Killing Time

He’d done a lot of stupid things in his life. Some he’d thought about. Some he hadn’t. But as they stood there with Jenna’s flowers all around them and the sky doing its moonlight and madness thing above them, he quit thinking about the fact that the woman watching him with soul-deep eyes was Ramon Salinas’s widow. He quit thinking about the fact that she’d drugged and shanghaied him.

He only thought about how much he wanted to kiss her. How much he needed a connection to someone. No, a connection to her. Someone who had lost as much as he had.

Screw smart. He’d wanted to do this from the first time he’d seen her, drunk on his ass and looking to get laid. He’d wanted it sober, cuffed to a bed and determined to wring her neck. He’d wanted it at a noisy table at the Bogota airport, when she’d finally dropped her act and confessed who she really was.

But most of all, he wanted to kiss her because she looked like she needed to be kissed. Because she looked both tentative and on the brink of something she didn’t understand, but in this moment didn’t want to fight.

Eight years away from a loss they’d both suffered, miles from where they’d started, they’d reached a moment where they were kindred souls. Souls in need of solace, and a respite only they could give each other because of their common bond.

He cupped her cheek in his palm and, holding on to what he chose to read as an invitation in her eyes, he lowered his mouth to hers.

Insane, but perfectly, unerringly right. God, she tasted sweet and sad, and like someone who didn’t want to be sad anymore.

Her lips were lush and soft and open as they met his, accepting and yielding and needy. It completely unhinged him.

It had been a long time since a woman had needed him. A long time since he’d wanted one to. But he wanted to be important to her, strong for her, and even weak for her so she would understand how much she was giving him in return.

With a low groan, he deepened the kiss, drew her tighter against him, and took things to a different level. Tentative and sweet shifted to demanding and dark as desire outdistanced tenderness. They both fed from it, built on it, until his leg was wedged between her thighs, her hands tunneled under his shirt, and their mouths devoured each other’s.

The wet heat of her tongue sent shockwaves of longing straight to his groin. He pressed his hips against her, letting her feel what she was doing to him, and got so lost in the heat firing between them that it took a while to tune in to the sudden tension in her body.

She’d stiffened against him. The hands that had threaded through his hair now pressed flat against his chest, resisting.

He lifted his head, relaxed his hold, and gave her the distance she suddenly needed.

Long, long moments passed with nothing but heavy breathing and wildly beating hearts separating them. Below, the traffic continued to rumble. A soft light glowed from inside the apartment. A dewy dampness had fallen on the night. And where there had been heat, he now felt a clammy cold.

“Well.” He forced a deep, steadying breath. He’d started this; he needed to be the one to restore the status quo. “I guess that was probably inevitable.”

She tucked her chin to her chest, slowly removed her hands. “Yeah,” she agreed, sounding breathless. “I guess it was.”

She backed away then, crossed her arms beneath her breasts, and shook her head. “Doesn’t mean—”

“Anything,” he cut in, so she’d think he was on the same page. “I know.”

She smiled ruefully. “I was going to say, it doesn’t mean it was smart.”

“Oh. Right.” So it had meant something to her, too?

“But you’re right about the other, too. It didn’t mean anything. We… we’re both processing a lot of information right now. We’re both running on empty.”

He should have felt relieved. Instead, he felt unreasonably deflated.

“And you’re right on another count,” she said on a bracing breath. “I need sleep. I’m going to turn in.”

“Good night,” he said and waited for her to leave him so he could figure out what had just happened, and why it took everything in him to let her walk away.

When she stopped and turned back, his heart slammed into his ribs. And when she slowly walked back to him, and reached for his hand, his mouth went bone dry.

“I came out here to give you this.” She pressed a folded paper into his hand. “Call him.”

This time she left him there, closing the terrace door behind her.

For someone who prided himself on his reaction time, he stood like a freaking lump, in a lust-induced stupor, staring at the space she’d just occupied. And yeah, it was lust. No way in hell could he have feelings for that woman. Not this fast. Not… not Ramon’s widow.

He shook his head. Shook it off. And finally looked down and unfolded the paper.

It was a phone number he recognized. He’d committed it to memory long ago, but had never dialed.

“Call him.”

He stood there for a long time, staring blankly at the night.

Finally he walked over to a deck chair and sat down heavily. His heart beat like crazy. He could feel it in his throat… right there with the knot that damn near choked him.

His hand wasn’t exactly steady when he reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. It took a full minute to work up the nerve to dial. Took more nerve to keep from hanging up as he waited for the connection to Sydney, Australia.

Finally it started ringing.

He propped an elbow on his thigh, dropped his head into his hand, and pinched the bridge of his nose. And waited, a split second away from hanging on or hanging up.

Hanging up had about won out when he heard a pick-up on the other end of the line.

“Cooper. Leave a message.”

• • •

Jamie Cooper lay utterly still in bed, fingers clutched around his phone. The message light had been blinking when he woke up. He’d listened to it four times now. And he still felt dead inside.

Finally, he rolled to a sitting position; his feet hit the cold wood floor beside the bed and he shivered. It felt like a ghost had just drifted over his shadow.

Brown. Eight years ago, all he’d thought about was what he wanted to do to the man he had once called friend. Then he hadn’t thought of him at all—except when he thought of home and all the reasons he couldn’t go back there.

“Come back to bed, babe.”

Lonnie. He’d forgotten she was here. Why was she here? He dragged a weary hand through his hair. Oh, yeah. The party had run late, he’d drunk too much, and she’d convinced him it was a good night for a sleepover. Since it was pushing four in the morning by the time they hit the sheets, he’d been too wasted to argue. But he didn’t do sleepovers. Not with women who would read way too much into a “good night” followed directly by a “good morning.”

He squinted at the bedside clock. Two p.m. Okay. Not morning.

“Babe?” she repeated, raising up on an elbow behind him and touching a warm hand to his bare back.

“You probably need to get going,” he said, to keep from telling her to mind her own business. He was not her “babe” and this entire setup reeked of manipulation and expectation on her part. “Help yourself to a shower before you go,” he said, standing. “I’m going for a run. You want me to call you a cab before I head out?”

Yeah, it was cold but he’d been straight with her from day one. He had nothing to give a woman beyond a good time and a fast good-bye.

“No. I’m fine,” she said in a small voice and he knew he had hurt her.

He should be more sorry about that. His mother would not be proud. “Take care, then.” He pulled on a pair of running shorts and jerked a sweatshirt over his head. He grabbed a pair of socks and his running shoes before he left the room, closing the door behind him.

Then he headed out into the cold damp afternoon and ran as if he could outdistance his past.

A past that Primetime Brown had dusted off, shaken out, and aired like a bag full of dirty laundry and bad memories. Hard feelings. Big regrets.