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I scowled at myself. I was turning into Danny. But I couldn’t resist taking another look.
When I met Lorna in the hallway, she stopped in her tracks and just stared. I saw her eyes flick over my shoulders, my chest, my waist, my thighs. She took a shaky little breath that made my cock harden. “Do I look okay?” I asked.
Lorna looked away and I saw her cheeks flush. “You’ll do.”
In the evenings, Lorna would help Cody with his homework, build Legos with him and then do a quick yoga session before putting in a few more hours of work. One time, Cody asked if I’d seen any sticky tape anywhere. I hunted around for him for a while, finally found some in a kitchen drawer and took it to him in his room. When I walked in, he panicked and tried to hide what he was repairing: someone had torn one of his math textbooks almost in half. Protective rage blossomed in my chest and I stepped forward before I could stop myself. “Who did this? Same kid who tossed your bag in the pool?”
Cody ducked his head, just like his mother, hiding behind his hair. Then he nodded.
“Does your mom know?”
He shook his head.
“Kid, you’ve gotta tell her. Let her help.”
“No!”
“Why not?”
Cody lifted his head and glared at me from between locks of hair. “Because I don’t want to run to mommy.”
I gazed at him sadly. I remembered being that age, loving my mom but getting ready to turn into a man. What he needed was to talk to a guy about this stuff—
Don’t, I told myself fiercely. He wasn’t mine. But fuck, every fatherly instinct was firing, unleashing a flood of jagged, painful memories. Max falling and skinning both hands and knees, while we were playing tag in our yard. Max in tears after he left his toy dog in our car when we went on vacation, and me racing through the airport to rescue it before our flight left.
Max on the phone, that one time.
I was holding the doorpost in one hand as I leaned into the room and my hand squeezed, knuckles white. “Okay,” I muttered to Cody. “I get it. But you’re okay?”
“Yeah,” said Cody. “I’m okay.” We both knew he was lying. He looked at me. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” I told him, my voice rough. “I’m okay.”
We both knew I was lying, too.
The week passed quietly: no more attacks, nothing suspicious. But I knew Russ’s killer was still out there, somewhere, waiting and planning. I called Callahan. “You any closer to figuring out who it is?” I demanded.
“Look, I know you private military guys just do whatever the hell you want but we’re the FBI, it’s got to be by the book. I have to find evidence, get warrants for wiretaps, it takes time.” He sighed, as if he didn’t like it, either. “Hang tight, cowboy, we’ll get this guy.”
I growled that I understood, and ended the call.
That night, I lay in my bed, unable to sleep. All week, I’d been unable to get the image of Lorna in that skintight yoga gear out of my mind. It wasn’t just that it showed off those full breasts and ripe ass. It was that it showed off the way she moved, graceful and feminine, breasts bobbing as she bent and arched and… I realized my hand had snaked into my boxers and I was slowly stroking myself, something I’d been holding back from doing all week. Dammit… But maybe it’d help me sleep. I thought of the way she’d bent over, ass thrust in the air—
My door opened. Jesus! I sat bolt upright in bed like a guilty teenager and stared at Lorna, framed in my doorway by the hall light. “Sorry, did I wake you?” she asked.
I grunted noncommittally. How much can she see? The covers had fallen to my waist and I was bare chested. Could she tell that my cock was hard? “What’s up?”
She leaned against the doorframe. “Remember the dam in Poland, the pay negotiations? They’ve completely broken down. The workers are threatening to strike. If they do, we won’t complete the next stage of the dam on time. We won’t get paid and we need that money for our other projects: the company’s leveraged up to the hilt.”
I nodded, trying to get my brain out of raw lust so I could have a conversation. But it wasn’t easy because she was in a nightshirt, some pink thing with a cartoon kitten on the front, and it only reached about an inch below the bottom of her panties. My hand was still around my cock under the covers and I didn’t dare move it in case she saw. “What do we do?”
“We’ve got to go there and see if we can thrash it out in person,” she said. “We’ll have to fly out tomorrow.” She stepped back from the door. “I’ll let you sleep.”
