Against the Edge. Kat MartinЧитать онлайн книгу.
Monica apartment on Sixth Street. With the time change, she’d been up for more than twenty hours.
Ben had been up even longer. She ignored a little niggle of curiosity about the woman he’d been sleeping with the night before she’d met him, and led him toward the guest room. He tossed his duffel on the bed.
“Your bathroom’s at the end of the hall,” she said. “There’s soap, shampoo and toothpaste, and the towels are fresh. If you need anything, just let me know.”
“I need to get on the internet, see if I can find anything on Bridger. I hope you’ve got Wi-Fi.”
“I’ve got it. Sunrise452 is the code. But you need to get some sleep, Ben. You won’t be any good to Sam if you’re dead on your feet.”
He scrubbed a hand over his face. He’d been clean-shaven that morning; now a rough shadow darkened his jaw. “You’re probably right. I could use a couple of hours.”
“I usually get up early. If you’re not up, I’ll wake you.”
He nodded, turned to survey the queen-size bed, looked at it with longing.
“By the way. Johnnie Riggs called you Iceman. That’s your nickname? From the SEALs?”
“Yeah.”
With eyes like his, there was no mistaking where the name had come from. “Good night, Ben.”
“Good night, Claire. See you in the morning.” Ben disappeared behind the guest room door, and Claire went into her own room to shower before going to bed.
She yawned as she headed for the bathroom. With so much on her mind, she wasn’t sure she’d be able to get any sleep.
* * *
Surprised to find the sun shining brightly through the curtains over the windows, Claire yawned as she climbed out of bed the following morning. She needed to wake Ben and make some coffee’strong, she remembered, was the way he liked it.
Slipping into her robe, she opened the bedroom door and stepped out in the hall, heard footsteps an instant before she collided with Ben. His arms went around her, steadying her before she took a fall.
“Easy.”
“Sorry. I’I didn’t know you were awake.” He was returning to his bedroom, freshly showered, a towel slung low on his hips, his black hair wet, drops of water beaded against his tanned skin.
Claire’s mouth went dry. She couldn’t take her eyes off the thick pectoral muscles, flat stomach and six-pack abs. A patch of curly black hair spread over his chest and arrowed down his stomach to disappear beneath the towel.
She couldn’t seem to breathe.
“You okay?” he asked in a voice that sounded a little gruffer this morning.
Claire stepped back as if his skin had burned her. “Fine...I’m just... You just took me by surprise.”
“I’ve been awake for hours. Wanted to see what I could find on the net.” His gaze ran over her, taking in her sleep-tangled hair, traveling over the nipples that had hardened under her short silk robe, down the legs exposed below the hem, all the way to her bare feet.
How those icy eyes could look burning hot she would never know, but her stomach contracted beneath that heated gaze and her nipples hardened even more.
In an instant, his demeanor changed, the heat disappearing as if it had never been there.
“I need some coffee, doll. How ’bout you make us a pot?”
Her mouth dropped open, then snapped closed. Before she could tell him to keep his pet names to himself, he had walked on down the hall, disappeared into his room and closed the door.
Ohhhh, the man was infuriating! Ben Slocum was rude and arrogant, a complete macho jerk. How could Laura ever have fallen in love with him?
But she had, Claire knew. Laura had loved Ben desperately. And she had never gotten over him. Loving Ben Slocum and having to give him up had ruined her life. Even having his child hadn’t been enough to save her from the depression she felt in losing him.
Claire glanced at the door of the guest room. Laura had called him a heartthrob. He certainly had the most incredible male physique she had ever seen. Even the jocks in the gym didn’t look as good as Ben, whose hard-muscled body just seemed more authentic.
As a former SEAL, it actually was. It didn’t mean she had to like him. Still, for Sam, she would try to keep an open mind as much as she could. Laura had loved him. There had to be something good about him.
Then again, for a while, Laura had thought she was in love with Troy Bridger.
* * *
Ben went back to work on the laptop he’d set up on the kitchen table at 5:00 a.m. that morning. Claire was on the computer in her bedroom, digging for information same as he was.
Her place was nice. Just a few blocks from the beach. It was an older building, condos rented as apartments, but the unit was in good condition, the living room comfortably furnished with a pale green sofa and chairs, a glass-topped black wrought-iron coffee table, cream and pale green throw pillows.
There was an area with a glass dining table and upholstered, pale green high-back chairs. Lots of beach paintings hung on the walls. Overall, it was simple and elegant but not stark. The kitchen had white cabinets and a round white table with a butcher-block top. Lots of cream and pale green in the dish towels and pot holders, knickknacks on the walls.
He glanced toward her bedroom. Aside from handing him a cup of coffee, Claire hadn’t said more than a couple of words since he’d run into her in the hall.
He almost smiled. In only a thin silk robe, her thick mahogany hair curling around her shoulders, her bare legs exposed, she was one sexy lady. Since the last thing he wanted to feel was any sort of physical attraction to a woman he was trying to work with, he needed to keep her at a distance.
It was working even better than he had planned. Which should have made him happy, but didn’t.
He was beginning to like Claire Chastain. Yesterday, when she’d stood up for Sam, then stepped in to stop Martha Roberson from calling the police, that feeling had crept up another notch. Hell, he’d even felt a twinge of admiration. Claire was one determined woman.
He still wasn’t sure if he wanted her to be right about Bridger having Sam or whether it would be better if his son were wandering the streets of L.A.
Ben gazed down at the computer screen. He’d been surfing the net for hours, trying to find out about the people involved in the case. That was how he needed to look at it’as a case instead of a situation that involved his own flesh and blood. He had to be objective or he wouldn’t be able to do his job.
He’d started with his ex-fiancée, Laura Thompson. She’d married Tom Schofield less than a year after he and Laura had split up. So much for her broken heart.
Then again, Laura clearly didn’t have a heart, since he had found her in bed with another man just days after he’d given her an engagement ring.
He tracked her through old newspaper articles: her engagement, her wedding to Schofield, their divorce six months later. Old courthouse documents filed not long after changed her name back to Thompson.
He tracked her to Los Angeles where he had hooked up with her again. Her Facebook account was still open. He read personal posts, saw photos of Sam when he was younger.
It was oddly surreal to see a smaller version of his own face staring back at him. Surreal and surprisingly emotional. When he thought of all the years he had missed with the boy’the Little League games, the parent-teacher meetings, Christmases and birthdays’anger bubbled up inside him.
Even he hadn’t known how much he would regret not being there for those things.
What he didn’t find was a single damn thing connecting