e-to-face.
“Don’t go there,” she warned herself as she turned down the street near her condo complex and recognized O’Keefe’s old Explorer parked near her driveway.
Her fingers tightened over the steering wheel and she felt her pulse elevate. Did he know anything about Gabe? Her anxiety level ratcheted up a notch. As she pulled into the drive, the door to his SUV opened and he stepped into the street.
“Any news?” she asked as she climbed out of the Outback and slammed the door shut.
“Just what I was going to ask you.”
“Great. I was hoping you’d found my son.”
“And I was hoping you’d have a lead.”
“Been busy,” she said. “If you haven’t noticed.”
“I did.” He reached for her computer case, but she ignored his outstretched hand and walked to the front door of her condo. She didn’t want to be around him; it was just too difficult, but now, because of Gabe, she didn’t have much of a choice.
As she unlocked the door of her town house, she reminded herself that she had to keep this investigation professional, no matter how personal it seemed. Regardless if he was her son or not, Gabriel Reeve had an adoptive mother and father, a real family complete with siblings. She couldn’t mess with that.
As for O’Keefe, he was definitely off-limits. She wasn’t going to get involved with him again. Not that he’d shown any outward interest in rekindling their romance, but there was an undeniable chemistry with him, a passion she was determined to keep under wraps.
Once inside the foyer, she tossed her keys on a side table and slid out of her jacket and boots. O’Keefe, though not actually invited in, did the same as she called for the cat. When Jane Doe appeared on the stairs, poking her face through the rails, O’Keefe actually laughed. “She’s a clown,” he said, and the cat, as if she knew he was talking about her, hurried down the remaining stairs and rubbed up against his leg.
“No, she’s a traitor, from the looks of it.” But Alvarez felt a smile tug at the corners of her lips. “She was an orphan, her owner killed, and since I was investigating the case and no one seemed to want her, I adopted her.”
“And the dog?”
“Impulse decision.” She glanced at the kennel in the corner of the living room. “I thought I’d find him by now.” She felt a little tug on her heart. “I miss him. Don’t get me wrong, Roscoe could be a real pain in the backside, but still ... I guess he got under my skin.”
“That can happen,” O’Keefe said, and when she looked up at him, she found him staring at her. Hard. “When you least expect it.”
Her throat tightened. The room seemed to shrink. She knew he was talking about their brief time together, that white-hot summer in California. It would take so little to rekindle that flame ... so damned little. And that would be a big mistake. “I know,” she said, her voice a little deeper than she’d intended, “but then when it’s over, you have to let it go.”
“If it’s over,” he clarified. “Not when.”
She was staring at him, her gaze lost in his, and she forced herself to look away, to clear her head, to push away the thoughts of the time they shared, the kisses under the palm trees, the stolen moments in the shadows of the buildings, the night they’d been in the shower together. She remembered all too clearly the feel of his hands against her wet skin. Oh, damn. “It’s the only sane thing to do,” she whispered.
“Sometimes sanity doesn’t enter into the equation.”
“It always should,” she insisted. “Always.”
To her dismay, he reached forward and touched the crook of her arm. “Selena?” he whispered and something around her heart, that hard shell she tried so desperately to protect, started to crack. The long week, the loss of her dog, the knowledge that her son was out there, in the freezing cold, so near, yet so far, and Dylan O’Keefe, here in her apartment ... She didn’t resist when he folded her into his arms though she told herself she was every kind of fool. He placed a finger under her chin, lifted her face and kissed her. Hard. With a passion she remembered all too well.
Hot tears burned the back of her eyelids as his mouth moved over hers and she felt the roughness of his beard shadow against her skin.
A dozen memories flooded her brain. In that swift moment, she remembered laughing with him in a sudden rain shower and dashing to his pickup. Her blouse was so wet, it clung to her skin, becoming see-through, her bra visible. Inside the truck, they continued kissing and touching, the blood rushing in Alvarez’s brain, her body trembling with desire. The windows of his old truck steamed on the inside while rain drizzled down the windshield and lightning sizzled across the sky. As thunder had rolled through empty streets, she’d flashed back to another time, another place, another car and the smell of cigarettes and beer, the rough fumbling hands of her cousin Emilio, the hard plastic seat of the El Camino.
“Don’t,” she’d said, meaning it as he’d thrown himself upon her. “Get off me!”
But he, fueled by alcohol and a need to dominate, hadn’t listened. She’d screamed. She’d fought. She’d pulled the knife from his back pocket and threatened him with it, to no avail. The slice she’d made in his shoulder had only enraged him and made him more determined than ever.
No amount of kicking or screaming or spitting or crying could stop him, and there, in his father’s El Camino, he’d raped her, taken her virginity and impregnated her, all in ten minutes of brutal, soul-destroying hell.
She’d never been able to make love since.
Not in the pickup in the middle of a rainstorm in San Bernardino.
Not in O’Keefe’s shower.