Break for Me (8 page)

Dean’s eyes were sad as he looked at her. “She died just a few weeks before she would
have started kindergarten.”

*   *   *

How did he even start to explain this?

Slowly, feeling like he’d aged twenty years in the past twenty seconds, Dean straightened
on the couch, bracing his elbows on his knees as he stared at Amaya’s picture.

“Her mom and I weren’t married,” he said slowly. “We met in law school.” He slid her
a look from the corner of his eye, grinned a little. “I caused her a hell of a lot
of trouble. She was an adjunct teacher for one of the courses I took in law school.
She had a job at a local law firm, taught for a semester while I was still in school.
I was crazy about her. The feeling was mutual, but that’s a good way to get your ass
in trouble. For both of us. Rochelle wasn’t having any part of it, not that I didn’t
try. She had busted her ass to get where she was and she wasn’t going to let some
slick-talking boy born with a silver spoon in his mouth screw things up for her.”
He shrugged and reached up, rubbing his neck. “Once I was out of school, I didn’t
see her for a while. Then I ran into her one night after I’d passed the bar. I was
working my ass off for this slick defense attorney in Lexington. He had his hands
in almost every big case that went through that city—remember the basketball player
accused of paying for his girlfriend’s murder? He had that one.”

He caught the sneer on Jensen’s face and sighed. “I’m not the man I was then. I had
my eye on one thing, making a name for myself. Getting a partnership, maybe opening
up my own firm at some point. You want to make a name for yourself, you take cases
like that. And … even the very guilty are entitled to a defense.” He ran his tongue
around his teeth, thinking about how many of the very guilty he’d helped keep out
of jail. “Rochelle and I started dating. We figured out pretty fast that what we had
was heat. Nothing else. But it was pretty damn hot. Then she ended up pregnant. The
baby…”

Even now, he could remember that amazing feeling, the way love and awe had rolled
through him as the doctor placed the baby in his hands the very first time. “She was
everything to us. We didn’t love each other, but we adored her. Shared custody, went
to every doctor appointment together, picked out the school together. Everything.”

He lapsed into silence as other memories stirred.

A hand reached out and covered his.

Looking up, he saw Jensen staring at him.

“What happened?”

His voice rusty, he said, “Rochelle … she…” He blew out a breath and looked past her.
“She grew up in a rough area. She got out. Her brother didn’t. He started showing
up, looking for money. She didn’t give it to him. He was pretty damn desperate, had
all sorts of trouble chasing him. Then it found him. Had a couple of dealers, they
tracked him down—drive-by shooting. He lived. Rochelle and Amaya didn’t.”

“My God.”

“Yeah.” He rose and walked over to the entertainment center, taking the picture of
his little girl down. “I knew one of the motherfuckers. Rich-ass bastard. Made his
money selling drugs to teenagers, but the cops kept fucking up because they were so
determined to take him down. It was easy to get him off, like taking candy from a
baby. I was one of the lawyers who helped get him off. I helped put him back on the
street … and he killed my little girl.”

When she came up behind him, he didn’t move.

As her arms came around him, he didn’t move.

He just stood there, staring at Amaya’s innocent, precious face.

After a minute, he said, “I went home after her funeral and sat in my room. I knew
all about how to get a gun. I didn’t own one—still don’t, but I know more about getting
my hands on a weapon than most people. Except a cop or drug dealer probably. I kept
thinking about how easy it would be for me to just go kill him. I knew where he hung
out. I knew where he lived. I already knew how easy it would be for me to get off
with killing him. He had killed my daughter … the mother of my child. Two innocent
people, gunned down. There were witnesses—not that they’d ever testify, but they had
told me what they saw. I knew how to talk to people.”

He put Amaya’s picture down.

Jensen ran her hand up his arm. He felt the light brush of her mouth against his arm.
“That’s not the man you are.”

“That’s the man I was that night,” he said woodenly.

Slowly, he turned and stared down at her. “But as I was sitting there, in my room,
thinking about how I’d never hear her laugh again, one thing kept coming back to haunt
me. I didn’t
ever
want another father, another mother to have to feel like that again.” He cupped her
cheek, brushed his thumb over the soft, smooth curve of her jaw. “I decided instead
of killing him, I’d find other ways. Maybe I couldn’t prosecute
that
bastard, but I could find others. I knew how defense attorneys thought, after all.
Knew their tricks, how they’d prepare witnesses and shit.”

She covered his hand with hers. Lowering his head, he pressed his brow to hers and
stared into her eyes … so close, so close he felt lost in her. “I know that pain,
Jensen. It’s like a part of you is missing—like you’ve lost a limb, or somebody went
and ripped out a chunk of your heart and then sewed it back up together without bothering
to make sure all the pieces line up. I know that pain … if I could make this better
for you, I would.”

A sigh drifted out of her and she eased back. She had one hand on his waist and slowly,
she shifted that hand, laying it on his cheek and staring into his eyes. “Dean, I
think you’ve got enough pain of your own. You don’t need to worry about making this
better for me.”

“Maybe we could make it better for each other.” He curved his arm around her, spreading
his palm wide against her spine so that he could feel the graceful curve, the warmth
of her skin, as much of her as he possibly could.

“You offering to kiss and make it all better? Comfort sex?”

He dipped his head and pressed his lips to the corner of her mouth. “Hey, there ain’t
nothing wrong with comfort sex. But…” He hugged her against him, stroked a hand up
her back. “For now, I’m talking about dinner. You need to eat. We can talk. Once you
look a little more steady, I think I might try to seduce you.”

“Seduce me, huh?” She bit her lip, her hands curled into fists against his chest.
“That doesn’t really sound like comfort sex to me.”

“That’s because I don’t have comfort sex on my mind when I think about you. I’ve wanted
you for a damn long time and nothing changes that. I’m going to want you when the
sun goes down tonight, when it comes up tomorrow, and probably for a good long time
after. But I want you steady when you come back to my bed, Jensen. So if that’s not
tonight? We’ll wait for another night.”

*   *   *

Seduce you …

The very thought was enough to melt away her bones and her muscle until she collapsed
into a puddle of goo at his feet.

Even now, she couldn’t stop thinking about that.

It had been nearly thirty minutes since he’d delivered that calm, matter-of-fact statement,
although his eyes had been anything
but
calm. They’d practically burned as he stared at her.

He was back in control, though, and as she sat at the island in his kitchen, watching
him work, it was hard to believe this was the same man who had been in the darkened
living room, his eyes dull as he quietly told her about his daughter’s death, the
death of the child’s mother.

Hard to believe it was the same man who’d held her against his body, all but vibrating
with hunger.

I’ve wanted you for a damn long time and nothing changes that. I’m going to want you
when the sun goes down tonight, when it comes up tomorrow, and probably for a good
long time after …

Those words kept knocking around in her mind and even now, her mouth was dry. She
was tempted to grab the glass of wine he’d poured and knock it back, but if she did
that, she’d be tossing back another, and another. No way would she be steady if she
did that.

Polishing off a bottle of wine wasn’t going to let her stay in control and make calm,
rational thoughts.

Who says you need to be calm or rational?
She could
still
be steady, and throw calm and rational to the wind, she figured. Wasn’t like she
didn’t have reasons to toss back a glass or two of wine.

She tried to push that voice to the side but then abruptly, she frowned and made herself
answer
that. Why
did
she have to be calm or rational?

She’d been calm and rational most of her life.

She paid her bills on time.

She had a nice, neat little savings account.

She never dated.

She’d had exactly
two
sexual encounters prior to the weekend she’d spent with Dean. The first one had sucked,
but she’d been a twenty-one-year-old virgin who’d decided she wasn’t going to be a
virgin anymore. She hadn’t been looking for fun—she’d just been looking for sex.

The second encounter had been …
whoa
and
damn
. But Adam Brascum, the town Romeo knew all about
whoa
and
damn
. Maybe not so much about emotional connection, but she hadn’t been looking for that,
either.

She’d just been looking for … the
whoa
and the
damn
.

Staring at Dean’s turned back, the way his shoulders stretched the threadbare cotton
of his shirt, the dreads secured at the nape of his neck, the sleek, elegant play
of muscles under his skin. He was beautiful. And when
he
touched her, it wasn’t just
whoa
and
damn
.

Her heart stuttered when he touched her.

Her heart stuttered when he
looked
at her.

A knot settled in her throat and she had to admit the truth. She wanted him, but it
was so much more than that. She was going to want him when the sun went down, when
it came up.

It went deeper than want.

He somehow managed to break her and remake her all at once.

Maybe that was why she’d ignored it for so long.

She didn’t want to face this, or handle it.

But she was having an even harder time walking away from him now.

Her mouth had gone dry as the Sahara, but instead of gulping the wine, she slid off
the stool. “Mind if I get a glass of water?”

He glanced over his shoulder at her and then gestured with a spatula to the cabinet
on the right. “In there.”

She found them and grabbed a tumbler of pretty, cobalt blue. “You have a thing for
color, Dean.”

“No.
I
don’t,” he said, chuckling. “My mom does. She came in like a Pinterest whirlwind
a year or two ago and redid everything, dragged my sister, my brothers, and their
wives into it—it was her summer project.” He glanced around the kitchen and shrugged.
“We redid the entire inside of the house. I wanted to build a deck, but this was what
Mom wanted to do, so this is what we did.”

“I guess it didn’t occur to you to tell your mom you’d rather have the deck?”

He gave her a look like she was out of her mind. “Clearly, you don’t remember meeting
my mother. You don’t tell that woman
no
once she’s got her mind made up.”

Jensen grinned. “I’ll keep that in mind.” She glanced past him, more out of a need
to distract herself than anything else, eyeing the deck. “Looks like you got the deck
anyway.”

“Yeah. Did it myself last fall.”

“It’s nice.”
Nice
. She resisted the urge to roll her eyes and sipped at the water instead, leaning
against the counter and trying to think through the noise in her brain.

She had such a bad habit of overcomplicating things.

She knew that.

She needed to quit
thinking
. The longer she
thought
about what was going on here, what might be going on between them, the more scared
she became.

Seeing what people did to each other …
hurt
. She thought about her parents, everything that had happened, and it made her gut
twist. But she realized something else. Thinking about not reaching for … whatever
might be unfolding, that hurt, too.

She thought about putting down the glass of water and just walking out the door and
it filled her with such dread, it almost sickened her.

She thought about maybe quitting her job, finding a position somewhere else. She could.
Cops were always needed.

But the thought of never seeing him again?

Whoa.

That
thought really hurt.

Where did this come from? When did this happen?

From the corner of her eye, she watched him as he stood over the stove. Vegetables
and steak sizzled in the pan and rice steamed in a pot on the back burner.

A funny, familiar ache moved through her. This wasn’t a
new
thing, either. This was why he pissed her off so easily. Why she avoided him. This
had been building between them for a while, but she just hadn’t wanted to face it.

It was time she did, though.

Her brother, Tate, had been running from the truth all these years … and she’d been
doing some running of her own. She was a hypocrite, too, because she’d called him
out on it, while she was still here trying to figure out if she was going to face
the facts or just continue to hide, like the scared little girl she’d been fifteen
years ago.

Chapter Seven

Pushed too damn hard,
he told himself as they worked together in silence, cleaning up after the meal.

He’d told her he’d handle it, but she had just rolled her eyes and gone about helping
him clean up.

Dean wasn’t about to argue. He didn’t mind cooking—actually, he kind of enjoyed it,
but he hated the cleanup part with a passion.