The Promise He Made Her (19 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

“O
KAY
?” S
AM
NODDED
as he repeated the word, feeling...not good. What in hell did “okay” mean? “Okay, I can have sex with you? Or it's okay that I want to? Okay, it's out in the open now? Okay, you heard me? Okay, am I done yet so you can close the door and get back to whatever it was you were doing?”

And what had she been doing? She was still dressed, down to the two-inch pumps she'd worn to work that morning. Had anyone ever told her what those shoes did to her calves? How they tightened the muscles and made him want to run his hands along them?

Great...he was almost forty years old and developing a calf fetish. Wouldn't Dad be proud of him now.

“Are you done?”

Shifting his weight from foot to foot, Sam wondered how he'd gone from a sane and in control detective to swirling in a funnel cloud in the space of fifteen minutes. He also wondered how in the hell to get out in one piece.

With her in one piece.

The case in one piece.

And no more guilt on his shoulders.

He had to be honest with her. He'd made a promise he hadn't kept. To an abused woman who'd fought hard to get her life back.

“No, I'm not done,” he said, calmer now. “Although I do apologize for...” What? Speaking with the passion she aroused in him? Being honest enough to let her know how much she was getting to him?

Other than his ex-wife, he'd never had a woman living under his roof before...

“Do you mind if I sit down?” she asked him. “My feet are killing me.” As though unaware of the danger, Bloom walked into the room, kicked off her shoes and sat on the edge of her bed.

His bed. He'd bought that mattress. Those sheets. And the comforter, too, though he'd never slept on it. He'd washed it once. The day he'd taken it out of the...the day he'd brought her to... Now he couldn't think straight.

“The case first,” he said, leaning his shoulder on the doorway. He wanted to finish the beer he'd yet to start. Determined it would be best to wait until he was through there.

Bloom listened without interruption as he told her about her young patient's feeling that their female guard imposter could be her mother-in-law. The rest, the part about the girl only ever having seen the couple one time, she'd already known. “And you knew they'd only been married a few weeks?” he asked.

She confirmed that, too.

“He'd been hitting her before they got married.”

Bloom couldn't say either way. But he knew he was right. Though the girl had never called the police, he was now in possession of the medical records that showed more than a year's worth of “accidents.”

“He started hitting her when she got pregnant,” he said now. “And she stayed with him because she had nowhere else to go. She was young and pregnant and...” A foster kid. He got the picture.

“We'll get them, Bloom. She and her baby will be safe.”

He could have bitten off his tongue the second he heard the words. It didn't take her silent nod to tell him he'd just made another promise that came with no guarantee. When had he started thinking he was the man who could leap tall buildings in a single bound?

“My experience with this sort of thing tells me that we have an excellent chance of bringing them in and closing this case quite soon.”

As difficult as the words were, they were worth far more than the effort it had taken to say them when she smiled.

“Thank you.”

He thought about Freelander. About ten-year-old boys.

And didn't want to get her hopes up. He was sure. But he still only had the word of gang members. And a class roster. When he had proof, he'd tell her what he knew.

“So...I'm struggling with this whole sex thing,” he said.

“I know.”

She knew. The response raised about the same reaction in him as her “okay.” Of course she knew. He'd just told her less than five minutes ago.

“But you don't want me to move out.”

“Of course not. This is your home.”

“You're not leaving...”

She held up a hand. “I have no intention of leaving, Sam. I'm not stupid. My house was just broken into. They've been to my office. For all we know, they know about this place, too, but at least here I'm...protected.”

By him. And the fact that his house was a mile up from the road, behind an unscaleable iron fence, with two armed guards on the premises.

“So...what do you suggest we do?” She was the counselor. And, incidentally, the one who'd made everything so much worse when she'd kissed him the night before.

“Talk,” she said, patting the bed beside her. “We talk.”

He looked at her. At his bed. And didn't feel like talking. At all.

But he pushed away from the doorjamb and moved slowly toward her. Rested his ass several inches up the bed from her and dangled his beer bottle between his knees.

“What I know is that the best way to deal with a difficult situation is to confront it.”

She wanted him to confront it. He'd confront it, all right. Beneath a cold shower. Only that wasn't working. Not for long enough.

“It's a little...tricky...for me because I have to deal with the situation myself. I can't put myself in your shoes or try to imagine what you might or might not do.”

Wait a minute. Wait just a damned minute. “You're in the same boat?” he asked her.

His loafers were fascinating. He couldn't look away from the stitching on the toes. Didn't trust himself to catch a glimpse of her in his peripheral vision.

So much for the tough cop he'd been most of his life.

This woman practically had him on his knees. Using his own...weapon...against him.

No. That wasn't right. She wasn't using anything. And she wasn't against him. She was in the boat with him.

“So...we're agreed that we both have a supreme desire to see the other naked.”

The words were as erotic as his late-night thoughts had been. Only worse because she was actually present. Hearing them with him.

“Yes.”

Oh, God. He sure as hell hoped she knew what she was doing with this whole confronting thing. So far, for him, it wasn't helping matters any.

“And I think it's pretty clear that we both know that for us to actually see each other naked, or in any way engage in a physical encounter, would not be good.” Her running act earlier had confirmed that she shared his opinion.

“Correct. It would absolutely be wrong.”

Right. So, he was glad they'd had this talk, and...

“It would help if we talk about the reasons why it's wrong,” she said before he could get out of there. “Addressing them will help to solidify them in our minds. Make them more real. If we understand them, and truly agree that they're valid, their presence will build a wall between desire and action.”

He wasn't so sure about that. But she was the professional on this one. And sounded a hell of lot more in control that he felt.

If not for the way her hands were shaking, he'd think she wasn't affected at all.

“I'll go first,” he offered. “And state the obvious. I can't promise you more than a one-night stand, and you aren't a one-night stand type of woman.”

“No, I'm not. And it is clear that, with you, the job comes first.”

“I've already made you a promise I couldn't possibly keep. If I have sex with you, knowing that you need more than just a night of sex, I'm making another promise I can't keep. And I can't live with that.” It might have come out better if he'd actually had some of the beer he'd opened.

But he was getting the hang of this. Was on a roll.

“And you have...daddy issues.”

She stiffened. Noticeably so. Maybe there was a limit to the amount of honesty required in this discussion. But if he pissed her off, and she wouldn't let him near her...that plan could work, too.

He took a sip of his beer. Getting into the spirit of things. “I don't mean that as any kind of slur on your father, Bloom,” he clarified before he went on. Just in case.

“I know that. You're not the type of guy who'd go for the kill with innuendo.”

No, he just pulled his revolver out of his holster and shot. He'd killed a man, once. Before that man had shot the child he'd been holding hostage.

“But you do seem to have a thing for older men,” he told her. “Freelander's fifteen years older than you are.”

“I'm not denying your assertion,” she said, picking at the foiled label wrapped around the top of her bottle. “I've already come to see the truth of that for myself. I know that my subconscious need to feel the safety a child feels from a parent, that unconditional and protective love, made me vulnerable to Kenneth's manipulation.”

“And I'm older than you and currently in a position of authority in your life.” That was just a fact.

“Okay, but I didn't know that when I first started to feel...”

She broke off just when things were getting interesting. But if she thought it was for the best that she stop, it probably was.

“My strong reactions to you are most likely a simple case of transference mixed with a bit of childish hero worship,” she said. “It's not uncommon for a patient to think he or she is falling in love with his or her therapist, for example. Or for someone who is being protected to fall in love with his or her protector.”

Whoa
. They weren't talking about love here. This was a sex thing. Pure and simple.

“And the same holds true for sexual attraction,” she was saying, as if she'd read his mind. He started to breathe again.

“I can see that,” he said. He'd add her point to his list of “why nots.”

“You're an adrenaline junkie,” she said next. “I crave peace.”

He didn't have a thing against peace. But a world with crime and criminals wasn't a peaceful one...

“I can't disagree with you there.”

“I also feel, as of now, that my life is better lived without a man in it. I actually didn't think I was capable of feeling sexual desire at all,” she said. He looked at her then, against his better judgment. Because her tone had been so...uncharacteristically filled with emotion. “After the things Ken made me do...it wasn't just the actual actions, it was being forced to do them... Sometimes the result of that kind of abuse is...a woman's inability to feel sexual desire.”

“You really thought he'd stolen your ability to know sexual pleasure ever again?”

She nodded. “But it was okay,” she told him, meeting his gaze. He wondered if she knew how wide-eyed and innocent she looked to him. How naive. This woman who was ten times smarter than he was.

And had a way of making him feel so smart.

“I don't trust myself enough to enter an intimate relationship, anyway,” she said. “I don't know that I'll ever be ready. I don't know that I'll ever want to give up control of self to another...ever...again.” The wine bottle slipped and she almost dropped it.

He took it and set it on the nightstand beside his beer bottle. “Isn't a healthy relationship one in which neither party gives up self, but rather, both selves contribute to a third whole?” Or something like that. His ex-wife had espoused marital counseling tips at him so often he pretty much knew them all.

He'd listened the first couple of times they'd gone to counseling, too. Hoping he could somehow make it all work. Could find a way to be as committed to her as he was to his job.

“Of course,” she told him. Then added, “But not everyone starts out whole,” she told him. “I have a tendency to give up self in order to please.”

“But if you're with the right guy, wouldn't that mean he'd have a tendency to demand autonomy from you even while he's loving you?”

Why in the hell was he fighting her on this? Like he was trying to convince her to go start a relationship with someone else.

Maybe he was. Because he wanted her happy. And safe from him.

“In a perfect world,” Bloom said, confidence fueling her voice again. “Anyway, I think we have a list solid enough to build a fortress between us.”

She didn't need to sound quite so cheerful about it. But... “I agree.” He felt as certain as he had all along that he was wrong for her. That he couldn't sleep with her.

“I'm sorry I can't sleep with you,” she told him.

Not nearly as sorry as he was. He didn't tell her so. Because he wasn't feeling anywhere near as together as she sounded.

“But at least something good's come out of all of this.”

He looked for it. Couldn't find it. “What?”

“I'm not as damaged as I thought. I know I can feel sexual desire.” She was smiling. A little crookedly. And the twitch at the corner of her mouth finally gave her away to him.

She wasn't any more okay than he was. She was just far more skilled at pushing aside her own feelings while she tended to others. Her cheerfulness was for his benefit.

If he was going to be a friend to her...and he wanted—badly—to be that, at least, it would require her autonomy.

“Tell me what you were just thinking,” he said. “Honestly, not the version you're giving so that this is easier on me...”

“I'm not...” She stopped. “Yes, I am.”

He waited.

“I was thinking that...I shouldn't get too excited about feeling sexual desire. Not until I know I can maintain the feeling through sexual interaction and actually experience an orgasm.”

Her entire being changed. Her expression filled with he didn't know what. While his body surged with a desire so intense it knocked all thought from his mind.

“So I was thinking, you're safe. You want sex with me, but don't want a relationship, and I just want to know whether or not I'm capable of a normal sexual encounter. We could both get what we want with neither of us being in danger of hurting the other. Or taking advantage of the other.”