“I shouldn’t have told you?”
“I might have suffered less not knowing.” Her admiration had the ability to fully arouse him from one heartbeat to the next. He could already envision her fingers tangled in his chest hair, smoothing, stroking…
“Why should you suffer? I’m the one who’s had to contend with fools and abstinence.”
He choked on a laugh. “Charlie—”
In a mournful tone worthy of the divine, she said, “It really has been rough, you know.”
Dalton’s daughter, Dalton’s daughter, Dalton’s…
She peeked up at him, a study of feminine adoration. “If he’d looked anything like you, Harry, I might have been able to ignore the hickeys, even though they weren’t mine, and even though I can’t imagine anyone putting their mouth on him there. But he wasn’t you and he’d been with someone else. And if I wasn’t going to marry him, and of course, after knowing that, I wasn’t, then I didn’t think I should have to sleep with him.”
Harry didn’t think she should have to, either. He didn’t particularly want to think of her sleeping with anyone, certainly not a man with a hairless chest, not a man who’d been with someone else and gotten love bites in unlikely places. What places? No, he didn’t care what places. He didn’t want her with any man, except maybe himself, and he was out of bounds.
He pulled up to the curb across the street and a few doors down from where their human targets would be making mischief. “Promise me that no matter what, you’ll keep your cute little bottom in my car. I don’t want you to start—”
“You think my bottom is cute?”
He bit his tongue. “It’s a figure of speech used whenever addressing female bottoms.”
“Oh.”
“Promise me.”
She shrugged. “I don’t intend to start a brawl in the middle of the street, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“You’re unpredictable. I worry about a lot of things.” He glanced at his wristwatch. “We have some time before our neighborhood psychopaths are due to exit. There’s a pattern to their visits, and they have the timing down. It’s my hope to do nothing more than follow them today, see where they go, then perhaps I can turn the authorities on them without involving the proprietors.”
“Why don’t the proprietors want to be involved?”
“They want to be involved. Badly. If it was left up to them, they’d have set a trap already and, like vigilantes, exacted their own sort of justice, which I have a feeling is as bloodthirsty as your own. But my…friend, fears retribution against them if they do so. Being the stubborn cusses they are, they refuse to involve the police. They’ve called on them a few times, for less serious issues—minor vandalism, loud music, loitering, that sort of thing. And the police were unable to do much more than offer to drive by more frequently. It injured their pride.”
“And so they’ve given up on the police?”
Harry nodded. “I can understand them. They’re older, but resistant to the idea of being frail. All their lives they’ve been independent, able to handle all situations. They’re settled and productive and happy. Then a few months ago the extortion began, and they can’t tolerate it, but their pride insists they don’t need the police now, not when they couldn’t help them in the past. My friend is concerned, of course, but he did promise them he wouldn’t contact the law. And actually, I’m concerned that if they did, especially without rock solid evidence, things could become worse. Ralph and Floyd are only minions. They answer to Carlyle.”
“So it’s Carlyle you want?”
“Yes, I want him. Badly.” Harry rubbed his hands together, imagining what he’d do to Carlyle. “I detest a bully, but a bully who picks on the elderly ranks right up there with the devil himself. With any luck, once I find out where they gather, I’ll be able to link them with more than extortion. They’re criminals, and I hope to find them with illegal firearms, drugs, anything that will implicate them with the law, without involving the extortion.”
He happened to glance over at Charlie, and caught her staring—worshipful lust in her big blue eyes. He scowled. “Stop that.”
Her smile was almost sappy. “You’re incredible, Harry. A real—”
“Don’t say it!”
“But don’t you see? You are a hero.”
He bent a severe, utterly serious look on her, determined to make her back off before his control snapped. “I’m not a damn white knight, Charlie. I’m not the man you’ve been waiting for, even though I have a hairy chest and no unseemly love bites. I’m doing a job, that’s all.”
“I saw the way you looked, how eager you are to get hold of Carlyle. You’re a good man, Harry. And good men are few and far between. Believe me, I know.”
She looked warm and soft and admiring, and he liked it. He responded to it. She was such an enigma, so strong, so outspoken and confident, yet still so very female. She was quirky, rough around the edges, but so brutally honest she took his breath away. And unlike his ex-wife, she seemed to thrive on the excitement of his job. She actually admired him for what he did, rather than disdaining his choices.
Of course, she also thought he was afraid, and as much as that rankled, he supposed allowing her to believe in some flaws would only add to his efforts to push her away.
He clenched his muscles and forced his honor to the forefront of his brain, nudging the lust aside. “Your father is a good man, by all accounts.” She stiffened immediately, but he pressed on. “Wouldn’t you like to meet him? I could arrange it, you know.”
“That’s not necessary.”
“You should be pleased, Charlie,” he said gently, knowing this was difficult for her, glimpsing again that damn vulnerability that squeezed his heart. “He can assist you financially, and he can be a friend, if you’ll let him.”
He saw it in her eyes before she even moved. The determination, the cunning. He braced himself, both distressed and anxious, and then she was against him, her hands gripping his shoulders, her body as close as she could get it.
“I don’t need a friend, Harry. Right now, I need a lover. You.” She kissed him.
Harry tried to resist, he really did. But as he kept telling people, he was far from a hero. Mortal men couldn’t be expected to withstand such provocation. He made a desperate effort to recite all the reasons he shouldn’t kiss her back; it didn’t work.
He felt her breath on his jaw, the silkiness of her hair on his temple when she slanted her head. Her tongue stroked tentatively over his closed lips and he groaned.
“Harry, please…”
Before he knew it, his hands were on her body, under her blue-jean jacket, cupping her small, perfect breasts through her sweater, and there was nothing mysterious about them. They were soft and firm and her nipples burned against his palms. “Damn.”
Charlie panted. She bit his jaw, nuzzled his neck and kissed his throat. Somehow she managed to get one slender thigh up and over his and he helped her, smoothing a hand over that luscious, resilient bottom and cuddling her closer, letting his fingers probe and explore and entice. She straddled his lap and he could feel her feminine heat from the juncture of her thighs against his abdomen, and it made him nearly wild with need. He wanted her naked, in this same position, riding him gently, then not so gently. He groaned.