He turned toward the door and I didn’t see his face.
No.
I saw the shiny badge on his belt.
“You sleep naked?”
“No.”
“Don’t start tonight.”
Oh.
My.
God.
He left the office he was in and my eyes went from his badge to his face. Since that thing in my belly was unfurling, growing, swelling, filling my stomach, slithering up my throat, I didn’t notice the look on his face or feel his mood hit the room like a slap.
I just knew a man like Jake Knox would have not one thing to do with the pale-faced woman who was me.
Unless it was his job.
His eyes caught mine and he stopped dead.
I’d been stopped dead, but the minute his eyes hit mine I moved.
Rushing quickly toward the elevators, I hit the button at the same time my eyes scanned.
I found what I was looking for.
Exit.
Stairs.
I dashed to the door, opened it, darted through it, and then down.
I heard my heels echo on the stairs then I heard his boots.
One flight and around, I went faster. Two stories. Three flights to go.
“Tess,” I heard his voice call and I went faster.
Another flight and around.
“Goddammit, Tess,” he clipped, and I kept going.
Another flight and around.
His boots were getting closer.
Another flight, the last one. I raced down them and had a hand to the door, opening it when my wrist was seized in an iron grip, yanked away, my body with it. I was pulled from the door and pushed against the wall, Jake’s tall, lean frame fencing me in.
I looked to the side.
“Let me go,” I whispered.
“You promised we’d talk,” he growled.
I shook my head and kept my eyes averted. “Let me go,” I demanded.
His voice dipped gentle and his other hand curled around the side of my neck. “Tess, baby, you pro—”
My eyes shot to his and whatever he read in them made him stop talking and flinch.
“Let… me… go,” I hissed.
He let me go and stepped back.
I walked instantly to the door and pulled it open.
Standing in it, I turned to him to see his eyes on me; his face unreadable, except his strong jaw was set in granite.
“Is your name even Jake?” I asked quietly.
His silvery-gray eyes, not melted, not quicksilver, not affectionate but glittering and hard, held mine.
I held my breath until he finally shook his head.
Then, without another word or a glance back, I walked through the door.
CHAPTER THREE
Kentucky
Three months later…
I WAS IN my kitchen when I heard the knock at the door.
My eyes went to the clock on the microwave.
Holy crap.
Martha was early. Martha was never early. In fact, I told her to be there at three because I actually needed her to be there at three thirty. Martha kept a steady schedule of being at least fifteen minutes late but had an average of being half an hour late (I’d known Martha a long time, long enough for it to happen so often I could actually calculate that average, which I did) and, therefore, it wasn’t unheard of for her to rush in, winded and filled with excuses forty-five minutes or an hour late.
It was ten to three and I didn’t even have the cake ready.
Damn.
This meant one of two things.
Man trouble or wardrobe malfunction.
Both of these did not bode good things, for both of these meant Martha would be in a more than the usual Martha tizzy. And the usual Martha tizzy, which was the result of the crazy, out-of-control life Martha lived, was bad enough.
Fuck.
“I’m elbow deep in icing, honey!” I shouted toward my front door, bending back over the cake with my pastry bag. “Let yourself in, it’s open!” I finished as I continued to dot every third fluffy white buttercream frosting star with a point of pale yellow icing.
The door opened as I spun the cake around to get to more stars.
I was standing at the island in my kitchen, my head bent to the cake, when I felt her presence hit the room but stop in the doorway.
“I’m running a bit late,” I told the cake. “Get yourself a pop or something. In fact, get me one. Cherryade. Crushed ice,” I ordered, dotting more stars at the top border of the cake, then moving down to the bottom.
Martha didn’t move.
My eyes lifted and my mouth opened to say something but the words and my breath got clogged in my throat when I saw not Martha but Jake Knox, arms crossed over his wide chest, one broad shoulder resting against the doorjamb, lean hips hitched to the side, motorcycle-boot-clad feet crossed at the ankles.
I said not a word and didn’t move as I took in all that was him.
Ratty-assed, faded black T-shirt with the peeling words “Charlie Daniel’s Band” over an equally peeling American flag fitting just right over his torso, a pair of mirrored shades shoved in the collar by an arm and dangling down. Jeans so faded they were their own unique shade of blue with frayed bits around the pockets and delicious worn patches at his crotch, the length of them fitting loose or snug in all the right places on his slim hips and long legs. Unruly dark hair about an inch longer than I remembered, so it was curling low on his neck and around his ears. Below his sharp cheekbones, along his strong jaw and chin, and down the column of his corded throat was, from my experience, at least three days’ worth of stubble.
Silvery-gray eyes pointed right at me.
Fuck.
I straightened, filled pastry bag in my hands, and stared at him.
He stared back.
He did it better.
So I blinked and when I was about to say something, do something, maybe even yell something, he got there before me.
“You ready to talk now?”
I blinked again.
Then I whispered, “Sorry?”
“Talk, Tess.” His deep voice rumbled across the kitchen at me. “You promised we’d talk. I wanna know if you’re ready to do it now.”
I dropped my pastry-bag-filled hands to the counter and kept staring at him.
Then I asked, “Have you lost your mind?”
He ignored my question and told me, “Name’s Brock Lucas.”
I closed my eyes and dropped my head as that knowledge filtered through me, knowledge I lay awake at night wondering about, knowledge that had been kept from me as I fell in love with an imposter.
“Tess, babe, eyes,” he growled. “Now.”
My eyes opened and my head came up as I felt a shaft of steel rip down my spine.
My eyes narrowed on his hard face as the electric feel of his mood finally made it through the cocoon of surprise shrouding me and sparked against my skin.
“Oh my God,” I whispered. “Are you angry with me?”
“No,” he bit off. “I was angry with you, seein’ as I fucked my woman for the first fuckin’ time, she made me a promise when my cum was still inside her and then just hours later she reneged on that promise. Now I’m here ’cause there’s a goddamned for-sale sign planted in your front lawn and I walk in here and see you lookin’ like this so, gotta say, babe, I’m not angry. I’m fuckin’ pissed.”
Did he…?
Did he…?
Did he just fucking say what I thought he just fucking said?
“Sorry?” I whispered again, but this whisper was different.
He didn’t repeat himself. Instead he asked, “Where are your glasses?”
“What?”
“Your glasses, Tess. Where the fuck are your glasses? You never decorate a goddamned cake without your glasses.”
“I got contacts,” I snapped.
His head tipped back and he clipped to the ceiling, “Jesus,” before I saw his jaw get h
ard.
Why in the hell were we talking about my glasses?
I didn’t care. Nope. I didn’t.
I only cared about one thing.
“Get out,” I ordered. His chin tipped down and his eyes locked with mine.
“No.”
I felt my eyebrows go up. “No?”
“Yeah, Tess, no.”
“You have,” I told him. “You have lost your mind.”
He ignored me again and asked, “What the fuck are you wearing?”
“What am I wearing?”
“Yeah, babe, what the fuck are you wearing?”
I looked down at my T-shirt and jeans then I looked back at him.
“T-shirt and jeans…” I hesitated then spat, “Brock.”
“No one calls me Brock. They call me Slim.”
I blinked and something about that took me right out of our current scenario and into la-la land.
Therefore, I breathed, “What?”
He pushed away from the doorjamb while speaking. “No one calls me Brock. Mom, Dad, brother, sisters, friends since I was a kid called me Slim.”
“You’re not slim,” I told him.
Although he was lean, he wasn’t what I’d call slim.
“No, I’m not and I wasn’t when I was a baby, seein’ as I was over ten pounds when I was born. It was a joke ’cause I was a big kid. My family’s screwy that way.”
Whoa. He was over ten pounds when he was born? That was one huge kid.
He was tall, at least six one, maybe six two. And muscled. He wasn’t slim at all. His body was built of lean, compacted muscle that had some bulk to it, sure, but I wouldn’t call him huge now.
Since babies didn’t come out muscled, I wondered if he wasn’t a big baby but a long one.
It hit me then that, while I was distracted, he’d rounded the island and was getting close. I stopped thinking about his weight as a baby and his current size and started retreating at the same time I came out of la-la land and back into our current scenario.
“I want you to leave,” I stated firmly.
“Yeah,” he replied, still coming at me and I hit the side counter as he kept coming and talking. “I get that, but clue in, Tess. I ain’t leavin’.”
Then he was right there. So right there that I could feel his heat and I had to tip my head way back to look up at him, seeing as I was barefoot and not six foot one or two but five foot six.
“Please leave,” I stated a fair bit less firmly.
He leaned in, settling his hands on the counter on either side of me and I lifted my hands (and the pastry bag) between us.
He also again ignored me. “You didn’t call.”
I stared into his angry eyes. “I didn’t call?”
He glared at me with his angry eyes. “No, babe, you didn’t call.”
“I didn’t call,” I whispered. My heart, already beating fast, started to pound.
“Three months,” he declared but said no more.
I stared into his glittering, silver eyes.
Then I lost my ever-lovin’ mind.
“Are you nuts?” I shrieked.
“Tess—”
“Fuck you!” I shouted and pushed at him with my pastry-bag-filled hands. A thin stream of pale yellow icing shot out onto the floor beside us as well as on his Charlie Daniels tee.
I found the bag not in my hands and watched him twist his torso and toss it on the island next to the cake and twist back to me.
That was when I put my hands on the hard wall of his chest, shoved, and repeated on a shout, “Fuck you!”
He rocked back a couple of inches, then moved right back in. His face got into my face and he growled, “Fuckin’ listen to me.”
“No!” I yelled. “No way. No fucking way. You used me.”
“It’s my job,” he ground out.
“Do you think I give a shit?” I asked.
“Maybe, if you’d calm the fuck down and listen for a goddamned minute, you’d understand why I do think you should fuckin’ give a shit.”
“I can assure you, Brock Lucas, that nothing you can say will make me understand why I should give a shit,” I informed him.
“Your ex, Tess, that motherfucker needed to be taken down. That motherfucker is serious bad news.”
My body went completely still at his words and I held his eyes as my next words trembled. “I know that, Brock. I know.”
And it was then I watched with rapt attention as his eyes immediately melted quicksilver and his hands moved from the counter to my head, palms at the base of my neck, fingers in my hair, and his face dipped an inch away from mine.
Then he whispered a ragged, tortured “baby,” and that one word cut through me like a jagged knife.
Oh God.
He knew.
Of course he knew.
Of course, of course, of course.
That thing tight in my belly uncurled, filling me up, slinking up my throat and this time it wasn’t filled with the paralyzing poison of fear or despair. It was something else.
Panic.
I tried to tear away but Brock held on. One hand still at my head, the other arm sliced around my back, he shuffled me down the counter and pressed me into the corner.
With no way to escape, I held my body tight, hands pressed against his chest, and kept my eyes glued to his throat as I whispered, “Let me go and get out.”
“No one knows that shit happened to you, do they?” he asked softly.
“Let me go and get out.”
“You haven’t told any of your girls.”
Eyes firm on his throat, I demanded, “Let me go, Brock, and get out.”
“Kept that shit buried deep,” he murmured.
My eyes lifted to his and I screeched, “Let me go and get out!”
His arm around my back tightened and his hand shifted so his fingers were still in my hair but his thumb swept over my cheekbone.
“I was the first you let in there, wasn’t I, baby?”
Oh God.
“Let me go and get out,” I whimpered.
“Tess,” he whispered.
I fell silent.
“You need to let that shit out,” he advised and my gaze slid to his earlobe. “Eyes,” he ordered and my gaze slid back.
I still didn’t speak.
He held my eyes.
Then he said softly, “I held back takin’ us there, Tess. I didn’t want us to go there until the shit with Heller was done and you were cleared and we were good to move on. But your goddamned glasses and that cute fuckin’ look you’d get on your face every time I kissed you that made you look like you just experienced a fuckin’ miracle, shit.” His hand tensed on my head. “Shit, baby, you got to me and I couldn’t hold back.” His thumb swept my cheekbone. His eyes went from warm to hot and his voice went deep when he told me something, but he said it like he was talking to himself, “That look gets way fuckin’ better after you come.”
“Please let me go and get out,” I whispered.
He shook his head. “It’s the job and it’s a shit part of the job and I’ll tell you, Tess, I knew he violated you, no way I’d have played you. No way, Tess.” His voice got lower and his face got closer when he said, “You gotta believe that, babe. I wouldn’t have played you if I’d known.”
“But you did,” I said quietly.
His hand tensed on my head. “I didn’t know.”
“You still did it.” I leaned into the counter, pulling back my head. “I didn’t play you. I never played a single game with you. But you played me from start to finish.”
His hand tensed on my head again as his eyes started glittering. “That’s not true, Tess, and you fuckin’ know it.”
“You’re right, Brock. Earlier with what you said, you’re right. You’re the first person I let in there and when I did, I didn’t even know your fucking name.”
“That fuckin’ guy had to go down,” he growled.
“Yes, he did but it doesn’t warm my heart to thi
nk the first man I trusted with my time and attention after a very, very bad marriage was with me only to investigate my possible criminal relationship with my definitely criminal ex-husband.”
“It started like that, yeah, it did and that lasted about a goddamned hour. You cannot stand there lookin’ in my eyes and tell me you don’t know the fuckin’ second it stopped bein’ that, because, if you do, you’re a goddamned liar.”
He was not wrong. I knew. I knew the exact second. I’d lain in bed at night thinking about that too.
Therefore, I didn’t respond.
He kept speaking. “I had a job to do and we wanted a clean sweep. I knew you weren’t gonna be swept up in that but I also knew they had to make certain, so I had to make them certain before they hauled your ass in and you finished them off.”
“So you’re saying you did what you did to protect me?”
“No, I’m sayin’ I did my job. You weren’t dirty, no need to protect you. And I’m sayin’ for four fuckin’ months I liked my job a whole fuck of a lot.”
That took my breath away. So much so, I couldn’t speak.
Brock didn’t have the same problem. “You didn’t have my name, Tess, but all that time you had me and you know it.”
I looked back at his throat.
“Baby, eyes,” he growled and my eyes lifted to his.
“Why are you here?” I asked quietly and he sighed.
Then he asked back impatiently, “Honest to God?”
“What do you want from this talk?” I pushed.
He shook his head, but as he stared at me, I saw his eyes light and felt the sharp flickering voltage of his mood shift out of the room as the sweet hum that came with his humor started pulsing through it.
“How many conversations do you think I have with women I corner against a counter, hold in my fuckin’ arms, and do it with icing all over my favorite fuckin’ tee?” he asked.
Oh God.
I had to move this away from Brock being sexy and amused and back to Brock being out of my life somehow. So I did the best I could do.
“I don’t know. Turns out, I don’t know you very well.”
He held my eyes and replied, “Well, lettin’ you in a little more, the answer to that question is none. A bitch throws attitude at me, shouts in my face, and gets icing on my Charlie Daniels tee, that bitch isn’t you, I walk out the door.”
“I’m not fond of being referred to as a bitch,” I snapped.