“You look like you’re unraveling.” He went to the coffee machine. “Coffee? Or maybe, a Coke?”
She nodded. “Coffee. Black.” She sat back down. “And I’m not unraveling. What are you doing here?”
“I got to thinking about the kid.” He handed her the coffee. Then he went to the soft-drink machine and got a Coke for himself. “I don’t know how anyone drinks black coffee. It tastes like tar to me.”
“It was all my mother kept in the house when I was a kid.”
“You’re not much more than a kid now.”
“Sixteen.”
“That’s what I was afraid of. I was hoping for a little older.” He sat down beside her. “Eve, Rosa called you. Eve what?”
“Eve Duncan.” She took a drink of the coffee. It was strong and generally foul-tasting. She didn’t care. It was hot. “And why do you care how old I am? Are you making a pass at me?”
“No, you’ll know when I do.” He lifted his cup to his lips. “Just a comment. You’re still in high school?”
“I graduate next year. You?”
“I graduated over a year ago. I’ve been moving around the country and raising a little hell with a couple of buddies for the last year. Sort of a last hurrah before I go into the service.”
“You’re joining the Army?”
He nodded. “My parents are dead, and I don’t have money for college. I thought it was my best bet to get more education and move up in the world. The Army’s not a bad deal.” His lips tightened. “And I won’t be caught in the same trap that choked my folks to death. Minimum-wage jobs and kids they never wanted. You think that housing development you live in is bad? I moved down here from Milwaukee, and the place I lived was called the Bricks. We had a killing nearly every two months, and the cops never came near it without a backup.”
“Is that where you learned to- You broke Frank Martinelli’s arm.”
He shrugged. “I learned a little self-defense from living at the Bricks. But my uncle was a Ranger in the Army, and he taught me everything he knew. Uncle Ted is the reason I’m down here. He’s got a back problem, and he moved down here because the VA Hospital has some specialists in Atlanta. I wanted to get him settled before I checked in for basic training.”
“Self-defense?” Eve’s brows rose. “It didn’t look like self-defense to me. They didn’t have a chance.”
He smiled. “If I’d let them move first, it would have been self-defense. It’s all how you look at it.” His smile faded. “And they made me mad. I didn’t like what they were doing to you.”
“Neither did I.” She leaned back in the seat. “I was scared.”
“But you went running in after them anyway.”
“They were hurting the baby.” She lifted her hand and rubbed her neck. “No one has a right to hurt the helpless. Most of us can take care of ourselves. But you have to do something about it if they go after babies or animals or-”
“Is your neck hurting?”
“Aching. That bastard was jerking me backward by my hair.”
“I can help.” He put his Coke down and stood up. “Lean forward a little.”
She looked at him warily. “What?”
“I won’t hurt you.” He stood a little behind her. “My uncle taught me this, too. It helped when I got whiplash from an accident.” His hands were on the back of her neck. “It’s all in the thumbs…” His thumbs were digging into her neck in deep massage. “Relax.”
She couldn’t relax. Her flesh felt hot beneath his touch, and that heat was spreading out in waves throughout her body. The muscles of her stomach were clenching, and her breasts…
What the hell was happening to her?
She knew what was happening. She wasn’t ignorant. It just had never happened to her.
“You’re not relaxing,” he said softly.
“No.” But she didn’t want him to stop. “You’re not… helping me.”
“I’m not helping myself much, either.” His fingers never stopped moving, digging, pressing. “But I want to keep on touching you no matter how much it hurts.” He drew a deep breath, and his hands fell away from her. “I didn’t mean it to happen this way. I didn’t mean it to happen at all. Hell yes, I wanted to get my hands on you. I’ve wanted that ever since I saw you sitting on those steps at-” He dropped down in the chair next to her. “Sorry. I didn’t know you would-”
He didn’t know that she’d respond as she had done. She hadn’t known it would happen, either. That flash of sensuality had come like a bolt of lightning. Searing, melting, overpowering. She instinctively pushed the knowledge of that response away from her. “It’s okay. I’m… it’s not as if-nothing happened.”
“The hell it didn’t.” He wasn’t looking at her. “But I’m trying to work it out in my head and decide what’s going on. Look, I’m no saint, but I don’t jump every girl I run across. The whole damn night has been crazy. I don’t usually interfere with- But I couldn’t let them hurt you. And then later on the stairs, I couldn’t keep from looking at you.”
And she hadn’t been able to stop looking at him. She still couldn’t. He was staring straight ahead, but her gaze was drawn to him like a magnet. Her gaze fell to his hand, lying on the wood arm of the chair.
His nails were short and clean, and the thumbs, which had dug into her muscles, looked long and strong.
They had been strong. She felt as if she could still feel the imprint on her flesh. Her chest was tightening, and her heartbeat was suddenly faster.
His gaze shifted to her face. “Oh, shit.” His cheeks were flushed, and his dark eyes were narrowing on her throat, then wandering to her breasts.
She had to stop this. She hunted wildly for something to break the web of sensuality that was tightening around her.
Rosa. The reason she was here. Talk about Rosa.
She jerked her eyes away from his. “Rosa’s afraid they’re going to try to take her baby away.”
“I don’t want to talk about Rosa right now.” His voice was soft and with a note in it that sent a shiver through her. She hadn’t realized that a shiver could be hot as well as cold. Then he paused. “But you need to back away from me, don’t you? Okay, I’ll try not to think about-but it won’t be easy.” He combed his fingers through his thick, dark hair. “What did you say? Oh, yeah. Why do they want to take the kid away from her?”
“They think she might be the one who hurt Manuel. It’s nuts. She loves that baby.”
He nodded. “I could tell.”
“None of the neighbors will talk to the police about what Rick Larazo and the rest of the gang did. And the guys were gone by the time the ambulance came. They’re not going to believe me, either. I’m too young.” She added in disgust, “They never believe anyone under thirty.”
“And you’re just a little over halfway there.” He grimaced. “Dammit.”
“I’ll get around it.” She finished her coffee. “I promised Rosa I’d go talk to some of the neighbors and try to persuade them to tell the truth about what they saw.”
“You really want to help her, don’t you?”
“Of course I do. Any way I can.”
“Then, if you can’t find someone to tell the truth because Larazo’s got them scared, get one of the potheads in the place to lie and say they saw it. It shouldn’t be hard. Just slip them a joint. There are addicts in half the apartments in the building.”
“I don’t deal drugs,” she said sharply.
“Whew.” His eyes narrowed on her face. “Did I hit a nerve?”
She ignored the question. “Do you deal?”
He shook his head. “But if it came to a choice of paying someone a few joints to help your friend keep her kid, I’d do it in a heartbeat. It’s a shitty world, and you have to pick both the weapons and the battles.”
“Not drugs.”
He nodded. “Whatever you say.” He was silent a moment. “But you have to know that I’m not like you. I won’t lie. I’m not what you’d call a good guy. I do whatever I have to do to survive and get what I want.” He paused. “It’s not always safe to trust me.”