Maximum Exposure (16 page)

Her fear for her life had not been erased, though it had been eased. Today would be the test of how completely—whether she felt better only when he was around, or if his assurance that he’d keep her safe left her able to walk out of her own front door.

Jodi Fontaine. Afraid to face the world alone. If someone had told her that day was coming, she would have taken the bet in a heartbeat and never in a million years would have expected to lose a dime.

It had been late on Friday when she’d heard the knock on the door. She’d been asleep on the couch, huddled beneath the quilt she’d brought with her from Atlanta, one of the only things she’d kept when she’d cut the ties with her old life and left it behind.

The quilt had belonged to her grandmother Netta, and it had been Gramma who’d reminded her at every visit that it didn’t matter if she followed her head or her heart as long as she didn’t give a fig about anyone else’s. Gramma wouldn’t have been much for Jodi giving in to her fears, but she definitely would’ve liked Roman.

She and Gramma had seen eye to eye on most things. And it surprised her at times how much she did like him, and the ways she liked him. Her liking him had gone way beyond wanting to get him into bed. Even last week, when she’d been hating his guts, she couldn’t stop thinking about him.

And hating him was exactly what she’d spent most of last week doing. She couldn’t believe he hadn’t called her back when she’d told him it was urgent. Yes, she’d agreed to his terms that night in her office, promising to keep their contact to what happened there and then, but he’d broken that when he’d come to her at the pool!

She couldn’t believe he’d hold her to a higher standard or let himself off the hook so easily because he wanted to get in her pants! That wasn’t the reason he’d given her for his visit, of course. And she’d been the one to fondle his goods first. She still didn’t like the way that exchange of power had gone down.

Him, however, she liked. She liked the way he hadn’t been scared of being met at her door by a gun. She liked the way he’d known immediately, intuitively, that something was wrong. She even liked the way he’d pressed for the truth, that he hadn’t settled for the bits and pieces she’d doled out, but had demanded the whole.

She’d liked him as Roland Green, but as Roman Greyle he was…something. Amazing. Unbelievable. Hard and determined and disciplined. Powerful. Provocative. Potent. Oh, so potent. Insistent. Intense. He oozed all the things she loved about men. And that was before she even got to the sex and his skills as a lover.

When he’d come back to her on Friday night, he’d scooped up her and her quilt from the couch and carried her to bed. They hadn’t made love. Neither one of them had undressed. He’d told her to go to sleep and assured her that he’d taken care of the threat, that he wasn’t going to let harm come to her when he’d only just found her. He wasn’t going to let her go.

She’d believed him. Just like that. She’d been wounded, exhausted, beyond beat. All she’d wanted was sleep, and with him there, with only his word to go on that he was a federal agent, she had gotten it.

He’d been there with coffee and a monstrous blueberry muffin the next morning. Wrapped in her quilt, she’d leaned into the pillows he’d stacked against the headboard and devoured her breakfast as if she hadn’t eaten in days, while he’d sprawled across the foot of the bed, with her newspaper and a large cup of his own.

When she’d finished, he’d finished, folding the paper before gathering her up in his arms and carrying her to the tub. He’d sat her on the edge and gently bathed her knees, and he’d done it all without saying a word. She’d remained hushed, too, finding in the silence a place of calm she wasn’t willing to disturb.

Once he’d dried her legs and applied ointment to the healing scrapes on her knees, he’d returned to her room, where he’d undressed her and, never taking his eyes off her, he’d stripped out of his own clothes and laid them both down, so gently, so carefully.

After that, well, she wasn’t sure she’d ever been made love to so thoroughly. He’d spent hours with her, fucking, coming, recharging, doing it all again. Thinking of it now, her hands slick with soap and her eyes closed, she cupped her breasts with one arm, teasing her nipples, found and flicked at her clit with the fingers of her other hand.

And then she heard the slide of the shower-curtain rings on the rod and Roman asking, “You need help with that?”

She opened her eyes, met his wildly charged gaze. “That’s up to you. You can watch, or you can participate, whichever one’s your pleasure.”

“How ’bout I come closer first? Not sure I can make up my mind from all the way out here.”

“You can come as close as you’d like,” she told him, smiling as she widened her stance and slipped both of her hands down to her sex, slipped a finger deep.

He stepped inside, pulling the curtain closed. The space she’d always thought too roomy for one was a perfect fit for two. They could share the water without touching, and if they wanted to touch, there would be no banging into the soap trays or knocking into the water controls or tripping on the shower-curtain hem.

And if they wanted to touch…What was she thinking? Of course, they wanted to touch. They were here because they wanted to touch. As much bliss as she could give herself, even having him watching heightened the thrill.

But he didn’t just watch. He leaned forward, bracing his hands on the snowy white tiled wall on either side of her head, bringing his mouth to the sensitive skin where her shoulder met her neck. “You sure you really feel up to going in to work?”

She’d been off a week. She needed the money. And his assurance that he’d taken care of the threat meant she wouldn’t be looking over her shoulder all day. Or at least she’d be less afraid when she did. “I have to. And I’ll be fine. I might be walking a little bit slower than usual, but it’s all part of the cover story, right? You know all about cover stories.”

“I know you’re a hell of a better actor than I am,” he said, nuzzling across her collarbone, down her arm, to the crease of her pit, where he sucked on the tender skin there, leaving a bruise.

“You’ve just been at it too long. You’re tired.” She clenched her hands at her sides, desperate to reach for his cock where he nudged it against her hip, even more desperate to wait. “You’ll be able to be yourself again soon.”

His mouth was against her left breast when she felt him shake his head. “If not Roland Green, I’ll be someone else. It’s what I do. Being someone else is who I am.”

She closed her eyes, fighting frustration, fighting anger. She’d just found him, and when he turned into someone else, she’d lose him just as quickly. “What kind of life is that for anyone? What about friends, and a home?”

“I have friends,” he said, rolling her nipple with his tongue. “I work with most of them, but that means they understand when a break in a case means bailing on a fishing trip last minute.”

“But why does it have to be you? Why do
you
have to give up so much? Why do
you
have to be the one putting your life on the line?” She was well aware how selfish she sounded, how selfish she was being, giving voice to her inner six-year-old. But, goddammit, she wanted things to go her way. Why was that too much to ask?

He lifted his head, looked down at her, his expression frighteningly severe, censuring, taut, and unforgiving. “Do you want me to make love to you? Or do you want to hear the story of my life?”

“Can’t I have both?” she asked, still six, still selfish. She added a pout.

He shook his head. And then he laughed. “Give me your hand.”

She did, and he wrapped it around his cock, which continued to soften, even when she squeezed. “Did I do that? Asking all those questions about why?”

“Thinking about you? I get hard. But you start me thinking about seeing my brother murdered? This is what you get.”

His brother? Murdered?
“What are you talking about?”

“Just what I said. I saw my brother murdered,” he said, his eyes dark, his expression agonized before he shut down and left her with nothing.

She didn’t want him to shut down. She wanted to know. “When? Where?” And she asked the obvious. “Why? What happened?”

“Later,” he said, shaking his head and reaching for the soap. “We’ve both got to get to work, and this is no way to start the day.”

They could have been making love. They could have started the day sated and gloriously sore. But she’d had to whine like a petulant child who wanted her way. And now she had nothing to show for it, and he was in pain.

Right then, she hated her guts more than she’d ever hated his. She took the soap from his hand, rubbed it in circles over his back, filling her hands with rich suds scented with sandalwood and sage.

“I’m sorry,” she said, washing his shoulders, his arms, his pits, his ribs, pressing her body against his back and wrapping him up to scrub his belly and chest. “For pressing you, for arguing with you. I’m sorry for what happened to you, for your brother.”

“It was a long time ago,” he told her, his hands braced on the wall, the water beating down on his neck as he hung his head.

“Like that matters?” What, she couldn’t be sorry, because it was ancient history? Or was it because it hurt him anew for her to know? For her sympathy to take him back to a place he’d left behind?

She knelt to wash his buttocks, his thighs, his calves, his feet. The last thing she wanted was to cause him more pain. “I hate to think about you and your family suffering through that, experiencing that loss. That’s all.”

“Is that the sort of thing they teach you to say in charm school? To give the poor, grieving soul your condolences? To prostrate yourself and wash his feet?”

What the hell?
“Excuse me?”

He turned, then swiftly found her shoulders and jerked her up. “You don’t know my family, Jodi. You don’t know me.”

“Not yet,” was all she got out before he pushed her away and climbed out of the tub, still soapy and dripping.

“Don’t feed me that bullshit about suffering and loss when you don’t have a clue what it’s like to watch a man plunge a knife into your kid brother’s gut and slice all the way to his throat.”

And it wasn’t just the slow-lane thing or the lazy thing. He was having trouble figuring out Olivia, and she was way too complicated a woman for him to be feeling the things he was feeling for her with so much of who she was up in the air.

Hell, half the reason he’d wanted to do the beach shoot here was so he could get her out of her comfort zone and see how she fit in his.

He walked down to the water’s edge, loving that he could do that here without dozens of oiled-up, hard bodies competing for space.

He squatted on his haunches, then gave it up and just sat, crossing his legs, hunched forward and drinking his coffee, and knowing he was going to have to shower again before Olivia got here, or deal with tracking sand through the house all day.

After Saturday and whatever the hell had happened then, he’d expected her to cancel. He didn’t know what she’d seen in the warehouse shots that had scared her or hurt her or whatever.

He still didn’t know. She hadn’t told him a thing. She’d closed the computer, closed herself, and left, just like that. Like she really did have nothing else on her mind than getting ready to enjoy her day off. He didn’t buy that crap for a minute.

Something in those pictures had triggered her fight-or-flight response. He’d seen it in the calculated way she’d closed the laptop and got to her feet, making certain there was nothing in her appearance to criticize, smoothing and straightening as if the fate of the world depended on her clothes being wrinkle free and her body covered.

He understood that she had an image to maintain, that she needed to look her best as the owner of Splash & Flambé. But they’d been on an impromptu picnic, sharing cold beer and hot pizza on a blanket on the floor. The only business she’d done was look at his pictures. Something about them had her pulling her protective shell tight.

For the life of him, he couldn’t see the danger. But then, he hadn’t been the one out there on the floor, the one letting down his hair and sweating through the clothes he was wearing and moving his body until he could barely stand straight.

The only scary thing he could imagine the photographs bringing to mind was how he’d slammed her into the wall and banged her until his legs were the ones ready to give out. Yeah, that had not been one of his proudest moments, even if it had been one of the most amazing.

He watched the steady pulse of waves, the clouds that hung low and obscured the sky, the white Vs of gulls against the gray and thought again of chemistry. His and Olivia’s. The chemistry even Dustin Parks had noticed and thought would make for the perfect working relationship.

Finn sipped at his coffee, supposing sex had been inevitable. He’d definitely had it on his mind since that first morning in front of the bistro. All that caramel and brown-sugar hair and sweet toffee skin and eyes the color of chocolate. He’d wanted to feast on her, eat her up, lose himself in all that luscious stuff.

But a warehouse wall? A stage floor?

Chemistry or not, he could’ve done a whole lot better than that, could’ve shown her that he wasn’t the thoughtless, horny louse she had ever right to peg him as.

He really did know how to treat a woman, even if his actions with Olivia—beer and pizza on Styrofoam plates and a blanket on a hardwood floor—proved otherwise.

“Mind if I join you?”

Whoa! Just whoa.
He hadn’t heard her tires on the drive, her car door, his front door…. “Sure. I see you found the place okay.”

“I also found your coffeepot,” she said, crossing her ankles and dropping down beside him in one fluid motion, her long, full skirt ballooning in the breeze. She patted it down and never spilled a drop from her mug. “And I have a bone to pick with you and your beach house.”

“Oh?”

She gestured over her shoulder with her chin. “I pictured a couple of rooms on stilts. Not, what? Four bedrooms? A wraparound deck? A professional kitchen and a main room large enough for two full sofas and a big-screen TV? Not to mention the pool table.”

He brought his mug to his mouth and smiled. “Yeah, but it’s all up on stilts.”

“As everything down here should be. You’re a surprise at every turn. A mystery man. A Renaissance man.”

The surprise was that she was here. He still hadn’t shaken the shock. “I wasn’t sure you would come.”

“I told you I would,” she said, both hands cupping her mug as she blew across the top.

“Yeah, but things haven’t exactly been comfortable between us.” He waited for her to contradict him. She didn’t. “I didn’t know how you were going to feel about bunking here.”

She straightened out her legs, toed off her sandals, dug her feet into the sand, and sighed deeply. “First of all, I assume my bunking here comes with my own bed, or at least my own sofa.”

“It does.”

“And obviously, I have my choice of rooms.”

“You do, though they’re not all furnished.”

“Well, at least neither one of us will feel crowded.”

The way he’d crowded her up against the wall in the warehouse?

“Secondly,” she went on to say. “The comfortable thing? My fault, and I apologize.”

Uh, no.
He wasn’t going to let her blanket things that easily with her one-size-fits-all apology. “I’m not sure what you think is your fault, but it’s my fault that things at the photo shoot got out of hand.”

He saw in his periphery when she pursed her mouth, hiding it behind her mug and sipping before she spoke. “So we’re going to go there, are we?”

Yeah. They were. “I think we have to.”

She waited a moment before asking, “You’re accepting responsibility but not apologizing?”

“I apologize for the when and the where and the uncomfortable how, but not for the fact that it happened,” he said and waited, wondering if she was going to try and make the pleasure they’d shared into something less.

She tried, but it was a weak effort. “It wasn’t an anomaly? A moment out of time?”

“God, I hope not.”

And at that, she laughed. “See, that’s what I adore about you, Finn McLain. You’re so honest.”

“That’s me. Honest and happy to be adored.”

“Better than being abhorred, wouldn’t you say?”

He would, and she didn’t have to be so quick to dash his hopes that she felt more for him than adoration. He certainly felt more for her, though he hadn’t defined it, because it was too wrapped up in lust. “The way you abhorred the pictures, you mean?”

She dug her toes more deeply into the sand until all he could see were her heels and her ankles. “It’s not that I didn’t like them. I certainly didn’t abhor them. It was just seeing them like that…seeing myself like that…It wasn’t easy. It brought back some stuff I try not to think about.”

“Like me ruining your outfit and not even offering to pay for it?”

Her smile was brief. “No. Not you. Just some ancient history that belongs in the past.”

The set of her mouth, her shoulders, the deep V wrinkling her brow…the way she sat hunched in on herself, buried under her skirt and in the sand…This was bigger than he’d been digging for.

He’d thought this thing between them was about chemistry exploding into sex. That could’ve been what sparked it, but this was way more. “Is it something you should think about? Maybe dump it once and for all?”

“I don’t think this can be dumped. I’ve been trying since I was fourteen.”

He mused on that for a moment…. “A few years ago, I was living in Texas and was on the road with my sister. We stopped for a burger at this out-of-the-way diner. My sister…she’s a treasure hunter, antiquities, antiques, historical papers, stuff like that.

“Anyway, this small-time thug was following her. Someone had paid him to find the same thing she was after. He and his cronies stormed the diner. They held three of us hostage and sent her and this other dude after the documents.”

“What? Are you kidding me?” She turned her entire body to face him, settling in as if sitting around a campfire, listening to his tale. “What happened? Obviously, things came out okay for you. What about your sister?”

“She’s fine. She even married the guy who helped her hunt down the artifacts.”

“Wow. That’s a plot for a romance novel if I’ve ever heard one.”

“Yeah. It is,” he said, thinking that Georgia and Harry had gotten their happily ever after.

“Were you scared?”

“Some of the time, sure. Mostly, I tried to figure a way out of there. My life didn’t exactly flash before my eyes, but I had three long days to think about things. My mom dying young. My dad dying in prison, where he was serving a life sentence for betraying his country.”

“Finn. Jesus.” She reached over, squeezed his wrist. “And here I thought you were just a guy remodeling his beach house.”

Finn captured Olivia’s fingers before she could get away. “I
am
just a guy remodeling his beach house. But every once in a while, I pull out some crap from the past to see how it’s sitting. If I’ve grown enough so that it doesn’t bother me anymore, or if I still need to work on the fit so it’s not choking me.”

Olivia stared at their joined hands, toyed with his fingers, finally looked out over the water, where a ray of sunshine had sliced through the clouds and turned the surface of the ocean to glittering gold.

Several minutes passed before she glanced back, and then the sadness in her eyes nearly killed him.