Breathless (16 page)

“With me living in Seattle and her still in Nevada, she hoped no one would look this far afield.” The explanation seemed plausible. With a stolen cache of diamonds that no one knew existed up for grabs, it was a wonder Tawny hadn’t been killed.

“We’ll see what we can learn about Lenny’s disappearance, but from the sound of this, we won’t find much. I doubt Loretta would have filed a missing person’s report under the circumstances.”

Pansy agreed. “Not with his murderer climbing into bed with her.”

“And her wanting to save her baby.” Tawny patted her mom’s shoulder, then gave it a gentle squeeze to show her support. “I’m sorry that your growing-up years were so messy.”

“I could never figure out why she turned so cold when I began to develop. She wanted me out of the house and away from Frank, but she was afraid to leave. She wanted me out of Frank’s reach, and he often said he’d never let her take me. I blamed myself for not being the son they wanted and looked to men for what I was missing from her. Frank was just a dark, violent mass that terrified us both.”

“Any idea who would have visited your mother?” Stack asked.

“Frank had mistresses all the time. Maybe one of them?”

“But it’s a man who’s been watching me and going through my things.”

“If one of his women had a son with Frank, he could be our guy.” Pansy’s voice sounded distant while she thought. Finally, a realization slipped into place in Pansy’s expression. “That sounds likely.” She got excited, her voice higher. “Frank came home once with a fistful of cigars and screamed that some other woman had given him what Loretta should have. Then he hit her and chased me out of the house.”

“How old were you?”

“About seven, maybe eight.”

“Why didn’t she take the diamonds and run like hell?” Tawny wanted to know.

“Run from Frank? Not a chance. He moved up the ranks in his organization. He became more dangerous, more powerful. He had connections to the law, and he kept a tight rein on Loretta.”

“If he’d killed Loretta in a fit of rage or jealousy, anything could have happened to Pansy,” Stack murmured. “Loretta must have been on guard every moment.”

“Frank made it plain I disappointed him. If I’d been a boy, things might have been different.”

“Yeah, you’d have been a thug too,” Tawny said.

Stack snorted. “Or a mob lawyer.”

“He finally took notice of me when I hit fourteen or so. He pointed me out to some of the young guys who came around the house with him. Not that they hadn’t noticed me already.” She laughed ironically. “Now that I think about it, he may have seen some value in me after all.”

Tawny’s belly sank. “You don’t mean…?”

“Pimping me out? No, not even Frank could do that to a girl he thought was his kid. I think he would’ve arranged a marriage. I would’ve ended up with a connected husband the way my mother did.” Pansy fell silent, lost in her memories.

Tawny eased back into her seat, her mind spinning. She tried to rearrange everything she thought about her mother and her grandmother. No wonder Loretta never looked for Pansy once she ran off with Tawny’s father.

She was afraid her daughter might actually come back.

“I
like him,” Pansy said about Stack the minute he left them alone in the guest room. “But then, I haven’t proved to be a great judge of keepers when it comes to men.” She stripped to her bra and panties.

Tawny shrugged. “Knowing a good man when we find one is not a gene we James women seem to have.” She threw open her mother’s carry-on bag and let Pansy rummage. She pulled out a short, silky robe. “Remember Dennis? I thought he was a decent man, but he turned out to be a real jerk.”

“Dennis…” Pansy tapped her chin. “Oh, yeah, you were in college and decided only intellectual types would do. He went on to dentistry, didn’t he? Why was he a jerk?”

“I didn’t tell you?” She stalled, sorry to have brought her first serious boyfriend into the moment. Pansy tied her sash and dug in for her toiletry bag.

“Aren’t these regulations a pain? Who travels with a teeny, tiny bottle of shampoo?” She pulled out a plastic zippered bag that did, indeed, contain a teeny, tiny shampoo.

Just when Tawny thought they could move the conversation along to a new topic, her mother said, “Go on, what was wrong with Dennis?”

“He liked threesomes.”

Pansy froze, her hand half out of the bag, clutching a curling iron. She looked over her shoulder. “Lots of guys like them, especially with two chicks.”

“It wasn’t just any chick he wanted, though.” “It wasn’t?”

“It was you.”

That stopped Pansy cold; then she twirled and sat with a
whump
on the bed. “That’s sick!” Her face twisted in dismay. “Eeeuww!”

“For about three months before he met you, I felt that Dennis was the one. Since then, I’ve been leery.”

Pansy pouted. “I don’t blame you, but seriously, honey bun, that Stack’s quite a man.” She opened her arms and Tawny moved into them for a long moment.

Tawny appreciated the hug, and she hugged Pansy back. “Thanks, and I’m glad you like Stack. I do too. From the first moment I saw him, in fact. I don’t think I could have turned down the job he offered me, even if I wanted to. He’s just so easy on the eyes, and he made me feel sorry for him within thirty seconds.”

“Seriously?”

“He’s so big and he looked so helpless and overwhelmed by a desk full of paperwork. His accounts were a mess and he looked desperate.”

“A desperate, gorgeous man is hard to resist. And for what it’s worth, sympathy is a gene we James women
do
have! To our detriment. I suspect that’s why Loretta fell so hard for Lenny. And that’s why I ran off with your father too. He needed me and I felt sorry for him.” Tawny’s father was a long-gone man who never looked back once he left.

“When did he stop needing you?”

“He never did, not really. But you needed me more. I stayed on the road with him for as long as I could, probably longer than I should have, but by the time you were ten, I could see you needed the stability of a home, a regular routine, and school. All the things your father was running from.” She shrugged. “Pecker and I parted ways.”

Her father’s name was Percy, not the kind of name a biker told many people.

“Are you sorry?” Tawny asked, feeling a daughter’s guilt at the confession. She’d always assumed Pecker didn’t want them anymore.

Pansy threw her arms around her. “Aw, honey bun, that was the day I grew up. And I’ve been a better person ever since.”

After a lot of discussion, Pansy agreed that it would be all right if she actually went on her date. She’d only half agreed to see the colonel because he’d been so adamant about only having one free night to spend with her.

“But I won’t leave unless you have backup here,” Pansy said with as firm a tone as she ever used.

“Would you feel better if I call in a favor and have a patrol car cruise by a couple times tonight?”

“Yes.” But she looked doubtful.

“Mom, if this guy wanted to hurt me, he had lots of chances before I knew he was looking for the diamonds. For whatever it’s worth, I doubt we’re dealing with a vicious career criminal. Stack agrees.”

Mollified when Stack called the local police and made arrangements for some extra patrols, Pansy agreed to leave them alone. With a twinkle in her eye, she called her impatient colonel.

He arrived within the hour and shared a few moments of conversation with Stack. Each man nodded and shook hands, then turned to the women. With a hug and a whisper not to wait up, Pansy left with her date, in a swirl of expensive cologne.

The next morning, with Stack’s coffee brewing, Tawny took a quick shower with him. They managed to get clean without getting down and dirty, but it was tough. With the clock ticking toward the post office opening, they had no choice but to keep their hands to themselves.

The problem started when Tawny picked up a towel to use on her hair. “Need help with that?” Stack offered.

Her eyes glowed with happiness and the warmth of the look flashed an invitation. “Thanks!”

He gathered the soft cotton and told her to sit at the edge of the bed. Scooping her hair into flat plaits, he patted the shafts, squeezing and finger-combing to get most of the water out of her hair and onto the towel. He massaged her scalp gently while she leaned into his hands. When she moaned lightly, he checked the time on the bedside clock.

“We’ve got an hour before the post office opens,” he said. He rose to his knees and glanced down the front of her body. “And Pansy didn’t come home last night. The apartment’s all ours.”

She tilted her head to one side and he nipped the soft lobe of her ear between his teeth. She sighed and capitulated just like that. No fuss, no pretty words, nothing but his own need was enough to rouse her.

Three wasted years. Damn.

Dressed in her industrial-strength bra and a red silky thong, he had a bird’s-eye view down her long, luscious body.

Heat centered in his groin as he rubbed and listened to her soft moans of pleasure. He tossed the damp towel aside.

“You’re good at this,” she said, “much better than a hair dryer.”

“Your personal exotic slave, here to do your bidding.”

She froze at his next touch. “Really? You’ll do exactly what I want, when I want it?”

“Only for you,” he promised. He slid around to suckle on her other ear.

“Scoot back,” she said.

He did, giving her enough room to lay flat. He scooped her hair and fanned it out on the hastily made bed.

She pulled up her heels to rest on the edge of the bed and opened her legs. The aroused scent of her, the deliciously open vee of her cradle called to him. He answered and dropped his head between her open thighs, and nudged the string of her thong aside with his nose.

Delicious and ready, Tawny laughed when he speared into her with his tongue. She murmured, “Make this quick, big man, we’ve got somewhere to be.” The sexy witch unzipped him and took his freshly filled cock in one long, open-mouthed kiss.

Both ready, both needy, they lapped and swallowed until they took each other into oblivion.

Slowly, as Stack’s breathing returned to normal, the tap-tap of high heels outside the bedroom door told him of Pansy’s return.

“Anyone home?” she called. “I smell coffee, so I’m guessing you’ve been distracted.” A light, charmed chuckle drifted away as she walked past the bedroom door and headed for the kitchen.

Stack smoothed his hand down Tawny’s soft belly and sighed with the rightness of having her with him in his bed, his home, his life. “I like this.”

She rolled and twisted so her face leaned over his. She pecked him on the lips. “I love this with you,” she said. “I never much liked oral before, but you’ve got a talent, big man.”

“You know what they say about talent, don’t you?”

“No, what?”

“It should be exploited at every opportunity.”

“Well said. I agree.”

He slid both hands into her hair and held her so he could kiss her, share the tastes of themselves. He wanted more, right away, but he squeezed the soft flesh of her bottom. Gave her a light tap to roust her out of the bed. “We need to get moving. The post office will be opening just as we get there.”

“Right.” She rolled off his bed and he wondered if she’d want to come back once she had the diamonds. He hadn’t considered that she might want to take off with the money, start somewhere fresh. A new life.

Without him.

Blindsided by the idea, he fell into a dark silence, buried in his thoughts. Life without her. He flat out didn’t want to go back to living without Tawny James.

They found Pansy in the kitchen, drinking a mug of coffee, with two more steaming on the counter for Stack and Tawny.

“You look happy this morning,” Tawny said through a grin. She was dressed in her shorts again, topped by a peacock blue tank top. The spaghetti straps slipped down her shoulders, and her lips were puffy from kisses, her skin rosy. Her eyes were lit by a fire Tawny recognized. “You’re in love again,” she said as she took one of the filled mugs.

“I, um, don’t want to talk about it.” But her eyes were alight with something like fear. Fear? Pansy?

Fear of men didn’t compute when it came to Pansy. She was a no holds barred romantic who threw herself into new relationships with her entire being.

Stack must have noticed her underlying edginess as well. “He okay with you, Pansy? Because if he needs a lesson or two on how to treat a lady, I’d be—”

“No! No! He’s wonderful! So masterful and manly.” She blushed.

“Okay, I’ve got to sit down. If my mother’s blushing, this is big.” Tawny pulled out a stool at the sandwich bar and sat. “Fess up, Mom. What kind of man is this colonel?”

“Jeff’s a widower who liked being married. He’s a family man at heart, but his children are grown.” She chucked Tawny under the chin. “Like mine. He’s about to retire and he doesn’t want to live out his retirement alone.”

“That’s a lot of information for one night,” Stack commented with a grin. “Men usually hold some of that stuff back.” He sipped his coffee and looked at Tawny with a dark focus that made her wonder what thoughts were rolling around in his head.

But this conversation was about her mother and the colonel. “You like him. A lot.” The signs were clear as glass, Pansy was deeply interested.

Pansy nodded. “He’s funny and smart, and he’s here to look at some boats. He wants to sail to Mexico and Alaska, and I didn’t sleep with him.” The last part came out all in a rush.

“TMI, Pansy,” Stack commented. “Tawny, I’ll wait for you downstairs, but we’ve got to go. We’re behind schedule.”

“And whose fault is that?” she said tartly.

Pansy looked wide-eyed.

Stack hummed in his throat. “We’ll continue this discussion later.” He looked at Pansy. “Would you like to come with us to get the package from the post office?”

“Absolutely. And Jeff will be there incognito for backup.”

Tawny rolled her eyes. “Stack’s arranged for his own backup. Right?”

“I told him last night a military man could come in handy.” So that’s what they’d been talking quietly about. Protecting the women. Tawny rolled her eyes but felt the warmth of their concern.

Stack opened his cell phone, hit a button, and headed out the door. From the sound of his fading conversation, he was being filled in on some background information.

Pansy collected their mugs and put them in the sink. “I want you to get to know Jeff, Tawny. I like him so much. I haven’t laughed as much with a man in my whole life.”

“Laughing’s good,” she said on the way out the door, thinking of Stack.

Pansy caught up on the landing. “What will you do with the diamonds, honey bun?” she asked on the way down the stairs.

Tawny nearly stumbled. “I’m not sure. I haven’t thought that far ahead.”

Her mother tapped her shoulder. “Well, it’s time.”