Chapter 19
Razorback drove Bill’s pickup truck with Jackie by his side, the seat hard and awkward against his back. The air conditioning didn’t work, so the windows were rolled down to the thick, humid air, which rushed through the cab with a deafening sound.
At least the noise made the silence between them easier to take, neither of them having spoken since they’d climbed in here more than two hours earlier. Hell, he might have talked if he’d had a damn clue what to say, or if he wasn’t so blown away by what had transpired.
He’d stood behind her as she signed the official documents that made Selena legally his daughter, and when she penned the explanatory letter to go with her new will, describing a reunion with Ian Rhodes and Jackie’s desire for him to take his rightful place in their daughter’s life, should anything happen to Jackie.
It was a lie. A ruse. Deception. But it was more real than anything else in his life, a tie that bound him legally to another human being. A child, no less.
He wasn’t sure what to do with that.
He had no business being a guardian to a hamster or a goddamn goldfish, much less a child.
And while he knew he would do everything in his power to protect Jackie on this journey, he could only imagine what they might come up against when they challenged the political machine.
SVX might be the least of their worries. This could be a hell of a lot worse.
Her death was a very real possibility, as was his own. He’d be lying if he said otherwise. So he’d driven alongside her in silence, unsure of what to say, both deeply touched and profoundly unsettled.
While the hike around the checkpoint was a difficult task, it was bound to be the easiest of those that awaited them in the next few days.
How would Jackie fare on the trek? She appeared to be physically fit, but there were different types of fitness and this situation would require an inner strength not everyone possessed.
He allowed himself a glance in her direction. Her skin was shiny from the heat, her hair blowing in the breeze. Her serene expression made her appear lit from within. She looked formidable. Capable. Determined. Yes, she had the fortitude for what lay ahead.
He took a ramp to the right, merging onto a smaller road that would take them into the town where they would spend the night before beginning their hike in the morning.
The sun hung low and blazed through the windshield, the glare of it combined with the heat radiating off the dashboard reminding him of Icarus, his wax wings melting as he neared certain death. That might be where they were heading, after all.
“I’m sorry,” she said, loudly enough to be heard over the rushing of air past his ears.
“What for?”
He saw her turn toward him in his peripheral vision. “You know.”
For needing his name on that document, for pulling him so securely and deeply into her life with the simple stroke of a pen.
He, who clearly wasn’t father material. He, who knew better than to attach himself to a woman when he was only half a man.
He reached for her hand and held it. “It’s all right. ”
“Can we stop pretending, please? With everything else, I just don’t have the energy for make-believe.”
She sounded so tired, so sincere, so beautiful.
The thought struck him. Yes, she was physically beautiful, but now that everything else had been stripped away—the resort, her daughter—the raw, battered beauty of her very self was shining through, as stunning as the flaming sun now setting in the sky.
He longed to pull to the side of the road, to stare at that face, touch it, hold her jaw in his hands.
Meet the stare that would be empty and so completely full of truth.
She was as broken as he was, and he yearned to stretch alongside her and shore up her weaknesses where he was strong.
Fit his body to hers and find a semblance of perfection in a world that had veered so damn far away from it.
The desire was so strong he was dizzy with his need for her.
“Are we almost there?” she asked.
“Just a few miles more.” An omniscient certainty settled inside him. Their lives were intersecting, one piercing the other like a razor-sharp knife.
He knew as he pulled into the parking lot of the small strip motel that she felt it, too, and he wasn’t surprised when she said, “Only one room, Ian,” as he got out of the truck.
He closed the door and leaned back into the window, taking in that stoic, pragmatic face of hers, so bold and honest in what she wanted. The air between them seemed to hum with energy, his body like a grounding rod in an electrical storm. “You’re sure?”
Her eyes were dark, the green seemingly overtaken by the black of her irises. “Yes.”
With a nod, he stepped back from the vehicle and headed inside.
His vision was wavy, whether from the heat of the baking pavement or his heightened physiological state, he couldn’t be sure.
This was crazy, insane, yet it made perfect sense.
The final segment of a circle being drawn, the direction of the pen and the curve of the line making the shape’s completion all but inevitable.
And he wanted her.
Damn, how he wanted her.
He signed for the room, the jagged edge of the old-fashioned key digging into his hand, and he pushed back outside. Jackie stood on the sidewalk with her back to him, his eyes drinking in the curves of her body before he spoke. “Room seven.”
She fell into step beside him, her arm lightly brushing his, and his cock pressed against the fly of his shorts. He opened the door, gesturing for her to go first, then followed her inside. The air was comfortably cool and smelled like clean laundry.
“I’d like to take a shower,” she said.
“Okay. I’m going to hit that store across the street. You want anything?”
“Wine would be nice. Would you bring my bag in for me? I should have grabbed it.”
“Sure thing.”
“And if they have a mailbox, you can mail the package.”
The box from the hallway closet that contained her proof of McGrath’s heritage. They were shipping it to themselves at a post office across the border, where it would be held.
Razorback got the bag first, leaving it outside the closed bathroom door.
The sound of the shower was an unexpected intimacy and he paused, listening to the water as it fell.
When was the last time a woman had showered around him?
His wife? The women he slept with these days didn’t know where he lived, and they sure as fuck didn’t shower at his place.
But all that was changing.
He furrowed his brow. He’d accepted the role of Selena’s father, if it came to that.
He wasn’t the same man he was yesterday, or the day before, or the year before that.
The feet that had been frozen in place since his world imploded had been forced into movement, forward motion, and despite his resentment, he knew it was good.
His eyes went to the bed, his mind to the memory of his first trip to Mexico.
It had been his honeymoon, for God’s sake, and even that felt less momentous than this, less ceremonial.
Tonight he and Jackie would make love, solidifying their connection and the promises he’d made to protect her and Selena forever.
He left the room and went back into the heat, his immediate need for condoms the only thing strong enough to pull him away from her.