Trouble Me: A Rosewood Novel (25 page)

With the alacrity of a man who appreciated beautiful women, Eric closed the distance separating them and stretched out his hand to shake Jade’s enthusiastically. “I’m very pleased to meet you, Jade. Rob’s been holding out on me.”

Rob saw the panic in her wide green eyes at his friend’s remark.

“Excuse me?”

“He neglected to mention how lovely you are.”

Eric’s smooth line caused a spurt of jealousy to flare inside Rob. It was instantly doused by Jade’s reaction. The irritation that stole over her face told him she wasn’t interested in guys talking about her looks, no matter how dynamite they were. Now that he thought of it, he should have guessed that having men fawn over her beauty wouldn’t impress her. The ones who’d drooled over her in Norfolk had been summarily dismissed.

But Eric was a lot smarter than them. He switched tacks as soon as he saw her reaction. “Though Rob did tell me what a wonderful time Hayley is having in school.”

His second effort earned Eric a smile. “Hayley’s a great girl.”

That Jade still hadn’t acknowledged him, even though she was talking about his daughter, filled Rob with amusement—and a dash of impatience.

Just how long would she hold out?

A little longer, it seemed.

“So what’s this about Roxie offering free ice cream?” she continued. “Tonight’s loss to Stuart means I’m buying the brownies. I might as well console myself with a free scoop of coffee ice cream.”

“Since I’m feeling so extremely satisfied with my win, it’s going to be my treat, Jade.”

“But, Stuart—”

“No buts,” he said with a shake of his head. “You need to save your paycheck for your new ponies’ stomachs. Eric, Rob, can I offer you one of Earl’s brownies? They’re exceptionally fine.”

“No, thanks,” Rob replied.

“Not for me either,” Eric said. “I may sample the nachos, though—they’re on the house too.”

“Then come and let me introduce you to Earl and the delicacies of his snack bar.” Stuart made a grand sweep of his arm in invitation.

“You all go on ahead. I need to stow my ball in my bag and change my shoes,” Jade said.

“We can wait, my dear.”

“No, no,” she insisted. “Besides, there may be the nine o’clock rush on the brownies.”

That set Stuart Wilde’s feet in motion. Eric, shooting Rob a knowing glance, obligingly accompanied him.

Jade retrieved her bowling ball from the ball return, only to find Rob sitting in Stuart’s seat. Her expression wasn’t meant to boost his ego.

He smiled nonetheless. “So, Stuart Wilde. He was your hot date?”

She cast him a haughty look as she marched toward her seat. “One of the hottest.” Dropping into it with what he knew was a deliberate lack of grace, she bent forward and pulled a black bowling bag from beneath the seat.

He watched her stow her ball and then pull off her shoe. He remembered nipping the high arch of her foot and feeling her entire body shudder. “Stuart’s a good man,” he observed.

“The finest.”

“You know, some people think I’m not so bad either.”

She turned to look at him, her expression one of pure astonishment. “Really? How remarkable.”

He fought a grin. “There’s my mother. She likes me. And Hayley assures me I’m the world’s best dad.”

“Well, that’s very nice. It’s good to have a fan club, but if you’re out here recruiting new members, I’m afraid I’m not a big joiner.”

“I’d say we both joined—and pretty enthusiastically too—back in Norfolk.”

She jammed her feet into a pair of black suede Pumas. “That was so last month, dude.”

“And then there was parents’ night.”

“You’re going to make me say it, aren’t you?”

“Say what?”

She zipped her bag and stood, then gave him a smile as sweet as a five-pound bag of sugar. “That I wonder what I ever saw in you.”

He laughed as he, too, rose, enjoying that she wasn’t trying to impress him in the least. “Jade, I think you know the answer to that. So, you feel like getting that brownie now?”

How was she supposed to eat a brownie with Rob watching her? Eating her coffee ice cream was bad enough; his gaze tracked each spoonful she put in her mouth. The snack bar was typically crowded for a Saturday night, and Stuart and Eric were engaged in an animated discussion. About what, she had no idea. She couldn’t seem to focus on anyone but Rob.

By the last spoonful, her throat was tight with awareness and her mind full of lascivious thoughts in which melted coffee ice cream and muscled flesh predominated. Poor Stuart would probably have a seizure were he to glimpse the graphic images flashing in her mind.

She glanced at the brownie sitting on the paper plate, afraid to touch it, convinced that even a minuscule crumb of the moist fudgy cake would feel as scratchy as sandpaper going down her esophagus.

Damn it, she loved her
après
-bowling brownie!

Rob showing up here when she was having her night out with Stuart, who was like a great-uncle to her—warm and caring and supportive, and above all
non-sexual
—was a gross injustice. His presence had blown her self-control to smithereens. This was neither the place nor the company in which she should be imagining all the different ways she could be having sex with a man she wasn’t sure she even liked and who she was pretty sure didn’t particularly like her—how could he, when he didn’t know her? The entire situation was enough to make her want to scream, which of course she couldn’t, because then Rob would know how much he disturbed her.

And part of her was convinced that was the point behind aiming his laser-beam stare directly at her mouth. To rattle her until she was a quivering mass of nerves. He was such a cop.

It rankled, too, that she’d been doing a pretty good job of being a model Warburg citizen. Since returning, she’d been as boring and straitlaced as anyone could hope for. Then Rob had turned up at parents’ night. She’d been prepared for RoboCop but not for the Rob Cooper staring at her now, as if he, too, was thinking about tearing off clothes and dribbling sticky sweet ice cream over hot flesh. The idea that he might be sharing the same graphic fantasies left her feeling as if every nerve ending in her body were short-circuiting. None of her college flings had left her feeling so out of control. How could Rob have this power over her when no one else had?

Rob Cooper might have been an officer of the law, but he was serious trouble.

The solution was to ignore her reaction to him completely, deny it with everything she had. Defiantly, she picked up her brownie and took a huge bite. She probably
looked like a gopher with her cheeks bulging out, she thought, but who cared? Chewing vigorously, she fixed her gaze on the red plastic salt-and-pepper shakers and concentrated on not choking and spewing brownie all over the round metal table.

“Jade, my dear, Eric was wondering whether you’d care to bowl a few more frames tonight.”

If she were to open her mouth now, the gunk inside would be equal to the grossest of horror films and would have Rob looking away awfully quick, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. So she was stupid enough to be vain around him.

Shaking her head violently, she swallowed hard—and, yes, the damned brownie did feel like sandpaper going down her throat—before croaking, “Sorry. I need to get home. I’ve got a full day of training tomorrow. Here, Stuart, take the rest of my brownie. I can’t finish it.” She passed him her plate.

“You don’t want to take it with you?” Stuart eyed the three-quarters of brownie that remained.

“Nope. And I wouldn’t want it to go to waste.”

“Well, then,” he said happily.

She smiled at the man who had an even sweeter tooth than she. Bending over, she grabbed her bowling bag and stood, waving brightly at the three men. “See you.”

“Good night, my dear. Drive safely.”

“Nice meeting you, Jade,” Eric said, his expression one of vast amusement. “Hope we’ll run into each other again.”

Somehow, in the time it took for Eric to finish his sentence, Rob had already circled the table. “I’ll walk you to your car.”

“No, that’s okay, I—”

His look silenced her. When he put his hand around her elbow and all those aforementioned nerve endings
began sizzling like there was no tomorrow, she knew she was in trouble.

The parking lot was still full of cars and the illuminated neon shone jewel-like against the blackened sky.

“This is totally unnecessary,” she repeated, wishing he would leave her alone so she could regain some semblance of control over her body.

“No. It’s not unnecessary. You’re a woman. All it would take would be for someone to grab you, shove you into an idling car or van, and head out on Route 50. In less than two minutes, someone could make you vanish.”

She glanced about the parking lot, which had abruptly taken on a much more sinister aspect. “You do know how to scare a girl.”

“It seems to me you bounce back pretty quickly, and, for the record, I’d bet you’d fight any attacker like a hellcat. Nevertheless, only a fool takes unnecessary risks, and I’d be a lousy cop if I didn’t make sure you were aware of them. I’d be an even lousier man if I didn’t offer to escort you to your car.”

Chivalry from a strong man—there was nothing sexier. But why did it have to be Rob Cooper, Officer Rob Cooper, who was making her weak-kneed with his macho protective impulses? Try as she might, she couldn’t ignore the effect he was having on her as they walked side by side, the heat from his body meeting hers, the dark of night a cloak enshrouding them.

The darkness offered a delicious temptation: escape. In this setting she could forget her ambivalence toward him and toy with the delicious idea of abandoning her struggle against the intense physical attraction she felt whenever he was near. She could turn to him as easily as the breeze stirring the September night.

The notion was seductive. Her body responded, her heart thumping rapidly, heavily, making each breath she
took an effort. Her senses suddenly extra-acute, she could hear the crunch of the gravel beneath their shoes, the roar of cars speeding past, and even the altered rhythm of Rob’s own breathing. As she inhaled, the soapy male scent of him made her head swim, and she remembered when her face had been pressed against his warm, naked flesh and she’d learned all his scents.

Clearly she had three choices. One: stop breathing and pass out. Two: breathe and jump him. Three: get the heck out of there before she succumbed to option two.

Option three it was, because she had no death wish, and she wasn’t insane enough to think that jumping Rob—a police officer and the father of one of her students—in a public parking lot was what model citizens practiced.

Still several yards away from her Porsche, her feet ground to a halt. Dragging her keys from the front pocket of her jeans, she jangled them and then, in her most everything-is-just-dandy voice, said, “Here I am, safe and—”

Her words evaporated in the air as he turned to her. Like her other faculties, her night vision had grown as sharp as Superman’s. Rob’s face was all slashing angles and broad planes. No man should be so ridiculously handsome, she thought.

She looked into his eyes and saw everything she was feeling mirrored there: the feverish desire, the hunger. Helplessly, she licked her upper lip, which was parched for the touch of his mouth.

“Jesus,” he whispered roughly. “What is it about you?”

The question must have been rhetorical. Before Jade could get her lust-dazed brain to formulate a reply, his mouth was on hers, ravishing, devouring.

It didn’t matter that kissing Rob was wrong for countless reasons. She could no longer resist the power he
wielded over her. She needed the taste of him. She needed the feel of his arms pulling her close, of his fingers caressing the sides of her face, tracing the line of her jaw and then the nape of her neck, loving how sure, how knowing his touch was, how it made her nerves dance and her insides melt. Later she’d deal with how utterly duncical being in his arms was; for now, all she wanted was for Rob to keep making love to her mouth like he’d never stop.

She arched against his muscled length and opened her mouth wider, tangling her tongue with his, setting sparks of arousal shooting through her. The memory of how his hands would feel stroking the rest of her had her body growing tight in anticipation. Need had her pressing closer, her hands clenching into fists about his neck.

And suddenly an alarm began blaring loudly enough to wake the dead.

Not just any alarm, but her Porsche’s alarm. She’d been gripping the damned remote-thingy so tightly, she’d accidentally pressed the panic button. To make matters worse, she realized what she’d done only after she jumped about a mile, frightened out of her skin.

Feeling like an idiot, she fumbled with the remote and finally the quiet returned. Thankfully, the crazy lust that had seized them did not. Nothing could shatter a mood like having one’s eardrums pierced by a 125-decibel screech.

“Sorry about that,” Jade muttered. She wasn’t sure if she was apologizing for setting off her car alarm or her wild response. God, he was going to start thinking she was a nympho or something, and she really wasn’t. It was just him.

“It happens.” Rob cocked his head toward her car. “So you still have the Porsche.”

“It was my mom’s.” Only she knew how nonsensical her reply was, since any sentimental affection she’d had
for her mother vanished the night Jade discovered her to be a liar and an adulterer. But she’d much rather talk about her mom’s car than what had just happened between them. That was truly dangerous territory.

“Yeah, I imagine Hayley would have a hard time giving up something that belonged to Becky.”

There was a big difference between her mom and Hayley’s, Jade thought. Becky Cooper had doubtless been a kind and considerate human being. In comparison, not only did her mom fall far short of the mark, but Jade did as well. After all, she’d been trying to be wholly good for only a few weeks and, thanks to her inconvenient attraction to Rob Cooper, she was already in danger of messing up.

“Your wife must have been very special.”

Rob looked at Jade. Even in this less-than-romantic setting, a half-lit parking lot, she was temptation personified. Her hair, mussed from his fingers delving into its thick mass, tumbled past her shoulders, and her mouth was deliciously swollen from his kisses. And yet instead of desire, he ached with a sense of loss.