10

Dean hadn’t held a sleeping woman in a long time, and he liked it.

As Stacey’s ragged breathing smoothed and evened, and the tears dried in her eyes, he watched her succumb to exhaustion. Her long lashes rested on her pink cheeks, her lips parted slightly as she breathed over them. Her hair was still wet, spread across the pillow and his chest.

He just kept watching her. Wondering what he’d gotten himself into here, and why he didn’t regret it.

By the end of his marriage, he’d been sleeping in the spare room. Dean had been working crazy hours back then, traveling a lot, getting home late in the night. His wife hadn’t wanted to be awakened, since she had to get up early in the mornings to get Jared off to school. He’d understood. More, though, he’d been relieved.

That should have been a big tip-off about the state of his marriage. He hadn’t given a damn. He’d had no physical interest in the woman he’d married. Between his absorption with his job and focusing every spare thought on his son, he’d been entirely oblivious that she was walking out of their marriage.

He really had been a lousy husband.

With all these realizations that had been hitting him in recent days, he was seeing the whole sorry mess clearly for the first time since he’d been so blindsided by her request for a divorce and her confession about the affair.

He’d been furious. Humiliated. Ashamed.

But not heartbroken.

It had taken him more than a year to realize that truth. She hadn’t broken his heart. Because it hadn’t been hers to break anymore.

Stacey sighed in her sleep, her bottom lip quivering. Drawing the sheet up, he covered her naked body-so feminine and curvy for a woman so tough and capable.

“Maybe too tough,” he murmured, swiping the tip of his finger down her cheek.

In another time and place, the idea of a woman bursting into tears and sobbing her heart out right after they’d both had orgasms that nearly blew the tops of their heads off might have been a little disconcerting. Even worrisome.

But he knew why she’d cried. She had at last been releasing those closed-up boxes of dark emotion that he suspected had been building in her head for a very long time. She’d needed to let them go. That the catalyst for the final emotional meltdown had been a poor pup someone had left on her front porch meant only that she’d been ready to break anyway. He was just glad he had been here when she did.

“Dean?” she murmured, not even opening her eyes.

“Hmm?”

“I’m sorry.”

He tightened his arm around her waist. “I’m not.”

“I mean, sorry that I broke down.”

“Repeat: I’m not.”

She nestled closer, her face against his neck. “I don’t usually do things like that.”

Unable to help it and wanting to lighten her mood, he replied, “Really? You’re incredibly good at it.”

She chuckled a little against his throat, but didn’t reply. And within moments, her breathing returned to its deep, steady pace as she drifted off again, obviously feeling completely safe right here with him.

Well, wasn’t she? Because he’d do anything to make sure she didn’t get hurt. Except he somehow had the feeling he’d already hurt her, at least a little. By showing up in her town and invading the nice, safe world she’d invented for herself after she’d escaped from the horror she’d seen in her previous job, he suspected he had hurt her badly. She either hadn’t realized it yet, or just didn’t want to acknowledge it.

“I’m the one who’s sorry,” he whispered into her hair.

From the bathroom a few feet away came the ringing of his cell phone. Dean normally would have ignored it, but not now, not while he was on a case-especially this case. Carefully disentangling himself from her, he padded naked across the room and grabbed his jeans off the bathroom floor. Tugging the phone from his pocket and seeing the familiar number, he couldn’t keep a smile from his mouth.

Not the case. Not the job. Something much more important.

“Hey, big guy,” he said, keeping his voice low. “Isn’t it past your bedtime?”

“Hi, Daddy. We gotta talk.”

Smothering a chuckle at Jared’s serious tone, he knew before the words left the boy’s mouth what the problem was.

“They’re back.”

“No way.”

“Yes way. They’re under there. I hear ’em.”

“Impossible, dude. You know your mom wouldn’t stand for any dust bunnies under your bed, so there can’t be any dust-bunny-eating monsters.”

From across the room, he thought he heard a sound. A quick glance, however, revealed that Stacey was still sleeping soundly.

“I think they eat candy wrappers now.”

“Well, that’s a different story, then. Have you been tossing candy wrappers under the bed?” Candy. He almost snorted. His ex and her dentist husband would have a fit.

“Maybe one or two.”

Or maybe his son just wanted to say good night once more. It wouldn’t be the first time they’d shared a second good night phone call since he’d given Jared the cell phone. His ex hadn’t liked it, but too bad. Dean wanted Jared to be able to reach him whenever and wherever he wanted.

“You’re gonna get those wrappers out of there in the morning, right?”

“Yep. But until then…”

“Okay.”

Cupping his hand around the mouthpiece of the phone, he began to recite the rhyme he’d made up when Jared was five and had first started hearing monsters under the bed. They banished them with invisible laser beams. Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader-who’d somehow become a hero between Dean’s generation and his son’s-helped. So did Jared’s favorite stuffed bear, which he still slept with but hid from his buddies by day.

“Jared’s not coming down there; you can wait all night. So just get going or we’ll have another fight,” he concluded, hearing his son sigh in sleepy happiness at the end. The boy barely even murmured good-bye, already half-asleep.

Dean was smiling as he stuck the phone back into his pocket and carried his jeans into the bedroom. At least until he saw that Stacey was now awake, climbing out of the bed, not meeting his eye. And definitely not smiling.

“Where are you going?”

“Are you hungry? I’m hungry. I forgot about that steak. Let’s go eat.”

“Better idea. Let’s go back to bed.”

She did that weird take-the-sheet-off-the-bed-and-wrap-it-around-yourself thing that he had only ever seen in movies. As if he hadn’t explored just about every inch of her body in the shower less than an hour ago.

It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out why. “Stacey, look, if anybody was due for a meltdown, it was you. Don’t wig out because you happened to let some of the pent-up emotion in your head come out through your eyes.”

She stared at him, snagging that full bottom lip between her teeth. Sniffing, she murmured, “Thank you for that. I guess I needed to let it go.”

Exactly. But that damned sheet stayed in place. And she actually headed toward her dresser and began pulling out clothes. Sensible, nonseductive Stacey clothes, including a simple white bra and boy briefs that he knew would look sexy as hell on her.

He didn’t, however, want anything on the woman. Except himself.

“What’s going on?”

She pulled on the underclothes, dropping the sheet. Yeah. Supersexy.

Grabbing a brush, she yanked it mercilessly through her long hair. He knew she was putting up barriers, but damned if he was going to watch the woman rip those long strands out by the roots. Stepping into the bathroom again, he grabbed his briefs, tugged them on over his naked body, and walked up behind her. Dean took the brush out of her hands and began working it through the tangled, damp mass of hair, which had begun to curl softly against her skin as it dried. Such beautiful hair, kept so tightly restrained. Like the rest of her.

“You don’t have to do that.”