,” he agreed. “But I was eighteen when that happened.” He was silent for a moment. “How old were you?”
Teri shook her head. “No.”
“No, you don’t remember?” he asked.
She didn’t want to remember. Huddled in her bed, too scared to move . . .
“Give it a guess,” he persisted. “You don’t need to be exact.”
Hoping, praying that tonight he wouldn’t come in. Stay out of my room! She’d never said those words to him. She’d been too afraid.
“Thirteen?” Stan asked.
Teri shook her head. No.
“Older or younger? And, please, I’m praying that you’re not going to say younger.”
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“Oh, god damn it. Please tell me how old you were.”
She had no intention of telling him. She meant to stand up and walk out of her own hotel room, just to get away from his questions, if she had to. But the word came out of her, almost on its own accord. “Eight.”
He made the kind of sound a man might make if he were punched in the gut. His face twisted as if he were in terrible pain, and as she looked at him, she saw tears in his eyes.
There were tears in his eyes, but she was the one who suddenly started to cry.
She didn’t know where it came from, this sudden storm of emotion, but she couldn’t stop it. Maybe it was acknowledging it aloud for the first time. Maybe it was knowing that she was finally going to tell someone. Maybe it was because part of her desperately wanted to tell, while part of her desperately wanted to keep it buried, forever.
Teri reached for Stan. Or maybe he reached for her. Same as earlier, when she’d kissed him, she wasn’t quite sure who moved first. But then it didn’t matter, because she was in his arms, and he was holding her tightly while she cried.
“I’m so sorry,” he murmured, as if it were all somehow his fault.
“It’s not as bad as you think,” she told him when the tears finally eased. Her face was pressed against his shoulder, against the warmth of his neck. He smelled like heat and dust and hard work and coffee. “He never touched me. Not really.”
“Not really?” Stan asked. “What does that mean, not really?”
“He came into my room at night,” she whispered. “And he . . .”
She couldn’t say it. At the time, she hadn’t even known what he was doing with that furtive movement of his arm, as he stared at her with his robe hanging open. It hadn’t been until years later that she’d truly understood how sick that bastard had been. The handkerchief he always took from his pocket after he came into the room and closed the door behind him. The full-body shudder that signaled the fact that it was almost over, that he would soon take his ugly face and his whispers of how much he loved her and leave.
Teri knew Stan was imagining that the bastard hadn’t stopped at the edge of her bed, and she knew with a revolting certainty that it had been leading to just that. If she hadn’t left for summer camp . . .
Summer camp, the bane of her existence, had saved her from physical abuse. The emotional and psychological damage, however, had already been done.
Teri wiped her eyes, embarrassed that he’d seen her cry. She never let anyone see her cry.
But Stan was barely breathing, his arms still around her. He was as tense as she’d ever seen him, waiting for her to finish her sentence, to explain.
Maybe if she started from the beginning . . .
“He was one of my mother’s boyfriends,” she whispered, not sure just how much of this she’d really be able to tell him, how much she’d be able to say aloud. “A live-in. They all were, really. She didn’t like to be alone. This one was younger than the others, younger than my mother. And he would’ve been good-looking, except his smile was so . . . I don’t know . . . fake, I guess. And his eyes . . .”