To Trust Her Heart (3 page)

He ended up doing what he usually did at social occasions – standing in a strategically advantageous point not too far from the door, by himself, and watching everyone else have fun. He wasn’t a chummy type of person; not an easy type to be around. He’d seen and done too much to be easy going. But Rafe’s wife Carolyn was trying her best at matchmaking for him. She thought he was too much of a loner and that he needed a woman.

Ty might have laughed when he heard her disturbingly accurate assessment of his love life, but, of course, he didn’t. He would have loved to have a real relationship, but neither his personality nor his job lent well to being a family man. He’d gotten out of the military with a thought towards wanting to settle down, but honestly hadn’t considered that a woman might be a part of that scenario. Most of them spent so much time back-pedaling away from him that he never got the chance to really know them. Rafe had done it, and the couple was obviously very happy, but then he was a fairly jovial sort, damned good at his job, but not at all somber about it like Ty.

His wary eyes had already settled on a woman who was the life of the party, one Madison Victoria Evers. She was surrounded by people and was always laughing about something, most often herself, it seemed, and she invited everyone else to laugh with her. He didn’t think he could remember seeing her without a smile on her face. Apparently, he was the only one in the room that didn’t know her, all of the other guests milled and talked around her much more so than their hostess.

But what had impressed him the most about her was the fact that she didn’t appear to be afraid of him in the least. In fact, she’d touched him voluntarily, casually, not like she was on the make while trying to talk to him about what he did. No woman of casual acquaintance had ever done that. She was either being deliberately obtuse or she really didn’t feel any particular danger from him, which was unusual enough to intrigue him.

His experience with the opposite sex was spotty at best because of the vibes he threw off. Some women were attracted to men who exuded danger but even they steered clear of Ty. He’d never seen that predictable wariness in Maddie’s eyes. He’d never seen her starting to inch away from him slowly, like a rabbit caught in the sights of a half-starved wolf, except this morning in the bathroom, and that didn’t count. She wasn’t afraid of him. Rather, she was just trying to circumvent him.

He didn’t want to be intrigued by Maddie Evers. She was the keeper type, the two point five kids, three dogs and a cat type. Exactly what he didn’t want or need. Well, need anyway, he’d thought, wishing he could reach down and adjust his uncomfortable self, but that move was only likely to garner unwanted attention in a crowd like this.

So he contented himself just watching her, teasing himself with that which he knew he could never have or really shouldn’t have. A man in his situation, more involved in cloak and dagger stuff than Rafe by a long shot, couldn’t afford to have a family. Not for his sake, and not for theirs.

They ended up leaving at the same time, very early, although he couldn’t understand why she might be leaving early. He was going because he figured he had subjected himself to quite enough wall-flowering for one evening.

By default, they had ended up walking towards their cars together. Maddie had fallen into step right next to him, startling him by looking up at him and saying, “We met earlier. Ty, is it?”

He gazed down at her with not a small amount of disbelief and answered shortly, “Yeah.”

“I understand that you do essentially what Rafe does, some sort of hush-hush work for the government.”

“Yeah.”

“I just want to thank you.”

She had done what probably no one else in the world could do with this statement of sentiment. She accomplished what an aggressive show of tanks and machine guns could likely not, she stopped him cold in his tracks. “What?”

Maddie had stopped too, looking up at him with that beautiful, open face of hers that nearly took his breath away. “Thank me?” he parroted back mindlessly, lost in her eyes and damned annoyed by it.

“Yes. Although I really have no idea of what you or Rafe do, I know it must be very important to the safety of the country. I’ve seen Rafe come home all broken up and battered, and I know it must not be an easy job. I just wanted to say thank you. I’ve already thanked him.”

Damned if that little speech didn’t make him feel better than he had in a long time about what he did for a living. “I don’t do that much now,” was all he could come up with as a reply.

“But still. I know that Rafe considers you one of the best, active duty or not, and I, for one, am glad that you’re on our side.”

Her clear, apparently heartfelt expression of gratitude as well as her distracting nearness had reduced his normally iron trap mind to mere Jello. If he had been in his right mind, he might have bothered to argue with her, just to draw her out and keep her there so he could drool over her a little longer, however masochistic a pursuit. Instead, he was even more taciturn than usual. He felt silly saying it, but there it was. “You’re welcome.”

She smiled up at him, and he found himself even further entranced.  He’d tried, albeit unsuccessfully, to shake it off by ambling awkwardly off to his own vehicle. He’d wanted that to be the end of it, but her sweet face kept popping into his mind at all odd hours, and finally Ty ended up calling Rafe to get her number, and that was all she wrote.

Now she was sitting primly on the bed where they’d made love four or five times ravenously last night, meeting him eye for eye, not even thinking of backing down. He couldn’t remember a time when she’d hesitated to meet him toe to too about something she felt strongly about. Luckily for him those times weren’t very often though. In general, Maddie was very easy to get along with, but when she felt it was necessary to stand up for something, she got in his face with the best of them, even when most men would have backed down. At first it had annoyed him a bit that she challenged him, he wasn’t used to it even from men, but it also gave him a warm feeling that she felt comfortable enough with him to do that. She didn’t seem to have a care in the world about the fact that he knew more ways to kill her in one move than probably any man alive.

Just thinking about her like that, about how she must’ve felt about him, brought him to a full, painful erection. Ty walked back to the bed, dropping his jeans casually along the way. He wouldn’t need them for what they were going to be doing shortly. He never took his eyes off Maddie, though, watching her face grow cloudy with anger at his actions.

“Stop!” She held up her hand just as he reached the side of the bed, his rampant thickness mere millimeters from her palm, so close it branded her with the heat it radiated.

Ty was literally aching for her to wrap those soft fingers around him, but he stopped, giving her an intent, quizzical look, hands on his hips in impatience.

It would never do for her to let him know just how much she itched to reach out and caress him gently, so she snatched her hand back and tucked it under her toweled butt. “I know exactly what’s on your little mind, both of them, and we’re not going to do that.”

He bent down, his face inches from hers. “Are you sure you don’t want to?” Ty was excruciatingly careful not to touch her, but let her feel his breath on her cheek, just barely nuzzling her neck, blowing the tendrils of baby fine hair around her temples. He could feel the sensual shiver that racked her entire body. She’d never had any defenses against him sexually. He could, and had, done just about everything with and to her, and she’d always been a joyful participant. Come to think of it, the only time she’d ever denied him access to her body, barring when she was sick, was when they’d split up.

His mouth twisted at the memory that still had the power to wrench his heart.

Maddie’s nipples were so hard they hurt, plumping out with her ever present need for his touch, but then he’d always had the ability to do this to her, distract her with sex. It was always so damned good between them, and her body retained every mind-blowing ecstatic memory even as she did her best to try to forget them. All he’d ever have to do would be to look in her direction, and she knew she had to guard herself against just that. She could fall into bed with him right now, but then where would they be? Nowhere, as usual, and still miles apart in there beliefs of what it took to make a successful relationship.

“No.” She said it flatly and with as little emotion as possible. Come to think of it, she sounded just like him, she thought with an almost smile.

“No?” Ty repeated with a frown. He straightened, his stiffness poking out at her accusatorily without his having to say another word.

“No.” she said again, quietly but strongly. “And would you please do something with that thing?”

His comeback was instantaneous. “I’d like to, but you just declined the pleasure.”

Annoyed at herself and at him, she turned and disrobed a pillow, hanging the case on his natural handle. “There. That’s much better.”

He growled and turned, removing the cover she’d so thoughtfully provided in favor of his jeans. “Since you’re not interested in a repeat performance of last night, I guess we might as well go.”

Maddie huffed. “I wish you would stop saying that WE made – “ that phrase stopped her short and made her rethink what she was going to say. “That WE had sex last night.”

He out and out grinned at her, a rarity for him. “I’m not surprised you don’t remember it, although you missed some of my best work,” he added with no trace of ego whatever. “You were drunk.”

“Then you shouldn’t have taken advantage of me.” Maddie grabbed the sheet around her, since the towel had deserted her, and scrunched her way over to the edge of the bed.

His snort said it all, although she’d known he’d never do that. She was probably all over him in her inebriated state. Damn him! Where the heck had he come from anyway? She was here with her girlfriends…

“Oh, my God!” Maddie got up and began to scurry around the room, dragging the sheet behind her like some absurd Egyptian cotton train, hunting for any trace of the clothes she’d been wearing last night.

Ty just stood there, watching her. He did a lot of that, because although she was an extremely intelligent person, Maddie tended to be a little spacey on occasion. He leaned back against the armoire, enjoying the occasional glimpse of the curve of her sleek backside provided by the consistently drooping sheet.

She came to stand directly in front of him, one hand clutching the cream cloth precariously against her bosom, the other clutching the only evidence that she’d been clothed last night at all – her sling back silver sandals. “What are you doing?” she asked, frazzled almost beyond repair.

“Watching you.”

“Don’t just stand there like a lump, help me.”

“Help you what?”

His laconic responses made her want to deck him or hurt him in some way, any way, neither of which was ever likely to happen. “Help me find my clothes!”

Ty moved away from the armoire and pulled open one of the top section’s doors, revealing the slinky black and silver dress she’d been wearing yesterday, complete with the sheer black stockings, bra, and panties. Maddie’s jaw dropped. “Didn’t want it to wrinkle,” he explained laconically at her fiery glare as she grabbed for them and ran into the bathroom, heaping invectives on him the entire way.

Maddie felt much better dressed and much more capable to handle Ty Scanlon when she wasn’t naked and inches away from a comfortable flat surface, although she blushed with the memories of the times they weren’t able to make it to any other flat surface but the floor of their foyer. She cleared her throat and shook her head, hoping to clear those traitorous memories away, trying hard to retain her purely righteous anger at him. She’d been trying to get him to let her go since he’d first awakened. But noooooo, he’d only consider it when
he
wanted to go. That was so like him! And had he bothered to produce her clothing? Of course not! He was having too much fun keeping her naked and aroused . . . well, naked anyway, she thought, brushing away the arousal part is if not thinking about it would make it less of a fact.

When she finally exited the bathroom, he was just sitting on the bed. He was the quietest man she’d ever known. Ty had infinite patience. He could lie in wait like a big cat, coiled and ready to spring, for the longest time. More than once in their marriage she’d awakened to find him bathed only in moonlight, staring down at her, watching her while she slept. At first it freaked her out a little, but she grew used to it, and eventually it made her feel safe, like he was always on guard against anything that might hurt her even in the middle of the night. She knew he would guard her safety ferociously, putting himself in the line of fire without a thought to save her.

She didn’t say a word, just crossed to the door and left knowing he wouldn’t be very far behind her. They didn’t exchange one word until they reached the lobby, when Ty said, “I have to check out,” and left her to do just that, warning sternly, “Stay put. Don’t move a muscle, or I can promise you’ll regret it.”

Maddie nodded blithely, which should have made him immediately suspicious, and watched him go, then very carefully never taking her eyes from his broad back she slipped back to the elevators and up to the two rooms she and her friends had rented.  She knocked lightly for fear of waking them up. Drew answered the door, obviously right out of bed, stepping aside to let her friend in.

“Well, look what the ex dragged in! How was it? Was it as good as it was before?”

Questions about how their sexual romp went last night flew at her, even from the three barely recognizable lumps sharing the queen sized beds. “Yeah, we want details!”

“I can’t give you details,” Maddie slumped down on the edge of one of the beds.

“Aw, c’mon! Some of us are married and have kids, remember? We haven’t had real sex in years!”

Maddie snickered at that lament, then sobered. “No, it’s not that I won’t tell you, it’s that I can’t. I was so polluted that the last thing I remember was Seana sitting down at that slot machine and winning a thousand bucks on fifty cents! Then the cocktail girl came around, and I was sunk. Why did you guys let me drink? You know I can’t handle liquor.”