Cooper Security 06 - Secret Intentions (17 page)

They had to drive a long way before they came to the next exit, then another few miles before Jesse spotted a narrow country lane that looked secluded enough for their purposes. “Pull off there,” he said, pointing.

They dug their weapons from the trunk of the car and loaded them with fresh ammunition. Jesse chambered an extra round, and Evie followed suit. She lifted the hem of her shirt, giving him an all-too-brief look at her flat stomach as she slid her hip holster into place and tucked the compact Ruger she carried into the holder.

He dragged his gaze away and holstered his GLOCK, dropping the hem of his denim jacket over the bulge of his weapon. Overhead, the sky was leaden, moisture adding a bite to the mild October air. “I should have checked the weather reports before we left D.C.”

Evie looked up at the gunmetal-gray clouds above them. “I did. Supposed to be heavy rain this afternoon all across the area.” She dropped her gaze to meet his. “We’re still four and a half hours away from Maybridge. Are you sure we should try to get there tonight?”

Temptation licked at his belly. “We could find a motel somewhere around here.”

“Another no-tell motel?” she asked with a half grimace.

“I’d rather not sleep in a place you have to fumigate first,” he admitted. “But those are the kinds of places that will take cash, nobody asks too many questions and they keep their mouths shut when the law comes knocking.”

She released a soft breath. “You’re right.”

Thunder rumbled from the south. “Sounds like we’ll be heading straight into it.”

“Then we’d better get a move on.” Evie tossed him the keys. “You drive.”

He caught the keys and circled around to the driver’s side.

“Are you glad to be going home?” Evie asked a few miles later.

He glanced at her. She was gazing forward through the windshield, presenting him with her pretty profile. “I’ll be glad to have my family around,” he admitted.

“Safety in numbers?”

“Something like that.”

“Did we do the right thing? Going to D.C.?”

He wondered if she was still thinking about the two men who’d died in the street in Congress Heights. That morning, before leaving D.C., they’d bought a newspaper and learned that both men had succumbed to their injuries. “You don’t still blame yourself for what happened to those two men, do you?”

“No, but they’d still be alive if we’d never gone there.”

“They’d still be alive if they hadn’t chased us into traffic with guns,” Jesse told her flatly. “They chose their own path.”

She fell silent for the next few miles, stirring only when Jesse pulled off the interstate in Knoxville, heading southeast toward the airport. “Where are we going?”

“Best cheap motels are almost always near an airport,” he said.

“‘Best cheap motels’ being a relative term,” she murmured, stretching her arms and legs. The movement stretched her T-shirt tight across her small, firm breasts, reminding him that the luxury of staying in a place with two bedrooms was about to be over.

They found a small, slightly shabby motel just north of the airport. The Volunteer Inn offered little in the way of amenities—no pool, no internet, only the most basic of cable. But Jesse’s Bluetooth worked fine in their small, two-bed room, giving them internet access at least.

He set up the laptop while Evie examined the bedding with a critical eye. “You know bedbugs are on the rise, right?” she asked as she pulled one of the thin blankets away from the sheets beneath.

“Yeah, ask me about the camel spiders in Iraq,” he answered.

She slanted a look his way. “You never talk about Iraq. Or Afghanistan or Kaziristan—”

“Or the Sudan or Sanselmo or Colombia,” he added, keeping his voice light. “So?”

“Why not?”

“What is there to talk about? War is hell.”

“Rita said you kept things bottled up. All the time. She’d try to get you to share your feelings and experiences with her but you’d just clam up.”

He turned from the laptop to look at her. “Rita didn’t want to hear my experiences.”

“But—”

“No buts. I tried to tell her sometimes. But I could see what it did to her, hearing the kind of hell we all had to face in the battle zone. It hurt her. Scared her. Your father knew the same thing about her. He kept that part of his life away from your family, didn’t he?”

She dropped the blanket back in place and sat on the edge of the bed nearest to him, her hands folded almost primly on her lap. “Yes, he did. Remember how I told you I wanted to be a Marine? Well, after I announced my plans to him and Mom, he sat me down and shared a little about what he’d gone through in the first Gulf War and in Panama. It was pretty terrifying, hearing how close he came to dying so many times.”

“It’s why we don’t talk about it,” he said quietly.

“But I can take it.”

He leaned toward her, covering her hands with one of his own. “I know. You’re one of the strongest people I know.”

She turned one hand over, curling her fingers over his. “I’m not sure that’s true. Sometimes I feel as if I’m drowning and I can’t find the surface.”

He squeezed her hand. “Sometimes I feel the same way.”

She laughed softly. “No, you don’t. You always know what you want and how to get it. And then you go do it. No fuss, no muss.”

He laughed, as well. “Apparently I hide my neuroses well.”

One dark eyebrow lifted, and her blue eyes sparkled with curiosity. “What neuroses might those be?”

“Well,” he admitted, “I’m not fond of spiders.”

“Like camel spiders?”

“Exactly. And I’m obsessive about winning.”

She grinned. “I know. I’ve played poker with you. Really, taking a week’s allowance from a seventeen-year-old? Harsh, Cooper. Very harsh.”

“You knew what you were getting into. And if you’d won, you’d have gotten me as your personal slave for a month.”

“Oh, that would have been nice,” she said with a wistful smile.

“Yeah? What would you have ordered me to do?”

She pretended to give it some thought. “Change Tuffy’s litter box, for one thing.”

He grimaced. “What else?”

“Well, the reason I really made the bet was that my senior prom was coming up, and I didn’t have a date.” She shot him a sheepish half smile.

Her answer surprised him. “You’d have made me take you to your senior prom?”

Her smile faded. “You don’t have to make it sound like a fate worse than Tuffy’s litter box.”

“I’m sorry,” he said quickly. “I didn’t mean it that way. I just—why? There had to be a dozen teenage guys beating down your door back then. Why would you want to take your sister’s boyfriend?”

She looked down at their entwined hands. “Because I saw you first.”

He waited for her to continue. She looked up at him, finally, her cheeks flushed and her eyes dark with humiliation.

“I met you first, remember? I was with my father on his first tour of the new base, and you were assigned to give him a quick tour before he met with the rest of the base command at the officer’s mess.”

“I remember.” She’d been all arms, legs and thick, dark braids. Her curves hadn’t developed at that age, and her shy smile had reminded him of his youngest sister, Shannon, who was only a year younger than Evie. “You were quiet.”

“I was smitten,” she said quietly. “I could barely breathe around you.”

“I didn’t know.”

“I know you didn’t. I worked hard to make sure you never did.”

“You were so young then.”

“Just three years younger than Rita.”

“But there’s a big difference between seventeen and twenty. And I was twenty-six. Some of my fellow Marines accused me of cradle robbing when I asked Rita out the first time.”

She pulled her hand away from him. “I know.”

“How long did the crush last?” It wasn’t the question he’d intended to ask, but he found himself curious to hear her
answer.

She lifted her gaze slowly to meet his. Her blue eyes smoldered, igniting a wildfire in his own veins. “I don’t think it’s ever ended.”

He pulled his chair closer, taking both of her hands in his own. “Are you sure about that?”

“You’ve kissed me twice and you have to ask?”

He smiled a little at her tone of voice. “Desire is physical. What you’re talking about is emotional.”

“For me, they go hand in hand.”

He wasn’t surprised by her words. Evie Marsh had always struck him as the kind of woman who took things like sex and love seriously. She wouldn’t be able to separate those two things as lightly as some people did.

He’d never been very good at separating sex and love either. Oh, he’d indulged his physical desires quite a few times over the years without feeling much of an emotional connection to his partner. But bad sex with someone he loved was better than the best sex he had with someone he didn’t really care about.

“It would be easier if they didn’t,” he said quietly, feeling as if he owed her the bare truth.

“Why?”

He brushed his knuckles over her cheek, feeling a surge of raw masculine pleasure as she leaned into his touch like a purring cat. “Because we could get naked and go at it right now without any fear or regret. And I’ve got to tell you, Evie Marsh, I’d really like to get you naked right now.”

Her eyes darkened. “What’s stopping you?”

He couldn’t come up with a good answer. His mind was too busy taking off her clothes and exploring every silken curve of her body. He wanted to kiss his way across her body, down the satiny curve of her thighs and along the well-toned length of her slender arms. He could almost feel her beneath him, hot and slick and welcoming, her legs wrapping around his back to pull him deeper inside her.

She put her hand in the center of his chest, flattening her palm over his heart. “I don’t need to be protected from you. I’m not seventeen anymore.”

He covered her hand with his, trapping it against his racing heart. “Feel what you do to me?”

She nodded slowly. “Yes.”

He lowered his head, brushing his mouth against hers. Her lips parted, inviting him to deepen the kiss. Their tongues clashed, then found a seductive rhythm of give-and-take, reminding him how much he wanted—needed—to be inside her.

He told himself to go slow, to give her pleasure first before seeking his own, but Evie’s small, talented hands were driving him beyond reason, moving over his hips to tease his buttocks until he was harder than he could ever remember being.

“Evie,” he growled as she slid her hand between their bodies to cup him firmly through his jeans.

“Shh,” she breathed against the side of his neck, nipping the tendon until he bucked helplessly against her hand.

He wasn’t a teenager, damn it. He was good at seduction. He wasn’t supposed to be the one trembling and weak, but here he was, shaking like a virgin, both terrified and enthralled by her power over him.

He slid his thumb over her tight nipple, caressing through the thin layers of cotton T-shirt and silk bra. She moaned against his collarbone, and he felt his own power surge to life.

He unzipped her jeans in one movement, slipping his hand beneath the denim and silk barrier between his fingers and her soft sex. She gasped as he touched her, clutching his arms as she arched her back in response. A low, guttural profanity escaped her lips, making him laugh.

He withdrew his hand, earning another hissing curse, and grabbed the hem of her T-shirt, drawing it up over her head. She reached for the front hook of her bra but he stopped her, closing his hand over hers.

“Leave it,” he whispered, bending his head to kiss the curve of her breast just above the silk of her bra. “For now.”

She curled her fingers through his hair, drawing his mouth lower. He slid his tongue over her pebbled nipple, laved it through the silk until she was panting softly, her back arching in a half circle.

He kissed his way to the other breast, gently tugging the nipple with his teeth. Then he moved lower, over the shadowy contours of her rib cage, down the narrow furrow of muscle until his tongue ran lightly over the rim of her belly button.

She let go of his hair and clutched handfuls of the bedspread in her white-knuckled fists. Her hips writhed against him. “Jesse—please—”

The trill of a cell phone filtered through the haze after a couple of rings. His body screamed at him to ignore it, but his inner Marine ordered him to do his duty. He’d made protecting Evie Marsh his mission. He meant to see it through, at any cost.

He drew away from her, sitting up on the side of the bed.

“No!” Evie moaned. “Let it ring.”

“I can’t.” He willed his body under control and grabbed the phone from his duffel bag. “Yeah?”

It was his sister Shannon. “Lydia’s awake.”

Evie sat up beside him, gathering her T-shirt in front of her in an endearing display of belated modesty. He wanted to kiss away the frustrated furrow creasing her brow. “How is she?” he asked his sister.

“Better than we hoped. She remembers what happened.”

He looked at Evie. “Lydia remembers what happened,” he told her. Into the phone, he asked, “Did she recognize her attackers?”

“No, but she remembered they were after her jewelry.”

Her answer surprised him. “Just petty thieves, then?”

“No,” Shannon answered. “They told her they knew her husband had put the code in her locket. They demanded she give it to them.”

“Her locket?”

“She has a locket the general gave her not long before he died. She wears it all the time.”

His heart dropped. “Did they get it?”

“That’s the lucky break.” Shannon sounded pleased. “A couple of days before the home invasion, Lydia broke the clasp and took it to a jeweler to be fixed. It’s safe and sound—Gideon and I got it from the jeweler an hour ago and took it to the vault at the office for safekeeping.”

“What about the code?”

“We think it’s in a hidden compartment beneath the photo. We thought you should be here when we try to open it. How soon can you be here?”

He looked at his watch. “We can be there by midnight.”

Evie looked up at him as he hung up the phone, clutching her T-shirt more tightly against her chest. She looked soft and seductive without even trying, and his body tightened with hunger. “What’s going on?” she asked.