But maybe not a total jerk.
“Best damn omelet, best damn coffee. Count on it.” He was grating cheese now and he went on, his back to her. “The thing is, my social encounters these past few years have been pretty limited. The women working the bars I frequented didn’t want the lowlifes they served to know their names, so honey and sweetheart got to be a habit.” He shrugged. “They called me big guy. At the end of the evening the bouncers called me pal. Hell, I had a whole circle of friends who didn’t exchange names with me.”
She’d just been given an apology, Tamara realized—an apology or an explanation. Whichever, she had the feeling it hadn’t been easy for the usually closed-off man in front of her to reveal even that fleeting glimpse of himself.
“I wondered today when I saw you in that rooming house,” she said steadily. “You’ve got a drinking problem, haven’t you, McQueen?”
He was chopping scallions. He stopped, and she saw his grip tighten on the knife in his hand.
“Not anymore.” His words were clipped. He brought the knife down once more on the scallions, and then halted again, setting the utensil on the chopping board and turning to her.
“That was the wrong answer.” Beside him, the pan on the stove began to sizzle, and he moved it from the burner without taking his gaze from her. “If I haven’t learned anything else over the last eight months, I’ve learned that. Yeah, the drinking became a problem. I used it as a crutch, and one day I found I couldn’t function without the crutch. Then I realized I was in danger of not being able to function at all. I took the longest walk of my life that night—right past my usual watering hole to the basement of St. Mary’s Church a couple of blocks away, where there was an AA meeting going on. I’ve been clean and sober since that first meeting, but kidding myself I’ve got the problem licked for good would be the worst mistake I could make. I take it day by day. I still go to the meetings every couple of weeks. And sometimes I try to remember how to pray.”
He held her gaze a moment longer and then turned back to the counter, picking up the knife again. “And I drink one hell of a lot of coffee, honey, so I make sure it’s not crap out of a machine,” he growled.
Beneath his abrasiveness she thought she’d heard a hint of relief, Tamara thought slowly. Maybe he needed someone to talk to about this. Maybe since she’d opened up to him earlier this evening, he wanted to talk to her.
“Chandra said your last arson case was the reason why you gave it all up and walked away from the job, McQueen,” she said softly. “That’s when you started needing a crutch, wasn’t it?”
“For crying out loud.” He poured the beaten eggs into the pan, scattered the grated cheese over the mixture and turned to her, all in one economical movement. “This isn’t a talk show, honey. I told you about the drinking because I can’t afford not to be upfront about it, okay? And the next time you talk to Boyleston, tell her the whole of freakin’ Boston doesn’t need to hear the story of my life. Forget it—I’ll tell her myself.”
Taken aback by his abrupt about-face, Tamara glared at him, any warmth she’d been beginning to feel toward the man evaporating instantly. “Take a pill, McQueen,” she snapped. “For God’s sake, I was trying to be a friend.”
“A friend?” His laugh was short. “And what comes next—you and I watch chick-flicks and talk about boys before we fall asleep? Dammit, I don’t want you as a friend, honey.” He sounded as outraged as she felt, and her temper finally gave way completely.
“That’s fine by me.” Without even being conscious of getting to her feet, she was standing in front of him, her furious face only inches from his. “You’d make a lousy friend. Hell, you make a lousy acquaintance! And the damn omelet’s burned, so you’re not even a competent cook. Tell me, babe—what’s left?”
“Aw, crap, the omelet.” Reaching behind him he slid the pan from the burner without looking and turned off the stove. He shrugged, his gaze holding hers. “You know what’s left, honey,” he muttered impatiently. “Try not to make me screw up on this, too, will you?”
“As if you need my help for that,” Tamara said under her breath, as his mouth came down on hers and her arms went around his neck.
Chapter Five
It was like running into a fire without any protection. His hands spread wide on either side of her face, and in the instant before she closed her eyes she saw those dark lashes come down like inky spikes over his. He swayed slightly, immediately regaining his balance by widening his stance. Leaning back against the counter, he pulled her with him, a hard-muscled leg on either side of her thighs.
Dear God, Tamara thought dizzily. Stone McQueen had come close to swooning. She felt him harden against her.
He wasn’t a subtle man. But though his lack of finesse in a social setting might be something he could consider working on, she thought, right here and right now it was incredibly, overwhelmingly erotic.
His mouth more than covering hers, his tongue licked the wetness of her inner lips and then went deeper. She felt her head tipping back with the force of his kiss, and her arms tightened around his neck. Oh, no, McQueen, she thought disjointedly. No fair. I get to taste you, too.
She slid her fingers upward through the coarse silk of his still-damp hair, and felt the solidity of his jaw graze her cheek. With no preliminaries, greedily the tip of her tongue lapped against his with short, flicking strokes. It was like licking sweet cream, she thought—like desperately licking up sweet, melting ice cream from a cone on a hot summer’s day, before it could run down her hand.
Except she wanted him to melt all over her. She wanted him running down her, running into her, pouring over her. She wanted to see him in shadowy half-light, that big body over hers, those corded arms braced on either side of her, that wet hair falling into his eyes.
He’d said a woman had struck the match. He’d said he’d been burning so long he’d grown to like it. But whoever that woman had been she’d walked away years ago, leaving the fire unattended. Tamara felt his hands move to her neck, to her shoulders, down her rib cage until they were spanning her waist. Whoever she’d been, she’d walked away, leaving him smoldering.
And that was dangerous. Any firefighter knew a damped-down flame only needed the slightest breath of air to bring it to a full-blown blaze. He pushed her sweatshirt up, and she gave an involuntary little gasp. Impatiently he shoved the sweatshirt higher, his palms sliding up to the cotton bra she was wearing. She dragged her mouth from his, raised herself swayingly to her tiptoes, and nipped the lobe of his ear.
Lightly she blew against it.
An immediate shudder ran through him, and his fingertips tightened convulsively on her skin. With deliberate slowness she lowered herself from her raised toes, her exposed flesh rubbing against his taut stomach, the thin material of his T-shirt hardly a barrier. The chinos he was wearing were even less of an obstruction. Through the soft fleece of her jogging sweats she could feel every hard, rigidly outlined inch of him, pressing stiffly and immediately against her thighs.
“You do like to burn, don’t you, McQueen?” she whispered, looking up into his face and feeling the heat of his breath on her lips. “You’re liking it right now.”
His eyes were still closed. With a carefully controlled movement he nodded, cautiously exhaling as he did. She saw the bulge of his jaw muscle tighten.
“Yeah, honey, I am,” he rasped. “You’re going to take advantage of that, aren’t you?” Opening his eyes just enough so she could see the smoky gleam of his gaze through the dense lashes, he looked down at her. “But I told you I thought you’d like it, too.”
His hands were still splayed open against her bra, the ball of each thumb just under the thin cotton. Smoothly he hooked them farther under the scrap of material and tugged upward. Before she had time to do more than throw him a startled glance, her vision was cut off as he unhesitatingly drew both her top and her still-secured bra up and over