Asking For Trouble (22 page)

"Why would I care? I'm just doing my job,
right?" Beau taunted nastily and her face fell.

He felt like a total dick, but he was
jealous and pissed, and she didn't have to let the man kiss her in
front of him. She sure didn't give
him
that kind of
reception at the safe house, that's for sure.

Jazzie slid her hand along his cheek and ran
her thumb over his lips, then she stood on her tiptoes and kissed
him gently, before she told him, "Don't be jealous, Beau...Eddie
does nothing for me...you seem to have that market cornered
lately."

Hearing her soft statement did something
inside of Beau, longing and joy erupted in his heart, wound tightly
with potent desire. He growled then shoved his hand into her hair
and cradled the back of her head to pull her to him and claim her
lips in a heated kiss. Jazzie whimpered and pressed herself against
him, and he deepened the kiss. Her hands were full with her violin
and purse, and it frustrated him, because he wanted to feel them on
his body. He used his free hand to pull her lower body against the
instant heat in his groin.

Beau was amazed at the level of desire this
woman inspired in him. She brought him from zero to sixty in two
seconds flat. He wanted her again with an intensity that scared
him, even though a week ago, he'd been determined to slow things
down. Fuck slowing things down, he thought, she was single, he was
single, and they set off thermo-nuclear war inside of each other
when they touched...even in the parking lot of a damned school.

That thought brought him back to reality and
he managed to corral his rampaging emotions and pull back from her.
He was breathing hard and his heart was playing ping pong inside
his chest. Her face was flushed and her lips swollen, and the pulse
on her neck was beating rapidly. He leaned down to lick that spot,
then whispered near her ear, "You're mine, baby...I don't want
anyone else touching you."

Jazzie groaned then pulled out of his arms
and said, "I have a class to teach...let's go," then she walked
around him and stepped up onto the sidewalk. Beau waved at the
agents who were just leaning against the car with their arms folded
over their chests, watching them behind their dark sunglasses. When
they nodded, he took off after her at a half-jog, catching up with
her at the gym entrance.

"Don't run off like that, Jazzie...we need
to protect you, sugar," he reprimanded and put a hand at the small
of her back leading her inside. He saw Eddie Gonzales with an
armload of violin cases setting them by the stage at the other end
of the big cavernous room. It was warm and humid inside the gym and
it smelled musty. It looked like it hadn't been remodeled or
updated since the sixties.

The curtains on the stage were a faded red,
and looked like they'd seen better days for sure. Beau saw the
lights had been turned on the stage and there were various colored
metal folding chairs there set up in an arc formation. In the
center of the arc was a small wooden podium.

An older black woman walked out from behind
the curtains and grinned widely when she spotted him and
Jazzie.

"Hi, Jasmine! Glad you could make it--the
kids were so excited yesterday, I couldn't get them to focus on
anything else," she told Jazzie then walked down the stairs at the
side of the stage and over to them. "You're a little early, so
they're not here yet. A couple of the kids will be late, one has to
work at her family's laundry this morning, and the other is
walking, because her foster family's car is on the fritz. I wanted
to go get her, but I was afraid I'd miss the delivery of the
instruments."

"She's walking alone in this neighborhood?"
Beau asked with concern.

"Yeah, she lives in this neighborhood, and
didn't have a choice today," the woman told him like he was dense
and this was commonplace for the kids here.

Jazzie put her hand on his arm and said,
"I'm really glad to be here today, Mrs. Jackson, and look forward
to meeting your kids."

"I'll go pick her up, where does she live?"
Beau said impulsively, because the thought of a young girl making
her way on these inner city streets alone sent chills racing up his
spine.

Mrs. Jackson pulled her eyes from Jazzie's
then looked him over, her eyes settling on his gun. "I don't think
that's a good idea, Mr.?"

"Beau Bowman, ma'am...I'm a Texas Ranger,
and the gun is to protect Jazz--um, Jasmine, because she's had a
little trouble lately," he told the woman and then showed her his
badge.

She cast worried eyes toward Jasmine then
said, "Everything okay, sweetie?"

Jazzie fluttered her hand and said,
"Everything is fine, just some trouble my brother stirred up...and
Beau is a friend," she assured her, then her eyes slid up to his
and she silently begged him to not elaborate.

A friend--god, how that chapped his ass for
her to refer to him that way. That's the same way she referred to
Chase Rhodes and Eddie Gonzales and who know how many other men. He
was one of the pack of 'friends' that Jazzie had accumulated,
nothing special to her. But what could he expect? This is my friend
with
benefits
, was hardly, appropriate, but Beau wanted to
be more to her. She couldn't very well call him her boyfriend,
because he'd made it plain he didn't want a relationship with her.
No, Jazzie wasn't the one confused by what they were to each other,
he was.

Friend was definitely the right answer for
now, until he figured out what the hell was going on inside his
head...and his heart.

"Would you mind if I go pick her up and
bring her to class?" Beau asked Mrs. Jackson again. Indecision
flickered in her warm brown eyes, but then she nodded and gave him
the address.

"Let me call her foster parents and tell
them you're coming," she said then pulled her cell phone out of the
pocket of her skirt and walked away.

"That's nice of you, Beau...thank you,"
Jazzie said softly.

"No kid should be walking around in this
neighborhood, especially a little girl," he told her gruffly.

"The kids in this neighborhood are just as
tough as their environment, Beau...that's why I'm here. I'm hoping
to soften them up some, give them a little hope that there's a way
out. I've been doing this every summer, since I was seventeen."

That was his Jazzie...her heart was as big
as Texas. This knowledge just added another layer of awesomeness to
his already high opinion of her. She was the real deal, someone who
cared about others, more than herself obviously, because here she
was putting herself in danger to help these kids. This woman would
make a spectacular mother one day, he thought, then flinched.

That was not something he needed to worry
about for sure. Beau wasn't having kids, ever. It wasn't that he
didn't like them, he did. His problem is he hadn't had good
influences in his life as a child, so he had no idea how one was
supposed
to be raised. Just like he didn't know how
normal
relationships were supposed to work. It was just
better, safer, for him to avoid those complications. But in this
case, he supposed that since his own mother had been so cold and
unfeeling, any warm and positive maternal influence would impress
him.

"I'll go get her and be back in a few
minutes. I'm going to get one of the agents to come in here with
you, until I get back. Don't give them any grief, and don't go
outside!" he told her firmly.

"Yes, sir," she said sarcastically with a
half-smile, then walked toward the stage and went up the steps,
exaggerating the sway of her heart-shaped ass in the tight jeans
she had on.

Beau shook his head and grinned...she loved
taunting him, and he loved it too. All that woman had to do was
blink at him and he was ready. Soon, he was going to teach her a
lesson about teasing him, and he would make her like it.

Mrs. Jackson came back over to him, and
looked a little frazzled. "I spoke with Lucy's foster brother, and
he said she's not feeling well, she's in her room crying. I don't
know if it's because she's stressed out about not having a ride
here, or if she truly isn't feeling well. He said his foster
parents weren't home. That's strange, because her foster mother
told me the car was broken."

"I'll go see what's up and make sure she has
a ride, if she wants to come," he assured her.

"Thank you...please take it easy with her,
because she's pretty vulnerable. This is her third foster home this
year."

"I will, don't worry Mrs. Jackson..." he
said then put a hand on her shoulder.

"Call me Gert..." she invited then gave him
a tight smile. He could tell she was still worried about the girl
he was going to pick up.

"Thanks, Gert...and please call me
Beau...I'll be back in a few minutes," he told her with a smile,
then held her eyes intently. "You keep Jazzie in line for me,
okay?"

"Jasmine is an angel, I think it's you I
might have to keep in line," she said brusquely, but with humor
lacing her words.

"You're probably right there..." he agreed
with a grin, then turned to head toward the gym door.

Beau passed two kids on his way out, one
looked to be about twelve and the other probably fourteen. The
older boy had his pants hanging low on his skinny hips, and a red
bandana covering his head, and the girl's shorts were entirely too
small for her, and too short for a twelve-year-old.

Beau nodded at them and thought that if
these two were representative of the kids Jazzie was going to teach
today, he understood what she was talking about when she said they
were hard. He also understood her desire to help them, but he
didn't like her being in this neighborhood too long...hell, he
didn't like being here.

Right outside the door, Beau stopped and
spoke with one of the agents, letting him know what he was doing.
Other than his eyebrows lifting above the top of his dark aviator
sunglasses, the man did nothing but nod, so Beau just shook his
head and left, hoping the guy would do as he'd asked and go inside
and stick to Jazzie.

Putting the address Mrs. Jackson had given
him in the GPS on his phone, Beau sat it in front of his
speedometer, so he could follow the directions. Five miles, they
had expected that young girl to walk in this neighborhood. It was
unbelievable to him.

Beau was acclimated to the city now, but he
was a country boy at heart. He'd been raised in a rural community
on the outskirts of Amarillo. He'd ridden horses and bulls, and
whatever the hell else you could put a saddle on, without fear. But
he knew what to expect from animals, not so much for some of the
humans he'd encountered in his job, the same kind of people who
inhabited this neighborhood.

This was an urban jungle rife with threats
you couldn't even identify half the time. His anger ramped up with
every second it took him to drive to the girl's house, as the area
got rougher and rougher. For supposedly responsible parents, who
were checked out by social services before they could foster kids,
these two sounded like real losers...but he was prejudging them,
there could be any number of explanations for this situation, so
he'd just wait until he got there to draw any conclusions.

CHAPTER TEN

Beau followed the directions given by his
GPS, until it led him to turn onto a street lined with ramshackle
shanties. Each one was more dilapidated than the one before it, the
further he drove down the street. His heart gave a little twist
seeing how many kids were out playing in the street, little ones
even, two and three years old, unsupervised.

Finally, he reached the right address, or at
least he hoped it was, the number six on the side of the house by
the door hung drunkenly, and another of the numbers was missing.
There wasn't a light on inside the house that he could see, and it
was really quiet. He got out of his truck and unsnapped the leather
strap over his weapon just in case, and clicked off the safety.

Sidestepping the first weed-choked wooden
step that had collapsed in the middle, he stepped on the second one
and then quickly onto the porch. The loose boards creaked under his
feet as he took two steps forward then knocked on the door.

The door squeaked open and a boy of about
ten with wary eyes said, "What do you want?"

"I'm looking for Lucy, is she at home?" he
asked evenly trying to let the boy know he meant him no harm. The
boy looked at his holster and fear shot through his eyes and he
went to shut the door. Beau put his hand on it and told him, "Mrs.
Jackson at the school asked me to come and pick her up for her
violin lessons...I have a gun, because I'm a police officer."

"She said she doesn't want to go...she, um,
isn't feeling good," the boy said and Beau could see that he was
lying.

"Can I please just talk to her for a
second...I want to make sure she's okay," Beau asked the child.

Indecision flickered in the kid's black eyes
and he chewed his lip, but finally he opened the door and pushed
the torn screen door open to let him in. "Make it fast, I don't
want to get into trouble when
they
get home," he said
nervously and looked up and down the street.