Hell on Wheels (10 page)

The warm brick walls added texture and ambiance to the silver ductwork and exposed pipes overhead. Whoever did the murals out in the shop had obviously put their hand to different work, evidenced by the abstract diptych painting above the bed. The technique was totally different, but the barrage of color was unmistakably signature. It tied in beautifully with the turquoise-and-green coverlet on the bed and the area rug partially covering the lacquered, original-wood flooring.

So the room and the to-die-for feather mattress weren’t the problem. Neither was her insomnia due to Peanut curling his substantial self against her side with his motor running full tilt.

Well…maybe that had a little bit to do with it. It was sort of like lying next to a jet engine.

But no, her real problem? She was scared.

She thought she was scared when she hopped in her car back in North Carolina with the intent to make it to Chicago without stopping to sleep. Now, she understood she’d only been spooked. Because at the time she’d expected to show up here, present her problem, pass it off to Nate, let him handle it, and head back home after maybe a minor excursion to the shops on the Magnificent Mile.

Oh ho! Boy, had she been naïve. Not only did that
not
happen, but she also learned she was bugged, her brother had gone off the reservation, his FBI contact was dead, and she was likely being followed and threatened at gunpoint by the CIA.

Now she was well and truly scared.

Whose life was she living?

Not hers, that’s for sure. Things like this didn’t happen to kindergarten teachers. Unless of course those kindergarten teachers had older brothers specializing in covert operations for the government. Which, unfortunately for her, she did.

Dang
it, Grigg! What in the world were you thinking getting me involved in this?

As soon as she had the thought, she felt disloyal. Grigg would never knowingly put her in danger. There was something else going on here, something niggling at the back of her mind like a worm. But when she tried to focus on it, it just slipped farther and farther into the dark depths of her subconscious.

Okay, so it was time to think of something else. That’s what her mom always advised when her belabored brain was flitting around an answer like a butterfly flits around a flower.

Taking a deep breath, she cleared her head. And what do you know? The first thing that leapt to mind was that wonderfully horrible day on the beach with Nate. The way the hot sun had warmed her bare shoulders. The way the cool waves had crashed to shore with foam and fury. The way the seagulls had cried in seeming sympathy with the breaking of her heart. And the way Nate had instinctively understood the strange longing inside her. The unlikely need to reaffirm beautiful, vibrant life after facing the dark specter of death.

Oh, yes, it wasn’t a new story or a novel reaction to loss. Probably as old as time. The cavemen no doubt mounted their mates in heated urgency after one of the clan passed on to that great unknown. But the commonness of her reaction hadn’t registered at the time.

She’d been dying inside and she’d needed…something. Something real and raw. Something to keep her from falling into an abyss of black sorrow so deep she’d never return.

And somehow Nate had known. He’d understood. Dark, scowling, brooding Nathan Weller had seen inside her, past all the pain and despair. He’d given her a rare and wonderful gift that day.

Tender.

That’s what he’d been when she’d pulled her desperate mouth from his surprised one to whisper recklessly, “Make love to me.”

She remembered now how his Adam’s apple bobbed as he searched her face as only he could. With that savage alertness, that probing intensity. Black eyes searing into her very soul. He’d reclaimed her mouth in a kiss that still brought flaming heat to her cheeks.

It was passionate, but, oh so carefully and tenderly thorough. He’d made love to her mouth. There was just no other way to describe it. Possessive, fierce, compassionate love. And when his big hand with its warrior’s collection of calluses and scars softly cupped her left breast, she’d sighed. With a gentle pass of one large thumb, he’d brought her nipple to aching attention.

The result had been instantaneous.

Instantaneous lust.

Cripes.

She shivered now. The memory making her squirm until Peanut raised his scarred, furry face and slanted her a disgruntled look.

“There are other beds you could be sleeping in, you know,” she told him.

His response was to lift one hind leg behind his head and begin meticulously cleaning his balls.

“Well, that’s a succinct answer if ever there was one,” she grumbled, flopping onto her back and throwing one arm over her eyes.

She’d tried, oh,
lordy
, how she’d tried over the past three months to forget about that day. To forget the expertise of his mouth and hands. To forget the way she’d responded, with such abandon, giving herself over to him.

And for the most part, during the daylight hours, she was successful.

The nights were another matter.

At night, she couldn’t push the memories away. Often awoke with her fingers between her legs trying to ease the ache her dreams built. And now, lying in bed with Nate only two doors down, her usual powers over the past were lost, and it all played out again. Her mind’s eye supplying vivid, graphic detail.

Hot.

His broad palm had been so hot when he’d brushed it along her cool thigh, under the short skirt she’d been wearing, never hesitating as he pushed aside the lace and elastic of her thong. His rough thumb had been unerring when it landed on the hot knot of nerves at the top of her sex to circle slowly.

Big.

His calloused fingers had been so big when he’d gently pressed one, and then another, inside her.

What had followed was more a visceral recollection than an actual memory. Because her brain had ceased to work at that point. She’d become strictly physical. A thing of liquid bones and racing blood. An entity made solely of desire, of
want
.

Her mouth remembered the taste of him as his tongue plunged and retreated. Her breasts tingled with the memory of his broad chest and the friction he’d created while moving against her. Her fingers itched in recollection of the tense and release of the lean tendons and heavy muscles of his forearm, the one that’d been angled down between their bodies.

At the time, she didn’t know when she grabbed him whether she wanted it to stop or go on forever, so she simply clung.

She remembered the explosion of her release, of screaming his name and then crumpling into a boneless heap in his arms. And she remembered her astonishment when he simply held her for long moments, murmuring nonsensically and rubbing his hand up and down her back before bundling her up and carrying her back to the Jeep.

She shivered again, and Peanut stopped licking himself just long enough to direct an annoyed
mrrreow
directly toward her face before returning to his mission of impeccable nuts.

“You keep that up and you won’t have any hair left,” she advised him before throwing back the covers and padding to the bathroom. She looked at herself in the mirror over the pedestal sink and grimaced.

Crapola.

She wanted Nate Weller.

There was no more denying it.

At a distance of a thousand miles, it was easy to blame her behavior that day three months ago on soul-tearing grief. But being here and seeing him? It made it impossible to continue to deceive herself.

That itchy feeling, the tightening of her scalp whenever he came within ten feet of her, her inability to stop jabbering like one of her kindergarteners? They were all the result of her impossible physical reaction to him.

And that
something
about him that always irritated her to no end? Well,
that
was simply the hurt and frustration she felt knowing he didn’t suffer any similar difficulties.

She’d been a fool not to understand it before, or maybe she’d just been afraid. Afraid of everything he made her feel. Afraid of everything he made her want. Afraid of…rejection.

Double crapola.

She huffed out a breath and splashed her hot face with tepid water. It was all too much. Too complicated.

Turning off the tap, she patted her face dry with a fluffy turquoise towel. She was never going to get any sleep tonight, so she might as well head downstairs and see if anyone else was up. Maybe Becky was in the mood to share a glass of wine—a
big
glass of wine—and commiserate with her about the unceasing frustrations of men.

Tying the satin belt of her robe, she peeked out into the quiet hallway. All the lights were off, including the ones downstairs. A faint glow of yellow pooled below only one door.

Nate’s.

Wouldn’t it figure?

The one person she
didn’t
want to share of glass of wine with, especially a
big
glass of wine. Sufficiently lubricated, she didn’t trust herself not to attack him, tie him to the bed, and sit on his face.

Of course, there
was
something she’d like for him to clear up…

“C’min,” Nate murmured, looking up from the screen of his laptop where Ozzie had dumped—er, the kid preferred the term
transferred—
all Grigg’s email correspondence from the last three years. He’d volunteered for the onerous task of finding out just how often his partner, his best friend, his sole confidant, had flat out lied to him and rest of the team and done jobs for the FBI.

As if that wasn’t enough to put the shit-icing on top of this crap cake of a day, now Boss was back at his door.

What more could the man possibly have to ask him?

After everyone had gone to bed, the two of them hashed out, or should he say
re
hashed out, every sickening, macabre detail Nate could remember from his oh-so-happy time in Syria in order to see if maybe there was some connection between that and what was happening now.

Oh boy, and hadn’t that been a real barrel of monkeys?

Because even after months had passed and he’d told the story enough times to recite it verbatim, he couldn’t stop the flash of memory that suddenly stabbed in front of his grainy eyes anytime he let his mind travel down that path. That’s all it took, just the mere thought of it, and instantly he was back there, back in that dingy little house out in the middle of bumfuck Syria.

The guards, a group of three guys too cruel to be called men and too inventive in their cruelty to be called animals, had gone somewhere to get drunk—as per their usual schedule—and he’d finally managed to chew through the cheap ropes binding his hands. Getting through the door had taken some ingenuity and more than a little brute force, but he’d eventually managed, and it’d only cost him three broken ribs.

He’d been dizzy with pain and hunger while dragging himself across the hallway, finally succeeding in accessing the room next door.

He saw it all so well, in stark, Blu-ray definition.

Grigg, lying on that rough table. Blood everywhere. Too much blood. And viscera. And that smell…
Sweet
Christ
, he’d instantly recognized that smell. It was the scent of a dead man who didn’t yet know he was dead.

“Nate?”

The sight of Ali standing in his open doorway instantly snapped him back to the present.

Thank God.

Too much more of that and he’d have to go see that shrink Boss kept harping about. Although, if he was really honest with himself, he probably
should
go. Back when he’d been with the Marines, he’d known a lot of guys who’d been forced by their commanding officers to go through some form of therapy. And even though most of them had gone in kicking and screaming, they’d come out the other side more balanced, more accepting of the horrors of war. So yeah, it could be a good thing, but the thought of telling a perfect stranger what he’d done made him break out in a cold sweat.

Wiping a clammy hand across his forehead, he vaulted from his chair to pad barefoot across the small room. Once he got to the door, he realized he’d just left behind his worst nightmare to stand directly in front of his wildest fantasy.

Well, almost.

Minus that flimsy, cream, thigh-length robe, it would be his wildest fantasy. Because he could just make out the faint hue of…was that blue?…bra and panties so lovingly covering everything he’d ever dreamed of putting his lips on. Her Disney princess face looked even more innocent scrubbed clean of makeup, and her hair was damp in front, wet little tendrils sticking to her cheeks and jaw.

Geez, just kill him now and get it over with.

“Ali? What’s wrong?” he managed to ask through a mouth that wanted to drool like a dog. For some reason, the temperature in the room jumped ten degrees.

“Can I talk to you for a minute?” she peered up at him, all sweetness and light.

“Sure,” he made to step out into the hall, but she halted him with a hand on his forearm.

He would not think about how she’d dug her nails into that same arm as she’d reached her climax that day on the beach. Oh hell no. He would most definitely
not
think of that.

Shit. Now that’s all he could think about.

“In private?” She glanced furtively down the hall to Becky’s closed door.

No, no, no,
no.
Supremely bad idea. “Uh, sure.”

He backed up and held the door wide, surreptitiously glancing around his bedroom to make sure nothing untoward was left lying about, like the candid photo of her he usually kept hidden in his nightstand. The one Grigg snapped the summer before he died. The one where Ali’s golden hair was caught in the soft breeze coming in off the ocean and her head was thrown back in laughter. The one Nate looked at so often the edges were starting to bend.

Luckily, it was still buried in the top drawer of his bedside table under some cough drops, tissues, and a dog-eared John Grisham novel.

Shooting one last glance down the hall, he quietly closed the door.

And closed Ali into his bedroom.

Just the thought had his crotch tightening. Not good. Not good at all.

It was super strange how his pulse could stay metronome steady while he was inches away from a drug lord, jihadist, or enemy combatant but raced out of control the minute he was alone with one little wisp of a woman.

“What’s wrong, Ali?” Hopefully this time he’d get an answer. Preferably something he could quickly solve so he could shoo her out, double-time, because right at that moment his gaze snagged on her clasped hands.

And somehow, despite the fact that he’d never really considered fingers sexy before, he wanted to get his lips on them. They were just so darned cute. So petite and slender—just like her—and perfectly polished a seashell pink. They virtually screamed
female!
And Lord knew that was something he’d gone without for a long while now. Too damned long…

“What did Delilah say to you tonight?” she asked, her brow puckering adorably.

Well, wasn’t that just a kick in the nuts? It was also the dead last thing he expected to hear.

“Uh…”

“We’ve known each other for a dozen years, and I think that was the first time I’ve ever heard you laugh like that.” She took a step closer.

Whoa. Not good. And getting not gooder by the minute.

Not gooder? His brain was ceasing to function.

“Uh…”

Now she was standing in front of him, so close he could sense the soft feminine heat rolling off her body in gentle waves, and smell the sweet aroma of her honeysuckle shampoo mixed with the scent of Ivory soap on her skin.

Where was that humming coming from? Was all his blood rushing to his head?

“Uh…” And what was the question? He swallowed and tried to drag in a much needed lungful of O
2
. Was it just him, or were the walls closing in?

“It’s a bit strange, don’t you think?” she asked.

Yeah, it was all very, very strange. Strange that she was here in Chicago. Strange that she was being chased by some spook. Strange that Grigg had put her in the position to be chased by some spook. Strange that she was standing half dressed in his bedroom. His. Bedroom.

Strange that she was looking up at him imploringly instead of watching him like a mouse might watch a hungry hawk. Not to mention the fact that he
felt
very, very strange. Like maybe he was about to pass out.
Bam!
Down for the count. And wouldn’t that impress upon her what a macho man he really was?

“Ali—”

“What?”

Yeah, what? What was he about to say?
Get
out
, maybe?
Get
naked?
That was much more likely.

He simply shook his head. “Nothin’.”

“Back to playing the strong, handsome, silent type?” she asked, her head tipped teasingly to the side.

“Handsome?” She though he was handsome? Not that he should be
too
surprised, he supposed. He was no Brad Pitt, but he wasn’t necessarily Quasimodo either.

She shrugged. “Of course. You do know you’re, like…sorta drop-dead hot, right?”

Did he? Maybe once, years ago when he’d been young and carefree. Innocent of the world. But not now. Not with the years spent battling the elements. Not after having carried around the weight of what he’d been forced to do three months ago. He felt like an old man.

“Wow,” she shook her head, clearly surprised. “You really don’t get it, do you?”

“Get what?”

“That you’re beautiful.”

“
Beautiful
?” Okay, now he
knew
she was blowing smoke up his ass.

Because handsome he figured he could maybe understand. Women were strangely wonderful in that they liked a little character in a man’s face.

Drop-dead hot was probably pushing things a bit. But beautiful? Huh-uh, no way.

“Yes,” she slid her tongue into her cheek, her eyes bright with amusement as she leaned toward him. “Men can be beautiful.”

He laughed even as his spine snapped ruler-straight. He clasped his hands behind his back, gritting his teeth with the effort not to reach out and touch her. She muddled his thinking on a good day. And now, standing so close, especially when she lifted a hand toward his face? Well, that caused all conscious thought to stop dead in its tracks. Every single cell inside his body focused with a capital F on the feel of her sweet, pink-tipped fingers.

“Nate?”

When she said his name like that, he wanted to take on the world. “Hmm?”

“You just laughed.”

“I do that on occasion.” He used to do it all the time when Grigg was alive. The exasperating sonofabitch had done his level best to keep Nate in stitches. Of course, Ali wouldn’t know that. Anytime she was around him, he was usually concentrating so hard on not springing a boner that any attempt at appreciating humor was out of the question. Since Grigg’s death though, all the laughter had left him, flown away with Grigg’s last breath. But something about having Ali there made him feel…lighter. Dare he admit it? Maybe even a teensy bit happy?

“Nate?”

Scratch that. He didn’t just want to take on the world when she said his name like that, he wanted to take on the whole friggin’ galaxy. “Yeah?”

“I’m touching you.”

No doubt about that. The baseball bat he was trying to conceal behind his zipper was testimony enough. “I noticed.”

“You’re not jerking away. Acting like I’m carrying around a double whammy of hepatitis and bubonic plague.”

Double whammy of…he could only shake his head and fight a grin. She was simply adorable. No bones about it. And, yeah, that warm feeling slowly seeping through his veins could only be happiness. He remembered the sensation…vaguely. “What are you jabbering on about now, woman?”

“That fact that you don’t like for me to touch you.”

Was she insane?

“You
don’t
like it when I touch you, do you?” she asked.

“I never said that,” he muttered through clenched teeth because she was in the process of running her hands over his shoulders. Was it possible to feel happiness while in the midst of being killed?

“Then why have you always gone out of your way to avoid any physical contact with me? We’ve known each other for…well, sometimes it seems like forever. You’re like a second son to my parents. You grab up my mom and hug her until she’s giggling and ruffling your hair. Even that awkward male combination handshake-hug thing you do with my dad proves you’re not allergic to human touch. And you and Grigg had your arms thrown around each other’s shoulders so often mom sometimes called you the USMC’s only set of Siamese twins—attached at the armpit. But all I ever got was a tip of the chin, if that. So what gives? Why do you turn sideways when we pass each other in the hallway?”

For a brief instant, he considered lying. But there were so many bitter truths he couldn’t tell her, so many questions she’d asked that he absolutely could not answer. This wasn’t one of them. So…the truth it was. “I like it too much.”

“Huh?” There went her nose again, all wrinkly and wonderful.

“Your touch. I like it
too
much.” Hell, now it’d be
her
going out of her way to avoid physical contact. Which was just as well. He was only a man after all, and with her within arm’s reach—not to mention actually touching him—his hold on his usually stalwart restraint was tenuous at best.

Downright threadbare at worst.

Her delicately arched brows snapped toward her nose. “Like it too much. What does that mean?”

Geez. The woman wasn’t usually slow, but she was pulling the ol’ bag of hammers routine with this one. Instead of explaining it, he simply reeled her in until she brushed against the irrefutable evidence centered directly behind his fly.

Sweet lovin’ Lord, it was hell. Or heaven. He wasn’t sure. If his dick had a voice of its own, it’d start shouting a rousing chorus of hallelujahs.

Her beautiful eyes shot wide. “Oh!”

Oh
was right.

Lightbulb moment, Miss Morgan. “Yeah, does that clear things up for ya?”

Any second now. Any second she was going to jump back and give him that look she’d perfected over the years. The narrowed eyes and pursed lips, the canted head, the one that said she thought he’d just climbed out from under the nearest slimy rock.

Any second now…

“You
want
me?” she asked incredulously.

“I’d say that’s undeniably apparent.”

“But you don’t
like
me.” Inexplicably, she was still pressed against his pulsing, aching-like-a-month-of-Mondays erection.

Not like her? Was she crazy? “Of course I like you, Ali.”

He silently counted to ten and recited the team roster of the 1998 St. Louis Cardinals. Over the years, he’d learned it was the mental equivalent of a cold shower.

“No, you don’t,” she adamantly shook her head.

“Ali,” he knew he must be wearing the expression of a tormented man, “all evidence points to the contrary.”

Okay, so the ol’ Cardinals trick wasn’t working tonight.

And uh-oh, he knew the look she was wearing now. It was the one Grigg so often complained about, all calculating and wily. This was
so
not going to be good.