All the Secrets We Keep (Quarry Book 2) Read online

  She had no home to get to, but he didn’t know that. The thought of driving again, even if it was only to the big-box store parking lot where she’d be able to park unmolested overnight, was enough to tighten her grip on the wheel again. Sleeping through this storm was going to be hard, too. Her hair was still wet, and she would have no place to dry it.

  “Theresa,” Ilya said, the way he had in the diner. This time she looked at him. His expression was curious. More open and honest than she could ever recall seeing it. “I don’t want you to crash your car because you were good enough to bring me home. Again.”

  She chuckled and shook her head. Lightning lit the car’s interior, bright as day, and she prayed hard for a moment to whatever greater power the universe provided that he didn’t look into the backseat and see her pillow and blankets, the deflated air mattress.

  “C’mon in until the storm lets up.”

  She nodded. Ilya counted to three, and they both got out, slamming the car doors and racing for the front door. They got there seconds ahead of another flash and crash, and Ilya pushed open the door so they could stumble into the entryway.

  Theresa wasn’t surprised when he kissed her.

  Somehow she seemed to have been expecting it. The looks. The touch. His reputation, if nothing else. She’d been waiting for Ilya to pull her into his arms, one of his hands flat between her shoulder blades so he could bend her as he captured her mouth the way he’d taken that spoon of tapioca pudding. Savoring, lingering, tasting.

  Breathing hard, they both ended the kiss at the same time and moved a step apart from each other. Outside, the storm seemed to be moving away. The plink of water dripping off them onto the hardwood floor seemed very loud. Theresa put her fingertips to her lips.

  “Don’t do this because you’re trying to get back at him. Or her,” she said quietly against her own touch. “This isn’t the same thing at all.”

  “I’m not doing it to get back at either of them,” Ilya said. “Maybe just at you.”

  She was the one who kissed him this time, pushing him back a step so that he bumped the newel post. Her hands anchored on his belt loops, her fingers hooking them for a moment, holding him still so she could explore his mouth with hers.

  They didn’t break apart so abruptly this time. Softly, easily, ending with a brush of lip on lip, they parted. A moment or two after that, she let go of his belt loops so she could put another half step of distance between them.

  “You want to talk to me all the time about how I don’t know you? Well, you have no idea who I am,” she said. “Not a single damned clue, especially if you think that kissing me will make me feel bad about convincing Alicia to sell. It won’t change my mind about you, either.”

  “I’m sorry, Theresa.”

  It was not what she wanted him to say, but the kicker of it was that he sounded sincere. Theresa nodded and shivered. Her clothes were soaked through. She went to the door and looked out through the door’s side windows.

  “It’s still coming down really hard,” she said as though nothing had passed between them but the most casual of conversations.

  She couldn’t decide if she was angry with him for the kiss or at herself for the one she’d given him. All she could be sure of was the lingering flavor of coffee and sweet jelly, and the memory of his heat against her. Behind her, she heard the shuffle of his feet on the bare wooden floor, and she tensed, waiting to see if he would touch her. Disappointed, a little, when he didn’t. Maybe only because it denied her the chance to refuse him.

  “It’s a forty-minute drive back to Elisabethville,” Ilya said, naming the town he didn’t know she no longer lived in. “I can’t make you go out in that. Stay here tonight. You can have my bed.”

  She turned to face him.

  “I’ll be on the couch,” he said, seeing her expression. “Not like last time. You should have the bed.”

  Snuggled beneath blankets that had covered him? Her head on the pillow that had cradled his? The sheets would smell of him. Sleeping in his bed without him in it beside her would be as intimate as those kisses they’d shared, yet would make her feel as distant as a stranger. She didn’t want to go out into the storm, not even to get her pajamas, but she most definitely did not want to sleep in Ilya’s bed alone.

  “The couch is fine. I’ll need something dry to wear, though. And a hot shower first.” If she took one tonight, washed and combed her hair, she could braid it before she went to sleep. It would still be damp in the morning, but it would be tidy and professionally appropriate for the cold calls she’d planned to make.

  “Sure. Of course.”

  She followed him upstairs, where all the doors in the hallway were closed except for the one to the bathroom. She took the oversize sweatpants and T-shirt he was lending her and let herself linger in the shower, using up their hot water far beyond what seemed polite. With the almost-scalding spray beating down on her shoulders, she could close her eyes and pretend everything was going to be all right.

  It wasn’t going to be, she thought when the water started to go lukewarm and she got out, drying herself with a towel embroidered with daisies that she swore she remembered from when she’d lived there as a girl. Nothing was going to be okay, not for a long time, anyway, and some of that wasn’t her fault, but some of it was.

  She came out of the bathroom wearing Ilya’s clothes, her hair clean and braided so that it hung down over one shoulder. The rain still pounded the roof, but no light flashed through the windows at either end of the hall, and she heard no more thunder. She knocked softly at Ilya’s bedroom door, opening it at the sound of his voice.

  “I changed the sheets,” he said. “You really should take the bed.”

  “I can’t do that, Ilya.”

  He shook his head. “No, really. I feel like shit, making you sleep on the couch—”

  “It’s fine. I really don’t mind.”

  “The bed’s big enough for two.” The offer might’ve sounded lecherous. Maybe was meant to be. He only sounded hesitant.

  She could tell him that the lumpy couch was better than an air mattress in the backseat of her car. That she’d showered here not because of the chilly rain but because the other option would’ve been pits-and-privates in the bathroom of the discount store in the morning, early enough so that nobody would walk in on her. That she had enough money in her bank account to make the minimum payment on her outstanding loan and monthly bills, but nothing beyond that, and she chose to keep making those loan payments because every time she did, it chipped away a tiny bit at the seemingly insurmountable problem of getting her credit score above three hundred. She could have told him that almost everything she owned was in her car or a storage unit that was about to go up for auction if she couldn’t manage the back payments on it by next month. She could tell him this wouldn’t have been the first time she’d let a guy take her to bed simply so she’d have a place to spend the night.

  At nearly two in the morning and wearing his clothes, Theresa didn’t have it in her to be honest.

  “I don’t think it’s a very good idea,” Theresa said. “Do you?”

  “I’m not known for my good ideas.” An unmistakable heat flared in Ilya’s gaze.

  No hesitation this time. Definitely an invitation. One he’d no doubt made to countless other women who’d taken him up on it. Theresa was not about to share his bed. Especially not after that burning pair of kisses at the front door. How could she? What would she do? Screw him with his mother down the hall, his brother on the floor above them? In the house where they’d once lived as brother and sister? Theresa had made a lot of dumb choices in her life, but she was not going to make this one, no matter how tempted she was to explore the heat that had become so palpable between them.

  “I really have to be up early.” That was the truth.

  “Okay, then. Good night, I guess.” He sat on the edge of the bed. He waited until she got to the doorway before he said in a low voice, “Theresa.”