Authors: Kristi Lea
Idiot man.
Jess stared at the wide red splotch oozing through
the cotton of Noah’s shirt. “You need a doctor.”
He glanced at the wound and frowned. “Probably
just a new bandage. I will take care of it.”
She waited. He tried to reach for her again with
his good arm and she recoiled. Then she remembered the coaster still under her
shoe. She pulled her foot back towards herself, scooting the crystal. She
plunked it back on the side table and cast another look at Noah and the red on
his shirt. “So go take care of it.”
He all but growled. “I am fine.”
“Idiot man.” She stood up.
He still sat on his haunches on the floor, looking
blankly back up at her. He looked pale around the edges, and she could see the
whites of his knuckles on clenched fists. She felt a familiar void at the base
of her stomach like that first huge hill of the roller coaster. It sucked her
breath down and away. He was in pain and hiding it from her.
“Do you have supplies to change the dressing with
you or do we have to go back to Walgreens?”
“In my room. Upstairs. I’m fine.” He stood up
quickly. Strongly. But she didn’t miss how he put a hand on the edge of the
chair to steady himself.
She forced herself to breathe slowly. There was no
reason to panic. Noah Grayson was young and healthy. If he were here, the wound
couldn’t be that bad. Nothing to worry about. “Look, I’m coming with you. I
won’t run away. Upstairs, right?”
He hesitated for a few more heartbeats, then
nodded.
He ushered her in front of him up a wide wooden
staircase and down a cream-and-floral wallpapered hall to a tall polished
mahogany door. Once upon a time she dreamed about living in a house like this.
A stately Victorian, full of chintz and vases of freshly cut flowers, carved
furniture and sparkling crystal. A house like Tallie’s.
Inside the room, Noah grabbed a small navy blue
duffel bag off of a luggage rack and walked through a door that lead to the
bathroom. Jess shut the door to the hall behind her and looked around. In the
middle of the room was a massive poster bed, a pair of wing chairs like the
ones from the parlor, a small dresser. Both bedding and walls were covered in the
same black-and-white fleur-de-lis patterns. The effect was a bit dizzying.
She could hear sounds of a fabric rustling and
running water in the next room, and a faint hiss that might have been a sharp
intake of breath. She sat in one of the arm chairs and waited. He hadn’t closed
the bathroom door all the way, and from here she could see a thin slice of the
action through the crack.
Noah’s dark form loomed above a white pedestal
sink. He had taken off his shirt and she could see hints of the tanned skin of
his back before he turned away. Her pulse quickened and she felt a rush of heat
through her belly and to her sex. She forced her eyes down to her hands.
Something hit the bathroom floor with a bang and
she heard a stream of unintelligible cursing from Noah.
She jumped up and knocked softly on the cracked
door. It swung wide open. Noah sat on the lid of the toilet, shirtless, his
face pale and his breathing heavy. His bag lay at his feet, with toothpaste and
shampoo and other toiletry bottles spilling out of the open zipper. The exposed
wound on his shoulder was bruised black and blue with an ugly black and red
slash through the middle probably three inches long. One corner wept tears of
red blood where the stitches didn’t hold the edges closed.
“Are you okay?”
He didn’t answer right away.
She bent down to help pick up the fallen bag,
expecting another brusque retort. Surprisingly, he stayed where he was. Quickly
she stuffed the contents back into the bag and sat back. “Can I help?”
“I will be fine.” His voice was shaky.
“Yeah, right.” She shoved the bag to one corner
and stood to wash her hands at the sink, taking time to scrub them thoroughly.
He had set out a couple of gauze pads, bandage tape, and a tube of prescription
antibiotic on the ledge. She spotted a bottle of Tylenol on the floor and left
it there.
Grabbing the supplies, she turned back toward him.
“Let me see that arm.”
To her surprise, he turned slightly so she could.
“Hold still.” She began to clean the area around
the wound with one of the pads. “What happened? The news report was pretty
vague about the whole thing.”
He winced as she got close to where the cut was
still tender. “I found a guy sneaking out of your garden. He shot me.”
“Did you catch him?” She squeezed a line of the
ointment onto a clean gauze pad. “Who was it?”
“I got shot and hit my head on the concrete. He
got away.”
She began cutting strips of tape. “What was he
after?”
His eyes flickered from the scissors in her hands
to her face and then back. “No one knows. Your security didn’t even know he was
there. They were supposed to turn over any surveillance video for us to look
at.”
She patted the last of the tape in place and
tossed the scraps in the trash. “And?”
He shrugged and then winced. Jess found the
dropped bottle of Tylenol on the floor and handed it to him. “Unless you had
something else to take care of the pain.”
He lifted his gaze from the bottle. It lingered
for a minute on her chest, but by the time his eyes met hers, they were
unreadable. “Nope.”
She waited. Raised an eyebrow to his stony
expression. “So what did the security tapes show? It is my house. I have a
right to know.”
“You probably do.” He stood up and made to walk
past her.
It was either climb in the sink to avoid him, or
park herself in front of that solid expanse of muscled chest. She parked. And
crossed her arms. And tried to ignore the way his abdominal muscles rippled
when he breathed. “What did you see on the tapes?”
“You would have to ask an active member of the
force. I am on ‘leave pending an internal investigation’.”
The air in her lungs escaped with a whoosh and she
folded meekly as he maneuvered around her and back into the bedroom.
Next to the dresser he gingerly slipped a t-shirt
over his head then leaned his good arm down on the edge of the bed to rest,
still breathing heavier than she liked.
She took a minute to parse his words. Law
enforcement agencies launched internal investigations when officers shot
suspects, not the other way around. “What happened in the alley? What aren’t
you telling me?”
He shot her a withering look. “Funny, that was my
question.”
She chanced a glance at his arm. Her bandage job
seemed to be holding, but the edges were visible beneath his short sleeve.
Unconsciously, she reached up to smooth her short hair down. “I don’t know for
sure who the men work for. But I can guess.”
He tugged the shirt down over his waist and
waited.
“They told me the ‘boss man’ wanted to talk to me.
Around here, that can only mean one person. Senator Wilson.”
He didn’t bother to disguise the sneer in his
voice. “Lover’s quarrel?”
The sting of his words went straight to Jessica’s
chest.
Tramp. Whore. Worse. She had been called all of it
over the years. But Charles had insulated her from so much of it for so long.
Of course Noah would know about her so-called affair with the senator. Of
course he would believe every word. That was the point. Wasn’t it?
Well, let him believe it. After this morning’s
attack, she knew she had little chance of escaping this town without
assistance. She had precious little money left. And Tallie hadn't left any
money in that precious package at the park.
Noah didn’t have to know the real reason that
Wilson would send thugs after her, as long as he could help her escape.
“I need to get out of town. It won’t take Wilson’s
men long to track me down. There are only so many hotels…Do I really have to
spell out what will happen if he catches me?”
He frowned. “If you were so hell-bent to escape
the man, why run straight to his back yard?”
“I didn’t know he would find me. I wasn’t even
sure he was looking until today,” she shot back. “Look, I know things about the
man. Things I’m sure he doesn’t want the public to hear. Things he would go to
great lengths to cover up.”
“Like the fact that he’s a lying, cheating
bastard? Who in politics isn’t? Your affair is old news, sweetheart.”
***
Jess’s eyes blazed as she argued with him, and her
cheeks flushed. Her chest rose and fell, stretching the fabric of her shirt
taut across her breasts. He flexed his wounded shoulder, letting the spikes of
pain take his mind off of her body and the effect it was having on his.
None of what she said added up. Maybe the Senator
did want to talk to her, and maybe he did send his men to find her. But why
threaten her? Why the home invasions, the dead rodent? If the guy were that
much of a bastard to want her dead, surely the deed would have been done by
now. Jess had been protected back in California, but not that well protected.
Either she was wrong or she was lying through her
teeth.
Trouble was, for once he had no idea what the
right thing to do was. If Wilson were rich enough and well-connected enough,
then putting Jess in local FBI custody would be the same as delivering her on a
silver platter.
He could haul her back to California and turn her
in to his own office. He would have already bundled her into his car if he were
still on active duty. But since he couldn’t keep an eye on her personally, that
idea tasted like bile in the back of his throat. Cutlass had it in for her, and
possibly for him too.
There was no paragraph in the Policies and
Procedures handbook to deal with this situation. Just his gut. And his gut told
him to take her suggestion and take her out of town. And fast.
“Where would we go?”
The question must have caught her off guard
because she blinked twice and then closed her mouth. She opened it again to
speak, but the ringing of his cell phone interrupted. He glanced at the Caller
ID. Cole’s personal number.
Noah clicked the talk button and moved to lean his
back against the door to the hallway. She hadn’t run yet, but he didn’t trust
her not to try while he was distracted. “Grayson here.”
“Hey, Noah. I tried to stop by your place just now
but you weren’t home.”
Noah forced a smile into his voice. “Back already?
How did it go?”
“Eh. I’ll tell you about it later. Want to meet up
for a beer, or are you cleared for drinking yet?”
“Yep I’m cleared, but I’ll have to take a rain
check on the beer. I’m out of town myself for a few days.”
“No shit?” Cole sounded surprised.
Noah glanced back at Jess. With the argument rug
pulled out from under her, she seemed to deflate. She sat down on one of the
arm chairs and rested her head on the wing back. No doubt she was hanging on
his every word, though.
“I thought I’d take advantage of my time off.
Head for the mountains. I’ve been working way too hard lately.”
“Huh. Who knew. I don’t think you’ve taken a
vacation as long as we’ve worked together.”
Not entirely true, but Cole had a point. Outside
of his annual trek to his parents’ every holiday, Noah didn’t do vacations. If
he wanted a beach, he had a dozen choices twenty minutes from his condo.
Sight-seeing wasn’t a lot of fun by yourself.
“Yeah, well, I think I’m due for a nap. Did you
find what you were looking for? On your trip?” He knew the answer, but Cole
would expect him to ask.
“No. But we cracked a major larceny ring. Picked
up a perp who’s been picking pockets in a dozen states. He thought he’d found
himself the mother lode with that last job, if you know what I mean.”
Noah blew out a breath. That corroborated part of
Jess’s story, and helped explain why the multi-billionaire starlet was
travelling like a runaway teenager. “Did he have any information on his
victim?”
Cole’s laugh sounded hollow. “Maybe. We are trying
to backtrack over his route. It won’t take long to pick up her trail.”
Noah glanced over at Jessica. “Uh. Great. Anything
else?”
“Nah. Well, there was one interesting thing, but
it isn’t really pertinent to the investigation. We got the background checks on
the household staff. One of the catering helpers is on the Homeland Security’s
watch list. He’s Cuban, here illegally, which is what got him flagged. He
probably shouldn’t have been on the staff list at all. He was one of those
waiters the Kingsbury’s would bring in when they threw a big party, which they
haven’t done in years.”
“Interesting. Did you send someone to question him
anyway?”
“We tried. His listed address is old, and the
landlord hasn’t heard from him in months. Anyway, enough work talk. Enjoy your
R&R. If you want to get together this weekend, I will be at my sister’s
house. Call me when you get home and we will go have a beer.”
“Great.” Noah hung up the phone, wondering about
the abrupt change in topic at the end of that conversation. He turned to Jess.
“When did you get off the Greyhound bus?”
Jess’s eyes had been slitted as though she were
fighting sleep, but opened wide at his question. “Yesterday morning.”
Noah did a quick mental calculation. Cole would be
reading passenger lists now, watching surveillance video, tracing who was on
the bus with the thief. It wouldn’t take them long to trace her here.
And if they found Noah here with her, it would end
his career. “Grab your bag. We’re checking out.”
An hour down I75, Noah pulled off at a gas station
to fill up his Highlander. They were already nearly to the outskirts of
Chattanooga, where Jessica had insisted they drive. He didn’t trust her, but
didn’t have any better idea about what to do next.
His stomach had its own idea. He pulled into the
lot of a Denny’s, bustling with the early Sunday dinner crowd. “Hungry?”
Jess jumped. She had spent most of the drive
staring out the passenger window, not saying a word.
He jerked his head toward the neon yellow sign
over the door. “It’s not exactly haute cuisine, but I need some dinner.”
“I don’t feel like eating.” The words were defiant
but her tone sounded exhausted.
“Then come in and keep me company. I won’t take
‘no’ for an answer.”
She shoved the baseball cap down over her head and
slung the tattered backpack over her shoulder and tromped after him. Soon they
were sliding into a vinyl-padded booth between a table full of teenagers and a
family with one baby in a highchair and two more wiggling toddlers in booster
seats.
Remnants of cigarette smoke mingled with the
smells of bacon grease and fry oil, making Noah’s mouth water. It smelled homey
and filling. The laminated menus were greasy, and he scanned through the choices
for something that was likely to be drenched in butter and salt.
Across the table, Jess slurped down half a glass
of water in about two swallows. She stared at the menu, at the ice swirling
around in the cup, at the light fixtures. Anywhere but at him.
“How much money did you lose on the bus?”
That got her attention. Noah was beginning to
crave those flashes of blue fire she kept shooting him with her eyes. With the
hundreds of photos and video clips he had studied over the past year and a
half, the feature of hers that he always saw first was her eyes.
Sure, the rest of her body, displayed in all of
its lush beauty, was nice to look at. Hell, he had endured more than enough
good-natured ribbing from some of the other agents about the “research” that he
was assigned. And he couldn’t deny that photo after photo of her naked and
scantily clad body affected him. He had painstakingly cataloged the photos with
words—dates, locations, others in the photos, any other detail that could help
establish a pattern.
Words didn’t have plump lips and rouge-tipped nipples;
they didn’t have teasing smiles or lengths of perfectly toned legs. Words
didn’t sparkle with humor, like her eyes. Or burn with anger, sadness,
calculation, annoyance. With secrets. No one would ever believe that he could
lose himself for hours in photos of her eyes when there was so much more of her
there for the ogling.
“Is that how you guys found me?”
“It’s how I found you. My partner just got back
from a trip to Las Vegas where he arrested a thief who had been targeting
passengers on Greyhound buses.”
She shrugged and glanced away. The gesture was
designed to look indifferent, but he didn’t miss the bleakness behind her eyes.
“Cole guessed about the cards, but he thought you
were on a bender in Vegas. There were quite a few of those prepaid credit cards
on that report. How many did you have on you? Surely the guy didn’t take them
all. How much do you have left?”
“If I give you the rest, will you forget you found
me here?”
Noah flinched. “No.”
A waitress finished unloading a tray of coffee
across the aisle and turned to Noah and Jessica, paper and pen at the ready.
“What can I get you two to eat?”
Jessica tried to waive the woman off.
The waitress raised an eyebrow. “Not even
something to drink? Dessert? We have pie.”
He frowned. “You haven’t eaten all day.”
Jess shrugged. “That’s okay.”
Noah ordered a chicken dinner with a salad, plus
an extra side of bread. “And an extra plate.”
The waitress left and Jess glowered. “I don’t need
your food.”
“What about my money? How much did you lose to the
pickpocket? If I had to guess, quite a bit. I got a peek at the charges the guy
was racking up before Cole left. He had one heck of a run at the casinos.”
The waitress came back and set a plate of bread
and butter in between them. Jess bit her lip as she glanced at the food. He
shoved the plate toward her, a knot forming in the pit of his stomach. “Let me
guess. He took almost everything you had. Here, eat. It’s on me.”
She picked at the bread at first, just a few
crumbs. Then a few more. He waited until she had downed most of her roll before
he took one. The rest of his food came out quickly and this time she didn’t
protest when he piled half of it on the extra plate and slid it across the
table.
“I would ask what you are going to do in
Chattanooga, but you probably won’t tell me,” he said between bites of chicken.
“And maybe it’s better that I don’t know ahead of time. So instead, it’s your
turn. Ask me something. Anything. Whatever you want.”
She twirled her fork in her mashed potatoes for a
moment. “Do you have a big family?”
He paused, his cup halfway to his lips. Not what
he was expecting. “No. My mother lives in California with her husband. I have
two step-brothers.”
“Older or younger?”
“Younger. They’re both in high school.”
“Your father?”
“Dead.”
She was silent for a long moment.
Noah’s brothers were his mother’s second chance at
life. After his dad died, she married a plastic surgeon and moved them to a
ritzy suburb in Atherton, California. His brothers had grown up attending
private schools and learning to golf on the weekends. It was a far cry from his
working class childhood.
“Do you see your mother a lot, and the brothers?”
“Not really. They are all pretty busy with school
and all that, and its several hours drive. My mom keeps busy with her
charities. We talk on the phone mostly.”
“Oh.” He couldn’t decipher all the emotions that
flickered across her face. Scorn, maybe, or sadness. The look that lingered was
pity.
He turned his attention to his plate. Just because
he got that same look of pity from his mother at their annual family Christmas
dinner, didn’t mean that he had to take it from Jessica Kingsbury. Just because
law enforcement didn’t earn him enough cash for a fancy country club membership
didn’t make his job less worthwhile.
Noah shoveled the last bite of dinner into his
mouth and glanced at Jess’s plate. Hers was mostly finished. She looked far
more relaxed than he had seen her all day, her shoulders not as tense, and her
mouth making an almost-smile as she ate. God she looked tired.
Neither of them spoke any more unnecessary words
while he paid and they climbed back in the car. Within five miles, she was
sound asleep in his passenger seat, head slumped against the seatbelt.
I75 met up with I24 and he took one of the
downtown exits and looked for a place to stay for the night. He found an
upscale-looking hotel that seemed to cater to tourists and left Jess snoozing
in the car while he reserved a room.
When he got back with the keys, she was still
there. He sighed in relief that she hadn’t bolted the moment he had stepped
away. He opened the passenger door for her.
“Where are we?” she asked, making no move to
unfasten her seatbelt.
“Vacation. Come on, sleeping beauty. Inside.”
She huffed but didn’t make a fuss as he handed her
out and gave his keys to the valet. The room was a suite with the bedroom and a
separate living room, and was a hell of a lot more expensive than the kind of
places he normally stayed. She didn’t look impressed.
“Now what? You cuff me to the bed?”
An unexpected rush of heat hit him below the belt
at the mental image of her naked, arms raised above her head, full breasts
begging for his mouth. He felt his neck flush and he turned away from her to
arrange his suitcase in the corner.
“You take the bedroom. Lock it if you want. I’ll
take the couch.” He unzipped his bag and began to rifle through the contents as
he tried to get the right head back under control. She didn’t move from behind
him for far too many breaths. Breaths that did very little to slow the steady
pounding of his heart.
Shit.
Did she expect him to take those
words as an offer?
Finally he heard her exhale, go into the bedroom,
and shut the door behind her. Noah sat down on the couch and flipped on the TV.
He must have scrolled through the channels at least three times before he
realized that nothing was going to hold his attention for long.
He could hear the sounds of her opening and
closing doors, a zip that must be her bag, the click of the lock on the living
room-side bathroom door. Noah unfolded the sofa bed and found the extra pillows
stashed in a closet.
The shower turned on and Noah lay back on his bed
for the night, trying not to think about Jessica Kingsbury, naked and soapy
just a few feet away from him. It didn’t work. It didn’t help that he could
vividly picture one of her Playboy spreads from his research file. Shower
scenes.
His groin tightened almost painfully and he tried
to picture his father’s face. His mother. Cole. Puppy dogs. Hell, Cutlass.
He turned off the light, curled onto his side, and
threw a pillow over his head and settled in for a long night.
***
It was late before Jessica truly fell asleep. Or
maybe it was early the next morning. The last wisps of evening sunlight were
gone. The traffic fell silent. And still she waited, huddled alone under
starchy sheets with a shoe tucked under her pillow. Anxiety made her stomach
knot and kept her pulse from slowing.
Noah Grayson seemed like a good man. One of the
few she had ever met. But good men always had a dark side. Just because she
hadn’t seen it yet, didn’t mean Noah was any different. She had not missed the
expression on his face when she mentioned the handcuffs—the dilated pupils, the
sharp intake of his breath. The way his gaze had raked her figure.
The way he had turned away in disgust.
That was a stupid, dangerous thing for her to do.
Some men would have broken the lock on her door. Some would just knock.
So she waited in the dark to see which kind of man
Noah was.
But all she heard was the TV, the creak of
springs, and silence. She silently told herself, over and over again, that she
was stupid, stupid, stupid. Stupid for walking into Wilson’s trap. Stupid for
getting herself into this mess in the first place.
But the stupidest thing was how the thought of
Noah coming through that door made her feel hot all over. She remembered the
feel of his lips on hers. Imagined his strong, sure hands on her breasts, her
thighs, her sex. His lean muscled arms holding her, his heat surrounding her.
She shivered and ached, alone and safe in the bed.
And she hated herself all the more.
She didn’t know when she finally slept or for how
long, but the sounds of a busy hotel—doors opening and closing, chattering in
the hallways, water rushing through pipes in the walls behind her finally woke
her. That and the smell of coffee.
She put on her clothes from the day before and
splashed water on her face in the bathroom, then tentatively unlocked the
bedroom door. Noah sat at the desk chair wearing jeans and a white t-shirt with
a fresh looking bandage on his arm. The TV was tuned to one of the all-news
channels. The kind that made Jessica dizzy with the constant scrolling of words
and numbers across the screen, words that never sat still long enough for her
to concentrate. She preferred to hear the voices of the newscasters, but Noah
had muted the TV. Maybe to keep from disturbing her.
He motioned toward a coffee cup and a Styrofoam
takeout container on the table across from him. “Eat first; then we can talk.”
She turned her back away from the flashing
television and peeked inside the container. Melted butter pooled on top of
soggy pancakes next to a pair of limp sausage links. There was a plastic cup
with a few pale strawberry slices swimming in sugary water. Her stomach rumbled
at the spicy sweet scent.
Her first forkful tuned to ash in her mouth when
she saw her backpack leaning against the leg of Noah’s chair, just out of her
reach. She had left that…
She left it in the bathroom.
Swallowing the food in her mouth turned a thousand
times more difficult, even with a gulp of cold bitter coffee to wash it down.
Noah saw the direction of her look and hefted her
bag into his lap. “Maybe we should talk first after all.”