Stop Me (Last Stand #2)(79)
Author: Brenda Novak

Life was so much easier when he didn’t have anything to lose. He’d made the adjustment, knew how to deal with each day. So why was he getting involved with Jasmine? Caring, without the old assurance he’d possessed that fate would be kind to him, was new territory. And he didn’t want any part of it.

Jerking away from her, he stalked to the office, where the buzzer on the front desk roused a sleepy middle-aged man who rented him a room. When Romain walked back outside, it was drizzling, but he didn’t have to encourage Jasmine to get out of his truck. She was already standing in the rain, hair and clothes damp, suitcase in hand.

Although he tried to take it from her, she refused to let him carry it as they located the room. He unlocked the door but, using her suitcase to block him, she pushed past him and grabbed the key from his hands before slamming the door.

Romain stood there, feeling far too many things to sort them all out. He knew he was being unreasonable. He regretted his actions. But he couldn’t deal with the emotions she brought to life, and if this was the only way to put a stop to them, so be it.

Isolation. That was what he needed. He’d known it when they let him out of prison; he knew it now.

Telling himself it was for the best, he returned to his truck, got in and drove away.

Wet and miserable, Jasmine sank onto the bed with her suitcase at her feet, blinking hard against the tears that had started to fall. She told herself Romain didn’t deserve such an emotional reaction, that she barely knew him. But she didn’t have the reserves to deal with the hurt any other way, so she tried to convince herself that she wasn’t crying over him. She was crying because she was exhausted and confused and…lost. Always lost.

Stripping off her wet clothes, she kicked them aside and decided to take a hot shower. She had a picture of the man who’d taken Kimberly. An actual photograph.

And she knew that someone connected to the Moreaus would be able to identify him.

That was a giant leap forward. She should be happy right now, not mooning over someone she had no business wanting in the first place.

Adjusting the faucet, she waited several minutes for the hot water to kick in, then stood under the spray, trying not to think about Romain. Or the fact that she didn’t care whether or not they made love, she just wanted to be with him.

Romain drove for ten minutes, but every mile was harder than the one before.

He kept picturing Jasmine standing there in the rain with her suitcase—and kept wondering what the hell was wrong with him that he could be such a jerk. He’d learned to get angry when he felt threatened, learned to fight. Prison had taught him that, and so had the tough breaks that’d led him to prison. He couldn’t choose what he shut out. He had to shut it all out. But he knew Jasmine didn’t deserve the way he’d treated her. She’d had a few tough breaks of her own and didn’t need him to make her situation any worse.

But besides that, she was right. He wanted her now more than ever. And it made him feel disloyal—because he could no longer remember the subtleties of Pam’s expressions during those intimate moments, could no longer rely on the absolute dedication that’d made other women a very remote temptation. Feelings he’d thought would never change were dimming, slipping away, and he found himself yearning to let it happen, to move on despite the loss of his wife and the subsequent loss of his daughter.

Maybe it was normal that human survival would make a mockery of his devotion, but he couldn’t help feeling shallow for being so weak, so susceptible.

He was only a half hour from home when he began to slow. Don’t turn back.

You don’t want to hurt her again. It was true and, with his track record, hurting her seemed inevitable. But he kept seeing those wide trusting eyes gazing up at him as he rolled her beneath him, and it wasn’t three minutes later that he stopped at an all-night liquor store to buy a box of condoms.

A knock at the door surprised Jasmine just as she was toweling off from her extended shower. She had the television on to distract her from the thoughts spinning around in her head, but the volume was low. Surely it hadn’t disturbed anyone….

Standing behind the door to shield herself, she opened it the width allowed by the security chain and saw Romain there, his hands in the pockets of his coat, his collar turned up against the rain.

She pulled the towel tighter around her and stepped into view. Romain had seen a lot more than her bare legs and shoulders and, after the way he’d acted, she didn’t mind taunting him with what he couldn’t have. “Did you forget something?”

His eyes went briefly to the cle**age showing above the towel. “Will you let me in?”

“No. What do you want?”

He hesitated, glanced away, then met her gaze directly. “I want you,” he said simply.

Jasmine started to shake her head. She couldn’t take any more ups and downs.

But there was something so honest in those words, so vulnerable, that she couldn’t close the door on him, either.

He had to be as exhausted as she was. “You can sleep in the extra bed,” she said and removed the chain. But when he came in and closed the door behind him, he reached for her and she didn’t turn him away—even when her towel landed on the carpet.

Beverly sat in her home office, utterly exhausted. Once she’d gotten Billy and the baby to bed at the transfer house, she’d managed to nap a little, too, but the newborn had slept only two hours before screaming for half the night. She was so colicky and miserable Beverly hadn’t known how to help her. It was dawn when she finally settled down, time for Zalinda Sputero to start her shift. Zalinda had two kids of her own, whom she brought with her. She’d been told that the children in the transfer house were foster kids waiting to be placed and seemed to believe she was doing a good deed. The fact that Peccavi paid her in cash, like he did Beverly, should’ve told her otherwise, but if Zalinda suspected she’d fallen in with a bad crowd she preferred the money to a clean conscience. She had to feed her family somehow.

A noise at the door told Beverly that Phillip had followed her into the room.

They’d just had an argument because he’d taken off again while she was at work, had left even though she’d told him over and over how dangerous it was for Dustin to be alone. Dusty could’ve tried to get up and fallen; he could’ve had a seizure; he could’ve reached the pain meds he was always begging for and overdosed. All kinds of things could’ve gone wrong. Why wouldn’t Phillip listen?