Betrayed by a Kiss (9 page)

Chapter Nine

Sleeping on the couch two days straight had Dane waking cranky and sore at dawn. Even a shower didn’t change his mood. Yesterday, he and Marnie woke early and shared information. She was polite and distant, a far cry from the sultry, wide-eyed siren he’d kissed in the kitchen the night before. He’d allowed his dick to control his head, and now he was furious with himself. He wanted her, and when she’d accepted his kiss, it had turned combustible, and then…

He sighed. She was like a drug, heady and addictive, and by the time Harper interrupted them, he could barely string two words together. All he wanted was to strip down with her and make love there on the floor, up against the wall, on the table, anywhere and everywhere, as long as it meant he could touch and kiss her. Possess her.

He’d misread the moment. His one excuse was being off the market too long, buried in case files. He must have lost the skill of reading a woman’s signals. Marnie ran the first chance she got. The next day she was indifferent and he was kicking himself. His lack of focus, priorities, propriety, for shit’s sake… He’d allowed his attraction to her to muddy the waters of their partnership, and that was all on him. He couldn’t forgive that mistake, or get it out of his head.

She’d locked the door on him.

Yesterday Marnie had asked to see his files. He’d agreed because no one had ever asked before, except Joe. When she peppered him with questions, pulled apart every decision, every assumption he’d made on every lead he’d followed up and discounted, he’d patiently answered, willing to give her the day to do what she had to do. He knew she was trying to help. He also knew she needed time to recover from her wound. She liked to pretend otherwise, but she’d been shot three nights ago. It was only a graze, but it had to hurt still, be mending, and she’d been beaten up by her near drowning, and was still weak from exposure on the mountain. A day wasn’t too much to ask, not that she was asking for anything.

He suspected she was searching through his files to find evidence that would make breaking into Whitman Enterprises unnecessary. He could have saved her a day’s research. What they needed was on Ian Whitman’s personal server, and they were going to steal those files before the company moved them or did something worse.

Someone woke before him and had the coffee brewing. He knew it had to be Marnie. Harper wasn’t an early riser. He stood in the kitchen, hesitating, because this early there’d be no Elizabeth or Harper to act as a buffer. A hundred pounds soaking wet, and Marnie had him walking on eggshells around her. How exactly had that happened?

She wasn’t downstairs, so he assumed she was still upstairs. He peeked his head in the file room and found her sitting on the floor. Hair damp, wearing the same clothes he gave her when she arrived, she was sipping coffee and frowning at a file.

“Hey.” He sat next to her, trying not to disturb the files lest she had a system in place. “You’re up early.” There were dark circles under her eyes. The last couple of days had taken a toll on them all, but especially Marnie. She never once complained. “Did you sleep at all?”

She rubbed her eyes with the heels of her palms. “I have a lot on my mind.”

He scanned the room and tried to see it through her eyes. So many files. “This all started with an email in a dead man’s inbox.”

“I’m sure Kevin Washington would disagree.”
The suicide case.
Marnie dropped the file she was holding onto a pile. “Why didn’t you drop the case when you were ordered to?”

“Information and evidence was being suppressed. A man was dead, and I thought he deserved justice.”

She perused the manila folders. “Your files are comprehensive, but there’s nothing here to indicate Whitman Enterprises is a shell company, or that they had anything to do with Washington. Yet you wouldn’t drop the case.”

“Something felt off.” He shrugged, not willing to delve into the many red flags he’d seen when he brought up his concerns to his lieutenant.

“Then you were sidelined with the kidnapping and Alice’s murder. Thrown off the force because of your reaction to your wife’s death being classified as cold. Even now, you have nothing to tie Whitman to Alice. I guess what I’m trying to ask is, why were you so sure Whitman was behind this?”

“With the Washington case, every lead I had was touched by Whitman somehow and then scrubbed clean afterward. I smelled cover-up, and I was right. Then, after Alice was killed and Tuttle confessed, I found the security feed from that gas station I told you about. It proved he couldn’t have been with Alice, yet the police pretended it never existed once it was stolen. That kind of stonewalling takes someone powerful pulling strings.”

“But no evidence it was Whitman.”

“I never thought Whitman personally killed Alice. But he was involved. You know it.”

She pressed her hand on Tuttle’s file. “I’m not sure I did you a favor by forwarding you the Tuttle bank information. We wouldn’t be here otherwise.”

“I’d be here. Maybe not today, but soon. It wasn’t as if Tuttle’s new influx of money could be hidden forever. I would have traced it, found the link between Whitman and Tuttle. I’d be here. You just got me here sooner.” She met his gaze and then looked away just as quickly, blushing.

In the scenario he just described, she wouldn’t be involved. She’d still be blithely ignorant of whom she was working for. She wouldn’t have warned him at the cabin. She wouldn’t have tipped him off about the files. He’d be here, but he wouldn’t know about Whitman’s extensive files and where he kept them hidden.

Dane wondered if Marnie was getting cold feet. Very little was tethering her here. He’d probably blown any infatuation she might have had with his ham-fisted seduction in the kitchen. Getting to know a guy went a long way to dispelling infatuation, too, and Dane was no knight in shining armor. Alice would have been the first to agree.

“I don’t doubt it. You’re a thorough and tenacious investigator.” She turned her face toward the window. The rising sun bathed it with warm colors, showcasing her strong bone structure and hiding her exhaustion. She was beautiful in a way that made him want to stare. And she caught him. “I want to apologize.” She lifted her coffee cup and showed disappointment when it reached her lips empty. Replacing it on the floor, she nudged it about nervously. “When we kissed the other night—”

“I’m sorry.” He wasn’t sure what she was going to say, but
I’m sorry
seemed to fix a myriad of things when it came to women, so he threw it out there and hoped for the best.

“Okay. We can both be sorry, but let me get this out.” Her sheepish expression confused him. “We both know I enjoyed the hell out of that kiss.” They did? “But it’s still a bad idea. Us. Our shelf life going into this heist is short.” Shelf life? “And I have to protect myself. Do you understand?”

No, he hadn’t a clue. She might as well have been speaking Greek, but she was looking at his lips as if she were remembering their kiss, and he understood that. He made as if to stand, teetering on the brink of leaving to prevent a fuckup, then sat back down. This whole thing was getting ridiculous. It was just a kiss. “I get it. You’re afraid you’ll fall in love with me.”

She laughed from the belly, leaned back with all her weight onto her palm, which rested on a file that slipped out from under her. She fell onto her back, prompting her to laugh louder. She lay laughing on files that represented a year and a half of painstaking, single-minded, obsessive hunting for Alice’s killer.

He enjoyed the hell out of her. It was the first time he’d smiled in this room of misery. Gratitude and hope hit him hard. She made him feel like anything was possible, that she was on the level, that maybe he had found someone who would help him rather than hurt his family.

When she calmed, wiped the worst of the tears from her cheeks, she lay there smiling. He lowered himself onto his elbow next to her. “I’ll take that as a no.”

She chuckled again. “Oh, I could fall in love with you, MacLain. Easily. That’s not what I’m afraid of.”

“Then what?” The moment was surreal. They were just two people, trying to connect. He couldn’t remember the last time that happened. Maybe in high school. No. It was all about sex then. College, maybe, though sex had a lot to do with that, too.

“You don’t know me,” she said. “You don’t want to, really, because then you’ll have to deal with how I fit into what happened to you.” She sobered, and so did he, because she was right. He hadn’t pointed that fact out, but it rode him hard. She came from the company that had ruined him. Killed Alice.

Sitting up, she indicated the files with her hand. “Whitman Enterprises. It was my job to give you and your family up to them. Every sound bite, every move you made, I reported up the chain of command. I didn’t know it was because they wanted a way to get rid of you. I didn’t know it would lead to you having to run to this farmhouse with your family—what’s left of your family.” She pursed her lips. “I didn’t know, but it happened. There’s no coming back from that. So falling in love with you would be just my style.”

Marnie Somerville wasn’t a big fan of Marnie Somerville. It made him want to defend her and point out all the things she’d done right in the last few days, but he didn’t trust the instinct. He didn’t trust his opinion of her yet.

She raked her hair off her face and threw its length down her back. “Get what you need from me, MacLain, and then say good-bye.”

There she was again, trying to save him. “I can take care of myself.”

“That’s what we tell ourselves.” She arched a brow. “These people, Whitman Enterprises, they’re ruthless. Smart. They’ve been doing this a long time. When I broke into his office…let’s just say I never would have been that sloppy if I’d been doing a grift.” She poked her finger into his chest, and he felt its tip burrow just above his heart. “And I can see myself getting sloppy with you.” She looked him up and down and made no attempt to hide her appreciation for what she saw. “You’re sexy as hell, and when you touch me, I stop thinking. You’d be doing both of us a favor by remembering I’m a thin veil away from being a bad guy. You need to keep your distance, MacLain.”

He believed her, but Dane’s expectations of people had narrowed since Alice’s death. “Are you with me or against me, Marnie?”

“With you.” He hoped that was true. Really hoped.

“Then everything else is best left for contemplating over a beer after the fact.” Marnie was on his side. He believed her. If only for now. And he didn’t have the energy to judge her, a person trying to make restitution, when so many had sinned against him and felt no shame, when
he’d
been ruthless in his pursuit of what he thought was right.

“MacLain—” She held up her hand and then stopped herself from saying whatever else she’d been about to spill.

“You’re asking me to be smart,” he said, “to play it safe. I hear you. Consider it done.” He owed himself to be wary of her, and he owed his family that consideration.

She nodded. “So we agree.”

“What do we agree?” She was so damn adorable.

She swallowed hard. He could see her trying to pretend a nonchalance she couldn’t quite pull off. “The kiss was a bad idea.”

He shook his head, leaning closer, his face inches from hers. Her blush rapidly moved from her chest to her cheeks, and she was biting her lip. “That kiss,” he said, “was inevitable.”

Slowly, so as not to make her feel she had no choice, Dane pressed his lips to hers. Instead of balking, Marnie opened her mouth for him and wrapped her arms around his neck.

At first he felt satisfaction. He’d breached her defenses. Then something strange happened. It was as if time stopped, and her lips on his was the only concern in his world. There was only Marnie and this kiss. When he lifted his head, he saw the uncertainty in her eyes and knew it mirrored his own. He should back off. If it mattered too much, it might be dangerous.

Then she pulled him back to her, kissing him with passion, demanding he keep pace. She pulled him to the floor, rolled him onto his back, and with a flurry of paperwork scattering this way and that, straddled him, sitting on his arousal. What she was thinking was beyond him. He recognized she needed something, but the pleasure she was giving rattled him. It was hard to think when he was trying to remain still and not rock his hips against her, especially since he really, really wanted to do that.

He promised himself he’d learned his lesson from the kitchen. Take it slow. Allow her to dictate the next move. He caressed her thighs and waited, keeping it PG. He didn’t want to spook her.

It didn’t take long to see the flaw to his plan. She was killing him, moving on top of him, licking her lips, watching how her movements were driving him wild. He was shaking with the effort to keep his passion in check when all he wanted to do was strip her naked and take her in the morning sunlight. Then she fell on him and kissed him, moaning into his mouth.

He loved touching her breasts, her gasp of pleasure, then forced himself to rein it in and hold her hips, position her and take it slow.
PG, MacLain, PG.
Marnie had other plans. She pulled his hands back to her breasts, covering his hands as he cupped her. Her eyelids fluttered closed, and her breath was shallow as she returned his kisses, moving against him.

When he slipped his hands up under her shirt, it happened without thinking. When he drew them down into her pants, clutching her ass, he was just as surprised as she. He knew exactly what he was doing, however, when he moved his arousal against her softness. He felt adrenaline rush as he swallowed her moans with an ever-deepening kiss. She was his to command, but he’d never felt more of a servant.

A door opened and slammed downstairs. She startled, froze, and then rolled off him, on her back, staring at the ceiling. Both were breathing hard, hanging from a precipice neither wanted to abandon. Dane’s erection was pressing so hard against his zipper he had to shift himself to stave off pain. Marnie had her palms pressing against her eyes, as if hiding from the truth. They wanted each other, and neither had the confidence or self-control necessary to go for it.