CRIMINAL CHRISTMAS: A Set of 8 Holiday Suspense Stories, page 33
He was acting like a jackass, but for this mission, she was his wife and he was in charge. And he wanted that made clear. He felt her relax against him, her hands wrapping around his waist. She opened her mouth to him and pressed closer against his chest. He hadn’t expected her to respond, and now all he wanted was another sweet taste of Maddy. He ran his hand along the soft dip of her hips, to her toned thigh.
The stoner dude’s cough brought him to his senses. “I’m going to be heading out.”
Hunter looked down at Maddy’s full, pink, moist lips and waited for the moment she’d come to herself and explode. He kept his arm around her shoulder in case she had the urge to demonstrate her formidable fighting skills.
She batted those baby blues once, then twice, and then the transformation. The soft, open woman now hardened into a battle-ready Marine. She clenched and unclenched her fists at her side, and her blue eyes narrowed into a tight squint.
She pulled away and stepped closer to the dipshit who stood around like some weird voyeur. Definitely stoned. “Rod, I’m sorry for the unseemly display.”
Unseemly? This from the woman who pranced her way through the JRS building looking like every man’s fantasy.
“My husband hasn’t seen me for a few weeks, so he’s acting like a Neanderthal.” She patted Hunter on the chest, getting close enough to do something painful. She gripped his hand and bent his little finger back, not enough to break it, but enough to be clear about what she thought of his manhandling her. Judging from their first day, marriage to Maddy was definitely going to be the most challenging assignment of his career.
Chapter Five
Hunter drove in silence while Maddy stewed. She had melted in Hunter Hines’s arms. If the handsome brute weren’t inches away, she’d pinch herself to make sure she wasn’t in Kansas or some other make-believe world.
Hunter didn’t merely kiss a woman, he took possession. He demanded and devoured. She could never have imagined that Hunter Hines was capable of such deep passion. Something well-hidden had emerged when Hunter kissed and held her. And she had succumbed to the desire to belong to someone. She had been alone so long.
She glanced at the man who stared straight ahead, not giving any indication of what had occurred between them. Hunter drove as masterfully as he kissed—no wasted motion, no miscalculations, despite the bumper-to-bumper traffic heading south to the Rainier Valley. Whatever he did, Hunter remained in full command.
Heat flashed through her body as she fantasized Hunter making love in his careful, demanding way.
He kept his focus on the road as he spoke. “I owe you an apology. My behavior was,” he turned his head, and a small smile lifted one corner of his full, firm mouth, “unseemly.”
Hunter Hines, teasing. She really might have to click her heels to yank herself back to reality.
He shrugged his massive shoulders. “I can’t explain it.”
Since Maddy couldn’t understand her own behavior, she chose the smarter route: Silence.
He twisted to look at her again as they waited at a red light. “I’ve never behaved irrationally around any woman except you.”
Maddy wasn’t sure she liked the direction his apology was taking, implying that she was the reason he’d grabbed and kissed the bejesus out of her.
“But if we’re to pretend to be married, you can’t flirt with other men.”
Now that was the Hunter she knew. Not the fantasy man who had kissed her.
“Flirting? Are you implying that your manhandling of me was my fault?”
“No, absolutely not.” He gripped the steering wheel tightly, making the veins in his hands bulge. “It was the bozo tracking you like a hound dog on a scent.”
Classic male response. The kiss hadn’t been about feelings, but rather a pissing match between two alpha males. Her eyes burned with unshed tears. She rationalized that she was tired. It was the only reason his explanation hurt. Like her adolescence, she had been traveling back and forth on a city bus initially without a final destination, wondering what her next stop would be. Rather like her entire life—always moving, never settling.
Hunter made a right turn on Marion Street and parked in the shade of some alder trees across from the Renaissance-style St. James Catholic Cathedral. He shifted his long torso in the seat so his body faced hers, and he inspected her with the same careful and critical intensity that always left her confused.
“You’re upset?” His voice softened.
She’d never admit to hurt feelings over such a little something.
“Look. I acted like a jerk. You in that outfit…”
Hunter always had a way of pushing the switch to incite her to outrage and a need to do violence to his person. “My outfit? First, I’m guilty of flirting, and now it’s my outfit?”
“You know you’ve been messing with me. Admit it. You and your hot body in that tiny, tight dress.”
Maddy’s mood lightened. No slouch, Hunter Hines. “FYI. You need to look around. That dress is what every other woman is wearing.” She turned in her seat to look closer at his face. She got a whiff of hot male and his woodsy pine aftershave. With Hunter’s big frame squeezed into the small front seat, if she turned and lifted her legs, she’d be straddling his lap. She wanted to reach out and run her finger along the dark stubble on his jaw.
He leaned against the door, retreating from their closeness. His face was flushed, and he kept swallowing, his strong throat rippling. “Maddy, you’ve lived with Marines. All I’m saying is men respond to women in revealing clothes. It’s part of our DNA.”
After basic training, she knew more about the inner workings of the male brain and its sex drive then she’d ever wanted to. “Got it. Because you’re a male, you can’t control your urges. And with the city filled with women in shorts and tank tops for the summer, you can’t stop yourself from grabbing them and kissing them silly.”
His dark eyes narrowed and that full upper lip flattened. Why did she enjoy baiting this sexy grizzly bear?
She leaned closer and touched his muscular thigh. “It’s okay, Hunter. Do you think I want to make this marriage real?”
“What?” He sat up straight and hit his head on the ceiling. Then he laughed, a deep belly laugh that started in his chest and rolled down his tight abs. He put both hands up in the air. “You got me, Maddy.”
“I do?” Maddy batted her eyelashes like the heroine in a melodrama.
He shook his head and grinned. She had never seen Hunter smile in such a spontaneous, open way before. The grin spread across his face and lightened his shadowy eyes. His enjoyment did wonderful and twisty things to her stomach, like a sudden steep drop on a roller coaster.
“Truce, Maddy? I’ll try to control my primitive urges when I’m around you.” He looked down at her breasts, examining every exposed inch of her bare skin while his fingers twitched on his thighs.
Her lungs tightened as if there wasn’t enough air in the car. The blood pulsed in gushes through her body.
“As long as you don’t flaunt yourself.”
Flaunt? She readied herself to blast the idiot, karate-style—fully focused, kill energy. “Hunter…” And suddenly she couldn’t stop the laugh that bubbled upward. “How can I bitch at you if I don’t know your full name?”
“Huh?” The bewildered look on his usually intense face made her laugh harder. “If we’re married, I should know your middle name.”
His dark eyes lit up like his sister’s. “James. Hunter James Hines.”
“Oh, that’s nice. Hunter James Hines.” She laughed again at the confused look on his face. “Now I can’t remember what I was going to yammer at you about.”
He chuckled. An easy, relaxed sound that vibrated in the car and in her heart. Their eyes met, and she leaned toward him as he moved closer. She stilled with anticipation. The only sound was their erratic breathing. His loud and rough, hers quick and impatient. He stared into her eyes as he tucked one of her wayward curls behind her ear. She felt suspended by his fierce look and the gentle touch.
“What’s your middle name, my ball and chain?”
She huffed. “Ball and chain?”
With his long finger, he traced the outside of her ear, and sensations skittered along her skin like sand blowing along the beach. She leaned closer, wanting to feel his hard body against hers again.
He pulled his hand back as if touching her brought pain. “We can’t do this.” His breath and words were choppy. “I’ve got to keep my hands off of you. It’s this weird assignment, pretending we’re married. It’s messed up.”
She had told herself all the same things repeatedly, so why did it hurt when he said it? It was exactly like her adolescence with each foster home—a temporary family. This isn’t forever. Not a family to love or be loved by.
She moved back into her seat and watched the people walking through the cathedral’s thick, twelve-foot doors. “Don’t worry about it. We can have a no-touch, no-feelings rule in this pretend marriage of ours.”
He turned quickly to look at her, to give her one of his dark stares. “Speaking of pretend marriages, I picked up a wedding ring for you. I wasn’t sure about your size, but I knew it had to be tiny.” He pulled a square, black jewelry box from the front pocket of his blue oxford shirt. No T-shirts and shorts for Hunter.
It was then she noticed he wore a gold wedding band on his left hand. Seeing the wedding band that marked him as belonging to her awakened the little shards of loneliness and isolation buried deep in her soul.
This wasn’t real. This wasn’t about caring. The gesture only meant the man paid attention to detail.
Hunter opened the box and took out an exquisite opal in a simple silver setting. “I hope you’ll like it.”
Her throat thickened, and she couldn’t speak. She had no words for the excess of new emotions and old pain twisting inside of her. “I’ve never had anything this beautiful.” The ring reminded her of her mother’s engagement ring—the one her foster sibling had stolen.
“The way the colors change reminded me of the blue in your eyes, the fluctuation with your moods from bright sunny blue to stormy purple.”
Maddy swallowed against all the emotion stuck in her throat. No one ever paid attention to her or her eyes. No one had cared that her most meaningful possession had been taken from her.
He took her hand into his giant palm and slid the ring onto her finger. He was looking down, but his cheeks had reddened. “For my pretend wife.”
She was asking for a lot of hurt if she mistook this ring for her own romantic fantasies. Like her mother’s ring, this one would disappear, too. She didn’t—couldn’t—believe in happily ever after. She had learned the harsh reality at the age of fourteen, and no child could continue believing in fantasies after her parents died.
She’d never let herself be that vulnerable again.
Grief washed through her over the inevitable loss of the ring on her finger and the man who’d tenderly placed it there. “Will you be able to return the ring when we’re finished with the assignment?”
Hunter stiffened and started the car. “Don’t worry about it.” And he drove away from the shade of the alders and the moment of make-believe.
Chapter Six
Hunter pulled up in front of a small farmhouse in the densely populated Rainier Valley, the area where the beautiful people of Seattle didn’t live. Recent immigrants and the working poor resided in South Seattle. “We’re home.”
Maddy leaned forward to catch a better glimpse of the house. “Oh, my God. It’s nothing like I expected. It looks like Snow White’s cottage tucked in the woods. How can such a charming, rustic home sit in the middle of all these fabricated ’70s houses?”
“This whole area used to be cherry orchards and farmland.”
“Really?” Her blue eyes widened. “But there is a 7-Eleven, a psychic, and a hair salon on the next block. We’re in the middle of the ’hood.”
“Now, yes, but years ago, the valley was called Garlic Gulch or Wop City because of the Italian immigrants. I’ve heard both from our neighbor.”
“You met our neighbor?”
“Pretty hard not to. She came out when I brought in the groceries. She is the only English-speaking person on the block. She has lived here for fifty years and has seen the neighborhood go through many changes. None for the better, if you ask her.”
“I don’t care. I love the house, the flowers in the window boxes, and the chairs on the front porch. I’ve always wanted…”
Hunter watched her transformation. She shifted from enthusiastic to remote, slamming shut her feelings. For a brief moment, she was the open girl she probably had been before her childhood world had become untrustworthy. Trust didn’t come any easier for him, since he’d learned that mothers weren’t forever. It was why they both excelled at their jobs. They were suspicious of everyone.
Maddy gazed out the window, like a child watching the first snowfall of the season. “Why would anyone leave this house?”
“The young couple who lives here was transferred to New York for the next three months. Or that’s the story I was told. If you’re asked, we’re renting until we find our own house.”
“We’ll be here for three months?”
He couldn’t decipher if the news pleased her. She twisted a curl around her finger, and her shoulders hunched.
Three months of sharing the same house with Maddy, sleeping in the next room. He wasn’t sure if he could survive it. He let her believe it was all about sex when he’d kissed her, knowing she believed the BS that all guys are randy.
He’d made it all about her hot little body, but there was much more to his attraction to her. Maddy was the quirkiest mix of strength and softness and vulnerability that he had ever seen in a woman. He admired her loyalty to her friends, her job, and her country. It didn’t take a shrink to understand his need for a loyal woman. Maddy had it in spades.
“Now the act begins.” Except, for him, this didn’t feel like an act.
Maddy put her hand on the door handle. He reached over and covered her hand with his. “Don’t get out. Let me open it for you. I’m a man in love.”
He came around the Prius and opened her door, offering his hand to help her out. She rolled her big, wide eyes at him and extended her hand. “There is no one on the street to see us.”
“The nosy neighbor across the street is watching from her front window. She is going to be a problem.”
He leaned down into the car to be face-to-face. “Maddy.”
“Yes?” She looked up at him with a question in her big baby blues.
“Get ready for a bit of PDA.”
“PDA?”
He pulled her against him and kissed her lightly on her lips.
Caught off guard for a second, she stiffened as he pressed her against him, holding her tight in his arms. Unaffected by his embrace, she talked around his gentle kiss. “If you touch my ass, I’ll nut you.”
He laughed out loud, shocking himself. He never wanted this marriage or this assignment to end.
# # #
A smiling and relaxed Maddy sat across from him at the polished pine dining room table. The furnishings were like the house, filled with rustic, old-fashioned charm. Maddy ate her dinner of steak and a baked potato with gusto. For such a petite woman, Maddy packed in a lot of calories. Probably to make up for her time living on the streets during her last assignment.
He wasn’t sure if it was the meat and potatoes, the Oregon Pinot Noir, or his company that made her look replete. He hoped it was a little bit of everything. Maddy deserved to be treated well, and while she was his wife, he planned to pamper her. Not that he’d ever tell her, or she might threaten to nut him again.
“I can’t remember the last time I sat down to eat a home-cooked meal.”
“The ecoterrorists didn’t dine out much?”
Maddy giggled, a light, youthful sound that made him smile. “Unlike the Seahawks, we didn’t dine out on twenty-four-ounce steaks.”
She did that a lot to him. Lightened his mood with her irreverent and simple enjoyment. Since meeting Maddy, Hunter had smiled more than he had his whole lifetime.
“Thank you for cooking. Doing all this, shopping, planning. It is so nice here. Not the usual assignment.”
He didn’t want to think about what Maddy had suffered during her past assignments or as a foster child. He wanted to take care of her, make her world a safe and better place. For the first time, he wanted little Maddy Jeffers to experience what it was like to be loved and protected.
Hunter leaned back in the small hardwood chair. Sometimes old-world charm could be downright uncomfortable. “I didn’t do much, just grilled, but I do like to cook.”
Maddy’s cheeks were now a rosy pink, but he wasn’t sure if it was from the wine or the heat of the summer night. He had opened all the windows and the door, but it was an unusually hot summer in the Northwest.
She leaned forward with her elbows on the table. “You like to cook? Is there anything you can’t do?”
Smile spontaneously, feel a deep connection with a woman, fall in love. “There are loads of things I can’t do.”
“Name one, besides relax, hang out, or tell a joke.” She gave him the saucy look he enjoyed.
“Little do you know.” Talking with Maddy brought out a youthful side to him. He wanted to tease back, make her laugh, have her appreciate him as more than a tight-ass soldier. “Angie didn’t tell you I had a gig as a stand-up comedian before I joined the Marines.”
Maddy laughed out loud, making the curls bounce across her forehead. Tears were in her eyes, and she covered her mouth with one hand. “It’s mind-boggling. The image is too funny.”
“But that’s why my act worked. Pretending I was an uptight guy versus my raunchy, weird self actually worked. I was invited to go to Las Vegas.”
Maddy tapped her finger against her cheek. “I can’t tell if you’re messing with me or not.”
