Always a Hero Read online

She’d surprised him yet again.

  “What if you decided you hated it here?”

  She didn’t say it, but the look she gave him said “Like you did?” as clearly as if she had. But then, she hadn’t grown up here, under the watchful eyes of…everyone.

  “I knew I’d love it, and I do. Now that it’s fairly stable, I have to make sure I leave the work behind at the end of the day, though.”

  “Do you succeed?”

  “Most of the time. It’s an effort, though. It would be easy to stay as consumed by it as I was in the beginning.”

  “Don’t.”

  “Voice of experience?”

  “Yes.”

  She only nodded, as if she’d suspected as much. He watched as she glanced at the now half-full coffee pot. Then she turned back to him.

  “Did you notice Jordy was really edgy today?” she asked.

  His mouth quirked. “How could I tell? He’s always edgy around me.”

  She smiled at him. “There is that,” she said, and he liked that she didn’t deny it, or try to reassure him with some meaningless platitude. “Any idea what might have him so wound up?”

  “Maybe.”

  She studied him for a moment. “That’s what you wanted to talk to me about.”

  It wasn’t a question, and she didn’t go on. She reached into a cupboard and pulled out two mugs, one blue, one green. Waited as the stream of coffee diminished, then stopped, then filled the mugs.

  “Black?” she asked.

  He nodded. She slid the blue one toward him on the counter, then added a spoonful of sugar to her own mug. She took a sip, wrapping her hands around the mug as if savoring the heat. And that quickly, his mind was taking that nosedive again.

  “I suggest you just dive in,” she said.

  He nearly choked on his swallow of coffee at her choice of words. It took him a second to convince himself there was no way she could know where his mind had wandered.

  He took another swallow of coffee, to ease his throat and marshal his thoughts. And in the end, he took her advice and simply laid it all out for her, Jordan’s sudden interest in his job, the specifics of his questions, and his own suspicions.

  To his surprise, she accepted it all.

  “It makes sense,” she said when he asked. “I always knew Max was up to something. I just didn’t know—or didn’t want to know—exactly what.”

  “About that,” he began, uncomfortable about what he’d yelled at her that day.

  She shook her head, cutting him off. “You were right. I should have told you my suspicions right away. For Jordy’s sake. If he is caught up in this…”

  “And that’s what I need to know. But he won’t talk to me.” He hesitated. Just dive in…. “But he does talk to you.”

  She stared at him for a long moment. He wondered how anyone could handle that intense gaze for long. Realized belatedly that that was the same thing people had once said about him.

  “I need your help,” he said, his voice low and harsh.

  Many would have had a smart comment to make to that, or at least would have asked him how much it hurt to have to ask. Kai did neither.

  “You want me to try and get him to tell me what he knows?” she asked.

  “I have to know how deep he’s in, to know what to do. How to protect him.”

  He half expected her to say no. To consider what he was asking was a betrayal of the boy’s trust. At the least he expected to have to do some heavy convincing.

  “All right. I’ll try.”

  He blinked. “You will?”

  “Yes.”

  He couldn’t help himself, the question burst out. “Why?”

  “Because if you’re right, Jordy’s in danger of getting sucked up into my worst nightmare.”

  It didn’t take any special perception to understand where that had come from.

  “Kit,” he said softly.

  She nodded. “That photograph in the store,” she began.

  “Etched in my memory,” he said, then wished he hadn’t. For a guy who didn’t believe in wishing, he’d been doing a lot of it lately, he thought sourly.

  “It’s not there just to feed my ego. It’s there to remind me.”

  “Remind you?”

  “That night was the beginning of the end. The night I realized Kit was going to die, and probably soon.” She sighed. “I did everything I could think of. I rallied friends and family to intervene, I threatened to leave, and actually did, for a while. Nothing worked.”

  “He wouldn’t clean up, even for you?”

  “Oh, he’d talk a good game, but he always slipped back. Finally I literally tricked him into rehab, told him we were just taking a much needed break from the road until the last second.”

  “So he didn’t go of his own accord.”

  “No. Which explains why his sobriety lasted exactly six hours after he left the facility. He never forgave me for tricking him into it. But I loved him. I had to try.”

  And Kai Reynolds would always try, he thought.

  She took a deep breath as if to steady herself before going on.

  “Unfortunately, he loved alcohol and drugs more than he loved me. Or himself.”

  She said it without self-pity or anger, just that sadness.

  “I’m sorry. For you being hurt.”

  “Caring costs,” she said simply.

  “He was a fool.” Don’t you be one, he ordered himself.

  For a moment she just looked at him. Then, softly, she said, “Thank you.”

  “He had everything, and he threw it away.”

  “Yes.”

  “He had…you.”

  “Yes.”

  He couldn’t seem to shut up, no matter how hard he tried. “Then he was worse than a fool.”

  She stared at him then, her eyes flicking over his face as if she were trying to read him. She’d always done pretty well at that before, so he wondered that what he was thinking wasn’t as clear as a glowing neon sign to her.

  Maybe because it’s as clear as mud to you, he thought.

  He hadn’t felt anything like this in longer than he could remember. Maybe he never had, and that was why it felt so strange, so foreign, so overwhelming.

  He set down his coffee mug. He took the single stride across the kitchen floor to her. Slowly, giving her every chance to stop him, he took her mug and set it on the counter behind her.

  Close now, so close he could feel her warmth, as if it were a physical thing wrapping around him, welcoming, comforting, supporting. He cupped her face with his hands, hands he was surprised weren’t shaking. His entire body had awakened in a rush, and the intensity was all the more startling because of how long it had been.

  At least, that’s what he told himself.

  “Kai,” he said, his voice a low, harsh, unfamiliar thing. “Stop me.”

  What the hell are you doing? he asked himself, not sure if he meant being about to kiss her or asking her to stop him.

  She didn’t. She just looked up at him, those gray eyes wide and dark.

  Somewhere, some part of his mind was warning him he was messing with the one person who might get through to his son. And he realized with a little shock that he knew, somehow, that she would never jettison Jordan because of anything stupid his father did.

  He trusted her on that.

  It was the last coherent thought he had before he kissed her.

  Chapter 16

  Curiosity killed the cat.

  Wasn’t that how the old saying went? Kai was learning the truth of it now.

  She’d never felt anything like this. And she certainly had never expected it from this man. Although to be honest, she’d been curious from the day he’d first walked into Play On. And now, when he’d finally made a move, she had been too curious about what it would be like to stop him.

  She’d never expected him to…envelop her like this. To take charge of her senses, her pulse, her entire body, and send them all reeling out of control. Even in
the wildness of youth, when she’d been crazy in love with Kit—or the idea of him—it hadn’t been like this. So how could she have expected such a consuming heat?

  Of course, she’d never expected him to actually make a move at all. Maybe that was it, she thought, a little dizzily. She was going all female and mushy because she knew he hadn’t wanted to do this, but had done it anyway. Female power, all that.

  And then his mouth moved on hers, tasting, probing and searing. And she realized the power wasn’t hers, it wasn’t even his; it was something generated by the combination, by the connection between the two of them. She wondered that she couldn’t hear it crackle.

  She kissed him back, not simply because she was unable not to, although it was true, but because she wanted to. She wanted more, more of that heat, that luring taste of him, more of the unexpected sweetness behind the gruff, sometimes intractable exterior.

  She had the fleeting thought that breaking through that tough exterior made this all the more incredible. All the more precious. People valued things that were hard to get, her father had always said. Maybe he was right in more ways than she’d known.

  And then she couldn’t think at all. It was as if her system had no room for anything but the flood of physical sensations it was registering. As if there was nothing left in her entire world except this man, and the feel of his mouth on hers, his body pressed against hers, fierce and demanding and impossibly hot.

  When at last he broke the kiss, she took what seemed to be her first breath in hours. It was an audible, gasping sound that only added to her shock. He didn’t pull away, he was still pressed against her, knee to shoulder, and she thought she might whimper if he broke that contact, too.

  He was staring down at her, brow furrowed, looking, not satisfied but almost…bewildered.

  I know the feeling, she thought.

  “What the hell was that?” His question came out as a whisper that nevertheless seemed to vibrate in the air.

  She could think of several answers, most of them provocative, but her mouth didn’t seem to want to work. The only thing it wanted was his back where it had been. Kissing her again. Stoking that fire again. Melting her again.

  “Wonderful?” she finally suggested.

  She heard him suck in a breath. He opened his mouth as if to speak, then stopped. Tried again. Finally, with an expression she could only describe as rueful, he lowered his head, shaking it in a way that matched the bewildered expression he’d worn moments ago.

  “Kai, I….”

  “You what?”

  “Hell. I don’t know.”

  “This could…complicate things,” she said. “With Jordy, I mean.”

  His head came up. “Even if you’re mad at me, you won’t take it out on him.”

  She knew him well enough by now to realize the implications of his words. The simple fact that he trusted her not to do that was amazing. Perhaps intractable wasn’t the word after all.

  But that wasn’t what she chose to answer; she doubted he’d talk about it anyway.

  “Why would you think I’m mad at you?”

  He took a half step back then, letting go of her, breaking the last physical contact between them. It was all she could do not to protest aloud.

  Especially when she realized, as the last of the pleasant haze lifted, that he had been as swamped by this as she had been; he didn’t even try to hide the fact that he was thoroughly aroused.

  Not that he could have, she thought, still a little off balance.

  “I know you didn’t want…that.”

  It wasn’t an apology, but it was close enough to spark a bit of the remaining fire in her. She crossed her arms, as much to steady herself as anything, and looked at him levelly.

  “I am a fully grown, adult woman,” she said. “I’m quite capable of making my preferences crystal clear.”

  He blinked.

  “If I hadn’t wanted ‘that,’ you would have known it.”

  One corner of his mouth twitched upward. “Why do I get the feeling that I’d be wearing your hot coffee?”

  Again that flash of humor made her wonder what he must have been like before…before what? Before Jordy had landed on him? Or had he been this way much longer? When had his view of life changed?

  A life, she reminded herself, she knew very little about. And wondered if he, like her, had had a single moment when things became vividly clear and undeniable, a moment that changed everything.

  “I didn’t mean to…complicate things,” he said.

  “There’s a teenager involved. They were already complicated,” Kai retorted.

  But despite her joking, she knew he was right. Things had gotten even more complicated. Because she was about to, at least in Jordy’s eyes, betray him completely. And she wasn’t sure which the boy would think was worse; her trying to pry information out of him for his father, or her having the hots for that father.

  Because you most certainly do, she thought; never had she responded to anyone like that, swift and fire-fierce. Even with Kit it seemed almost tame compared to this. At first she thought that impossible, but now that she could think again, she realized that she shouldn’t be surprised. With Kit, she’d always been part of the music, and it was the music that got his full and total focus. After he’d died, she’d often wondered if they would have even been together if they hadn’t shared that. And in her cooler, more analytical moments, she’d wondered if he would have looked twice at her if she hadn’t been able to serve the music.

  No one had ever focused on her the way Wyatt Blake just had. As if she were the only person in the world of any importance to him. As if she were some irresistible force that he, a strong, determined man, was unable to resist.

  And he kissed her as if she were the oasis after an eon spent in the desert.

  She nearly shuddered just at the memory. And she knew that despite everything, this was not something she wanted to run away from. She didn’t think she even could.

  And if she lined up every man in the town of Deer Creek—heck, the whole county—she doubted she could have picked a more difficult one to deal with.

  Quite a knack she seemed to have.

  If he’d had his way, he’d have sent Jordan to bed at seven o’clock, just so he could have time to think. But as it was, while Jordan was doing his homework on the computer in the den, then through the mostly silent meal, and after when Jordan was back on the computer, Wyatt had to fight off a flood of images and thoughts.

  Jordan was still casting wary glances over his shoulder, as he had been ever since Wyatt sat down in the armchair a few feet away. He had a book in his hands, but he knew it was just an excuse; focusing on written text was beyond him at the moment. But he could stare at it as if he were reading, which was less obvious than staring into space.

  He had to have been out of his mind. He’d gone this long without kissing, hell, without even touching a woman, so why now? Why at the worst possible time, when he should be focused entirely on Jordan? And why with the worst possible woman, one he had to rely on to help him keep Jordan safe, and get him away from the likes of Max Middleton?

  If he could just categorize her in the old way, as an asset, someone to be used to achieve the goal, then maybe he could keep his head on straight.

  Keep? Yeah, right. Like your head isn’t still spinning.

  The last time he’d gotten this tangled up had resulted in Jordan. But he’d had a weak sort of excuse then; he’d been young, caught up in it all, and so damned full of himself. Life and his work hadn’t thrashed all that out of him yet.

  So how had he ended up here, at a time when he should be focused on just one thing, his son, seemingly unable to focus on anything but one woman? And worse, the one woman he most needed on his side? Every working brain cell told him he should back off, that he didn’t dare risk that he would, as he usually did, screw things up.

  Then again, there was nothing usual about what he was feeling. Even the flash fire of youth and foolishn
ess that had resulted in the boy sitting a few feet away had been nothing compared to this.

  It was all he could do not to reach up and touch his own mouth, where he could swear he could still feel the softness, the warmth, the very shape of her lips.

  He suppressed a shudder at the memory, tamped down his body’s eager response to just the remembered feel and taste of her. When it had been the real thing, when she had been in his arms and his mouth had been on hers, it had been nearly unbearable. And no amount of telling himself he’d simply gone too long without could explain the explosiveness of his response.

  He couldn’t believe that last month this time, she’d been only a name to him. And now he seemed to be carrying her around with him; she was in his head all the time. Even the soothing anodyne of his job hadn’t been enough to keep her at bay; he caught himself thinking of her at the oddest times.

  And now you’ve really done it, he told himself. Now he had even more insistent and fierce images to fight off. And he wasn’t doing a very good job of it.

  “I know you’re not reading, not really.”

  He blinked, and looked up. Jordan was standing there, a couple of feet away. And he’d been so entranced by those overheated visions in his head that he hadn’t even realized the boy had gotten up from the computer. That shocked him fully back into the present.

  “You haven’t turned a page in forever.”

  He didn’t deny it. “Having a little trouble concentrating tonight.”

  He waited, wondering if Jordan was going to broach the subject again, try to pump him for information he could pass along to Max. Wondered what Max would do if approached, after their little encounter. He’d scared him then, he knew, but time had passed, and Max’s cocky self-assurance would slowly flow back; he knew the type.

  It hadn’t come up with Jordan again since last night, but he doubted it was over. If for no other reason than Max wasn’t likely to give up. He’d just make sure Wyatt never found out there’d been any contact. He wondered what kind of pressure the young dealer was putting on the boy.

  If things were normal, he would simply apply his own kind of pressure to get Jordan to tell him. But if he did that, if he resorted to the old ways, there wouldn’t be any kind of relationship left when he was done.