Bound and Determined (33 page)

Once inside, he grabbed her hand again as if he wasn’t about to let go. She knew it was dangerous, that she was reading too much into a simple gesture after something so harrowing. But he’d come after her, run into a burning building to find her, offered his hotel room. She still hoped he cared, at least a little.

The elevator ride up was silent, and Rafe guided her to his door, palm at her back. Quietly, he closed the door behind them.

Out the window, Kerry saw the Causeway and the Gulf waters beyond, a sludgy blue close to the hotel, then wending out to a sparkling turquoise highlighted by the noontime sun.

“Kerry? Babe, sit down. You look exhausted.”

He drew her onto a smallish sofa against one wall, then sat beside her. “Tell me exactly what happened after you left here this morning.”

She sighed, trying to get it all straight in her mind. “I went home. I hadn’t been there long when Jason arrived. We fought.” Regret cramped her belly into a thick knot. “He . . . came on to me, said he never intended to marry Mara. Said he thought about me”—she winced—“about having sex with me all the time. I had no idea.”

Rafe looked every bit as furious as he would if someone outlawed computers. “What else did the son of a bitch say?”

Kerry hesitated. “That he wanted to take care of me. When I refused him, he cornered me in the kitchen. He pinned me against the cabinets and . . . he kissed me.”

Another bout of anger spread over Rafe’s face, tightening his mouth. “I’m going to break his fucking face if I see him again, I swear. Forcing you to kiss him—”

“I broke it off, told him I wasn’t interested in him as more than a friend. I think that surprised him for some reason. He cursed at me, then slammed out of the door. I was upset and tense, so I took a hot shower.”

“Did you lock the door first?”

Frowning, Kerry sorted through the morning’s events in her head. As vividly as an NFL replay, she realized that she hadn’t. “I—I usually do. But I was so distraught . . .”

Losing the man she loved and a trusted friend all within a few hours apparently wreaked havoc on a girl’s common sense. What an idiotic mistake!

“Kerry . . .” he growled.

“I know, I know,” she huffed. “Anyway, when I came out, I decided to make a cup of tea. That’s when something hit me on the head. That’s how I remember it, anyway.”

Rafe scowled. “That doesn’t fit with what the fireman told us.”

“True, but I didn’t have the stove on yet when I was hit. I didn’t have a towel on the stove, either. I just know it. I was still sorting through tea bags when I heard something behind me, from the direction of the pantry. I tried to turn . . . but something—someone?—hit me.”

“Jason, I’ll bet.”

“Maybe.” She looked unconvinced. “I just never considered him dangerous. You have to admit, he’s not exactly menacing. I can’t imagine that he’d actually try to kill me.”

“
Someone
tried to kill you. Smikins and Tiffany hadn’t just been to your house, hadn’t just been rebuffed by you. If your little friend took the money, as I suspected all along, he was probably foaming at the mouth by the time he left your place this morning.”

“He wasn’t happy,” she conceded.

“Hell, I knew he couldn’t be trusted,” Rafe muttered. “He hadn’t locked your door on his way out and probably suspected that you hadn’t locked it, either. He could easily have come back in while you took a shower and hidden in your pantry, waited for you. Face it, babe, he had opportunity and motive.”

“I . . . I guess. He was angry, but angry enough over my refusal to try to kill me?”

“Maybe not just that. Someone went looking for the money this morning. Someone got on the ‘retired’ terminal there at the office and started beating around the accounts for that money.”

Kerry shook her head. “He hadn’t been to the office yet that morning. How could he have known it was missing?”

Rafe scoffed. “He told you he hadn’t been to the office yet. Who knows if that’s the truth? Maybe he’d been there and realized the money was missing. He knew from the beginning that I was helping you find out how Mark was framed. It’s possible this morning, when he saw the money gone and found it shuffled into an account in my name, that he came to you and he was angry.”

“Then why come on to me?”

“My guess? He wants you and the money both.”

“He never asked me about the money.”

Shrugging, Rafe leaned closer. “Why not get close, gain your trust, get a little—or a lot—of ass before you start talking about stolen money? Maybe he wanted you happy and sated before he raised the subject. Besides, would he really tell you if he framed your brother?”

Mentally, Kerry chewed on Rafe’s theory. “I don’t know. I just don’t see him going to the office and leaving, or angry enough after being turned down to try to kill me.”

“You didn’t see that he was trying to get into your panties, either.”

Kerry covered her face with her hands, head reeling. Maybe Rafe was right. Maybe Jason had wanted to get close to her so he could find out what had happened to the money.

She sighed, beyond confused. “It’s just . . . I thought I knew him so well. But this morning, I wondered if I knew him at all.”

“I know, babe.” He squeezed her hand.

Squeezing back, Kerry continued to turn the possibility over in her mind. But something still didn’t ring true.

“Wouldn’t Jason have brought up the money before just leaving? Why try to kill me before finding out what happened to the money? Any information I had would die with me.”

“He’s not a stupid guy, but neither is he subtle. He knows where the money is, most likely. But he didn’t know where I was. Regina made my hotel arrangements.” Rafe grabbed her shoulders, fingers gripping with urgency. “He asked you where I was, didn’t he?”

Kerry thought back through the hours that seemed like a
whole month ago. “He did, several times. Why does that matter?”

“He can’t get to that money without me. I put it in a bank that’s nearly as tight as Fort Knox. Working at a bank, he’d know that. So he devised a very smooth plan. Get close to you, find out how to get the money back and who’s watching it. That would have been Plan A. When you refused him, he had no choice but to leave and try to hunt me down himself so he could get the money back. Which he did. He asked Regina where I was staying.”

“But why try to kill me? That wouldn’t gain him anything. It’s just risky.”

Rafe swiped a hand across his face. “If he can’t have you, he doesn’t want anyone else to.”

She sent him a dubious frown. “That’s twisted.”

“The guy framed his best friend for embezzlement so he could sleep with said friend’s sister. That doesn’t make him sound like the most stable of characters.”

“Ohmigod!” Kerry gasped as pieces of a puzzle came flying together. “The reason Mark never wanted him to date me . . . When Mark first brought Jason around the house, Mark had been doing some charity work, something to do with a drug treatment center. Jason had just come through re-hab. Mark befriended him so that he wouldn’t fall back in with old friends and old patterns. Mark helped Jason get the job at the bank. But Mark confided in me once that Jason, when he’d been an addict, had robbed a liquor store with a gun.”

Sighing, Rafe grabbed her hand. “Kerry, I know you don’t want to see it, but I think you need to reconsider—”

“That Jason might be guilty. I’m thinking about it as we speak.”

S
he’d wanted a shower, and Rafe didn’t blame her. He reeked of smoke himself, hair, clothes, skin. It wasn’t that he didn’t understand her desire.

It was that he didn’t understand his own.

Pacing, he stared at the bathroom door, waiting, watching. He gritted his teeth as residual fear pumped through him. What if he’d lost her today? It was one thing to jet home and
know she was safe and sound—and eventually with someone who could give her everything her heart desired—here in Florida. In that scenario, he’d never see her again, but she was happy, healthy, loved by some unknown guy Rafe didn’t have to picture.

The thought of her dead . . . He swallowed, unable to form thoughts out of the jumble of emotions. It was like a loud buzzing in his head. The mass of feeling was almost too big for his body. Even now, knowing logically that she was all right—that wasn’t the same as holding her, looking into those wide green eyes, seeing her smile that could melt metal. Knowing intellectually that she was safe lacked the impact of sliding deep in her heat and feeling her so very alive in his arms.

He was insane. Had to be. Why else did the need to connect with her, feel her in the most elemental way possible, beat at him worse than a group of back-alley thugs?

Raking a grungy hand through his smoky hair, Rafe looked around the room. He needed something to do, something to keep him busy, or he’d yank off all his clothes, jump in the shower with Kerry, and claim her in every way possible.

But he’d given her up, for her own good. For his sanity. He couldn’t go back on that now.

Prowling over to his phone, he flipped it open and called Regina.

“Mr. Dawson?”

“I need two things as soon as possible.”

“Name it,” came her confident reply.

“My flight changed. I don’t think I can get out of here before tomorrow, maybe early afternoon. Push out the Fairline Tech job in Jersey until Friday. Offer them ten percent off and my apologies.”

“Something wrong with the Standard National job?”

He heard the frown in her voice. “No, it’s not the job. Something . . . personal.”

“Ah, I see.” She hesitated. When he didn’t offer anything more, she said, “I’ll let you know when I’ve revised your reservation.”

“Thanks. I also need the name of the best criminal attorney in Tampa.”

If Mark’s case made it to trial, the man deserved more than
an overworked public defender. Kerry deserved more. After all, what good was five million dollars if he didn’t use it to help someone he lov—

Whoa! Where did that thought come from?

He didn’t love Kerry. No. He cared. Yeah, he could do that. Loving her . . . it was too soon. And too difficult. Everything he knew about love, he’d learned from watching his parents, who, with a little more trailer in their blood, could have appeared on Jerry Springer. If he tried to love Kerry, she’d be doomed.

“Criminal attorney? Are you in trouble, boss?”

“No.” A smile twisted his mouth when he imagined how the request must have sounded. “Not for me. For a . . . friend.”

Regina hesitated. “Miss Sullivan?”

“Not exactly. Long story. Can you let me know when you get that info, too? I want to call the attorney and get it set up before I go.”

“Sure thing.”

The shower stopped running. Water sloshed. The
whoosh
of the shower curtain against the metal rod told him Kerry was getting out.

“Gotta go. Thanks.”

He put his phone down and turned to find Kerry emerging from the little bathroom, her lush body barely wrapped in a skimpy white towel. Wet strands of her dark gold curls clung to her shoulders, rivulets of water running under the terry cloth, between her breasts.

“Kerry?”

At the sound of his voice, she whirled, wide-eyed, to face him. The shock of the day’s events bleached her skin white. Scratches marred one of her cheeks. A bruise was forming above her left eye.

Some asshole had done this, nearly ended her life. The need to protect roared with all the subtlety of a tornado inside him.

He swallowed, fisted his hands.

Damn, he was going to explode if he didn’t hold her soon,
feel
that she was all right. While part of him ached to have her naked, underneath him, assuring him with every cry and moan that she was real and in one piece, he
needed
to wrap his arms around her and listen to her heart beat.

Okay, hold her, yes,
he told himself.
Sex
—
no dice.
Blood churning through his body, he exhaled. He couldn’t make love to her. Their forty-eight hours was up. She owed him nothing. If she had feelings for him, better to end it now, before he really fucked up.

“Shower sounds like a good idea. I’ll—um—be back in a few minutes.”

The shower, even set to mimic the Arctic, didn’t help. He went through the motions quickly. His illogical need to assure himself that she lived and breathed, heaped on top of his insane desire . . . he felt like a rocket ready to explode. Like the adrenaline had never left him. Sure, he could take matters into his own hands, but he’d rather be with Kerry, next to her, even if she just talked and smiled, than self-pleasuring. Being near her was as necessary as air or water right now.

Damn it, what the hell was the matter with him? Next thing he knew, he’d be writing poetry, decorating his own apartment, and trading in his Porsche for a minivan.

With a vicious curse, Rafe yanked on the faucet, cutting off the spray of water. Grabbing a towel, he wrapped it around his waist. He ought to get decent, dry his hair—hell, at least put on underwear—before he stepped out and faced Kerry.

Impatience won. Ignoring the boxer-briefs he’d laid out on the toilet, he turned the knob and emerged into the rest of the room.

Kerry stared out the big bay window, wearing nothing but one of his button-down dress shirts with the streaming sun making the thin cotton transparent . . . and talking on his cell phone.

H
ello?” Kerry whispered, wondering at the wisdom of answering Rafe’s phone. But it had rung three times. The caller ID said
Office.
How personal could it be?

After a brief pause, a woman said, “Sorry, must have reached the wrong number.”

“Wait! If you’re looking for Rafe Dawson, he’s in the next room.”

Another pause. “Miss Sullivan?”

“Kerry, yes. You’re Regina, right?”

“I am.”

Frowning into the phone, Kerry asked, “You know who I am?”

“Not exactly, but your name has come up several times lately.”

The ironic tone of his assistant’s voice made Kerry wince. “I guess Rafe told you I kidnapped him. I swear I didn’t hurt him—”

“Kidnapped?” Shock sharpened her voice. “No, he failed to mention that. Why did you kidnap him?”