Because ten more minutes in the front seat of this Ford and—
She suddenly popped up, inches from his face. “I’m not going to be able to sleep.”
“Just try.”
“I cannot possibly sleep without first going to the bathroom. I don’t think I ever have in my whole life.”
“Not in the plan, huh?”
She flicked her finger at the arm he’d draped over the top of the seat as he leaned into the door. “Don’t knock plans. If we’d had better ones, we might not be sitting in a downpour with no headlights, no windshield wipers, no food, no bathroom, and no hope.”
“We have hope. And a flashlight if you want to use the ladies’ tree.”
She squished up her nose, as if considering the pros and cons of the rainy, dark non-facilities. “I’ll wait until the rain slows down, but I honestly can’t sleep. I’d rather talk.”
“I talked you right to sleep on the way down here. Anyway, don’t you have rules about that?”
Even in the dark, he could see a flicker in her blue eyes. “We’ve already butchered the ‘no intimate conversation rule,’ and since you just copped a feel of my ass, there goes the ‘no unnecessary contact rule’ down the drain. And you insist on calling me Francesca, despite the fact that I specifically asked you not to.”
“You like it when I call you Francesca. You told me so.”
“It puts me off-balance.”
He smiled at her. “That’s the rum.”
“Yeah?” She took the bottle and helped herself to one more swallow, as if to say she wanted to be off-balance. “So…” She pushed a lock of dark hair out of her eyes, but it fell right back and partially covered her brow. “Talk to me, Malcolm Harris.”
“You may have underestimated the potency of the local rum.”
“Pah.” She blew the hair, but it fluttered over her eye again. “Maybe. I am starting to like you, and I told you not to make me do that.”
“Which of my grand gestures won you over? The going off route, buying a car you hate, or waiting until we were in a rainstorm in the dark to discover the windshield wipers don’t work?”
She gave a slightly loopy sideways grin, suddenly looking a little like Gabe when he was in a playful mood. “The rum.”
He leaned a little closer, the cracked leather seat back making an effective barrier between their bodies, but it was low enough to get face-to-face and mouth-to-mouth.
“You’re a little tipsy, Francesca,” he whispered.
“Not really…but we could play a drinking game.”
He laughed. “That won’t help things.”
“Might even them out and get you tipsy, too. Here’s the game,” she said. “Every time you say something that makes me like you, I’ll take a drink. And vice versa. And we’ll just…talk.”
“Or pass out.”
She reached for the bottle. “Okay, that was funny. Cute. Drink-worthy. Gimme.”
He watched her take a tiny sip, barely enough to wet her lips.
“So tell me about Door-Matt,” he said.
And she choked on that baby sip. “What?”
“I want to hear about this guy who broke your heart.”
“Mood killer,” she sang lightly.
Exactly. Because if one of them didn’t kill the mood, they were not going to make it to the hotel to start on their hopeless sex.
His approach worked, since she slid away from him to lean against one of the bags, essentially as far from him as she could get in this car. She stretched out her legs, dropped her head back, and closed her eyes.
And everything in Mal that made him a man ached to crawl over the seat and stretch right on top of her.
“He didn’t break my heart,” she finally said. “He just didn’t like my plan.”
“Which was?”
She tipped her head, as if to remember just what that plan had been. “Date for two years, get engaged, buy a house, get married, pop out a few kids, have noisy Sunday barbecues and sleepy Christmas mornings, bicker over meaningless things because what really matters is the two of us and we are solid until we get old and gray.”
He stared at her, trying like hell to process that, but failing miserably. “That’s your plan?”
She eyed him. “Too 1950s for your taste?”
“Not if you like your life the way you like your cars.” But that wasn’t what got to him. He couldn’t figure out what it was, but it wasn’t the old-fashionedness of her dreams. It was…the impossibility of them.
“Exactly how I like things,” she said, unaware that her statement had caused him any turmoil. “Classic, simple, pure, and maybe a little out of sync with the rest of the world. Yeah, I do.” She nodded as if she were only thinking about that for the first time. “I really do.”
“It’s not out of sync with the world, Chessie, since people live those lives all the time, but the whole picket fence thing is really out of sync with what I know about your family.”
“You’re only considering the family that craves danger and excitement. It’s also the family that is full of love and security and happiness. And lots of spaghetti. I want that, too. God, I would kill for Nino’s spaghetti carbonara right now. Kill.”
“You want permanence and security.” Nothing he could ever give a woman, not the way he lived.
“And carbonara.” She lifted her head, eyeing him as if his tone had just sunk in. “What? Is my plan too sweet and innocent for you?” she asked, scrutinizing his expression.
“Too far from…reality,” he said. His reality. He couldn’t even imagine a childhood like that.
“Reality is what you make it, big boy.”
“And it wasn’t the reality of this Matt character? He didn’t want the kids, fence, and Christmas dinners?”
“He checked off some boxes,” she said after a long pause.
“Loaded, hung, and…dreamy-looking?”
She snorted a laugh. “Yeah, a regular swoonfest.”
“Hey, I’m trying to speak 1950s to you so you’ll like me.”
Her lips curled up slowly as she shook her head and reached over the seat for the bottle leaning next to him. “You had me at dreamy.” She took the rum, leaned forward to take a sip, then handed it back to him. “Are you playing?”
“I already like you,” he admitted, taking the bottle back. “And one of us has to stay sober.”
“I’m sober,” she assured him. “And for the record, dreamy wasn’t one of the boxes he checked.”
Back to Matt.
“He was grounded, you know?”
Actually, Mal didn’t have a clue what grounded was, so he just listened to her talk.
“Good family, stable lifestyle, respectable job.”
If those were her boxes, he sure as hell came up empty. “And the Christmas mornings?” Mal did a shitty job of keeping the bitter out of his voice.
“Don’t knock Christmas. It’s big in my family. Well,” She laughed lightly. “I guess Christmas is big in every family, but—”
“No, it’s not.”
She looked up at him, frowning. “Assuming you celebrate it. Maybe you did Hanukkah or some other winter festivity.”
“Nothing.”
She sat up again, looking hard at him. “Nothing?” Pure disbelief in her voice. “No tree, no gifts, no big dinner?”
“Not that I recall.” He gave her a hopeful look. “Does a shitty childhood make you want to drink? I’ll take sympathy points.”
She leaned all the way forward, putting her hand on his arm, which still rested on the seat back. “It makes me sad for you. I love Christmas.”
“I hate it.”
She looked at him for a long time, her face not far from his, her fingers warm on his arm. “Have you ever had one? A real Christmas?”
Never. But she didn’t need to know that much about him. “Once,” he lied.
“Aww.” Her eyes glistened, and she inched closer. “Tell me about it. I have a feeling it’s going to make me dr
ink.”
“I can’t,” he said, feigning a little heartache. “Hurts too much to remember.”
“Oh, really?” She gave his arm a solid squeeze. “Please tell me.”
He faked a sad sigh. “Okay. It was two years ago. At Allenwood. They had a tree, and we got rubber turkey instead of mystery meat and sleigh bells instead of the lights-out alarm.” He could feel his lips curling in a wry smile. “Santa came sliding down the guard tower when we were all tucked in.”
She rolled her eyes. “You son of a bitch.” She grabbed the bottle from him. “Stop it.”
“I thought you only drink when I say something you like.”
“You did. Made a joke.” She didn’t actually drink, holding it even though he kept his hand on it, too. Her other hand was still possessively around his forearm. So, basically everywhere they could be touching with a fifty-year-old cracked leather seat back between them, they were. “You can definitely stop making me like you now,” she said softly.
“And you could stop touching me.”
She gave him a very slow, very sexy, slightly looped smile…and didn’t let go.
He slipped his hand under her hair, grazing her jaw, curling around the narrow column of her neck. “For the record, Francesca, I really wanted to wait for a bed before we had our hopeless sex.”
She inched closer. “What could be more hopeless than the backseat of a car? I think it’s perfect.”
“I think you’re perfect,” he admitted on a gruff whisper.
He watched her eyes drift closed as his mouth hovered over hers. He could feel her breath, her pulse, her soft skin, and, finally, her lips.
She tasted like rum, only sweeter and warmer. And despite his best efforts to stay sober, Mal was instantly intoxicated.
Chapter Fifteen
God, she was tipsy. Spinning. Lightheaded. Kicked-in-the-ass high on…him. It wasn’t the rum, though that might have made Chessie a little chatty and given her a slight push closer to him. No, it was the feel of his lips. The touch of his hand. The slip-slide play of his tongue against hers as he kissed her like a man appreciating fine wine and not bad rum.
“You okay?” he whispered as he pulled away enough for them to look at each other.
“Yeah.” Except her eyes weren’t open, and her whole body was tingling. “Better than okay.”
She felt him laugh against the next kiss, a rumble that made her want to reach over this stupid bench seat and flatten her hands against his chest so she could feel that laughter vibrate against his gorgeous pecs.
“Here.” He took the bottle as if he knew she was about to drop it, stuffed the top to close it, and set it on the floorboard. That gave her just enough time to think about what they were doing. And wait for a litany of stop, be smart, don’t do this to sing in her head.
But the only thing she heard was the thumping beat of hot blood pulsing through her body, which sounded a lot more like yes than no.
When he turned back to her, his expression was serious and…exactly like it was in the hotel room the other night. His jaw set, his gaze unrelenting, his breath remarkably steady for a man who had to be on the edge of the same sensations that had a hold on her.
Wasn’t he? Didn’t he want to touch and kiss and undress as much as she did?
“I know what you’re thinking,” he said, running his finger along her lower lip as if it fascinated him.
“Do you?” ’Cause if so, it was game over.
“This isn’t part of your plan.”
“No,” she agreed with a laugh. “The car, the rain, the lights, the wipers, the water, the detour, the whole damn trip is off plan. And making out with you in a 1959 Ford Prefect? In another league of off the plan.”
“Sometimes…” He trailed his finger down her throat, into the hollow of her neck, down another inch, where the back of the seat forced him to stop. “You have to go with the flow.”
“Ah, yes, contingency sex.”
“Exactly.” His finger slid up her throat again, and he spread his whole hand against her cheek and jaw, holding her face so that she had to look at him. He threaded her hair, twisting strands and sliding through them.
He pulled her closer and kissed her again, angling his head, owning her mouth, tracing her teeth with his tongue. Each second of the kiss brought them closer, leaning up, fighting the barrier that was the only thing keeping them apart.
The windows, closed against the rain, were completely fogged, blocking out the world they couldn’t see anyway.
She tilted her head and let him pepper kisses on her throat while her hands grasped his arms and squeezed the hard curves of his biceps. Up to his neck, fingers into his hair, her legs trembling already, and her breasts aching with the need to be touched.
Thankfully, he seemed to read her mind, climbing easily over the barrier, barely breaking the kiss.
She laughed into his neck. “We didn’t make it twenty-four hours.”
“Not the first time either.” He slid lower, getting his mouth into the vee of her T-shirt and his hand underneath it with little effort. He stroked over the satin of her bra, her senses exploding with pleasure as his body pressed against hers, hard and hot.
A whimper escaped as she pressed against his erection, and sparks shot through her as he dragged her top over her head. “I’ve never…” Felt anything like this.
“Never what?” He snapped off her bra with ease and slid the straps off her. “Never did it in the back of a Ford Prefect?”
“Any car.”
He smiled and kissed her, tossing her bra into the front seat. “First stranger sex. First car sex. First hopeless sex. I like being your first for things.”
“You just like sex.”
“Mmmm.” He lowered his head to take one of her breasts into his mouth, but that just meant she couldn’t think at all. Instead, she clutched his head, holding it against her, guiding him from one sweet spot to the another.
They rocked their hips, already thrumming with the same rhythm and need, his hard-on rubbing exactly where she needed and wanted it. She rolled over the ridge again, the contact like electricity, sparking and twisting.
The muscles between her legs clutched, and she broke the kiss to try to get her breath as an orgasm started firing through her, throbbing and unstoppable, his hands all over her while he let her ride him until she felt like the whole world was…rolling away.
“What the fuck?” Mal shot up, stealing his body and making Chessie cry out in abject frustration. “What’s going on?”
“Um…if I have to explain it to you—”
He vaulted over the front seat and opened the door to the sound of the steady rain hitting the car…the car that was floating.
“Flash flood!” He turned the key, and the engine screamed…but didn’t turn over. Of course not, Chessie thought. If water had gotten into the fuel line, this car would never start.
“Damn it!” He revved again. Nothing. “Get up here, Chessie. I’ll get out and push.”
She scrambled to the driver’s seat, vaguely aware she had no top on, taking his place as he jumped outside into a calf-high mud lake.
“Keep trying to turn it over,” he ordered, then disappeared into the darkness. She turned the key again, tapping her foot on the sticky, useless accelerator while she patted around the front seat and found her glasses.
This car would never…
Move. It moved. She squinted into the rearview, but the glass was still fogged up.
Furious at the weather, the car, the situation, she rolled her window down a few inches, ignoring the rain that came in, desperate for a clear look.
“Try it again!” he called.
She twisted the key and worked the gas pedal, feeling the whole vehicle moving, but not because the flooded engine was on. And then the rear window finally cleared enough for her to see a sight she’d never forget.
Mal, drenched in rain and mud, his shirt sticking to every impressive muscle, his body lit red by the rear lights
. He clenched his jaw and stretched his arms and pushed the damn Prefect through the water.
Like some kind of god.
Desire and admiration ripped through her, punching her in the gut and the heart just as he rolled them out of the rushing water. On drier land, the engine sputtered, shuddered, and finally caught, and Mal yanked the driver’s door open.
Wordlessly, she slid to the side like the whole thing was choreographed, giving him the driver’s seat. He pressed the gas, and they shot forward, spitting rooster tails on either side of the car.
“We’re not stopping again until we get there,” he announced.
Chessie clutched the seat, wishing like hell the old beast had a seat belt she could drag over her bare breasts. “And you wonder why I don’t want to work in the field.”
“Like I said, gotta go with the flow. Or flood, as the case may be.”
An utterly unfamiliar sensation thrummed through her, as strong as the sexual desire that had just rocked her, and every bit as thrilling. She didn’t dare admit it, she couldn’t. It was so off plan.
She liked the rush of this job. A lot. And, holy shit, she liked Mal Harris more than any man she’d ever met.
* * *
Roger Drummand leaned against the stiff leather sofa outside his father’s office, tapping his shoes on polished oak floors and glancing out the colonial-style panes to see the bare trees of early December in Georgetown.
Why the hell had he been summoned here? It couldn’t be good. It couldn’t be. If that bitch outed him…
From behind the closed door, he couldn’t hear Bill Drummand’s voice, of course. He was a spy through and through, using only a soft voice and a few well-placed words. He elicited information more than he gave it, and although long retired from his work at the agency, he was, at ninety-one, still interested in everything that went on there.
But why had he called in one of his least favorite supervisors for a meeting? It wasn’t like they had a warm father-son relationship. It wasn’t like they had any relationship at all. Ever. After all, if Roger hadn’t been born, Donna Lee Drummand would likely have survived the appendicitis that she developed when he was only four days old. And if given a choice between the two, Bill would have picked Donna Lee over Roger in a heartbeat.