All I've Ever Wanted (12 page)

K
ennedy didn't respond. In fact, she practically forgot how to breathe as she drowned in the liquid pools of Max's eyes. Sensations spread through her body, each wondrous in their own right.

“Excuse me?” Had she heard him right?

Max's eyes never left hers. “I asked if you wanted to be seduced. I'm only asking because you've been acting odd ever since you've arrived here.”

“I have not,” she denied indignantly.

“No? Who was jumpy when I mentioned being shown to the bedroom? You've been blushing excessively, not to mention, gawking at my butt.”

Color drained from her face. How did he know
she'd been staring at him? A wave of humiliation wiped out the wondrous sensations. Had she subconsciously given him mixed signals throughout the evening? She looked at the bottle she was holding. Or couldn't she handle her alcohol?

“I'm sorry,” she said, placing the half-empty bottle on the coffee table. “Maybe it's time for me to go to bed.”

His gaze finally deserted hers and, for a brief moment, she could have sworn that she'd read disappointment in his eyes.

“Aren't you going to answer my question?”

His intense gaze returned to her.

Yearning bloomed, confusing her even more. It would be all right to admit a mild attraction, the small voice in her head encouraged. What was the big deal? He was a man and she was a woman.

“It's a ridiculous question,” she said instead.

“Of course it is.” He winked, and then took another swig of beer.

Unable to shake the feeling of being the butt of some untold joke, Kennedy crossed her arms and asked her own question. “What would you have said if my answer was yes?”

“Race you to the bedroom.” He winked again, his face exploding in a smile.

She laughed, mainly because it seemed like the right thing to do. When she leaned over to retrieve
her beer, her gaze returned to the manila folder that held the details of her life.

“Find anything interesting?”

Max followed her gaze. “As a matter of fact, yes.”

“Oh? Like what?”

He shrugged. “Like, you've experienced quite a bit of tragedy for someone your age.”

It was her turn to shrug and rely on a quote her grandmother had often said. “What doesn't kill us makes us stronger.”

“No one could accuse you of not being a strong woman. Especially after everything that you've been through in the past week.”

Even through the alcohol-induced haze, she knew what he was trying to do. “Yeah. I've been harassed by the police and then caught in the middle of a police shoot-out at a baseball game.”

“An interesting spin on events.”

“It's the way I see them.”

His leveled gaze seemed to evaluate her. “Sure you do.”

She shrugged her shoulders and didn't say any thing further.

“What helped you to cope?”

Kennedy's gaze fell and a familiar sadness embraced her like an old friend. “My son.” She nodded in remembrance. “He's all I have left. He's my will
to live, to be the best person I can be. I don't expect you to understand. You don't have children.”

When she looked up again, she was surprised to find that Max's gaze was no longer on her. He seemed to be transfixed by something beyond her. Impulsive, she glanced in that direction, but nothing was there.

“I have a son.” His voice broke.

She was sure that her expression showed her surprise.

The butterfly smile he gave her looked pained. In fact, his entire demeanor had changed.

“I even had the house with the white picket fence, a wife and a dog.” He tilted up his bottle and drained the remaining contents in one long gulp. “So don't think you've cornered the market on pain and loss.”

Kennedy blinked, surprised he'd allowed his mask to crumble before her. As she stared at him, she clearly saw her vulnerability, as well as his strengths, and they both unnerved her.

The alcohol gave her courage to ask, “What happened?”

He remained quiet for so long, she thought he wasn't going to reply.

“She broke my heart,” he finally responded.

Raw pain dripped from his words and seemed to infect the air. When his gaze returned to hers, it was as if they both stood naked before one another.

“Did you love Lee Carsey?” he asked.

“With all my heart,” she responded without hesitation.

He nodded. “It's good to have loved, isn't it?”

“Yeah,” she said in a broken whisper. It was good to have experienced love, she reaffirmed. It was the one thing that could make you glow like the sun and that would allow you to hope, dream and embrace everything that life had to offer. Yet, at the same time, it completely terrified you: terrified you to lay it all on the line with the possibility of coming up empty…like she had.

“I don't think I could do it again,” she said, numbly.

“Why is that?”

“It takes too much of you. Hurts too much when—”

“When it's snatched away,” he finished for her.

Their eyes met, plunging them into a deeper level of intimacy.

“What about you?” she asked. “Are you willing to risk it all for love again one day?”

He frowned as he thought about it. “I don't know. If you had asked me a year ago, I would have said no. Better yet, hell no.”

She smiled. “So you're a romantic?”

He shook his head. “More like an optimist. Who knows, maybe my partner is rubbing off on me. He's constantly telling me there's someone for everyone. I think he's the romantic.”

“An optimistic cop. That sounds like a contradiction to me.”

Max's deep laugh proved contagious, and helped erase the remaining tension that lay between them.

“You know, our sons are approximately the same age. Little Frankie is five.

“Franklin Dwayne Collier, II. We named him after my grandfather.”

Max's pride in his son was clear. She draped the extra-large pajama top more securely over her legs as she pulled them from the floor and tucked them beneath her. “You have a good relationship with him?”

“As close as one weekend a month will allow?”

She shook her head and waited for him to return to the subject.

“My wife.” He caught himself. “Make that my ex-wife. She decided that she loved someone else after seven years of marriage.” His gaze trapped hers. “That someone, of course, was my best friend.”

His gaze captured hers.

Sympathy was the last thing he needed, she realized, but she couldn't keep the emotion from showing in her expression.

“Hell, I don't even know why I'm telling you all of this,” he said, his voice a mixture of wonder and regret.

She thought about it for a moment, and then smiled. “Maybe we're becoming friends.”

He nodded and smiled, too. “Maybe we are.”

A
fter their talk, Kennedy lay awake for a long while in Max's bed, staring up at the ceiling—alone. She had nervously made calls to area hospitals, and then some that weren't so local to make sure neither Tommy nor the Warners had been admitted following the trouble at the ballpark.

When she came up empty, she felt reassured that they were safely on their way, but she wasn't sure enough about it to sleep.

How easy it would be to walk up to Max and confess the past week's events. It was what she wanted to do, but something in her gut told her to hold her
only bargaining chip for just a little longer—long enough to get Tommy safely out of the line of fire.

As she thought back on their discussion, she was amazed by how much they had in common, yet at the same time how different they were. She shook her head. She wasn't making any sense.

Closing her eyes, she tried to will herself to sleep, but to no avail. Instead, a pair of rich dark eyes stared at her from behind her lids. She smiled at the kindness and honesty. Slowly, her mind crystallized every detail of Max's face.

Who could ever have been crazy enough to break that man's heart? From what she knew of him, he was a strong, caring and funny man. She had a feeling that when he loved someone, he gave his all…expected the same in return.

For some reason, she tried to conjure a picture of what Little Frankie would look like—despite the fact that she had never seen a picture of the boy or his mother. The result, of course, was a tiny replica of Max.

The image thrilled her.

Kennedy's eyes flew open.
What on Earth am I doing?
She sat up and glanced around the dark room, assuring herself that no one had seen her smiling and hugging the pillow like some crazed teenager.

It was one thing to be attracted to Max. Heck, she couldn't think of a single woman who wouldn't be,
but it was something else entirely to be dreaming about the man's child.

Maybe Wanda was right. All she needed was to get laid. And hadn't he offered?

Kennedy cradled her face in her hands as she tried desperately to pull her mind out of the gutter. Maybe she had sustained a head injury during the chaos at the stadium. At least that would explain her strange reaction to Maxwell Collier.

If not, it only meant one thing: she was horny.

Grabbing a pillow, she buried her face in it to stifle her scream of frustration.

 

Max frowned toward the hallway when he heard Kennedy toss and turn during the night. It wasn't surprising she couldn't sleep after the day's harrowing events. After they'd talked, he did feel like he'd come away with a better understanding of her.

There were times when he felt that she, too, had loosened up toward him; maybe she had begun to trust him a little. But she still wouldn't come clean about what she knew about Underwood's death.

What he hadn't planned on was telling her so much about himself. Strange thing was that he wasn't sorry about it.

Visions of her walking around his apartment, wearing nothing more than his pajama top, drifted through his mind. He'd never seen a sexier woman.
The few times when he'd caught a glimpse of an exposed leg or shoulder, when the large top shifted awkwardly, a primal urge seared through him.

She'd confessed she'd loved Lee Carsey and something within him wondered what it would be like to be loved by her. Would she give as much as she took? Would her love strengthen her man? Would she be faithful?

Something told him that the answer to all his questions was a resounding yes.

In the distance, he heard the bedsprings creak and knew that she was tossing again. Maybe he should knock on the door and see if there was something he could do to help her get some sleep.

He groaned. Who was he trying to kid? Sleep was the last thing he wanted to do, and who could blame him? The woman was every man's fantasy, and she didn't even know it.

He pressed the small light button on his watch. It was a quarter to five in the morning, and he was nowhere near falling asleep.

The bed creaked again.

He groaned again.
Will she go to sleep already?
The torture of knowing her supple body lay enveloped in
his
clothes and in
his
bed was killing him.

Max sat up. His gaze darted around the living room and then toward the long hallway.

Another creak.

He swore under his breath and went to the kitchen. Within seconds, he had a cool bottle of water, which he pressed against his temple. Maybe it
was
a bad idea to keep her here. The woman was playing havoc with his self-control.

“Mind if I have one?”

He turned and saw the object of his desire illuminated by a sliver of moonlight. The pajama top exposed a bit of her shoulder and her hair looked like she had just awakened from a night of making passionate love.

“I hope you don't mind me joining you, I couldn't sleep.”

Max's body tensed and he knew he needed to shut the refrigerator door, before the light revealed his growing erection.

“Sure.” He grabbed the last bottle and slammed the door.

Kennedy accepted the bottle he handed to her, but she didn't move away. “How about you?”

He blinked, uncertain whether he had missed something.

“What about me?”

“Could you sleep?”

Her voice seemed lower, huskier than normal, and Max could feel that his erection was at full mast. “No.” He surprised himself by answering honestly.

She didn't say anything else. In fact, Max sensed that she waited for him to say or ask her something.
But his mind couldn't stay out of the gutter long enough to think of any appropriate thing to say.

“I'm scared,” she finally said. “I'm scared of what will come with the sunrise.”

He knew she was referring to her son, and his heart immediately went out to her. “Where did you send Tommy?”

She turned away from the door.

Max concluded that he'd asked the wrong question.

Kennedy moved into the living room and stood by the window. “I can't talk about that now.”

“All right.” He shrugged. “What
do
you want to talk about?”

When she didn't say anything, he moved to stand behind her. “Unless you don't want to talk.”

“I don't.” She turned and lifted her face to kiss him.

Max abandoned reason as he dipped his head to receive her kiss. He had never experienced a kiss like this. The woman's lips were as soft as rose petals and tasted sweeter than wine. He pulled her closer, believing he could develop an addiction to everything about her.

Kennedy thought she could happily remain in his arms forever. It had been so long since she had enjoyed the splendor of a man's touch. She twined her arms around his neck and allowed herself to sink further into his embrace.

In one quick swoop, Max swept Kennedy up into
his arms and carried her down the hallway toward the bedroom.

The next thing she knew, she felt the firm mattress beneath her while his strong body hovered above her. She drowned in the passion of their kiss, and she didn't care. She couldn't think about tomorrow and what it may bring. In this time, and in this space, Detective Maxwell Collier embodied all she ever wanted in a man, in life and in love.

Zone Five Precinct
Saturday, 8:00 a.m.

Lt. Kelly Scardino watched Capt. Stephen Vincent scratch his head as he reread the report in front of him. Judging by the deeply grooved lines creasing his face, she felt safe to say that he wasn't happy.

When he finished, his steel-gray eyes stabbed hers. If she were able to get out of there with her butt intact, it would be nothing shy of a miracle.

“Do you know what this is?”

“Yes, sir. It's my official report.”

“No. This is killing my ulcers. That's what this is.” He tossed the report aside. “I can't take that to my superiors or the press. I can't tell them that yes, my men were involved in a public shoot-out where four civilians and one cop were wounded, but no arrests were made.”

“One gunman was killed, sir.”

His gaze narrowed. “I stand corrected.”

“It's all I have, sir.”

“And I'm telling you it's not enough. What are we doing to locate this Keenan Lawrence character?”

“We have an APB out on him, but I have to tell you, I think the chances of us finding him are slim to none. Since he's the leader of The Skulls, I'm sure he can make himself invisible if he wants.”

“So, are you suggesting that I tell the people of Atlanta that we are unable to protect them due to the fact that there is an invisible man in our midst?”

Scardino bit her lower lip and counted to ten before she answered. “No, sir.”

“I want this man found. Do I make myself clear?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. Now where is this Ms. St. James?”

“She was released late last night.”

It was his turn to count to ten. When he finally spoke, his voice still quaked with anger. “And tell me why we released her again?”

“There was nothing to charge her with.”

“But she was the target, correct?”

“We suspect that she was the target. According to her statement, she was an innocent bystander.”

Vincent pinched the bridge of his nose. “This day isn't happening.”

She shared his wish. “We have our best people on
the case. The moment we turn up something, you can be assured that you will be the first to know.”

He nodded, but she knew he still wasn't happy.

“And where are we on the Underwood case?”

Just when she thought she was going to make a clean getaway, Scardino felt the beginnings of a migraine. “Unfortunately, sir, we seem to batting 0 for 2.”

“A baseball joke.” His smile tightened. “You're a regular riot, aren't you?”

“No, sir.”

He simply stared at her. “I need results, Scardino. The press is hanging me out to dry on these cases. The mayor reminds me constantly that election time is right around the corner. And I don't mind telling you that if I go down, I'm taking you with me. Are we clear on that?”

“Yes, sir,” Scardino responded.

“Good. I expect to hear from you by this time Wednesday with some real progress. Hopefully you'll have this Lawrence character in custody.”

She stood, relieved that she would, after all, be able to escape. “We'll do our best, sir.”

He gave her a look that demanded that they do better than that.

Scardino made her exit without a backward glance. When she closed the door behind her, her shoulders immediately drooped and her migraine spread like a forest fire.

 

Aaliyah arrived at the Underwood estate, clueless as to what she was going to say to get an interview with Judge Hickman. Though the two women had never met, Hickman's no-nonsense reputation preceded her.

Stepping out of the car, she self-consciously smoothed her pantsuit with her hands, and stared up at the beautiful colonial house.

“Come on, girl. You can do this,” she reaffirmed under her breath. But doubts still managed to ebb their way into her thoughts.

She walked slowly toward the door, her mind racing for an angle that would get her past the front door.

A strong gust of wind rustled the surrounding trees and, in the distance, she heard the sound of passing cars. Another sound drifted on the wind and she stopped to listen.

Voices.

Aaliyah cocked her head. It was a man and a woman. Their angry voices pricked her curiosity. Her impromptu interview with Judge Hickman was quickly forgotten as she crept toward the side of the house to hear more.