Chapter Eleven

When Eric walked into Jesse’s room, the kid was lying on the bed, his back facing the door. Tiger trotted around the bed and stuck his snout in Jesse’s face. Petting his dog would ease some of the tension, so Eric hung back, giving Tiger time to work his canine magic.

Eventually, he rounded the bed and sat next to the kid. Any idiot could see the boy adored his sister and that Tess would do anything for him. But something about their family dynamic was out of whack.

“What’s going on, Jess?” He watched the boy’s hand curve beneath Tiger’s chin, his fingers massaging the dog’s throat as Tiger leaned in for more attention. Still, Jesse didn’t respond, but he could see the gears turning in the kid’s eyes.

“Something’s bugging you,” he continued. “I get that, and I get that you don’t want to talk about it. But you should know I’ve done surveillance for seventy-two hours straight without sleep. You won’t outlast me.”

“Fine.” He sat up and propped a pillow behind his shoulders. “Why’d ya have to kiss her?”

Yeah, he knew that was the crux of things. Jesse must have been taken totally off guard. It had shocked the shit out of him. “I didn’t have to. I—” Wanted to. So badly, he hadn’t been able to stop himself. “It wasn’t planned; it just happened.” And it won’t happen again. Kissing her had been a mistake. Nick had been right nine months ago when he’d warned Eric off. With his extreme aversion to being tied down, he’d only wind up hurting Tess, and he liked her way too much for that to happen. More so, now that he was getting to know her better.

“Are you gonna do it again?” Jesse didn’t bother to hide his sneer.

“No.” That didn’t mean he didn’t want to. Christ, the way she’d felt in his arms, with her perfect little body plastered to his, and her lips tasting like honey, and roses, and peaches. All it had taken was a few seconds, and he’d grown a boner the size of a Louisville Slugger.

Tiger surged his chest against the side of the mattress, pushing his head closer to Jesse’s hand.

“You promise?” The kid’s face was brimming with such hopefulness, it became screamingly apparent that extracting that promise from him was important in a way that went well beyond the typical brother-looking-out-for-his-sister concern.

“What’s really going on here? You’re more than just a little pissed that I kissed your sister.” Crickets. “Talk to me.”

Jesse narrowed his eyes. “Do you really care about her, or are you just tryin’ to get into her pants?”

Definitely the first. Maybe the second, but that wasn’t going to happen. Ever. “I care about both of you.” And it didn’t matter that he hadn’t gotten into her pants. Whatever she’d been wearing was so damned thin, she might as well have been naked, because he’d felt nearly everything.

It wasn’t humanly possible for her to miss my ginormous boner.

“Bullshit.” Jesse crossed his arms and leaned back against the pillow. “You need us for your investigation. You’re only bein’ nice to us to keep us around.”

Eric dragged a hand through his hair. The movement caught Tiger’s eye, and his dog sat with a huff, swinging his dark gaze from him to Jesse. Even Tiger could sense the brewing tension in the air.

“It’s true, I do need you, but I also knew your sister before I ever met you. We were…” They hadn’t been anything, not really, and when this was over, he’d never see her again. The realization twisted his guts into a goddamned pretzel.

“Were what?” Jesse eyed him speculatively.

“Nothing. We were nothing.” Again, he was hit with a wave of regret that stabbed him to the bone. This was getting them nowhere. “What’s really bugging you, that I kissed her, that you think I’m using you, or something else?”

Jesse seemed to ponder that question for a moment. “I only just found her again. She’s all I got, and I don’t wanna lose her.”

“What do you mean, you only just found her again?”

The kid’s shoulders slumped. “I haven’t seen or talked to her since she ran away. We emailed some, and she always sent me money, but I haven’t spoken to her since she left Alabama. Right before her eighteenth birthday.”

“Jesus.” That had to be ten years ago. He hadn’t realized Tess had been on her own for that long. “Why not?”

The kid’s tone turned acidic. “My asshole stepfather.”

“What about him?” He had a bad feeling about this.

“He treated her like garbage. Did she tell you he yanked her out of high school when she was fifteen?”

“That’s not even legal. Why’d he do that?”

“So she could cook and clean and do whatever else he told her to do?”

Eric gritted his teeth. “What else did he tell her to do?”

“He told her that on her eighteenth birthday, he’d give her to his best friend. That’s why she left the night before her birthday.”

“Give her to his best friend?” Eric couldn’t believe what he was hearing. It was child slavery. And rape. The idea of anyone hurting Tess, let alone—

Finishing his thought made him want to kill someone.

“Yeah, give her,” Jesse confirmed. “That guy used to slobber after her every time he came to the house. Lucky for Tess, my stepfather had some kind of twisted, fucked-up sense of morality and wouldn’t turn her over ’til she was eighteen.”

“Fucked up” didn’t begin to cover it.

Eric ran a hand over his stubbled jaw. He’d killed before, but never for personal reasons. Always for the job. Right now, if Tess’s stepfather and this other POS were standing in front of him, he’d break their necks with his bare hands.

Gradually, he forced himself to unclench his hands that he only now realized he’d been clenching into tight fists. He never would have guessed for one second that Tess had lived through that kind of childhood trauma. She was so bubbly and vibrant and brimming chock full of all that life-force stuff she believed in. That’s when it hit him. She used yoga, and Zen, and chi, and everything else he’d made fun of to make her emotionally strong. To help her get past the ugliness of what she’d lived through. His respect for her hadn’t been anywhere close to the gutter before, but now it zoomed into the stratosphere. She really was an amazing woman. He’d always known there was so much more to her than what people saw on the outside.

“Who is your stepfather?” The statute of limitations on any offenses the guy had committed had probably long since expired, but he had half a mind to run the guy anyway, just to satisfy his curiosity. And to make sure the bastard didn’t do that to anyone else.

“It doesn’t matter.” Jesse looked away. “He’s out of our lives, and that’s the way we want it. As soon as I can pay you back for what I did, we’re leavin’ and I’m gonna stay with her. If I don’t go to jail, that is. I swear I’m never goin’ back to Alabama. The only way I’d ever go back there is if they drag me back unconscious.”

From the look of disgust on the boy’s face, Eric believed him. After the nightmare he’d just described, who could blame him? “Sounds like your stepdad was even worse than my father, and that’s saying something.”

“Really?” Jesse sat up, although his face contorted as if he were about to throw up.

“You okay?” he asked, about to grab the garbage can in the bathroom for the kid to woof his cookies in, but the moment seemed to have passed.

“Yeah, just a little nauseous.” He swallowed. “What was your father like?”

Eric watched a moment longer, until he was satisfied the kid wouldn’t heave. “A bastard.” The scars on the outside of his body were from injuries sustained in the line of duty, but the ones on the inside were inflicted by his own father.

Jesse leaned forward. “What’d he do to you?”

Tiger laid his head on Eric’s thigh, and he ruffled the dog’s ears, which were soft and warm and full of soothing energy. Great, now I’m thinking like Tess. As far as he was concerned, his K-9 was better than any crystal for alleviating tension.

Not wanting to get into it, he pushed from the bed and headed for the door. Tiger trotted after him. “Let’s just say, I’m never going back there, either.” Just thinking about his dick of a father and how the man had pretty much trashed every aspect of his and his sister’s childhoods pissed him off all over again.

Reliving that part of his life? He’d sooner volunteer for clean-up duty at the firing range, picking up thousands of shell casings one by one, every day, for the rest of his life.

“Wait, Eric?” Jesse stood. “You’re not an assho— I mean, you’re not a jerk like I expected, so I guess it would be all right if you kissed my sister again. As long as you don’t hurt her, and as long as you promise not to take her away from me.”

Great, now he had her brother’s blessing to do precisely what he shouldn’t do—and exactly what he wanted to do most.

He tightened his grip on the knob. “Don’t worry, kid. I don’t plan on kissing her again, and I definitely won’t take her away from you.”

As he yanked open the door, Tess jumped back. Wide green eyes stared up at him, guilt written all over her face.

“Did you get all that?” He should have been annoyed, but she was only looking out for her brother’s interests. That, he understood.

Living through the daily wars between their mother and father had made him protective of his own sister, and he still made a point of butting into her life periodically to make sure she was doing okay.

“Um, no.” She quickly dropped her hand. “I was about to check in on Jesse to see how he was feeling?”

Good recovery. Not good enough.

She had been eavesdropping, and he should have expected nothing less. The woman was intelligent, inquisitive, and as protective of her brother as Eric was of his sister, Maggie. All good qualities in his book. And holy hell, she was still wearing that body-hugging yoga outfit, looking like a turquoise Popsicle that he wanted to lick clean off that amazing little body.

Fuck. Me.

Dream on.

Physical attraction was one thing, and that was abso-fucking-lutely there in spades. What was killing him now was that he liked her more than he could possibly have imagined. When he’d been rubbing that crystal in his fingers, he’d lied to her. More to the goddamn point, he’d been lying to himself. He had felt something, and not just the stirring of his brainless dick. Whatever that something was, he needed to run from it.

“I have to get to the office. I won’t be back until dinner.” He started past her, feeling the warmth radiating from the bare skin of her perfectly smooth arm and shoulder. “There’s a house key for you on the kitchen table. I’ll write down my cell phone number for you. Send me a text so I have yours.”

He practically ran down the hall to his bedroom. Tiger led the way, his tail whipping back and forth. Just before escaping to the solace of his bedroom, he glanced over his shoulder, then stormed inside and slammed the door behind him. Groaning, he leaned back against the door and squeezed his eyes shut.

The look of confusion in her eyes had his gut clenching to the point of pain. He’d been a cold-as-ice dick to her, and without any explanation whatsoever, but it had been necessary. Distance. Total separation—miles of it—was the only cure to what ailed him. Whatever was happening between them couldn’t, because all it took was being in the same room with her, and his common sense went completely to shit.

The air would turn electric, charging with a kaleidoscope of colorful energy that threatened to drive him insane if he didn’t act on his impulses. The only things keeping him in check were the warning flags interwoven between all those colors, driving him away with the force of a tornado.

Because I don’t do commitment.

Yet, here they were. Living in the same house.

He pushed from the door and sat heavily on the bed. No matter his adolescent urges, he needed to keep his mind sharp, and clear of personal baggage, so it stayed on track for the controlled delivery tomorrow.

Tiger had been about to plop down on his dog bed but instead turned and sat in front of Eric, lifting his paw and focusing his gaze on him. Yeah, even his dog knew.

The conversation he’d had with Jesse had torn loose a Band-Aid he’d kept securely fastened on old wounds. Exposing those wounds had screwed with his reality, leaving him totally dazed and disoriented. Because he’d just done something he’d never done in his entire life, something he’d sworn would never happen.

He’d given a woman—and not his sister—the key to his house.