Head Over Heels (10 page)

He responded with another rough sound, and the intensity of his kiss shot up several degrees. For a man who was so hard-mouthed all the time, his lips were surprisingly soft as they pressed and pulled at hers, but his tongue was take-no-prisoners aggressive. His thumbs slid up onto her face, where they stroked first the hollows of her cheeks, then her cheekbones from the apples to her temples.

A moment later, he drew his mouth away from hers with a leisurely, soft suction that kept their lips clinging until the very last second. Veronica's lips throbbed and her eyes felt weighted down by the sheer hunger pulsing through her. Slowly prying her eyelids open, she found Cooper staring down at her. His eyes, too, looked heavy-lidded and slumberous, the irises nearly black with an intensity so sexual it curled her toes inside her shoes.

“God, this skin,” he said in a low, gravelly voice and, loosening his grip on the back of her neck, dragged his rough-skinned fingertips around to the
front. Veronica shivered as he stroked them down her throat, over her collarbones, and across her chest to the scooped neckline of the thin camisole sweater she wore beneath its matching cardigan. “I thought only babies had skin this soft.”

She blinked, trying to summon an ounce of concentration. But his touch set off shock waves of sensation that traveled outward from his fingers to all sorts of interesting places, and her focus fragmented. She rallied enough to murmur, “I'm a long way from being a baby.”

“Oh, yeah. I know.” He insinuated a fingertip beneath the shell's neckline and trailed it along the satin edge where her breasts rose out of her demi-cup, tracing the bra's outline from shoulder strap to shoulder strap. “A fact for which I'm eternally grateful.”

Then he leaned down and bit at her mouth, and Veronica's head fell back in helpless surrender. His hands dropped down to her knees and heat burned through the fabric of her jeans as he pulled them apart and promptly insinuated himself into the space he'd created. Her thighs bracketed his hips, but he didn't close the scant distance that would press his sex between her legs. And suddenly she wanted that more than the air she breathed.

She tilted her hips up to his, but he ignored the invitation and continued to kiss her as if he had all night. Wiggling her bottom against the counter in frustration, she unpeeled her fingers from the front of his sweater and slid her arms up to wrap around his neck. His hands tightened on her legs, his mouth lost its leisurely expertise and ground against hers, and with a needy sound ululating in the back of her throat, Veron
ica scooted forward to align the heavy denim seam that ran between her legs with the hard, thick ridge threatening the fly of Coop's jeans. Inhaling sharply at the contact, she locked her ankles behind his thighs.

Coop ripped his mouth free and swore. He slid his hands around to grip her butt, and his head fell back. His eyelids slid closed as he rocked his hips against her, and Veronica could only hang on and press back, moving mindlessly.

Abruptly, his eyes opened and he looked down at her. “I want you naked,” he growled. “Now.”

It never even occurred to her to demur—she unhooked her arms from around his neck and shimmied out of her cardigan. Stepping back, Coop peeled off his sweater and the white T-shirt underneath it with one economical move, and Veronica froze with her hands crossed over her stomach, the hem of the shell held clenched between her fingers momentarily forgotten.

Holy Mary, Mother of
—All the moisture abandoned her mouth for parts farther south. His body was beautiful. The stuff from which classical statues were created, except instead of cold white marble, it was golden-skinned with the unseasonable tan she'd noted on his face and hands.

His chest was smooth and hard, with small, flat, coppery nipples, and his abdomen was a study of rigidly defined sinew. His shoulders were broad with a sharp ridge of bone and lean bands of muscle, and powerful biceps stood out round and hard in his upper arms, while the longer, leaner muscle of his forearms shifted fluidly beneath his skin as he reached for the button on his Levi's.

A tiny trickle of insecurity cut through the hot,
pounding haze of her arousal. Her own curves were a far cry from voluptuous. In fact they barely curved at all. Before she could work herself into a state about it, however, his big, rawboned hands paused, and she looked up to see him watching her. The look of the hunger on his face decimated every doubt.

“You're way behind, Ronnie.” He nodded at the shell. “Take that off.”

She fumbled its removal, and still had her arms over her head fighting her way out of the camisole when she heard Coop's breath hiss in. In the next second her bra was unhooked and peeled away and hot hands enveloped her breasts. She pulled the sweater away from her face.

Coop handled her breasts as though they were Fabergé eggs, fragile and priceless, and he stared down at them nestled in his hands with riveted absorption. “Damn,” he whispered. “These have got to be the tiniest breasts I've ever seen on a grown woman.”

“Why, you sweet-talker, you.” Veronica battled her way past the befuddling sensations his touch produced and said dryly, “That's
just
what every woman wants to hear—a testimony to the inadequacy of her attributes.”

He raised his eyes. “Aw, no, I never said inadequate. Tiny, yes, but mighty. They've sure as hell got the power to bring this boy to his knees.” Without relinquishing his hold, he bent his head and kissed her, and she immediately tumbled back into the roiling cosmos of screaming nerve endings he seemed to engender in her without even trying. She felt his thumbs
stroking down the slight slopes of her breasts to capture her nipples against his forefingers, and she strained closer. He tugged, and she sucked in a sharp breath.

Raising his head, he gave her a crooked, carnal smile. “Ah, you like that.” He glanced down to where the pink tips of her nipples poked through the prison of his fingers and tugged again. A high-pitched moan purled out of her throat and the smile dropped away from his face. He released one breast and grabbed her by the back of the neck, clamping his mouth down on hers. His kiss was almost rough, and moving back between her thighs, he ground his erection against her as though he could work his way inside of her despite the layers of material separating them. Yet he manipulated the breast he still cupped in his hand with incredible tenderness.

He was reaching for the button on her jeans when the phone suddenly rang. To Veronica's overstimulated system, it sounded louder than the alarm bell in the fire station over on Fifth Street, and she jerked in Coop's arms, then pulled back, heart pounding, to blink up at him.

“Let it ring,” he growled and reached to draw her back against his chest, but she leaned away from him until the edge of the bar biting into her back prevented her from withdrawing any farther.

“It could be about Lizzy.”

Coop swore softly but snatched up the receiver. “The Tonk.” He listened a moment and then said, “Yeah, she's right here.” With clear reluctance, he extended the receiver to her. “It's Mrs. Martelucchi.”

Instant fear clearing the haze of arousal out of her brain, Ronnie snatched it out of his hands. “Mrs. M? Is everything all right?”

“The girls are fine, dear. I didn't mean to worry you—it's just that you're usually here right at two-oh-five and I began to worry when you didn't come home. Sometimes there's a rough element out there when the bars close.”

“I, um, got busy here. But I'm sorry, I didn't mean to keep you waiting.”

“Oh, that's not a problem, dear, so long as you're all right.”

“I am. I'll be right over so you can get home.” Avoiding Coop's eyes, she hung up and reached self-consciously for the cups of her bra, bringing them together and fumbling with the catch between her breasts. Cold, hard rationality had returned while she was on the phone, and she froze miserably when Coop's long, tanned fingers came into her line of sight and brushed hers aside to finish hooking her up.

What had she been thinking? She didn't care how hot he made her—and oh, God, she had a feeling that neither a cold shower nor squeezing her thighs together until her knees cramped was going to put out this fire. But having sex on bars—or the closest thing to it—was not her style. She wasn't getting involved with a self-professed drifter with no more ambition than to work the Tonk until the urge hit him to move on. How on earth had it come to this?

She glimpsed the tangle of black hair in Cooper's armpits as he raised both hands and shoveled his fingers through his hair. “I guess this means we go to bed frustrated tonight, huh?” he said and his voice was
raspy, barely more than a whisper. “You okay?” He bent his head as if to kiss her.

“Don't!” Veronica jerked her head back.

He stilled, and slowly she raised her head to meet his gaze. His eyes still burned with dark fires, but his face was expressionless as he looked at her. “You've had a change of heart, I take it.”

“Yes.” Veronica reached for her shell and yanked it on, then snatched up the matching cardigan and slid off the counter onto her feet. “This was a mistake.”

“A mistake.” The flesh over his cheekbones tightened. Then his eyes went cool as they traveled all the curves and planes of her upper torso. “You just keep telling yourself that, Princess. You keep telling yourself that whenever we get too close. Because, lady, I want you and you want me, and
that's
an imperative that sooner or later you're not going to be able to ignore.”

“You think not?” Because she was deathly afraid he might be right, and she would
not
end up like her mother, working her fingers to the bone for an unmotivated, lazy man, Veronica made her voice, her posture, her demeanor, extra confident. She grabbed her coat and purse and sailed, head held high, for the door. “Watch me.”

K
EEPING TO THE SHADOWS
, C
OOP STEALTHILY APPROACHED
Eddie's house. He wasn't in the best frame of mind for breaking and entering, but he sure as hell was in the right mood. Like an addict, his mind kept sneaking back to the bar and the memory of Veronica half naked on the counter, all smooth white skin, eager mouth, and responsive little tits. God, she was so soft and sweet-tasting, and she'd wanted it every bit as much as he had. No one could tell him she hadn't.

Not even Ronnie herself, he thought fiercely, recalling the cool look on her face when she'd said,
This was a mistake
. He clenched his teeth so hard his jaw ached.

Dammit all, it wasn't as if he didn't know that. Yet the memory of her dismissing what they'd shared as some no-account error only served to infuriate him all over again. God knows why, because she was ab
solutely right. He'd had no business instigating a session of the hot and heavies with her—not when Eddie was his only reason for being in Fossil. But that sure as hell wasn't something he was about to share with Crystal's sister, and didn't that pretty much say it all? Other than a chemistry that unaccountably kept sparking between them, he and Ronnie had diddily squat in common.

Go tell it to his hard-on, though. If he hadn't been trained in stealth tactics by the best, he thought sourly, he'd probably be using the damn thing to batter down the door to his brother's house about now.

As he checked out all the doors and windows for a weak spot, he did his best to put himself in the emotionless, single-minded state that had earned him the nickname of Iceman in his recon unit. He concentrated on blocking all thoughts of Ronnie out of his mind and focused instead on what he had to do to get in and out of Eddie's house without detection.

Eventually, he found a basement door that didn't sport the same state-of-the-art deadbolts as the main entries. He jimmied the lock with a credit card in seconds flat and let himself in, hoping to hell Eddie didn't have an alarm system that would bring the cops down on his head.

Aside from a need to burn off this frustration-fueled energy pumping through his veins, he couldn't say for certain what he was doing here. A judge had undoubtedly issued a search warrant and the police were sure to have tossed it thoroughly—with a helluva lot more expertise than he could lay claim to. He'd been trained to get in and get out, to assess the lay of the land or grab the hostage and run, not how to find a needle in
the proverbial haystack—so it was unlikely he'd find anything they'd missed.

Yet he had a need tonight to touch base with Eddie, even if it was only through handling things that his brother had handled. Besides, who knew? Maybe something would speak to him. Perhaps something that had meant nothing to the cops would point him down the path he needed to take to clear his brother's name.

Once his eyes had adjusted, he wound through the basement's clutter of odds and ends to a wooden staircase. The door at the top of the stairs was latched, but with the same type of flimsy lock that was on the basement door, and once again Coop used his credit card to good effect. He closed the door behind him and was about to congratulate himself when he heard a low buzzing. Next to the outside door was a security keypad with a blinking red light.

“Shit!” He reached it in two large strides. He probably had thirty seconds, tops, to deactivate the alarm.

Knowing it was bound to be an easy number to remember, Coop punched in Eddie's birthday. The pad kept buzzing. Okay,
too
obvious.

He knew neither his brother's social security number nor the PIN number to his bank account. So what was the most important
date
in Eddie's life? He'd never been married….

If Coop hadn't already been busy running other combinations on the keypad, including his own birthday and that of their mother, he would have smacked himself on the forehead.
Well, duh. The day Lizzy was born, Einstein.

Then his mind went blank. What
was
Lizzy's birth
day? March fourteenth? No, the thirteenth, right?

He punched in three, one, three, but the pad continued buzzing. No, wait, not March—it was in April, because he'd sent her that Fool doll he'd picked up in Vienna. It had made him think of April Fool's Day, which had made him remember her birthday was coming up. Coop tried four, one, three, but the buzz continued. His breath even, his nerves rock-steady, he felt like himself for the first time since Veronica had sashayed into the Tonk dressed to kill. One more try, and then he'd have to get the hell out of here and attempt it again another time. He punched in zero, four, one, three and grinned when the buzzing stopped and the red light blinked out.

Yes!
He'd forgotten the adrenaline rush of walking the fine edge of danger. Odd, considering it had once been an everyday occurrence. Amazing how fast one adapted to a different lifestyle. Coop headed for Eddie's home office, figuring either that or his bedroom were the most likely places to pick up an errant clue…if any were there to be found.

An hour later, he was ready to concede what he'd known all along: There wasn't a damn thing here that the police hadn't already had their hands all over. Nothing was going to miraculously jump out at him with the key to Eddie's defense.

Yet Coop didn't feel as if he'd wasted his time. Because all around him were traces of his brother, of the warmth and the joy that made up Eddie. Unlike the furnishings of Crystal's house, which looked like something out of an opium dream, Eddie's home was all soothing earth tones, soft, comfortable furniture, and touches that felt homey and inviting. There were
pictures of Lizzy all over the place, as well as photos of father and daughter together, sporting smiles so big you could almost reach out and touch the love. Every room in the house held mementos of Lizzy: little kid drawings framed on the wall of Eddie's office, a disc of clay embedded with a tiny handprint on the nightstand next to his bed. Coop could only shake his head over the injustice of a man who'd only wanted the best for his daughter and had ended up on the run for a murder he didn't commit instead. It was ludicrous.

Coop shook off the frustration that threatened to impinge on his fiercely focused attention and opened the door next to Eddie's bedroom.

It was clearly Lizzy's room, and the first thing Coop saw was the Fool doll he'd sent her on her last birthday. It sat with another doll and a couple of stuffed animals on the pink and white spread on her bed. Something hung from a ribbon around its neck, and crossing the room, Coop saw it was the birthday card he'd enclosed with it. Edging it open with the tip of his finger, he read by the light of the moon his own bold handwriting beneath the printed Italian-language sentiment.
Happy Birthday from Venice, Lizzy,
it read.
Uncle James
.

Not
Love
or
Fond Wishes
—just
Uncle James
. Seeing the place of honor she'd given his gift and card, he felt like the biggest fraud in the world. Some uncle he was. Shame suffused him to know that it was one of the few birthdays he'd even remembered.

He eased open the card again and looked at his signature.
James
. It always took him by surprise to see that name in his own handwriting on personal correspondence. He'd been using it for a couple of years
now to sign books, but before he'd become published, he'd never been anything but Cooper or Coop…except to his mother. It hadn't really been an issue until she'd left them for Chapman, and even after that it hadn't escalated into open warfare until his dad died and Coop'd had to go live with them full-time.

At first he'd refused to answer to the name, trying to force her to accept him for who he was—just plain Cooper. But his mother had proven to be even more stubborn than he, and “James” he had remained in her household. Whether he was merely there for a weekend visit or under her permanent custodianship, she would brook no blue-collar name for her son. It probably smacked too closely of her own less-than-prestigious roots.

Consequently, it was as James that Eddie had always known him. Because Eddie was Eddie, though, Cooper hadn't minded when his brother called him that. Eddie had said the name with love and admiration. When his mother had said it, it'd simply been a way to make Coop more acceptable in her eyes.

He shook himself free of the reverie, ignoring the gnawing ache low in his gut. All that was water under the bridge. Hell, she'd
died
disapproving of him, but that wasn't important now. What mattered was doing whatever he could to help his remaining family.

Which at the moment seemed to be damn little. He'd take home the folder of Eddie's financial papers he'd liberated. And, taking one last look around Lizzy's room before he eased the door shut, Coop wondered if there was a way to at least get his niece's personal belongings back. It might give her a measure of comfort until she was reunited with her daddy.

As far as being instrumental in clearing Eddie, though, Coop was beginning to harbor a nasty feeling that all he could really do was be in place, ready to take advantage, if a break should ever come his way.

 

Kody awakened in slow increments the next morning, barely relinquishing unconsciousness enough to acknowledge that he felt exceedingly loose-limbed and stress-free. Honest-to-God contentment hummed through his veins, but it was the physical heat radiating against his chest and across his stomach that aroused his sleep-deprived curiosity. Body heat warmed his entire right side, in fact, and blinking groggily, he raised his head off the pillow to locate the source.

A woman was pressed against his side, her head nestled in the hollow between his collarbone and the beginning swell of his chest. Her face was hidden from view by her sandy brown hair as it spread across his chest and over the arm she'd draped across his stomach, but now that he was more fully awake Kody knew perfectly well who this long, well-rounded body belonged to, and he couldn't have contained the satisfied smile that curled up the corners of his lips to save his life.

When he'd looked up last night to see Marissa standing next to Veronica, he might've been caught in the fallout of a megakilotron bomb, so immediate was the impact she'd had upon his senses. Just thinking about it now made him shake his head. Man. It was as if he and Marissa had been two components of a volatile compound kept on separate shelves—and for good reason, it turned out, because just look at what
happened when they'd come together. Mix one part Marissa and one part Kody and—boom!—instant combustion. He'd never felt anything like it in his life.

He wanted to keep on feeling it, though, and he eased his hand beneath the thick fall of her hair to sweep it away from her face. As he shifted to look down at her, his gaze swept across two portraits on the far wall, then snapped back to fix on them.

His stomach sank. One was of a curly-haired little girl with a big smile and gaps where her two front teeth should be. The other was of a slightly older boy who looked to be long and lanky. He had Marissa's eyes. Had her smile, too, minus the dimples.

Kody tried to tell himself that they were probably her niece and nephew, but it wouldn't wash. Not only did the boy look like a male version of Marissa, but there was an inscription in childish handwriting on the little girl's photo.
For Mommy
, it said.

Well, shit.

It wasn't that he didn't
like
kids; he liked them just fine. But he had a bit of a blind spot when it came to them. What man wouldn't who'd watched his sister flit from one man to the next, and had watched the heartache of his nephew getting attached to the men traipsing in and out of his mama's house? Just about the time his nephew Jacob felt safe getting comfortable with the presence of some new guy in his young life, that guy would invariably disappear. And while Kody couldn't do a damn thing to change his sister's behavior, he'd sworn he'd never be responsible for putting the look he'd seen too often on Jacob's face on the face of someone else's kid.

So he tended to date women who came without the
baggage. And the few times he had gone out with a woman who had children, he'd been careful to take her out on adult-only dates that didn't include her kids, figuring—rightly, as it turned out—that the attraction might not last. By keeping his interaction with her progeny to a bare minimum, he at least circumvented having to feel responsible for building false hope in a child's mind that this latest male influence to pass through his life would turn out to be something more permanent.

No kid would ever have to watch him waltz out the door with the youngster's heart in his hands.

Kody swept Marissa's hair off her face and tucked in his chin to gaze down at her. Smoothing a finger down her nose, he looked at the faint blue veins in her eyelids, at the crease in her cheek that even in repose any fool could see would turn into one of those knock-you-on-your-butt, killer dimples of hers the minute she smiled.

Hell. He didn't want to give her up. He wanted to explore this amazing chemistry between them to the fullest. Something this combustible was bound to burn itself out in the end, but he sure hated the idea of walking away from it before it did.

But that's exactly what he'd better do. Because no matter how unique this thing between them felt, he wasn't betraying his one true, steadfast principle. He'd already forsaken one of the rules that went along with it—to never sleep in a woman's bed when there were children in the house. His actions last night had been dictated by sheer lust, and for all he knew, Marissa's kids were sawing
z
's down the hall right now.

He eased her off his chest and slipped out of bed.

He'd stepped into his jeans and pulled them into place but hadn't yet fastened them when he heard her rustling behind him.