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Always a Hero Page 13
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Like it’s so great now?
No, he admitted silently to that nagging little voice, but he didn’t want to destroy what little there was.
Fleetingly, as his son stared down at him, obviously working up to saying something, he wondered what the boy would do if he knew what his father and his beloved Kai had been up to while he’d been practicing. Wondered how he’d feel if he knew his father was sitting here wishing with every aching cell in his body that it had gone further.
Wishing that, despite the fact that it would irrevocably complicate every aspect of his life, that it would go much further. He wanted to see the bedroom in that airy, comfortable apartment, and he wanted to see it soon.
From the bed.
Next to her.
On top of her.
In her.
And he nearly groaned aloud at the swift, wickedly hot clench of his body at the mere thought of it.
“Never mind,” Jordan said abruptly and turned away, telling Wyatt something had shown in his face. Probably pain, he thought wryly. There was another skill that had apparently gotten rusty; time was he’d been able to hide any thoughts at all.
But then, he didn’t think he’d ever had thoughts like this to hide.
“Jordan, wait.” It was becoming an effort, the more he was around Kai, to not call him Jordy. But even if he knew little else, he knew that permission had to come from his son. “I was caught up in another problem.”
Jordan looked back at him. “That’s all I am to you, isn’t it? A problem.”
Wyatt mentally kicked himself for his choice of words; he couldn’t seem to do anything right with this boy. He’d handled what most would consider much bigger problems than one teenager’s moods with cool efficiency, but here he was at a loss.
Caring costs.
Kai’s words echoed in his head. She knew the truth of them, better than many people ever did. Yet she still let herself care. It probably never occurred to her to try not to. And for the first time in his life he saw the simple, honest courage in that.
“You scare me,” he said to his son. “And that’s a problem, yes.”
“I scare you?” Jordan sounded astonished. But he came back, clearly wanting an explanation.
“Your mother knew what to do,” he said. “Sometimes I think women know instinctively.”
It was the first time in months they’d even spoken about Melissa, although as little as they’d spoken at all, it wasn’t surprising.
“She was the best,” Jordan said, his voice tight.
“I know you miss her. I know you wish she was here, not me. So do I, for both our sakes. But she’s not. We’re all we’ve got.”
“You didn’t even love her.”
“No. And she didn’t love me.”
They’d decided not to lie about that. Melissa had always told Jordan that it didn’t matter, because out of what had been an impulse of the moment had come the thing she loved most: him. To her credit, she’d never tried to belittle the cost of that impulse, but she’d also managed to never make Jordan feel unloved because of it.
A knack he didn’t seem to have.
“I know I’m not good at being a parent, not like your mom. But I care too much not to try.”
Jordan blinked. “You don’t care.”
“If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be here.”
“Why are you here?” Jordan’s voice rose, and Wyatt guessed his emotions were rising with it. “You didn’t love my mom, you don’t love me.”
He didn’t know how to answer that. He never had. And now, with his emotions so tangled and confused, he knew even less. So the only words that came out were blunt, simple, and at least true.
“You’re mine.”
Oddly, the two-word answer seemed to derail the building storm. Jordan’s glare faded, and he lowered his gaze.
“What did you want?” Wyatt asked.
The boy’s head came up. “I want to download some music.”
It wasn’t a huge leap to figure out whose. “Kai’s band?”
He nodded. “She gave me their first CD to rip, but I want to buy the rest. The last one, especially.”
The masterpiece, that music blogger had called it, Wyatt remembered. “Don’t want to cheat her out of the money? That’s a good thought, Jordan.”
He shifted his feet as if embarrassed. “She gives it away anyway. All the money from their music goes to the rehab center she started.”
“I know.” Jordan blinked, surprised. “But you don’t have to download it. Not the last one, anyway.”
“I’ll pay back the money. I’ll do extra work around here, whatever.”
Well, that had to mean he was serious, Wyatt thought ruefully.
“You can do that for the other CD. But the last one…it’s already there.”
Jordan blinked. “What?”
“It’s in the music folder.”
Jordan stared at him, clearly stunned. “You?”
“Hard to believe, huh?”
“Did you…listen?”
“Repeatedly.” And he had, from the time he’d downloaded it, that night after she’d come here and he’d made her so angry she walked away. “It really is a masterpiece.”
Jordan looked utterly flummoxed. And for the first time since their lives had collided, Wyatt felt a sense of amused satisfaction.
“Tough call, isn’t it?” he said. “Do you now hate it because I like it, or do you go along with the guy you already hate?”
Loyalty won out, and quickly. “It’s Kai. I could never hate it.”
“Good for you. Right decision.”
Wyatt kept his tone level, but inside he was pleased.
Later, after Jordan had transferred the music to his small player and retreated up to his room to listen before bed, Wyatt took his place at the computer. He got out the headphones, put them on and made himself go through the usual checks. Except for the flurry of expected angry explanations of why he hadn’t shown up the other night, the postings on Jordan’s networking page had slowed down a lot since he’d been practicing at Play On. Another benefit, Wyatt thought.
There was no post at all today, and no new messages. Satisfied that that front was handled, he was about to shut down when the alert window popped up again.
He jumped through the hoops until he was reading the newest message. He supposed to some the fact that the inquiries on his whereabouts had seemingly ceased days ago would be a relief. To some, it would be proof that whoever it was had given up.
To Wyatt Blake, it meant they’d found him.
Chapter 17
Wyatt sat with his hands wrapped around the coffee mug. And he would keep his hands right there. Think of it as a deadman detonator, he told himself. You let go of it, and you blow everything to bits.
He sensed Kai’s gaze on him as if it were a physical thing. As if by the mere act of looking at him she could set nerve endings tingling in places he couldn’t quite ignore.
For days now they’d done this—it was in danger of becoming a habit—decamping to her apartment while Jordan practiced. He’d felt guilty about her leaving the store, but so far, only twice had she had to go back downstairs to handle a customer who’d rung the buzzer. Still, every day he’d told himself he’d wait until four-thirty to go pick the boy up. And every day he was there within minutes after the sound room door had closed on the budding musician.
“We have progress,” Kai said after a sip from her own mug of coffee.
They did? He didn’t feel that way. He felt in limbo, wanting more than anything to revisit that crazed, wild place he’d fallen into at the first touch of her lips, yet afraid of what might happen if he did.
Wyatt looked up from his hands. “Progress?” he asked, tentatively.
“I listened to a bit he recorded last night. He’s sounding better.”
Wyatt felt like a fool. She meant Jordan, of course. Idiot. He jerked himself out of the stupid reverie he’d let himself drift into, thinking about kissing and
more and the fact that her bedroom was mere yards away.
“Anything that sounds like actual music yet?”
She laughed. “Well, since there’s a pretty wide range of what various people consider music, I’d say the answer to that is yes. Sort of. More than before, anyway.”
“Okay. Progress.”
“Speaking of which, if you’re expecting me to make any on…that other front, I’m going to need some time with him. More than five or ten minutes as he’s coming or going, anyway.”
He gave her a sideways look. She had told him earlier that there hadn’t been any sign of Max since the day he’d told him to stay away from Jordan. She hadn’t even seen him, or his friends, at the usual pizza hangout. He would like to think his warning had taken root. But he’d like to think whoever had been looking for him had given up, too. And newly reawakened instincts told him otherwise on both.
He’d warned John, and the man had agreed to two new temporary security guards, but it was going to take a couple of days to get that in place. Wyatt was regretting now that he hadn’t made it clear to Max that he suspected what he was up to, but his only goal at the time had been keeping him away from Jordan.
“You have a plan?” he asked.
“I was thinking you might need to be late tomorrow. To pick him up, I mean.”
He thought about it a moment, then nodded. “Okay,” he said. “That will give you time alone with him.”
She nodded in turn. “I think I can get him to hang around here and wait.”
He nearly laughed. “You could get any male breathing to hang around.”
She went very still. “Was that an assessment of my powers of discrimination?”
He frowned, not understanding. “What?”
“You seemed to think I once had none.”
Sexy girl rocker….
His own thoughts came back to him, and he supposed he had once thought that, made assumptions that sex, drugs and rock and roll was more than just a saying.
He didn’t try to dissemble. She was too perceptive, and he didn’t want to risk denying something she obviously knew was true.
“I was wrong,” he said simply. “About a lot of things. Very wrong.”
She didn’t seem surprised as much as pleased by the admission. Not in an “I win” sort of way, but more like he’d done the right thing by honestly admitting it, and that made her happy.
The idea that he had even the slightest power to make her happy hit him like a punch to the gut.
“Thank you,” she said. And then, giving him a level look that somehow put him on guard, she added, “So, there’s something I’ve been wondering.”
“What?”
“Are you ever going to kiss me again?”
If the mug he held hadn’t been heavy, thick stoneware, he thought it would have shattered under his sudden tension.
“Kai,” he said, unsure if it was plea or warning.
“I mean, aren’t you curious?”
The mug hit the counter. Coffee sloshed. “Curious? Is that what you call it?”
“I just meant, what it felt like…what if it was a fluke?”
He stood up, backed away from her, as if any kind of distance was safe when she had in fact taken up residence in his head.
“Yeah, it was such a fluke my brain’s been fried ever since. Such a fluke I can’t get the visions of it out of my mind, can’t focus, can’t concentrate, can’t—”
He broke off before he committed the total idiocy of telling her about the dreams. He’d wished for so long to be rid of the nightmares, but he’d never expected them to be replaced by hot, erotic images involving the most unlikely woman he could ever have imagined.
Careful what you wish for.
Truer words never spoken, he thought.
She was smiling at him. “Thank you,” she said again, a soft huskiness in her voice that sent the same shivers through him that those dreams had.
But his brow furrowed; her words made no sense to him. And again she understood perfectly, as if she could read his mind.
“Nice to know I’m not alone.”
He blinked. “Alone?”
Her mouth quirked. “Same problems.”
He sucked in a breath that was so audible he knew she must have heard it even from five feet away, a distance that no longer seemed safe at all.
“I thought it was just me,” he said.
She let out a compressed chuckle that sounded half frustrated, half wry amusement. He knew the feeling.
“I don’t think it explodes like that going only one way,” she said.
“I don’t know. I’ve never felt an explosion like that before.”
She smiled again. And it damned near took his breath away.
“We did a song once, called ‘Playing With Fire.’”
“I know.”
He’d surprised her that time. “You do?”
“It’s on the last CD. One of the best on it, and that’s saying something.”
“Thank you, for the third time,” she said. “I didn’t realize you’d…listened.”
“I’m trying to get better at listening,” he said, and knew by her expression that she understood all the levels he meant that on.
“That song…that’s what this feels like. To me.”
He thought of the chorus, that line about always going back to the flame because you’re helpless not to. Yeah, it felt that way, all right.
“So, are you going to?”
“No.”
She drew back a fraction. Looked at him for a long moment, as if he were a puzzle she was trying to find the key to. Then, slowly, she smiled.
“So it’s my turn?”
God, she could read his mind. “Exactly.”
He couldn’t explain why, couldn’t understand himself and why it was so important to him that she make the move. Yes, it was knowing that she wanted this, that he wasn’t pushing her somewhere she didn’t want to go, but it was more. He just wasn’t sure what.
The only thing he was sure of was that he had to know if it had really been that hot, or if his imagination, over-energized by lack of exercise in that area, had built the memory of that single kiss into something reality could never match.
And then she was there, stepping into his arms. She tilted her head back, stretched up, brushed her lips tentatively over his.
And he realized he’d handed her the detonator, and she’d triggered the inferno without a second thought.
Chapter 18
Any thought that the first kiss had been a fluke was seared out of Kai’s mind the moment her mouth touched his. For a bare few seconds, maybe three, he held back, letting her do the coaxing. But then a choked groan broke from him and he was kissing her back, fiercely, hotly.
She wondered vaguely if knowing what it could feel like influenced what it did feel like. Not that it mattered. What mattered was that she’d never felt anything like this before, not even in the frantic days with Kit. No, this was more, far more, something white-hot and consuming.
She clung to him as he seemed to sap the strength from her; any more and she’d be sagging weakly against him. And then he flicked his tongue over her lips, asking, and she parted for him without hesitation. She wanted, needed the taste of him, the hot, male, coffee-tinged taste of him more than she wanted her next breath.
He cupped her face as he invaded, and for a moment she just savored the feel of it, savored the tension in him, the low, harsh sound that she could both hear and feel deep in his chest.
She slid her hand down his back, wanting him closer. Her fingers traced the contours of lean, solid muscle; for a pill counter he was in great shape. She reached his waist, tightened her embrace, drawing him in. Any doubt she might have had that it was the same, instant conflagration for him was erased when she felt the prod of his erection against her and heard his low groan as they were pressed together chest to knee.
His hands moved downward as hers had, drawing them even closer, harder together
. But then they slipped upward, to slowly, gently, cup the outer curves of her breasts. She shivered, drawing back just enough to give him more access; denial wasn’t in her vocabulary with this man, it seemed. Not with this man.
For a moment he simply held her, letting the soft flesh mold to his hands. But then his thumbs brushed over nipples that were already taut and aching for just that, and she moaned softly, unable to stop the sound and not caring.
She was lost in the swirling sensations, and was thinking, crazily, that she was glad she’d made her bed this morning. She tugged at his shirt, wanting to feel the heat of him skin to skin, wanting to touch, wanting the feel of his hands on her own skin, wanting more, wanting…everything.
She returned the probing exploration of his tongue, thrilling at the way his breath caught, then stopped as she traced the even curve of his teeth, then beyond. He allowed her the invasion, welcomed it with a slide of his tongue over hers, and—
He stopped.
He not only stopped everything, leaving her bereft, but went suddenly still and rigid in an entirely different way.
“Jordan,” he said, in the same moment that she heard the clatter on the stairs from the store. Usually they were back downstairs before Jordy finished; not today.
They backed apart, as if it were instinctive. They hadn’t talked about this, specifically, what to tell Jordy, if anything, about what had sprung to life between them. It was too new, too tentative, and too hotly private to share with anyone, but especially his son.
Besides, what if it’s so hot it burns itself out? she thought.
“Kai,” he began.
“We’ll talk about it later,” she said as a rapid, excited-sounding knock came on the door. Jordy had been up here once before, when he’d come up to get the CD she’d given him. He’d burst right in that day, and she was thankful now that she’d made the point that this was her home, not just an extension of her workplace, and that a knock on the door was required.
She tugged on her T-shirt to straighten it. He tucked his back in, hastily. Then he went back to the bar and picked up what had to be a cold cup of coffee by now; although if it was boiling from the heat they’d generated she wouldn’t be surprised.