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  “I’m not getting frustrated,” he snapped, his tone edgy.

  “Right. I forgot. That’s your usually cheerful voice.” Not about to let the matter drop, Janelle got up off the floor and sat down on the couch beside him. “Watch,” she instructed.

  She held up her right hand and demonstrated how to work the two long sticks that had been sent along with the take-out order.

  “Okay, now you,” she said, turning over the chopsticks to him. Janelle pressed her lips together, desperately trying to hold back a laugh as he sent several grains of rice flying through the air. Along with several more choice words. “Not quite.”

  “No kidding, Sherlock,” he bit off.

  His mood was getting worse. Since he was going out of his way to help her, she decided to try to be encouraging about this. People always worked better with encouragement.

  “Almost, though,” she coaxed. “Here, hold it like this.” She took his hand and inserted first one chopstick and then the other. “One is stationary,” she told him. “Only one stick is supposed to move.” She showed him again with her own set. “Like this.” Then she dropped the two she was holding and started to mold his fingers around his set.

  She was too damn close, he thought. Janelle was practically sitting on his side, definitely fitting into the curve of his body. Her scent seemed to be all around him, like an invisible bubble. Sweet, heady. Tantalizing.

  Sawyer shook his head to clear it. He was having a great deal of difficulty concentrating on the chopsticks. Or the hunger that supposedly only existed in his belly. That was swiftly fading away. There was another, much more overpowering hunger taking its place. It vibrated through him like an entity that desperately needed excising.

  To his knowledge, there was only one way to do that.

  Swallowing a raw curse, he dropped the annoying chopsticks and turned his attention to the even more annoying woman. The woman who had been traipsing through his head at unconventional moments, at inconvenient times. Making him crazy.

  She felt his eyes on her. Not the chopsticks, but her. Her breath stood still in her throat as she waited. And hoped.

  Burying his hands in her hair, Sawyer brought her face toward his and kissed her. Kissed her with all the hunger currently ricocheting throughout his soul.

  And went on kissing her.

  Rather than end, the kiss built and continued. Continued so much that it fed the fire that had been burning within him for a while now. The fire he’d hoped to somehow put out.

  No such luck.

  Especially not after he’d made his connection. From Janelle’s response, this was not one-sided, and he was relieved. At the same time, her eagerness made it harder for him to step back, to break contact.

  And walk away.

  But there was no resistance, no signal that he was to back off, to stop. Instead, he was met with a passion that almost swallowed him whole. Janelle wasn’t just there for the ride or simply on the receiving end, she was pushing forward.

  And kissing him back with feeling.

  Something snapped inside of him. The last of his resistance crumbled. He pulled her closer into his arms. Closer against him. Absorbing her warmth, her desire, and making it his own.

  He was breaking every single damn rule he’d ever made for himself. He had no idea what came over him, or why. There wasn’t anything to point to, no trauma to try to blot out, no anniversary that had dug a pit in his gut or made him feel less than whole. It was her, all her. If anything, she made him feel like a person again. All the numb extremities were no longer numb. Maybe from the moment he’d first laid eyes on her, something about her roused him. Maybe that was why he’d felt this antagonism toward her. It was his own self-preservation mechanism kicking in. Trying to save him.

  From what?

  From this all-consuming pleasure that was rampaging through him like a gaggle of wild gypsies? No, save him from the aftermath of this. Because there would be an aftermath. Consequences to face. Pipers to pay and all that other garbage. He’d done it before. Once.

  He didn’t care. All he wanted right now was to feel this happening. To feel, for the first time, as if he were alive and not just on some damn automatic pilot whenever he was away from any life-or-death situation.

  That was it. Life or death. Like all the other situations when he’d felt alive, on his game, alert, with adrenaline running full steam ahead through him.

  His breathing grew shorter as the demands of his body grew more urgent. Deepening the kiss, he swept his hands over her body, molding her to him, assuring himself that he wasn’t just hallucinating all this.

  Janelle couldn’t remember the last time she’d made love. The last time she’d been with a man. It didn’t matter. It didn’t count. Heaven help her, this counted. She couldn’t pull enough air in her lungs. Her breathing grew shorter as the magnitude of sensations grew larger.

  She didn’t remember being undressed, could only vaguely remember ripping clothing off him. It was as if lightning chased her, urging her to make the most of this before the storm suddenly left. That was what this felt like. A storm. A storm that wrapped itself around her and pulled her into the very heart of it.

  This detective who moved like smoke through a room knew how to make his presence known when he wanted to. He left his mark on her. On all of her. Branding her with his lips as well as his hands, bringing her up to climaxes with the pass of his tongue, the skill of his hands. Finding secret places along her body that greeted him with joy, places she hadn’t even realized could offer these kinds of responses.

  He was making her crazy.

  She found herself digging her nails into him, arching up to absorb the full sensation, the full weight of his body along hers. She bit down on her lower lip to keep from crying out when he brought her up to a full explosion.

  Panting, she wiggled down beneath him, her silent urging clear. She wanted them to come together, to be together in the full sense of the word, before she completely ran out of energy.

  She felt his smile against her mouth.

  They made love quickly, furiously, as if to outrun common sense and the taboos that would have, should have, kept them apart. All that mattered was the end goal. The wild, ecstatic climax that would, and did, wipe out everything that was dark and ugly and sad from their lives.

  At least for as long as it lasted.

  As she slowly came back to earth, she realized Sawyer was holding her to him. Like a lover, not a stranger who’d been caught up in this mysterious whirlwind along with her. It made the euphoria last a little longer.

  “If I’d known that would be your reaction to a clue, I would have asked about the fingerprints a long time ago,” Sawyer commented.

  He tucked his arm under his head, trying his best to sound removed. Glib. He stared up at her ceiling because he didn’t want to see the disapproval he thought might be forming on her face.

  She turned toward him, her hair tickling the side of his cheek as she faced him. Her heart was still racing. But there was something more. A radiance that she couldn’t contain. She hugged it to her and made the very most of it. Because something this splendid couldn’t last long.

  “You have an interesting way of guarding a body, Detective.”

  “Something new I’m trying out,” he deadpanned. “Although it was a little fast,” he admitted, glancing at his watch. “A lot fast, actually,” he amended.

  Her eyes widened. She could feel her body warming all over again. “There’s a longer, slower version?”

  Sawyer laughed and found himself combing his fingers through her hair, moving it away from her face.

  Found himself wanting to kiss her again. “Yes.”

  “Show me,” she coaxed, her voice low, husky, throbbing with a myriad of emotions she had no idea how to deal with, other than to allow them to exist.

  This was just a release, she told herself, trying not to set herself up for the disappointment she knew had to follow. This was just a way to knock off
a little tension, nothing more.

  More, a small voice inside her head echoed.

  Sawyer looked at her for a long moment. “You’re sure?”

  Adrenaline began to build all over again. “I’m sure.”

  She watched as a smile spread along his lips, taking over all of him. Threading itself into her. Binding her to him.

  She raised her arms and welcomed him back.

  The next minute, she’d crossed over again to a place where there were no clocks, no judgments, nothing but feelings and needs. She would have wept for joy—if she weren’t suddenly so very busy.

  Chapter 13

  There’d been a few times in his life when he’d felt awkward. But he had always managed to mask his feelings and appear to the world the way he always did. Confident. Because he had the kind of face people associated with someone in control, who set the pace rather than followed it, no one ever thought anything could make Sawyer feel awkward. Men like Sawyer Boone did not feel awkward, or uncomfortable. That was for other mortals, whose self-confidence depended on and were built upon outside sources.

  Sawyer had always been his own man.

  That did not, however, negate the fact that deep down, Sawyer was currently experiencing one of those rare, unsettling moments when he did feel awkward. Because this time had been so different from the other times when he had made love with a woman. His life, before Allison had come into it and after she had left it, was marked with couplings. With sex, not feelings. With physical attraction, not emotional bonding.

  He’d had more than his share of women, although when it came to relationships, not counting Allison, his score was still at zero. Which was where he liked it. He purposely avoided women like Janelle because he didn’t want to be in a situation where a relationship could exist. He’d been there once. The pain involved was far too great to risk again.

  Which was why he didn’t know what the hell he’d been doing last night.

  Morning found him alone in the spare bedroom, the tangled sheets beneath him the only testimony that last night had not been a figment of his imagination. That and the hum he still felt along his body.

  He could swear if he took in a deep breath, he could still smell her. The scent of her hair, her skin.

  He needed to pull himself together, he thought, before their paths crossed this morning. Before he had to face her—and say what? Last night was great, but today’s today and we don’t look back?

  Biting back a curse, Sawyer sat up and scrubbed his hands over his face. Where the hell had his judgment been last night? Or his brain, for that matter?

  It had all gone to hell, that’s where. And so would he, for what he’d done. If he didn’t go there first class, one of the Cavanaughs would undoubtedly send him there.

  There was a knock on his door. Muscles all along his upper torso stiffened.

  “Sawyer?” Janelle’s voice came through the door.

  He couldn’t gauge her mood from the single word, but he braced himself, just in case. He instinctively knew that she wasn’t the kind of woman who engaged in one-night stands or flings. Which made his situation all the worse.

  “Yeah?”

  “You decent?”

  He could have sworn he detected a smile. Sawyer didn’t know if that made things worse or better. “Not since I was fifteen.”

  Her laugh, like a much needed shot of brandy on a cold night, burrowed right into him, settling around his belly and nesting there. Arousing him.

  He didn’t want this, he told himself. Didn’t need this. Didn’t know what the hell to do with this.

  The doorknob turned. Sawyer drew the sheet around his middle. They’d made love last night, but this morning, he was looking to return to the status quo. That didn’t include either one of them being naked.

  Janelle stuck her head in and seemed mildly surprised to find him still in bed. That made two of them, given that he was ordinarily such a light sleeper. He should have woken up the second she’d started to slip out of bed.

  “We need to get going,” she told him.

  He started to get up, then stopped. That naked thing again. He’d have to wait until she left the room. Her words played themselves over in his head, registering this time. “I thought you said you didn’t want a bodyguard anymore.”

  “Maybe I was wrong,” she allowed. If someone was out to control Wayne through his son, and she seemed to be the most likely candidate to challenge the evidence, then eliminating her from the scene, as Sawyer had pointed out, would be to that person’s benefit. “But I’m not talking about you being my bodyguard. We’re supposed to be on our way to Uncle Andrew’s house.” She saw the dark brown eyebrows draw together in a vacant scowl. Funny, she never noticed how sexy that scowl was before. “Breakfast, remember?”

  The former police chief’s visit last night came back to him in broken bits. Everything that had transpired in the last twelve hours had taken a back seat to their lovemaking.

  He stared at her now, not a little stunned. “You’re serious?”

  She wasn’t exactly sure how to take that. She decided not to feel slighted, or to allow herself to make anything more of last night than it having been the most teeth-jarring experience of her life. If she wanted it to be more, to mean more to him, she wasn’t going to let herself go there. She’d known the kind of man he was at the outset. And he wasn’t a nester.

  But he was engaged once. Loved someone enough not to ride out of town and into the sunset.

  She shut out the voice in her head. “I might not be, but he is. I’ve learned you never turn down a personal invitation from Uncle Andrew.” Her mouth curved. “There are consequences.”

  He blew out a breath, feeling trapped. More by his own reactions than the so-called command performance. “Look, if this is because of last night—”

  “It is.” Then, before he could protest or begin a rebuttal, she added, “He was here last night, remember? Told me to bring you.” She knew that wasn’t what Sawyer was referring to, but at the moment she wasn’t up to hearing him say It was just one of those things. Suck it up, honey. “I believe the words tomorrow morning were specifically used.” She spread her hands wide. “Well, guess what? It’s tomorrow morning.”

  He groaned. Andrew Cavanaugh might be the former chief of police, but he was still related to half the police force, not to mention the current chief of detectives. Deliberately ignoring the man’s invitation was not a wise move. Not if he wanted to stay here. And although he’d told himself that one place was as good or bad as another, he’d put down roots here. He didn’t want to leave just yet.

  “Give me a few minutes.”

  She nodded, then paused by the door to look over her shoulder. He was still sitting there. “Hustle.”

  With that, she closed the door. And made sure she was on the other side of it. No matter what she wanted to the contrary.

  The second the back door opened, the warmth found Sawyer, surrounding him like a comforting embrace.

  It was a combination of warm air generated by so many bodies in a limited amount of space, and warmth generated by the actual people who comprised those bodies.

  Voices rose, shouting greetings and teasing remarks, all aimed at the woman who had entered the country kitchen just ahead of him. To his surprise, several calls of greeting were sent in his direction, as well. Sawyer recognized none of the voices although some faces were vaguely familiar from the police department.

  His eyes quickly swept over the crowd, making assessments. For the most part, Cavanaugh men had black hair and sky-blue eyes. Their female counterparts were blondes with green eyes. All except for the redhead left of center. They were all dynamic. The children present seemed to be running on self-recharging triple-A batteries.

  Sawyer could feel himself withdrawing.

  For the most part, he’d done undercover work in the last three years. That kept him out of the general loop. On occasion, he would be summoned and told to come into police headquarters. But us
ually he was left on his own, and he liked it that way.

  Except for the brief period when he’d been engaged to Allison, he’d been an outsider for most of his life. That’s what made him so good at what he’d done up until now. Blending in. Being invisible. Observing was second nature to an outsider because there was nothing else to take up his time.

  “We left you a space,” Andrew informed him, as if he’d been expecting him to come all along.

  The older man pointed out two seats at the table he’d had custom-made to accommodate his ever-expanding family. When he’d first left the department, shortly after his wife’s disappearance, there’d been a regular table to grace the kitchen. But as his cooking skills had improved and his desire to have his family around him had increased, he’d had a table made to accommodate them.

  Now, because his family had more than doubled in size, there were three tables placed as close together as possible and extending from the kitchen through the family room into the dining room. Physical walls had been moved so that emotional ones were never given an opportunity to go up.

  Janelle looked around. She hadn’t been here in several weeks, since before Sawyer had appeared on the scene. The extra work had drastically cut into her free time. She realized just how much she’d missed these people who were so dear to her. These people she had very nearly, in her anger and hurt, given up.

  Her mouth curved. Showed her that even she could be an idiot.

  Right now it looked as if half the family was missing, she assessed. Only one of her brothers, Dax, with his wife, Brenda, and their infant daughter, was at the table. The rest of the spaces were filled by four of Andrew’s five children, Callie, Shaw, Clay and Teri, and their spouses and assorted children. Rayne and her husband were missing. As were her cousin Patrick and his wife, Maggie. But Patience, the lone redhead, and her husband Brady were there. Their eyes met and she nodded at her cousin.