Thirty
Sam was watching TV with Mrs. McKenzie when Ben got back to the house. The boy grinned when he saw Claire and ran to give her a hug.
“I asked Ben if you could come over, but I didn’t know you were coming tonight.”
“Claire’s staying for a couple of days while they do some work on her apartment.” He cast her a glance, still waiting for her to argue. He’d been surprised she had agreed without a fight.
She just looked down at Sam, and though her face was pale, she gave the boy a smile. “I hope you don’t mind sleeping on the sofa.”
“I don’t mind.”
“I made lasagna,” Mrs. McKenzie said. “There’s plenty for company.” She was a small woman, rotund, with silver hair and tiny wire-rimmed glasses. She looked as though she had stepped out of an ad for homemade jam. Sam loved her. Ben was damned fond of her, too.
“Mrs. McKenzie, this is Claire. She’s...a friend.” She was way more than that. Not his girlfriend. Not exactly. But something close to it. He wasn’t sure when he had started thinking of her that way.
He wasn’t sure what word Claire would use to describe their relationship. Or lack of one.
“It’s nice to meet you, Mrs. McKenzie,” Claire said warmly. “Sam thinks a lot of you.”
“It’s just Emma, and that’s real nice to hear.” She patted the boy on the head. “You take care of your guest tonight, and I’ll see you tomorrow.” She waved and headed for the door.
“How about some dinner?” Ben asked, looking at Claire for agreement as much as Sam.
Sam vigorously nodded. “I’m starving.”
Claire looked pale and not the least bit hungry.
“You need to eat,” he said, encouraging her, and finally she nodded.
Ben served the meal, including the crisp green salad Emma had made, and they all sat down together. It felt the way it had when he had first brought Sam home and Claire had been staying at the house with them.
He thought about the last time he had taken her to bed, the hot sex they’d had at Buster’s cabin. He thought about all the days since then that he had wanted her and not been able to have her.
He looked at her, noticed the way a few strands of dark hair had come loose from her clip and floated against her cheek. He noticed her soft blue cashmere sweater and how it curved over her pretty breasts. Arousal slipped through him, tightened his groin.
He wanted her just as much as he had when she had been in the house before. And his bed was going to be just as empty.
He waited till they all finished eating then shoved back from the table. “Time for you to put on your pajamas and brush your teeth,” he said to Sam. “Say good-night to Claire.”
He did so politely, the way he always did, then disappeared into his bedroom to get dressed for the night he would spend on the sofa.
Ben wondered what Claire would do if he came to her tonight. He rubbed a hand over his jaw at a memory of a slender palm burning his cheek and wondered if she’d hit him again or invite him to join her.
“The cleaning lady was here this morning,” he said. “Clean sheets all around. I’ve got a T-shirt you can borrow if you need one.”
“That would be great. I’d...umm...like to wash my underwear before I wear it. I can’t stand to think of who might have handled it.”
He remembered her sexy red bikini panties and his blood heated. “Go ahead.”
He watched her head back to the bedroom to retrieve her things, walk past him into the laundry room to start a load of clothes.
The nights had been long without her. Now that she was back in his house, it was going to be a long night again.
* * *
Sam was asleep in the living room when Claire threw her clothes into the dryer and padded down the hall in search of Ben. She found him sitting at the computer in his study.
“What are you working on?” she asked, only a little self-conscious in the olive-drab T-shirt he had loaned her with just a pair of bikini panties underneath.
When he looked up and saw her, his shoulders tightened. She wanted to walk over and massage the tension away.
“I’m reading the exposé your boyfriend wrote for the L.A. Times.”
A chill slid through her. “Ex-boyfriend. Why are you doing that?”
“Because, angel, your friend was tortured. Whoever did it either wanted payback for something he did, or they wanted information. If they were looking for something they thought he had, that could also be the reason they trashed your apartment.”
“I thought they were looking for something to sell.”
“Could be. Could be they were looking for something else and what they took was just a bonus. Since the vandalism occurred a day after Sullivan was killed and I’m not a big believer in coincidence, I’m trying to figure out what your friend was working on.”
Claire straightened. “Oh, my God, you think what happened could have something to do with Michael.”
“If they were pressing Sullivan for information and didn’t get it, they might think you have it.”
“But I don’t have anything. I only went out with him a couple of times.”
“Unfortunately, no one knows that but you.”
“What...what should I do?”
“Be careful. Don’t go off by yourself. Tomorrow I’ll talk to Castillo, tell him what happened at your apartment. There’s a chance it was just what it seems, a drug addict looking to make enough for a fix, or a bunch of destructive kids. But we need to find out.”
Claire said nothing.
“Listen, baby, it’s been a long day. Why don’t you try to get some sleep?”
She nodded, but didn’t walk away. Even with Michael’s death and the vandalism, there was something she had to know. Something she’d been thinking about for more than a week.
Ben looked up, surprised to see her still there. “What is it?”
“I’ve been thinking.... The other day...when you made your ugly proposal...”
He frowned. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for it to be ugly, just practical.”
“Well, I’ve been thinking about your practical proposal. If I’d said yes, what did you plan to do about women?”
His frown deepened. “Women?”
“We both know you have a voracious appetite for sex. To the best of my knowledge, that involves women.”
He shrugged. “I like sex. I’m pretty sure you do, too.”
“That isn’t the point. You aren’t a one-woman man. Were you planning to fool around on the side? Maybe you thought if you were discreet—”
He was out of his chair in an instant and pressing her up against the wall. “I wasn’t planning to cheat on you. I don’t believe in that. I haven’t been with another woman since I met you. I sure as hell wouldn’t do it after we were married.”
She swallowed, surprised by his answer and the fact she knew he meant it. “I just... I was curious.” She tried to move away, but he didn’t let her go, just bent his head and kissed her. A deep, wet, ravishing kiss that turned her body liquid and warm. His tongue was in her mouth, tasting and coaxing, and she melted against him.
She could feel every hard muscle, feel his powerful erection, and though she told herself to resist, he was Ben and she loved him. And she ached for him to touch her the way he had before.
“I want you, angel. God, I want you so much.”
“Oh, Ben. I want you, too.”
He kissed her again, softly his time, then more deeply. She loved the way he kissed, loved the taste of him, the feel of his hard body. No man could ever compare, not for her.
Lifting her into his arms, he carried her down the hall into his bedroom. In an instant, the borrowed T-shirt was gone, her panties stripped away. She helped Ben take off his clothes, then naked, he carried her over to the bed.
The loving started slow and easy, in seconds turned hot and wet, deep and erotic. He knew just how to touch her, how to stir her body until she couldn’t think of anything but him, couldn’t stand another moment without him inside her.
He drove deep, took her hard, drove her to frenzy. She bit down on her lip to stifle a cry as she reached a climax, then another. A few minutes later, Ben followed her to release.
Afterward they lay entwined, Claire nestled against his side. She traced a finger over his powerful chest. “I should go. Sam might wake up.” Thank heaven he was a deep sleeper.
Ben pressed a kiss on her forehead. “Not yet.” For a while he just held her, and she wondered at his thoughts. She was back in his house, but nothing had changed. Leaning over, he kissed her again, came up over her and slid himself inside. This time they reached their peak together and slowly drifted down.
Ben didn’t stop her when she eased out of bed, grabbed his T-shirt and her panties off the floor, went into the bathroom. When she walked back out, he was wearing his jeans and nothing else, standing in front of the door, blocking her escape from the bedroom.
“We’re good together, Claire.”
She reached up and touched his cheek, felt his late-evening beard. “I know.”
“Will you think about it?”
She didn’t have to ask what he meant. She had been thinking about his “practical” proposal for days. But until that very moment, it hadn’t occurred to her that she might actually accept it. Now as she looked into his hard, handsome face, she thought how much she loved him, thought how lonely her life would be without him.
And what if Sage was right and Ben really did love her? Would it be possible for them to be happy?
But what if Sage was wrong and the reason Ben was marrying her was exactly what he said. A practical solution to the problem of sharing Sam?
Could she live with a man who didn’t love her? Claire knew she could not.
And yet she heard herself saying, “I’ll think about it,” as she turned and walked out of the bedroom.
* * *
Ben drove Claire to work the next morning.
“Don’t you think you’re overreacting?” she said.
“It’ll only be for a day or two, till Castillo gets a line on things. We need to be sure the break-in isn’t connected to Sullivan.”
“I’m staying at your house. No one knows I’m there. Surely it’s safe for me to drive myself to work.”
“I’ll pick you up at five. And don’t go out to lunch by yourself.”
Claire sighed. “All right, I’ll do it your way for a while, but it if looks like a burglary, I’m driving myself and moving home as soon as my apartment is ready.”
“All right, fine.”
The morning passed uneventfully. No phone calls, no one following the car or watching the building as they had driven away. Ben was being ridiculously cautious, but he’d always had a protective nature. It was one of the things she loved about him.
Sitting in the employee lounge eating the brown-bag lunch she had made herself that morning, Claire thought of Ben’s “practical” proposal. It wasn’t the hearts-and-flowers kind of marriage proposal she had dreamed of. It wasn’t promises of eternal love and devotion.
But she would be sleeping in Ben’s bed, and he would be making love to her. He would be a faithful husband, and both of them could take care of Sam. In time, maybe he would even come to love her. Was she brave enough to try?
He had asked her to think about it. Claire couldn’t seem to stop.
* * *
As he drove to his meeting at the Texas Café, Ben’s attention kept wandering. Claire was considering his proposal. He should be frantic. Why wasn’t he? If she married him, he would have to settle down, give up his freedom, give up other women. But now that he was a father, he had to settle down anyway. And though he had a strong sexual appetite, he had never been into counting coup, the way some guys were. He just hadn’t wanted to risk a deeper commitment.
It doesn’t get any deeper than marriage, buddy.
But it did. Love was the dangerous part and he wasn’t marrying for love. He was just being practical. The plan suited him perfectly.
He pulled into the Texas Café and spotted Danny Castillo’s plain brown police car. As head of the gang division, Castillo knew everything there was to know about drug trafficking in the city.
Ben shoved open the door to the café, and a tall, knockout blonde named Ashley Sommerset walked over to greet him. “Hey, Ben.”
She was Maggie Rawlins’s sister, married now to a Houston multimillionaire named Jason Sommerset. She didn’t have to work, but she was studying to be a chef. She loved the café, and her husband indulged her.
“Hey, Ash. How’s the family?” Ashley had a baby, a little girl less than two years old.
“Great, how about yours? I hear your son is living with you now.”
He felt a rush of pride. “That’s right. His name is Sam.” It took all his willpower not to pull out his iPhone and flash a picture of Sam around like one of those old geezers in the park showing off his grandkids.
“Bring him in sometime,” Ashley said. “I’d love to meet him. I’ll make him one of my special chocolate shakes.”
“That’d be great. Sam loves ice cream.”
“Detective Castillo is already here. He said you’d be looking for him.”
He headed in the direction she pointed, slid into one of the pink vinyl booths and ordered a cup of coffee.
“How’s the investigation coming?” he asked, not mincing words.
Castillo took a sip from his steaming cup. “From what the body showed, it looks like it may be the work of a guy named Diego Santos. Those cigarette burns on the forehead are his trademark. He likes to look his victims in the eye while he’s burning them.”
“You got him in custody?”
“Not enough evidence to arrest him. It’s all just hearsay, rumor and word on the street. We’d bring him in for questioning, but we haven’t been able to find him.”
Not good. “What about motive?”
“We think Sullivan may have dug a little too deep. Pissed some people off.”
“Last night Claire’s apartment was vandalized. Any chance Santos was torturing Sullivan to get some kind of information, something Sullivan had that Santos wanted?”
Castillo sat up a little straighter. “Sullivan’s apartment was trashed, too. If they tore up Claire’s place, maybe they didn’t find what they were looking for.”
Tension rolled through him. “Hard to believe Sullivan didn’t give it up, considering what they did to him.”
“Unless he gave it to Claire and was trying to protect her.”
Ben didn’t like where this was going. “If Claire’s got it, she doesn’t know it. She’s told you everything she remembers.”
The waitress refilled Castillo’s cup and walked away. “Her laptop was the only thing taken. They could be looking for emails between her and Sullivan, something that would help them locate whatever it is they want.”
“Sullivan was in her apartment a couple of times. If he was being followed, they’d know where she lived.”
Castillo mulled that over. “If they come after her, can you keep her safe?”
Ben thought of the torture Michael Sullivan had suffered, and his stomach burned. “You can count on it.”
* * *
Ben picked up Claire after work, but he didn’t take her home. Claire was only a little surprised when he headed for the shooting range.
“Castillo says Sullivan’s apartment was trashed just like yours. That means someone is after something. They wouldn’t have hit your place if they’d found it. That means they might come after you. I want you to know how to defend yourself.”
“I don’t know, Ben. I’ve never shot a gun.”
“You’ll do fine.”
“Are you sure this is necessary? They don’t even know where I am.”
“No, but they might find out. My house has the best alarm system money can buy. You’ll know if someone’s coming in, but if they’re serious about getting to you, they’ll still get inside, and you’ll still have to stop them.”
Claire was nervous, but Ben was determined, and she had to admit, she had always been curious.
“Just relax,” he said. “This is my ankle gun— six-shot, .38 revolver. It’s very easy to use.”
First he showed her how to load and unload the weapon, how to cock it, instructed her in all the safety aspects she needed to know. “It’s only loaded with five bullets, so the chamber beneath the hammer is empty. That way it won’t go off if you drop it. When you cock the weapon, the cylinder turns and the gun is ready to fire.”
She worked with it for a while, then they were ready to shoot. Her hand shook as Ben showed her how to hold the weapon, then moved behind her to steady her aim. With that big hard body and all those amazing muscles pressed against her, she could barely concentrate. She shifted against him and heard his soft curse.
“You make me crazy, you know that?”
“What?” She looked at him over her shoulder, saw his mouth curve up and his eyes dancing. She gasped as he leaned forward, let her feel his erection.
Claire laughed.
“You think that’s funny, huh? I’m trying to teach you to shoot.”
“It isn’t my fault. Well, not exactly.”
“It’s exactly your fault,” he teased. “Now let’s try it again.”
She was still smiling as she aimed at the paper target, relaxed for the first time. She missed the first two shots, hit the third, fourth and fifth.
“Not bad. Let’s try it again.”
She fired and reloaded until Ben was satisfied she could aim and hit what she was shooting at.
Finally he took the gun from her hand and they headed back to the house. She should have felt safer, but she didn’t.