Wanting him but knowing the addictive and intense emotions she could feel when they were connected physically would be impossible for her to stand. Her sanity would never last staying in the same house with him but not touching.
Not after he’d shown her a kind of pleasure she hadn’t even dreamed about, not to mention a closeness she had never known could exist between two people. When he touched her, they connected on a level far beyond the mere physical.
Didn’t he feel it, too?
The doorbell rang as Josie was pulling her lasagna from the oven.
“I’ll get it,” Claire called from the living room.
Daniel would have told her to wait for him if he didn’t know, with a certainty he could not have explained to someone else, who was on the other side of the door.
“It’s your friend, Hotwire.” Claire’s voice had an odd quality Daniel was in no mood to wonder about at the moment.
He was too busy watching with grim acceptance as Josie quickly set the hot dish down on the counter and ran into the living room to greet the other man. Daniel followed her, arriving in time to see Hotwire wrap Josie up in a hug that required full-body contact.
It lasted several seconds, every one over the first unnecessary excess in Daniel’s opinion.
Claire stood shyly to one side, and Daniel noticed right away that Hotwire didn’t hug her.
“Thank you so much for coming.” Josie smiled up at the blond man as if he’d found the cure for cancer or something.
“It’s no trouble. You’re a friend, Josie.” He turned to Daniel. “Hey, Nitro. I tried to call you last night and early this morning on your cell phone, but I got voice mail. You didn’t call back.”
Daniel hadn’t known his cell phone had almost no signal in the hotel room, so he hadn’t heard it ring. He’d been relieved when he’d listened to the messages after realizing he’d missed two calls because they’d both been from Hotwire. His friend had only wanted to give an ETA for his arrival at PDX and to say he’d had no luck looking for Josie’s dad via the Internet yet.
“I didn’t check until early this afternoon.” When he’d first become aware he’d missed the calls. “By then you were airborne.”
“Why’s that, I wonder?” Hotwire asked, his blue eyes too damn knowing.
“We had a break-in here last night. The whole day has just been crazy,” Josie said, probably thinking she was explaining Daniel’s uncharacteristic behavior.
Hotwire knew better, and his shrewd gaze met Daniel’s. “I was real surprised you didn’t answer last night. You usually sleep with your cell phone beside your bed. And there was no answer when I called Josie’s phone either.”
She sighed. “My cell phone was lost in the fire.”
“I called here. Didn’t any of you hear the phone ring?”
“I was working,” Claire replied, her vague expression giving nothing away of Daniel and Josie’s movements.
She was a discreet roommate, the best kind if you had to have one.
Josie turned an interesting shade of pink, and he waited to see if she would tell Hotwire the truth, but her lips stayed sealed while her moss green eyes assaulted him with mute appeal. Did she want him to explain, or to lie?
He’d never lied to either Wolf or Hotwire, and he wasn’t going to start now. He put his arm around her waist in an unmistakable gesture of possession. “Josie and I weren’t here last night.”
She didn’t pull away, but her body was tenser than that of a member of the NRA at an antiwar rally.
“Where were you?” Hotwire drawled, seemingly endlessly amused by the situation, if the twinkle in his pale eyes was anything to go by.
“We stayed at a hotel.”
“For security reasons?”
“N—”
“Are you hungry?” Josie slotted in before Daniel could even get the word out. “Dinner’s ready.”
She stepped away from him and headed into the kitchen. “You know where everything is, Hotwire. Why don’t you get freshened up while I put the food on the table?”
Josie had known as soon as she stepped away from Daniel that it had been the wrong thing to do. His expression had turned to stone, and he’d been more withdrawn than ever over dinner.
He hadn’t even sat beside her at the table. There were six places at the table, and Claire had left one end and the chair to its right unset. Daniel had chosen to sit on the other side of Claire, leaving the chair to Josie’s left for Hotwire.
He’d allowed the conversation to flow around him without making much contribution, leaving it to Claire and Josie to tell Hotwire about the break-in and their belief it had been the work of her father’s would-be killers. Every time she tried to draw Daniel into the discussion, he answered monosyllabically, which was not out of the ordinary for him, but frustrated her nonetheless. She could just feel him smoldering, even if nothing showed on his face.
“You have no idea where your father is?” Hotwire asked her as he pushed his plate aside.
She directed her thoughts away from her lover and back to the discussion at hand.
“No.” She stood up and started clearing the table so she could serve dessert. “I’m going to finish reading the journals just in case I’m missing something, though.”
“We can start going through the computer files tonight.”
She smiled at him, relieved they had a direction to go for their investigation. “That would be great.”
She hated feeling helpless, and knowing her dad was somewhere out there, maybe even not remembering why he’d left the hospital, filled her with fear.
Daniel had risen when she did and silently began stacking plates. He put them in the dishwasher while she dished up four bowls of French vanilla ice cream and poured a berry compote she’d made earlier over them. Despite the smallness of her kitchen, she and Daniel did not bump once.
“Can I help with your investigation in any way?” Claire asked as Josie and Daniel each brought two bowls to the table and sat down.
“I’d love your help, but I don’t want you missing classes on my account.” Josie sighed, remorse eating at her insides. “I feel guilty enough that you lost so much just by having the bad luck to be my roommate.”
“Don’t say that,” Claire replied, her eyes and voice filled with distress. “None of this is your fault.”
“If I’d kept a better eye on Dad, he could help us identify his attackers a lot more easily and might even have known they’d want the computer files, too. We could have been here waiting for the thieves.”
Hotwire reached out and squeezed her hand. “Not even you could keep your dad from bolting if that was what he wanted to do. He’s too good a soldier, and if you’d been here, the perps wouldn’t have tried last night, and you wouldn’t be sure today that the bombing was linked to the school’s files.”
“Thanks.” But she still felt badly.
She couldn’t help it. Her dad was at risk, and she felt as though she’d let him down in some way.
“After what happened last night, I’d prefer to bunk on your floor out here rather than hit a hotel.” Hotwire had already brought in his duffel bag.
Daniel could have told Josie she’d lost the argument before it began, but he let her go through the spiel about how Hotwire would be more comfortable in a bed and there was no need for him to stay at the house.
He gave Daniel a meaningful glance. “If Nitro can survive sleeping on the floor, so can I.”
After the way Josie had acted earlier, Daniel figured that was exactly where he was going to end up sleeping. He didn’t know if she was regretting giving herself to him, but she sure as hell didn’t want Hotwire to know about it. As much as her denial of him irked Daniel, a woman had a right to choose who she took into her bed.