Run To You (7 page)

She lifted a hand and pointed it at him. “And I also know your mother wants you to start producing kids.” She chuckled. “Better get started on that, soldier.”

Several drops of water slid down her hand and dripped into the pool. Her soft laughter tugged at the knot in his shoulders and spine and the hard-on in his shorts and all he could think of was that he’d like to get started on that. He’d like to get started on her. “Marine,” he said just above a whisper. He’d like to start with her mouth and work his way down. “A soldier is Army.”

She flicked a droplet of water at him and laughed. “Potato-potahto.”

One second he was looking at her small hand, wet fingers, and soft palm, and in the next he grabbed her wrist and pulled. To stop her laughter and the things it did to him. Because he had no control. Because he couldn’t stop himself from wanting her to touch him. Because he’d been thinking about it since she’d accidentally touched him earlier.

The big splash cut her scream short and a wave of water swamped Beau’s mouth and chin. She came up gasping through a tangle of wet hair. “Help,” she sputtered, the white shirt floating up her belly.

Beau turned away from the glimpse of bright pink panties and bare legs beneath the surface. He swam toward the ladder on the other side.

“Help!”

No way.

“I can’t swim,” she gurgled through all that thrashing.

Right.

“Beau!”

He grabbed the ladder and glanced over his shoulder at the flailing white shirt and dark hair. She went back under and his brows lowered. “Quit playing.” She wasn’t coming up. All she had to do was kick off the bottom and grab the side of the pool. “Stella?”

Her head broke the surface. She sputtered and gave a watery cry before she sank again.

Jesus. He pushed off the side and had her beneath her flailing arms within seconds. They came up in a gush of water and tangled limbs and hair. “I’m drowning,” she choked.

“You’re fine. I’ve got you.”

“I can’t swim.”

Clearly. “You’re not that far from the side of the pool.”

She pushed her hair from her eyes and glanced at the side of the pool several feet away. “Are you trying to kill me?”

The shirt floated just beneath her breasts and brushed his belly and chest. He should let her go. Push her to the edge of the pool and let her go. Not just stand there, feeling the cool water and brush of cotton. His voice came out rough, low when he asked, “Why would I do that?”

She looked back at him and her hands settled on his shoulders. “So you wouldn’t have to take me to Texas.”

Maybe it was the moon and the envelope of darkness. Her lips just below his. Her hands on his skin. His body so close to finally getting what it craved like a junkie craved his favorite drug. He moved a hand to the back of her neck and slid his arm around her waist. He pulled her to him and lowered his mouth to her. Shirt and bare skin pressed into his chest and belly, and a flood of want and need and greed surged through his veins like liquid flame. He felt the breath of her gasp and took advantage of her parted lips. He knew how to kiss a woman to get what he wanted, how to give just enough to make her want him. He was thirty-eight. A man. A man who loved everything about a woman’s body. The touch and smell and taste. A man who loved to take his time, but God. God, her mouth was soft. And wet. And tasted good. And he couldn’t think beyond her warm mouth and the front of those pink panties pressed into the front of his swimming trunks. Into his erection.

She opened her warm mouth a little wider. Her slick tongue tangled with his, drawing him a little deeper. The suction got a little tighter, the kiss a little wetter, and the world around them a whole lot hotter.

“Mmm,” she moaned as she had during dinner. A breathy moan of pleasure that made his skin so tight he ached.

He tangled his fingers in her hair and pulled her closer. She was good. So good, and he was gone. Gone. Drowning in her. Drowning in the raw lust pulsing through his body. Lost in the heat of him and her. Of their bare bellies touching and that damn shirt floating all around and keeping her bare breasts from resting on his chest. So lost he wanted to push her against the side of the pool and shove aside the little scrap of her panties covering paradise. So close he wanted to pull out his cock and thrust into her. Taking what he wanted.

God he wanted that. Wanted it so much his hands shook as he pushed her to the side of the pool. Pushed her and turned away.

S
tella touched her free hand to her lips as she watched Beau climb up the ladder and onto the deck. Who would have thought he could kiss like that? Certainly not her. Light slid up his long legs as water splashed to the concrete from his tall body and shorts. Without a word or a backward glance, he walked to one of the chaises and reached for something on the seat. Then he was gone, swallowed up by darkness as he moved to the house.

She let out a breath and moved her hand to the top of her wet head. She felt a little buzzed. Like she had earlier off a couple of glasses of wine. Only now she was completely sober.

A door to the house shut and her hand fell to the edge of the pool. Consumed. She’d felt consumed, yet he hadn’t really touched her at all. There had been something in the air. Something that had surrounded them. Something in his black thundercloud that had hit her with relentless waves. Something she’d never experienced before.

She let go of the edge and sank down into the water. She hadn’t been thinking about kissing Beau Junger. Hadn’t been thinking about him kissing her, but once he did, she hadn’t wanted him to stop.

The shirt billowed about her as she tipped her head back and slowly resurfaced. She ran her hand over her head, smoothing her hair back. Beau. The kiss. Her reaction. It was all so confusing. One moment she’d been kneeling by the edge of the pool on dry ground trying not to stare at his big shoulders and some sort of black cord around his thick neck, and in the next, he’d yanked her into the water. One moment, she’d been pretending that she was drowning, thinking that she would get back at him for pulling her into the water and getting the last laugh, and the next, he was kissing her brains out. One moment, he’d been kissing her brains out, and the next, he’d pushed her away like toxic waste.

Stella swam to the ladder and hauled herself out of the pool. She gathered her hair over one shoulder and squeezed the water out. Stella had kissed a lot of men in her life. She’d kissed men she liked and loved and men who meant nothing. She’d kissed men who’d made her pulse leap with anticipation and attraction, and she’d kissed frogs, hoping for a prince. She was sort of a kissing connoisseur, but she’d never experienced anything like Beau. His kiss had been a complete shock. A jolt to the senses. A knock to the head. A surprise out of nowhere, and she got the unsettling notion that she’d just been kissed by an expert. A man for the first time in her life. Which was just crazy.

She gathered the bottom of her shirt and squeezed. Beau was certainly the oldest man she’d kissed, but her last boyfriend had been thirty. That certainly qualified him as a man.

Although Jeremy had been thin enough to fit into her navy Banana Republic trench coat, he’d still been a man. And yeah, he’d liked the coat so much, he’d worn it on more than one occasion. She usually wasn’t into brand names, but she’d loved that coat and it had mysteriously gone missing when she’d dumped Jeremy. Maybe Jeremy had been a little more metro than male, but he’d still been a man.

Kind of.

She gathered some of the shirt at her hip and squeezed. Just for the sake of curiosity, she wouldn’t have minded if the kiss had lasted a little longer. But he’d pushed her away and headed for the house like he couldn’t get away fast enough.

A little smile twisted one corner of her lips. He’d wanted her. She’d felt it in his kiss and against her thigh. He’d been hard and ready, but instead of taking things to the next step, or trying to, he’d left. Like he was trying to be noble or decent or something. Like he’d been worried that things would go too far.

Stella sat at the edge of a chaise in the darkness. He needn’t have worried. Things would not have gone too far. She would have stopped him.

A slight breeze chilled her skin and cotton shirt. She should go in but she was far too awake for bed. She hooked her heels on the edge of the chair and hugged her knees. She might not have experienced anything like Beau’s kiss. She might have wanted more, but she would have stopped. She always stopped. Always. As her abuela told everyone,
Estella es una buena nina.
Perhaps because of the circumstances of her birth, Abuela made sure Estella was a good girl. She didn’t swear. Didn’t wear red fingernail polish, at least she hadn’t until she’d moved out, and she didn’t take her shoes off at parties.

Stella rested her cheek on her knee. And she didn’t have sex before marriage. She was a twenty-eight-year-old virgin by choice. At first she’d remained a virgin out of fear. Fear that her grandmother would take one look at her and know she was one of “those” girls. Out of fear that she’d have a baby like her mother. Even after she moved out and lived in Vegas, her grandmother’s cautions and rules still played in her head. In her early twenties, she’d come close to giving it up several times but had always stopped. She’d discovered ways of intimacy while technically keeping her virginity. She knew what some people thought about that. That there was no such thing as a “technical virgin,” but she didn’t care what other people thought and felt. She was twenty-eight. She’d waited this long, and if she wanted to save sexual intercourse for marriage, she would.

She didn’t have a lot. Only herself. She was the only thing that she had to give to the man she would love forever.

Chapter Seven

S
tella held her grande caramel macchiato to-go in front of her mouth. The scented steam rose from the small black opening and fogged her sunglasses while a steady
crunch, crunch, crunch
from the other side of the car filled her ears. She’d never seen anyone eat an apple like that. She never knew an apple could be that
loud
. This was not the same man who’d eaten at his mother’s table the night before. This was not the man who placed his napkin in his lap and used the right fork. This was a man who ate like he had five minutes to get as much as he could in his stomach. This was a Marine who had three dead apple cores lined up on the console between the leather seats.
Crunch
. His mother was right. He was a hog. Although hearing his nice, polite mother call him out on it was a bit of a shock. Not quite as shocking as watching him hog down his apples, though.

Stella took a sip of her coffee and choked mid-swallow when he hit the window button and tossed one core after another out onto I–10. “You’re littering,” she pointed out as she wiped a drop of caramel macchiato from her chin. If he made her get a drop of coffee on her white tank top she was going to kill him.

He glanced at her through his mirrored sunglasses, then back at the interstate. “Biodegradable material.”

“It’s still littering.”

He shook his head as he hit the button and closed the window. “Given the heat and humidity and the number of times those cores will be run over, they’ll completely decompose in a few days. If not, animals will cart them off.”

Her mouth dropped open a little. “You’re luring wild animals onto the highway.”

His answer was a slight shrug of one big shoulder. His black polo shirt matched his black heart.

“There’s probably a law against that.”

“Probably.” He reached for his own coffee in the cup holder and took a few gulps. “Are you going to make a citizen’s arrest?”

She sat back and folded one arm under her breasts. “Of course not. I just don’t think you should lure little wild animals to certain death.”

“Are you doing that thing where you think you’re being funny?”

She frowned. “No.” Some things weren’t funny. Like certain death for critters.

He laughed and rested his cup on the knee of his khaki cargo pants. “Too bad. You’re actually funny this time.”

Stella frowned and turned her attention to the highway divided by a grassy median. A forest jam-packed with pine trees bordered each side, and sure enough, on the shoulder lay a sad gray lump. “Look,” she pointed out. “A poor little opossum. Lured to its death by irresistible apple cores.”

“That isn’t an opossum. It looks like a neck pillow.”

“Oh.” She took a closer look as they whizzed past and hated that he was probably right. Not that she preferred a dead animal, but . . . “Well, littering is tacky, whether it’s ‘biodegradable material’ or pillows.”

“Pillow probably just flipped out of the back of someone’s truck and they didn’t know it until they got home. Now they’re screwed because they have a stiff neck and no pillow.” He paused, then added, “Of course, it might have seen an irresistible apple core and jumped to certain death.”

She looked across at Captain Smartass. “You’re unusually chatty this morning.”

“You don’t know me well enough to know if I’m ‘unusually chatty.’ ”

That was true. “I know you well enough to miss your grumpy side.” Which wasn’t true.

He glanced at her, then back at the interstate. “I’m not grumpy.” He drifted into the right lane and dropped his free hand to the bottom of the leather-covered wheel. “Not usually, at any rate. But you’re fairly annoying.”

“Me?” She pointed her to-go cup at her chest. “I’m annoying?”

“This can’t be news to you.” He shoved his own cup into the holder. “Someone has to have told you that before.”

“No. I’ve never met anyone as rude as you.”

“You’re a bartender. I call BS.”

She’d had to put up with some really obnoxious drunks, that was true. “No. You’re the rudest person.”

“I prefer honest.” The corners of his mouth turned up in a slight smile.

“I prefer rude.”

“This disagreement is what’s called a teachable moment.”

She pushed her sunglasses to the top of her head. “Who’s supposed to learn something? Me or you?”

“You are, Boots.”

“I’m wearing flip-flops.”

“Boots is a new recruit.” He looked at her and grinned like
he
was really funny. “See what you just learned. Maybe you should call me Staff Sergeant Junger.”

“You’re a sergeant?” Of course he was.

“First Battalion, Fifth Marines.”

She returned his smile. “What were you trying to teach me last night in the pool, Sergeant Junger?”

“Last night was a bad idea.” His smile fell and he looked back at the road. “We should forget it happened.”

“We should?” He was probably right, but that wasn’t likely to happen. At least not for her.

“We’re going to be cooped up in this car for a least two more days before I can dump you off in Texas. We don’t need complications.”

Dump?
Dump!
“Like the complication of your tongue down my throat?”

“You weren’t complaining.” His frown deepened. “You were moaning.”

“I didn’t moan.”

“You moaned.”

Maybe a little. “You groaned.”

He glanced at her and she could feel his hard gaze from behind his mirrored glasses. “Let’s just forget it happened. Do you think you can do that?”

“It wasn’t that memorable.” She waved a hand. “It’s forgotten.”

He looked like he wanted to argue about his memorability, but he returned his gaze to the road and said, “You don’t have to worry that it will happen again. It won’t.”

She knew she should be more relieved than insulted. And she was. Really. If he wanted to forget it happened, fine. She had enough to think about besides the shock of Beau Junger’s hot mouth on hers. Like her mess of a life.

After they’d said a quick good-bye to Naomi, they’d jumped in the Escalade and headed to the nearest Starbucks, where she’d been confronted with reality. She didn’t have a job and five dollars was a lot for coffee. Beau had paid for the coffee and Naomi had packed apples and croissants for them to munch on, but this trip was going to put a hit on her back account. A hit she couldn’t afford.

Her rent was paid for the month and she did have some money in the bank. Maybe if she was really careful, she’d be okay financially. She’d have to find a new job when she got back, not to mention a new place to live. Stella wasn’t worried about finding a new job. She was a damn good bartender and made good tips. She could always find a job.

A new apartment was going to be trickier.

Stella pulled at the legs of her jean shorts and sank further in her seat in an effort to get more comfortable. She figured she had about five days. Two days to get to Texas, two to visit her sister before she flew back to Miami and found a job.

Sadie. She didn’t want to think about her sister. Thinking about Sadie made her stomach get all tight and nervous. Thinking about Sadie made her feel like a kid again, sitting at the library, surfing the Internet and the
Amarillo Globe
for news of Clive and her sister. And while she’d hung on every mention of Sadie’s 4–H accomplishments, her sister hadn’t even known she was alive.

Stella chewed on the inside of her lips and looked out the side window. She’d think about Sadie later. When she was alone. Right now she needed to think about the Gallo boys and Ricky. Did she really need to relocate? Moving to a new city was expensive and she hadn’t saved for it. Did she have a choice? Where would she go?

She glanced across at the man who’d help blow her life too hell. He was rude and she’d prefer to ignore him, but she had to know. “Do you really think I need to move out of my apartment? Or were you just being dramatic?”

He looked over at her. “I’m never dramatic and yes. You need to move.”

She closed her eyes. “How?” she said, more to herself than to him.

“Hire movers.”

She opened her eyes. He made it sound so easy. “I don’t have a job. Remember? I can’t just hire movers.”

“You have a trust fund.”

She wasn’t even surprised he knew about the trust. Irritated, but no longer surprised. “That isn’t my money.”

“What do you mean? Of course it’s your money.”

She shook her head. “It’s my mother’s money.”

“Your father set it up for you when you were born.”

The money had never been hers. She didn’t even know exactly how much was in it these days, and it was best not to even think about it. “My mother is the trustee.”

His brows lowered beneath the silver rim of his sunglasses. “When does it stipulate your age of maturity?”

“Twenty-five or marriage.” Which was why at the age of eighteen her stepfather drove her to Vegas and tried to force her to marry his nephew. Carlos and her mother had been divorced for several years, but he’d never given up on the idea of controlling all that money. He just hadn’t counted on Stella’s refusal to go along with his plan.

“You’re twenty-eight,” he pointed out needlessly.

She shook her head and pushed away the memory of those few days. Of the drive there and thinking she was going on a fun vacation, only to be locked up in a hotel room with a boy her age who didn’t speak English. He’d been even more afraid than she’d been, and he watched her escape out a bathroom window while Carlos slept. She remembered calling her mother and her mother’s hurtful response. It had seemed to Stella that Marisol had been more angry than concerned. More angry over the potential loss of the money than concerned for Stella’s welfare. “It’s my mother’s money,” she repeated. “She supports herself and Abuela and my other grandparents in Mexico.”

“What about you?”

“She took care of me until I was eighteen.” Stella might not have had the latest or best of everything, but other people had less. “Then I started taking care of myself.”

“Your father put that money in trust for you. You should have gained control of it at twenty-five.”

“It’s in a joint trust account, now.”

“What?” His brows drawn in confusion, he glanced at her, then back at the road. “How did that happen?”

Stella shrugged. “Guilt.” On Stella’s twenty-fifth birthday, the day the trust seamlessly settled on Stella and her mother’s job as trustee ended, Marisol came to Stella with a folder of documents and a boatload of guilt. How would Marisol and the grandparents live, if not for the money? Did Stella want them all to live in the street? Was she so selfish she’d watch them starve?

She finished her caramel macchiato and put the cup in the holder. “My father never gave a shit about me, and I don’t want to talk about his money.” It was a useless conversation. Useless to think about all the things she could do with that money or that her father had set up the trust because he cared. “Are the Gallo brothers going to come after me when I go home? Even if I move?”

He dipped his head and looked at a rest stop sign on the side of the road. “Do you want to run into them when you’re out and about?”

“Miami is a big city. Maybe they’ll forget about me.”

He turned on his blinker and merged to the right. “You smashed Lefty Lou’s bum hand. Probably broke it. I doubt he’ll forget about that.”

“You knocked Ricky out and put that flashbang under the Gallos’ car!” Her scalp got a little tingly.

“Exactly.”

“They’re probably looking for you, too.”

“Probably.” He pulled into the rest stop.

“What am I going to do, now?”

“Well, I don’t know about you, but I have got to piss like a racehorse.”

“That’s disgusting.” Her nose crinkled.

“Sorry.” He shoved the vehicle into park and turned the key. “I have to use the
facility
and I suggest you do the same.” He took off his sunglasses and tossed them on the dash. “The next stop isn’t for another seventy-two miles.”

Her life was a scary mess and he was no help except to offer bathroom break info. Without a word, she grabbed her backpack and followed him across the parking lot, past a row of palm trees, to the brick building. Because she wasn’t all that certain he wouldn’t leave her stranded, she quickly did her business and waited for him outside on a bench next to a big map of Florida behind Plexiglas. Reaching into her backpack, she pulled out her cell and stared down at her blue toenail polish and rubber flip-flops as she dialed.

“Hi Malika,” she said when her friend from work picked up.

“Stella! Where are you?”

Maybe her life didn’t totally suck. Maybe Ricky had moved on. “About an hour or so north of Tampa.”

“What happened Thursday night? Ricky is looking for you.”

She guessed not and glanced around as if her former boss might jump out at her. “Why?” she asked, eyeing a family of tourists in matching Disney T-shirts. “What did he say?”

“It’s kind of hard to understand him because his jaw is wired shut and his face is black and blue.”

Stella gasped. “Oh no.” That’s why he’d sounded like he was speaking through gritted teeth. He had been.

“Yeah, and that creeper friend of his has his hand all bandaged up. Not the short fat one; the creeper without a thumb. Yuck!”

“Crap.”

“They’re asking everyone at the bar if we’ve seen you. Last night, they locked themselves up in Ricky’s office, and when Tina took them a bottle of Patron, she said they were watching security tapes from Thursday night.”

Oh no.

“They also want to know about some big dude in a black Escalade that you might have met at the bar on Back Door Betty Night. Did you get kidnapped by a drag queen? Should I call the cops?”

“No!” She raised a palm and covered her eyes. “I haven’t been kidnapped.” Her hand dropped to her lap and she watched Beau walk toward her. Definitely not a drag queen. Without question a big dude. “Ricky is a maniac. Stay away from him.”

“What happened?”

“The less you know, the better. I’m going on vacation for a while. I’ll call you when I get back. Don’t tell anyone you talked to me. Promise.”