Joe sat beside Violet on the bed at the motel and slid the collar of her shirt aside. His fingers trailed over her skin and he felt her quiver in response. God, he wanted to put his mouth right there…
“What’s that?” Beni asked, standing on tiptoe to peek over Violet’s shoulder while she tried to snap the buckles on his life jacket.
“A muscle stimulator,” Violet said. “To make my neck feel better.”
She scooped her hair up and out of the way as Joe peeled a gel-backed electrode off a plastic sheet and pressed it onto the nape of her neck. Then he placed the other three electrodes on the surrounding muscles, hooked up the wire leads, and set the dials to low.
“You know how to run this thing?” he asked.
“Yes.”
Joe handed her the unit he kept in his gear bag, the size and shape of a pack of cigarettes, then fished a couple of the muscle relaxants from his pocket and held them out.
She pushed his hand away. “No.”
“Yes.” He slapped them into her palm and grabbed a bottle of water off the nightstand. “Relax. Take a nap. The muscle stim will shut off after twenty minutes. I promise I won’t break your kid.”
“I wasn’t really worried about you breaking him.”
Oh, come on. The kid was five. Joe could handle him. Probably.
“Take your medicine,” he told Violet. “We’ll be fine.”
The instant they cleared the pool gate Beni shot out of Joe’s grasp, took a flying leap and splashed down like a miniature hippo. He came up sputtering and coughing, despite the life jacket. Joe bailed in after him and took an elbow in the throat and a knee in the gut as he grabbed the slippery, thrashing body.
Beni gagged, spit, and choked out, “Again!”
Hoo boy. Joe hauled him to the side of the pool by the straps of his life jacket, planted his butt on the concrete deck and said, “Stay.”
Beni stuck out his bottom lip, but stayed put.
Joe peeled off his soaked T-shirt and lobbed it toward the nearest lounge chair, then braced a hand on either side of Beni, pinning the squirming kid in place while he leaned in, nose to nose. “So here’s the deal, sport. You want to swim, you follow my rules.”
Beni’s forehead did a mutinous pucker. “My daddy lets me make the rules.”
“Bullshit.” Even Joe wasn’t falling for that line. “We got a deal, or do we go back to the room?”
Beni chewed his bottom lip, considering. Geezus, he was something. Really, it didn’t matter that Joe knew nothing about kids. Beni was a fifty-year-old con man stuffed into a four-foot-tall package.
“Oh-kay,” Beni said, stretching the word into two pained syllables and tossing in an eye roll for good measure.
“Great. Rule number one. No running.”
* * *
Violet was still alone in the room when she woke up. She rubbed the sleep from her eyes and checked the clock as her brain slowly came unmuddled. She’d been asleep for two hours? Where was Beni? Even Joe must’ve run out of energy by now. She went to the bathroom, splashed cold water on her face, then shuffled outside. The air slurped around her like hot molasses when she stepped out the door.
Beni’s voice echoed across the parking lot. “You can’t beat me this time!”
“Wanna bet?”
They were halfway down the pool when Violet reached the fence, Joe gliding easily while Beni churned water like an egg beater with bad gears. Violet’s mother lounged poolside in the shade of a huge red-striped umbrella, head buried in a book.
“Have they been swimming this whole time?” Violet asked, easing into a chair beside her.
“They take a break every half hour to reapply sunscreen. Joe has a timer set on his phone to be sure they don’t go over.” Iris tilted her head toward where it sat on the table, beside a small cooler. “There’s sweet tea in there. And cookies in that plastic tub.”
Violet pulled out a jug of tea, guzzled a third, then got herself a peanut butter cookie.
Her mother studied her closely. “Looks like you’re moving better.”
“Mmm-hmmm,” Violet mumbled through the first chewy bite. The pain in her neck had been reduced to a dull ache. “I didn’t mean to keep you waiting. Why didn’t you wake me?”
“You needed the rest. And it’s nice to just sit here and listen to Beni laugh.”
Because they were so damn lucky both of his parents were alive to hear him. Violet nodded, the second bite of cookie hanging up on the lump that swelled in her throat.
“I win!” Beni yelled, finally reaching the shallow end of the pool.
Joe stood, water sliding off his body, and Violet got choked up all over again. His soccer shorts were plastered to his body, the weight of the water dragging them down to expose the curve of his hipbones and a stretch of taut skin below his navel, a regular smorgasbord of lean, tanned muscle glistening in the sun. Violet could damn near taste the water on his skin.
Her face went hot. Geezus. Her mother was sitting right there. Violet took another bite of cookie before her mouth did or said something completely inappropriate. Beni spotted her and scrambled onto the pool deck. Joe lunged, snatching Beni up by the straps of his life jacket, leaving his feet spinning in midair.
“What’s rule number one?”
Beni scowled, but went limp. “No running.”
Joe set him on his feet. Beni marched over to Violet and planted his hands on his hips, forty-five pounds of perturbed boy child. “Mommy, Joe is mean.”
Violet swiped wet hair off his forehead, trying not to stare as Joe hoisted himself out of the pool and strolled over to join them, dripping and shameless. Damn. He even had nice feet. It would not be good if she gave in to the urge to lick the water out of his navel with her son and her mother watching.
Violet forced her eyes to focus on Beni. “Looks like you were having fun to me.”
“He wouldn’t let me do any of the good stuff.” Beni ticked off the injustices on his fingers. “No flips. Or jumping off the diving board. He wouldn’t even throw me like Daddy does. We wasted hours.”
“We made up for it.” Joe flopped onto the next chaise lounge, scooping a hand over his head as if to push back the hair he didn’t have any more. He slid Violet another of those wary looks. “Your mom said it was okay.”
“It’s great. Thanks.” Her voice sounded chirpy. Nervous. She shifted her gaze to the pool, squinting against the glitter of sunlight on the water. “I didn’t expect you to spend the whole day out here.”
Joe hitched a shoulder. “It’s been fun.”
Violet raised her eyebrows.
“The water’s nice and cool,” he amended, his smile as fleeting as the eye contact before his gaze dropped.
“Time to get dried off. Soon as your grandpa gets back, he’ll want to leave,” Iris told Beni.
He grabbed a cookie, then plunked back down on the foot of his mother’s chaise lounge, giving her the sad puppy eyes. “Can’t you come with us?”
“I have to stay and give Joe a ride to the airport in the morning.” She combed her fingers through his wet hair. “And the next day, Daddy gets to come home.”
“Is he gonna be all better by then?”
“He will be before you know it,” Iris said, then turned to Violet. “Gil borrowed an RV to take Delon home.”
Violet could hardly fathom that Gil hadn’t broken every speed limit between here and Earnest when he heard about Delon’s injury, but that damn motorcycle had busted more than Gil’s body. It had shattered a bond between two brothers that Violet would have said was unbreakable.
Beni wolfed down the last of his cookie, then scrambled to his feet. “Come on, Joe. I wanna swim some more before Grandpa gets here.”
Joe stood and scooped Beni up in one swift, seamless motion. At the side of the pool he swung Beni like a sack of feed. “One, two…” He hesitated just long enough to let Beni plug his nose, then, “Three!”
Joe launched Beni out over the water, then jumped in after him, splashing down simultaneously to the tune of Beni’s delighted shriek. Joe looped an arm around Beni’s waist while he sputtered, “Again!”
Joe gave him another toss, laughing as Beni squealed. She never would’ve guessed Joe could be so patient. So careful. He looked so…so…
Perfect. Still. Violet’s heart spasmed, the pain arcing through her chest. But as her head cleared from the nap and the drugs, something tickled her memory—a glimpse, a fleeting image not quite registered before it was gone. With one eye on Beni and Joe, she swiped and tapped on her phone until she located the video Hank had shown her that morning. She kept her face schooled—nothing to see here, just checking my email—while she fast-forwarded past the wreck, to the point where she was sprawled in the mud and Joe came into view.
The hard glare of the arena lights revealed all. As he dropped to his knees and reached for her, he was totally exposed—every thought, every emotion drawn in stark lines on his face. And what she saw made Violet’s heart ring as true and sweet as a Sunday church bell.
Joe wasn’t pretending. Not in that moment. Maybe not in any of the moments.
She let the phone drop into her lap, blinking hard behind her sunglasses to hold back the tears. Of joy? Hope? Delusion? He was still determined to leave. Did it matter how he felt if he didn’t want her more than his precious Oregon desert?
A hand squeezed her arm. Her mother smiled, but it was sad around the edges, a mother feeling her child’s potential pain. “It won’t be easy, baby girl, but you have to try.”
Violet drew in a long, shaky breath, her fingers clenching around the phone as she watched the man she loved laughing with her son. Yes. She had to try. She couldn’t let him walk away without a fight. This Joe—yes, dammit, her Joe, whether he would admit it or not—was worth saving. She just had to figure out how. And soon. She had to stake her claim before he stepped on that plane tomorrow.
Dragging him away once had taken all of Wyatt’s considerable power. If Dick Browning got his hooks back into Joe, Violet feared she might never be able to pry him loose again.