Hot and Bothered (19 page)

The gunpowder burned on his face as if it was new, as if Rochelle had a mark of her own now on the inside of her where no one could see it. The ache of that possibility eclipsed the soreness of his jaw.

“I've got to call Suzanne,” she finally said out of nowhere.

“I already texted her.” Gideon took out his phone, held it up, and then put it on the manila-folder–covered coffee table. “I told her that you're okay and asked her to give you a little time to yourself. She's respecting that, although I'm pretty sure she thinks I'm being bossy, overstepping as your bodyguard.”

But that wasn't what he was any more—just a bodyguard. He hadn't been just her BG for a while now, and only a fool wouldn't see that.

Rochelle was still in a daze, obviously trying to fit all the creeper pieces together, and Gideon wished he could pull her out of it.

“Not long ago,” he said, “I actually accused your manager of setting up some creepers to scare up publicity for you.”

Rochelle blinked and refocused on him. “You said that to her?”

Good. He had a part of her back, and he tried for more. “I was only floating the idea to see how Suzanne would react. I don't know if I actually suspected her of being the brainchild of what was going on but . . . Well, I was willing to be open to any theory to get this solved and make you safe.”

She turned to him, her gaze there and not there. “Imagine—two dumb kids thinking they were doing me a favor with their gaming. The truth is stranger than . . .”

“Fiction? All you have to do is read the news to see that they fit in perfectly with this world we live in. A crazy world that included a small town like Rough and Tumble and the people who lived here.”

Somehow the day's events had unlocked his memories of when he'd found his parents' car at the graveyard, his dad raising a revolver at his own head . . .

Gideon shook off the image. He'd done so well, putting it out of sight, out of mind. Why was it creeping back now?

She was watching him with a gaze that was sad yet savvy. She gave his gunpowder mark an extra-long look, then sighed. “I'm sorry I broke down earlier. I didn't mean to.”

“You're apologizing for how you reacted after we found a creeper in the backyard?”

As she took in a shuddering breath, he couldn't stop himself from reaching over to touch her cheek. Her breath clutched, and she closed her eyes.

“I don't like crying in front of people,” she said. “Even if it's you, Gideon.”

“Hey,” he said gently, “I told you I'm here for you to lean on. You don't ever have to be ashamed of that.”

Something in her gaze fell apart, but it was in a good way, one that had him thinking he'd gotten past a wall of some sort.

He went a little further. “You don't have to be ashamed about needing a shoulder to lean on, or arms to hold you, or . . .”

A heart to love her?

But this couldn't be love, because love would only be the start of something awful. What there was in the beginning would play out too early, leaving behind only a big pile of debris.

Just as he was least expecting it, she slid over to him and rested her head on his shoulder, taking him up on his offer.

Rochelle, the last woman he'd ever thought would need someone like him.

He wasn't used to such a genuinely needy gesture from her, but then he allowed himself to hope, to feel, and he curled her into his arms. He buried his face in her honeysuckle hair, closing his eyes and thinking that this was finally so right.

Hope coursed through his veins as the two of them sat there like that, a couple of people who needed each other in a way that had nothing to do with sex right now.

“You came to my rescue again today,” she whispered. “I feel like such a princess for saying this, but . . .”

“Don't say I'm your white knight.”

“Stop denying what you are. It's like your dad's still in this house, telling you you're not worth anything.”

“He wasn't as bad in his later years.” And that's the only reason Gideon had come back after being in the Army.

“Then he was only like that when you were growing up, when it mattered the most?”

He shrugged, and she slipped her arm around his waist, cuddling into him more. He thought there wasn't a more perfect moment ever created.

But then she had to break that illusion. “I can guess why you're redoing everything about this house. You didn't grow up here, but this is where your parents lived when they—”

“Died.” That was the kind word for it because Gideon had managed to set it up so that it looked as if his father had been driving drunk that night and run the car off a nearby desert cliff.

Yeah, regular death was a real kind notion.

His breathing in synch with hers, he got even weaker, his body all liquid warmth now, making him think that
she
could chase away the bad memories and that he wouldn't have to do a damned thing to keep them back.

“You only want this house to have no trace of them,” she finally said.

“It was the practical thing to do. I can't really afford to relocate to a mansion like some people I know.”

She laughed into his chest, and a surge of joy flew through him. He'd made her laugh, even in her darkest time.

But the moment faded out, back to serious again.

“You never did like to talk about your parents,” she said. “It's my guess that you joined the military to get away from them until you returned to Rough and Tumble. Now, every time your dad or mom comes up in conversation, you still get a shadow in your eyes. You might not think I ever noticed, but I did.”

He grabbed on to her harder. Who had ever cared about what was in his eyes? And how long would that last if she really knew who she'd left seventeen years ago? He was no hero.

He couldn't stand to have her think so, either, and he started to talk, partly from wanting to show her that leaving him was really a good idea in the long run, partly because he needed to see what was keeping her here now.

And what would send her out the door.

“You asked me the other day why I decided to become a bodyguard,” he said. “I didn't quite tell you the truth.” He paused. “There was something that happened a few years ago, something that made me realize that I could prevent shit from happening instead of letting it happen. Something that rattled me until I found this . . .”

“Calling?”

Yeah, maybe it was a calling. Maybe that's why he'd taken the whole no-getting-close-to-clients thing so seriously. That night by the graveyard, everything had changed, even as he had always acted as if nothing had changed at all.

She breathed against him, and it felt so natural to have her there. He ventured telling her a little more.

“Vow that you won't tell this to anyone, Rochelle,” he said. “Not a soul.”

She slightly moved her head against him, tensing a little bit as if she was about to tell him to stop where he was before he said too much, before it was too late. But he didn't stop. Couldn't. Now he had to see if what he was feeling for her was right, if it
would
last.

And if it didn't, he knew she'd never tell anyway.

“You remember my dad,” he said. “How temperamental he was. How he and Mom were like flame and oil. They did pretty good whenever they were across the room from one another, but sometimes, when you got them too close together . . .”

“Boom,” she said.

“Yeah. Boom. And your uncle Dennis would take me in during every boom. So would your cousins, although Jonsey barely even fit his britches at the time.”

“He used to watch you with the horses, thinking you were so cool.”

It'd been nice to be looked up to like that back then, until Jonsey had become too
big
for those britches. It'd been nice to have another family, especially one that had a pretty cousin visiting every summer.

She still held him, making him think that everything might not be as bad as he'd always thought it was, that the past was the past—that they could both live through anything as long as they had each other.

The realization struck him, resonating with him. It gave him true courage.

“My dad and mom . . .” he said. “I never understood why they stayed together. They were a catastrophic couple. Hell, I was even an accident for them.”

She raised her head. “Don't say that.”

“It's the truth.” He ran a hand over her dark hair. “No use in lying about it.”

No use in lying about anything, was there?

As she looked into his eyes again, searchingly, there was a hint of fear in them. She
didn't
want him to go on, even if she'd asked about that gunpowder mark before.

But he was finally ready to see if she would leave, even before she was scheduled to.

“
Everything
about my parents was an accident,” he said. “Everything except their deaths.”

Rochelle couldn't believe Gideon was revealing this much of himself to her; she'd felt safe in the assumption that he would always keep the most private parts of himself
to
himself, because that's what they were about, wasn't it—sex, fun, a release from all the adrenaline-fueled stress that was plaguing them lately?

But he was going somewhere they shouldn't be. Why couldn't he just let this lie? She already believed that he couldn't have had anything to do with his parents' deaths, even though the way he'd phrased it had her heart in overdrive. So why did he have to explain?

She put a hand over her chest. This was too real.
Everything
had suddenly gotten too damned real with them.

“Gideon . . .” she said.

His gunpowder burn seemed blacker than ever as he looked down at her with those light brown eyes that'd also gone dark.

“I didn't kill my dad, if that's what you're thinking,” he said.

“Of course you didn't.” Okay. If he wasn't stopping, then she could be here as a friend. Definitely. She was equipped to be one of those, but surely he knew there'd be nothing beyond that for them.

Even so, her pulse scattered within her like buckshot, burning her.

“I came close to killing him,” he said. “So goddamned close.”

The anesthetic haze from the creeper had already worn off, but now she felt like she was in a different kind of limbo, one that left her lungs shallow, as if one long intake of breath would break apart the fragile webbing holding the moment together.

“Everyone thinks my parents died in a car accident on the outskirts of town,” he said. “Drunk driving. And that would've been typical for my dad, hauling my prescription-drug–addled mom around in the passenger's seat until he ran them off the road and down the side of a mountain. That's what everyone assumed when my dad's Buick was found months later in a gulch.” Gideon's gaze hardened. “That's not even near the truth, though.”

He was so serious that it was as if he were telling her a war story from his time in the Army. The years had helped him to distance himself from the action; he had totally recovered from everything he'd endured.

He almost made her think that he wouldn't welcome any comforting.

“From what I know,” he said, “my mom was depressed about losing the ranch. It'd been in her family for a couple generations, and she was ashamed that it went into foreclosure on her watch. I know that my dad felt the same way, and it killed him to see her in such a black hole. Believe it or not, when he and Mom weren't fighting, he was the most loving man in creation, so he'd get protective of her.”

Rochelle almost said
I remember hearing this somewhere when we were kids
, but the words stuck in her throat.

He touched the gunpowder scar on his cheek. God, this was why he was telling her his story, and she'd asked for it, suspecting that the whitewashed version he'd given her before wasn't true. But she'd had no idea his mark tied in with this, had no idea that it was a piece of his soul burned into his skin for all the world to see and for him to keep secret.

He went on. “I'd just gotten back from overseas, and it was the first time I'd seen my parents in years. It was also the first time they had to face me after the loss of their livelihood, their pride. The ranch meant that much to them, and my mom kept apologizing for messing up any inheritance they could've given me.” He shrugged. “I told her I'd survive, maybe even reenlist someday after I got tired of the ranch-hand gig I'd found over in Sandy Valley, but I guess that didn't make her feel any better. She'd already made up her mind that her life was hopeless, and it seems my dad had agreed. That's why, soon afterward, he drove Mom out to the graveyard during the dead of night. He saw it as the most giving, loving thing he could do for her . . . and probably himself. Neither of them wanted to face me again as such screwups.”

Gideon's jaw tightened, and he closed his eyes, as if he were feeling the punch he'd taken earlier from Jonsey. But then again, it might've been because he was showing the first sign of emotion Rochelle had seen. With her heart throbbing, she nearly touched his swelling injury, because she knew where this story was going. The groundwork for tragedy was all there as were the hard lines etched near Gideon's mouth.

Yes, she could be his friend . . .

And when he opened his eyes to reveal the barely concealed pain there, she cradled his hand with hers while he made a fist on the sofa.

“I'm so sorry, Gideon.”

“My dad,” he rasped, “had left a note for me, knowing I'd be stopping by in the morning. But I'd been partying at the Rough and Tumble, and after last call, I drove by the house on my way to a room at the Silver Hills near the interstate and saw that his Buick wasn't there. So I decided to run in and check on them because sometimes after they fought, my dad would take off and my mom would go on a bender. I figured if I was around to sober her up and put her to bed, then so much the better. Instead, I found the note on the kitchen table, and neither of them was in the house.

“That note spelled it all out. Dad told me that I could find them by the pioneer graveyard in the morning, so I drove there as fast as I could, but I wasn't in time to keep my mom from taking a bottle of pills that did their job as my dad watched.”

Not a car accident
, Rochelle thought. And she had the feeling this was only going to get worse.

Gideon narrowed his eyes, as if witnessing the scene all over again. “They chose the graveyard because they'd stopped there on their first date to talk, and it had romantic significance for them. That's not surprising, though, right? They were the kind of couple that'd have something as morbid as a graveyard somewhere in their courtship.” Gideon sighed deeply. “Anyway, my parents had made a pact with each other, and my dad was supposed to make sure those pills went down nice and easy. But he'd also brought a revolver, and it was in his lap as he sat there, drunk off his ass as usual, watching her.”

A tear slipped from Rochelle's eye. She angrily cuffed at it. No one should have stories like this.

But he didn't stop there. “When I opened the door of the Buick, still thinking I'd gotten there in time to save my mom, my dad picked up the revolver. I dove in and wrestled with him for it since I was sure he was going to use it on himself. But as I grappled with him, I saw Mom slumped in the passenger's seat. Realizing she was already dead, I nearly put that revolver to his head myself. Goddammit, I was dying to do it, but the muzzle was facing away from him so that when he pulled the trigger, it went off so close to my face that . . .”

“It left a burn.”

Gideon looked so deeply into her that she felt they shared more than just a story right now—they were sharing everything, including his pain. Moment by moment, she felt herself joining with him in more than just the physical ways they'd experienced, and fear pumped through her. Fear of the unknown—a fear she'd never planned for.

His voice was so low that she could barely make out the anguish-riddled words. “That was the first bullet. And I'll give this to the old man—he had some bullish strength in him. He kicked my ass out of that car so that, the next thing I knew, I was on the ground. Then, before I could get back up, he managed to use the next bullet on himself.”

Rochelle closed her eyes.

“I was used to death on the battlefield,” she heard him say. “The first time you see someone dying when you're there, you live through the sight of blood time and again until, finally, you learn how to put it in a place where the color isn't as red, a place where it doesn't seem real anymore. Then, if you push it back even farther, you're able to forget it altogether.” He nodded. “It's been a few years since the suicides now, enough to forget how I went back to the car and saw my dad leaning against my mom, bleeding over her white shirt. It was the quietest I'd ever seen them together.” He smiled in obvious remorse. “The only time they'd probably ever agreed about anything was about how they'd die.”

She searched for a reply, but even though she made a living using words, she had nothing. All she could do was hold on to his hand. She'd heard terrible stories during her research for books—the fire that had taken down the house Cherry had been partying in, tales of drug abuse and lives stained by tragedy—but that was just what it'd been: research. She'd imagined the faces that belonged to the stories, but she'd never been so close to a real one before.

Her voice quivered as she opened her eyes and asked, “How did everyone come to think that your parents died because of a car accident, Gideon?”

He still looked unaffected, as rough and steady as ever. “That's on me. Shit, I hated my parents and I loved them, and it was the love that won out in the end. I didn't want them to be the people who committed suicide by the graveyard, and before I could think about the consequences, I hopped in that car and drove it out of Rough and Tumble. I took the evidence out of that Buick and then sent it over a cliff and into a gulch. I watched it crash, crumble, and burn, and all the while I figured my dad had lived a drunk, so why not die one, too? Truthfully, I might've also not wanted to be the person whose parents took the easy way out of life.” He paused for a heartbeat. Two. “Seems as if I'm just as much into historical fiction as you are.”

She opened her mouth to say something, anything, but he beat her to it.

“So that's the story of my black mark. I figured that you shouldn't leave Rough and Tumble without it.”

He was so nonchalant. “And that's actually why you became a bodyguard—because you weren't there to prevent your parents' decision.”

“And I became one so I could stop things before they happen. Hell, Shel, don't dig into me deeper than that,” he rasped. “I know you want to set up a character profile for everyone you meet but . . .”

She'd lowered her head, and she raged that she couldn't stop her emotions from overwhelming her.

When she felt his fingers under her chin, tipping her head up so she could meet his gaze, her chest rolled into itself, squeezing the breath out of her.

He said, “Kat and Boomer know this story, too. On the first anniversary of my parents' deaths, I'd had more whisky shots than usual, and my tongue was looser than I intended. We never talked about it again, though.”

“And after that . . . no one else found out?”

“I never told.”

He must have recognized the fear of intimacy in her gaze, because he let go of her chin, the afterburn of his touch searing her. Then his gaze darkened again, and she stiffened.

He wasn't seeing the pain she was also feeling for him; he was seeing that she didn't know what to do now, what they were to each other.

An anguished laugh rocked him, and he pulled away from her. “You're wishing I hadn't told you a word of this.”

“No. You gave me a shoulder to lean on, Gideon, and I'm glad I could give you one, too.”

But, as she looked into his eyes, friendship didn't seem to be enough for him.

It had to be, though. She was better as a friend. Cherry had been the same way with Tommy, afraid that love wasn't as real as ambition or goals, afraid that love didn't actually exist, afraid of tossing aside her life for a bad bet like love.

But was that what she had with Gideon? Love?

Rochelle stayed on the sofa as he stood, his hands on his hips.

Love
, she thought, her pulse weak. This couldn't be it. It didn't fit with her. She'd never wanted it.

But as he stood over her, he seemed more exposed than ever, his gaze naked with yearning. “I see now. You make up stories all the time. You hear stories that build your books, but you have no idea what to do with one that hits this close to home.”

She looked up at him, and it was as if an electric shock got her pulse working again with a vicious jump.

The veins in his arms strained as he clenched his hands. “Can't you feel
anything
real?”

Could
she?

With a tragic jerk of her heart, she realized she wasn't sure. She'd told herself a hundred times she wasn't a candidate for true love, but she'd told herself a lot of things in life mainly just to leave them by the wayside. She couldn't jump out of a plane. She couldn't cook a meal on
Iron Chef
in under an hour.

But this? It was much more meaningful than any of that, and it pained her that she wasn't capable of it.

“Rochelle,” he said with such raw feeling that she stared at the floor.

“I wish your parents hadn't gone that way,” she said shakily, giving him a way out so they could both go on as if nothing had happened just now. Moving along, nothing to see here.

But when he tentatively reached out to her, stroking her hair with a gentle touch, she panicked.

Instinct had her reaching out to slide her hands up his jeans-clad hips, dragging him closer. She ran her fingers over his fly, feeling one button under the denim flap, then the next, then the swell of him, and she hoped she could make them both forget this keen awkwardness.

“I want to make you feel better,” she whispered, and she truly did. She wanted to do it in the only way she knew how.

But all she felt was a sawing sensation around her heart as if it were being cut out.

He grabbed her wrist. “Don't. Jesus, is that all I am to you?”

Her voice was thick. “You asked if I could feel anything real. From what I see under your fly, this is as real as it gets, Gideon.”

“I'm not talking about sex. Shit, Rochelle, are you really gonna play dumb with me like this?”

Yes. She would've if she could've. It'd worked so many times before with men.

He slowly bent down on one knee in front of her, while she kept her hands midair, utterly stilled.