Текст книги "Against the Ropes"

Автор книги: Jeanette Murray

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Текущая страница: 7 (всего у книги 19 страниц)

CHAPTER

10

Reagan finished typing the last of the editorial article she’d begged from the local paper to write. It had been a near thing, and she’d been ready to promise some sexual favors if it came to it, but luckily it hadn’t. She had just enough space, plus one photo, to write up a rebuttal on the article from that morning.

David Cruise—aka Mr. High-And-Mighty “Journalist”—had dodged her calls all morning, and refused to call her back. Oh, but others called. A larger paper from the Wilmington branch, plus several touchy-feely blogs that dealt with anti-everything not fluffy kittens. They were against violent sports, violent hobbies, violent careers—military included, of course—violent acts, violent protests, violent thoughts, and violence.

Duh. Way to narrow it down there, bloggers.

She’d done her best there, working hard to make the reporter’s story sound overdramatized without directly calling him a pansy-ass good-for-nothing. Fine line, but she was pretty sure she walked it well enough.

Hopefully the work she’d done that day, combined with this decent PR she’d written just now and would—please God—show up in tomorrow’s paper, would help. Everyone wanted to see a softer side of Marines, right? She’d worked hard to strike the right balance between pride for the sport, a love of service and also some good-natured humor without overstepping any boundaries.

Her entire job was about fine lines, as it turned out.

Sliding her feet into the slippers Marianne kept in the office and said she could borrow, she turned in Marianne’s desk chair and surveyed the training room. Marianne and her interns had packed up a bit ago and headed out. The gym was quiet now, with all but the emergency lights shut off outside of the training room. Reagan could have used Coach Ace’s office, but his desk was a mess so she had borrowed her friend’s room instead. And though she’d never admit it to anyone, she’d needed to get out of the heels. They were killing her.

Her phone beeped, and she glanced at the text message.

Greg: Hungry?

She rotated her head a little, stretching the neck muscles and giving her shoulders a bit of relief. She could so go for a cheeseburger right about now. But she still had way too much to do to contemplate leaving yet. If she went home, she’d just crash on the bed. Too tempting.

Reagan: Starving. But I’ve got too much work to worry about.

Greg: How about I bring the food to you?

She thought about it for a minute. But again . . . too tempting.

Reagan: Thanks for the offer, but I’ll be okay.

Greg: Too late.

Too late? What did that mean? She hadn’t even told him where she was.

“Knock, knock.”

She shrieked and bobbled her phone a little. Catching it, she put it down on the desk and glanced up to see Greg standing in the doorway, holding two brown sacks. Their bottoms were dark with grease, and her stomach rumbled just thinking of the deliciousness hiding inside.

“What are you doing here?” She thought for a second. “Actually, how did you get in here?”

“Marianne. When we were all leaving, I mentioned asking you to dinner and she said you were working late here. So she ran back by to let me in.”

“Sneaky lady,” Reagan muttered, pushing away from the desk and standing. The food smelled so good, her stomach actually started to rumble. She covered it with one hand. “Well, you’re here now. Shouldn’t let the food go to waste.”

“That would simply be criminal,” Greg agreed. He walked in and set the food down on one of Marianne’s tables. Reagan winced, then silently vowed to wipe it down again with the disinfectant like she’d seen the interns do before. Good as new.

“You struck me as the kind of lady who would want a cheeseburger, but order a salad. Am I right?” He started pulling out paper sleeves of fries, a few plopping to the plastic table top as he did.

“That might have been insulting, but I’m too hungry to care.” Her eyes strayed, though, from the fries on the table to the man holding the bags. He wore cargo khaki shorts, running shoes and a simple graphic tee. Nothing flashy or out of the ordinary.

But she started feeling a hunger of an entirely different sort after watching his forearms flex with each reach into the bag.

Down, girl. Not while you’re working. She forced herself to walk with ease to the table and pick up a fry. He crumbled one bag, threw it in the other and set it down on the second table. So now she’d wash down both table tops before she left.

“Are we going to eat standing up?” she teased.

“Good for the digestion.” Greg unwrapped a burger, checked what was in it, then handed it to her. “Just a plain old cheeseburger. You good with that?”

“More than good. Great. Thrilled, actually.” To prove it, she took a healthy bite. “See?” she said around the gloriousness.

He smiled, then leaned in a little. Then a little more . . . then more . . .

Oh, God. He was actually going to kiss her now. A real kiss. And she had half a cow stuffed in her mouth. Her eyes widened and she froze as he inched in, as his fingers caressed her jaw and tilted her head, as his thumb brushed over the corner of her mouth . . .

“You had a little sauce there.” He straightened and sucked the sauce from his thumb. “Good stuff.” Then he unwrapped his own burger—twice the size of hers—and started eating.

Reagan’s eyes narrowed, and she hoped he felt the daggers she was sending him. From the way his eyes danced above the massive burger, she knew he felt them and found them completely ineffective.

Finally able to swallow, she said, “That was low.”

“No, you’re low.” He bumped her hip with his. “First time we’re not eye to eye, or me looking up an inch or two.”

Oh, crap. She looked down, and realized she was still wearing Marianne’s slippers. And no, of course they weren’t something adorable and sassy like leopard print or something. They were Family Guy slippers, Stewie on one, Brian on the other. Ugh. She actually debated rushing back to the desk for her heels when he wrapped one arm around her waist and squeezed.

“Don’t. You’re comfortable. I like it.”

It took everything she had not to do it, but she managed to resist the siren song of her heels. When was the last time she hadn’t been in heels in front of a man?

That was embarrassing to admit, so let’s not go that direction.

“I think,” Greg went on, picking up a piece of fallen bacon, “that you in heels is sexy. I like your suits. I like your hair up in that tight school-principal bun. You make business look sexy.” He winked. “But you make slippers look pretty damn hot, too. You’re not a one-trick pony.”

“Hmm,” was all she could manage. Finishing off the burger—her thighs were so not going to thank her for that—she dug into the fries. Then she grabbed the bag off the other table and rooted through it. “Ketchup, but no mayo?”

He blinked. “I’m sorry, mayo? Wasn’t there mayo on your burger? Which, I have to point out, you’ve already polished off.”

“I was hungry, shut up. No, not for my burger. For the fries.” When he just stared at her, silently chewing his food, she sighed. “Does nobody outside of the Midwest know this? You mix the mayo and the ketchup and then dip your fries in it.”

He swallowed another huge bite of burger before asking, “Could they think of anything more disgusting?”

“Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it.”

“Okay.” He wrapped the last three bites of his burger up and tossed it in the bottom of the bag. Grabbing the fries from her hand, he tossed those, as well as his, into the bag, too.

“Hey! I was going to eat those!” Sorry, thighs. We’ll do lunges later, okay? “What’s the deal?”

“Get your shoes on, unless you want to walk out in your slippers.”

“Not mine, Marianne’s.” She hustled at the excuse to put her heels back on. “Where are we going?”

“Just come on.” He grabbed her hand and, barely waiting for her to lock up the training room, pulled her to the parking lot. He impatiently waited again as she locked the gym itself, then pulled her to his car and opened the passenger door for her. When she was settled, he tossed her the bag and raced to the driver seat.

Reagan held the bag up a few inches off her lap. Much as she loved the food, the grease did not agree with her wardrobe. “Are you going to tell me now where we’re going?”

“Going to get some mayo.”

“All this, for mayo?”

“The lady wants mayo, and I live to serve the lady.”

*   *   *

REAGAN sat on Greg’s bed, looking supremely pleased with herself. “Tell me I’m right.”

He hedged, wanting to play it out longer. “I dunno . . .”

She kicked at him with one bare foot. He’d gotten her to dump the heels once they were in the privacy of his bedroom. No slippers necessary here. He grabbed her foot and squeezed. She closed her eyes briefly, but opened them again. “Tell me.”

“As shocking as it is, you were right.” She kicked with her other foot. He dodged easily. Using the non-foot-holding hand, he swiped the last two fries through the mayo-and-ketchup creation she’d made for him and popped them in his mouth. “I wouldn’t use it every time, of course, but it’s definitely not bad.”

“Not bad.” She snorted. “The first bite, your eyes lit up. Don’t lie.”

“Unexpected,” he went with.

“Unexpected that I kicked your ass in the taste department.” When he just stared at her, she shrugged. “Call ’em like I see ’em.”

He squeezed her foot once, then let it fall to the bed. “How was your day? You know, besides the whole kicking-my-ass thing.”

Her smile dimmed a little, and he regretted that. But he also needed to know if she was ready to start trusting him, talking with him about her day. If she was ready to let loose on everything that built up inside her.

“It was . . . hard.” She set her drink on the nightstand and stretched her arms up. The hem of her shirt rode up to reveal a delicious strip of pale skin, marred by pink lines from her waistband. He wouldn’t mind kissing those marks away. “It was harder than anything I thought it would be coming into this job.”

“What’d you think?” When she gave him a blank look, he rephrased. “With the job, what were you expecting?”

“Fluff,” she answered immediately, then blushed. It was adorable. “That’s probably rude to say, but it’s true.”

“Well, it’s a well-known fact Marines are the fluffiest of the services.” When she laughed, he shook his head in mock disgust. “We’re just so cuddly and lovable. About as innocent as a teddy bear and a bedtime story.”

She laughed at that, sitting up enough to clutch at her belly. “Oh yeah,” she said through gasps. “You’re regular stuffed animals, all of you. So harmless, so tame.”

“Exactly.” When she’d calmed down, he added, “No fluff jobs closer to home?”

“Oh, there’s fluff, but . . .” She picked at the edge of his pillowcase for a moment. “I needed to get out of there. Suffocating family, you know?”

He didn’t know. He couldn’t even begin to fathom what that felt like. To not only know who your family was, but to feel their presence so keenly in your life that you wanted to escape it. “Yeah,” he said, throat tightening. “Sure.” To buy him time, he added, “What’s so fluffy about this job?”

“Oh, I don’t know.” She picked up her drink, set it down again. “Keep you all in line, make sure you didn’t completely lose your minds when traveling, arrange simple media stuff, not screw up ordering the travel bus for the right day. Basically, idiot-proof junk. At least, I thought it would be idiot proof.”

“Is that what you wanted?”

“No.” She gritted her teeth, then sighed. “If I tell you this . . .”

“It stays here.” He did some halfhearted attempt at a cross. “Confess your sins, my child.”

She groaned, turned her face into his pillow, then popped back up again. This playful side of Reagan, in his bed no less, was seriously turning him on and making him think decidedly unpriestly thoughts. “I only took the job because I couldn’t get anything else. I wanted to be Olivia Pope from Scandal. I wanted to be out there, tackling the world’s toughest, most ugly PR scenarios. I wanted to be hiding a politician’s love child behind my back while kicking the bra he wore last night at the drag show under the bed with my foot and smiling through it all for the press.”

“That’s . . . an interesting occupation aspiration.” He wasn’t sure what to say about that. “Do people actually act like that?”

“Of course they do. They just have Olivia Popes to hide it. But of course, Olivia Popes don’t come from Nowhere, Wisconsin, with a 5-point-5-year degree and zero experience. So . . .” She let her arms lift, then fall into her lap. “Here I am. And as it turns out, the moment this job turns into more than fluff, I’m floundering.”

She looked so disheartened, he wanted to change it immediately.

“Well, if you ever have to hide Coach Ace’s bra, please tell me where you put it.” She snorted a laugh, and he grinned. “I’m glad you took the job.”

She sighed and let her head loll against the headboard. “For all I thought it was just a filler . . . I’m glad, too. Half the time, I think I’m in over my head. And the other half, I’m running so hard on adrenaline that I’m pretty sure if I got enough of a running start, I could leap off the catwalk and fly.” She patted her stomach. “Apparently, a belly full of comfort food makes me mushy.”

That tired contentment, the sight of her sighing in happiness and exhaustion in his own bed, surrounded by his things, after they’d spent an evening together, filled him with his own brand of contentment. Crawling to her, he hovered over her. She blinked her eyes open and waited very still for him to say something.

“I’m really glad you took the job,” he repeated.

CHAPTER

11

Reagan waited for him to move . . . what felt like a lifetime of waiting. She’d have sworn it had been years since she first wanted to feel his lips on hers . . . not weeks. But he didn’t move in, didn’t push any farther.

And then it occurred to her. He was giving her the last bit of control. He wanted her to come to him, to give that last seal of approval on the act. To show, without a doubt, it was what she wanted.

She raised her hands to cup his jaw. The rasp of his five o’clock shadow under her fingertips excited her. Despite having shaven that morning, he already had a good head start on a beard. She explored for a moment, the trail from the tip of his earlobe to the slight dent in his chin, invisible to the eye but so easy to feel with fingertips. He watched her, warily, lips barely parted. His chest heaved, and she wondered if it was from excitement, or the effort to give her this chance.

Maybe both. It’s why her own heart was thundering loud enough to drown out a herd of stampeding mustangs.

Following instinct, she traced over his lips, to that sweet cupid’s bow in the middle of his upper lip, up to the tip of his nose. There, she grinned as she pushed in. “Boop.”

As if that were all the invitation he needed, he rolled her over to straddle him. He was flat on the bed now, the pillows pushed to the floor in his haste. And though the suit rode uncomfortably tight in the back due to her unbusinesslike stance, she’d never felt more powerful than when she looked down between her arms and saw Greg Higgs looking up at her with hunger in his eyes.

And it was that power that gave her the strength to take what she wanted. It wasn’t a surrender to temptation, she realized as she lowered her head to breathe in his clean, male scent. A surrender was too weak, to mild sounding. No, she was claiming what she wanted. She was making it hers. That was a power in itself.

“I’m claiming you,” she whispered as she nipped his lip. His eyes widened a little—in fear? No, in surprise—and he licked his tongue over the spot she’d bit.

“Is that so,” he murmured. “I won’t get in your way, then.”

“You won’t,” she agreed, then kissed him fully.

It was exactly what she’d needed. The immediate release of pressure, like letting the cork on a champagne bottle fly free, gave her limbs a weightless quality. Or maybe that was just Greg’s arms as he steadied her.

He lay quiet beneath her as her hands roamed his upper body, while her lips explored his. Though his muscles quivered while she touched and stroked, he allowed her the time to get to know his body. Let her make each new move against his mouth. When she chose the tilt of her head, he accommodated her and adjusted. When she swept her tongue against his lips, he opened invitingly.

And he never once pushed her for more, never demanded she move faster to suit his pace, or slow down more. For once, he gave her the option of choosing.

It was like stepping into a cage with a lion. The lion might allow you to pet its head, run your hands over its powerful, rangy body, make the first move to play. There was no escaping the knowledge, though, that in an instant, the lion could make the final move, swipe his big paw once and it would all be over.

But for that moment of control . . . what a rush.

When she pulled back enough to see if he was just as affected as she was, she couldn’t help the catlike grin that spread.

Greg’s eyes were half-closed, as if drunk on lust, and thanks to the way she draped over his body, his erection was impossible to miss. It lay thick and hard against her thigh, making her very much want to reach down and stroke it.

How much more would the lion take before swiping with that dangerous paw?

Before she could even find out, she was flat on her back. The lion, it appeared, wasn’t as lust-drunk as she’d thought. He flashed her a quick grin before taking control and dazzling her with a kiss so skilled, she forgot to breathe.

She tore her lips away just before spots started to appear behind her eyelids. “You’re . . . dangerous . . .”

“Me?” He did what she assumed was his best imitation of innocence. His best needed some work. “I’m just here with a beautiful lady, doing some sweet kissing. Nothing dangerous about it.”

“You say that, but—” He interrupted her with another lip lock that took her several minutes to remember she’d been speaking. “You say that,” she repeated, putting two firm hands on his cheeks to keep him away. “But there’s nothing sweet about this.”

He waited a moment. “Do you want me to slow down?”

“I want you to speed up, dammit!” She hooked a leg over the back of his thigh, her heel resting just below his butt. With a nudge that made him jolt, she brought him back to her. And when his hand started to roam down her body, finding all those spaces above the waist she loved, she arched into his touch.

But just as his hand cupped her breast through way too many layers of clothing, he was off her and across the room. He might have been yanked away with a wire like a stuntman if she hadn’t been watching. She sat up, dazed and not entirely sure what had just happened.

“Why . . .” She moistened her lips, which felt sort of numb. Could really excellent kissing make your lips go numb? “Why are you over there?”

“Because you’re in my bed,” he said, as if that were a completely logical explanation. When she looked down at his crotch—yup, still saluting—he followed her gaze, then turned toward the door. “That’s about all for tonight.”

She scrunched up her nose. What the hell happened? “Did I do something wrong?”

“No. Hell, no,” he emphasized when she didn’t move. “You did everything right. Way too right,” he added in a mumble.

She was starting to get a headache. Or maybe it was akin to altitude sickness . . . only with lust. Changinglust levels at too quick a speed caused the oxygen in her brain to lag behind.

“It’s that I want you.” He laughed halfheartedly. “Obviously. And that’s not on the menu tonight so—”

“And why not?” She crossed her arms under her breasts, only to realize she was in the world’s most unattractive sprawl on his bed. She sat up and did her best to position herself better . . . or at least more comfortably. “Why not? Oh.” She glared. “You’re doing that whole ‘my way, caveman’ thing again, aren’t you? Exerting your control over the situation and the details.”

“I’m doing what I think is right. You’ve had a rough few days, I’ve had a rough few practices, and the team as a whole got dumped on. I don’t want you to look back tomorrow and think you were used. I want this to go right.” He said it all slowly, as if he wasn’t sure she wouldn’t take a swipe at him.

With as much dignity as she could muster—not a lot, sadly—she scooted to the edge of the bed and began to pull her heels on. “It appears as though I’ve overstayed my welcome.”

“Ask me a question,” Greg blurted out.

She paused in the act of putting on shoe number two. “A question?”

“One of your PR things.” He shifted a little, and she knew it made him uncomfortable to offer. But he did it anyway, because it meant she’d stick around.

Brownie points for Greg Higgs.

She stood and turned a tight circle around his room. Nothing personal there. No photos of friends or family. No hints of the life he led outside of the gym where he trained with a dozen of his teammates. It was as if he existed for one thing only . . . to fight. “Tell me why you chose the Marine Corps.”

“The Marine Corps is the baddest of the badasses.”

She turned and watched him cautiously settle down on the edge of the bed. As if returning to the scene of the crime so soon might ignite potential feelings best left behind. “‘The baddest of the badasses.’ Very technical phrase.”

“It’s exactly what my seventeen-year-old mind was thinking when I chose.” He smirked. “Seventeen-year-olds aren’t known for their mature thought processes.”

Seventeen. Not even eighteen when he joined. Still a baby, in all the ways that count. But something told her he’d hate hearing that. So she sat at the opposite edge of the bed, as far from him as she could, and nodded. “Okay. Keep going.”

*   *   *

HOW did he explain it to her? She was a farm-fresh face with a loving family she actually wanted to avoid because they cared too much about her life. What was it like, he wondered, to hear from someone that the thing you dodged was the one thing someone else craved with every cell in their body? That the family she found smothering would have fulfilled every single childhood dream of his.

“I needed to pick a service, and I went with the one that sounded the coolest. When you’re a seventeen-year-old boy, being a badass is basically the highest pinnacle to achieve.”

“Seventeen,” she murmured, and he could see the wheels turning. Did she ask, didn’t she . . .

She chose not to. Wise, since he wouldn’t have told her why, and he didn’t want to lie.

And the truth was something he never wanted to discuss. Ever.

“Hey, so funny story . . . abandoned as a baby, foster system blew, got sucked into the wrong crowd, spent lots of time in juvie for fighting and other petty shit. Had a judge tell me it’s either the service now—and he’d sign off on the early enlistment—or it’s going to be the big time . . . adult lockup. So I picked the lesser of two evils.”

Not exactly a sexy bedtime story.

“Anything else you want to add?” she asked, jarring him from the past.

He thought, then shrugged. Not particularly.

“What made you stay in?” She raised a hand, as if she wanted to reach out and touch him somehow. But she let it fall back. “You must have had to reenlist at least once between then and now.”

“It’s a good life.” The only good life he knew. “I got my college degree thanks to the Corps, shifted over to the officer side, and just kept plugging away. Every time there was a chance to get out, I considered it. Any guy who says he doesn’t hesitate, at least for a second, before re-upping is a liar. But in the end . . .” How else to say it? “The Corps has been good to me.” A surrogate family, really. Like the team had become. He’d do whatever he could to keep it.

She nodded at that, folded her hands in her lap very primly and looked down. Eyes closed, she said, “Hmm.”

Hmm? That’s all? It was the most personal he’d been with her since meeting her—the closest he’d come to baring that true, vulnerable kid he’d been—and she said “hmm”?

“I wouldn’t disclose what age you were when you went in,” she began, eyes still closed, as if envisioning something.

Aw, hell. She was back in business mode. He straightened his shoulders and forced himself to be impartial.

“I would say that the military has provided you with a good life, a good and honorable living, and you feel it is your duty to continue to give back.” She looked at him from under her lashes. “Does that meet your approval?”

He nodded, not trusting his voice.

“Good.” She stood, picking up her purse from the dresser where she’d left it. “I’ll leave you for now. Have a good evening.”

Before he could stand up, she was gone. He raced to look for his shoes, slipped them on without socks and raced after her.

He found her, standing still, on the sidewalk outside the building. “I forgot . . . I rode with you.” She turned, facing him with a blank expression. “You have to take me back.”

The five-minute car ride back was quiet. He struggled for something to say, but nothing quite worked out. When he parked at the gym, he sighed in relief to see her car was still alone, unharmed. With the vandalism happening, he shouldn’t have left her car there. Next time he’d be more careful. But before he could say anything, she slipped from his car and headed toward hers.

He barely caught up with her before she opened her car door. Damn, the lady could move with those long legs when she wanted to.

“Dinner,” he blurted out, then felt like an idiot.

“Dinner,” she said slowly. “We just ate dinner.”

“Tomorrow. Your place.” Sentences, Higgs, use real sentences.

She closed off at that. “No, thank you.”

“Fine, back at my place then.” He could make that work.

She shook her head. “Thank you, but no.”

“Then at Sweeney’s place. I’ll kick him out. He won’t care.”

She hesitated, then asked, “He wouldn’t mind?”

He might, but Greg wasn’t about to tell her that. “Nah, he’s good with it. Said we should make ourselves at home.” Probably hadn’t meant that for when he wouldn’t be home, but Greg wasn’t about to let the man take it back now. “Seriously, it’s fine.”

She hesitated, and in that hesitation he could see her true desire.

“Reagan.”

Her eyes slanted to his. She nibbled on her bottom lip a moment, and he slid in for a kiss. With her heels on, and him in just his running shoes, he was actually reaching up an inch to make it work but that was fine. When she sighed and pressed into him, he knew he’d won over her resistance.

Breathing hard, he pulled away and pressed his forehead to hers. “Have dinner with me tomorrow. Let me cook you a real meal, let me sit with you on the couch and watch a movie. Let me cop a feel during the scary parts and whisper cheesy lines in your ear during the romantic stuff. Let’s do the normal couple things that people do when they’re dating that are hard for us here.”

She laughed and let her head drop to his shoulder. “Okay. Fine, you convinced me. But only if Graham is okay with it.”

“He will be,” Greg promised as he shuffled her into her car and watched her pull away. He will be or else Greg would murder him on the spot and move into his house.

As soon as Reagan’s car—God, that was a death trap on wheels—pulled out of the parking lot, he dug his cell phone out of his pocket and flipped through his contacts.

“Sweeney? Yeah, I need a favor . . .”