It took him a moment to grab the hose from the garage and hook it up to a spigot beside the driveway. He was excruciatingly aware of Becca watching from just off the porch, her eyes still huge and her mouth pressed tightly closed. He wondered what she was thinking. Was it like staring at a train wreck? She just couldn’t look away? Or was there something more to the way her gaze followed him whatever he did? She didn’t say a word and he couldn’t guess.
Meanwhile, Tonya put away her cell and grabbed the spray gun part of the hose. “So how’d you do it?” she asked.
“What?”
“Declare him legally incompetent. You did it so Pam could have everything, right? Otherwise she and the kids would be out and penniless.”
He nodded as he positioned himself at the top of the driveway. “He thought he was a bear.”
Tonya frowned. “But he is a bear. Or was.”
“The judge didn’t know that. And neither did the therapist who evaluated him. And if he hadn’t been such a blowhard, he would have known to shut his mouth when being videotaped.”
Tonya’s laugh was the last thing he heard before icy water hit him full force. It should have cut off his breath. It should have had him cringing against the frigid cold. Instead, his gaze ended up on Becca, still standing by the porch with his coffee mug in her hand. She watched him steadily, her eyes slowly softening as her mouth lost its tight cast.
What was she thinking? What did she want?
He almost went to her. Fuck the wet and the blood, he needed to touch her right then. But he didn’t get far. The very moment he took a step toward her, she flushed and turned away. He wanted to call her back, but she didn’t give him a chance.
Long before he figured out what to say, she disappeared back inside the house.
Becca didn’t know what to think. Worse, she didn’t know what to feel. The sight of Carl covered in blood had made her physically ill. She held herself together by willpower alone, but by the time she’d been able to function, Carl’s eyes had gone flat.
She knew that look. She was raising a boy, after all. It was that moment when they just turn off and you know nothing you do or say will get through. So she stood there waiting, racking her brains for something that would make it better.But before she’d found it, he’d stepped under the spray of water. It was spring in Michigan, which put the temperature at a few notches above freezing. He hadn’t even flinched when the stream caught him. He’d just stood there taking the punishment while all that blood washed away.
Never before had she seen anything more beautiful. A man covered in gore, slowly cleansed in the sunshine. Inch by glorious inch, his body had emerged, flexing golden in the light, his muscles rippling with power. She knew every curve and hollow of that body, had kissed every part of him last night. She had lain underneath, felt him strain above her, and had climaxed around him. This beautiful man had worshiped her last night, and she had reveled in it. In him.
That was the man who was revealed to her beneath the spray. That was the man who looked at her with such yearning that she had felt herself go wet and achy. Her nipples had tightened and her belly had contracted just from the way he looked at her.
But they were in public and he’d just killed a man in front of her. Hell, the grizzly body lay just a few feet away. And yet she’d wanted to strip naked and step under the water with him. She’d wanted to feel the cold sluice down her while his body warmed her. And if he had bent her over and taken her right there on the front lawn, she would have loved it.
She was that aroused.
Which was insane.
So she’d run inside rather than give in to such an immodest display. She rushed inside and headed for the kitchen without any thought of what she was going to do or say. She couldn’t even figure out what she was feeling. Lust? Certainly. Disgust? Maybe. But not at him. She was appalled by herself for wanting someone who was so violent it terrified her. She was a civilized woman, and now she saw him as a primal man in all his brutal glory. She wanted him even as she was repulsed by the violence of him.
She could have reconciled the two if this were a simple attraction. Who didn’t love a hot, dangerous man? But the real problem was the power of her desire. This wasn’t a lukewarm interest. Or even a fascinating diversion. No, this was hunger—deep and raw. This was desire without inhibition. This was a need that went beyond anything she’d ever felt before and it terrified her.
She’d never be able to control a passion like this. She couldn’t imagine fitting it into her regular life. This was something that would consume everything around it. Her life, her nephew, herself. She could lose herself in a man like Carl. And as a single parent, she had no business losing herself in anything except Theo.
“Are you okay?”
She looked up from the kitchen sink to see Alan standing in the door, his expression wary.
She swallowed and cleared her throat. “Um, yeah. I’m fine.”
He took a step into the room. “Forgive me, but you don’t look fine. You look scared.”
“Do I?” Get it together!
Alan was quiet as he poured himself another mug of coffee, but then he leaned against the counter to study her with a quiet intensity.
“He’d never hurt you.”
That was something she felt to her bones. “I know.”
“It’s natural to be freaked out. I grew up here, and challenges like that still bother me.”
