But hey. It wasn’t like she needed approval for her career choices from Jon Amendola. She needed something very different. Very specific.
She gave herself another smile. It looked tense, false. Scared. She let it fade, and in that naked moment, she saw a flash of something different in the mirror. Her future. Her woman’s face. Older, more defined. Vulnerable too, but in a different way. A deeper, realer way.
It occurred to her how different life was going to feel once she abandoned her protective shell. She usually blamed her brothers for it, but she’d done her own part in creating it and maintaining it. It had kept her focused on her goals, sure. And it had also kept her safe.
It was too small for her now. It chafed and pinched. Pressure from the inside, opposing pressure from the outside. Crushing her.
She didn’t want to start a difficult, challenging adventure like the Circo della Luna Rossa with this extra inner struggle to cope with.
Then again. Once she broke the spell, once she cast off that shell, that was it. No going back. She’d be out in the cold, where the wind whipped and the wolves howled. Where anything could happen. Brrr.
She shivered, and then blew out a sharp breath and straightened her spine to its proudest height. This was no time to wimp out.
Besides. Jon was a wolf, yeah, but not that kind of wolf. He was exactly, precisely the right kind of wolf for this job. And the chance for a good whack at him might never roll around again. Her, Jon, alone and surrounded by the immense privacy of the Cascade Mountains—mmm.
The shiver that rippled through her then was very different—a toe curling, lip biting, thigh clenching tingle of hopeful anticipation. Whew.
Enough already. This potty break had stretched out to unprofessional proportions. She had to get her butt back to the monster console before Eliza got annoyed and sent out a posse to retrieve her.
Danny swept by as she was plugging herself back into the infernal machine, his habitual fierce scowl of concentration on his face. “You coming to Mac and Jane’s for dinner tomorrow?” he rapped out.
She blinked. “Uh…nope. Sorry. Can’t,” she lied. “I’m working back to back birthday parties all afternoon, and I’ve got a Commedia Dell’ Arte class in the evening. Til late. Very late.”
Danny snorted, and charged off on his important CFO business. Both brothers were like that. Alpha didn’t begin to describe it.
She sat in the ergonomic chair and vibrated. Doubts assailed her thick and fast. Jon had said he was bad company. Neck deep in shit. He’d sounded depressed. He’d probably be unthrilled to see her.
Yeah, and that was exactly the kind of chickenshit, cowardly-ass reasoning that produced twenty-five-year-old virgins.
It was now or never. If he blew her off, she’d cope. She might fall into a crack in the ground and be crushed to a fine paste first, of course, but then she would just stick on that red nose and soldier on.
Jon jerked up the emergency brake on his pickup and sat there, feeling blank. The light was almost gone. He should move, so he didn’t have to fumble through the dark. He didn’t have the goddamn energy.
The Geddes case had gotten to him. He didn’t know why. He’d worked plenty of grisly murders over the years, but this one wiped him out. Wallowing inside the twisted mind of this perp had poisoned him.
William Geddes, the “Egg Man.” So called for the blue robin’s egg he’d place into the mouth of his victims—after he’d killed them, with agonizing slowness, in ways that defied the imagination. Five girls that they knew of, ages eighteen to twenty-two. Just thinking about the guy’s frozen face and staring eyes in the courtroom gave him the shudders. Fucking head case. And Jon had seen a lot of bad shit.
He’d finally nailed that pustulant shitbag, but not until five girls—at least, he hoped to God it was only five—had died, badly. The trial had wrapped up a couple weeks ago, a drawn-out, sprawling media circus, full of press and politics and pontificating bullshit. But he’d seen to it that the prosecution’s case had been watertight.
Geddes would be inside forever. Five consecutive life sentences, in a maximum security hellhole where that pumped up prick’s blond Viking good looks would not go unappreciated. Jon took a fierce satisfaction in that. Justice had been done, insofar as possible.
Cold comfort for the families of the girls, though.
So? He should be feeling accomplishment. Maybe even pride.
But he felt like shit. Nervous, jagged, on edge. He couldn’t sleep. He had nightmares, about blood, birds. He was tormented by details that couldn’t be explained. Uneasy about vibes that didn’t add up. He couldn’t pin down what the problem was. But he felt like it wasn’t over.
His boss hadn’t liked it, either. She’d kicked his ass out on a mandatory vacation after he’d been caught one too many times poring over the Geddes files after the conviction. That stung. He was a good cop. The one thing he knew he was good at. He may have been a rotten husband, he may be a no-good boyfriend, and God forbid he ever have kids. But when someone dissed him as a cop, it got his back way up.
It was the one thing in his life that he gave a shit about these days, though he knew damn well it was dangerous to care too much about anything. He’d grown up in a series of foster homes, some OK, some less so. He’d seen too many kids get exploited by predators. Now, when he heard about innocent kids being abused, something revved up inside him that he couldn’t control. Sleep wasn’t even an option. He started putting in those thirty-six-hour days without even getting tired.
Or maybe that was overstating it. Look at him now. Monumentally fucked up. He got an unwelcome memory flash of how Vicki used to nag and bitch about how emotionally unavailable he was. But how could a guy be available to a woman who constantly whined? He tried briefly to remember if Vicki had whined during their whirlwind courtship. Maybe she had, and he’d been too hypnotized by her big, jiggling tits to notice.
Fuck it. This line of thought was not going to energize him.
He forced his leaden body into action. Shoved open the truck door, grabbed his grip and the bag of groceries. He made his way with heavy feet up the switchback path to the hillside cabin—and froze.
Footsteps around the corner of the cabin. Someone was passing through the foliage. The shush-shush of jeans legs, rubbing each other. The swish-slap of bushes. He heard every sound like it was miked.
He let the duffel, the groceries drop. His gun materialized in his hand, though he had no memory of drawing it, or flattening his back to the weatherbeaten shingles, creeping towards the corner…waiting—
Grab, twist, and he had the fucker bent over in a hammerlock, wrist torqued at an agonizing angle, gun to the nape. It squawked.
Female. Long hair, swishing and tickling over his bare arm. A delicate wrist that felt like it might break in his grip. What the hell?
“Jon! Stop this! Let go! It’s me!”
Huh? The chick knew him? His body had ascertained that she was no physical threat, so he shoved her away to take a better look.
His jaw dropped when she straightened up, rubbing her twisted wrist. He tried to drag in oxygen, but his lungs were locked. Holy shit. No way had he met this girl before. He would have remembered. Wow.
Long hair swung to her waist. Big dark eyes, exotically tilted, flashing with anger. High cheekbones, perfect skin, pointy chin. That full pink mouth, glossed up with lip goo, calculated to make a guy think of one thing only, and suffer the immediate physiological consequences.
And her body, Jesus. Feline grace; long legs, slim waist, round hips. High, suckable, braless tits, the nipples of which poked through a thin cotton blouse. Low-rise jeans that clung desperately to the undercurve of that perfect ass. Who the hell…? This was private property, in the middle of nowhere. His dick twitched, swelled.
She did not look armed. He slipped the Glock back into the shoulder holster. “You scared me,” he said. “Who the hell are you?”
Her eyes widened in outrage. “What do you mean, who the hell am I? It’s me! Robin!”
Robin? His brain spun its wheels to reconcile the irreconcilable.
Danny’s baby sister? He’d practically pissed himself laughing the night she’d juggled flaming torches in Danny’s kitchen, although Danny had been unamused when the rib-eye he’d grilled got unexpectedly flambéed. The steak had tasted faintly of petroleum fuel, but what the hell. She hadn’t burned down the building.
Robin? Robin of the dorky glasses, the mouthful of metal? Robin who was as cute and funny as a bouncing labrador puppy?
The irreconcilable images slammed together, like a truck hitting his mind. Those big brown eyes, magnified behind Coke bottle lenses.
It was Robin. Holy shit. In his mind he’d already been nailing this girl, right and left and center. Danny would kill him if he knew Jon had entertained pornographic thoughts about his baby sister. “Ah, sorry,” he muttered lamely. “I didn’t recognize you. You look…different than I remembered. Do your brothers know you’re out dressed like that?”
Her back straightened and her eyes narrowed to gleaming brown slits. “Mac and Danny have nothing to say about my wardrobe.”
“Maybe they should.” He jerked his chin in the general direction of her taut brown nipples, all too evident in the chill, and averted his eyes.
“Why should they?” Her slender arms folded over her chest, propping the tits up higher for his tormented perusal. “I’m twenty-five, Jon. That’s a two, and then a five.”
He blinked at her. “No shit.”
“Absolutely, shit. Want to see my driver’s license? I wear what I please. I answer to no one.”
This was surreal. He dragged his eyes away from her gleaming pink lips, and pulled himself together. “Uh, I don’t mean to be rude, but what the fuck does your age have to do with anything? And what are you doing up here, anyhow?”
The gleaming lips pursed. “I could ask you the same question.”
“You could,” he conceded. “But it would be none of your goddamn business. Your brother gave me the keys. I’m crashing up here for a couple weeks to do some fishing and stare at the wall with my mouth hanging open. And now? Your turn. What did you come up here for?”
Her gaze fell. She started to speak. Pressed her hand to her belly.
“Um…you,” she said.
2
Jon looked at her. Twilight deepened in visible increments. He cleared his throat. “Could you clarify what the fuck you mean by that?”
Robin threw her head back to look into his eyes. “I don’t need to clarify anything. You understand me perfectly well.”
“You mean…” His mouth stopped moving. He just couldn’t say it. It was evidently too horrific an idea to him, too shocking to verbalize.
Mayday. Going down. She resisted the urge to wrap her goose-bumped arms over her braless, much too visible boobs. “Yes,” she said.
A scowl furled his brows together. “You have got to be kidding.”
Hope soured inside her. “I’ve never been so serious in my life.”
He was starting to look pissed, as if someone were playing an unfunny joke on him. “What put this crazy shit into your head?”
“It’s been in my head for over ten years,” she announced.
He couldn’t stop shaking his head. “I cannot believe it,” he muttered. “I cannot fucking believe it. This is all I need. Come on, let’s get inside.” She followed him arround the side of the cabin. He turned, scowling, when he found the door open. “What the hell?”
“I have a key,” she said simply. “I’ve been here for a while.”
His gaze sharpened. “Did Danny tell you I was coming up here?”
She bit her lip, and looked away. “Not exactly.”
“Wait. You were the receptionist today, right? Did you listen in?”
She flushed. “Um…”
“Bad.” He shook his head at her, scowling. “Bad karma.”
She lifted her chin. “A girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.”
“Yeah, well, you’re not gonna do me. Get your ass in here. And sit. Down. Now.”
His voice snapped like a whipcrack, working on her nerves in some mysterious way that made her body obey before she knew what she was doing. Suddenly she was sitting, ramrod straight in the dim kitchen. On the spot. She regretted having chosen the tight, sheer chemise top. He was so big, vibrating intense man energy at her.
“Don’t glare at me,” she said sulkily.
“What’s going on?” he demanded. “Are you on the rebound? Do you want to make some guy jealous? What’s the deal?”
“There’s no deal.” She tried to lick her lips, and tasted the strawberry-flavored gloss she’d glopped over it. “And there’s no boyfriend.”
“Then why the fuck are you here?”
She flinched at the harsh punch of his voice. The truth popped right out, like it always did when she was put on the spot. “Because I’m tired of waiting for this to happen! And I wanted you to be the first!”
“First?” His eyes went wary. “You mean to say you’ve never…oh, holy fuck. You’ve never…” He sounded afraid to just up and say it.
“Yes! I do mean that! I want you to break the ice for me, OK? That’s all! Just…do the honors. So I can exhale and get on with it! I won’t get clingy on you. I don’t expect you to fall in love with me or—”
“That,” he said, through gritted teeth, “is fortunate.”
His clipped tone chilled her, but the damage was done. She might as well just go for it. “It’s just this one little thing. To break the spell.”
He looked ferociously offended. “Little thing? You call that little? It’s not. And it’s flat out against my rules. So you can fucking forget it.”
“Rules?” She goggled at him. “You have rules about this?”
“Yeah. I do. Let me get this straight. You want me to just pop your cherry and then walk away, and pretend I didn’t just fuck my best friend’s baby sister? No, scratch that—my best friend’s virginal baby sister. What kind of opportunistic asshole do you think I am?”