His body went still but his face registered surprise and I continued.

“I was scared of losing them. I was scared of them not thinking I was good enough.” I bent and touched my lips to his and then said there, “See? You bring out the best in me.”

He rolled us so I was on my back, he was on top and he was looking down at me.

“Not sure I’m big on the best in you bein’ attitude,” he said but I knew he was teasing, I knew it because his face was warm and his eyes were dancing.

“I am since it’s the real me and I feel safe being just that with you.” My hand went to the side of his head and my fingers slid into his thick hair. “It was exhausting, trying to be perfect. It feels good being able to be just me.”

“Laurie –”

“Kiss me, Tate,” I demanded softly.

“Baby –”

I lifted my head and put my lips to his, encouraging on a whisper, “I wanna catch fire, honey, and only you can bring that out for me.”

I watched up close as Tate’s eyes went intense then his head slanted and he muttered, “You got it, Ace.”

Then he kissed me.

Then he made me catch fire.

* * * * *

Two days after that, Tate was back out on the road, the blinds guys were up in our bedroom installing Tate’s new, cool as heck, dark wood venetian blinds and I was in his office sorting through his stuff.

I was coming to the realization that I could spend four, sixteen hour days organizing his office and I still wouldn’t have it in hand when a thought occurred to me, it involved the computer, the computer was right there so I followed through with that thought.

I turned on the computer, typed in the password Tate gave me, pulled up the search engine and typed “Tatum Jackson”.

Then I hit enter.

A listing of sites with Tate’s name in them instantly appeared.

The top listing was an online encyclopedia entry. I held my breath and clicked on it.

At the right top side was a photo of Tate, surprisingly not from his football days, relatively recent. It was torso and up, mostly his side, his neck was twisted and he was looking in the direction of the camera. In shot, but turned away, his back to the camera, Tate’s hand wrapped around his bicep, was a blond man in handcuffs. Under this photo was a caption that said, “Jackson, after apprehending now convicted murderer Cleeg Johansson” and under that were Tate’s stats.

The rest of the site contained a good deal of description mostly of Tate’s short-lived football career but also Tate’s accomplishments as a police officer and bounty hunter with some alarming information about the fugitives he’d found, a goodly number of them being very high on the armed and dangerous scale.

There were photos of him playing football but they were small so I clicked backwards to the search results and randomly chose a site further down the list.

It came up with a black background, “Tatum Jackson, God” in green writing at the top with blue footballs dancing on the left side of his name and red hearts dancing to the right by the word “God”.

I stared at the page and the two side by side photos of Tate prominent on the front of it. One was of him walking from the field what appeared to be at halftime or after a game, helmet held by the faceguard dangling from his fingers, hair wet with sweat, eyes still intense with residual focus on “the game”, body lean and fit and spectacular in his Penn State jersey and football pads. The other was a black and white, taken from the back, a football field with a bunch of equipment was in front of him. Tate was standing on the sidelines wearing a pair of loose-fitting athletic shorts that hung down his thighs and he held a t-shirt bunched loosely in his hand. His muscled back was bared and the eagle tattoo was on prominent, glorious display. His neck was twisted, his head slightly tipped down, you could see his profile and he was grinning at someone out of shot.

Wow, but he was something.

“Cool!” I heard Jonas cry from behind me, I jumped and turned to see him rush into the room. “You found Loretta’s site.”

It was way too late for me to hide the fact that I’d internet searched his father and I knew this because Jonas had pushed my hand away and was clicking through “Loretta’s site” with what looked to be great familiarity of what it held.

“Loretta?” I asked him.

“This page is my favorite,” Jonas said and looked at me as I looked at the page and he went on, “Yeah, Loretta. She’s Dad’s stalker.”

I knew my mouth was hanging open but I couldn’t close it because I was staring at a page that was a mélange of photos of Tate from what appeared to be high school, through Penn State (not just playing football but also walking to class and sitting on barstools and the like) – I shoved Jonas’s hand out of the way, commandeered the mouse and scrolled down – through Tate at awards ceremonies, his short-lived career with the Eagles (mostly shots during practice) – I scrolled down further – and shots of him in Carnal and doing bounty hunter things, like dragging fugitives into police stations or standing over them with their bellies to the pavement and their arms cuffed behind their backs.

“Oh my God,” I breathed.

“She’s harmless,” Jonas told me.

“Oh my God,” I repeated.

“Dad’s talked to her. She’s agreed not to put pictures of me on there but I think that sucks, since the kids at school thought it would be cool. Hey, wait!” he cried. “She’s got a new page.”

He pushed my hand away, clicked on the “3” at the bottom of the page which was next to the “Pages 1 2” and then a site came up with one picture.

Tate and me on his bike.

We were waiting to pull out of Bubba’s parking lot, Tate’s booted foot was to the ground, his head was turned to look down the street and I was tucked close to his back, my arms around him, my thigh against his, my chin to his shoulder.

The caption under it said, “Tate’s Flame, love her or hate her (and I hate her), she’s got great legs.”

I shot from the chair and squealed, “Oh my God!”

Jonas grinned up at me. “You’re famous, Laurie.”

I didn’t hear him. I was too focused on my horrified panic.

I tore my eyes from the screen, reached out to where my cell phone was on top of a pile of scattered papers on Tate’s desk, snatched it up and called Tate.

“Laurie, it’s cool. Loretta’s awesome. She went to school with Dad at Penn State. They had some class together. He knew her. Dad says she’s harmless,” Jonas, reading the atmosphere, assured me.