The Drake House (6 page)

She had her hair pinned up in some sort of twist and he itched to pull it down. Recalling the way it fell around her face last week at her house, he envisioned himself grabbing hold of a handful of it and hauling her to him, roaming his tongue over that long neck, and plunging into her on the carpet right here. It was easier, so much easier, to dismiss her when she wore that flannel and hid everything underneath. When she aggravated him with sardonic and unamused smiles.

“You moved here from Milwaukee, right?” she asked, snapping him back.

He cleared his throat as she bit into her sweet and sour chicken. “Yes,” he uttered.

She raised her eyebrows and glared at him through impatient brown eyes. “Social butterfly, aren’t you,” she said flatly. “Why?”

“Why what?”

Grinning fully, she shook her head and rolled those eyes. “Why did you move?”

He thought about avoiding her question, but decided against it. “I shot a perp. They don’t prepare you in the academy for how you feel after shooting someone. I figured I wouldn’t have much opportunity to draw my weapon here.” It was the half-truth, but it’s all she needed to know for now. It was already more than he revealed to anyone outside the force.

She looked at him with an unreadable expression. “You had to kill?”

He answered her expression with one of his own. “It was him or my partner. I had less than a second to choose him.”

Less than a second to choose Mitch over Johnny.
And Johnny’s eyes, staring into his own with shock and betrayal as blood gushed from the hole in his chest, was enough for Nick to resign and bolt. Enough to leave him close to an empty shell of a man.

Her look was unwavering and long-lived. After several moments, she ever so slightly drew her brows together, her eyes showing a trace of sadness. “That must’ve been hard.”

You have no idea
. “It was my job.”

Slowly, she nodded her head, concluding he said an adequate amount and she had heard enough for now. She peered around the room and settled her gaze back to him. “So when does the furniture come?”

Nick focused on now, drawing back to this time and place and not that dark alley a year ago. “Next week,” he mumbled, tracing a finger over her cheek.

He hadn’t even realized he’d done it until she edged back, eyes widely surprised. He decided on another approach. He had to touch her. Around her, colors were more vivid, breaking up his bleak world. He couldn’t smell or taste, but he wanted to know if he could feel. If he could feel some pleasure without pain, maybe there was hope for him yet. Gripping a napkin, he hesitantly brought it to the corner of her mouth to dab at a spot that wasn’t there.

Her tongue darted out and slid over her lip where the napkin touched her. Eyes drawn to the movement, he watched her, carefully masking and banking his want, waiting for the pain to come.

He was a whisper from her face, close enough to breathe in her light fruity scent. Peaches, maybe?

Smell
. He could smell her! It had been a year since he could taste anything, smell anything. Unsure whether this was a good or bad sign, he froze. In a way, it was so rewarding he nearly leapt from the floor.

But then the pain came, almost sharp enough to make him cry out. A searing, sharp hot stab in his gut that reminded him of the monster he was. How dare he feel a measure of happiness? How dare he drag her into his mess?

Trisha must have interpreted his expression all wrong. She edged back and said, “Look, I’m sorry Nancy got involved. It’s obvious you don’t want to do this, Nick.”

As she rose from the floor, he reached out, grasping her hand. He had to make her understand it wasn’t that he didn’t
want
to this, it was that he
couldn’t
. “It’s not you—”

She jerked her hand from his and stepped back, looking even more thoroughly insulted. “Now you’re feeding me lines?” She yanked her coat from the hook.

“It’s not a line.”

She laughed. Bitterly. “Really?”

God, she could drive him mad with lust and make him want to throttle her in the course of minutes. “Really,” he ground out. “I don’t do lines.” She turned to leave, and if he didn’t come out with the truth, at least part of it, then she was just going to be one more of his victims. He couldn’t have that on his conscience. It was crowded as it was.

She already had her coat on and the front door open before he said, “I’m broken, Trish.”

She turned, confused, and shut the door. “Broken, huh? Like a record.”

Exactly, because records couldn’t be fixed. “Since the shooting in Milwaukee, I haven’t been right, haven’t been normal. I can’t feel pleasure without pain. I see very few things in color, and when I do, they’re diluted. I can’t smell the rain or taste my gum. So, ‘it’s not you’ isn’t a line to feed you. It’s the truth.”

She was staring at him with a cross between disbelieving and wanting to believe. He was expecting her to call him a freak and leave. Demand he go on meds and be locked in a padded cell. What he wasn’t expecting was for her to take her coat off, hang it on the hook by the door, and sit down in front of the crates as if the past five minutes hadn’t happened.

Swallowing, she mumbled, “You haven’t eaten.”

He sat down next to her, a breath away. Jaw twitching, he answered, “I’m not hungry.”
Not for food anyway
. It had been awhile since he felt something other than self-contempt. He wanted her mouth on his. And so did she if her heavy lids were any indication.

So he eased back. Swiftly. He watched her eyes grow wide again, pissed off for not kissing her. He liked her better with fire in her eyes.

“Where do your parents live?” he asked, needing to separate himself from the heat between them.

“Florida. Near Miami. They left the business to me and retired.”

Picking up his egg roll, he asked, “How long ago?”

“Almost nine years.”

“Any siblings?”

Her eyes narrowed to slits. “No. I’m an only child and adopted. Mom and Dad were older when they decided to adopt.” She studied him when he didn’t respond. “What about you? Where is your family?”

“My parents are in Milwaukee. Dad’s a retired truck driver and Mom was a librarian before retiring.”

“Siblings?” she asked, taking another bite.

He’d known the question was coming, but his heart rate kicked anyway. “A sister in Milwaukee.”

She grinned, surprising him. “Does she have those green eyes and long, dark lashes too?”

Bethany flittered to mind, and he shook his head. “No, she looks like Mom. Red hair and blue eyes.”

“Are you close?”

The question seemed harmless, just two strangers trying to know each other, but it wasn’t. And there’s no logical way to answer it, so he shrugged.

Reaching for a fortune cookie, he cracked it open, wanting something to distract from the conversation.

“You are adventurous and exciting,” he read from the fortune.

“In bed,” she replied, her grin wicked. “When reading a fortune cookie you have to say
in bed
afterward. It makes it more interesting.”

Completely satisfied with herself, she cracked her cookie open as he drank deeply from his water bottle. “Your dangerous nature can get you into trouble,” she read.

He choked on his water and recapped his bottle while coughing violently. Clearing his throat not so charmingly, he whispered in a hoarse tone, “In bed.”

****

Trisha slipped quietly through the front door and dropped her keys on the hall table. She pulled off her shoes and headed into the living room.

She stopped short at discovering her dad in a chair with an unopened book in his hands. Smiling, she walked over and sat by his feet to set her head in his lap, just as they did when she was young. Before bed, she’d read to him from one of her storybooks and he’d brush her hair.

“Are you pretending to not wait up for me?”

Chuckling, he pulled the bobby pins from her hair. “Yes. Did you have fun?”

“I guess. Nick’s okay,” she mumbled, the sleepiness sneaking through her voice.

“Nancy said he’s got a crush on you. He seemed decent enough to me.” He placed the last of her hairpins on the table next to him.

She uttered an exaggerated grunt. “Adults don’t get crushes, Dad.”

He paused. “When did the nightmares kick up again?”

“A couple weeks ago.” She sighed. Lifting her head, she dropped her chin on his knee and searched his eyes. “You can tell, huh?”

“You’re easier to read than a book. You don’t hide your guilt very well.”

“I don’t think it’s guilt. I’m afraid.”

“Of what?”

“They’re not the same…like they were before.” His expression went from concern to fear in a blink. She backtracked to explain. “As long as I can remember, the dreams were the same. But now, I don’t know, it’s like a memory instead. Is that stupid?”

“No,” he answered and touched her chin with his thumb. “What do you remember?”

She shrugged a shoulder. “I was running down that path by the tree line and I fell. This woman was there. She was frightening. I couldn’t see her face. I woke up when she reached for me.”

His other hand stopped short in motion above her head. Though he was looking straight at her, he wasn’t in the same room with her. He wasn’t even her father. A cold trickle of beaded sweat rolled down her back.

“You did fall,” he said.

“What,” she said, straightening. “What do you mean?”

He rubbed a hand over his chin. “We heard you screaming this God-awful shriek and couldn’t find you.” He cleared his throat and stared into nothing again. “The whole town was looking for you. They had the Madison Police Department up here, too. We thought you’d been kidnapped. The scream,” he shuddered, “the scream was bad enough. But when you stopped…”

His hands were ice cold when she reached for them. “Oh, Dad, that must have been terrible. But I was okay, just a scratched knee, right?”

He jerked his head back to her from the nothing he was looking into and widened his eyes. His hands flexed in hers and gripped them so tight she cried out. “Don’t speak of this anymore, Trisha. I mean it. You understand? Keep this between us. It was a scraped knee a long time ago.”

“You’re scaring me…”

He let go. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled. He scrubbed his hands over his face. His features now calm, he smiled like he had a thousand times before and stroked her cheek with his thumb. “The dreams are just a way to remember. You were fine, and we’ll let it go now.”

She rose and headed for the stairs, completely shaken. “Night, Dad.”

Trisha sank onto her bed and wrung her hands. Her dad, usually sweet and funny, had just stopped her heart mid-beat. The look in his eyes, pure fear, had jarred her. What was that about? What could be so frightening about a scraped knee?

Taking a deep breath, she stood to undress, focusing instead on her date. She wasn’t accustomed to dating, finding it useless and a waste of time. She wasn’t prudish or anything, but it had been awhile. Romance and gushy verses were an ineffective, futile means to end up in bed, and she much preferred getting right to it.

So when Nick Mackey showed up at her door earlier for their supposed date, she didn’t know what to expect. She wasn’t even so certain she wanted Nick in bed, and that their date was one gigantic, monumental lapse in better judgment. On the occasion she did take a lover, guys like Nick weren’t the sort who attracted her. So why was he different?

The man had a speech deficit. He was incapable of conversation and when he did talk he said inappropriate, odd things like,
you should smile at me more often
. He was rude, arrogant and, despite what Nancy said, too good looking.

What he said about the shooting though really got to her. It explained a lot about him and why he seemed so distant.

Oh man, that almost kiss tonight… It hadn’t taken her long to bounce back, but for a moment she remembered she was a woman again. The arrogance of him, though! Thought he was irresistible, did he? She wasn’t charmed. She didn’t feel a thing.

And she was totally lying to herself.

Nick Mackey wasn’t what she was expecting at all. There was heat between them, no doubt. And a deeper part of himself he didn’t allow to the surface. She couldn’t help but be interested in exploring that.

Walking to the window, she reached for the drape cord and paused. In the barren spot, where the tree had been cut down a week before, a shadow moved. The row before it was partially blocking her view, but the shadow wasn’t from the moonlit trees.

She put a hand to her chest to still her heart and squinted through the darkness. When the shadow moved again, she gasped. A man stepped out from behind the row, his arms still by his side. He was one big black blur. She couldn’t even get a body type.

But he was looking right at her. At the house. She stared, wondering if it was one of her men, but her gut said no. One of her workers wouldn’t stand in the dark staring at the house. Her window. At her.

He tilted his head, raised his arm, and pointed to the empty spot where the tree once was. Slowly, his arm came around until he was pointing at her.

Blood froze in her veins. Her hands fisted around the drape cord.

After staring for several more seconds, she snapped out of her haze and reached for the phone.

****

Nick attributed his lack of sleep to the air mattress. He would thank the powers that be when the moving truck pulled into his driveway on Monday. Shifting again on his side in the dark, he groaned when that position too was not satisfying. Then again, it’s not as if he’d slept much in the past year. One should be used to it by now.

It’d been two hours since he took Miss Trisha Eaton home. Two long hours. She hadn’t left his mind since. Hadn’t he come here for quiet? Instead he brought more unwanted trouble in the form of a female. A female who, after only seeing her a couple of times, was making him feel something. And what was it about her that did this to him? He’d seen shrinks, tried antidepressants. Hell, he’d tried everything to get back to even a semi-normal existence. But then guilt set in, and with it came the pain. In truth, he didn’t deserve to be normal again.