The Lawman's Nanny Op (15 page)

Remaining perfectly still, he felt his arousal start in the crash of his heartbeat, the fever that seemed to sweep over him and the uncomfortable tightening of his khaki slacks.

As she reached the last of the buttons, she finally looked up at him as she pulled the shirt from his shoulders and allowed it to fall to the floor.

He couldn’t remain still another minute. He pulled her roughly against him and once again took her mouth with his. She tasted like half-remembered sin, like youth and desire. It was a taste he’d never forgotten, would never forget.

As the kiss continued he began to unfasten the buttons that ran down the front of her blouse. He began slowly but by the time he reached the last button his fingers were clumsy with haste.

The blouse fell away, leaving her in her bra. With her gaze still locked with his, she unzipped her white shorts and slid them down the length of her legs.

Both her panties and her bra were plain, no lace or frills, just sturdy white cotton that Caleb found sexier than anything he’d ever seen in his life.

“You’re so beautiful. You take my breath away,” he whispered.

A blush swept into her cheeks and she shook her head as if to negate his words. That had always been part of Portia’s charm, that she didn’t recognize just how beautiful she was.

As she got into the bed he took off his shoes, socks and slacks and then joined her. He took her into his arms, relishing his bare skin against her, but impatient with the underwear that kept them from being completely naked with each other.

No old memories of prom night intruded into his mind. He was firmly in the here and now and making love to Portia the woman, not Portia the inexperienced teenager.

As he kissed her again he wound his arms around her and unfastened her bra, eager to feel the weight of her breasts in his palms, taste her nipples as they pebbled with pleasure in his mouth.

He pulled the bra from her and slid his lips down the length of her neck. Her hands wound in his hair, fastening there and pulling slightly in anticipation of his mouth sliding down her body.

She whispered his name as his hands cupped her breasts and his tongue flicked at one of the erect nipples. She moved beneath him, twining her slender legs with his as he continued to tease and kiss first one nipple and then the other.

Her hands untangled from his hair and smoothed down the length of his back, sparking electric sizzles with each touch.

He was ready to take her, swollen and half-mindless with the need to plunge into her, but in the part of his mind that still worked rationally he knew he’d be cheating her by moving too fast.

“Caleb,” she whispered and he raised his head to look at her. “I want us naked,” she said, as if she’d read his mind, as if she knew his need.

“Me, too,” he said. He rolled away from her and tore off his briefs at the same time she removed her panties. When they came back together his body ached with the feel of her nakedness against his.

He slid his hand up her inner thigh, heard the slight gasp of pleasure that she released as his fingers found her heat.

She arched her hips up to meet him and, at the same time, wound her fingers around the hard length of him. Intense pleasure crashed through him as she moved her hand up and down. She seemed to know just how much pressure to use, what kind of touch evoked the sharpest response.

He wanted, needed to take her over the edge before he found his own release. He gently pushed her hand away from him so he focused completely on bringing her as much pleasure as possible.

As he continued to stroke her intimately, he felt the rising tension in her. Her breathing grew more rapid and she began to moan, the deep, throaty sound increasing his desire. Her legs tensed and she cried out his name as he brought her to climax.

Almost immediately he rolled away from her and fumbled in his nightstand drawer for a condom. He ripped the foil package with more force than necessary and rolled the protection into place.

She was ready for him as he eased between her thighs and entered her. She welcomed him by clutching his buttocks and pulling him deep within.

He closed his eyes and refused to move, afraid that if he did it would be over before it began. They fit together as perfectly as they had years ago and the scent of her, the familiar contours of her body against his, caused a wealth of emotions to crash through him, emotions that had nothing to do with the physical act itself.

He opened his eyes and looked down at her, surprised that her features swam as tears filled his eyes. She, too, had tears glittering in her eyes. He quickly closed his again and began to move his hips against her.

She moaned again and it was a sound that stole all thought from his mind. He stroked into her faster and faster and felt her tightening around him as she once again reached her peak.

As she cried out and shuddered, he climaxed, the force of it stealing every breath from his body. For a long moment they remained unmoving, gasping for breath, then he crashed to his back next to her, the only sound in the room their efforts to find a normal beat of their hearts.

“Wow,” she finally said.

“My sentiments exactly,” he replied. He closed his eyes for a moment, willing the emotions that had momentarily gripped him away.

He got out of the bed and padded into the bathroom and almost immediately was struck with a thousand kinds of regret.

He washed up and then stood in front of the mirror over the sink and stared at his reflection. “What the hell are you doing?” he asked the man in the mirror.

This was going to end badly. The emotions he felt for Portia scared the hell out of him. Portia was everything he desired and everything he refused to have in his life. Making love to her now had been one of the biggest mistakes of his life.

As always a knot of anger twisted in his gut. Twice he’d put his heart on the line for a woman and both times it had been trampled into the ground. He’d be a fool to put his heart out there again.

Caleb was a man meant to be alone and even though making love to Portia had been beyond wonderful, it didn’t change his mind.

He returned to the bedroom and was slightly disappointed that she hadn’t gotten dressed but rather remained naked in his bed. He grabbed his slacks from the floor as she sat up and clutched the sheet to her breasts.

“Caleb, we need to talk.”

“Why? Portia, what we just did was pretty stupid.” He pulled on his pants and refused to look at her, afraid that he would do something even more stupid.

“Funny, I don’t feel stupid,” she replied.

A wave of shame swept over him as he heard the faint tinge of hurt in her voice. He sat on the edge of the bed and looked at her. She looked incredibly hot even with the faint bruising around her throat and the red area on her jaw. “Sorry, I’m being a jerk.”

She smiled. “Yes, you are, but you get points for recognizing it.”

“I just don’t want you to make this into something bigger than it is,” he said and reached down to grab his shirt.

“Don’t worry, I’m not planning my wedding announcements. I don’t even know if I’ll be alive tomorrow. I don’t want to talk about the future, Caleb. I want to talk about the past.”

“Why? We can’t go back and change anything.” He tensed, wishing she would just leave it alone.

“You’re right, I can’t change anything, but I can tell you that I was wrong not to believe you. I was wrong not to trust you. I allowed gossip and innuendo to screw up my head.”

He hadn’t realized how much he’d wanted, needed to hear that from her until now. It was as if he’d carried a weight with him for the past ten years and her words finally banished it.

“That night that you were out of town for your grandfather’s funeral I went to the café to hang out with a bunch of kids. Jayme Cordell was there alone and I sat in a booth with her. It wasn’t a big deal. In fact, I spent the whole night telling her all about you, about how much I missed you and how I knew you were the right girl for me.”

He looked toward the window where the sun had disappeared. The forecast that morning had been for hot and humid and with a chance of late-afternoon thunderstorms, but the weather was the last thing on his mind as he gazed back at the woman he’d once loved with all his heart, with all his soul.

“It was nothing but innocent conversation and to tell the truth I think I bored her to death with all my talk about you. When I decided to head home she left the café, too. I walked her to her car and I guess enough people saw us leaving together that they got the wrong impression.”

“And I heard the gossip and thought the worst.” She frowned, the gesture doing nothing to detract from her loveliness. “It didn’t help that I had my mother pounding it into my brain that all men were alike, that all of them were cheaters. I heard the rumors and instantly believed them.”

She left the bed, magnificent in her nakedness, and crouched down in front of him. “I’m sorry, Caleb. I’m sorry that I hurt you, that I screwed things up between us. That’s what I wanted to tell you.”

He wanted to kiss her again. He wanted to take her back into his bed and make love to her all over again, with the weight of anger gone from his chest. But his head refused to allow him what his heart desired.

“Thank you for telling me that,” he said. “And now I need to go make some phone calls and see what we can do to catch the man who wants you dead.”

He didn’t know what she expected from him, but he could tell by her expression that this wasn’t it. She gracefully rose to her feet and moved away from him.

He left the room without a backward glance.

A rumble of thunder accompanied Portia as she left the guest room after she’d showered and dressed. Caleb was on the phone in the kitchen and she curled up on the sofa with only her thoughts as company and her cell phone in her hand.

She needed to call her mother. It was possible that the story of the break-in at Portia’s house had made its way around the town. Doris would be worried if she couldn’t get hold of her daughter.

She punched in the number that would connect her to her mother and steeled herself for the conversation to come. “Hi, Mom,” she said when Doris answered.

“I was wondering when I was going to hear from you,” Doris said. “I heard there was trouble at your place last night. Where are you now?”

“I’m staying with Caleb. He’ll keep me safe from whoever is after me.”

There was a long pause. “And who is keeping you safe from that womanizing man?”

With her heart still filled with the lovemaking she and Caleb had just shared, with her head still reeling from the brief discussion they’d had, Doris’s words aggravated Portia to the breaking point.

“Stop it, Mom,” she exclaimed with a harsh tone. “If you can’t say anything nice, then just don’t talk. I’m sorry Dad left you years ago and I’m sorry you never got over it, but that doesn’t mean that all men are bad. Your bitterness has driven everyone out of your life except me, and if you continue, you’ll end up driving me away, too.”

“I didn’t raise you to talk to me that way,” Doris said, but her voice was filled with more hurt than anger.

Portia drew a deep, steadying breath. “I love you, Mom, but I won’t let you beat up on Caleb or any other man I might date. I won’t let you ruin what happiness I might find with your bitterness.”

“I love you, too, Portia. I just don’t want you to get hurt. I don’t want you to go through what I did.”

“I won’t, Mom. Oh, I might get hurt, but I’ll never allow any heartbreak to keep me from seeking happiness again.” She softened her voice. “You have to let it go. You have to let your bitterness go, Mom.”

There was another long silence. “I’ll think about what you said,” Doris said grudgingly. “Although after all these years I’m not sure I know how to begin to do that.”

“I just wanted to let you know that I’m all right, that I love you and I’ll talk to you later.” Portia hung up as Caleb came into the room.

“Everything all right?” he asked.

“Yes, I was just checking in with my mother. I knew she’d be worried.”

Caleb sat on the opposite end of the sofa from her. “I checked in with Sam McCain. He’s been sitting on the Stemple place since we left earlier but there’s been no sign of Dale. When Sam’s shift is over Dan Walker is going to take over and continue surveillance.”

“Maybe he’s staying someplace else around town,” she said. “Maybe he has a friend or a relative we don’t know about.”

“It’s possible, but I still think he’s been staying at his parents’ place. Art acted shady, like a man who was hiding something, and I know I smelled cigarette smoke.”

“But we still can’t be a hundred percent sure it’s Dale who is after me,” she said.

“True, but it doesn’t matter who it is, I just want them under arrest.” A rumble of thunder sounded overhead and the room got increasingly darker. Caleb got up from the sofa and went to the window. “Going to storm,” he said.

“We could use some rain.” She watched him as he remained staring outside. His shoulders were rigidly straight with tension and when he’d come out of the kitchen his eyes had held a guarded expression that brooked no intrusion.

Her heart expanded with an emotion she’d tried to deny, but in that moment she was faced with the truth. She was still as deeply, as profoundly in love with him as she had been years ago.

The knowledge didn’t surprise her; it only sent a small edge of pain through her.

She’d hoped that by making love with him again, by telling him that she’d made a mistake before, that somehow he’d profess his love for her, but that hadn’t happened. The only thing it had managed to do was broaden the distance between them.

There were moments she felt his love, saw it shining from his unguarded eyes, felt it in his simplest touch, but there was also an inexplicable darkness, an anger in him that she didn’t understand.

“Tell me about Laura,” she said.

He turned from the window and looked at her, the dark shutters in his eyes firmly in place. “Why do you want to know about her?”

“Because she’s a part of your past. Because I’m curious.”