“You were my strength when I was weak.
You were my voice when I couldn’t speak . . .”
And no more words were said between them.
They just slow-dragged to the music, and held onto each other.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
They arrived back in Low Town, at Charly’s apartment, still in that quiet frame of mind. The guys were still hanging out in the complex, which didn’t sit well with Boone, but he ignored them. Charly was on his mind. She was all he thought about the entire drive home.
He got out, walked around to the passenger side door, and opened it for Charly. When she got out, he placed his hand on the small of her back again, but this time he kept it there. They were still just friends. He wouldn’t dare call it anything but what it was. But it still felt to him as if they had crossed some invisible line. They both still had boundaries, but the demarcations weren’t as pronounced.
Especially when they walked up to her front door. A part of Boone wanted to go inside and do to her what he did to every woman he’d ever had a date with. But another part of him didn’t want to mess this up. Whatever this was. Because it felt too good and pure.
Charly was in that category, too. On one hand, she wanted to experience the fullness of Boone Ryan. She knew a man as sexy as he was had to have some serious skills. But on the other hand, she was terrified of what would happen next. She wasn’t ready for any full-blown love affair, and she was certain he wasn’t. At least not the kind that she would require. Darryl cheated on her so many times, and like a fool she kept taking him back. She allowed him to treat her the way he treated her. She wasn’t allowing any man to ever treat her that way again.
When she unlocked and opened her door, she looked at Boone. “Thanks,” she said. “I had a nice time.”
Boone still wanted in. He was so hard he was tenting. And when he moved closer and gave her a good night hug that lingered, she felt it too. He was so hard he felt like steel against her. He was so hard she could almost outline the massive size of him. And she almost faltered too.
But she didn’t. She couldn’t. Going down that road with him would be a suicide mission, when she barely survived her last attempt. “Good night,” she said when they stopped embracing. She almost walked on in and closed the door, but she couldn’t do that to him either. She needed him to co-sign her decision.
She could tell he didn’t want to. He wanted in. But she could also tell he knew it was for the best.
Their heads overruled their hearts.
“Goodnight,” he said to her. But then he glanced over at those guys again, and looked back at her. “Lock your door,” he ordered her.
But he needn’t have bothered. She was nobody’s fool. “I will,” she said as she walked on in, and closed the door behind her.
He stood there until he heard it lock. Then he headed for his Mercedes. But not before glaring at those young men again.
And when he got into his car and backed out, and was about to drive off, he felt such a burden that it alarmed him. How could he leave her in a place like this? He knew what kind of element lived there. Ninety percent were great, God-fearing, hardworking people. But that ten percent he knew like the back of his hand. He’d arrested each and every one of them before. He knew what they could do.
But Boone would be damned if they were going to do it to Charly. Or even attempt to.
Instead of leaving, he sped his car over to where the guys were hanging out. They all rolled their eyes, expecting some kind of harassment.
But Boone wasn’t that kind of cop. He didn’t play those kind of games. He got out of his car, walked straight to Porch, the guy he knew was the leader of the pack, and looked him dead in the eye.
“What did I do this time?” Porch asked. He had a long, well-deserved arrest record. “What did I do?”
“If you or your boys touch a hair on her head,” Boone said to him, “it will be the same as if you were touching me. And nobody touches me,” Boone added, stared at the rest of the gang too, and then got in his Mercedes and sped away.
Porch puffed on his cigarette. “So asshole got an asshole now. Maybe he’ll stop screwing us,” he added, as his boys laughed.
Then Porch sipped more beer, as his face turned to stone.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
It was well after midnight when Charly finally began to feel sleepy. She was awake in bed, not thinking about her new town, her new job, her new life. She was thinking about Boone. The way he held her, mainly, but also the way he looked at her. He made her feel so special, even though she was at a point in her life when special was the last thing she felt. But he pulled it off.
She turned over, still thinking about Boone. He wasn’t her usual type. She usually went for the cool black guys, not some older, white hothead like him. And the way he was so quick to arrest Amos Yerkson for a crime she wasn’t at all sure he committed. To Boone Ryan, Amos lied about minor matters that could have been easily checked out. That, to Boone, proved his guilt. But in Charly’s mind, that, to her, proved his innocence. He lied about small matters that could be easily checked out because he was no criminal. But Boone seemed to render judgments on people with precious little evidence.
And maybe that was why he was rendering a judgment on her, too, with precious little information about her. To him, she was just this sweet little dean. She thought, after she told him about her past and the kind of man that had actually been her type, he’d become cool to her. But on that dance floor it was just the opposite. And when they arrived back at her place, he was as hot for her as he had been on the dance floor.
She turned over again. She didn’t know what to make of that man!
And she fell asleep thinking about that man, all over again.
Across town, Boone tried with all he could to fall asleep, but he couldn’t get there. He tossed and turned and turned some more. But something was bugging him, and he couldn’t figure out what.
He kicked the covers off and got out of bed. Naked as a jaybird, because that was how he slept every night, he went into the sitting room adjacent to his bedroom, walked behind his full-sized bar, and poured himself a drink. He looked at the clock on the wall. Just after two a.m. Charly, he suspected, was fast asleep. Charly, he knew, was why he wasn’t.
He couldn’t stop thinking about her!
He didn’t know what it was about her. And it wasn’t that she wasn’t his type because he didn’t have a type. He liked all kinds of women. But she wasn’t his speed was more to the point, he figured. She wasn’t a party girl. She wasn’t somebody he could get in bed with and hit and run with. If he ever got in bed with her, he was certain, he wasn’t going anywhere. She would leave him before he left her.
And that, for a man like Boone Ryan, was a problem.
He’d never give up that much power. Not ever.
But it damn sure was tempting, he thought, as he sipped from his glass.
But something still was bugging him. He still felt unsettled. How could he do it, he wondered. How could he leave Charly at that crime-infested apartment complex to fend for herself? He felt strange when he left her, as if he was leaving a part of himself with her, but he left anyway. Now it was bugging the daylights out of him. Porch and his crew were bugging the daylights out of him.