Smoke and Mirrors (13 page)

"You had no way of knowing." She steered the conversation to safer ground. "I shouldn't have reacted the way I did."

He dropped the empty tumbler and slid his hands behind her neck, where he fiddled with her braid. "Sure you should've. I had no right to say what I did."

Just when she thought she had him figured out, he veered off course. "What?"

"My little jab about Ryan unraveling you," he explained. "I was trying to get to you—"

"Don't worry about it." She didn't want to talk about it, think about it. She just wanted the scene behind her.

"Not an option," he answered smoothly. "Your son is part of you, a part you'll never lose, a part you'll never get back. What I said was cruel and uncalled for."

Cass fought the lure of compassion. "You didn't know."

"No, I didn't."
Mansfield
slid closer, his gaze on her, his hands working diligently at unweaving the braid, his words at her defenses. "But I'd like to."

Her hair slipped free. Longing nicked away at caution. Abort! The warning reverberated through her, but other needs held her rooted in place. Slowly but surely his warmth was seeping inside and chasing away the chill. That, in and of itself, should have induced her to break away, but she'd forgotten how seductive warmth could be.

"It happened five years ago," she whispered. Those eyes. God, a woman could lose herself in their glittering intensity. They were dangerous enough when they were uncivilized, but now, all solemn and brimming with gentleness, they were devastating. "It was Christmas Eve."

Derek swore under his breath. One hand slid from her braid down her back. He began stroking in the same comforting, reassuring manner he'd used in the park.

What the hell was happening, some distant corner of her being demanded. This man was her prime suspect. He was jaded beyond repair, dangerous as hell. But his eyes brimmed with sincerity, and his touch held the promise of healing.

And she couldn't pull away had her life depended on it.

Which in many ways, it did.

"It was Christmas Eve," she said again, "and Randy—he was my husband—Jake and I were sitting around the tree drinking hot chocolate. Jake, being a four-year-old, was gleefully inventorying the presents. He had little stacks of them, one for him, one for Randy, one for me."

The memory slashed in, sharp and jagged, debilitating, like an arrow through her soul.

She tried to smile, felt her heart break instead. "When he finished, he pointed out my stack was smaller than his and his father's." And when she closed her eyes, she could still see his mischievous twinkle.

"It didn't matter to me. Truly, it didn't. But it was the spirit of the moment, and I thought Jake wanted me to share his distress. So I did. I went on and on about how he and his father hadn't done their fair share, how I'd been a good girl all year long and surely deserved as many gifts as he and Randy had."

Derek didn't say a word, just sat listening. And watching. Stroking. Sharing his warmth, his strength.

"They were laughing so hard," Cass recalled. "Randy swept Jake into his arms and told him they had a few hours left to catch up. Mommy, after all, deserved the best Christmas in the world." She could still see them, smiling and laughing, two indignant warriors going off in search of gifts. They'd each been wearing jeans and red-plaid flannel
shirts,
each donned a leather bomber jacket.

She swallowed hard. "They hurried out of the house, and I just stood there, giddy and amused and laughing, watching my boys drive away." She sucked in a jagged breath, let it out slowly. "That was the last time I saw them alive."

The pain of her words shot into Derek's eyes. "Jesus."

"It was snowing outside," she murmured. "A white Christmas."

Derek pulled her into his lap and cradled her against his chest. His hands spanned the width of her back, one down low, one up high, tangled with her hair. She could hear the steady thrumming of his
heart,
feel the heat of his body.

"The roads were icy," she told him, speaking into his chest, needing to finish what she'd started. "Randy and Jake were only a few miles from the house when a drunk driver ran their car off the road and into a ditch."

The memory cut like a knife, slicing away the dam she'd constructed around the pain. "I was in the kitchen baking sugar cookies for Santa when the knock came on the front door." Cass pulled back and looked at him. She knew her eyes swam with grief. "I thought it was carolers."

Derek winced. "But it wasn't."

"No, it wasn't." It was Gray. And the second she'd seen the bleak lines of his face, she'd known. Instinctively, irrevocably.

"It was my fault," she admitted brokenly. Her husband and son's deaths hadn't been a careless drunk driving accident like the press reported. They'd been a message. A warning.
Don't mess with us,
it had meant, but the needless violence had backfired in the worst kind of way. "They died because of me."

"No." Derek slid a hand around to cup her cheek. He forced her to meet his steadfast gaze. "Not your fault."

"I could've stopped them," she insisted, but deep in her heart knew their fate had been sealed the moment she'd taken up the badge. "Do you have any idea what it feels like to live with the knowledge that you're responsible for the deaths of the two people you love most in this world?"

His gaze locked rock steady onto hers.
"It wasn't your fault, Cass."

His voice was strong and steady, a lifeline she wanted to grab. The rough pads of his fingers slid across her face and into her hair. He soothed the strands down over her shoulders.

"You have such beautiful hair," he murmured. "Do you have any idea how badly I've wanted to know if it's as silky as it looks? To touch it like this, feel it slip through my fingers?"

Nowhere near as badly as she'd wanted him to. "No."

He leaned closer. "Let me in, Cass. Let me help you. Let me make you feel better. I can, you know."

The seductive invitation slipped past the pain and stole her breath. "I bet you can," she sadly acknowledged, "but it wouldn't last, Derek. It would only be fleeting and temporary, for the moment."

A wicked heat kindled in his gaze. "It would be longer than a moment, I promise you that."

Her eyes drifted shut as she sank under his spell. Reality
faded,
all those nasty reasons she had to hold this man at arm's length. There was only need and heat, escape.

His mouth brushed over hers in the most seductive of hellos. "Let me in," he urged, his lips lingering against hers. "Let me help you forget."

Temptation flowed through her like
a heady
nectar. She could lose herself in this man, his heat and strength, his promise. But the fire was too hot, instinct warned. All too easily it could reduce her to ashes.

You can't immunize against him, can't escape him. Can't survive him.

But Cass didn't care. The feel of Derek's arms around her, his hand stroking the hollow of her cheek, his body pressed to hers, left no room for memories, for ghosts, only for the here and now, the incredible way he brought her back to life. Her body. Her heart.

No. Not her heart. That was only loneliness speaking, need, the part of her that watched Gray and his wife and longed for that kind of unity. Derek wasn't here in the guise of her soul mate—

Derek.

The name splashed like cold water. Since when had she started thinking of him as Derek and not Mansfield?

This man was her lead suspect, she forcefully reminded herself. He was a hot-blooded man who sensed a vulnerable female, who somehow knew she longed for a man's touch, his embrace, his possession.

Not his heart. Never that.

She couldn't let desire override sanity, fantasy blot out reality. She latched on to that pivotal truth and, like a drowning woman, used it to pull her from the murky waters.

Quickly the cop in her took control and rechanneled the passion from her body into her mind.
Mansfield
's guard was as low as hers. Any good cop would jump all over that. Now was as good a chance as any to ferret out the man behind that killer smile. And his involvement with Santiago Vilas.

"Sometimes I just need something to ease the grief," she murmured, pulling back. She gazed into his eyes, deliberately filling hers with the hollowed out look she'd seen in one too many junkie. "That's when I turn to my friends. They never let me down. Just a few minutes, and it all goes away. The pain, the emptiness."

Derek went very still "Friends?"

She smiled. "I call them that."

"Well, you don't need them anymore, Cass. You've got me."

She laughed. "There's nothing to be jealous of, Dare. These friends come in a bottle." To authenticate her act, she skimmed a finger down the side of his face. The dark stubble seduced her fingertips, making Cass wonder what it would feel like to lay her cheek there. "Four or five a night and I forget whatever's bothering me."

Surprise ignited in Derek's eyes. "With friends like that," he growled, but didn't finish the cliché. He swore softly and raised his hands to frame her face.

Cass sucked in a sharp breath. If a trace of regret lurked in his gaze, she chose to ignore that. And if a hint of redemption hid behind his grim smile, she ignored that, too.

He leaned closer, his hands holding her in place. "You are a strong, beautiful, desirable woman, Cassandra LeBlanc. When I make you forget
,
it won't be with the aid of any so-called friends. Just
you,
and me. You'll never need anyone, anything else, again."

The sensual vow triggered a torrent of need. For relief, fulfillment, but most of all, absolution. It burned through her like a raging forest fire, consuming everything in its path. Scorching, destroying, but leaving ashes that would one day nurture and replenish.

She couldn't go on like this. Couldn't let the past steal the future. But the pain wouldn't go away,
nor
the need. They fused into a passion more powerful than anything she'd ever known, and nothing she would ever be able to control.

He brushed his lips over hers. "Me, doll. Let me in."

With a low cry, Cass surrendered. Derek accepted her invitation and moved in, his lips slanting against hers, his hands cruising along her face, tracing the line of her cheeks, her jaw, then slipping down along her neck. Her skin burned where he touched, yearned where he did not.

"Derek," she murmured. "Derek."

"That's right," he rasped. "Just me."

She arched into his touch, loving the feel of his fingers toying with her collarbone then roaming down her sweatshirt to the swell of her breasts. He lightly caressed and circled, taunting, teasing. Heaven and hell at once, winter and summer, spring and fall, all combusting into a never-ending nirvana.

Her body turned molten, needy. The sensations crashed through her, forcing her to realize just how long had passed since she'd felt the need, the desire. Not just for a man, but to live. To really live. To enjoy.

She twisted in his arms, eager to lose herself there, pleased to feel him respond in kind. He pulled her down
with him, until they lay on the sofa, arms and legs tangled, bodies pressing close.

The bulge in his jeans told her he was as lost as she.

* * *

A low moan tore from Cass's throat and ripped into Derek's gut. Sweet mercy, he'd wanted her like this, pliant and willing, since the second he laid eyes on the fearless
New Orleans
beauty. Yet nothing had prepared him for the intensity of her response. She was coming alive in his arms, her clever hands running over his body, caressing and demanding, arousing, torturing, yanking his shirt from his jeans and sliding up his bare flesh.

The fire in his blood flashed hotter. He wanted her with a single-mindedness that stunned him, one that warned he'd never be satisfied until he buried himself deep inside and made her his.

Awed, he slid his mouth down her neck, enjoying the way she arched into him. He wanted to taste her, all of her, every last delicious hill and valley. His hands led the way, fighting with the oversize sweatshirt until he found the bottom and was dragging it up toward her head. He stopped when he reached her breasts, stilled for a moment when he discovered them braless.

Then he indulged. Her breasts were full and perfect, and damn near sent him over the edge. But he restrained himself, determined to stoke her passion as high as his.

The breathless sighs tearing from her throat indicated he was doing a damn good job.

He toyed with the swell of her breasts, running his fingers enticingly close to her nipples,
then
backing off as she arched into him. He wasn't trying to tease her, just draw out her pleasure.

"Touch me…" Her legs fell open and wrapped around his. "P-l-e-a-s-e just
touch
me."

Derek advanced to her nipples, each forefinger dancing slow circles around the dark-mauve peaks. Moaning, she arched into his touch, causing him to abandon his deliberate movements and simply savor. His mouth joined his hands, greedily pulling one nipple inside and sucking thirstily.