Under His Cover-nook (11 page)

“People have threatened and killed for some pretty stupid reasons.”

He nodded his head. “You’re right.” He leaned back against the seat. “There are proposals on the Senate floor to increase teacher pay, to lower the tax rate for construction companies who build cost effective homes for low-income families, and to change the state employees work day from five days to four.”

“Is that it?”

He shrugged his shoulders. “Off the top of my head, yes. There’s always more. What? You think some crazed teacher or state employee is gunning for me if I don’t vote their way?” he asked and laughed.

She joined him in his laughter. “No.” She took a sip of her champagne. The cool liquid didn’t do much to help chill the flame sizzling inside her. With each word, he seemed to move closer. His thigh touched hers under the table.  The silky material of his slacks tickled the bare part of her thigh, causing goose bumps to erupt up and over her legs. His hand was so close to her neck she wanted to lean back against it and allow him to caress her skin. “But you never know.”

The waiter arrived and took their orders, but she doubted she’d be able to taste a thing. A tremor of sensation rumbled through her and her heartbeat thrummed heavy in her ears. She wanted to be closer to him, skin to skin.  How could this be? She’d just had sex with the man a few hours ago.

Snap out of it
.

He still wasn’t being totally honest with her, and she’d begun to wonder why he cared so much about those other kids when he wouldn’t even publicly acknowledge his own. But could she really fault him for it? Since she pushed him away, he had no reason to be honest with her. After all, they weren’t in a committed relationship. Plus, she really didn’t know the history behind why no one knew about Maya. Maybe it hadn’t even been his decision. Maybe the mother wanted it that way.

Whatever the reason, it didn’t seem to bother her body. It still wanted him, desired him. Wanted him inside her a
gain and again.
She had to get her mind on something else. “Tell me something. Why was getting this funding so important to you?”

He looked at her, and she saw a moment of indecision slide over his features. “You know Zechariah and I have been friends since we were little? Probably six or seven years old, I think.”

Jade picked up her glass and nodded her head before she took a sip.

“Yes, Karyn told me that.”

“Well, despite what you may think, I didn’t spend my childhood going to boarding schools and country clubs. I spent it at the community center.”

She released an incredulous gasp. This definitely surprised her. Rhys was born with the proverbial silver spoon in his mouth, and the thought of his parents sending him to a community center to play was unfathomable. What she’d imagined of Rhys’ life was one of privilege, and exactly what he said: boarding schools, country clubs and summers spent on a beach. No way had she expected him to spend time with the common folk. But maybe that was how he met the mother of his child.

“My parents were really down to earth people. They didn’t believe in all that country club elitist bullshit. My father grew up with working-class parents and had a great childhood. He wanted me to have the same. He didn’t want me to grow up thinking I was better than anyone else just because they had money. So, from the time I was seven till I was a teenager, I spent my summers at the community center. Even worked there a couple of years when I was old enough. And that’s where I met Zechariah.”

He twirled the stem of his champagne glass between his fingers and didn’t say anything for a couple of minutes.

“I wasn’t blind. I noticed things. I saw how some of the kids dressed, the shoes they wore, and it wasn’t from the same stores my parents bought my stuff from. Zechariah confided in me. Going to that community center saved him from a life of violence and gangs and all the other mischief some kids got into at that age. I do it in memory of that. There are still children out there who need that community center for the exact same reasons Zechariah needed it when he was young. I’m determined to make sure it stays open and funded so they can still have a safe place to go to after school and during the summer.”

“Wow… I never knew.”

“I know. You thought I was just some rich jerk with a job title but no substance behind it.” Humor glinted in his charcoal gray eyes. “I’m used to it. Sometimes, when people think they know you, expect certain things from you, it can leave them at a disadvantage. I use that to get what I need for my kids.”

Jade was learning a whole lot about Rhys Cunningham that she really didn’t want to know. Not because she wasn’t interested. She was. But because it threw her off. And, unfortunately, left her at the disadvantage. She’d had him all wrong. He was not the person she’d assumed him to be.

He reached into the basket sitting on the table and broke off a piece of bread. “So, tell me about you, your family. Any brothers or sisters?”

“Yes. I have two brothers, no sisters.”

He smiled. “The only girl, huh.”

“Well, yes. Except my mom of course.”

“How long was your dad a police officer?”

Jade squirmed. He was too close to her. Every time his leg or his elbow brushed against her, her pussy throbbed. “He um…retired after thirty years on the police force about three years ago.”

Rhys leaned back against the seat, so composed, too relaxed, when her body screamed inside. “And your brothers are cops also, right?”

She nodded. “My older brother, John, has been a cop for about fifteen years, and my younger brother, Justin, about seven.”

Under the table, his leg moved back and forth, which made his pants leg sweep against her bare skin, like a caress. Little tingles of desire skittered around her calf muscle.

“Oh, so you’re a middle child as well?”

She needed to keep her mind on what they were talking about. She was having a hard time formulating coherent speech. “What about your family?”

He shrugged. “Only child.” A brief hint of longing slid across his face, and his voice lowered when he said, “I used to crave a brother or sister when I was growing up, but my mom had such a hard time when she was pregnant with me, she didn’t want to try again.”

Jade laid her hand on top of his forearm. “I’m sorry.”

As she watched him shake off the unpleasant emotion, he took a sip of his champagne and smiled. “Thanks. I think that’s one of the reasons why Jackie and I are so close, you know? She was an only child too. I think our parents secretly harbored wishes, still do I think, that she and I will fall in love and get married, but well, you know the answer to that already.”

“Where is your mom now?”

“In Florida. After my father died, I don’t think she could bear living in that huge house anymore without him. She has a sister who lives in Destin, so, she’s not alone. I try to get down there and visit her at least once every few months.” He reached for his glass and took another sip. “Where is your family?”

“Serving and protecting the great city of Nashville.”

The conversation stopped for a minute when their waiter brought their food. After Rhys took his first bite, he asked her, “Why didn’t you become a cop like your father and your brothers? How did you end up a private investigator?”

Jade was quiet for a minute, her fork hovering between the plate and her mouth. She tended to shy away from asking herself that very same question.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“I’m not upset,” she said a bit too defensively.

Rhys reached over and with his thumb, smoothed the space above her nose, between her eyes. “When you get upset, this part right here always crinkles.”

“It’s just…”

“You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”

She took one bite of her food, then set the fork down.

“You didn’t want to follow in everybody else’s footsteps,” he stated plainly.

“When I was a kid, even though I was a girl, I always played with my brothers. We played cops and robbers and cowboys and Indians. They always made me the robber or the Indian and they would chase me around the backyard.” Happy memories flooded into her mind. The old plastic badges her father gave them, her grandfather’s cowboy hats with feathers on the side, too big boots she always stumbled out of running from her brothers. “I begged them to let me be the cop just one time, but they never did.”

“But when you grew up and could really be a police officer, you didn’t want to be.”

“Right. I wanted to do something along those lines, but not something so rigid, with so many rules to follow.” She smiled, glad but surprised that he understood. And she was afraid to admit she was beginning to understand him too. She wasn’t sure if that was good, or bad.

Rhys took his napkin out of his lap and wiped the corners of his mouth. “So, you’re not the conformist, huh?”

“I’m not,” she said and laughed. “Plus, I didn’t want to be a cop just because my father did it and my brothers did it.”

He swung his arm up and behind her to rest on the booth again. His fingers slid across and down her neck. “I knew there was something special about you.”

She shivered. “Being a P.I. means I don’t have to sit behind a desk or ride around in a car all day.”

With his other hand, Rhys swirled his drink in the glass. “So, this job must be pretty boring to you.”

Rhys and bored were not two words she’d put in the same category, let alone in the same sentence. The first time they’d met, they’d had a one night stand. They’d gone to a fundraiser, went to a meeting, almost had sex in a hotel lobby, did have sex in his office. “
Boring
isn’t exactly the word I’d choose to describe working for you.”

Rhys leaned closer to her. “So, what would you call it, exactly?”

Jade moistened her lips. “Um…interesting.”

He took her hand and turned it over. “That’s all?” He massaged tender little circles along the inside of her wrist with his fingers. “I’m positive you can come up with something more imaginative than that.”

She drew in a deep breath and let it out. “Well…” The statement stalled in her throat when Rhys pulled her hand to his mouth and kissed the same spot. “Wh-what are you doing?”

An erotic spasm clinched in her chest when he nibbled her skin. His tongue snaked out and left a wet spot. “You called working for me just ‘interesting.’ I don’t think I like that.” He lowered her hand onto the table. His disappeared under it where he drew his hand up her thigh. “I think I need to change your opinion of me.”

Jade had on a skirt that cinched at the waist but flowed out loosely around her legs, so it was easy for Rhys to maneuver his hand under the material without her having to move an inch. “But…but, the waitress, the…the other people…” His finger slipped under the rim of her panties and found the lips of her pussy.

“Will never know a thing,” he murmured.

A burst of panic seized her chest as her gaze slid from one corner of the room to the other. What if someone saw him? But it quickly changed. Her breath caught in her throat as a little thrill followed in its wake. Rhys moved his fingers slowly, in and out.

“You know,” he whispered, “we’ve made love at a hotel.”

There was heat, gigantic waves of it, and every muscle in her body tightened and reached for the pleasure his hand promised.

“And we’ve made love in my office.”

Tension coiled tightly in the center of her body. Desperate for more, she lowered herself in the seat, just a bit, so he could go deeper, because she wanted—needed—for him to do so.

“But I’d bet a million bucks that you have tastes…decadent flavors I have yet to savor, yet to discover, hidden inside you.”

His voice was low, and in response to his words, every cell in her body strained and begged for release, pleaded for climax as it built and built between the walls of her pussy.

Her breath came in short gasps and she became weak with desire. The noise in the restaurant seemed almost non-existent while he pleasured her. But when she heard a plate drop in the distance, reality trickled back into her senses. And luckily it did, because the waiter was approaching their table.

“Rhys,” she panted. “Stop, stop… The server.”

He leaned close and whispered in here ear. “I will finish this,” he promised her.

Jade sat motionless, breathing in and out slowly, trying to still her desire as it cascaded over her like a waterfall. It was inevitable, she and Rhys, from that very first twirl on the dance floor. Didn’t she tell herself once already that the man was a predator when it came to matters of sex? Hadn’t he proved that to her again and again?

Let’s just face it. She was powerless to stop it. Powerless to stop her desire or need to be with him, to want him. Why not just go with the flow? Why not take what he offered and enjoy it while it lasted? No one said she had to fall in love.

Rhys was standing. He reached for her hand, and she gave it to him. She walked out of the restaurant oblivious to her surroundings. In the limo, Rhys closed the inset between them and the driver, then pulled her into a kiss. She sank into the bliss of his lips without question. No more wondering. No more questions. Just the caress of his fingers across the back of her neck was all she needed. Just the slide and tangle of his tongue against hers was all she desired.

To hell with the rest of it. She’d worry about it tomorrow.

And then Jade took control of the kiss. She became the wanton sexpot she’d always wanted to be. If she was going to indulge in whatever this was with Rhys, then so be it.

She pushed him back against the seat and straddled him while sliding her fingers through his hair and pulling his head back, exposing his throat. With each slow beat of the music filtering through the speakers, she licked, bit, and savored his taste. He moaned when she tugged at his earlobe, nibbling just beneath. Smoothing the lapels of his jacket aside, she reached inside and shoved the garment over his shoulders and down his arms. Power vibrated beneath her fingertips, and his heartbeat hammered against the palm of her hand.

At the same time, and awkwardly, they removed each other’s shirts until they were skin against skin. Her skirt was bunched around her hips and the palms of his hands slid around to cup her ass and squeeze. He traced a path upward until the pads of his thumbs grazed her lace enclosed nipples. She gasped when his mouth replaced his fingers. The throbbing tips ached as he gently teased one with his thumb, the other with his tongue. He enclosed them both in his hands and lapped at each.