Chapter Nineteen
He held her chin, tilting it up to catch those hazel eyes she had grown so familiar with. That didn’t mean they couldn’t confuse her from time to time, like now.
Rose blinked up at the giant man who had just interrupted her with a kiss.
“Excuse me?”
James didn’t retract his words. Instead, he doubled down.
“I’m mad at you, Rose Little. I’m mad that you left without saying anything and I’m mad that you didn’t answer my call.
I mean, even Deputy Collins felt like I deserve some kind of check-in to know you’re okay after everything you’ve been through.
That we’ve been through. I know you’re Wildcard Rose but sometimes I think you use that as a pass to run headlong into danger and it’s okay.
” He shook his head, truly looking the part of a man angry at having been left in the dark.
Rose started to say something—she wasn’t sure what—when he continued.
“And that’s what I thought I was mad about before you got here. You, being you, running into the unknown swinging. But then I saw you and I realized I’m really just mad at me. I’m mad I didn’t give you a good reason for you to take me with you. So I’m going to make sure I give it now.”
That frown didn’t lessen but his words seemed to soften.
“I like you, Rose Little,” he said. “I want to be with you whether we’re eating breakfast, talking about TV, or surviving explosions in service pits.
I don’t need you to stop being Wildcard Rose.
I just want to be by your side when you’re doing it.
I want to help you, I want to fight for you and with you.
I want to do the hard stuff and the boring stuff.
I want to finally tell Mr. Donahue I officially can’t date his daughter because some loud woman one day pulled up into my garage without an appointment and then told me she couldn’t just leave me alone. ”
He finally smiled.
“I want your good news and your bad news, Rose Little. I want your chaos and your calm. I want—”
The man sure was talkative. That was what Rose was thinking when the last vestige of her self-control finally snapped.
It was her turn to do the interrupting and interrupting she sure did.
Rose threw her arms around James’s neck and fastened the two of them together. She started with their lips and then folded against him with every curve and surface of her body that she could.
If James was mad at the cutoff, he certainly didn’t stay that way.
His tongue was hungry, and it parted her lips in unison with his hands running down her sides. It was light work after that.
James cupped her backside in his hands and had her airborne in a second flat. Like they had rehearsed the move, Rose wrapped her legs around his waist, all without breaking their kiss.
If anything, the new position made the pace even more frenzied.
James made surprisingly quick work of getting them from the living room to the second-floor bedroom in one heavy-breathing journey. And he did so in a way that only stoked the fire within Rose higher.
He had her horizontal two steps inside of the bedroom, careful to cushion her body from the drop down.
Sadly, the move ended their kiss.
Luckily, it gave him the space to do something even more riveting.
James Keller was already a handsome, good-looking man, but the second he rid himself of his clothes, Rose knew something else to be just as true.
His height wasn’t the only big thing about him.
Rose couldn’t help but stare a little longer than she originally meant to. James noticed and let out a laugh.
“I’ve got good news and I’ve got bad news,” he said, his fingers working the last of her clothes down her legs.
Rose struggled to keep her composure as cold air started to hit all the right spots.
“What—what is it?”
James didn’t smile. He smirked.
“Good news is, I’m about to spend a good amount of time with you in this bed, Deputy.” To emphasize his plans, he brought his naked body flush with hers and moved his fingers down between her legs.
Rose gasped in surprise and felt her breathing quicken from a new kind of pleasure.
James’s gaze went from hers and then down to her lips. He pushed deep inside of her and watched as her mouth opened in appreciation.
Then he laughed again.
“Do you want to know the bad news?”
He picked up the pace and all Rose could do was manage a nod.
Still, he didn’t answer right away. At least not with words.
He hit the right spot and worked it until Rose’s body bucked up against him in a dazzling twist of release. It wasn’t until he captured her mouth in his and devoured her a little longer there, that he moved himself to the part of Rose that wanted him most.
His words weren’t warm or soft. They weren’t gentle or quiet.
They were hot and they were ready.
“The bad news is, I do believe you might be sore in the morning.”
Without any more teasing or talking, he thrust inside of her with a nearly overwhelming force.
Nearly.
Rose took him in with a moan that would have made her grateful that house was empty.
That moan was one of many that afternoon as his good news really did pan out. They stayed tangled in his sheets until the sun started to set. Once they had exhausted themselves and Rose lay there trying to catch her breath back, she already knew he would be right about the bad news.
Though, to her, what she had just done with James could never be counted as bad.
A belief she took into that night when round two started up in the shower.
By the time they had found themselves truly, truly exhausted and back in bed, Rose didn’t have the stamina or focus to remember what it was she wanted to talk about with James before this all had started.
Maybe if she had, what happened next might have gone a whole lot differently.
* * *
JAMES ADDED A set of blackout curtains to his online shopping cart the second after he woke up the next morning. The sun wasn’t completely out—the rain was being lazy in its walk across Seven Roads—but there was enough of it to make Rose start stirring from her own sleep.
James hovered his hands over her eyes, cutting off a beam that was particularly precise, but it wasn’t enough to keep her in her dreams.
Rose’s eyes fluttered opened a minute or two into his attempt. When she saw his hand, though, she only laughed.
“Not even the mighty James Keller can compete with the morning sun.”
James felt the vibration of her stretching out her legs before that vibration ran up to her arms. She didn’t go for the normal starfish pose since she, as per her usual habits over the last several days, was already wrapped tightly around his bicep.
She shook him lightly, then became nosy about his phone.
“Don’t tell me you’re the kind of man who shops online all of the time, even in bed.”
James snorted.
“Only when I’m buying the necessities,” he countered. He held his phone closer so she could see it more clearly. “I am the kind of man to be generous, though. Need me to get anything for you? Say the word.”
Rose rubbed her forehead against his arm as she shook her head.
“I’m pretty happy with what I have already, thanks.”
James wasn’t sure if that was a nod to him, but he felt the warmth of it anyways. Confessing his feelings to the deputy the day before had been a spur-of-the-moment decision made from a spur-of-the-moment realization. But he didn’t regret it. He certainly didn’t regret what had come after either.
Now, however, he was realizing that Rose hadn’t returned those feelings. At least not in words.
But who was he to nitpick?
Surely she felt enough of something for him to do what they had done multiple times the day before. He didn’t need the words.
At least not now.
“I’m starting to think you’re a pretty relaxed woman. At least, when not on the clock. Then again, I still have never seen someone as calm as you when you were staring down at a seat covering a bomb.”
James regretted the mention as soon as he said it. He didn’t want to remind Rose of the close calls they had encountered, not when the last week had been so kind to them, but he felt her tense and knew it was already too late. The damage was done, and the damage was Rose pulling away from him.
“I’m sorry,” he hurried. “I didn’t mean to bring any of that stuff up. It’s just one of those once-in-a-lifetime things I can’t believe happened.”
She shook her head.
“It’s not that. I just realized I haven’t told you what I found out yesterday.”
And that was when James learned about Wynonna Harrison and her brother’s past with Damon.
“Before I left, Wynonna told me that even though Damon helped raise her with Lloyd, Derrick only visited on occasion,” she added at the end of the retelling.
“Derrick and Lloyd were friendly but not at all like Damon and Lloyd. They were close enough, though, that when there was a position open after Lloyd was hired into Camden Pharmaceuticals, he reached out to Derrick, who was looking for a job. That’s how the two of them came to be on that bus five months ago while Damon wasn’t around. ”
“And no one knew about Lloyd’s relationship with Derrick’s brother?”
Rose said no.
“I’m guessing they probably wanted to avoid any conflicts at work or about how Derrick got the job.
Though I guess I don’t know for sure. Just like I’m still not sure why the two of them were fighting on the bus, especially during a tornado.
” Rose’s face scrunched up. “Or why Derrick would look so hateful at a man that his brother obviously loved very much.”
She fell into a silence while she probably was thinking about the possibilities.
James, on the other hand, realized he had reason to apologize now.
“At the time I thought keeping it quiet was the right play but I’m not sure that’s the case anymore.” Rose’s eyes widened. “I’m sorry I should have told you this sooner.”
It was James’s turn to recount a conversation. His was all about Lloyd, up in that second-story room before he had taken his own life.
Rose wasn’t angry at his omission. She seemed to be enthused by it.
“The day Derrick died he stopped calling Damon a hero,” she paraphrased. “It wasn’t my fault that Derrick died. It was the storm… The generator.”
Rose rocketed upright.
It was so sudden James sat up next.
She turned to him and spoke fast and with her hands too.
“The generator. The damned generator. It was supposed to be the top-of-the-line and kick on no matter what. But it didn’t that day. That’s why they got on the shuttle in the first place. ‘One single point of failure’ that messed up everything.”
James started to pick up what she was putting down.
“Lloyd was doing something and the power going out messed it up. That means he was probably doing something he shouldn’t have at the research annex? And Derrick found out?”
“Something that must have included Damon and that’s why he was so mad at Lloyd,” Rose jumped in. “That’s why he stopped calling Damon a hero.”
Rose didn’t wait to finish the conversation. She was scurrying out of bed in her underthings, quickly searching out a fresh pair of clothes.
James followed suit, though he didn’t know exactly what they were going to do next.
Rose continued once she had a pair of jeans in hand.
“If Damon and Lloyd were working together to do something illegal at the drug trial, then them turning on one another like that would make sense, if they both hadn’t been ready to die.
” She pointed at him, jeans waving through the air in the process.
“But what if there was a third person in on it? Someone who knew enough to know where to hurt them.”
James found a shirt and tugged it on, heart starting to beat a little bit faster. Her excitement at a possible breakthrough was oddly contagious.
“But why get you there for the end of it?” he asked. “Or do you think Damon just got interrupted during his revenge plot against you?”
Rose did a combo between a headshake and a shrug.
“I’m not sure but maybe Wynonna has more information about Lloyd’s time at Camden,” she said. “Maybe she can remember something that we can—”
Rose stopped herself as her phone started to vibrate on the nightstand.
She hurried over and made a little noise after she scanned the new alert.
“It’s a text from Cameron… Oh my God.”
“What?”
James was at her side in a flash, as if he could somehow fight the phone if needed.
It wasn’t good news and it wasn’t bad news.
But it was shocking news.
“Damon Tillman is awake.”