Page 12 of Baby Take Me Home
One of Kessler’s superpowers was reading people—their body language, facial expressions, physical tics—and translating that into underlying motives and emotions with startling accuracy.
I stared down at my hands. As the team leader, I was used to having an answer for everything, and a backup plan if the first answer didn’t work. But the puzzle of Ashlee Armand was harder to solve.
“What happened Sunday morning?” Samantha asked gently, switching into her bedside-manner tone.
“She touched me. Maybe I’m reading too much into it, but… It might have been inappropriate, at least under the circumstances.”
“Which were…?”
“We were arguing about her involvement with the Kovacs.”
“And in the heat of the moment, she touched your penis?”
“Jesus, Samantha! No, she did not. It was my chest.” I touched the spot where she’d traced her fingers over my skin. “My tattoo. It wasn’t just that. It was thewayshe did it. She lingered.”
“You’re seriously concerned about this,” Sam said as though it surprised her. “Okay, well, while I can’t diagnose her from afar, my observation is that her inhibitions were lowered. That could have been brought on by the sedative. The two of you got turned on arguing, and she didn’t have enough of a filter to stop herself.”
“The two of us?” I hadn’t mentioned, nor would I, that I’d pressed her hand to my chest and held it there.
Samantha switched to the flat, unemotional tone she used when performing our medical exams. “TJ, as your medical doctor, I promise you, you’re healthy enough for sex. Be safe, use protection, and have fun out there.”
“Under the circumstances—“
“To hell with the circumstances,” she interrupted. “If everyone on this team waited for the right circumstances, I’d be prescribing antidepressants for a team full of lonely, horny, twenty-somethings. You and I are a bit older and wiser, but maybe there’s something you can learn from the youngsters. Seize the day.”
“Thanks, Doc.”
“Any time.” She grinned as she stood to leave. “Tell me what you decide. Complete with details.”
I pushed myself up out of my chair. “Not a chance in hell.”
“You’re such a killjoy.”
“And a stick in the mud and probably a hundred other names the team calls me when I’m out of earshot,” I added.
“Yeah, we really think you’re a drag. We would only follow you to hell and back. And if you asked nicely, we’d probably stay in hell indefinitely if you needed us there.”
“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”
We stood in silence for a minute, then she voiced the concern we shared.
“If the Kovac or Carbonados missions don’t yield good results, will the team still be together a year from now?” she asked quietly.
“Between you and me,” I met her steady gaze and refused to tell a lie, even a little one, even one she so desperately wanted to hear, to one of my closest friends in the world, “the honest answer is, I don’t know.”
CHAPTER 6
Ashlee
I arrivedat the gym on Wednesday afternoon ready for a fight. It had barely been forty-eight hours since my last workout, but I had energy to burn, and a whole host of erotic dreams to forget.
They were notable for more than the hot sex. For the first few days following my rescue six months ago, I’d had nightmares of being trapped, drowning, and even falling off cliffs. Three months of intensive therapy and sleep medications alleviated those terrors. I’d eventually weened myself off the sleep aids and I hadn’t remembered a dream or nightmare since then. I suspected they still occurred since I woke up at least three times every night. But at least I hadn’t been subjected to remembering the crazy scenarios my mind concocted while I slept.
But for the past two nights, I’d had vivid, technicolor, completely remembered dreams featuring my mystery-man rescuer. And while these remembered dreams didn’t terrify me the way the nightmares had, they came with their own set of problems, beginning with the fact that my subconscious longed for a man I still couldn’t prove deserved my trust.
I was the first one in my class to arrive at the rubber-mat-lined exercise room. I stepped inside and tugged on my hand wraps to test them.
“You’re early,” Barry, the instructor, said.