Erin pushed open her apartment door, dropped her bag and the stack of mail she’d collected on the table, and walked directly into her bedroom.
She shed her clothes on the way like leaves in an autumn windstorm. She was mentally and physically exhausted—all she could think about was pulling down her blackout shades, crawling into her own bed, and sleeping away the rest of the day.
She wished her brain had an on/off switch. Unfortunately it was stuck on repeat, intent on reliving every second of the last two disastrous encounters with Cam. She turned her face into the cool pillow and realized she was crying. She’d never cried over a man before, but then she’d never been thrown so far off-kilter by one either. One second she’d thought she’d died and gone to heaven, then she pulled the Go-Directly-to-Hell card. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200.
A banging at the door thundered through the silence.
Kendall.
Erin had called her on the way home and left a voice mail canceling their plans for the evening. The banging continued. And knowing Kendall, she’d bang on the door until someone called the cops, and then she’d take all of her anger out on them before turning it on Erin.
Erin got up, reached for her robe, and dried her tearstained face with the tail of the terry-cloth belt. “I’m coming.” She didn’t even look through the peephole; she just unhooked the chain and pulled the door open.
Kendall stood with her fist at face height, ready to either punch her or beat on the door more. In her other arm she held an alarming array of long garment bags, probably containing formal dresses for the benefit Erin had bowed out of—unsuccessfully, from the look of things.
“You didn’t get my message?”
Kendall stepped inside, giving Erin no choice but to back up—Erin was barefoot while Kendall wore sadistic, dominatrix-like boots planted shoulder-width apart. She quelled her with a once-over and back again. “Did you get the license plate number of whatever it was that ran you over and dragged you a few miles?”
Erin clenched her teeth so hard, her jaw ached and her temples throbbed to give variety to the pain. She shook her aching head, regretting her inability to hold back tears. Crying did nothing more than give her a horrible headache.
“I know what you look like when you’re sick, and this is not it. What’s wrong?”
“I’m not feeling well.” Which wasn’t a lie. A night of no sleep, self-recriminations, and a double dollop of disillusionment was enough to make any woman look and feel like not-quite-dead-yet road kill.
Kendall continued her visual autopsy. “You had sex.”
Erin was well aware of that fact. She was sore in places she’d forgotten she’d had. Actually, she was sore in places that she’d never felt before.
“If you had sex with Cam, why do you look like a raccoon that tried to tango with a truck? Was it horrible? Is he into scary kink? Is the size of his penis an inverse reflection of the size of his hands and feet? I’m only asking because Cam O’Leary wears what the nursing staff swears is a size fourteen shoe, and even I’ve noticed how big the man’s hands are—it’s difficult not to when every nurse in the hospital talks of little else.”
Erin had never noticed the size of Cam’s feet or hands, and she couldn’t believe the size of his penis in relation to his hands and feet was the subject of discussion and speculation for an entire staff of single female nurses.
Kendall gave her a you’re-so-naive head shake. “You’ll catch flies with your mouth hanging open like that. Now answer the question.”
“Fine. Long story.” She counted the answers off on her fingers. “No scary kink. And no inverse reflection.”
Kendall rearranged the garment bags over her arm, “Do you really think that ‘long story’ schtick is going to work?” Her voice went up an octave and she spoke so slowly Erin might have been confused with a remedial preschool student on the wrong side of the bell curve.
Kendall strode into Erin’s bedroom where she laid out the garment bags on the bed. “I brought you shoes to match, now all we have to do is pick out the perfect dress and you can tell me your very long story of woe while I fix your hair.” She tapped her top lip with two fingers, like a little lip drum roll. “I’m thinking a dramatic updo—very sexy.”
“I’m not going.”
“Oh, yes, you are. You are not backing out on me last minute. If you’re not there, who am I supposed to talk to?”
“Your fiancé?”
Kendall waved her hand like she was swatting a gnat. “No, silly, he’s supposed to talk business to everyone else at the table. He doesn’t have time to talk to me.”
Erin wanted to smack Kendall and tell her to get a clue. The man never had time to talk to her.
“And believe me, I have to listen to David schmooze so often I can recite whole conversations like a good Catholic can recite the mass without the need for a priest—well, except for the readings, because those change.”
Erin sank onto the one spot on her bed not covered with dresses. “Yes, I know.”
“Besides”—Kendall ignored Erin’s sarcasm—“there’s a friend of David’s I want you to meet.”
“No, Kendall.” Erin shot to her feet and tightened the belt on her robe. “This is where I draw the line. The last thing I need, after last night’s disaster, is another one of your setups.”
“This is not a setup, it’s an introduction. And what made last night so horrible? You haven’t told me anything remotely resembling a disaster.”
“And I won’t. You’ll have to take my word for it.” There was no way she would tell another soul what had happened. Not even her best friend. “Suffice it to say, it wasn’t the act that was the problem; it was Cam’s immediate reaction afterward.”
“It’s natural for a man to second-guess his actions. Cam O’Leary has always struck me as a very deliberate person. He just doesn’t seem the type to fall into bed with someone. The fact that he did just that, and that the someone was an employee at the time, would definitely be enough to freak a man like Cam out. Give him a break. Did he apologize for whatever it was he said?”
“No.”
“Let me guess.” Kendall drumrolled her lips again. “You never gave him the opportunity. Somehow I’m not finding this at all shocking. Hmm . . . I wonder why?”
“Because you’re just that good? Don’t break your arm patting yourself on the back.”
“I won’t. I’ll be too busy twisting yours.”
***
Cam carried a sleeping Janie to bed at ten. She’d been trying to wait up for Erin, and he didn’t know which of them was more disappointed that she’d lost the battle.
By eleven he was pacing.
By eleven thirty he broke out his police-ban radio, worried that Erin had been in an accident. How many women had he pulled out of smashed cars with the Jaws of Life?
When headlights cut through the window, he let out a relieved breath—that was until he saw her. Cam blinked his eyes, wondering if maybe the headlights had done something to his vision. She glided up the front walk like someone you’d see on the red carpet. She wore a champagne-colored gown that made her look like a cross between a Grecian goddess and one of the faeries that filled the bedtime stories his mother had told him. Her hair was piled on top of her head in a complicated mass that made him want nothing more than to dig his fingers into it, find the pins, and take them out one by one. Well-placed tendrils escaped to curl around her cheeks and jaw and highlight the length of her graceful neck.
Erin fumbled through her jewel-encrusted clutch, pulled out her keys, and unlocked the door. The room was lit only by the small lamp on the entry table, so he wasn’t sure whether or not she saw him sitting there.
“You’re home.”
“I’ve returned to work. This isn’t home—not to me. This is my job.” Erin didn’t turn toward him; as a matter of fact, she turned away—giving him a view of the back of the dress. It was held up with straps that looked like large diamond-encrusted chains, and went straight down her ballerina-worthy bare back, meeting just above her bottom in a jewel-encrusted hollow circle which was ruched with the skirt, highlighting her backside to perfection.
“Where were you?” He took a deep breath and memories of their every second together flipped through his mind like cards through a Vegas dealer’s hands. His fingers itched to touch her; her scent surrounded him, called to him, taunted him. He closed the gap between them, but even though he was closer to her, he wasn’t close enough. He doubted he’d ever be close enough. “I was worried.”
When she turned toward him, her gaze slammed into him with the force of a battering ram. The shock in her eyes made it clear she hadn’t been aware of his nearness. Her eyes were made up, all smoky and sexy, and they looked bigger than usual, the color sharper either as a result of her anger, the low lighting, or the makeup.
Her eyes had haunted his every waking moment since she’d slammed the bathroom door on him last night. “Is something wrong with Janie?”
“No.”
“Did you have a call?” She opened her clutch and checked her phone. “I kept my phone on me.”
“No, Erin, it’s just that I didn’t know where you were or when you’d be—” Home was the word that wanted to fly off his tongue but he caught it before it escaped. For some unknown reason, the word home was a point of contention with her. “I didn’t know when you’d return. Janie waited up for you, she fell asleep on the couch a few hours ago.”
“I’ll see her in the morning.”
“Erin . . .”
She was no longer meeting his gaze—she stared over his left shoulder.
“I want to explain . . . apologize . . .” Beg for mercy was more like it, but that wouldn’t be at all attractive.
“No, Cam. That goes against the ‘move-on-and-pretend-it-never-happened’ agreement.”
“I never agreed to that. All I’m asking is that you hear me out, then I’ll drop the subject forever. You have my word.”
“I think the words ‘Oh, God no’ pretty much covered it, don’t you?”
“I already explained that—I didn’t protect you and I’ve never put a woman at risk because of my lack of . . . planning. I freaked out for a second there. I’m sorry. I didn’t handle it well.”
“Cam, it’s not just that and you know it.”
“You’re right. God, Erin, you’re an employee. I took advantage—”
“Stop it, Cam. As much as I’d like to blame the whole thing on you, I can’t. There’s plenty of blame to go around and I accept my part in it. If it makes you feel any better, I’m not proud to say I had sex with my boss either. What do you say we both stop beating ourselves up over it and put it behind us, for Janie’s sake. I have another three weeks on my contract, and if we both agree to forget it ever happened, we can get through it. Unless you’d rather I leave—”
“No.” Just the thought of Erin leaving had him reaching for her. Pinning her in place. Holding her felt so right, so natural; she fit against him like her body was specially designed for his, and all he wanted to do was kiss her. Okay, that wasn’t all. He wanted to carry her to bed, strip off that dress, and make her scream his name until she lost her voice. He wanted to erase the last twenty-four hours. He wanted to be inside her. He wanted to hold her all night long. “I don’t want you to leave.”
“Then I suggest you take your hands off me.”
***
The next morning, Erin woke to Janie bouncing on her bed. “Erin, you’re home.” Janie launched herself into Erin’s arms and hugged her tight. “I missed you.”
“I missed you too. Did you have fun with your dad yesterday?”
“Yeah, we went to the park and we played, then we went to Grandpa’s house and had dinner with Grandpa and my uncles—Miss Lolly was there.” She wrinkled her nose. “She treats me like a baby, but Daddy says she means well. Then when we came home we made sticky popcorn and watched Frozen.”
“Sticky popcorn?”
“Yeah, it’s popcorn with sticky stuff on top and you have to mix it around and let it cool. Daddy makes it. The sticky part is really hot so I can’t help.”
“Caramel corn?”
Janie shrugged, “It’s sticky popcorn and it’s yummy. I saved you some.”
“That was very nice of you, thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Daddy made me promise not to wake you until eight o’clock, so I waited just like he told me.”
“Your dad’s not here?”
“No, he went to work early.”
Erin didn’t know if she was grateful or disappointed. “Well, in that case, I guess I should get up and make breakfast—”
“Not for me. Daddy poured me cereal and let me eat in front of the TV while I watched Frozen again. It’s my favorite movie.”
“That’s nice of him.”
“Oh, I forgot—be right back.” Janie jumped from the bed and raced down the stairs, her little feet slapping against the floor. She was back carrying a thermal to-go cup before Erin could finish finger combing her hair. “Daddy asked me to give this to you and tell you he said ‘Good morning.’”
“Thanks.” Erin opened the top, which, thank God, was shut tightly. The welcome scent of coffee hit her. She took a tentative sip and found it hot and fixed exactly the way she liked it. Cam certainly didn’t play fair. Being thoughtful enough to send a girl coffee in bed via the world’s cutest seven-year-old messenger was devious in the extreme.
Janie sat cross-legged on the bed beside her, staring. “So you’re not mad at Daddy anymore?”
Erin did her best not to choke on the coffee. “He told you I was mad at him?”
“Yeah, he didn’t mean to say something stupid and hurt your feelings. Did he apologize?”
“Yes, he did.”
“Did you forgive him?”
Did she? “It’s fine.”
Janie didn’t look convinced. She didn’t say anything, but then Janie could say more without words than anyone Erin had ever known, except maybe for Cam. His every look spoke volumes.
The night before Erin had barely kept her guard up while Cam did his best to knock it down. And when he held her, it was all she could do not to melt into him. The only thing that kept her from doing just that was fear.
Fear that she was the only one moved by their shared experience. Cam’s exclamation and the look of terror on his face was enough to make her consider entering a nunnery.
Fear of the pain—she’d known Cam a week, she’d slept with him once, and the free fall she’d experienced was one she never wanted to repeat. In the span of a few seconds she went from the stratospheric pinnacle of elation and feeling connected to someone like she’d never imagined possible, to the depths of despair that left her stomach in her throat, her mind reeling, and her heart shattered. The landing was a bitch.
Fear that she was one of a long line of women who had made that same free fall had overtaken her. At first she thought being together had been as meaningful and special for him as it had been for her, but then, what did she know? She didn’t have much experience when it came to sex, but what little she did have couldn’t be compared to her experience with Cam. She’d slept with two men. Neither had looked into her eyes and seen her, connected with her, touched her mind, her body, and her soul. No man before Cam had ever satisfied her, but then no man had ever hurt her before either.
Telling Cam to release her and pulling away from him both physically and emotionally had taken all her strength.
“Erin.” Janie’s impatient tone broke through the brain fog the coffee had yet to burn off.
The coffee might do the trick if she were to actually drink it; she’d been staring at her mug, which wasn’t much help. “I’m sorry, what did you say?”
Janie just shook her head as if resigned. “Dad’s been acting the same way you are now. Maybe you need to say you’re sorry too.”
“For what?”
“For whatever you did or said that’s making you sad.”
“Sometimes it’s the situation, and nothing you say or do can change that.”
“There’s always a way to change things.” Janie sounded so much older than her years; it was hard to remember she wasn’t even eight yet.
Could she change the situation? Yes, she could leave, but that wouldn’t change the fact that she was miserable. If she left, she’d also be leaving Janie, whom she’d had grown to care for more over the last week than she’d ever expected to. And leaving Janie would make her even more miserable than she was already. Plus, Erin had never walked out on a job for personal reasons. She was a professional as well as a woman of her word, and she’d told Cam she’d stay. She just needed to get past this uncomfortable made-a-mistake-and-fell-into-bed-together stage. She was sure she could, if only Cam would stop touching her and looking at her like he wanted to pick her up and drag her off to bed again. That so wasn’t going to happen. Screw me once, shame on you. Screw me twice, shame on me.
Erin ran a hand over the peach fuzz on Janie’s head. “It’s nothing for you to worry about, kiddo. I’m very happy to be here with you, and that’s all that matters. The rest of it will work out too.”
Janie didn’t look as if she believed it, even if it was the God’s honest truth. And unfortunately, there was nothing Erin could do to speed up the process.
***
Cam had come home late off a bad job. The cause of the fire was arson—no question. The only thing left to discover was whether the poor sucker who’d been in the building had been murdered on purpose or if he’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time. In Cam’s mind, it didn’t much matter—dead was dead.
Instead of heading home and finishing up the report the next morning like he normally would, he’d called Erin and told her he’d be late. He’d have much rather eaten dinner with Erin and Janie, but the Boston PD had a case to work, and his report would become part of a homicide investigation, and in his mind, that took precedence over going home. He wanted to do everything he could to make sure the guilty party got good and nailed. So he’d sucked it up, finished his work, and turned it all over to the detective in charge.
By the time Cam returned home everyone had been tucked into bed. Not that he’d checked on Erin. No, Erin in bed or out of it was off-limits, much to his dismay. He tossed his shirt and jacket in the laundry and headed to the shower to wash the stink of fire and death off him.
He pressed his hands against the cold tile, stretching his neck, shoulders, and back, and let the hot water beat away the tension. It had been five days since Erin had come home looking like a 1940s starlet. Five days since he’d held her in his arms. Five days of tiptoeing around each other, which, shit . . . wasn’t exactly the truth. He scrubbed the soot and smoke and sweat from his body and turned the hot water down enough to discourage his dick, but not enough for his balls to duck and cover. He’d been the one tiptoeing around Erin. He wasn’t sure what she was doing around him, other than keeping him awake at night. And as awful as it sounded, he knew she wasn’t doing it on purpose. It was in the tilt of her chin, the way her eyes shone when she talked to Janie. It was in the way she totally immersed herself in whatever she was doing, whether it be reading a bedtime story, cooking dinner, reorganizing his home and his life, or making love with him.
Erin Crosby gave one hundred percent with no thoughts of self-protection—she couldn’t help herself. And that was what made Erin Crosby the sexiest, most incredibly loving woman he’d ever known.
He understood why she’d left nursing. Sure, she’d told him at the interview, but after getting to know her, he realized the true depth of the problem. If Erin became one-tenth as attached to her patients as she was to Janie, then losing one would be devastating. And after his disastrous pillow talk, he understood why she’d kept her distance from him. It wasn’t because she didn’t want him; it was because he’d given her good reason not to trust him with her body or her heart. He’d given her good reason to feel the need to protect herself from him. Shit—just the thought of it was enough to make him want to bang his head against the wall, and not for the first time. He’d spent so much time kicking his own ass he probably sported bruises.
From what little Erin had shared about her life before coming there, it sounded as if she and her mom never had anyone in their corner. They had no one they could trust to care for and protect them. He’d do just about anything to prove himself worthy, to be that man for Erin.
Janie was thriving under Erin’s care, and for that matter so was he—except for the lack of sleep. He couldn’t blame his sex drive on Erin. She didn’t do anything to encourage it. She did just the opposite, in fact, but all it seemed to take was her nearness to get him going. He’d spent the last two years without so much as a thought about sex, but after Erin Crosby knocked at his door, he’d been able to think of little else.
He turned the water to frigid and did his best to think positive even though his balls were shrinking to the size of peanuts. In the last day or two, things with Erin had been looking up. He’d almost teased a laugh out of her before she remembered she was supposed to ignore him. And there were a couple of times when Janie said or did something cute and Erin would catch his eye and smile like one parent might to the other. Like they were connected.
Slowly but surely she was letting her guard down, and he was going to do everything he could to blast it out of existence. He just needed some time and he’d prove himself to her. Between now and the day Mrs. Truman returned, he would be the perfect gentleman if it killed him. Then once Erin was no longer his employee, he’d ask her out and, if he had to, he’d get down on his knees and beg for another chance.
With that thought firmly planted in his mind, he shut off the cold water, stepped out of the shower, and dried off, all the while trying to keep his thoughts off of Erin sleeping just down the hall.
His stomach grumbled, reminding him that he hadn’t eaten since breakfast. He tied the towel around his waist and considered checking out the leftovers, but couldn’t scare up the energy. No, he needed to sleep, so he grabbed his toothbrush, squeezed too much toothpaste onto it, and took his frustration out on his teeth.
When he opened the bathroom door, he walked right into a very sleepy Erin. Her hair was all over the place and her oversize boxers were slightly twisted as if she’d been tossing and turning.
“You’re home. I heard the water running and I thought it was Janie.” Her gaze traveled from his feet, pausing at the waist, and then continuing slowly up to his face. “I came to check on her.”
“I’m sorry I woke you.” It was a lie. Waking her was the highlight of his day, but he hoped she was too tired to notice. Still, the sight of her all warm and sleepy and sexy, with those boxers hanging crookedly off her hips, made it a pretty sure bet he would be doing anything but sleeping soundly.
“It’s really late.”
God, she was beautiful. “You should go back to bed.”
She shook her head—her hair flying around her face. “That’s not what I meant.”
“Okay, what did you mean?” Was she trying to kill him or give him reason to become hypothermic? He couldn’t help himself; he tucked the strand of hair that fell in her eyes behind her ear. She didn’t shy away. Progress.
“I’ve been worried. You’ve been gone so long—longer than usual. The investigation—was it bad?”
“It was as bad as they get. Arson and murder. We don’t have enough information to know if it was premeditated.”
“Oh, Cam. I’m sorry.” She ran a hand down his arm, slipping it into his palm and squeezing.
“I needed to get the report to the detective taking over the case so I didn’t hold up the investigation.”
“Are you okay?”
He’d never had anyone worry about him before—well, he supposed his dad worried about the physical job, but not about how any of them felt. Men were supposed to buck up and take it. He hated that he’d worried her, but he loved that she’d cared enough about him to worry. He didn’t release her hand, and it was all he could do not to pull her into his arms and crush her against him. She looked fragile, and as she stared at him, her eyes glassed over like she was fighting tears. God, she was sweet. “I’m fine.”
She stepped closer and looked up at him as if she were trying to decide whether or not to believe him. “Are you sure?”
Hell no, he wasn’t sure. He took a deep breath of Erin-scented air, and all he knew for sure was that he wanted to wrap his arms around her and bury his nose in her hair, her neck, her cleavage. He’d thought he was fine, but maybe he’d been wrong. Standing half naked in the hallway, whispering to her and holding her hand, loosened what he thought were permanent knots in his neck and shoulders. Stress he hadn’t realized he’d carried slipped away, only to be replaced by a very different kind of tension. Damn, he needed to get away from her bedroom eyes, sexy tank top, crooked boxers, and long, long, long legs. The woman was enough to tempt a eunuch. “I’ll survive.”
“Do you want to talk about it? Have you eaten? I can heat up your dinner or fix you an early breakfast.”
“Thanks, but no. We both need to—” Go to bed. Together. And not get a wink of sleep for the next few hours. But since that couldn’t happen again, he blew out a breath. “Get some sleep. Janie will be up with the birds.”
“Cam.” She reached over and cupped his cheek in her hand, while her other hand squeezed his.
God, the way she said his name, all low and throaty and sounding softly intimate, mixed with the touch of her hand to his roughened cheek had his dick searching for a way out of the towel.
“I’m here if you need me.”
He kept telling himself she didn’t mean it the way it sounded. His throat was raw and tight. He wasn’t sure if it was from the smoke he’d inhaled or the look in her sea-glass green eyes so full of compassion and something else he refused to label. The last time she looked at him like that, he’d kissed her.
He didn’t trust his voice, so he nodded, dropped her hand, walked to his room, and forced himself to close the door. Sleep was a fantasy and apparently, so was Erin.