Fall Into Me (9 page)

“He is a lot like you.” She laid her palm on Tick’s thigh in an easy contact Mark had witnessed dozens of times. The disconnect Mark had been trying to pinpoint all day coalesced in his mind. It was the two of them—

“He is not.” A visible wave of tension moved through Tick’s body, like watching the beginning of tsunami after an underwater quake. He shifted, Caitlin’s hand falling away from his leg.

“You’re right.” Del’s relaxed tone broke the silent vibrating strain. “You’re not that good at math.”

Tick’s tight grin looked more like a grimace. “Just because you can do amortization schedules in your head…”

Del laughed and the conversation turned in another direction, the awkward moment seemingly forgotten. Mark stretched his arm along the back of the glider and watched. That’s what had been niggling at him all day—the differences in their interactions, Caitlin’s unusual reserve, the way Tick kept a certain physical distance between them.

Tori nudged him in the ribs. “I’m going to see if Mama needs help in the kitchen. Come with me.”

No doubt existed in his mind that Lenora Calvert’s kitchen was as spotless as always, but he followed regardless. In the sparkling clean room, Tori turned into his embrace and rested her nose against his shoulder.

“I was afraid of that,” she muttered, muffled by his shirt.

He was such a sucker for her. All he wanted to do was find a way to take the sadness and worry out of her voice. With a sigh, he wrapped his arms around her waist. “Afraid of what, honey?”

“That.” She waved a hand toward the patio. “He’s going to pull into himself with the Captain America act—”

“Superman.”

“—and shut her out in the process because he’s had to face his own mortality and he can’t control what happens with Lee.”

He rested his cheek against her hair. “Don’t worry. Falconetti’s pretty good at sizing up a situation and taking control. She’ll reel him in.”

At least he hoped so.

“What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be in Atlanta.”

At Chris’s surprised voice, Troy Lee looked up from the monthly traffic report he was compiling ahead of time. He shrugged as Chris fed quarters into the soda machine. “I came home early.”

“So why are you here?” Chris slumped into the chair at the vacant desk fronting Cookie’s.

Because he’d needed something to do and the empty squad room had offered both a distraction and quiet, with the only noise the muted squawking from the radio room downstairs. “I could ask you the same question. You’re not on duty, either.”

“Yeah, but I don’t have family anywhere.” Chris popped the soda top and swigged, grimacing.

“I wanted to come home, okay? Sheesh. I needed to kill some time, so I figured I’d start on this.” He entered another ticket number into the spreadsheet. Chris snorted a laugh and Troy Lee looked up, annoyed. “What?”

Chris’s knowing gaze made his skin crawl. “You just referred to Coney as home. You’ve never done that.”

“Slip of the tongue. Big deal.”

“Yeah.” Humor lurked in Chris’s monosyllable and the silence that fell after it.

Aware Chris was studying him like some kind of lab specimen, he entered a couple more tickets—damn, Angel had two warnings this month—and turned his head to glower at his friend and colleague. “What?”

“She really has you hooked, doesn’t she?”

He didn’t even have to ask who Chris meant. He turned back to the computer. “No fishing metaphors. Makes me think of…” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder in the direction of Tick Calvert’s office.

“So why are you here, if you came home to see her?”

He didn’t miss the emphasis Chris placed on home. “Because she’s
not
home.”

“How many times did you go by?”

He held up three fingers and waited for the ribbing to begin.

Chris laughed, softly. “Dude, you’re a stalker.”

“I am not a stalker. I want to surprise her.”

“So you’re driving by her house repeatedly.” Chris snickered over a swallow of soda and stretched his legs out, crossing one ankle over the other. “Sounds like stalking to me.”

“Did anyone ask you?” He cast sideways glances at Chris between ticket numbers. Chris never made a big deal about being alone at the holidays, but being without family had to be a bitch. Even as aggravating as Ellis and Montgomery could be, he wouldn’t trade them for anything. “What did you do today?”

“Worked with Hound. Watched the bowl game. Took a nap.”

“You lead a sad life, Parker.” A sad,
lonely
life from the sound of things.

“I’m not the one stalking women.”

“Woman, singular. And I’m not stalking her.” He laid aside a stack of officer copies and saved the file to the department server. Maybe Cookie would be the one to review the recap. That way, maybe he’d avoid another little visit with Calvert, going over each and every fucking line. “I’m…waiting for her.”

“You know it’s after nine, right?” Chris tapped his watch. “When was the last time you went by?”

“Shit, after nine? You’re kidding me.” A twist of his wrist confirmed the fact it was closer to nine thirty. He’d immersed himself in the data entry and…damn it. “I gotta go.”

Angel picked up her cell from the bedside table and put it down again for what had to be the fifteenth time. This was ridiculous. Okay, fine, she missed him. She wanted him around. However, she was nearly thirty-seven years old. Old enough not to have these girl-with-a-crush urges to call him just to hear his voice. To lie against the pillows and listen to him talk, to imagine him in that very same bed beside her.

He’d be home tomorrow. Besides, hadn’t her mama always said it was bad manners to phone after nine o’clock?

“You can wait.” She addressed her reflection in the mirror over her dresser with a stern voice. She’d take a long hot shower and go to bed early. Darn it all, why hadn’t she opened the bar tonight?

In the shower, she soaped and loofahed and shaved, lathered, rinsed and repeated. Cleaner and smoother, but not relaxed, she pulled on a camisole and pajama pants and stared at the empty expanse of her bed. Shoot, if she went to bed, she wouldn’t be able to sleep. She’d end up staring at the ceiling, thinking about his smile, his eyes, his hands, his mouth. Oh yes, she was gone on him.

What was she going to do about it? He seemed perfectly happy with what they had. She’d given one man way too much of her life already, waiting for more. She’d given another way too much too soon, hoping for more. Did she dare leave things as they were, let the relationship unfurl as it would?

Her cell phone vibrated to life and she jumped as “Your Man” filled the air. Anticipation buzzed through her. She snatched up the phone.

“Hello?” The syllables emerged breathless and damn near quivering.

“Did you know you have the sexiest phone voice, ever?” His rich tenor filled her ear, the tones lazy and satisfied, the way he sounded after thoroughly kissing her.

“Hmm, don’t think so.” She strove for casual and relaxed, although she wasn’t sure she pulled it off. “At least no one’s ever told me that before.”

“Well, you do,” he murmured. If she closed her eyes, she could picture him, sprawled out, phone at his ear, while he drove her crazy with the sexiest male voice ever. The insidious desire pinched at her again. “So what are you doing?”

“Talking to you,” she replied with just the right note of cheekiness. Good, she didn’t sound too eager. “I just got out of the shower and ready for bed. What are you doing?”

“Standing on your front porch talking to you.”

Her ability to breathe stopped stone cold. “What? Troy Lee, don’t tease.”

“Who’s teasing? Come to the door and see for yourself.”

A blend of hope and annoyance swirled within her. Barefoot, she padded through the living room. “I swear, if this is some kind of a joke, I’ll—”

She swung the door open and the words died in her throat. “Oh my Lord.”

Under the porch light, he grinned at her and snapped his phone closed. He held aloft a cellophane package. “I brought you a fortune cookie.”

She stared at him, her voice gone, swallowed up by surprise and sheer, overwhelming joy. One thumb hooked in his pocket, he appeared relaxed and almost boneless in his jeans and a T-shirt emblazoned with “26-2”. Somehow, she tamped down the swamping desire to throw herself into his arms.

His eyes gleamed, burned. “Don’t.”

“Don’t what?” She finally found her ability to talk, although the words came out shaky and small.

“Don’t hold back.” His blue gaze dark and serious, he didn’t temper the words with a grin. “I don’t want you to.”

She tucked damp hair behind her ears, suddenly aware they were talking about more than the obvious. “Are you sure about that?”

One corner of his mouth hitched up. “I’ve always been sure.”

“What happened to just for fun, no sex or expectations?”

A chuckle escaped him in a low rumble. “I had to say something to get you to go out with me.”

She laughed, eating him up with her eyes, wondering what she was supposed to say or do next.

He held the cellophane packet up again. “So do you want your fortune cookie? I mean, I drove four hours—”

“I want you.”

His eyes went from smoldering to blazing. “Angel baby, I’m yours. Hell, I’m so yours it isn’t funny.”

A hot stare trembled between them, and in one step forward, two steps backward, her back landed against the wall inside the door and his mouth covered hers, kissing, teasing, devouring. She pushed at the door with one hand and somehow got it closed.

He lifted his mouth, chest heaving. He nuzzled her ear, uneven warmth rushing over her skin with each of his breaths.

“I want to know everything about you,” he murmured, hands moving over bare shoulders. His lips found hers. “What makes you moan, what turns you on, what makes you come apart.”

“Yes.” Her knees threatened to weaken, to leave her melted and boneless in his arms. “Oh Lord, Troy Lee, I want that.”

And more, that elusive something more, that specialness she’d never been for any other man. She wanted to lose herself in him, fall into them.

“Let me.” He dipped the very tip of his tongue between her lips, teasing, tantalizing, while his body pressed into hers, so she felt every hard inch of him. “Let me know you all over.”

She surged up against him, wrapping her arms around his neck. In a silence punctuated by kisses, she drew him the short distance to the dimness of her bedroom. He stared at her and sifted his fingers through her hair, stroked along her throat and shoulders, hooked his forefingers beneath her camisole straps and slid them down her arms. In their wake, he danced caresses along her bare skin.

“I’ve dreamed about this, about you,” she whispered, shivering as fingertips, callused from strumming guitar strings, feathered over her collarbone and traveled down to just touch the rise of her breasts.

“Me too.” He traced the lacy edge of her camisole. “Dreamed about you, thought about you, fantasized about you.”

“Fantasized?” Her breathless voice dripped with the arousal he brought to life within her. No one had ever claimed that she’d inspired his fantasies, and all sorts of wicked possibilities tumbled through her head as she pondered what he’d imagined, what he’d done while thinking of her. She flicked a glance up at him, from his burning gaze, to his fly and back again.

A slow, devilish smile revealed white teeth and he leaned in to whisper near her ear, “Yes, I did, while thinking about you, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

Her faced burned, even as another flush of arousal sizzled through her, ending in a wet, pulsing heat between her legs. His dark chuckle tickled her ear. “It shocks you, doesn’t it, that I jacked off while thinking about being inside you. You’re awful naïve, for a woman who keeps giving me hell about being older than me.”

With every word, he made teasing little forays just under her camisole. She moistened dry lips. “There haven’t been that many men who would have had reason to think about me and…and…”

“You can’t get it out, can you?” He laughed again, still touching her as he circled to stand behind her, fingertips rubbing maddening trails along the edge of her cami. “Have you ever done it?”

“Done what?” Now his chest pressed against her back, his arms enfolding her as he teased.

His humor rumbled through her and he pressed his lips to her shoulder. “I thought not.”

“That doesn’t mean anything, Troy Lee.” She tried for a stern note, but with his mouth doing sinful things to her neck while he edged the camisole down, she couldn’t pull off more than a husky protest.

“Maybe not.” The thin fabric pooled at her waist. He hooked his thumbs in it and swept it and her loose pajama pants down in one easy movement. Hot palms spread over her belly, covering, heating, enticing. “Or maybe it means Jim Tyre was too much of a dumbass to inspire you.”

“Why are we talking about Jim?” She shivered, anticipating the movement of those long-fingered hands, maybe one upward to her breasts, another down to the damp heat trembling and unfurling at the top of her thighs.