Valentine's Child (7 page)

“What in God’s name were you doing out there?” she demanded, puffing from exertion. Her luminous eyes caught a glancing beam of moonlight. Jake felt faint and lightheaded and wondered if he was going to pass out.

“Do you need someone to drive you?” She demanded.

He shook his head. Fine, bright lights seemed to dazzle his eyes.

“Are you certain?”

Jake fought his shivering but hypothermia had grabbed him in a death grip. He was going under and part of him didn’t care.

He didn’t feel the slap; numbness overrode everything. But he was suddenly blinking and awake, and Sherry’s open palm explained it all. He thought she might hit him again, but when he looked her way, she ordered, “Stay awake, J.J. Beckett. Do you understand?”

Oh, he understood. He was in big trouble. He nodded.

“Stay. Awake.”

“Okay,” he mumbled but it was just a whoosh of sound from his lungs that didn’t form words.

“Move over,” she commanded, pushing him until he tumbled over the gearshift and tumbled against the passenger door. He felt so brittle he thought he might break into a million pieces. Climbing behind the wheel, she stated calmly, “I don’t have my license, but I figure this is something of an emergency.”

With that she twisted the ignition and with a cautious expertise that Jake appreciated much later when he was finally warm and safe again, she drove him home. She made noise about taking him to the nearest hospital, but he adamantly refused and so she drove him up the hill to what she referred to as Beckett Manor.

The house was dark; his parents were in bed before ten every night. Sherry helped him from the car, through the gates and back door into the kitchen.

He fumbled with his clothes. There was no hope for it. Sherry hovered by the door, wanting to bolt, but he heard her mutter something under her breath that sounded suspiciously like a string of obscenities, and then she was helping him while he stood by, utterly passive. She undid his belt and dropped his wet jeans to the floor. His boxers were plastered to his legs. She pulled his shirt and undershirt over his head in one swoop, then said calmly, “You need a shower or bath or something.”

He shuffled down the hall, Sherry followed slowly behind, unwilling, he supposed, to abandon her patient until she was completely assured he would live. He was glad she was there. He needed someone, and he realized vaguely that he’d needed someone all night.

There was a guest room and bathroom — more like a maid’s quarters really — beneath his own wing of rooms. He led the way, Sherry behind him. The shower had been redone in a curve of translucent glass brick and Sherry briskly turned the taps. A rush of hot, moist air filled the room.

A moment later, she said, “I’m going to leave it on the barely warm side or you won’t be able to stand it.”

Jake was hardly in a position to argue even if he’d wanted to. Still numb, he hobbled into the shower with his boxers on. Through the glass he could see her wavy form move toward the door. “Wait!” he croaked out.

She stopped. Jake’s gaze stayed on the distorted colors that were Sherry as the heat from the shower needled into his skin. It seemed as if the water were boiling hot until his flesh began to warm and he realized the shower was barely lukewarm. Slowly he turned up the hot tap, but it seemed like hours before he felt his blood heat. The whole time, his gaze stayed glued to Sherry who hung by the door as if waiting for someone to open it from the other side and free her. Jake chafed at the delay. What if she left too soon? He didn’t want her to leave. He wanted her here, with him, and with growing insight, he realized that she was what he’d been waiting for all night.

Eventually he stepped from the shower. She still hovered by the door, looking awfully scared now, although earlier she’d been in maximum control. Grabbing a towel, he wrapped it around his waist and wished he could peel the wet boxers off without spooking her into running like a deer.

That was what she looked like — a scared fawn. Gone was the steel–voiced woman who acted with such cool determination. This was a new, vulnerable Sherry, and he could tell by the way her lips pursed that she didn’t like it one bit.

“Thanks,” he said, swiping wet hair from his face. He was glad his voice was back.

She nodded. “You probably would’ve frozen to death if I hadn’t come along.”

“I wasn’t thinking.”

“Really.”

Her sarcasm hit home. Now that the initial crisis was over he felt like a moron. God, what did she think? He practically owed her his life.

“What were you doing?” she asked. “What’s the ocean temperature right now? Forty degrees? Are you crazy?”

“Yeah …I guess I am.”

“You have some kind of death wish?”

“Not usually.”

“Was this some kind of macho dare?” she asked, her starch returning.

“I was just thinking that I wanted to get away from everything.”

“Permanently?”

“It wasn’t a suicide attempt,” he snapped. “I just wanted everything — to stop.”

The words came from somewhere inside himself. What had been eating at him all day, all week, maybe all year, suddenly seemed so clear.

“Thanks for saving me,” he said quietly.

“Oh… no.” She shrugged that off. “I didn’t do anything.”

“You mind not telling?” He tried a smile which was too much effort and fell off his face. “They wouldn’t understand.”

“Who would I tell?”

“Your friends.”

“I don’t have those kinds of friends,” she said.

“Neither do I,” he said, because it was the truth. He didn’t have the kinds of friends he could really trust. J.J. didn’t realize how condescending he might sound until Sherry’s face flushed pink and her eyes glittered.

“J.J. Beckett doesn’t have any friends?”

“That’s not what I said.”

“Yeah?” She arched one disbelieving eyebrow.

“I said I don’t have those kinds of friends. That’s what you said, and I agreed with you. That’s all.”

“What about Ryan Delmato? Matt Hudson?”

“Look, I just said — ”

“Don’t feel sorry for me, okay? I can handle myself. I don’t need you telling me you understand my problems.”

“Hey.” He lifted his hands in surrender. “Stop being so defensive. Sorry. I didn’t mean it that way.”

Silence pooled between them. He was truly baffled by her prickliness. Okay, so she hadn’t been born with a silver spoon stuck firmly between her teeth like he had. Big deal. Some people just come out with inner class and she was one of them. He could appreciate that. Too bad she couldn’t.

“I’ve gotta go,” she said abruptly.

“Wait.”

Without thinking he reached out and grabbed her wrist. Immediately he felt her recoil from his touch. But it was a move he was glad he’d made because he so wanted to touch her, and in a perverse sort of way he could tell that his touch affected her and he needed to know that.

“What are you doing?” she demanded as he leaned toward her.

“I don’t know,” he admitted honestly. He was just reacting. Reacting to a long, hard night and a brush with death had left him in a suspended state of unreality.

She was rigid as steel but warm. She’d tried to freeze him out so many times he’d half believed she was made of ice. But her skin was smooth, supple and hot beneath his hand and because he wasn’t thinking quite clearly, he pulled her into his arms and kissed her full on the mouth.

If she’d truly thought he was going to kiss her she would’ve pulled away; she told him that later when they could laugh about it. But at that moment she was so stunned that he’d actually dragged her into his arms that her lips parted in a gasp of disbelief. The feel of her half-open mouth was an invitation. Jake thrust his tongue inside its heat and groaned with desire.

And she bit down for all she was worth.

“Goddammit!” he howled, shoving her away from him. Blood filled his mouth.

“You bastard,” she whispered. “Touch me again and I’ll kill you.”

And then she was gone. Jake was left to nurse his injury and thank his lucky stars she hadn’t tried to bite off his tongue in earnest.

Later, lying in bed reviewing the scene, he was slightly embarrassed. For a moment he’d believed she was his and that she wanted him, there’d been no question. For a moment…

With a groan he shoved his head under the pillow and vowed to forget her, but even as he made the pledge, he knew it possessed no teeth.

He was going to do his damnedest to have Sherry Sterling. She was the one and only thing he’d wanted in a long, long time.

Now, Jake blinked awake like a sleepwalker. The waves still roiled toward shore outside his windows and the piece of paper with Caroline’s hotel number still lay in his hand. Only he’d crumpled it into a miniscule ball.

Emotion sang through him, down every nerve fiber. So long ago yet so powerful. It could’ve been yesterday. First loves were impossible to forget, but he wondered if others still felt them as keenly as he sometimes did. It bothered him a bit. What if this was some irreparable flaw in his character that would haunt him forever?

A moment later he chuckled. Then he threw back his head and laughed. Good grief, he was getting maudlin. So Sherry Sterling had materialized in Oceantides. So what? It wasn’t like she had the power to turn his life inside out again. That was a symptom of his teen years, and he’d been cured of the illness long ago.

As far as he was concerned, there was nothing Sherry Sterling could do or say that would make any difference to him now. There were no ties between them, apart from a few bittersweet memories.

With a renewed sense of control he picked up the phone to call Caroline.

VALENTINE’S CHILD — NANCY BUSH

Chapter Four

The espresso shop two blocks from the beach smelled like a combination of briny air, rich coffee and cinnamon rolls. Sherry cradled a mocha between cold hands, a treat to herself that she seldom otherwise drank. But these were desperate times. She needed sustenance and strength and a whole lot of courage, and if the sweet, hot drink would help, so be it.

The clientele at Beachtime Coffee was as varied as Oceantides’ residents. A couple in the corner wore matching royal blue sweaters tied around their necks, preppy–style, their heads bent close over an article in the newspaper. An elderly man sat rigidly in a chair, eyes focused on the clock although Sherry had come to understand he wasn’t watching time; he was merely faced that way, focused on inner thoughts entirely his own. Two teenagers with unwashed hair, baggy pants, T–shirts and skater shoes were digging coins out of their pockets, pooling their cash to purchase two coffees, leaving their skateboards propped against the wall outside the door.

Sherry did a mental inventory of her own appearance: loose ponytail, blue jeans, black body–hugging ribbed turtleneck sweater, black belt with a silver buckle winking at her waist. She doodled on a pad with a red pen and found to her dismay that she’d written “J.J.” several times. Well, he was on her mind, wasn’t he? He was the reason she was here wasn’t he?

She’d blown her meeting the night before. Blown it. He’d taken her by surprise, and she’d reacted like a teenager. Maybe that was to be expected since the last time she’d seen him they’d been teenagers.

Not that she was so incredibly mature now. She still had trouble reviewing the events of the night she’d found him shivering by his car, for crying out loud. She didn’t want to recall that first kiss, when he’d wrapped her into his shower-dampened arms and pressed his mouth urgently against hers.

Even now her pulse jerked in recollection, a wave of emotion rushing over. Damn it all. Swiping furiously at a loose strand of hair she wondered when–
when
–she would be immune to those memories. She should have quit with him right then, right after biting his tongue. That hadn’t been the end but the beginning. She’d come away from that night with a new awareness of J.J. Beckett. No longer could she cover her feelings for him with sarcasm; she was too affected, too attuned to him.

And the number of times she’d sensed the weight of J.J.’s gaze on her after that rescue, said he felt the same way, although they both tried to act like nothing had happened.