Carolina Blues (13 page)

L
AUREN WAS AN
expert on morning afters. The trick was to manage expectations from the start.

She generally provided couch crashers and other overnight guests with a toothbrush (disposable), coffee (optional), and sometimes her phone number (assuming either party had a repeat performance in mind). But spending the night was not like checking into a bed-and-breakfast. When she slept over at a guy’s place, she had learned not to overstay her welcome. No leisurely checkouts, no experimenting with bath products, no hanging around waiting for an invitation to return.

Hit it and quit it
, as one memorable guy-in-a-band explained crudely the next morning.

So she was a long way from confusing sex with commitment.

But Jack confused her.

He kissed her good morning, for starters. And then, while she was still weak with lust and wrecked from lack of sleep, before she had a chance to worry about morning breath or think about the places she was sore, he used his mouth and hands to arouse her, making her sigh and reach for him, making her arch and moan. Filling her, possessing her, body and heart, while the soft pearl light slipped through the windows.

After which, she’d slept. Peacefully. Without nightmares.

When she opened her eyes again, Jack was looming over her, showered and fresh and in uniform.

Heat flooded from her breasts to her hairline. It wasn’t like he hadn’t seen her naked before. He was now intimately familiar with every square inch of her body. But he’d never seen her with pillow creases and beard burn and hair that looked like she’d brushed it with a whisk.

He, of course, looked amazing, closely shaved, completely in control.

He watched her grab for the sheet and raised one dark, sexy brow. But all he said was, “Head’s free, if you want to use it.”

Head?
Oh, the bathroom.

“Thanks.” She cleared her throat. What exactly did you say to a man who’d given you four earth-shattering orgasms the night before?
Thank you?
Way to go?
Let’s do this again sometime?
“What time is it?”

“Almost seven. I’ll drop you on my way to work.”

Guy code for
Please leave now
.

Her stomach sank. She should have snuck out while he was in the shower. Although, sneak how? There were no cabs on Dare Island, only the senior shuttle service. And she very much doubted they would appreciate being called out at seven in the morning to spare her the walk of shame.

She scrambled for her bra. “Right. Just give me a second, I’ll . . .”
Pull myself together
. Where were her panties, damn it?

“Lauren.”

She stopped.

Jack swooped and kissed her hard, like he wasn’t finished with her yet. He smelled so good, like toothpaste and clean male skin. Her toes curled under the covers.

Before she could wrap her brain or her arms around him, he straightened. “You’re fine. Coffee’ll be ready when you get out.”

She watched, confounded, as he strolled through the narrow door.

Coffee.

Galvanized, she threw back the covers. A corner of the blanket swept the built-in storage unit on the other side of the bed, knocking something to the floor. A book. She flopped across the mattress to retrieve it, fingers stretching, naked butt in the air.

Her own face—younger, smoother, under a blond pixie cut—smiled up at her from the carpet. Her publicity photo, on the back cover jacket of her book.

Her breath backed up in her lungs. Jack was reading her book,
Hostage Girl: My Story
.

She sat back on her heels on the bed, the book in her hand. Lots of people read her book.
Forty-eight weeks on the
Times
list.

But knowing Jack was reading up on her, investigating her like one of his cases, made her feel exposed. At a disadvantage. Vulnerable. It was a degree of intimacy she wasn’t prepared for. Like the bed-head-and-pillow-crease moment all over again.

She could still smell him on her skin. Still feel the imprint of him deep in her body, every breath, every movement, a reminder of last night and those four devastating orgasms.

Positive thoughts, she told herself. Constructive action. What she needed was a shower.

So she took one, standing under the lukewarm spray before dressing hastily in last night’s rumpled clothes.

When she went out on deck, Jack was squatting by the animal trap, talking in a calm, soothing voice to the kitten pressed against the bars. So he was kind to animals, too.

Lauren sighed. Like he wasn’t irresistible enough already.

At the sound of her footsteps, he straightened, all muscled competence and controlled male grace. For a moment, she let herself drink in the scene: the hazy sunlight, the golden sea, the scent of the breeze off the water. The man, unwrinkled, unwilted, his strong Roman features gilded by the sun, his smile a miracle of disciplined beauty.

Why spoil the moment? Why not just, well,
live
in it and keep her mouth shut for once? She could pretend she hadn’t seen anything.

But she was really sick of pretending.

“I wasn’t snooping,” she said.

Jack’s lips did that unbelievably sexy quirk thing. Her breath caught. The man should really smile more often. “So you didn’t find the stack of
Playboy
s under the bed.”

“No. Thank you.” She accepted the coffee he handed her and took a careful sip. Hot and bitter. “I found . . .” Her throat closed.
Oh, crap. Just do it
. Wordlessly, she held out the book.

His gaze dropped to the cover; rose to her face, his dark eyes alert. Assessing. He didn’t say anything.

She swallowed. “When did you . . .”

“Buy it?” He shrugged. “A couple days ago.”

The same time he’d bought the condoms? “Why?”

“I was interested in you.”

“In me? Or in Hostage Girl?”

“That’s pretty insulting,” Jack said quietly. “To both of us.”

She closed her eyes. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be.”

Silence. Onshore, a chorus of birds tuned up for the day, their calls sharp and sweet against the whisper of the water.

“Look, I get it,” Jack said slowly. “You’re on tour, you get hit on by guys trying to tap a celebrity. That’s not me.”

“I know. I said I’m sorry.” She opened her eyes, looking at him directly. She had to make this right. And the only way she knew to do that was to tell the truth. “This isn’t about you. I’m trying to tell you something about me.”

“Go on.”

Her courage faltered. Her throat felt like she’d swallowed broken glass.
Not everybody wants to relive your fifteen minutes of fame over and over . . .

“Don’t you have to get to work?”

“I will. Tell me about you.”

She’d spent six months trying to write a book, talking about what happened, but never about herself. Never about how it made her feel.
My Life After Crisis
.

“It isn’t only guys who hit on you,” she said, forcing the words out her shredded throat. “It’s everybody. Like, people would see me on TV or they’d read part of an article online, and they’d think they knew me. Like they had the facts to judge. The right to comment. To me personally, sometimes, but online, too. God, they’ll say anything online.” The words, once started, trickled through her crumbling defenses like water through a dam. “Twitter’s the worst. And yeah, okay, there were guys who got off on the whole hostage thing in a really creepy way, who thought I got Ben to give himself up because I was giving him blow jobs out of sight of the security cameras. But it wasn’t like that with him and me. It was never like that.”

“What was it like?”

“It’s in the book.”

“I’ll read the book later. I’m talking to you now.”

He was so calm. So unmoving. Like she could pour herself out in drabs and spurts and wild torrential bursts, all her guilt and grief and regret, and he’d never flinch.

“He had a brother.” The words spilled out, widening the crack in her chest. “Joel. It wasn’t supposed to be Ben who did the job that day. Their uncle George planned it. He wanted to take Ben’s brother Joel, because Joel was still a juvie, and he figured the DA would go easier on Joel if he got caught.”

“So what happened?” Jack prompted, smooth as a priest in a confessional.

“Ben found out. He told their uncle he’d take Joel’s place, that it was him or nobody. They needed the money, their mom has diabetes, he figured he was the responsible one. The interviewers, they kept saying I was so brave, and the comments, they made it out like I manipulated him, but I didn’t. It’s just . . . I kept thinking about my brother, Noah, and how we were alike, really, Ben and me. We were both so scared. He was just trying to take care of his family. And now he’s in jail, his mom’s still sick, his family’s still broke, and I have all this money from my book deal. It’s not fair.”

“You’re not the same. You didn’t try to support your family by holding up a bank and taking people hostage.”

“You do what you can, what you know how to do. Ben didn’t have my options. He didn’t know any better.”

“Don’t kid yourself. He knew and he chose to do the wrong thing. Just like you chose to do the right one. I was a sniper. SWAT and Afghanistan. I don’t take out a target, maybe he kills twenty other people. Sometimes you have to make the tough call.”

Oh, he was good. Like a detective extracting a confession, he offered just enough of himself to keep the conversation going without ever truly laying himself open. Without ever making any promises.

“The situations aren’t the same. You don’t understand.”

“Try me.”

His words set up echoes in her flesh. This was an intimacy more seductive, more dangerous, than sex. All the vulnerable places in her body clenched.

“Ben
trusted
me.” She made herself say it. “I promised I would help him. And instead, his uncle George was killed when he surrendered to the authorities.”

“Some surrender. The guy resisted.”

Her brows tweaked together. “I don’t say that in the book.”

His gaze met hers. Flat, black, unreadable. “I watched the entry go down. On TV.”

That made sense. He was a cop. On a SWAT team, he’d said. He might have followed the situation out of professional interest. But she was missing something. She watched his hands ball in his pockets, making the fabric of his uniform slacks stretch across his thighs. Hands betrayed emotion when the face did not. “The tapes don’t show everything,” she said. “Some people say the SWAT team overreacted.”

“That’s on them, not on you.”

She knew that. She’d talked about survivor guilt with her therapist. But . . .

“Ben’s mother blames me. Her brother is dead, her son is in jail, because they listened to me.”

“Bullshit. That day at the bank, you did everything you could. You kept your head. You got three thugs with guns focused on you. You talked them into letting seven other people go. You put yourself out there for some strangers, even though it meant your brother, your mother, might not see you again.”

“You’re making me sound brave. I’m not. There just wasn’t anybody else who could talk to them. Who was trained at talking with people.”

“Well, you are good at that,” he said very dryly.

She laughed shakily, the sound scraping through the ground glass in her throat. “I’m sorry. I’m talking too much.”

He smiled slightly. “It’s all good. You got something to say, you say it.”

“I wish. I haven’t been able to talk about my feelings or write about them or anything else in months.”

“Talk about your feelings,” he repeated without expression.

“Yes.” She expelled her breath, a huff of amusement and frustration. “I’ve been on a book tour. I’m supposed to be connecting with people, inspiring them, and I’ve been reading off a script for so long I can’t remember what my feelings even are anymore. I’m numb. All I can manage is sound bites.”

All the same questions, over and over, scraping her nerves, probing barely healed wounds.
Tell me how it felt . . . Were you close . . . I’ve heard you write to him in prison
 . . .

“So? You don’t owe a pound of flesh every time somebody asks you a question. You give them the answer that takes off the least amount of skin. Otherwise you bleed to death.”

Oh, God. She stared at him, stricken. That was it exactly. “Or you cauterize your emotions until you can’t feel anything anymore.”

“That’s not you.”

She wanted desperately to believe him. “How do you know? Trauma
changes
you.” From someone who wanted to make a difference in the world to someone who couldn’t bring herself to leave her hotel room.

“It can,” Jack agreed calmly, his gaze steady on hers. “Or it can show you who you really are.”

She winced. “Hostage Girl.” Captive to her fears.

He shook his head. “That’s not who I see.” His fingers traced the silver coil of her ear cuff; traveled her jaw to the point of her chin. The solid heat of his body tugged at her like gravity. His pupils were wide and dark. She swayed, lost in their darkness.

“You’re not afraid to get involved. You’re not afraid to get hurt. All those feelings you say you don’t feel? They’re all in there.”

“In my book.”

“In you. You’ve got something inside you,” he murmured. “A spark. A heart. You care in an uncaring world. That takes a kind of courage most people will never have.”

The look on his face tightened her heart in her chest. She struggled to speak. To breathe.

He released her chin, stepping back. “You need more coffee?”

She blinked, rocked off balance. “Um. No. Thanks.”

“Because I’m going in for a minute.” He picked up the trap with the tabby kitten inside, the muscles in his arm flexing. “I can get you some.”

“What about . . .” She waved her hand around.

“Should be fine. I don’t have time to get to the shelter this morning, but the cabin’s cool enough. I’ll leave food and water.”

Her jaw jarred open. He thought she was talking about the
cat
?

But no. Lauren’s eyes narrowed. This was a pattern. Intimacy and retreat. He’d done it before.