Page 55 of The Agent
Ten minutes later, she slipped under the covers and stared up at the ceiling. Outside, the rain continued to pound against the house, drumming out a staccato beat on the roof.
Sleep did not come. She was too keyed up and afraid, unable to erase the memory of what Patrick had done to her locker. That angry red word, designed to scare, to accuse. She pushed the image from her mind, only to have it replaced with one equally disturbing—Caleb sitting outside her door. He was actually prepared to spend the night there. In the morning, his back would be throbbing, his legs stiff from— God, she was such a bleeding heart.
Or maybe she was just looking for excuses to invite him into her room.
Marley sighed in the darkness. Why couldn’t she just stay angry with him? She shouldn’t want him around. After Patrick’s betrayal, she’d banished her former fiancé from her heart and mind. Had had zero desire ever to see his sorry face again. So why wasn’t it that way with Caleb?
She lay in bed for eighteen more minutes, watching the red numbers on her alarm clock roll over. Finally, she couldn’t stand it anymore.
Groaning, she pushed away the comforter and got up, bare feet padding toward the door. She threw it open, and sure enough, Caleb sat on the floor, his head resting against the door of the guest room.
“Get in here already,” she mumbled.
He shifted, one hand on the gun holstered at his hip, the other behind his head as a makeshift pillow. “I’m fine out here.”
She set her jaw. “Seriously, come in. I can’t sleep knowing you’re spending the night on the floor.”
“I—”
She held up her hand to silence him. “Stop arguing,” she mimicked, “and come in.”
Looking extremely reluctant, Caleb stood up and followed her into the bedroom. He eyed the bed, and she noticed his throat working as he swallowed. She knew exactly what he wasthinking. She was thinking it, too, and her body grew hot as she remembered everything they’d done on this bed only last night.
A wave of longing hit her as she thought about Caleb’s hands touching her skin, the seductive swirl of his tongue, the strength of his body as he drove into her, over and over.
“Now what?” he asked with a sigh, turning to her for his next orders.
She hesitated. “We’ll share the bed. It’s big enough for both of us.”
“Marley…this isn’t a good idea.”
“I don’t care. It’s one o’clock in the morning, I’m exhausted, and I can’t sleep knowing you’re sitting on the hard floor.” She marched to the bed and got under the covers, then shot him a pointed look.
Caleb seemed ready to protest again, but finally he just nodded, a resigned light in his eyes. Slowly, he removed his gun and holster and carefully placed them on the top of her dresser. Then he glanced down at his clothing, as if trying to figure out what the heck to do.
Marley averted her eyes as he reached for his zipper. She heard the soft rustle of his clothing falling to the floor and then he was lowering his big body onto her bed. The mattress sagged from the weight of him. Her pulse sped up.
He didn’t get under the covers, just lay on top of them, flat on his back with his arms pressed to his sides. She was on her back, too, suddenly feeling nervous and slightly upset with herself. Her fingers tingled with the need to touch him. From the corner of her eye, she saw his bare chest rising and falling with each breath he took. And his masculine scent wrapped around her, spicy and musky and totally intoxicating.
She curled her fingers into fists to keep from reaching over and touching him. Staying completely still, she closed her eyes and tried to sleep, but her mind refused to shut off. She suddenlyremembered something, and rolled onto her side to look at him. “What did you say to Hernandez in the hall?” she asked.
“Nothing important.”
“It seemed important,” she said. “And when he came back to question me, he was actually being kind of…nice. So either hell froze over or you got him to change his mind about me.”
Caleb went quiet for a moment. “I reminded him that you’re not Amanda James.”
She wrinkled her forehead. “Who?”
“AJ got me a copy of Hernandez’s file, which included the last case he worked.” Caleb paused. “I probably shouldn’t be telling you this.”
“Don’t you think I deserve to know why he’s treated me so badly?”
He paused for a second beat, finally letting out a breath. “Amanda James was the girlfriend of a guy Hernandez was trying to pin a series of bank robberies on. She insisted she had no idea what her boyfriend was doing, that she played no part in the robberies, and she was inconsolable when Hernandez brought her in for questioning. She was just a kid, barely nineteen, and Hernandez felt protective of her.”
Marley propped herself up on her elbow. “What happened?”
“The boyfriend was arrested but the judge let him out on bail. The day he got out, he and the girl robbed a grocery store, trying to get money to skip town. They ended up killing three people, including a ten-year-old kid.”
