Tough Customer

CHAPTER 21

DODGE WAS WAITING FOR CAROLINE WHEN A NURSE WHEELED her out of the hospital. The wheelchair was unnecessary, but it was a nonnegotiable hospital policy.

His car was illegally parked at the curb. An eight-by-ten card behind the windshield had the Houston PD logo stenciled on it, making the car look official enough to ward off parking monitors.

He was leaning against the passenger door, ankles and arms crossed. As the nurse guided the chair through the automatic door, he pushed himself off the car and walked toward them.

Caroline looked up at him through the dark lenses of her sunglasses. "I called a taxi."

"I gave the driver ten bucks for his trouble. I'm taking you home."

His voice brooked no argument. He motioned the nurse to roll the chair to his car. Hesitantly, she said, "Ms. King?" and waited for Caroline's nod before complying with Dodge.

Caroline was leaving in the clothes she'd had on when she was admitted three days earlier. She had nothing with her except her handbag. Dodge took it off her lap and placed it in the backseat of his car, then offered her his hand and helped her out of the wheelchair. She thanked the nurse for her assistance. The nurse wished her good luck and good health before wheeling the chair around and heading back into the building.

Dodge asked Caroline if she wanted to lie down in the backseat.

"No, I'll ride up front."

He looked like he might argue, especially when he noticed how stiff and tentative her movements were, but he helped her get situated as comfortably as possible, then went around and got in the driver's side. They covered three blocks without either of them saying anything.

When he stopped for a traffic light, he turned toward her. "How do you feel?"

"Weak. Like I've been lying in bed for three days."

"They didn't feed you?"

"I didn't have much appetite."

"Can't blame you." He made a face. "Hospital food."

"When were you in the hospital?"

"Never. But I've heard."

She smiled, but her lips were tremulous, and he noticed.

He asked, "Does it hurt?"

"Not as bad as it looks like it should. It looks pretty awful. One of the nurses felt sorry for me, I guess. She brought me the sunglasses."

He was trying to see past the opaque lenses so he could assess the damage, but the driver behind him tooted his horn when the light turned green, forcing him to return his attention to driving.

"How did you find out?" she asked.

"Jimmy Gonzales."

"He wasn't one of the responders."

"His night off. But it's still his beat. He heard about it the next morning. I've been out of touch the last couple of days, so he didn't reach me till late last night. I called the hospital this morning and was told they were releasing you."

"Don't you have to work today?"

"I called in sick."

They rode in silence for a time, then she said, "Did you go after Roger?"

"I wanted to. Still do. I'd like to kill him." His fingers were wrapped so tightly around the steering wheel the skin had turned white. "But I won't."

She said nothing, waiting for him to finish.

Finally he braked for another traffic light and turned his head. "The only reason I haven't killed him is because you begged me not to. That means more to me than the promise I made him the night I beat him up."

Nothing more was said until they reached her house. He assisted her up the front walkway to the door. She went in. He followed. A broken vase and dying roses were lying on the living room floor. The water had left a damp stain on the carpet. A picture on the wall was hanging askew. A floor lamp had been overturned, the lampshade was dented.

These mute testimonies of Roger's violence no longer embarrassed her. They made her furious. But she was just as furious with herself for excusing his abuse for as long as she had, which had been way too long. Feeling in defiance of it now, she removed her sunglasses, exposing her eyes to Dodge.

He clenched his jaw and rocked slowly back and forth on the balls of his feet as though he could barely contain the wrath that surged through him. "I might change my mind about killing him."

"Don't. He's not worth it." He seemed on the verge of saying something but didn't. She said, "I appreciate the ride home. Thank you."

"You're welcome. I'll wait while you throw some things together."

"What things?"

"Your things. Whatever you want to take. You're staying at my place for a while. It's no palace, but--"

"What are you talking about? I can't stay with you."

"Can and will."

"Forget it."

"Get your stuff."

"What entitles you to order me around?" she asked angrily. "Your policeman's badge? Being right about Roger's true spots? You accused me of staying with him out of stubbornness. Well,

fine. I concede. I should have ended the relationship long ago, but out of pride, I didn't. I didn't want to admit how mistaken I'd been about his true character. So, okay, you were right. That doesn't give you license to take over where Roger left off."

She drew herself up to her full height, which was still far beneath his. "I've been bullied for the last time, Dodge. I won't be pushed around again, emotionally or physically or any other way."

He expelled a short breath. "Look, when it comes to expressing myself, I'm crap. I always sound like I'm bullying even when I'm not. And I'm not. I swear. I'm trying to be nice ... a friend. You need a hand, I'm offering one. But no matter how I put it, or how deep you dig your heels in, the fact is that I'm not leaving you here alone. End of discussion."

"That sounds like bullying."

"Sue me."

She smiled, but it wavered after a moment. "I'll be perfectly safe. Roger's in jail."

"He got out. Last night. His family posted bail."

"He won't be coming back to me."

"How do you know?"

"He told me so. He was livid. He said he was done with me."

"He'll change his mind, and I don't want you here when he does. In fact, you should relocate. You're a realtor. Put this house on the market. Find a new place."

She laughed without humor. "That would be poetic justice."

"What do you mean?"

"That's what set him off. I was excited over a pending contract. If it closes, it will be my largest sale to date. I was babbling on about it, then Roger said he hoped for me that it would close before I had to quit.

"I thought I'd misunderstood, but when I asked him what he meant by that, he stated unequivocally that I would no longer be 'a working girl' when I became Mrs. Roger Campton. It just wouldn't do for us to be a two-income family. What would people think? That he couldn't support his wife? I would have plenty to do, he said, taking care of him. He promised to keep me busy.

"I actually laughed. I told him that he'd taken leave of his senses if he thought for one moment that I planned to quit my job, forfeit my career, just because I was getting married." She raised her hands at her sides, adding sarcastically, "That didn't sit too well."

"The son of a bitch nearly knocked your eye out."

It had felt as though he had. The ophthalmologist who was summoned to the emergency room told her later that she was lucky her vision hadn't been impaired by one vicious blow.

Dodge said, "Gonzales told me the cops who responded to your call said you couldn't even stand upright."

"Roger hit me in the ribs, too. I thought some were cracked. They turned out not to be, but the bruise was very painful. Still is when I move too quickly or take a deep breath."

"Jesus," Dodge whispered. "That guy..." He placed his hands on his hips and walked a tight circle in the center of the room, again looking like a man who wanted to throttle somebody. When he came back around to her, he said shortly, "Pack your things."

"All right. I'll pack. You can drive me somewhere. But be reasonable, Dodge. I can't stay with you."

"How come?"

"We barely know each other."

He dismissed that. "We'll get to know each other. If you're afraid I'll cross a line--"

"I'm not."

"Well, good. But if you are, you can always call Jimmy Gonzales. If I laid a hand on you, he'd have my ass."

"I could go to ... to ... a friend's house."

"Doesn't Roger know who your friends are? You don't think he'll look for you among them? I'll bet you haven't shared with them that he hits. You'd have to explain your bruises. Besides, you know the downside of that plan or you would have already called a friend, and you wouldn't have stammered when you suggested it."

"An extended-stay motel then."

He folded his arms across his chest, considering it. "I've made plenty of arrests at those places. They're for shiftless transients. Whores. Drug dealers. Fences."

"Not all of them are disreputable. Some are actually very nice."

"Okay. Say you got into a good one with a decent clientele. It would require a lot of wear and tear."

"Wear and tear?"

"On me. I'd be going back and forth, checking on you several times a day, making sure you were all right."

"I wouldn't require that."

"I would. And who's to say Campton wouldn't hunt you down until he found you?"

"He could find me at your place."

"Yeah, but he'd have to kill me to get to you. Now," he said,"we've wasted enough time arguing over it. Go get your things."

He lived in a condo, one of a unit of four, in a complex made up of ten identical units. These were connected by landscaped grounds and lighted walkways. There was a common swimming pool, a tennis court, and a clubhouse for owners' use. It was a place where single professionals resided, not people who were investing their time, labor, and money creating a lasting home.

Before leaving for the hospital, Dodge had cleared out two bureau drawers and half his closet for her, much more space than she required. "I won't need any work clothes," she'd told him when he commented on how little she was taking from her house.

"Yeah, what about that?"

"I talked to Mr. Malone from my hospital bed the day after the incident. I hinted that I'd suffered some minor female ailment that required surgery. He didn't ask for details, which I knew he wouldn't. I asked for a month off to give myself time to recover and regain my strength. He told me to take all the time I needed."

"You need a month? Your injuries must be more serious than you've led me to believe."

"I won't need that long to recover. As I told you before, I bruise easily and deeply. This," she said, pointing to her eye, "will take weeks to fade. It'll go through a spectrum of colors. To avoid questions from clients and co-workers, I don't want to go back until it's completely gone."

Her explanation relieved his alarm, but he was a little jealous of the glowing terms in which she referred to her mentor, Jim Malone. At the same time, he was glad she wasn't working for a demanding, impatient asshole who was stingy with sick leave.

After her things had been put away, he forced her to eat some mashed potatoes, which he made himself from scratch. He admitted that he wasn't a gourmet but told her he hadn't starved, and he wasn't going to let her starve, either, even though she was already well on her way to emaciation.

After she'd eaten all she could hold, she took one of her pain pills, and he tucked her into bed. She slept for sixteen hours, waking the following morning barely in time to see him off to the tire plant.

"Marvin?" she asked, squinting at the embroidered patch on his shirt.

He frowned. "Believe me, you don't want to know."

He told her to keep the doors locked, not to leave, to stay in bed all day if she felt like it, and she promised she would. He told her to keep his pager number handy and to page him if she needed anything. He said he would avoid calling for fear of disturbing her rest, but if he did, he would call and let it ring once, then call back. That way she would know it was him.

Despite these safety precautions, he left her reluctantly.

After his shift at the plant, he went to the daily meeting of the task force. He reported that there was still no love lost between him and Franklin Albright. Albright had punctured one of his tires. "Stupid thing to do since my car was in the parking lot of a tire plant, for crissake." He'd had the tire replaced in no time.

He couldn't be sure Albright was the culprit, but he didn't have any other enemies at the plant, and Albright had given him a smirking grin when he reclaimed Crystal as she and Dodge came through the exit together after their shift. And Dodge knew about Albright's fondness for his knife.

Playing nerdy whipping boy to the violent ex-con was getting real old, real quick, but this was the role he'd started with, so it was the one he had to stick to. In the meantime, Crystal was becoming more affectionate. Recently she'd stroked his hand and wistfully told him she wished she'd met him first.

Dodge had told her it was too bad she didn't know something about Franklin that would land him back in the penitentiary for a long, long time and save her the hassle of having to break up with him so she and he--Marvin--could be together.

Her smile had faltered, and she'd quickly changed the subject. Her reaction raised Dodge's suspicion that something about Albright definitely made her uneasy, but she was a long way from blurting out that he was planning an armed bank robbery.

Dodge felt like he was marking time while accomplishing nothing, but no one else on the task force had anything cooking, so he had to keep his janitorial job and continue putting the make on Crystal in the hope of either getting something on Albright that would identify him as their robber or eliminating him from the suspect roster. And in the process, to avoid getting murdered by Franklin Albright, jealous lover. Staying alive was now a top priority with Dodge. He really wanted to live.

With Caroline.

When he got home that first evening, he caught her napping on the sofa. Embarrassed, she sat up, clasping and unclasping her hands self-consciously, apologizing for her tousled hair and disheveled clothing. Her shy uncertainty made his heart do cartwheels.

"How was your day?" he asked.

"Lazy."

"Perfect."

He'd brought home a carton of rich, creamy tomato basil soup, a speciality of a cafe where he often had his meals. They sat at his kitchen table and ate the soup with hunks of French bread he tore off the loaf and buttered with a heavy hand.

When he gave Caroline a second piece of it, she asked, "Are you trying to make me fat?"

"I'm trying to get you to where I can see you in profile."

After their supper, which included vanilla ice cream and fudge sauce, they watched television for a while, but by ten o'clock, Caroline was yawning. "I'm sorry. It's not your company, I promise."

"No apology necessary. I'm beat, too."

As she had the day before, she put up an argument for giving him back his bed and sleeping on the sofa. "I'm smaller. I'm the interloper. I don't mind."

"But I do."

In the end, he wouldn't hear of relegating her to the sofa, and she relented. Dodge spent his second wretched night on the damn hard and unforgiving thing, but relishing every single minute of his torturous insomnia because Caroline was under his roof and snug in his bed.

That first day set the pattern for those that followed. She got up each morning in time to see him off and was there waiting when he returned. At her insistence, he'd stocked the pantry and fridge with more groceries than they'd ever had in them. She wanted foodstuffs and spices on hand so she could prepare dinner each night.

"It's the least I can do to repay your hospitality."

He permitted it, conditional upon her eating half of everything she cooked, and promising not to overexert herself.

He watched the bruise around her eye fade from eggplant to violet, then to avocado green. Natural color returned to her cheeks. Her tiny frame fleshed out a little more each day until she no longer looked dangerously underfed.

She groused about her idleness, but to Dodge she seemed industrious. Daily, she studied the real estate sections of newspapers. She lamented the listings she'd missed and strategized how she was going to make up for lost time when she returned to Jim Malone Realty.

She made endless notes in a spiral notebook she'd brought with her, jotting down ideas as they occurred to her. Her ambition was undiminished by this temporary setback. In fact, because of it, she was even more determined to make a name for herself. Dodge supposed she wanted to succeed in order to spite Roger Campton and his family of untouchables.

She discussed with Dodge the career path she had plotted, as though he could offer valuable advice on how she could achieve her goals in the time frame she'd set. He had little to offer, but she didn't seem to realize that. He was flattered that she often asked for his unlearned opinion.

She was more cultured than he was. She'd read more books, heard more symphonies, listened to more lectures, and toured more museums. Hell, in his whole life, he'd been inside one museum, and he'd gone then only because he'd heard it had an exhibition devoted entirely to paintings of naked women.

Caroline was way above him intellectually. But the way she listened when he talked made him feel smarter, like she thought anything he said was worth hearing.

"I bet you got straight A's in school," he teased one night.

She blushed, which was as good as an admission.

He laughed. "I got my degree by the skin of my teeth."

"But you've got common sense."

"Street smarts."

"Don't dismiss the importance of that," she said earnestly. "In your line of work, that's vital to keeping you alive."

He couldn't talk to her about his present duty, but he told her about previous cases he'd worked, some amusing, some tragic. She seemed fascinated by even the most mundane story.

On one of his days off from the tire plant, they ventured out together for the first time. He took her to the movies. She wore her dark glasses until they got into the theater and the houselights went down.

They shared a box of popcorn. Occasionally their hands reached in at the same time and they had swatting contests. Once when she crossed her legs, her foot bumped his calf, but she excused herself and moved it away.

It was a movie about two brothers, one good, one bad, both of whom hated their tyrannical father but loved the same woman. There was a scene where the leads made love--sexy, hungry, forbidden love. Dodge had never been so turned on by a film sequence, and it wasn't because he got flashed by a celebrated pair of tits that were probably insured for a million dollars by Lloyd's of London. It was because he was sitting next to Caroline, whose breasts were small but the objects of fantasies that each night left him sweaty and fretful on his damn sofa.

He wanted her. God, did he. But he didn't touch her. For damn sure not during that movie scene. Even the slightest move in that direction would've shattered the trust she'd placed in him. Anyone who knew him would never believe their relationship was chaste, but to take advantage of her situation would be to abuse her worse than Campton had.

Dodge didn't think about the future when she wouldn't be there to welcome him home after his workday, when he would no longer hear her humming in the kitchen, or catch the scent of her shampoo in the bathroom. He pretended it would go on like this forever. Except for his raging, confused, and chaotic libido, he was wonderfully content.

Up till the day he was upended by a stupid, senseless, unnecessary calamity that made him want to pick up a baseball bat and attack God where he lived.

That day, after his grind at the tire plant, Dodge called Caroline and told her it would be another hour or so before he got home. He went to task force headquarters for a scheduled briefing.

He should have noticed the subdued atmosphere in the building immediately upon entering it. But he was thinking about Caroline and the pot roast dinner she had said was waiting for him. Pot roast was such an evocative dish. It connoted hearth and home. Permanence.

His daydream of pot roast dinners for years to come was swaddled in such a rosy haze that he didn't pick up on the funereal mood among his fellow officers until he realized that they were all avoiding eye contact with him.

He asked the room at large, "What'd I do?"

No one said anything.

"What's going on?"

Silence.

"Jesus. There's been another robbery? Did somebody else get killed?

Goddammit! Was it Albright? What bank? When?"

One brave soul cut off his tirade. "It's not that, Dodge. It's, uh, it's..."

"What?

What?"

"It's Gonzales."

It took a moment for Dodge to switch his thoughts from their elusive, clever bank robber to his former partner and best friend. But from there he made an instant connection between the glum mood in the room and Jimmy's name.

His heart came to a sudden, thudding halt. He stopped breathing. He swallowed convulsively, but his mouth had gone dry, he had no spit.

"There was an accident," one of his cohorts said. "Gonzales was ... He didn't make it."

"Sorry, Dodge."

"Hey, man, I'm sorry."

"Goes with the territory, but ... shit."

"Anything I can do, Dodge, just ask. Okay?"

The murmured words of consolation barely registered. He turned his back to the other men and tried to assimilate what they were telling him. He couldn't. He came back around. "Jimmy's dead?" When that was affirmed with solemn nods, he started hyperventilating.

"Take it easy, Dodge."

"Where is he?"

"The morgue. His folks are there."

"I gotta--"

"Dodge, you can't!"

He made a dash for the exit but was grabbed from behind, and he began struggling savagely to shake off restraining hands. "You can't go to the aid of a cop, Dodge."

"Think, man!"

"You'll blow your cover."

"Fuck that!" he yelled. "And fuck you. Let go of me."

He continued to scream obscenities, but eventually he exhausted himself, and the reasonableness of what the other officers were saying sank in. He ceased struggling, and they released him. He dropped into the nearest chair and sat there for the longest time, trying to collect himself, wishing he didn't believe the unbelievable. Finally he looked up. "You said it was an accident. What happened?"

A rock star had flown into Hobby Airport for a concert to take place that night at the Astrodome. Gonzales, wanting the overtime, had volunteered to ride in one of the squad cars providing police escort for the singer's limo. Word had leaked out of his arrival time. From Hobby Airport, the limo was chased by paparazzi and carloads of crazed, dope-fueled, fanatical fans.

Gonzales and another officer were in the car directly behind the limo. One of the cars chasing the motorcade, trying to get between them, clipped the front bumper of the squad car. They were going so fast that the officer behind the wheel lost control. The car spun out and was slung into a telephone pole, hitting it broadside with such force, it was almost cut in half.

Jimmy Gonzales was.

Cut in half.

The captain asked Dodge if he wanted to talk to a chaplain, a counselor, a psychologist. Dodge told him to fuck off. He didn't stay for the briefing.

For a while, he drove around the city looking for someplace in which to vent his roiling anger but soon realized that his erratic driving was a danger to innocent motorists and their passengers. Where would be the sense in his killing somebody in a car crash? No one would appreciate the irony. Least of all Jimmy Gonzales, who would rebuke him from the cold slab in the morgue on which the halves of him lay.

He wound up at a batting cage. It felt good to have something hard and potentially lethal in his hands, taking whacks at something as defenseless as Gonzales had been against the laws of physics and that goddamn telephone pole.

He didn't go home until hours later. By then the pot roast had been put away. Caroline's eyes were soft with sympathy when she greeted him at the door. "It was on the ten o'clock news. I'm so sorry, Dodge."

He nodded and walked past her into the kitchen. He opened the refrigerator but didn't know what he was looking for, so he just stared into it sightlessly.

"I want to do something to help you," she said with feeling. "But I don't know what to do."

He slammed the refrigerator door, rattling glass containers inside. "You can't do anything to help. I can't do anything. I can't even go to his funeral. I've been ordered not to. I can't go see his parents. Nice folks, by the way. Proud as punch of their son Jimmy, the cop." His throat seized up, and he groaned, "Jesus."

Caroline took a step toward him, but he rebuffed her. "There's nothing you or anybody can do, all right?" he shouted. "Don't you get it? The dumb asshole should have been off duty. Instead, he's dead! And for what? He died protecting that flaming fairy with pink hair and green satin pants, whose singing, frankly, sounds to me like a cat getting fucked in the ass.

"And the person who caused the wreck fled the scene. Didn't even have the decency to own up to taking out a good cop and a great guy. Probably some cokehead. If I ever find out who..." He raised his hands, curled his fingers toward his palms. "If I ever find out who was driving that car, I'll kill him with my bare hands."

"Dodge, you're--"

"You don't think I mean it, do you?"

"Dodge."

"Think again, nice girl. I beat up your fiance, didn't I? Have you forgotten that?"

"You're not yourself."

"I'm exactly myself." He sneered. "This is me, Caroline." He pounded his fist against his chest. "Take a good look. This is the real me."

He could feel the angry blood throbbing through the veins in his head and neck. He knew that his eyes were glowing with fury, that he was spraying spittle with each word, that he probably looked feral.

That he probably looked like his old man.

But even knowing that, he couldn't stop himself from saying what his father used to shout at him. "Just leave me the fuck alone, will you?"

With remarkable calm, Caroline sidestepped him and left the room.

Then he had no one on whom to direct his rage, so he threw himself down into one of the kitchen chairs, put his head on the table, and sobbed till his throat was raw.

He stayed there until dawn, benumbed by grief, steeped in self-loathing.

When he realized the sun was coming up, he stirred. He toed off his shoes and tiptoed through the house to the bathroom, where he splashed his face with cold water. His shirttail was out, his hair standing on end, he had a full day's growth of beard. He looked like a derelict after a weeklong binge, but he was too weary in body and soul to make repairs.

As he left the bathroom, he looked down the hallway toward the bedroom. The door was ajar, not quite an invitation, but she hadn't barred herself against him, which, after the way he behaved, she'd had every right, practically an obligation, to do.

He went to the door and pushed it open. Its hinges creaked, but that didn't waken her because she was already awake. He sensed she was even though she was facing away from him, lying on her side, her knees pulled up nearly to her chest. She lay on top of the covers, fully dressed except for her shoes. The pads of her toes, perfect dots of flesh, were lined up against the balls of her small feet.

The sight of her caused the bitterness that he had nursed through the night to disintegrate, and all he was left with was emptiness.

He walked to the bed and lay down, close to her, but without touching. He expected her to tell him to get away from her, that she couldn't stand the sight or sound or smell of him. But she didn't. She lay perfectly still, and that silent acceptance of his presence emboldened him to speak.

"I was wrong last night," he said in what, for him, passed as a whisper. Even so, his voice sounded abnormally loud. He tried lowering it another decibel. "When I said there was nothing you could do to help me, I was wrong. There is something."

"What?" Her voice was muffled by the pillow beneath her cheek.

"You're doing it."

"I'm not doing anything."

"Yes you are. You're ... you're being." He moved his head closer to hers, closed his eyes, and pressed his face into her hair.

"Just being?"

"That's enough. Actually, that's a lot."

She turned over until they were face-to-face. She didn't rebuke him for rubbing his face against her hair, which he was afraid she might. Her regard wasn't judgmental. More like tender.

"I'm sorry for flying off the handle." Then he snuffled with disgust. "That's an understatement. I went way beyond that."

"You were upset."

"I was. Am. But nothing excuses the way I acted and the things I said."

"I didn't take them personally."

"Good. They weren't directed at you."

"I know. I understand." Her sweet expression said she did.

It made his throat tight. "Do you think you can forgive me?"

"I saw you at your worst, and I'm still here."

He shook his head sadly. "That wasn't my worst, Caroline. Not by a long shot."

"I'm still here," she repeated softly.

Gazing into her calm, sherry-colored eyes, he felt little cracks forming in his mean ol' heart. It had been toughened early by the loss of his mother, who'd loved him, hardened by his father, who hadn't, then made stony by the man's ceaseless cruelties.

But his callous heart didn't stand a chance of remaining so when Caroline looked at him as she was doing now. Little fissures in it opened, allowing trickles of her gentleness, kindness, and goodness to get inside.

He was nearly suffocated by yearning. "Caroline." He stopped, swallowed noisily, tried again. "Caroline, a few weeks ago, you were engaged to another man." Again he paused, at a loss for how to express himself. "I'm bungling this, dammit. What I'm trying to say--"

"I know what you're trying to say." Her voice, unlike his failed attempts at whispering, was a perfect whisper. It was little more than a breath, a vibration of air that was felt more than heard.

She leaned forward and touched his lips with hers. When she withdrew, her eyes skated over his face, taking in his features, which he knew weren't classically handsome. Not even close. He'd never minded his looks until now. Miserably he wondered if there was anything in his off-center face that she could possibly find appealing.

Her hand came up, and he felt her fingertips, as soft and cool as flower petals, touching his scruffy cheek and chin. Then, she leaned forward and pressed her lips to his again. And this time they stayed.

He made a sound that, had he been a woman, would have scared the hell out of him. It sounded like something you'd hear in the darkest heart of the jungle. But Caroline didn't flinch. Instead her lips relaxed invitingly, and his tongue did what tongues seem to do by instinct. A few heartbeats later, he couldn't remember what it had been like to kiss any other woman because he was kissing Caroline. The word kiss was suddenly, wondrously redefined. It became an act of love, an engagement not merely of mouths but of souls.

Even more miraculous, she was kissing him back with a boldness and fervor that stunned and thrilled him. It was she who first left off mouth kissing for other parts. She pushed aside the collar of his shirt and pressed her open lips to his neck. If she was doing that, then surely she wouldn't mind if he slipped his hand under the back of her shirt and touched her skin. She didn't. When he splayed his hand against her delicate spine and applied pressure, she scooted closer to him, until her body was flush with his, and their middles started rubbing against each other.

He wasn't sure how a guy went about getting a decent woman out of her clothes. He had no experience with that. But Caroline solved the dilemma for him. She began gracefully peeling off her garments. He tore at his as though they'd caught fire.

When she lay beside him on her back, fully naked, he was struck with a terrible case of stage fright. She was so beautiful, he felt like he was about to defile a national treasure or a religious icon. Some might think her nose too pert and her lips too narrow, but he thought hers was the most beautiful face he'd ever seen. Her spare frame didn't represent the ideal of womanhood, but he had never desired a body with the passion he felt for hers.

The sunlight coming through the slats of the blinds painted peaches-and-cream stripes across her pale skin, which was adorably sprinkled with freckles. Her nipples were virgin pink, and the hair over her sex was a soft, golden red.

She smiled up at him. "Are you ever going to touch me?"

Gingerly, he placed his hand on her torso, and it almost spanned her rib cage. He felt burly. Hairy. Huge. "You're so ... pink. And little. I'm afraid I'll hurt you."

"You won't."

"Your ribs--"

"They hardly hurt at all anymore." She put her hands on his shoulders and pulled him down to cover her. "You won't hurt me, Dodge."

They began kissing again, and his inhibitions were soon abandoned. One brush of his tongue, and her nipples went from sweet to wanton. She sighed his name and moved restlessly beneath him. Her small hand closed around him and guided him. He nudged her with the tip of his erection, and she was soft and wet and receptive, so, with a low groan he claimed her.

His fingers threaded through her hair to cradle her head. He put his lips directly against her ear. "The first time I saw you, I wanted this. I wanted to be up you like this. Inside you. I wanted to feel your ... your..." He knew all the crude words and phrases to say, none of the sweet and romantic ones. "I don't know how to say it right."

She turned her face toward his and rubbed her lips across his jaw. "You're saying it just fine."

Pressing deeper, he groaned. "God, you feel good."

"So do you." Folding her legs around his hips, she arched up. "Stay as long as you like."

He didn't, he couldn't. Not that first time. Months of pent-up passion drove him toward a quick completion. But the next time lasted longer, and the time after that...

Dodge didn't know that happiness like this was possible. He'd never experienced it before. In the days and weeks that followed, he was saturated with a soul-deep peace and contentment that even his sadness over Jimmy Gonzales couldn't reach.

He didn't think he could be any happier.

He was wrong.

Six weeks after the morning they first made love, Caroline shyly informed him that they had made a baby.