He glanced at her. Finally. Probably checking to see if she’d lost her mind. “Filet mignon.”

  “So before we head back to the hotel, how about we find the best steak house in this part of the state and have a decent meal?”

  She might choke on it. She might not. She might not be able to keep it down. But she’d do everything she could to tend to him as he was tending to her.

  “How about we find the best steak in Benson?” he asked then, the lines on his forehead and around his eyes finally fading a bit. “I need to change my shirt.” She looked at the torn cotton hanging over his flat belly. Worried again about the damage he might have done to himself.

  He glanced at her again then, almost as though he could read her mind.

  She smiled her gratitude, her regard for him. A smile she knew was tinged with the desperation and agony that hung in the air, but still a real expression.

  And he smiled back.

  The same way.

  Chapter 21

  Ezra almost welcomed the sting of the soap to his scraped skin as he stood beneath the shower, thinking about the day, replaying the information that had come at him, the way he’d processed it, the choices he’d made. He found he’d done all he could possibly have been expected to do given the circumstances.

  Satisfied that he’d lived up to the ideal he’d once thought his father to be, to the best of his ability, he rinsed, determined that his stomach wasn’t nearly as bad as he’d thought, the skin more surface-burned than actually pierced, and pulled on his last set of clean clothes.

  Jeans and another long-sleeved T-shirt, this one in green. Balling up the dirties, he headed out to rejoin Theresa in the room they were sharing. She’d redone her bun. Was sitting at the table, scrolling on her phone.

  “I need to make a stop at the washer and dryer before we go,” he said, telling himself not to notice how incredibly beautiful she looked, sitting there so quietly, so still, while he knew emotions raged inside her. In some ways she was more like him than even his own brothers. The way she could be calm, collected, and raging inside at the same time. The way she could hurt, and yet wall herself off from the pain enough to get the job done.

  “I was just thinking about that, too,” she said. “Between the two of us, we’ve got a load. You mind throwing them in together?”

  He shouldn’t mind. Didn’t mind, really.

  Except that...he did.

  From the time he was eighteen, his clothes had usually been washed on their own. By him...

  “Of course,” he said. “Fine...” He held out his spare arm. “Load me up.”

  “I’ll do them,” she replied, grabbing the clothes out of his grasp before he knew where she’d been headed. “Your others are here, right?” she asked, bending over to the shopping bag he’d used for a laundry basket. She had his skivvies there...

  Grabbing her purse and a similarly filled shopping bag to his, she headed for the door. “Be right back,” she said and walked out.

  Ezra stood there, watching her go, hard as a rock.

  Because a woman—Theresa—was doing his laundry.

  As though it was all in a normal day. And then it hit him... Of course it was all in a normal day. She would have done laundry for three every time she did the chore. And had done it for four, too, back when her husband had been alive. As sick as he’d been at the end, there’d been no way Mark could have, or would have, gotten up to wash his own dirty clothes.

  Ezra’s growing erection shrank right up at the thought of her late spouse by the time Theresa returned. She let him know that the clerk at the front desk had just told her the best steak in town was right next door, and out they went, to have their first dinner together while his underwear soaked back at the motel with hers.

  How sick was he to be jealous of his own skivvies?

  * * *

  Dinner was as nice as a dinner could get when you were a woman adrift with her children in danger in an unknown location. As if by silent declaration, neither she nor Ezra spoke about bunkers, their search or the day they’d just had. They didn’t talk about Mark, his illness or how difficult the past year had been for her. And they didn’t discuss his family, or his father, either.

  They talked about the movies they’d seen, some the same, some not, held the same opinions on some, disagreed on others. He’d listened to classic rock growing up. She’d preferred the female pop singers of the time. Their favorite vacation spots both included the beach. He ordered a beer. She had a glass of wine.

  She’d had a high school sweetheart. He hadn’t. She had a college degree. He didn’t.

  She’d been married. He’d never been in a long-term serious relationship.

  What they didn’t do was expound on much of anything—except maybe the movies they’d seen. And by the time the waitress brought them their check, Theresa was shocked to see that she’d almost emptied her plate.

  He paid for dinner, and then walked with her to move the clean clothes to the dryer. She wasn’t sure whose idea it was to take a walk around town, just up and down the main drag, but it did her good, seeing normal people milling about, having normal lives. And it made her incredibly lonely and antsy, too, because everywhere she looked, she thought about the twins, what they’d like, where they’d want to go, what they’d be saying if they were with her.

  The length of the walk was predicated by the dryer cycle, and Theresa wasn’t at all ready to head back to reality as they stood side by side at the laundry table and, each grabbing their own things, folded and bagged separately.

  They could have been strangers at a Laundromat, where bras and panties were handled in every city, every day, by tons of people without incident or undue thought.

  Except that she’d had thoughts.

  Of him taking an interest in her underthings. She’d noticed his, after all.

  And when those thoughts raised such sorely needed good feelings inside her, she allowed more of them. Wondering if he’d like to see her wearing her underthings.

  If he’d like to take them off her.

  If he’d thought about undoing her bra and touching her breasts...

  If he’d seen her panties there on the table with his underwear and thought about their respective body parts together...her crotch on top of his.

  Then his phone rang.

  His brother Dominic again.

  An officer from Padillac, a small town just west of Benson—not far from the gas station where she and Ezra had stopped that first day—had found the Fitzgeralds’ old blue truck nose-first in a river. There was no sign of any bodies.

  But there’d been some blood inside.

  Some. Not a lot.

  Some.

  Ezra stressed the word. Over and over.

  There’d been no melted ice cream sandwiches in it, though.

  And based on the water’s rise and fall and the debris, the truck had been there less than a day. Which meant the nosedive happened after the brown van had been at the ice cream store.

  Had the girls been hurt in the accident? Had they even been in the brown van? Did the Fitzgeralds have two vehicles?

  Had a friend loaned them the van?

  Maybe even the young couple who’d shot at Ezra earlier that day?

  FBI forensics were going over the truck, lifting prints, and the blood would be tested. They wanted Theresa’s permission to access her daughters’ medical records for possible matches.

  “To rule them out,” Ezra said. More than once.

  She listened. Gave permissions. But floated in and out of focus. And when it was time for bed, and Ezra crawled in beside her, wrapping her in his arms, Theresa allowed herself to rest her head on his chest and lose consciousness for a little while.

  * * *

  He ached. Hard as a rock. Needed release.

  Movement on his chest. Fingers. Heading slowly downward.

  Excruciatingly heightened sexual desire pounded Ezra, bringing him from sleep.

  Not unusual. He was a healthy guy. And...

  He wasn’t alone. The weight against him...wasn’t just in his sleep.

  Full consciousness hit with a slam. Holy hell.

  Theresa.

  She was moving her fingers softly down to his penis. She palmed him there.

  How was he going to get his body under control with her doing that?

  Rubbing her face against his chest, she moaned, more like a hum, sounding pleased, and he lay there, trying to school himself into not reacting, but unable to stop her. Not that he wanted to.

  She was obviously dreaming, thinking he was Mark, and if he woke her...

  She had enough emotional crap to deal with. The day ahead was going to be rough, no matter what, and if she had to go into it with an embarrassingly awkward sexual component between them...

  Her hand stilled, and he told himself it would only be a few minutes. Then he’d get himself back to size and quietly extricate himself from the bed.

  No. No. Her fingers were on the move again. To his side...his other side...circling around his belly button area while his groin ached painfully.

  He was going to have to stop her. Sorry for the embarrassment. But it would be much worse if he exploded right there.

  Her hand slipped lower. Just an inch from the tip of him, and she lifted her head. Slid up to place her mouth on his, kissing him full-on.

  His lips knew what to do. How to respond. They did it.

  For her.

  Surely that would be it. She’d lie back down and drift off, with no conscious memory of doing anything more than having a dream. She’d been so distraught. Bottling up more emotion than any one person could reasonably expect to keep contained.

  Forcing her subconscious to seek an outlet in the only way...

  Her lips came at his again. Open and soft, her tongue looking to tangle. And...oh, God...he tangled with her. Just for a second.

  Because the incredible woman who he’d been wanting for days and couldn’t have was sticking her tongue in his mouth.

  Meaning him to be her husband, he figured.

  With her lips still on his, she moved, throwing one leg over his, straddling his thigh, and rubbed her core on him.

  Using every ounce of the rigid self-control he’d honed over the years, he lay still, prolonging the sweet torture as long as he could before being forced to wake her.

  Maybe she’d stop. The dream would end as if it had never been. She’d wake in the morning with no knowledge of...

  With her lips on his throat, sending delicious shards of desire through him, her hips moved upward on him, and her knee gently rubbed against his way-too-sensitive privates.

  He almost embarrassed himself. Barely held it back. Took a second to let things simmer lest he move and explode, fully aware in that second that what he was doing was wrong.

  He couldn’t pretend to be another man even if he was doing it to help her. It wasn’t right and...

  “Ezra?”

  No trouble freezing everything then. He didn’t move. Had no clue what to do.

  “I just... I know you aren’t much for words, but... I just need to know that you’re okay with this. That I’m not taking advantage...”

  Her body lay against his. Still, but for the heart that was beating hard against his chest.

  “It’s just for tonight,” she whispered. “Just to get through the night...and only if you really want to do it with me, too.”

  He still didn’t speak. The right words didn’t come. But he rolled with her, arms supporting his weight on each side of her, cradling her. Gazing into her eyes, seeing himself reflected there amid her want, he lowered his lips to hers.

  * * *

  It’s just for tonight. Even as she kissed Ezra, Theresa heard her own words again. Silently. A reminder.

  She’d known, when she’d woken up with her leg thrown across Ezra and had felt his hard-on, that he hadn’t been reacting to her specifically. His even, slightly raspy breathing had told her he’d still been asleep.

  She’d carefully removed her leg, but continued to lie against him as she dozed off again. To dream about him.

  Waking to see her fingers splayed on his chest.

  And to find his entire body tensed. His breathing too rhythmically controlled.

  Clearly awake.

  The rest... There hadn’t been thought. She’d just acted.

  Him lying there awake beneath her, still hard... The surge of feeling had been so good, so energizing, she hadn’t been able to resist.

  There’d been no plan to seduce him. Or even to do more than explore the expanse of muscles and hard stomach she’d been finding irresistibly hot over the past week.

  Thought returned briefly as she lay under him, looking up at his strong, gorgeous face. An acknowledgment that she was about to have sex with a man who was not her husband, for the first time since she and Mark had met.

  Her heart knew...and was okay, too.

  Her body needed Ezra Colton in a way she’d never craved a man in her life. The desire coursing through her was alive, an entity that was in control, demanding strong response.

  Tenderness was there as well, but almost as an afterthought.

  Urgency came first.

  Feeling as much of him, taking as much of him, as she possibly could, the only goal. He was familiar and brand-new.

  Exciting beyond recognition and safe.

  His lips didn’t just kiss hers. They consumed her, mingling tongues and breath into a taste that hadn’t existed before that night.

  One that was exclusive to them.

  She loved it. Couldn’t get enough.

  When he sat up to pull his shirt over his head, she started to pull hers off, too. He reached out a hand and helped, tugging the material over her head and tossing it away.

  Cool air hit her breasts, while his hot gaze warmed them. She liked sitting there for him, watching him enjoy the sight of her.

  And that made her too hungry again. With her hands on his chest, she pushed him over, lying fully on top of him, moving her breasts and her hands over his chest, learning the feel of his springy hair, rubbing their nipples together.

  With one arm around her back, he rolled them again, lifting himself up to slip out of his sweatpants, taking his underwear with them, and Theresa stared.

  He was male perfection. Truly beautiful. Muscled and strong and so gorgeous.

  And his penis was...clearly ready.

  She went for the elastic waistband of her sweat bottoms, but his hands were there first, one on each hip. With his thumbs hooked in the waistband, he pulled down slowly.

  Very slowly.

  Revealing her mama hips, and what lay in between them, with a glow in his eyes that she’d never forget.

  It had been a long time since Theresa had felt beautiful. Desirable.

  Too long.

  And that moment was hers.

  All hers.

  * * *

  Ezra never looked away from Theresa as he left the bed only long enough, and only far enough, to grab his wallet and the condom he always carried, tossing it to the pillow as he lowered himself beside a woman like none other. Over the next while, he committed every inch of Theresa to memory. He touched every part of her, with the intention to give her as much pleasant feeling as he could, to offset the bad consuming her world. To create a good memory for her in the middle of hell.

  It wasn’t about him. He’d had sex before. He’d have it again.

  It was always good.

  And then she pushed him to his back on the mattress, straddled his stomach and started touching him. Every inch. Watching herself do it.

  At one point she grabbed the condom. Ripped it open with her teeth, while her free hand teased his nipple, and then gave him a mouthwatering look at what he was going to feast on.

  Turning, she sucked on his neck, kissed him long and wet and hard, and moved to his arms. Sliding her hands up and down them. Kissing them.

  Her gaze was focused, and yet...ethereal, too. As though she was on another plane, being guided, knowing full well what she was doing to him and getting hot doing it.

  He’d never had anything like that before.

  She wasn’t rough, but she wasn’t gentle, either. And when she suddenly scooted lower, impaling herself with one movement, he hissed and almost came right then and there.

  He held on, and thanked fate that he had when she started moving on him, eyes wide open, watching him, and bending to watch them coupling before looking him in the eye again.

  If there’d been any doubt at all that the woman knew who she was having sex with, even though he knew she was aware, it would have vanished. Her voice was loud and clear, telling him she knew that she was with Ezra.

  And that was what made him come.

  Chapter 22

  Theresa slept naked, still slick with sex, cuddled up to Ezra’s chest. She was exhausted, satiated, mind blown, but more, she’d poured so much energy into him. Her emotional well was drained dry for the moment, allowing her the respite necessary to refill.

  A few hours later, she woke before dawn, knew exactly where she was, what she’d done, and was glad she’d done it.

  Slowly and gently removing herself from Ezra’s body and the bed, she used her newly learned silent walk to get to the bathroom and closed the door before turning on the light.

  The sight of her wild dark hair tangled and falling around her shoulders and breasts made her smile for a second.

  The one second she gave to herself.

  And then it was into the shower, taking care of her ablutions quickly and concisely, barely pausing over the sore parts of her that hadn’t been used in too long. The tender nipples that she soaped just as she did every morning.