Forbidden (Southern Comfort) (6 page)

Tricky because every time she went near him with something medicinal, he snarled like a wounded animal.
  “Guess that barnyard comparison wasn’t too far off.”

“What?”

“You’re growling.”

“You’d growl too if someone poured
liquid fire in your open wound.”

Tate bi
t her own lip as she resisted the urge to laugh.  Not that his injuries were amusing, but the fact that he’d so completely lost his unflappable arrogance pleased her greatly.  He was acting like a petulant little boy, and that put them on more even footing.  She was much more adept at warding off temper tantrums than slick seductions.  “Hush.  You’ll wake up Max.”  

Clay merely scowled at her when she smiled. 

Tate doubted that his various bumps and bruises hurt that badly.  No, she suspected his bad mood was due more to the beating his plans for the night had taken.

It was tough to woo a woman when you were ignobly perched on her toilet.

“I thought Charleston was supposed to be a safe city,” he complained, battered face giving him the look of a boxer who’d gone one too many rounds. 

“You know, for an FBI agent, you’re an awfully big whiner.”

The glance he shot her was filled with chagrin. “I was wondering when you would get around to mentioning that. I hope you don’t think I was yanking your chain earlier.  I really am a psychologist.  I just happen to be an agent, also.”

Tate
stopped dabbing the cotton swab against his lip and considered.  He clearly hadn’t wanted to divulge what he did for a living, and she couldn’t help but wonder why.  “Are you undercover or something?”

“Nothing that exciting
.”  He leaned back, wincing as if his bruised ribs objected to the movement.  “I’m just a guy on vacation trying to pretend that his real life doesn’t exist.”

Unsure whether the aggrieved tone of his voice was from embarrassment or
discomfort, Tate furrowed her brow in concern.  Maybe he was hurt worse than she thought. “Are you sure you don’t want to go to the emergency room?  I can handle a busted lip, but I don’t know anything about bones.  You might have cracked one of your ribs or something.”

“I’m fine,” he assured her.  “Justin looked me over and said that nothing appeared to be broken.  I’ll just be sore for a couple of days.
”  He shook his head, then turned a mocking look her way, voice lowered to a sexy murmur. “I know you had big plans, sugar, but the kinky stuff will just have to wait.” 

“And h
ere I’d been looking forward to pitting your handcuffs against my whip.”

She realized her miscalculation when
his eyes turned hot, raking down her body with obvious intent. His gaze climbed slowly, leaving a trail of gooseflesh behind, and she crossed her arms over her chest.

“I was kidding.”

“You sure?” He leaned back, cocky as hell again.  “You’d look awfully good in my cuffs.”

Tate pushed that image right out of her head.  “Be that as it may, I think you’ve been beaten enough for one night.”

  Instead of putting him in his place, the words merely bounced off his ego.  His eyes finished their lazy perusal, heavy-lidded as they met hers.

The walls of the bathroom suddenly seemed too close, or maybe he seemed too large.  Too masculine.  Too…

Hers to do what she wanted with for the night.

Irritated with herself, Tate tossed the used swab in the trash.

She could feel his gaze burning her skin, but was afraid to let her own get drawn back to his.  Because the truth was she was sorely tempted.  And that in itself was enough to make her wary. She didn’t do one night stands, and she sure didn’t do them with both her mother and her son just down the hall. So instead, she crossed her arms again, and after a few moments, heard him sigh.

“I appreciate the help, but I think I’ve taken up enough of your evening.” He rose to his feet, closing some of the distance between them. The step Tate took back was instinctive, and Clay chuckled before leaning toward her ear.  “You can relax now.  I recognize a stop sign when I see it.  Body language,” he explained, w
hen she raised a brow.  “You’re closed up tighter than a fifty-five gallon drum.”

“I’m sorry,” Tate began
, feeling the need to explain. “But I can’t –”

He waved her excuses away.
  “Probably for the best.  I’ll just call a cab to take me out to Justin’s house.  From the way things looked, he’s going to be spending the night at the hospital.”

Because
, as she’d discovered, he was a doctor.  Not a drunk. In retrospect, Tate guessed she’d misjudged both men pretty badly.  But then, that was par for her particular course.

“We have a room available downstairs,” she heard herself say, and cursed her tongue for having a mind of its own
.  She should simply let him call his cab.  “A last minute cancellation,” she continued anyway.  “If you’d like, you’re welcome to it.” 

He hesitated – just long enough to make her feel uncertain and foolish for having made the offer –
but then a lopsided grin eased some of the tension from his face.  “I’d appreciate it.” 

Tate opened the bathroom door.
“Come on.  I’ll see if I can dig up a T-shirt big enough for you to wear, and show you where you’ll be sleeping.”

THE
little boy called out to him for help.  Clay could hear him crying in the background as he talked to the child’s father over the phone.

“
Please
don’t
shoot
us
,
Daddy
.”

What kind of thing was that for a child to have to say?

And what kind of man could look into the terrified faces of his wife and son and pull the trigger?

Despite the fact that he was an expert on social deviants and their motivations, their sheer capacity for evil never ceased to disgust him.

“Carl.”  Clay called the man by his first name, establishing a rapport.  “Why don’t you just let Liz and Bradley walk out that door?”  
Remind
him
of
their
names
,
remind
him
they were people, not
possessions
. 
This was the kind of man that if he was going down, would want to take everything he owned with him.
 

“Because I’m not stupid.  The second they’re out that door, I’m as good as dead.”

“No.”  Clay gave his word.  “I’ll see to it.  My objective is to see that you get whatever it is that you need without anyone getting hurt.  What do you need, Carl?  Let me help you.”
Keep
it
conversational
,
between
you
and
Carl
. 
If he’s talking, he’s not killing his family. 
 

The little boy cried out again, tears giving way to sobs.  “What I need,” Carl hissed through his teeth.  “Is some goddamn quiet!  Shut him up, Liz!”

Be quiet, Bradley,
Clay silently pleaded with the child.  Any threat to his father’s control at this point could have devastating consequences. 
Empathize,
Clay reminded himself. 
Reassure.

“Carl, I know it must be difficult to concentrate with Bradley crying.  Why don’t you send him out here?  You can do that, because you’re in control.”

“Damn right I am!  Liz, I told you to
shut him up!
”

From there it went downhill at a breakneck pace.  Carl dropped the phone, and turned his gun on his family.  Before Clay could even signal the sharpshooters, that little boy was dead. 

His terrified voice still echoed in Clay’s head.  He wondered if he’d ever again be able to sleep without hearing him…
singing?

Shooting up like a
marionette on a string, Clay blinked his eyes at the dark-haired child sitting on the edge of his bed.  He moved a bright yellow cement mixer back and forth as he sang in a charmingly off-key voice. 

“Sally the camel has
tree
stumps, Sally the camel has
tree
stumps, so ride Sally ride.  Boom, boom, boom.”

For a moment, Clay thought he’d taken a high dive into shallow waters, but as dream faded into reality he
found himself grinning.  Max’s off base lyrics were hysterical.  He eyed his surprise visitor with a great deal of humor. 

“You go riding tree stumps and you’re bound to get splinters in your butt,” he advised.

Max turned around to face Clay, covering his giggle behind a small hand.  “You said butt,” he pointed out with glee.

Well shit,
Clay thought, scrubbing a hand through his mussed hair.  What was the politically correct terminology these days?  Bottom?  Derriere?  Hiney?  “I meant to say ‘in your behind’.” He didn’t want the kid to go rat him out to his mother.

“That’s okay,” Max said diplomatically, in that completely superior mann
er only the very young can pull off.  “I know what a butt is.  I know lots of things that Mommy doesn’t like me to say.  I hear ‘em from Cousin Declan and Cousin Rogan.  They’re teaching me how to cuss.”

“Are they now?”

“Uh-huh.”  Max pushed his cement mixer up Clay’s leg and made the accompanying noises.  His black hair was tousled, his face rosy from sleep.  By the gray cast to the light diminishing the shadows in the room, Clay could only guess that it was just before dawn. 

Max, apparently, was an early riser. 

“They said that the boys at the big school next year will think I’m a sissy if I call my butt a bum-bum and my penis a doohickey,” the little boy explained.  “Mommy has funny names for things, but that’s just ‘cause she’s a girl.  Girls are kind of prissy ‘bout stuff, Cousin Rogan says.”

Clay wondered if Tate had any idea what her cousins were doing to her son.  But Max’s next comment pretty much answered that.  “Cousin Rogan says that it’s just a secret between us boys, and that I should never cuss in front of Mommy ‘cause it wouldn’t be ‘spectful.  I don’t know what that means,” he admitted philosophically, “but I think it means that it might make Mommy mad.”  He gave Clay a quick once over before returning his attention to his truck.  “I figured it’s okay to tell you
, ‘cause you have a penis.”

In a bid to keep from cracking up, Clay bit his bottom lip, reopening his cut.  Then he added to Max’s education – or maybe corruption – by uttering a curse.

Max’s eyes, so like his mama’s, went wide with fledgling admiration.  “Cousin Rogan said that word would make Mommy
real
mad if I ever repeated it.  He said it the other day when he dropped a full bottle of whiskey on his pinkie toe.”

Wiping fresh blood from his tender flesh, Clay nodded his head in commiseration.  “I can understand why he did that.”

“Did you cuss when the bad man hurt you in the face?” Max wanted to know.

“How did you know a bad man hurt me?” Clay wondered, hoping to turn the conversation away from its current uneasy course.  He was floundering in a sea of anatomically correct names for body parts and inappropriate curse words.

“I woke up last night ‘cause I had to pee, and I heard you and Mommy talking.  That’s how I knew you were sleeping in this room.”

Clay had to admit to his own fledgling admiration, as well as a sincere and heartfelt concern for Tate’s sanity when this kid hit fifteen.  He was already showing signs of being both clever and sneaky – cute in a precocious five year old
. Terrifying in a teenager. 

“So your mom doesn’t know you’re in here?” he surmised.

Max shook his head.  “I’m not s’ posed to bother the guests.  But you didn’t lock your door,” he said almost accusingly, just beginning to understand the benefits of reassigning blame.  “So I wanted to come in and show you that I’ve been practicin’.”

“Practicing what?” Clay asked warily.  Lord knows what else Tate’s cousins had taught him.

“Givin’ five.” Max huffed out an exasperated breath. “You said I needed to practice it with Mommy.”

Something in Clay’s gut twisted a little at the child’s words.  “I guess I did say that, didn’t I?”  Then he held his hand out and waited for Max to slap him.

“Ouch, you got me,” Clay said when the small palm smacked against his own.  He waved his hand back and forth to indicate the expected display of pain, and then ruffled Max’s thick mop of hair before pushing back the covers.  The beer he’d consumed last night was demanding to come out.  He swung his legs over the edge of the bed, remembered rather suddenly that he was naked, and then made a grab for the shorts he’d dropped on the floor.

It was at that moment Tate unexpectedly appeared at the door, which was partially open due to the fact that Max had neglected to close it
all the way.

Every bit of color draining from her face, she launched herself at Max, snatching him off the cherry four-poster before turning her maternal fury on Clay.  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”