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Ridge’s fingers followed the long bones of her ribs as they curved round under her arm. With soft, progressive circles of his fingertips, he traced the bones until the upper parts of his fingers contacted the wonderful, warm smoothness of Raven’s breast. “Feels fine to me,” he said, letting thedouble entendrehang in the air.
“Me too,” Raven said shyly, surprised that she was able to speak. “Those parts aren’t as painful,” she felt it right to say, despite her body simply agonizing for him to go on, to touch the begging, straining nipple, which felt as if it might explode with excitement.Kiss it, her body told him.Put your mouth on it. His fingers went lower, checking the endings of her rib bones, and then back across, under her arm.
“I’m not a doctor,” he said, “but I don’t believe you’ve broken anything. You’d not have been able to stand contact like that.”
I could barely stand it, believe me,Raven didn’t say. “Well, that’s good news,” she said, pulling her bra strap back up and snapping the catch closed once more. “Thanks so much for checking.”
“No problem,” he said, and as he stood, Raven could have sworn — on a stack of Bibles — that she saw a large bulge in his sweatpants. It was only for a second, and then Ridge headed for the shower. For ten long minutes she sat on the sofa, breathing slowly and deeply, restraining the urge to peek around the bathroom door. She willed her overactive sex drive to leave her be, reminding herself that this lovely man was, among other kindnesses, going to help to save her brother’s life. Idiot though he was, and a drain on her sanity he had recently become, he was family and she’d never look at herself in the mirror the same way again if she allowed mindless criminals to hurt him.
Ridge sauntered from the shower to his bedroom wearing only a towel and a sly smile.
“Sweet Jesus, help me,” Raven breathed, and then stopped short. “And Hank.” Her brother needed his soul saved more, but Raven would certainly have appreciated some divine support in calming her raging desire. “But first, Jesus, helpme.”
CHAPTERSEVEN
Curt sat in his car,feeling oddly uncomfortable. He changed the radio station a few times, played around with the sedan’s air conditioning and adjusted his seat, but he couldn’t quite scratch the itch. There was something... well,inhumanabout trusting the word of a machine. Not only relying on its findings, but acting on them. Risking lives because of them.
He had developed a healthy distaste for all things technological when, as a teenager, he had watched the space shuttleChallengerself-destruct over Florida, only forty miles from his boyhood home. It engrained in him a lifelong skepticism, and contributed (so said his shrink) to college-age depression and maladjustment, which was just another way of saying he was pissed all the time and hated everyone. Some things never changed and, while he’d mellowed as he approached 40, he carried a lingering mistrust of both man and machine. A litany of disappointments — in work, in love, in business — had fossilized his views. So, his vigil outside the motel was marked by an almost childish squirming. He couldn’t wait to get out of the car andhit something.
Deliverance arrived as his target departed, taking with it the tiny GPS transmitter he’d placed in its trunk weeks ago. Curt made a note of the time and then strode with carefree nonchalance into the lobby. “Say, I’m an idiot, but I think I left my key in the room. Would you mind?” The receptionist was only too willing to help and, within five minutes of his mark leaving the hotel, Curt was beginning the process of thoroughly ransacking the absent man’s hotel room. It was a search which was as efficient as it was fruitless, to Curt’s immense frustration.
“Cocksucker,” he spat, and decided to leave a calling card. He grabbed a bottle of shaving gel from the bathroom sink and slowly spelled out his message on the mirror: “PAY NOW, OR DIE.”
Cheryl was workingon her third and fourth theories about Raven’s sudden bruises as she coaxed six loaves of incredibly fragrant rosemary focaccia loaves from the oven. Her young employee had beenhit. There was no sense in denying it, nor in entertaining the alternative which Raven had offered — that she had walked carelessly into a kitchen cabinet door — which was so clichéd, Cheryl wondered if it had been a plea for help. Her spirits were high enough this morning, the older lady noted, but underneath there was a deeply worrisome sense that Raven’s world had suddenly become a much scarier place.
“They’ll cool for five minutes, then slice ‘em for the lunch crowd,” Cheryl said. “Is that friend of yoursstillat the window table?”
Raven glanced through the circular windows of the bakery’s double kitchen doors, although she hardly needed to; Ridge would keep watch until her shift finished, he had said, and then drive her home. He had read both local newspapers from cover to cover, and was now paging through the first of three novels from the town’s little library. “He sure is. Just loves your coffee, Cheryl.”
The proprietor grunted mildly. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were some kinda royalty and he’s your bodyguard, or something.” Raven laughed easily, aware that Cheryl was twice as worldly as she’d ever be, and ten times as observant. “Well,” she conceded, “provided he ain’t the one who...”
“No,” Raven interjected, with the feeling that her boss deserved some honesty. “No, it wasn’t him.”
Cheryl carried the loaves through to the broad countertops they used for slicing and packaging the popular bakery’s breads. “‘Kitchen cupboard,’” she harrumphed skeptically, drawing an apologetic face from Raven. “Honey, I seen women beat by every object found in a modern home, and that one,” she said, pointing to the embarrassed girl’s face with the handle of her bread knife, “is found on the end of a deadbeat’s arm.” Raven nodded sheepishly. “Old Cheryl’s too wise for you, darling,” she said, tapping her temple. “Been too many places and seen too many things. You won’t ever hide the truth from me again, now will you, honey?”
Raven gave her motherly boss a squeeze on the arm and sidled back into the kitchen to bring out yet more trays of outstanding breads. She could no more admit to Cheryl that her own kin had inflicted this bruise than she could sign up for the weekend’s martial arts fights; Cheryl was a cherished institution in this close-knit town, but news flowed through her like she was Reuters. If Hank was to be kept safe, discretion was everything.
There was laughter from the window table. Ridge had been spotted by an old school friend and was catching up. It wasn’t the first time, either; his extraordinary service to his country, and his equally staggering mixed martial arts record had earned him fame and respect in this community. The more Raven saw, the more she recognized that this was a guy who had, according to these warm and sincere people, never put a foot wrong. His combat achievements, so went the lore, had been curtailed only because a dumbass pilot had bombed his camp; but for that setback, he’d have tackled the terrorists single-handedly. The stoical way he bore his injuries was merely further proof of his considerable — hell, near superhuman — strength in the face of adversity. Texans loved a fighting hero, and a level-headed, not to mention outrageously good-looking one, had all the characteristics of a genuine local legend.
And I very, very nearly caught a sneak peek of his goods this morning. Raven’s mind had spent her shift wandering between three very different fields of thought: worry about her brother and whether he might not come, or whether hewouldand might hit her again; worry that Cheryl — or a well-meaning customer — would over-react and call the cops on account of Raven’s bruises; and worry that she’d think too much about Ridge in his bath towel and wind up with either a sliced open thumb or distractingly moist panties. Or both. It was an exercise in mental control to which her tired mind was hardly equal.
“I ain’t never seen chocolate chip muffins with raisins, sweetie,” Cheryl exclaimed.
Raven blinked.Shit!“Oh, Cheryl, I’m so sorry! I guess my mind isn’t in the right place today.”
“Don’t you worry, little thing! We’ll name them ‘Muffins Raven’ like the French do. Very classy,” she added, scribbling the new name on the bakery’s chalkboard.
“I’ll get it together, I promise,” Raven assured her, red-faced.
Cheryl knew when to cajole, when to hustle someone along, and when simply to let it be. “We all do it, hon. I work you hard, and I know you’ve had a rough few days.”
Raven said nothing, determined not to be drawn out. She turned her attention to Ridge, who continued to sit by the window with Sphinx-like patience. For the eighth time that shift, she walked over to pour him more coffee and see if he wanted anything else. “How about a couple of muffins, Raven?” he asked with a wry grin.
“My own invention,” she said with mock pride, setting down his plate. “It’s not every day you witness genuine creativity.” He chuckled again but, as he did so, Raven noticed his eyes sweep the street outside, almost as if drawn there by an invisible force. “Something wrong?”
“No, no,” he said, waving away her concern. “Just an old habit.”
It was only half a lie. SEALs were trained to habituate hyper-observant behavior, but a retired one, sitting in a bakery, hardly needed to call on such skills. Unless, that is, he was watching a car, its driver similarly hyper-alert, pass the bakery for the fifth time since lunch.
