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Tonight, she’d made it a point to leave him outside. She might not hear someone placing a dead goose on her porch over the air conditioner's hum, but she’d hear the bay of her hound dog if anyone tried to get close to the house.
Bernie stood in the darkness, shimmied out of her bra and readjusted her T-shirt before lying across her bed on top of the sheets, too warm to slip beneath them. Her room was cool enough, but her blood ran hot through her veins.
A tall, handsome, intriguing man lay on the couch in the other room in a thin T-shirt and gym shorts.
Ray had been the same height as Bernie. She’d always felt on equal footing with him. Standing near Gerard made her tip her head back, leaving her feeling a little off-balance. Or was she off-balance because he made her pulse quicken and her breathing more labored?
Bernie lay staring up at the ceiling, wide awake and far too aware of the man in the other room. She’d loved her husband and grieved his loss, but she was still young enough to want a man’s touch and the intimacy of lying naked, skin to skin.
Images of the day flood her mind.
Gertrude’s limp body on the porch.
A Marine showing up to help.
Penelope the pig running rampant in the watermelon patch.
The foot.
A ring.
Harvesting melons with a team of former military hunks.
A man sleeping in her house after three years of being on her own.
Her core aching with a need she’d long since set aside.
Moaning softly, she rolled onto her side and squeezed her eyes shut. She needed sleep, not sex.
Chapter 5
Gerard made a pass through the small farmhouse, checking door and window locks, making notes where some of the latches on the windows were loose and needed to be tightened the next day.
When he’d brought his backpack inside, he’d tucked his handgun inside. He took it out, checked that the magazine was fully loaded, the safety was on and laid it on the table beside the sofa.
As he stretched out on the sofa, his feet hung off the end. Not that he minded. It beat sleeping on the ground in a desert where you ate, drank and breathed sand in everything you did. So, what if the AC wasn’t working in the living room? If he laid still enough, he could feel the cool air wafting through the open door of Bernie’s bedroom.
His groin tightened at the thought of her lying on her bed, those long, bare legs moving between the sheets. In that moment, he could imagine what they’d feel like wrapped around his waist.
Immediately, his groin tightened, and his cock swelled. He swallowed hard to keep from groaning aloud.
Bernie was unlike any woman he’d ever met. She was certainly taller than most and not as classically beautiful as some, but she had a confidence and inner glow that shone through when she smiled.
And she’d done something no other woman he’d met had been able to do.
She’d made him want a different life than he’d mapped out for himself.
He’d researched what made a person abusive. So often, if a child was raised by an abusive parent, he became an abusive adult.
Watching his mother tremble, the fear in her eyes, the acceptance that she could do nothing to stop the beatings, had marked Gerard for life. He never wanted to see a woman cower in fear because of him. As angry as he’d been at his father, he could see how a man could lose control. He’d never forgive himself if he lost control and hit a woman.
So, he’d never let himself get too deeply into a relationship. After a date or two, he’d walked away.
Except now. Assigned to protect Bernie, he couldn’t walk away. Even if he could...he didn’t want to.
The woman intrigued him. She made him want to spend more time with her. If it meant back-breaking work picking watermelons, he would do it.
Sitting beside her on the sofa, he’d fought the overwhelming urge to take her into his arms and kiss her. To hold her close and feel the warmth of her skin against his. As he lay on the same cushions where she’d been, he fantasized about stripping her naked and making love to her there in the living room.
