The Survivor (10 page)

She rolled her eyes. “The kind who was playing train in kindergarten,” she deadpanned. “The kind of
guy that sneaked kisses behind the school and kept nudie magazines hidden beneath his bed.”

He feigned outrage, then gave his head a baffled shake. “Have you been talking to my mother?”

“No,” she said, chuckling. “Though I imagine she has many stories to tell.”

“I'm sure she does,” Lex said, his eyes crinkling with a smile. “My brother and I gave her hell. Or as much hell as my dad would permit, anyway,” he added fondly. “My sister was always good, though. Mindful and obedient. Good grades.”

They sounded like a lovely family, Bess thought. Norman Rockwell normal, with pretty family Christmas cards and lots of home movies. She almost ached at the thought of it and a miserable yearning burned in her breast. She wished she'd known something similar. Her grandfather had made things as normal for her as possible, but she'd be lying if she said she hadn't missed some of the gentler touches. Someone to braid her hair, teach her about makeup, the birds and bees. She smiled.

Her poor grandfather had taken her to the pediatrician for “the talk” about her cycle and had left it for the nurse to explain. Armed with a box of feminine napkins and a little pamphlet on knowing her body, she'd blushed a million shades of red when she'd walked out of that room and seen him standing there.

He'd turned even redder.

Bless his heart, he'd tried, and he'd given her a good life. Had it been different? Yes, definitely. But it had been good all the same.

“What about you?” he asked. “Any brothers or sisters?”

“No,” she told him, knowing that this was moving into territory she didn't want to enter. “Where are you from originally?” she asked.

He frowned, obviously not missing the evasive action on her part. “Blue Creek, Alabama,” he said. “It's in the northern part of the state, about thirty minutes from the Tennessee line.”

“And your family is still there?”

“My mother, father and sister are,” he told her. “My brother is a medic in the army. He's in Afghanistan.”

So his brother was still in the service. That must be hard for him, Bess thought. His military career had ended, his brother's was ongoing. Did he envy him? she wondered. She peeked at Lex from the corner of her eye and caught the slight flexing of his jaw, the firmer pressure around those beautifully carnal lips. No, she thought, studying him thoughtfully, envy wasn't the right word. But she wasn't sure what was. Interesting, Bess thought. She wasn't the only one who didn't want to share all her secrets.

“I bet your family worries about him,” she said. “Is he older or younger than you?”

“Younger,” he told her. “By two years.”

Even worse then. Lex had set the example and then he'd been injured and come out. Her heart gave a squeeze at the thought of his injured shoulder. The shiny scars, the marred skin. She couldn't even imagine the sort of pain he'd been in, the horror of what had happened to him. The awfulness of what he'd seen, which somehow made his sacrifice all the more noble.

Though he went to great pains to disguise when he was hurting, she had noticed a few little tells, aside from when he forgot himself and actually rubbed the wound. He would flex his fingers in that hand, give the shoulder a delicate roll and, more interestingly, she'd been aware of this because Honey had alerted her to it. As if sensing his discomfort—his pain— Honey invariably moved closer to him. She'd put her head against his leg, or bump his hand and force a pat. To distract him? Bess wondered. Or to comfort? Probably both.

Her gaze slid to the dog, who was currently resting her chin upon the console, her face next to Lex's arm. Honestly, the relationship between the man and the dog was simply extraordinary. They were utterly devoted to one another.

Bess reached over and petted the dog, rubbed
her velvety ears. “You're a sweet girl, Honey,” she crooned.

Lex looked over at her and smiled. “She is,” he said. “She saved me.”

Saved him? Bess thought, seizing on the extremely revealing comment. Saved him how?

Looking as though he'd like nothing better than to cut his own tongue out with a rusty blade, Lex stared straight ahead. Every muscle in his body had tensed and he looked…braced, for lack of a better description. Braced and miserable. And anything that made him look that unhappy was not something she wanted to ask him about. She couldn't because she knew he'd hate it, because she knew whatever it was would hurt him.

And she wasn't going to satisfy her own curiosity at the expense of his anguish.

She released a deep breath. “You never answered my question,” she said.

He slid her a guarded look. “What question?”

“What was your first car?” she reminded him, feigning exasperation. “Honestly, as much as you've been avoiding the question, it must have been something truly horrid.” She gasped dramatically. “Ooo, it was a Pinto, wasn't it?”

He studied her for a minute, his mysterious blue eyes boring into hers as though she were a unique and unknown quantity and he was desperately trying to
figure her out. She saw relief and gratitude reflected in his gaze and then he blinked and the old Lex was back, confident as ever. “A Pinto? Are you serious? For your information, my first car wasn't a car—it was a truck. A little Chevy S-10, navy blue with a chrome toolbox on the back.”

“No doubt it was filled with condoms,” she said, rolling her eyes.

His grin turned wicked. “I kept my condoms in the glove box,” he said. “Easier access.”

Bess cocked her head and looked at him speculatively, then turned and popped open the glove compartment, revealing a large box of ribbed extra-large. She hadn't noticed the ribs, but could vouch for the extra-large. She smirked, shook her head and sighed. “I guess old habits die hard.”

He winked at her. “But never unprotected.”

L
EX HAD GOTTEN MANY GIFTS
over the years, mostly from his parents and grandparents. He remembered a train set for Christmas one year, birthday tickets to a concert he'd desperately wanted to go to.

But he didn't think he'd ever received anything that he'd appreciated more than Bess's free pass a moment ago. When he'd slipped up and made the “she saved me” comment, he'd immediately regretted it, had known that her keen mind would recognize its significance and her interest would spark.

It had, too. He'd seen it flare in her eyes, watched those pretty green orbs widen with the realization that he'd inadvertently handed her a small nugget of his soul. Any other woman would have immediately asked him what it meant, how the dog had saved him. And would have been perfectly within her rights to do so, because he was the one who'd slipped up and
opened the door to the line of questioning in the first place.

But the same mind that had picked up the significance of what he'd said had also recognized that he hadn't meant to say it. No doubt the remark had made her even more curious and yet, rather than ask him about it or insist he explain, she'd changed the subject and let it go.

He'd known from the get-go that she was different, that she wasn't like other women. He'd sensed her unique appeal and that had never been more confirmed than just a few minutes ago, when she'd respected his privacy.

One would think that, in light of her own generosity, he'd repay it in kind…but he wasn't going to. He couldn't help but notice that anytime he asked her a personal question, she immediately turned the conversation away from herself. In fact, she did it with such skill he hadn't even noticed it originally. Which meant that she'd been doing it for a long time, that she had had a lot of practice.

Why? he wondered again, presented with more questions than answers.

Should he press her? No, definitely not. He shouldn't. He should leave well enough alone. In light of the fact that their mission was probably going to be over in just a few hours, that he was going to walk out of her life with no intention of returning, he really
didn't have any right to pepper her with questions, to make her fill in the blanks he had about her life.

But, because he was an idiot, because he was a moron, because he simply had to learn everything about her that he could while he had the chance…he was going to.

“Any word from Elsie?” he asked.

“She sent me a text message and told me that ‘things weren't as they seemed,'” she said, waving her hands as if the last was supposed to be spooky and mystical. She grunted. “Who knows what that little nugget of vague insight is supposed to mean?”

“I don't know,” he said. “But it's funny because I've been feeling the same way. Something seems off about this, but I don't know what it is.”

She turned to look at him. “Off? How so?”

He shook his head, almost regretting that he'd given voice to his weird concern. “I don't know,” he said. “It's just a feeling. I can't shake the sensation that I'm missing something, that there's more here than meets the eye.”

She was thoughtful for a moment and bit her bottom lip. “I don't know what it would be. You've looked at everything. I even handed over a copy of the police report.”

“I know,” he told her. “It's probably nothing.”

“It's probably not,” she said. “I'm a firm believer in gut instincts. In heeding intuition.”

He was, too, though he definitely didn't think he was psychic.

And while he was heeding gut instincts…

“So you said you inherited your store and your love of ‘picking' from your grandfather.”

She nodded. “That's right.”

“What about your parents?” he asked. “Were they pickers, too?”

She didn't so much as flinch, but he felt her recoil all the same. “No,” she said. “My dad was an electrician and my mother was a secretary.”

Was?
Oh, hell.
He was a bastard, Lex decided. A horrible, miserable, wretched bastard.

“I'm sorry, Bess. I—”

She swallowed. “They died when I was little,” she said. “Eight. My grandfather raised me.”

They'd both died? Had they been in some sort of accident?

“He was a widower, was all alone, too, so we ended up being very good for each other.”

Still, it couldn't have been easy. Losing both parents at such a young age. And how had her grandfather coped? According to her, he'd been a picker all his life. That meant he'd spent a lot of time on the road. How had adding a little girl to that mix worked? What about school? How had he managed to be gone from home as much as he'd needed and
still taken care of an eight-year-old Bess? Had he hired someone?

“So you lived in Marietta the entire time? Went to school there and everything?”

She was quiet for so long he was afraid she wasn't going to answer. “I've lived in the house I'm in now since I was eight,” she said. “My grandfather homeschooled me after my parents died, so I didn't get the traditional education, but like to think I got a better one. When I was eighteen I went to college, got my BS in Business, with a minor in English Literature, and lived at home.” She sent him a droll look. “I wasn't your average kid. My grandfather knew a
whole
lot about a lot of different things and he shared those things with me. He had a love for dead languages, so he'd make me conjugate Latin verbs while we were on the road. He was a history buff and turned every battlefield into a classroom. Everything he picked had a lesson in it. Where it came from, who made it, why it was important, how it changed the world. That sort of thing.”

Even though his mother had been a schoolteacher, Lex was familiar with the homeschooling idea and knew that, for a lot of people, it worked. It obviously had with Bess—she was brilliant—but he couldn't help but wonder about the things she'd missed. Spend-the-night parties, playing sports, playing spin the bottle and going to ball games, time on the play
ground, commiserating with other classmates about an unfair teacher…those sorts of things.

She waited for him to respond and then chuckled softly. “I've shocked you.”

“Not at all,” he said, lying with more skill than he knew he possessed. “Your grandfather sounds like an amazing man.”

She sighed softly and the ache behind that breath made him want to reach out and touch her. “He was,” she said. “There isn't a day goes by that I don't miss him.”

“How long since he passed?”

“Three years.”

“And you have no other family?”

She shook her head. “None that I'm close to. My parents were both only children, so there weren't any immediate aunts and uncles, no cousins or anything.”

Geez, Lord, it just got worse. He couldn't imagine a world without his brother and sister, much less his cousins. Both of his parents had had many siblings and they'd all done their part to go forth and populate the earth. He had at least a dozen first cousins and could vividly remember playing hide-and-go-seek, swinging statue, Red Rover, Simon Says and Truth or Dare with them. He remembered picnics at the park and grilling hamburgers and making homemade ice cream. He remembered the adults getting together and playing cards and Trivial Pursuit into all hours
of the night, sending the kids outside to roast marshmallows over a fire. Good times, he thought. Really good times.

Things he'd just realized he'd taken for granted…because the woman sitting next to him hadn't known any of that. He was suddenly hit with the urge to take her over to his parents' house and share his family, to let her be a part of it so that she wouldn't be lonely, so that she'd know what it was like to be surrounded by affection.

They'd love her, Lex thought. And if he wasn't damned careful, they weren't going to be the only ones.

 

W
ONDERFUL
, B
ESS THOUGHT
. She'd gone from being desired to being pitied. He hadn't had to say a word, but she could sense it all the same. She saw his mouth turn down, watched him silently lament the fact that she didn't have any other family and that she'd lost everyone close to her. Yes, it was true. Yes, she was essentially alone. But she'd learned to be okay with that—this was the hand she'd been dealt and she had no choice but to play it.

But she wasn't going to play it lying down, as it were, and she wasn't going to miss the opportunity to spend at least one more night with him, not if she could help it. Even though she imagined he would say no, she'd decided to take a chance and ask him to
spend the night with her. At her house. Where she'd never invited anyone. She didn't want to be poor, pitiful Bess. She wanted to be smart, witty, sexy Bess, the one he couldn't keep his hands off, even when he was asleep.

“I was thinking,” Bess ventured.

He chuckled. “That sounds dangerous. About what?”

“Well, we're relatively certain we're about to nab our guy, right?”

“With any luck, yes.” He grinned at her. “And I'm feeling pretty damned lucky.”

“And it's about a four-hour drive back to Marietta, which will get us back into town late this afternoon.”

He nodded slowly. “Right.”

She was suddenly nervous, ridiculously so considering what they'd done to and with each other last night. “So, rather than you heading back to Atlanta tonight, I was hoping we could celebrate. At my house. Over dinner.”

He stilled, then a slow smile slid over his wicked mouth. “Does that tub on your back porch feature in any aspect of our celebration?”

She grinned, leaned over and kissed his cheek, lingering long enough to breathe him in. “Definitely.”

He chuckled low. “Then I'm in.”

She hesitated, also wanting to set something else
straight so that there wouldn't be any awkwardness between them come the morning. “Listen, Lex…”

“That sounds ominous,” he said. “Do I really want to listen?”

“I think so,” she said. “This morning, I think things felt a little off between us and I just want you to know that I know that you've just moved here and started this job.” She hesitated. She wasn't quite sure how to finish. “I imagine that you don't have any more time for something serious than I do, and I need you to know that I am not expecting anything beyond a little mutually enjoyable…fun.”

A strange expression passed over his face—regret maybe?—but it was gone before she could truly discern it. He laughed, but the sound was forced. “Are you telling me that you want to use me for sex and send me packing in the morning? That you're only interested in my body and not my mind? That you want a no-strings relationship that's going to flare up and burn out with no regrets, no formal attachment, no expectations?”

She considered a moment. Did she want that? Truly want that? No…but it was the most she was willing to let herself have. “That's right,” she said haltingly, not sure what to make of him.

He gave a delicate shudder and then smiled. “I feel kind of dirty.”

She laughed, relieved. “I'll wash that off of you…in my tub.”

He reached over and took her hand, threading his fingers through hers. Her stomach gave a little jump and her pulse leaped in her veins. “I like the sound of that,” he said. “Is there room enough for two?”

“Definitely.”

He nodded, seemingly pleased, though a shadow still hung around his eyes and she couldn't help but wonder if it was because she'd preempted him by giving him the out. She couldn't imagine that was the case, but hell, who knew? She was fairly certain that, like her, he knew that this—whatever it was between them—wasn't going to have a chance to really go anywhere, but she sensed that, also like her, he almost regretted that.

She smiled softly, more pleased than was truly reasonable.

“You're smiling again,” he noted, shooting her a grim look. “Should I be worried?”

“You worry when I smile?”

“It means you're thinking,” he explained.

“And that scares you?”

He chuckled. “More than you know.”

She could so get used to this, Bess thought. She could get used to being with him like this, listening to him laugh, the easy camaraderie between them.

“Vernon said to park in the back,” Bess told him
as he wheeled the car into the drive. She felt a shiver run through her when she realized what they were about to do, but it was a shiver of anticipation and not fear. She wasn't afraid of this asshole, she just wanted to take him down, to make him stop messing with her clients.

He nodded, then slowed the car so that she could get out and let Vernon know they were there. “I'll be right in,” he told her.

Having heard them pull up, Vernon opened the door for her. “Ms. Bess, how are you doing? Come on in,” he said, smiling warmly at her. “Come on in outta that cold.”

She hugged him. “Thanks, Vernon. I appreciate you letting us do this. Lex is hiding the car around back.”

“Not a problem, Ms. Bess. Just glad I could be of help.” He poured her a cup of coffee and offered her a seat. “Any luck finding that Wicked Bible?”

“Not yet,” she admitted on a sigh. In truth, she'd been more worried about finding Harold Yeager than the Bible, but she supposed she'd have more time to do that once they'd safely transported Harold to jail. Lex had called Brian this morning and given him Yeager's address, and he assured her that Payne would make certain that any copies of her hard drive were destroyed so that Yeager couldn't simply post bail and then go back to work tracing the Bible.

“Shame,” Vernon remarked. “I bet whoever has it can put that money to good use.”

“I'm sure,” she agreed. A moment later, Lex knocked on the door and poked his head inside. Vernon gestured for him to come in, as well—Honey with him, as usual—and handed him a cup of coffee. “Cream and sugar are on the table, young man. Feel free to help yourself.”