J Ward - Crave

Until she had to come and comfort him after he had let her down. After endangering her life and her professional career.

Yeah. Something like that.

As he groaned in the dark, he couldn’t believe the fucking mess he’d made out of the whole thing. Stopping in the middle? Going into the bathroom and pulling a hankie routine?

Why didn’t he just put a dress and some nail polish on and call himself Irene?

Shit, the sex… the sex had blown his mind. Literally. And that had been the problem. Some kind of fissure had been opened in him the instant he’d sunk into her wet heat, and with each pumping thrust, what had started as a hairline fracture grew into a vast divide.

It wasn’t about fear. Or second-guessing his AWOL status.

It was the fact that when you were on the job with Matthias, you were so damn busy keeping yourself alive that you had no clue how under-the-gun you were.

And what do you know, bolting from the fold was just more of the same. Having that dream? More of the same.

But making love to a beautiful, warm woman in a soft bed that smelled of lemon in a house even he couldn’t doubt the security of?

Too close to normal. Too safe. Too good to be true.

The juxtaposition of that and where he’d been and where he was going in the morning had peeled him wide-which kind of proved what he’d always suspected: It was just too hard to dip even a foot into the civilian way of life. The straddle to be in both worlds was unsustainable.

And on that note…

Shifting around to the side table, he reached for the remote of the DVD and hit play. When the menu came up, he chose play all, and after a beat, the Three’s Company logo came on over the shot of a beach scene. As the intro credits ran, John Ritter ogled a chick and ended up falling off a bike-and as he hit the sand, Grier’s brows tightened… then relaxed completely.

Perfect. She’d trained herself to associate the TV with deep sleep, and the bubble of noise and soft flickering light was going to help cover his tracks.

About fifteen minutes into the episode, Isaac slowly slid his arm out from under her head and then he eased from between the sheets. In his absence, Grier rolled over to face the TV and resettled with a sigh. Which was his cue to get a move on.

Hitting the stairs, he went down to the room he’d been given.

Ten minutes later, he headed back to her, fully dressed, with his weapons. Standing over her, he watched her sleep for too long and had to force himself to bend down and pick up her hand. Moving her carefully, he put her thumb on the remote to the security system and deactivated it. After a green light flashed, he reengaged the alarm to see what kind of delay there was.

Which would be none: Immediately the red light glowed, and he was stuck inside.

Made sense. She’d just trigger it after she locked the front door.

He checked his watch. Four a.m.

Grier made a little snuffle and eased her head deeper into the pillow, her blond hair falling onto her cheek.

He didn’t trust himself to stay with her until she woke up.

Now or never, asshole.

Thank you, he mouthed to her.

And then with a curse, he disarmed the system and left without looking back.

Downstairs, he was silent and quick as he went and checked the ADT keypad in the front hall. Just as he’d hoped: disengaged. After all, when you had a rottweiler guarding your house, did you really need a yellow Lab as backup?

The front door was solid wood and three inches thick-so even though he couldn’t engage the dead bolt, it was going to take a battering ram to get inside. His only concern was the glass doors and windows, but the frames were super sturdy and locked-and if you shattered panes the size of the ones in the kitchen, they made a hell of a noise.

So she was safe as she could be.

After cutting the exterior lights, he took his muscle shirt from his pocket and tore off a strip; then he stepped out and cranked that big ol’ door into place. Quick pause to double-check the handle was locked and secure and he tied the strip of cloth around the wrought-iron lantern to the left.

Next move was to walk off into the chilly April morning.

Not a moment too soon, either. As this was New England, the sun rose real early, and he probably had only an hour or so of good darkness before the dawn’s rays started to chase away the shadows. Going left, he headed across something called Pinckney Street, and less than ten yards down the hill, he found what he was looking for-one of the smaller town houses was under reconstruction, its windows on the first floor boarded up, a pathway of plaster dust running in and out of the front door.

And there were no lights on, inside or out.

Going in all Spidey and shit, he grappled up the house, using the moldings around the door and the windows to brace his feet and yank his weight up. A quick punch through a dusty pane and he waited for the scream of a security alarm. None came. So he flipped the latch, shoved the sash up, and hello, Lucy, he was home.

Total elapsed time: a minute and a half.

The place was rock cold and covered with more plaster dust, and he hoped like hell that this was a union job, given that it was Sunday-so he could stay as long as he wanted.

Casing the joint didn’t take long, and similar to Grier’s setup, the back of the house opened to a courtyardy thing that was gated-and there were no chalky footprints on the red brick there. Obviously, the workmen arrived and left the front way.

To clear the exit route for some parkour action if he needed it, he popped the latch on the window above the rear door’s transom; then he returned to where he’d broken in and picked out all of the glass shards on the pane he’d smashed-because no glass at all looked, from a distance, like nothing was wrong.

The vantage point he took was by the window on the far front right of the house, and to hide most of himself, he moved a piece of plywood over for cover. From where he took up res, he could see about seventy percent of Grier’s bow-front. What was missing was the rear door and the upper terrace, but this was as good as it was going to get.

Leaning up against the cold wall, his eyes scanned the little park with its wrought-iron fence and statue and gracefully limbed trees. Might as well enjoy the view. He wasn’t leaving until he saw Grier get into her car and drive away-without anyone on her tail.

Twenty minutes later what he feared most rolled up. The black unmarked was not what Jim’s buddy had described from the night before: no dings or dust on this bad boy. And the darkened windows prevented him from seeing the driver or any passenger.

But he had a feeling who it was.

Shit, he hated when he was right.

And this was all his fault.

Grier woke up at six a.m. and knew as soon as she saw the tail end of a Three’s Company episode that Isaac has left: She hadn’t restarted the DVD when they’d come up to her room… and yup, the security system was off.

She’d obviously slept through his going.

Arching over, she checked her bedside table, thinking that maybe he’d written her a note. But the only thing he’d left behind was the scent of the shampoo and soap he’d used: the cedar-y fragrance was on one of her pillows and some of her sheets.

Getting up, she pulled on her sweatshirt and went down to the second floor. The guest room was neat as a pin, the bed made to military precision. The only sign he’d been there at all was the single towel that had been hung to dry on the rack in the bath. He’d even wiped down the glass walls of the shower so there weren’t any water marks on the inside.

The man was a total ghost and she was a pathetic loser to think he’d make some gesture of good-bye.