Dateline: Kydd and Rios (19 page)

“I had a milk shake on the road.” Oh, why had she come like this? Unannounced, filled with expectations. She’d set herself up for rejection.

He twisted the cap off a beer and set the bottle in front of her. “I’ve been doing some thinking about your stomach problems,” he said, picking up a shrimp and peeling off the shell. He handed it to her. “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with you that three regular meals a day wouldn’t cure. Eat.” It was a command, not a request. He tore off a hunk of bread and slathered it with butter.

Nikki bit the shrimp off near the tail and chewed. He kept peeling and putting shrimp in front of her until she had a pile to match the two big pieces of buttered bread he’d added to her plate. And all the while, he kept talking to her.

“I heard you lost your job.”

The shrimp caught in her throat. She choked. “Don’t be too worried about it. Somebody else will pick you up. Drink your beer.”

His confidence outweighed hers by about a hundred to one. With the help of the beer, she got the shrimp down. “David didn’t think so. He’s . . . uh, blackballed me on the East Coast.” The admission came hard, but the professional turn of the conversation was a minor relief. Bad as her employment situation was, it wasn’t what kept her awake at night.

“Idle threats. You’re good. Everybody knows it. Have you sent your resume out?”

“No,” she said softly, returning an untouched piece of bread to her plate. She felt awful. She couldn’t eat.

“Why not?” He paused with his beer halfway to his mouth, his head tilted in curiosity.

“I don’t know.” She shrugged. The strap of her slip fell off her shoulder beneath the cap sleeve of her white shirt. With a distracted move, she pulled it back up. “Maybe I need a little time off.”

“For what?”

To give myself some breathing room. To find out where I stand in life besides in the middle of political upheaval. To find out about you, and me . . . and love
. She slowly looked up to meet his gaze across the table. “I don’t know what to say, Josh.”

Her hesitancy stripped away the years, leaving her as unsure as she’d been one summer night so long ago. She’d come because she loved him, because her days and nights felt empty without him, and she didn’t know how to say those things to the man sitting across from her. Nikki Kydd, ace reporter, war correspondent, was at a loss for words.

Josh watched uncertainty cloud her eyes, seeing the telltale signs of distress come over her. He wished he could tell her everything was going to be okay, but he didn’t know himself what the future held for them. They both took professional risks for granted, but he’d only risked his heart once, and he’d paid dearly for the loss. That she’d come to find him told him she’d been paying dearly too.

“Nice place you’ve got here,” she whispered, taking refuge in the inane statement, before his silence consumed her. She forced her gaze away, looked around the porch, focused on a distant spot of moon-shadowed lawn. “How did you find it?”

“My family used to come here when I was a kid. A couple of my dad’s brothers lived in Port Arthur. We’d all go fishing, have family reunions, that sort of thing. I think the fishing drove my mother nuts. One of my uncles still lives across town. My aunt Rosa lives down the street.”

“You bought this house?” she asked, clued in by his tone of voice.

“A year ago. The price was right, and I needed a place to come home to. Sometimes”—he smiled slightly—“
most
of the time these last few years, when I was on assignment, the thing I hated most was the feeling of impermanence, of not having one special place that was mine.”

“And before?”

His smile disappeared and a gentle longing darkened his eyes. “Before I started hating it, I had you, Nikki. You were home.” His voice trailed off into a silence filled with the soft heat and night sounds of summer.

Nikki stared at her plate, unable to face the sadness she’d caused between them. Leaving had seemed right at the time. Not easy, but right. Given another chance, knowing the loneliness she’d feel, the chances she’d have to take, she’d try another way. At eighteen, she hadn’t been able to see this far into the future.

“Are you finished eating?”

“Yes.” The word was barely a whisper.

He rose from the table and picked up her plate. “Maybe you’ll do better at breakfast.”

She doubted it, doubted if she’d even be there for breakfast. She didn’t want to run again, but neither did she want to continue hurting them both by trying to hang on to something she’d already thrown away.

His footsteps faded into the kitchen, and she walked over to the screen door. A warm breeze rustled the leaves on the trees, wafting the scent of flowers onto the porch.
Josh’s home
. The thought crossed her mind slowly, filling her with heartache. He’d found his place, his refuge from all the chaos in the world. She was happy for him.

So why are you crying?

Because he found it without me
.

She smeared the tears across her cheek and took a deep breath. This was crazy, hanging around and working herself into the blues. He had never planned on coming to Colorado, not even when she’d left him in San Simeon. Take the hint, Kydd, she told herself. Make a clean break.

“How’s your mother doing?” His voice came from close behind her.

“Better than any of us expected, physically.” She steadied herself with another lung-filling breath. “My Aunt Chloe is cooking up a storm, trying to fatten her up, but Mom always was slender. The hardest thing for her is adjusting to freedom and accepting Victor’s death. They were only married for a year, but she did love him.”

“Is she in therapy?”

“Three times a week. My mom’s a big believer in taking care of problems.”

“Like her daughter.”

Nikki thought she’d made a pretty good mess of her problems, so she didn’t say anything.

“I met her in Sulaco, before she left,” he continued, moving to her side and resting his shoulder against the screen door. “We had a long talk. She’s a strong lady, Nikki. I know you’ll always worry about her, but she’s going to come out okay.”

“I think so too.” Now was the moment to make her break, to find the right words, to say good-bye.

“What about you?” he asked softly, surprising her.

She made a slight turn and glanced up at him. His eyes, darkened by the night, met hers, clear and penetrating and close, so very close.

He bent his head and brushed his lips gently across hers, tasting her tears. “Why are you crying?” he murmured, his hand sliding up to cup her face.

“I . . . miss . . . you,” she said between his brief, teasing kisses, feeling new tears replace the ones she’d brushed away.

“Don’t miss me tonight, Nicolita.” He followed the dampness up her face, kissing her cheek, her temple, her brow. “Stay for a while.” His hands framed her face, lifting her mouth to his. He kissed her long and fully, taking her sadness inside himself and giving back sweet love.

His mouth moved tenderly over hers. The strength and warmth of him wrapped around her. He tightened his arms and drew her closer.

Nikki sank against him for everlasting seconds, stealing a share of the pleasure found in his kisses, in his hard body pressed to hers, in the strong arms holding her. It would be so easy to convince herself that this was all they needed, this intoxicating excitement spreading through her from the inside out. His mouth was warm, wet, consummately skilled in the erotic dance.

But she was no longer a young girl, and in all her life, nothing had taught her more about the pain of consequences than the loving and leaving of Joshua Rios. The flash of reason shocked her into breaking off the kiss. She stepped back, saw the confusion narrowing his eyes, and she wondered when she’d grown up. A heartbeat ago, she’d held everything she wanted in her arms, or so she thought.

“I’m in over my head.” Without meaning to, she spoke her thoughts aloud.

“Me too . . . but I’m willing to take a risk.”

The rough sound of his voice startled her into looking back up. “Josh, we need to talk.”

A woman
, he thought with a ragged sigh, closing his eyes and leaning his head back against the door. He’d found the answer to Quico’s question. Yes, Nikki was a woman now. After a moment, he opened his eyes and looked down at her. “Talking is just one of the things we need to do, Nikki, but we’re not going to do it here. Come on.” He slipped his hand inside hers and drew her into the kitchen, across the living room, and up the stairs to the second floor.

“Where are we going?” she asked, looking over her shoulder at the relative safety of the living room they were leaving behind.

“My bedroom. It’s a great place to talk. Believe me. I’ve been talking to myself in there every night for the last four weeks, and mostly I was talking about you, so you should feel right at home.” He mounted the stairs with purposeful strides, barely giving her a chance to protest.

“I don’t think this is what I . . . what I had in mind,” she stammered.

“And I think it’s exactly what you had in mind. It’s certainly what I had in mind, what I’ve had in mind for the last three years.” He strode into the bedroom, released her hand, and immediately stripped off his shirt. “You might as well take your clothes off and get comfortable. We’re here for the duration.”

His matter-of-fact tone shocked her almost as much as his suggestion. “I will not.” She enunciated every syllable with conviction. “And neither will you!” she added with alarm when his hands went to his belt buckle.

“Don’t be shy, Nikki.” He turned on the bedside lamp, which was in the middle of the large oak-floored room, next to the bed. The perimeter of the room was filled with a couple of desks—one holding a typewriter, the other a computer—their respective swivel chairs, a stereo system, and a pair of filing cabinets. A ream of paper spilled over the typewriter desk. A ribbon of computer paper flowed off the other. “And don’t worry. I’m not going to seduce you again.”

“Again?” She jerked her attention back to him, and her breath caught in her throat. Whether by accident or by design, she’d forgotten how beautiful he was, how light and shadow played across the muscles of his chest and arms, how warm and dark his skin looked. She curled her fingers into her palms and stared helplessly at him.

“Like the last time, the first time,” he explained, crossing the room to her and stopping a mere breath away. He raised his hands to the top button on her blouse. She quickly covered them with her own, but his fingers stayed put. One eyebrow lifted over darkening blue eyes, and he pushed the first button through. “I was in bad shape that night, Nikki, more than a little desperate.” Another button slipped through his fingers and hers, and the buttonhole. “When I came to your room, I thought we could just talk”—he softly emphasized the word—“but then you started to cry, and I knew I wasn’t leaving without having you, whatever it took. I never gave you a chance after that, not one.

“But tonight”—he’d worked his way down to the waistband of her skirt, and he slipped his hand inside—“tonight I’m going to give you every chance you want, every chance you need.” Her skirt fell to the floor. His hands slid up her body to her shoulders, burning a path across her breasts before pushing her blouse off her arms. “You can say yes . . . no . . . maybe. You can tease me, Nikki. I won’t mind, but I’m not going to seduce you. You’re a woman now, and women don’t like being seduced. They like to . . . talk.” His gaze drifted from her face to her breasts, hidden by the delicate flowering of lace on her slip. He took a deep breath and let it out. “So what do you want to talk about?”

She tried to speak, possibly to argue the definition of seduction, but the moment she opened her mouth, he rubbed his hands over her shoulders, taking her slip straps with them.

“Hmm?” he questioned, his thick lashes shadowing the languid light in his eyes.

He’d mesmerized her with touch, she thought, proving the truth of his words. She had come to love him, and he was making it so very easy. The remembered magic of that long-ago night, of the year they’d spent together sharing their friendship and their lives, had never left her. She wanted to belong somewhere, too, to belong to him.

“Okay, Nikki.” He sighed. “I’ll start . . . here.” His right hand slid up her bare thigh, pushing her slip higher and higher, and sending shimmers of lightning-quick pleasure across her skin. “And here,” he murmured, his mouth opening over her ear. He rested his arm on her shoulder, leaning across her and bracing his left hand on the wall. Then he began, teasing her with whispers and the overwhelming, gentle pressures of his body. “You’ve stopped crying. I’m glad. I don’t want you to cry anymore.” His tongue traced the inside of her ear, and a path of heat raced down the side of her neck. “Let me love you, Nicolita, before you drive me crazy. Let go of your fear and . . . let go of your slip.”

He reinforced his husky command with tugs on the soft material. The friction of silk sliding down her breasts gave way to hot masculine skin rubbing against hers. His low groan of pleasure vibrated through her body, lowering the last barriers of resistance.

She felt foolish and easy, and as if she were dying inside. The undeniable swelling between his legs, the hard muscles in his arms, the gentle gnawing of his mouth on her neck, along her jaw, under her chin, laid waste to her thoughts before they could form, leaving her with nothing to hold on to except the slick strength of his body. She was lost, completely lost to the one undeniable truth she’d kept sacred.