Jump Start (9 page)

“I’m positive,” Jennifer assured her, well aware from Kate’s fears from the exam room, that she’d lost a pet several years before to pneumonia.

“We told you she snored all night,” Kate said. “Right?”

“Yes,” Jennifer said. “You told me. The steroid shot I gave her will work wonders, I promise. Snoring is perfectly normal with allergies.”

The door to the clinic opened but instead of Kate’s father, Bobby stepped inside. “You said you weren’t going to tell anyone I snored.”

Instant adrenaline rocketed through Jennifer, all sense of exhaustion gone, but somehow she kept her expression unaffected despite the discreet head-to-toe inspection he gave her. Kate didn’t notice, she was smiling up at Bobby, her eyes lighting with teenage appreciation, and Jennifer couldn’t blame her. Clean-shaven, with faded jeans, a snug Army T-shirt and his blue eyes shimmering in a backdrop of sunlight, he looked country-boy sexy.

Roxie barked and huddled at Bobby’s feet. He squatted down and gave the pup a rubdown. “Hey there, cutie,” he said and smiled at Kate. “Yours, I take it?”

“Yes,” she said brightly, the worry from moments before fading away. “Her name is Roxie, and she snores, too.”

“Really?” Bobby said. “Small world. You know, when I was in college, I had a German shepherd that snored. The two of us together drove Jennifer crazy.”

“Jennifer?” Kate frowned.

Bobby pushed to his feet and eyed Jennifer, his expression lighting with pride. “Dr. Jones,” he corrected.

Kate looked between them and said, “So you two are—”

“No,” Jennifer said quickly.

“I’m in the doghouse right now,” Bobby told Kate. “But I’m howling my way back out.”

Kate laughed and the door opened as her father poked his head in. “Ready, Kate?”

“Yes,” she said quickly before eying Jennifer. “Thank you, Dr. Jones.”

“Call me if you need me,” Jennifer said, waving.

The door shut, leaving Jennifer and Bobby alone. “You’re making a habit of leaving without saying a proper goodbye,” Bobby said. “You didn’t even give me a phone number.”

“I was in a rush to get to work,” she said quickly.

“And away from me,” he added, and didn’t give her time to object. “So this is your clinic.” He scanned the lobby—the tiled flooring, to make accidents easier to clean up; simple cloth chairs, again, easy to clean; and pictures of animals on the walls. “You did it,” he said, more of that earlier pride in his voice and his face. “You made your dream come true.” His voice softened. “I’m happy for you, Jen. I really am. You knew what you wanted and you went after it.”

“Thank you,” she said, sadness balling in her chest. It was her dream, yes, but seven years ago, she’d shared it with Bobby. Expected to live it with him. “And you? Did you find what you wanted?”

His jaw tensed in a barely perceivable way, his answer coming slowly. “Yeah,” he said. “I found what I wanted.”

It was all she could do not to press her hand to her stomach at the coiling inside. Good. That was good. She did want him to be happy. She did. She loved him. That meant letting go sometimes. She understood that; it was the
not
saying goodbye,
not
dealing with the past, that had been hard. She had that chance now, and she should be thankful. Right. Thankful. Embrace opportunity.

She cleared her throat. “The door,” she said, trying to move beyond the moment because the embracing-opportunity thing really wasn’t calling to her. “Can you lock that door behind you? Roxie was my last patient, and I don’t want to risk any walk-ins without anyone covering the front.”

He stared at her, his blue eyes probing hers, before he turned to the door. “Ah, Jen,” he said, messing with the lock. “Is there a trick to this lock that you forgot to mention?”

Jennifer squeezed her eyes shut. “Oh, God, no,” she said, weary to the bone. “I had a new door put in two weeks ago, and the lock hasn’t worked right since. I just had a guy out here last week to replace it.” She pressed her hand to her face and then let it fall. “I can’t leave the place open. I’ll have to call the locksmith.”

Bobby opened the door and gave it a quick once-over, moving it back and forth. “It’s not the lock. It’s the door. It’s off center. I can fix you right up if you have a tool kit.”

“You don’t have to do that, Bobby,” Jennifer said. The idea of him taking care of this for her was hitting a sensitive spot. She didn’t want to depend on Bobby. He was leaving. “I can call someone.”

“I’m here,” he said. “Why wouldn’t I do this for you?”

Of course. Why wouldn’t he? “Tool kit coming right up,” she said.

Thirty minutes later, Bobby appeared in the doorway of her office. “All done and locked up.”

Jennifer pushed to her feet. “Great. Thank you.” He was so big and sexy, and her office, so small and confining. Jennifer gathered her purse from her desk, ready to escape. She wasn’t going to get perspective until she slept. “I desperately need a few hours of shut-eye.”

Bobby propped himself in the door frame. “The skydiving operation we’re going to tomorrow…they’re doing an exhibition show tonight. I was hoping, after you got a few hours’ rest, of course, that maybe we could drive out there together.”

Usually one to think before she acted, or spoke, Jennifer found herself unable to contain the explosiveness of her instant reaction. Her purse went down on the desk with a thud. “No, Bobby,” she said. “No, we cannot drive out to the exhibition show. Just like you shouldn’t have fixed my door. We,” she said, waving her hand between them in an exaggerated fashion, “are not dating. We do not do dating-type things. This is a fling. Nothing but a fling. An ends-in-less-than-two-weeks fling! That translates to sex and goodbye. Goodbye and sex. We’ve had this conversation. You don’t have to walk around that. You don’t have to make it pretty.” She was mad. She couldn’t help it. “Just make it good!”

His expression hardened, stone-cold and calculating, in a way she’d rarely seen Bobby. He stared at her. She stared at him. And then suddenly, she said, “Darn it, Bobby, I know you’re mad. But what right do you have to be mad? You left me. You were silent for seven long years. You cannot come back here and just expect me to fall at your feet. I didn’t do this to us. You did.”

He pierced her with a shadowy, haunted gaze. “I thought there was no ‘us’ to do anything to, Jen,” he said. “So is there or is there not?”

“There was,” she said softly, fists balled by her side as she tried to stop her hands from trembling, telling herself it was lack of sleep, when she knew it was him, it was Bobby, his nearness. The need to feel him touch her again, the fear he would and that she would lose herself to him forever this time.

“But not now?” he pressed. “Now there is only sex?”

She drew a shaky breath at the directness of the question, at the tension crackling in the air, as if the elements around them waited for an answer as surely as he did. She didn’t understand him, didn’t understand any of this.

“I’m not pressuring you, Bobby,” she said. “I’m not asking you for forever. I didn’t ask you to explain the past. You don’t have to do any of this. I won’t let our past ruin the wedding. But you keep pressing. I don’t know what you want from me. What is it you want, Bobby?”

She slid into his arms as if she knew exactly what he needed—her.

“Bobby,” she gasped, her hands curling in his shirt, the sexy sound of his name on her tongue exploding erotically into the silence of the room.

“That’s it, sweetheart,” he said, his fingers curving over her lush backside. “Say my name.” He needed to hear it enough to last a lifetime. He gently shoved his way inside her panties and then stroked her sensitive folds. “Say it again,” he whispered, his lips brushing hers.

“Bobby,” she hissed into his mouth, her tongue sucking his. He could feel her responding to the darkness in him, feel her looking for answers, for some sort of completion that words and seven years wouldn’t allow them. He kissed her, sliding his fingers inside her, stretching her, readying her. Moving his fingers with her as she rocked against his hand.

He nipped her lip and then picked her up, carrying her to the desk and setting her down. His zipper hissed as he opened it, and he shoved his pants to his knees. Jennifer quickly got rid of her panties. She spread her legs and scooted closer to the edge of the desk, offering herself in body, if not in heart and soul.

He ground his teeth in anticipation and slid the thick head of his erection along the slick folds of her body, probing, teasing. She stared down at the intimate view, as did he, the thrum of arousal fire in his veins. He circled the blunt head in the wet heat of her cleft and then captured her mouth with his, hot and hungry, and then pressed past the intimate folds of her body, entering her, and then driving hard and deep.

Jennifer whimpered and clung to him, wrapping her arms and legs around him. Bobby lifted her, filling his hands with her lush backside. Filling her body with the thick pulse of his erection. Their breath mingled together.

She rocked against his body, slow and sensuous, up and down, side to side; he guided her movements. But it wasn’t enough, not for him, not for her. Bobby used her weight, forcing her down on his shaft—harder, faster, deeper.

Drenching him with sweet, slick heat, she clung to his shoulders, her breasts pressed to his, ravishing him with sweet curves and soft moans. Again and again, he pulled her down his shaft, until she arched her back and hips, a sound of pleasure sliding from her lips just as she spasmed around him.

Bobby moaned with the intensity of her muscles milking him, dragging him to a dark, blissful place where there was only the shudder of her body against his. The shadows of the past were velvety rich with the present. There was only here, now, the two of them. He buried himself in the depths of her orgasm, buried the anger and regret eating him alive. Let the molten heat licking at his cock melt him farther inside Jennifer, clinging to every last second of the escape until he shook with the effort, unable to hold back. In an instant, Bobby’s orgasm was ripped from the base of his cock, spilling himself into the depths of her body. Bobby buried his face in her jasmine-scented, silky blond hair. Tormented by the pleasure that was both perfection and hell—the pleasure that would force him back into the present. For long seconds, Bobby held her, she held him. Weakness overcame his legs, and he set her on the desk and pressed his forehead to hers. There was so much he wanted to say, so much he should say, but also, so much he wasn’t sure he should say. As she had said, he had no right to come back here and expect more from her than what she was giving him.

Her hand gently rested on his jaw, the anger and demand between them absent, fading away. There was comfort in her tender touch, a sense of understanding that said she felt the vulnerability in him, the rawness of the confession he had yet to make, but he knew, stay or go, he owed her.

He swallowed what felt like a brick in his throat. “Since the Hotzone in San Marcus, we’ll already be halfway to my father’s place in San Antonio when the air show ends. It’ll be late, so we’ll want to find a hotel tonight and see him tomorrow, but I thought…I wanted, no…I need you to go with me to see
him
.”

Jennifer leaned back, searching his face, surprise glinting in the depths of her blue eyes. Her gaze sharpened and then narrowed. “You haven’t seen him, have you? Not since you left.”

His lips thinned and he shook his head. “No,” he managed to say, his throat as parched as the Iraqi desert.

Shock washed over her face. “Have you talked?”

“A couple times on the phone,” he said, pulling out of her and fixing his pants while she righted her clothing and then leaned back against the desk.

“And?” she asked. “How were the talks?”

A bitter laugh slid from his throat. “You don’t talk to my father,” he said. “He talks. You listen.”

“That good, huh?” she asked softly.

He shrugged. “It is what it is, but I left here because of him.” He ground his teeth. “No. That’s not true. I left because of me. Because I let him get into my head. And, Jen—” he scrubbed his jaw, the roughness of the stubble scraping against his palm “—I won’t lie. He’s still there. Working me over. I don’t have any right to ask you to go with me. I don’t have any right to ask anything of you. But I need you to know why I left, no matter how poor the decision. I need you to know it wasn’t about you. Or rather—it was about you. About protecting you.”

“You barely even drink, Bobby,” she reminded him. “You aren’t your father.”

“Yeah, well,” Bobby said, “he was sober until he turned forty. From there, it was one big slosh fest. Still is from what I can tell from a distance.”

She pushed off the desk, a solemn look on her heart-shaped face as she stopped in front of him. Her hands pressed to his chest, heating the area she touched. She blinked up at him. “You really believe you’re going to turn into him, don’t you?”

“No,” he answered honestly. “I wouldn’t be here now if I hadn’t come to realize I’m not my father. That my choices, just like his did, will decide my future. But deep down, I know I’m kidding myself if I believe I’ve dealt with this, not until I go and face him.”

She studied. “I wish I would have seen this in you before. I wish I…”

He pulled her close and kissed her. “Stop. Do not even think about making what happened somehow your fault. You do that—you take things on as your own. You didn’t see this in me, because I’m not sure I did. I hid from it. I’ve been hiding from it for seven years. I’m here now. It’s time I face him, and myself.” His gaze brushed her parted lips, wet from their kisses, the sweetness that was so her, without her even trying. “I was young and scared, Jen. I was running. It’s all I knew how to do.”

“From me,” she murmured. “You ran from me.”

“I ran from myself,” he said, cupping her cheek. “Not you. And I’m not running now. I’m laying it all on the line here. Everything I am.”

Turbulence flickered across her face. Slowly, she nodded. “Let’s go see your father. Get it over with now. Get this behind you.”

Bobby stood there, basking in the acceptance in her eyes, in the willingness to be there for him he didn’t deserve, when he’d deserted her.

Drowning. Bobby was drowning in a deep pool of water that felt as if it might turn into some of that quicksand he’d experienced back in that Iraqi desert. Jennifer was going with him to see his father. It was what he’d wanted. So why did he have a knot fisted in his gut? Because, he knew, he was afraid of pulling Jen into the quicksand with him.

He lifted her hand, pressed her fingers to his mouth. “Go home and rest,” he finally said. “You’ll need it to deal with my father. I’ll need it to deal with my father.”

“Then come with me,” she said. “We’ll sleep a few hours and leave from my place.”

“If I come home with you…” he said in a thick tone, thinking of how good stripping her naked and holding her would be, “I won’t let you sleep.”

“Sleep is overrated,” she said. “Come home with me, Bobby.”

But that tight feeling in his chest was back. He had to figure out how to dig himself out of this quicksand. “I’ve got stuff going on in my head,” he said. “I need to deal with it.” He touched her cheek. “I’ll pick you up at seven, okay?”

Confusion slid across her face. “Okay,” she reluctantly agreed.

His hands settled on her shoulders. “Thank you for coming with me, Jen.” He kissed her forehead and turned to leave, telling himself he was headed back to the hotel to review the encrypted files being sent to him on the Texas Hotzone skydiving operation and its owner. Telling himself he had duty. Work. Preparation for an assignment that might well be his last, but one he wanted to complete. He’d seen plenty of guys exit the Army and struggle in the civilian world. Hell, he could be one of those guys. He wouldn’t convict one of his own, a fellow soldier, without doing what he could to save him.

It was easier to focus on that than the questions Jennifer would ask if he stayed with her—about his mind-set now, about his mind-set seven years ago. He couldn’t talk about his father. Not with Jennifer. Not without backing out of this visit. Because Bobby might be prepared to face the past, to face his father and himself, but was she? And was he really being fair to ask her to?

Maybe he’d been selfish to return home, to pull her into this. But he had. He’d not only returned home, he’d tasted her, held her, felt the sweetness of her presence surround him. And Lord help him, he felt selfish. Because he wanted more of her.

Deep down, though, he feared she would not want more than their “fling,” as she called it. He feared he’d pushed her away, pushed her too far, for too long, and she really was simply saying goodbye. That he’d lost her, and no matter how hard he tried to win her back, he could not.

He wasn’t sure he was the man who could make her happy. Or maybe he could. By giving her a chance to say goodbye. He needed her to have that choice. Exactly why he wasn’t going to tell her about his reenlistment. He wasn’t going to put that kind of pressure on her. If she needed to use him and throw him aside, if revenge was all she needed from him, he’d give it to her. But not without trying to convince her forever had a place—with him.