OVER HER DEAD BODY: The Bliss Legacy - Book 2 (24 page)

“You made it.”

“Ashai, the new mother, died of hemorrhage, and over half the village was killed. They took some people with them. Young boys mostly.” She looked away, unable to stop the pain, the powerlessness, from washing over her. “But, yes, I made it.”

“And came home.”

“I stayed on for a while after the raid, but I couldn’t sleep. Then the panic attacks started.”

“How long had you been in Africa?”

“Not always Sudan, but on and off, almost seven years.”

He whistled softly.

“When the directive came for me to come home, I didn’t fight it.” She paused, hoping he’d understand her reason for leaving, which for some reason mattered to her. “The Sudan didn’t need another addition to the walking wounded,” she said. “They were right to bring me home. The shape I was in, I was no use to anyone.”

“That’s what counts with you, isn’t it? Being of use?”

If he looked at her with any more intensity, she’d turn to a heap of ash or a wash of tears. She didn’t intend that to happen. “If you’re asking if I aspire to change the world, right every injustice, and banish all sickness and evil from the face of the earth”—she swept her hand in a wide, purposely careless arc, anxious to lighten the mood, change the subject—“or if you’re thinking my heroine of choice is Wonder Woman, she of the narrow waist and magic belt, you’d be wrong. I’m not that good, not that pious, and not that dedicated.”

“That’s how you see it.” He shook his head.

“All I want to do is work in my little corner of the universe—Mayday House. If I can make it a decent, safe haven for women who need one, I’ll be content”

“No plans to go back?”

“To Africa?” Her thoughts stumbled, then righted themselves. “No plans as such. But someday? Maybe. You don’t walk away from Africa—it won’t let you.” She felt the sharp clutch in her chest, the ache there when she remembered the desperate suffering people of Darfur, her work there. “I left part of my heart there. With Marc … and others.”

Gus looked at her a long time, but he didn’t appear inclined to speak.

Curious and increasingly uncomfortable, she asked, “What are you thinking?”

He stood and walked up to her. “Not thinking exactly. More like wondering.”

“About what?”

“About whether or not the part of your heart you brought home has room for something new. If it’s up to another risk.”

Wary now, she asked, “Like what?”

He lifted her chin, forcing their gazes to meet. “Like me.”

“I don’t know what you’re saying,” Keeley said, too aware of his warm hand on her face, his dark eyes looking down at her. She couldn’t move. It was as if someone had stolen into her dimly lit bedroom and nailed her feet to the floor.

“Not sure I know myself.” He moved his thumb along her jaw, the gesture idle, his expression thoughtful. “We’re the last two people on this earth who should come together. An ex-nun and an ex … gigolo, for want of a better word.” He stopped, both his words and the movement of his thumb, then added, “But there’s a sense of inevitability to it. To us.” He didn’t look as if the idea made him happy.

Keeley knew he was right, knew it was what she’d been feeling and fighting since she’d seen him that first day, standing in Mayday’s front yard. Like a gift.

“Definitely inevitable.” He whispered the last, his tone smoky when he bent to brush his mouth over hers. “But it ends with this.”

When his lips met hers, they came softly, questioningly, as if he were tasting woman for the first time. As if he couldn’t stop himself.

As if he were waiting for her to stop him, giving her time to say no.

The word refused to come.

Instead, Keeley’s breath surged and swirled in her lungs, even as her mind softened to a warm gray light.

She wanted to close her eyes, but it would mean taking them from his, and she couldn’t; she was too mesmerized watching the fire in his gaze deepen, from the glow of rich brown to the darkness of desire.

Inevitable. Another word for fate.

She’d never believed in fate, things happening under their own momentum. She believed in God’s hand and making things happen by hard work and commitment. Good things didn’t simply come to you, you had to earn them.

But Gus had come to her, unplanned, unannounced. And since that day, she’d known a growing tension she could neither identify nor still—as if his presence had short-circuited her internal wiring—and her will. He was too big, too beautiful, too … dazzling for her.

Yet she leaned into him, drawn to his strong body, the strength of his arms, his hard length warming her deepest reaches. Making her want. Making her need.

Their gazes locked, and he slid his hands from her face, down her neck, over her shoulders. Grasping her waist, he pulled her flush against him. He stared down at her, then kissed her forehead, her cheeks, her ears, her throat. His every movement fluid, insistent.

Finally he came back to her mouth—this time boldly.

Keeley’s neck curved backward, and she shifted her body to get closer to him. Closer yet, desperate to feel the hardness of him against her belly. She knew this feeling, the power in it, what it could mean, but she was unafraid—oddly serene. If that was a word you could use in the middle of a sexual maelstrom.

Gus pulled back, slowly, carefully, until he again held her face in his hands. Using his thumbs, he rubbed her cheeks.

“Definitely stops here,” he repeated, and she heard the rasp and harshness in his breathing. His jaw tensed when he drew in another hard breath, looked heavenward. Dropping his hands from her face, he said, “I should have listened to Barton.”

“Father Barton?” His name entering the bedroom scattered her already errant thoughts.

“He told me to leave you alone.”

“He said that?”

“Close to it.” A wry smile briefly turned up his lips. “He said no ‘sleep-and-runs.’”

“You talked to Father Barton about us?” The word
us
slipped into her surprise of its own free will. She had no desire to call it back, even if confusion at Father Barton’s giving an opinion on the dos-and-don’ts of her sex life did set her brain on spin cycle.

“More like he talked to me.”

“Too bad he didn’t talk to me, I’d have talked back.” She stopped, a clear thought rising from her mental disorder. “Is that what you want, Gus? A sleep-and-run?” A slice of her earlier panic came back.

He rubbed his scar, seemingly locked in his own thoughts and not happy with them. He walked a few paces away from her, then turned to look at her. “The answer to your question is no.” He stopped. “When it comes to you, I’m not sure what I want” His lips turned grim. “Other than to toss you on that bed and make love to you until neither of us can breathe.”

Her chest loosened, made room for her heart to pound.

He paced again, then, with a careful few feet between, he slid his hand to the back of his neck, kept it there. “And that’s just for starters.”

“And after the starter, what then?”

He took his hand from his neck, put both hands on his hips, and cursed to himself. “I don’t believe we’re having this conversation.”

“You started it. I repeat, what then?”

A fog of silence fell over the room.

“The ‘then’ part is having breakfast with you,
then
lunch,
then
dinner,
then
starting all over again.” He paused.”The trouble with you, Farrell, is you’re not the kind of woman a smart man walks away from. You’re what’s called a keeper.”

“And that’s a bad thing?”

“It is when you’re not one of those ‘smart’ guys I mentioned.” His voice firmed. “I was a paid escort, Keeley, paid for services in bed and out. Before that I was running from a murder charge. Before that I lived on the streets, under the name Gus Vanelleto, among others, doing whatever it took to survive. I’ve spent a lifetime getting by and getting laid. A woman like you isn’t in my cards.”

She let the last go. “A murder charge?” she said. “Tell me about it.” When he didn’t answer, she urged, “I want to know.”

“It’s ugly.”

“Life can be that way,” she countered.

“Okay.” He paused, seemed to gather his thoughts. “When I was a kid, for a short time, I was in the care of Washington State. Specifically a woman called Belle Bliss, part-time prostitute, full-time child abuser. She made her living scamming Child Services. Alcoholic and stone mean, that woman. I owe her this.”

He touched his scar. “When she got herself shot in the head, and very dead as a result, the cops pegged me and a couple of other kids in the house as the murderers. We spent fifteen years running before they got the guy who did it.”

“Where is he now?”

“In the room they’d reserved for me. Behind bars.” He gave her a straight-on look. “That’s not all of it. I took Josh.”

“Who’s Josh?”

His eyes settled on hers. “Josh is my … brother, or as close to it as you can get. They put him with Belle the day she was murdered. When he was dropped off, she parked him in a broken-down crib and left him there to soak his pants, go hungry, and scream for hours. He was a baby, for Christ’s sake. Not even two years old. Belle was dead, lying in a pool of her own blood. I couldn’t leave him there alone, crying in that damn crib.” He rubbed his forehead. “So I took him and left the state. Raised him.”

“You raised a child?” She couldn’t imagine it. “Why didn’t you drop him off at a hospital, some place safe?”

“He’d already been ‘dropped off’ once,” he said, his tone hard, his face implacable. “At Belle’s house of horrors.”

“But you were a kid yourself, the risk …”

“The risk was me going to jail and Josh being dumped on someone else who didn’t give a damn. I didn’t exactly have a rosy experience with family life. What I knew was the streets. I figured I’d do as good a job looking out for him as anyone else. And I’d make sure nobody messed with him.” The last was said fiercely and with total conviction.

She had no response to it. “Where is Josh now?”

“When things finally got settled in Bliss’s killing, I found out his mother had died of an overdose, but he had a grandmother. Turns out he’d never have been at Belle’s place if she’d known about him. But she didn’t know he even existed until weeks after the murder. By then Josh and I were on our way east I didn’t know anyone was looking for him. If I had—” He shrugged and left the thought unfinished. “Anyway, he’s with her now. Staying with her and going to college. Straight A’s. He’s a good kid. A really good kid.”

Keeley heard the pride in his voice—and the love. “And a lucky boy,” she said. “All we need in this life is one person in our corner, one person to care. You gave that to Josh.”

He stared at her. “Josh was the one good thing in an otherwise selfish life. He doesn’t make up for the rest”

“Like being paid for sex? And not finding April.”

His handsome, ravaged face hardened, and she sensed him pulling away from her. “That’s a couple of them, yes.”

“I see,” she said, although she didn’t see at all. It would take years to unravel the mystery of Gus Hammond. She decided to start now. “What’s your real name, Gus?”

He studied her for what seemed forever, then said, “Hanlon. August John Hanlon.”

“Thank you,” she said. “For that truth and the others.” She fidgeted with the tie on her robe, sure of her heart, but not what it was telling her to do. She took a moment and steadied her breathing. “Father Barton was right—about the sleep-and-run thing. I wouldn’t like it. But I like you. And the getting-tossed-on-the-bed-making-love scenario”—she closed her eyes—“I like that, too.” She walked toward him, straightening her shoulders. “And while I’m not absolutely sure about the inevitability thing you talked about, I’d like to investigate the possibility.”

His breath lodged like a stone in his throat. “Didn’t you hear anything I said?” He touched his scar, but didn’t take his eyes off her. “You have no idea what you’re saying.”

“I know exactly what I’m saying, and I know what I’m feeling”—she glanced out the window, still dark but with the glimmer of morning coming from the east—“and I know we’re running out of time.”

“This could go very wrong,” he said, his voice low. He left a long silence before adding, “I could fall in love with you.” He said the words ominously, as if he were foretelling the worst of disasters.

Keeley thought about his kiss, the intimate and dangerous truths he’d shared with her, and she smiled. “I think you already have, August John Hanlon. I think you already have.”

Gus’s heart hammered, and his neck went cold, then hot.

The man who thought he’d learned all there was to know about pleasuring women—even before the experienced, demanding, and highly sexed Dinah decided to make their arrangement exclusive— stood stalled in his tracks. Whatever degree of cool, of restraint, he’d ever possessed burned away, leaving the sorry equivalent of the inflamed mind of a teenaged boy who’d spotted his first naked breast. And so far Gus had only imagined that.

I can’t do this. It’s not right.

Keeley dropped her robe and once again the ugly pink flannel came into view. It might as well have been a thousand-dollar black negligee. Christ, hadn’t he seen a thousand of them in his time? Always the trigger to strip off his clothes and get to work.

Not that it had been all that bad, all the time. He was young, he liked women, and he liked sex. Was damn good at it. More often than not the women were beautiful. And Dinah, for a time, incredible.

But nothing in his experience prepared him for Keeley with her pink toenails and her flannel nightgown.

He watched her walk to the bed and jump up to sit on its edge. When she saw he hadn’t moved, she sat for a time, dangling her feet, then said, “You’re not the only one who might fall in love here, you know. And I’m okay with that.” Her voice was soft, and he heard her take a deep breath. “Truth is, I’m halfway there already, and I have been since the day you wanted to kick me out of my house.”

He strode over to her, pulled her from the bed, and held her away from him, wanting to see her eyes. “You don’t know what you’re in for. I’ll let you down.”

“I’ll take my chances.” She touched his face. “The question is, will you?”