Trial by Fire (8 page)

He worked his hands under the edge of her shirt, skimmed her ribs, wondering if she’d protest. Ready to back off if she did. She sighed instead, melted into him, and he increased the pressure. Swept his tongue past the seam of her lips, into her moist heat. Tasting, exploring as she did the same, tangling her tongue with his.

Oh, God, so good. So right. They were sealed together now from head to toe, Kat playing with the thick hair at his nape as they drank one another. Two people dying of thirst for too long.

So much soft woman pressed against his starving body. Full breasts and lush hips. Spreading his legs, he cupped her bottom with his big hands, pulled her in, seated her against his hard length as intimately as possible. At least part of his fantasy came true. Yeah, she was everything a woman should be.
Mine
.

His body ignited, his rigid shaft desperate to be inside Kat to the point of pain. To be whole, no longer fractured and alone in a base act of sex. To feel filled afterward, rather than empty. And something else he couldn’t name, elusive and frightening. Enough to finally cause him to break the kiss and hold her close, breathing as though he’d run the training course in record time.

“Wow.” She collapsed against his chest.

His laugh emerged as a wheeze. “My thoughts exactly, sweetheart. If I don’t stop now, the good citizens of Cheatham County are going to see more of nature than they expected.”

“Mmm. Now I know the truth. You’re a very bad boy under that gentlemanly exterior, Lieutenant. I like. A lot.”

His inner bad boy stood up and cheered. Along with his outer one. “Have mercy—you’re killing me here. I still have to go home later to a cold, empty house. Wait.” He frowned. “I wasn’t hinting for you to come home with me. Not that I don’t want to—I mean, it’s obvious. . . .”

Nice move, idiot.

Putting him out of his misery, Kat dimpled, giving him a quick kiss before pulling away and gesturing to the sack. “Deli sandwiches, huh? I’m starved!”

Howard blinked in amazement. Any of the women he’d been with would’ve gotten all huffy and offended for one reason or another, accusing him of either not wanting her or of moving too fast. Lose-lose, whatever he said or did. Not his Kat. She seemed to understand exactly what he’d been trying to say. Even if he didn’t.

“Me, too.” Shrugging off his denim jacket, he knelt and spread the material on the ground. “Here you go, have a seat.”

“Oh, no, I don’t want to ruin your nice jacket.”

“You won’t. Sit,” he ordered, stretching out next to her spot. For a second, she looked ready to protest, then sat.

“Okay, thanks.” She shot a pointed look at his chest. “I thought coffee was your only vice. Smoker?”

“What?” Looking down at himself, he patted the tube-shaped bulge in the front pocket of his T-shirt and grinned at what she must’ve thought was a lighter. He plucked out a roll of candy. “Only if you can smoke Pez. Want one?”

“Ha! A grown man who still eats Pez candy can’t tease me for using kid words like ‘dork,’ ” she informed him smugly, peeling two off the roll he offered.

His lips twitched. “My other vice. I’m an addict; carry them everywhere I go.” Tucking the candy back in his pocket, Howard grabbed the sack and dug inside, fishing out four six-inch subs, four small packages of potato chips, and two bottled waters. “Ham or turkey? I got two of each.”

“Turkey’s fine—good Lord! Who’s going to eat all that food?”

He grinned at her. “Hey, I’m a growing boy. Gotta have fuel to deal with whatever life throws at me.”

“And you work out a lot.” Her eyes raked his body with appreciation. “How often?”

“Pretty much every night,” he said, handing her a turkey sub. Then realized he’d blundered.

“At night?” Kat glanced at him, curious, as she peeled the plastic wrap from her sandwich. “Don’t most people go to the gym in the morning or during the day?”

Setting Kat’s chips and water bottle on the jacket next to her, he scrambled to come up with a plausible reason for his odd schedule . . . other than the whole whacked-out truth. “I work twenty-four hours on shift, forty-eight off. During the days I’m on, we’re pretty busy, so it’s easier to work out in the evenings when things are slower. At home, I have equipment in one of the spare bedrooms, so I can hit the mats whenever I want. Or I can go to my health club for a change of scenery. Easier just to stick with my routine, though.”

Not exactly a lie. Still, it made him sound like sort of a fitness fanatic, one of those pretty boys who spent hours obsessing about staying buff, when nothing could be farther from the truth.

Problem was, the truth led right back down the dark and dangerous tunnel he’d been running from his entire life. And getting close to any one person meant sharing a nightmare not even he could fully understand—assuming he wanted to understand, which he didn’t.

“Good for you. I tried an exercise plan, three days a week for about six months. Weights, jogging, the whole deal. Finally gave up the ghost.” She opened her chips and took a bite of her sandwich.

“Yeah? How come?” Ravenous, he followed suit, glad to have dodged a bullet.

“Didn’t make a difference,” she said, chewing thoughtfully. “I can drop pounds, but I can’t change my body shape. I can be dry and round or sweaty and round. I don’t like to sweat, end of story.”

Uh-oh. Discussing a woman’s weight wasn’t a bullet. More like a rocket launcher.

Aimed at a man’s balls.

Shrugging, he said, “You don’t have to sweat to stay in shape. Something simple as a daily walk will do, especially for you.”

Arching a tawny brow, she eyed him in suspicion. “Yeah, why’s that?”

“Because you already look great.” Like the railroad spike in his jeans hadn’t given away his opinion. “But walking is good for your cardiovascular health, not to mention lowering stress levels.” God, he sounded like a pinhead.

“Good point. I propose we test the theory after we eat. Up for a hike later?” She took another bite.

“You bet.”

They ate in companionable silence for a few minutes, soaking in the gorgeous afternoon. The lazy Cumberland was smooth as glass, not a barge in sight, though one could appear around the bend at any moment. A water bird piped along the bank, spindly legs dancing, long beak flashing in and out of the mud. Howard thought he’d never seen a day so fine, enjoyed a meal so tasty.

And he knew the woman at his side was the reason.

She gestured to his left cheekbone. “How’d you get the scar?”

“A ninety-three-year-old lady with a golf club didn’t take too kindly to being made to leave her burning apartment with her kitty still inside.” He gave her a sheepish grin.

Kat’s eyes rounded. “Oh, my gosh! What happened? ”

“Twelve stitches.”

“No, to the cat!”

He rolled his eyes. “Rescued the darned thing.”

“Good. So, you’ve lived in Sugarland since you were four?” Kat prompted, popping a chip into her mouth.

Howard tensed, wishing he hadn’t mentioned being adopted. Playing
This Is Your Life
, at least with his own, had never been his bag. “Yeah.” He braced himself, knowing what was next.

“And before that?”

“I lived in a run-down shack on the other side of Clarksville, or so I’ve been told.”

“You don’t remember?” Sympathy laced her soft voice.

“Not much.”

Unless you counted the rotted boards of the front porch steps, the old mongrel that used to slink underneath to take refuge. The stench of beer and his father’s unwashed body, the boiling anger permeating the rank air like a terminal sickness. His father’s bellows of rage, his mother’s screams. The sting of the razor strap across his thin back.

“My mother loved her garden more than anyplace else,” he said instead, his throat gone tight. “She’d spend hours out in the sunshine, and I remember how beautiful she looked kneeling in the dirt, poking seeds into thumb-sized holes. She had long brown hair the same color as mine, but past her shoulders. And when she laughed . . . the whole world lit up.”

“She sounds wonderful.”

Oh, God. A bolt of old pain and anger sliced through his chest. “She was.”
Before she left me to a monster.

“What happened?”

His appetite vanished and he wrapped the uneaten half of his second sandwich in the plastic. “One day she left and didn’t come back. I don’t imagine anybody blamed her, from what little I remember about my father. He had a mean streak as long and wide as the Cumberland.”

“Your father was abusive?”

“Yeah.” The pity and disgust on Kat’s sweet face was almost more than he could stand.

“And nobody blamed her for leaving?” she asked softly. “Not even the son who loved her so much?”

She worked with young children every day of the week, and he didn’t have to tell her how emotionally devastating it had been for a boy to be discarded like an old shoe by the person he adored most. How much the knowledge hurt decades later, despite the healing magic of time.

He shrugged. “I was a kid. I got over it.”

From her knowing expression, Kat didn’t believe that any more than he did. Silence stretched between them, broken only by the laughter and whoops of the party downstream, as she waited for him to continue.

“Anyway, the night my mom left town, my father ditched me in the woods between here and Clarksville, then obliged everyone by crashing his truck into a tree and burning to death. Since I had no other family, I became a ward of the state until Bentley and Georgie rescued me.”

After he’d recovered from the final, severe beating his father had dished out before dumping him like so much trash.

“Did anyone try to find your mother?”

“I’m sure the authorities did, otherwise the adoption couldn’t have legally taken place. I believe the correct term is ‘child abandonment.’ ”

Kat hesitated, looking uncertain whether to ask the next logical question. “Have
you
searched for her?”

“What for? If the lady wants to see me, she can find me. It’s not like I’ve gone far.” His answer came out harsher than he intended, and he cringed.

Patting his shoulder, she didn’t appear to notice. “Oh, Howard. How horrible all of that must’ve been for you, especially that last night.”

Taking her hand, he gave her a reassuring smile. “I don’t actually remember that part.” But recalling the nightmare, a niggling part of him wasn’t sure.

“Thank God!” She squeezed his hand, green eyes luminous.

“Yeah. What I know is based on evidence the sheriff’s department pieced together and eventually passed on to the Mitchells. From what Bentley told me years later, the cops were a constant presence at my old place. Nobody in the county was surprised about the blowout the night my mother left.”

“This is none of my business and I won’t take it personally if you don’t want to answer, but . . . why is your last name different from your adoptive parents’?”

Howard looked away, wondering how she’d managed to locate and poke at every painful sore in his life in record time. Except for Sean, his brothers had never asked him outright, and he’d never offered to share. Then again, he’d never felt compelled to come clean on the subject before. With Kat, everything was different. She made him want to be . . . more. He saw no reason he shouldn’t open up for her, just a tiny bit.

“When Bentley and Georgie took me home, I was traumatized,” he said quietly. “No matter how they loved and nurtured me, tried to heal my wounds, I remained withdrawn. I didn’t speak for months, and when I finally started to respond, they thought it best not to push me too hard on the ‘Call us Mommy and Daddy’ thing. For a while, at least.”

“Makes sense. You weren’t a baby anymore, and you needed a period of adjustment.”

“And I came around, eventually, after we traveled the mother of all rough roads together. But by the time we bonded, they were Bentley and Georgie to me, permanently. They decided to leave the decision to me whether or not I’d take the Mitchell name when I turned eighteen. Of course, as a teenager, I was full of myself, determined to be my own man. I went to court and legally dropped my last name, period. From Howard Paxton Whitlaw, Howard Paxton was reborn.”

The first and last time he’d ever hurt Bentley. The terrible disappointment etched on the face of the man he respected and admired the most; he’d live with it until he drew his last breath.

“You regret your decision.” The observation was spoken with complete understanding.

Howard swallowed hard. “Every day of my life.”

“You could go back to court.”

“Yeah, but it wouldn’t change what I did to them. Wouldn’t fix anything. I waited too long.”

“Oh, I don’t know. You might be surprised.”

Down the river, from the direction of the large party, a woman’s voice called out, searching for someone. Focused on Kat, Howard missed who the lady was yelling for.

“Optimist,” he teased, hoping to lighten the mood.

She grinned back. “A perfect partner for a realist.”

The woman called out again, louder. More strident.

Damn, why did there have to be so many people here today? Trying to tune out the racket, he did some nosing of his own. “Tell me, how does one of Sugarland’s spoiled rich girls wind up teaching first grade and doing the bachelorette gig across town from the McKenna minimansion?”