“Sure.” He wrote it down, folded it, stuck it in his jeans.
He had no idea what to do next. He wandered around the empty house. Night deepened. The quiet terrified him. He wondered when the police would come. What would happen to him if they found him there?
At dawn, he filled his knapsack with as much stuff as he could carry, tied a rolled blanket onto the top, and headed out into the woods.
“…okay?” He jolted out of his memories. Vivi’s face was close to his, her gray eyes wide with worry. She patted his shoulder.
She tried again, louder. “Are you okay, Jack?”
He focused on the faint pattern of freckles on her perfect, narrow little nose. Like a constellation of stars. “Uh, yeah,” he said dully. “Sorry. I was someplace else for a while.”
She touched his cheek with her knuckles, a shy, tender stroke. “Noplace good. You had that look on your face.”
He shook himself to alertness, embarrassed. “What look?”
“Sad,” she said simply. “Can I make you some tea?”
“Coffee,” he said, rousing himself. “Tea doesn’t do it for me. Sit down. Stay with your dog. I’ll make it.”
“No, I’ll do it.” She pushed him back down. “The least I can do. Thanks for helping. It would have been that much more awful alone.”
“It’s nothing,” he muttered.
“Not to me and Edna it’s not.” Her smile was so warm and bright. He wanted to curl himself up around it. He followed her into the kitchen, just to stay close to her. Taking every sneaky opportunity to touch her, brush against her, sniff her scent as they put the coffee on together.
When it was done and poured, they sat across the table from each other. Jack reached out and grabbed her hand. They’d hit another smooth patch, and he was going to ride it for as long as he could. “I’m sorry for what I said in the—”
“Don’t,” Vivi broke in. “You apologized the last time you insulted me, and the time before that. Every time, I let down my guard and let you do it again. Let’s establish a rule. No insults. No apologies. Okay?”
“You misunderstood. I never insulted you,” he said.
“No? Me, the itinerant sexpot neo-hippie?”
He narrowly avoided spluttering his coffee. “That doesn’t count,” he protested. “You took me by surprise. In a wet T-shirt, no less.”
“Oh?” She gazed at him over the rim of her mug, eyes sparkling.
“Give me a fucking break! There you were, soaking wet in the forest, nipples poking through your shirt, looking like something out of a Penthouse centerfold—”
“It’s not my fault it was raining! I looked like a freaking mudslide!”
“Yeah, and it’s not my fault all the blood in my body got instantly rerouted to my dick! You expect me to be rational when a gorgeous woman tricked out like that waves a tire iron at me?”
Her eyebrows went up. “Did the tire iron turn you on, Jack?”
“I’ll tell you what turns me on. A proud, beautiful, self-reliant woman who takes no shit off of anybody. That turns me on.”
Her eyes fell, but she was smiling. “I never insulted you,” he went on. “I made a rational assessment of the situation based on the information I gathered. You read it as an insult, but I was not judging you.”
“Wrong,” Vivi said. “Your assessment is faulty.”
“I don’t think so,” he said. “I’ve had lots of practice.”
“Whoever you’ve been practicing on isn’t me. But let’s not talk about it, or we’ll just crash and burn all over again.”
She tried to tug her hand back, but he hung on to it. “That wasn’t what I was apologizing for,” he confessed. “I meant when we were out in the field. You asked about my uncle. I got all uptight. Closed you off.” He blew out a careful, measured sigh, trying to relax his tense belly.
Her eyes softened. She set down her coffee and reached across the table. “There’s a reason I was asking those questions about the bust.”
“Yeah?” he asked warily. “What?”
“I wondered if it was something we had in common,” she said. “I was in the middle in a big drug bust once, too. When I was a kid.”
He stared at her, mouth stupidly open. “Huh? You?”
“Me,” she said. “It sucked. As you are highly qualified to agree.”
“But aren’t you…didn’t you…” He racked his brains for the details Duncan had given him about her background. Italian nobility? Priceless art? Drug busts? What the fuck? This did not compute.
“My two sisters and I were all adopted,” she said, answering his silent confusion. “Lucia took us in as foster kids. I went to her when I was eleven. I got lucky. Nancy and Nell had to plow through years of bad ones before they found Lucia. I hit pay dirt right off, on my first placement. Lucia was amazing. And I got two kick-ass, readymade sisters in the bargain. They were the best.”
“And before?” he prompted.
Her face clouded. “Ah. Before. Well, my mom was a junkie. And the men she took up with were all dealers.”
“Jesus,” he muttered.
“I got used as a sentry,” she said. “Deliveries, sometimes, too.”
“No fucking shit!” He was aghast. “How old were you?”
She shrugged. “Eight, nine. Red pigtails, freckles, ruffles. Who would suspect what was in my Winnie the Pooh knapsack? I liked it, at the time. It made me feel important, grown up. Useful.”
“Used,” he corrected, harshly. “Anything could have happened to you! A little kid, for drug deliveries? That’s fucking insane!”
She made a dismissive gesture. “Duh. But anyway, the shit came down. There was a shoot-out. My mom’s boyfriend, Randy, got killed in the bust. And my mom went to prison.”
He winced. “Tell me you weren’t there when it happened.”
“I wasn’t,” she assured him. “I was at school. And I didn’t cry for Randy. He was a real zero. I have him to thank for this.” She held up her wrist, with its barbed-wire tattoo. “This was his idea of a joke.”
He stared at the fuzzy, faded tattoo, anger simmering inside him. “All I can say is, the list of people whom I want to dismember and grind into the dirt on your behalf is growing,” he said.
“Thank you, but it’s ancient history. So, how did the bust shake out for you? Did you end up with Child Protective Services, too?”
He shook his head. “No. I just took off.”
Her eyes widened. “Alone? At fourteen? How did you live?”
He hesitated for a moment before replying. “Barely,” he said. “So what about your mom? Is she out of prison?”
Vivi shook her head. “No,” she said. “She OD’d in prison. About eight months after she went inside.”
He flinched, sucker punched. That was what he got for trying to distract her from his own story. “I’m sorry,” he said, helplessly.
She gazed intently into her coffee mug. “It was a long time ago,” she said. “And I was as lucky with my second family as I was unlucky with my first. So I’m okay. You can relax, Jack.”
They listened to the wind in the trees outside. He reached out until he touched the flower tattooed on her chest. “That perfect combination of toughness and a good attitude,” he said quietly.
She blushed. “You’re doing it again, Jack. Saying all the right things.”
“Is it working? You want to grab me again?”
Her devastating secret smile turned dazzling. She got up, came around the table, sat down on his lap, and hugged him.
His arms encircled her. He was speechless. His dick was stone hard against the pressure of her ass, but it wasn’t just that. He just couldn’t believe she was there, draping herself over him, holding him. She was so beautiful, so special, so shining. Like a unicorn, laying its head in his lap, and him breathless with the wonder of it. And so turned on, he could barely suck in a lungful of air.
She gasped as he stood up and swept her into his arms, heading up the stairs. “Jack! What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“Being masterful,” he said. “Stop giggling. Get into the vibe.”