Lisa Jackson – Secrets and Desire: Best-Kept Lies / Miss Pruitt's Private Life / Secrets, Lies...and Passion (страница 12)
She hadn’t bothered to tell Donahue because she knew he wouldn’t care. He was a selfish man by nature, a rambler who followed the rodeo circuit and didn’t have time for the two ex-wives and children he’d already sired. Randi wasn’t about to try to saddle him with the responsibility of another baby. She figured Joshua was better off with one strong parent than two who fought, living with the ghost of a father whom he would grow up not really knowing.
She knew her son would ask questions and she intended to answer them all honestly. When the time came. But not now…not when her baby was pure innocence.
“Randi!” Striker was at her side, his bare head as wet as her own, his expression hard.
“What? More questions?” she asked, unable to hide the sarcasm in her voice. “Well, sorry, but I’m fresh out of shocking little details about my life.”
“I didn’t come all the way to Seattle to embarrass you,” he said as they rounded a final corner to the parking lot.
“That’s how it seems.”
“No, it doesn’t. You know better.”
She’d reached her Jeep and with a punch of the button on her remote, unlocked it once more. “Why do I have the feeling that you’re not finished? That you won’t be satisfied until you’ve stripped away every little piece of privacy I have.”
“I just want to help.”
He seemed sincere, but she’d been fooled before. By the master, Sam Donahue. Kurt Striker, damn him, was of the same ilk. Another cowboy. Another rogue. Another sexy man with a shadowy past. Another man she’d started to fall for. The kind to avoid. “Help?”
“That’s right.” His eyes shifted to her lips and she nervously licked them, tasting rainwater as it drizzled down her face. Her heart thudded. She knew in that second that he was going to kiss her. He was fighting it; she saw the battle in his eyes, but in the end raw emotion won out and his lips crashed down on hers so intensely she drew in a swift breath and it was followed quickly by his tongue. Slick. Sleek. Searching. The tip touched her teeth, forcing them apart as he grabbed her. Leather creaked, the sky parted, rain poured and Randi’s foolish, foolish heart opened.
She kissed the rogue back, slamming her mind against thoughts that she was making the worst mistake of her life, that she was crossing a bridge that was burning behind her, that her life, from that moment on, would be changed forever.
But there, in the middle of the bustling city, with raindrops falling on them both, she didn’t care.
Seven
Blinking against the rain, fighting the urge to lean against him, Randi pulled away from Kurt. “This is definitely not a good idea,” she said. “It wasn’t last night and it isn’t now.”
His mouth twisted. “I’m not sure about that.”
“I am.” It was a lie. Right now she wasn’t certain of anything. She reached behind her and fumbled with the door handle. “Let’s just give it a rest, okay?”
He didn’t argue, nor did he stop her as she slid into the Jeep and, with shaking fingers, found her keys and managed to start the ignition. Lunacy. That’s what it was. Sheer, unadulterated, pain-in-the-backside lunacy! She couldn’t start kissing the likes of Kurt Striker again.
Dear God, what had she been thinking?
She flipped on the radio, heard the first notes of a sappy love song and immediately punched the button to find talk radio, only to hear a popular program where a radio psychologist was giving out advice to someone who was mixed up with the wrong kind of man, the same kind of advice she handed out through her column in the
First she’d made the mistake of getting involved with Sam Donahue and now she was falling for Kurt Striker…No! She pounded a fist on the steering wheel as she braked for a turnoff.
Cutting through traffic, she made a call on her cell phone to Sharon, was assured that Joshua was safe, then stopped at a local market for a few groceries.
Fifteen minutes later she pulled into the parking lot of her condo. Now away from the hustle and bustle of the city, the dark of the night seemed more threatening. The parking lot was dark and the security lamps were glowing, throwing pools of light onto the wet ground and a few parked cars. The parking area was deserted, none of her neighbors were walking dogs or taking out trash. Warm light glowed from only a few windows, the rest of the units were dark.
For the first time since moving here, Randi looked at her darkened apartment and felt a moment’s hesitation, a hint of fear. She glanced over her shoulder, through the back windows of the Jeep, wondering if someone was watching her, someone lurking in a bank of fir trees and rhododendron that ringed the parking lot, giving it privacy. She had the uneasy sensation that hidden eyes were watching her through a veil of wet needles and leaves.
“Get a grip,” she muttered, hoisting the bag and holding tight to her key ring. As if it was some kind of protection. What a laugh!
No one was hiding. No one was watching her. And yet she wished she hadn’t been so quick to put some distance between herself and Striker. Maybe she did need a bodyguard, someone she could trust.
Oh, for the love of St. Peter! Hauling her laptop, the groceries, her briefcase and her rebellious libido with her, she made her way to the porch, managed to unlock the door and snap on the interior lights. She almost wished Kurt was inside waiting for her again. But that was crazy. Nuts! She couldn’t trust herself around that man.
“You’re an idiot,” she muttered, seeing her reflection in the mirror mounted by the coatrack in the front hall. Her hair was damp and curly with the rain, her cheeks flushed, her eyes bright. “This is just what got you into trouble in the first place.” She dropped her computer and bag near her desk, shook herself out of her coat and heard a pickup roaring into the lot. Her silly heart leaped, but a quick glance through the kitchen window confirmed that Striker had returned. He was already out of the truck and headed toward the condo.
She met him at the front door.
“You don’t seem to take a hint, do you?” she teased.
“Careful, woman, I’m not in the mood to have my chain yanked,” he warned. “Traffic was a bitch.”
He was inside in a second and bolted the door behind him. “I don’t like it when you try to lose me.”
“And I don’t like being manhandled.” She started unpacking groceries, stuffing a carton of milk into the near-empty refrigerator.
“I kissed you.”
“On the street, when I obviously didn’t want you to.”
One of his eyebrows lifted in disbelief. “You didn’t want it?” He snorted. “I’d love to see what you were like when you did.”
“That was last night,” she reminded him, then mentally kicked herself. Lifting a hand, she stopped any argument he might have. “Let’s not talk about last night.”
He kicked out a bar stool and plopped himself at the counter that separated the kitchen from the living room. “Okay, but there is something we need to discuss.”
She braced herself. “Which is?”
“Sam Donahue.”
“Another off-limits subject.” She pulled a loaf of bread from the wet sack.
“I don’t think so. We’ve wasted enough time as it is and I’m getting sick of you not being straight with me.”
“I should never have told you.”
He shot her a condemning look. “I’d already guessed, remember?” He took a deep breath and ran stiff fingers through his hair. “You got any wood for that?” he asked, hitching his chin toward the fireplace.
“A little. In a closet on the back deck.”
“Get me a beer, I’ll make a fire and then, whether you like it or not, we’re going to discuss your ex-lover.”
“Gee,” she mocked, “and who said single women don’t have any fun? You know, Striker, you’ve got a helluva nerve to barge in here and start barking orders. Just because…because of what happened last night, you don’t have the right to start bossing me around in my own home.”
“You’re right,” he said without a trace of regret carved into his features. “Would you please get me a beer and I’ll get the firewood.”
“I might be out of beer. I didn’t pick any up at the store.”
“There’s one left. In the door of the fridge. I checked earlier.” The empty bottle on the coffee table stood as testament to that very fact.
“When you practiced breaking and entering,” she muttered as he kicked back the stool and made his way to the deck. She opened the refrigerator again and saw the single long-neck in the door. The guy was observant. But still a bully who had barged unwelcome into her life. A sexy bully at that. Her worst nightmare.
She yanked out the last beer, twisted off the top and, as he carried in a couple of chunks of oak to the fire, took a long swallow. The least he could do was share, she decided, watching as he bent on the tiled hearth, his jacket and shirt riding up over his belt and jeans, offering her the view of a slice of his taut, muscular back. Her throat was suddenly dry as dust and she took another pull from the long-neck. What the hell was she going to do with him? She’d already bared her soul and her body, then, after insisting that she wasn’t interested in him, kissed him on the street as if she never wanted to stop, and now… She slid a glance toward the cracked door of her bedroom and in her mind she saw them together, wrapped in the sheets, sweaty bodies tangled and heaving as he kissed her breasts. Her heart pounded as he pulled at her nipple, his hands sliding down to sculpt her waist as he mounted her, gently nudging her knees apart, readying himself above her, his erection stiff, his green gaze fiery. Then, eyes locked, he entered her in one long, hard thrust—