Face blank, he held her gaze a second longer, then started around the rear of the car. Only when he was sure she wouldn’t see him did he let the ghost of a smile play over his lips.
Good ol’ Jenna, always willing to take in a stray, even if that stray happened to be an overbearing, hulking, and thoroughly unwanted ex-husband.
It was the moans that woke him. Not sexy, encouraging moans like the last time he’d woken up in this narrow, less-than-comfortable bed in Charlotte Langan’s farm house. Instead, it sounded like someone was hurt or scared. And since the only other person in the house with him was Jenna…
He tended to be a light sleeper anyway, but given the weight of his thoughts these days, and the disturbing lack of noise out here in the middle of nowhere, he found himself tossing and turning more than usual. He’d never realized before how much the sounds of traffic several stories below, punctuated with the occasional siren or squeal of brakes, helped to lull him into unconsciousness.
Tossing off the single sheet that covered him, Gage padded barefoot down the hall, wearing only a pair of black boxer briefs. The well-traveled hardwood floor creaked as he made his way downstairs.
Stubborn woman that she was, Jenna had refused to sleep upstairs in a real bed. She didn’t want to encroach on Charlotte ’s personal space by sleeping in her aunt’s room. The only other guest room in the house was used mostly for storage and sported only a bedframe without a mattress, and he knew that much more than Hell would have to freeze over before she’d willingly spend the night with him in what had formerly been “her” room.
So she’d chosen to grab an extra set of sheets from the linen closet and sleep on the sofa in the sitting room. A sofa that had seen better days and looked about as comfortable as a bed of nails or pile of lumber.
He scratched a spot in the middle of his chest and shook his head. If he lived to be a hundred, he would never understand women… and he didn’t think he’d understand Jenna if he lived to be a thousand.
He’d have been happy to slide over and welcome her into the tiny twin bed with him. He couldn’t have promised it wouldn’t lead to anything, but he could promise that if it did, there would be condoms involved.
Stepping into what passed as Charlotte ’s living room, he saw Jenna stretched out on the red brocade settee. She’d kicked off the covers, revealing a pair of hot pink shortie pajamas with white, dime-sized polka dots all over them. The cotton-and-spandex material molded to her petite frame like a second skin, and he couldn’t help but look his fill.
He remembered when she used to climb into bed naked and stay that way all night, but the PJs weren’t bad, either. They were both cute and sexy at the same time, showing off her feminine attributes to perfection.
Jenna had always been self-conscious about her figure, he knew. She thought she was too short, too thin, and that her breasts were too small.
Gage had never been nearly as critical. Yeah, she was petite, but he liked that. He liked the fact that he towered over her, and that when he wrapped his arms around her and tugged her close, she nearly disappeared. It made him feel big and strong and powerful, like he could take on the world and protect her from anything.
And her breasts might not be as large as those most often seen in men’s magazines, but he’d never had any complaints. They suited her, and had kept him plenty occupied when they made love.
Filed at the top of that invisible box of things he would never understand about women was the absolute perplexity that Jenna didn’t recognize how totally hot she was. Even now, after the divorce, the whole forced seduction/baby issue between them, and with her sound asleep and him still groggy, she turned him on. The evidence of that was making itself known in the tenting at the front of his underwear.
He was about to turn around and head back upstairs, reassured that Jenna was fine and apparently just mumbling in her sleep, when she moaned again and thrashed slightly on the sofa. Her arm flopped out to the side, nearly smacking into the edge of the coffee table. Her legs jerked, almost as though she were trying to run. And her head rolled back and forth on the pillow stuffed into the corner of the settee.
For a minute, he debated over waking her. It might put a halt to whatever bad dream she was having, but then she’d know she’d been crying out and that he’d heard her. He didn’t want her to be embarrassed, and he most certainly didn’t want her to notice the effect she had on him, even from a distance and while she was still asleep.
But if he left her alone… She jerked and groaned again, this time sounding even more frightened, more desperate.
Okay, enough was enough. Striding forward, he stopped beside the sofa and put his hands on his hips. “Jenna,” he said, hoping the sound of her name alone would startle her out of her nightmare.
When she continued to struggle, he leaned down, fitted a hip onto the edge of the settee beside her own, and slid a hand around her shoulder. “Jenna,” he tried again, giving her a small shake. “Honey, wake up. You’re having a bad dream.”
She stilled, her eyes popped open, and a second later, she was in his arms.
“Gage. Oh, my God, Gage.” Her voice was thick with emotion, her chest heaving as she fought for breath. She pressed herself against his chest, arms squeezed around his neck like tentacles.
He didn’t know what was going on or why she was suddenly so willing to touch him when only hours before she’d insisted they sleep on completely different floors of the house, but he wasn’t a man to toss aside a bit of luck when it came his way. Pulling her closer, he held her tight, his hands stroking her back while he inhaled the fruity scent of her hair where it tickled his nose.
“Aw, sweetie, it was just a nightmare. Nothing that should have you so worked up.”
She pushed away a couple of inches to meet his gaze. Her face was pale except for two splotches of pink that colored her cheeks, and her eyes were damp and glossy with tears.
Raising a hand, he ran a thumb along the bottom of one eye and then the other, wiping away the wetness as best he could.
“What’s wrong, honey?” he asked softly. “What were you dreaming about that was so bad?”
She shook her head and swallowed hard, fresh tears swelling to balance precariously on her lower lashes.
“It was you,” she said in a watery voice. “I couldn’t find you, and then when I did…” She took a hiccupping breath. “… you were dead.”
He froze at her words, an unwanted but automatic snake of trepidation wending its way down his spine. Every cop knew that the end could come at any moment. They knew it, lived with it, but didn’t let it keep them from doing their jobs.
Second only to his fear that something might happen to Jenna, though, was his fear that something might happen to him, resulting in her being left alone. Not just alone without him, but alone without someone to watch out for her and keep the bad things from touching her.
They might be divorced, which put him at a bit more of a distance than he had been before, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t still keeping an eye on her. He kept his ear to the ground, had surreptitiously convinced Zack and Dylan to watch out for her, and checked up on her himself when he could.
Without letting her know, of course. If Jenna found out he was still acting like an invisible commando bodyguard where she was concerned, she’d have his biscuits in a bag hanging from her belt… or attached to the ends of one of those fluffy boas she liked to wear.
So he didn’t let her catch on. He remained at a distance, pretending he was a-okay with the divorce, and far removed from anything that had to do with her.
And whenever they bumped into each other or were forced to spend time together because of their mutual circle of friends, he played it cool, pretended she meant no more to him than any other woman he might pass on the street. He hoped he was pulling it off, because it was about as easy as sucking on a lemon and not making a face.