Explosive Engagement (13 page)

Chapter Thirteen

Strong, wet arms wrapped tightly around Stacy, lifting her off her feet and whirling her around to face a naked, mad Logan Payne.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

That was a damn good question—one she should have asked herself before she’d followed him into the bathroom. But that look on his face—that look she’d mistaken for longing and desire—had drawn her after him.

That look was replaced with anger now. “You shouldn’t sneak up on me. I could have hurt you.”

He would hurt her. Eventually. She was certain of it because she was beginning to have feelings for her fake fiancé. And he obviously didn’t return those feelings.

“Why’d you come in here?” he asked. “Did you need to use the bathroom?”

“I—I...I needed...” Him. She’d needed her fiancé. Her face heated with embarrassment over that need, but she couldn’t admit it now, not in the face of his anger.

“What do you need?” he asked her. He stood before her gloriously naked, and she couldn’t help but stare, her gaze skimming hungrily over every slick, muscular inch of him. As she watched, his body grew hard and tense. His voice gruff with desire, he asked again, “What do you want?”

She’d been keeping secrets from him. But she couldn’t lie about her feelings anymore. “You,” she replied. “I want you. I need you.”

He carried her again, but this time she didn’t protest. Her skin heated everywhere his skin touched. And then instead of just laying her down on the bed, he followed her down—his body covering hers while his mouth covered hers.

He kissed her passionately, as if he was as hungry for her as she was for him. His lips pressed against hers and his tongue delved inside her mouth, making love to it, like she wanted him to make love to her body.

She’d never felt such passion. Such need. Her arms clasped his back, her fingers skimming down his spine to his tight butt. She pulled him against her arching hips. His erection hardened and pulsed against her.

He groaned. “Stacy, slow down...”

She nearly giggled. That was something she’d never been told before. Usually she was told that she went too slow, that she was too cautious. Even he had accused her of being old-fashioned and the comment had stung because it was true. That was why there had been so few men in her life and even fewer in her bed.

He leaned his forehead against hers and drew in deep breaths. But she could feel his heart racing against hers. He wanted her as much as she wanted him.

“Why?” she asked. “Why do I have to slow down?”

He kissed her lips again but it was a light, gentle kiss. “So we can make it last. So I can last...”

“It’s okay if you don’t,” she assured him.

He shook his head. “No, it’s not. I want you to enjoy this,” he said, “every bit as much as I intend to.”

She was enjoying it—every soft kiss. He moved from her lips to her chin and then down her throat. He flicked his tongue across her leaping pulse point. Then he nibbled on her collarbone.

While he’d told her to slow down, the man moved fast, removing her bra and panties before she even realized they were gone. She realized when he touched her there—first with his fingers tracing over the curves of her breasts before teasing the nipples. One hand moved lower, over her stomach to the small mound between her legs.

She squirmed beneath him as pressure built inside her. While his hands stroked her breasts and lower, his lips moved back to hers. The gentle kisses were gone as he kissed her more forcefully now.

Her hold on reality began to slip as he drove her crazy with those kisses and caresses. And she wanted him to descend to madness with her, so she touched him, too. She skimmed her palms over his muscular chest and down his stomach until she could encircle him with her hands. It took both and still he protruded over the top.

He groaned into her mouth. “Stacy...”

“I’m not slowing down now,” she protested. Not when the pressure building inside her was about to snap her in two. He stroked her again—deep—and she peaked. Panting for breath, she arched against him. But she wanted more than his touch. She wanted all of him, so she guided his erection inside her.

He thrust, sliding in and out of her, driving her to the brink of madness again as passion overwhelmed her. She’d never felt anything like this—such an intensity of desire and pleasure.

And such intimacy...

With him inside her, she felt so close to him—closer than she’d ever felt to another human being. He kept his mouth on hers, kissing her as deeply as he was driving inside her. And he kept touching her, running his hands all over her body as if he were trying to memorize every inch of her flesh.

She kept touching him, too, unable to stop touching him, unable to stop moving beneath him. She squirmed and arched. Then he reached between them and rubbed his thumb against the most sensitive part of her, and pleasure overwhelmed her again. She screamed his name as her body shook and shuddered with an orgasm more intense than any she’d ever felt before.

With a guttural groan of pleasure, he joined her, his orgasm filling her. He settled his forehead against hers and stared deeply into her eyes.

And she hoped that he didn’t see what that had meant to her.
Everything.

She had just made love to the man she’d spent the past fifteen years hating. If lying about being engaged to him was a betrayal of her family, this was worse. Making love with him was a betrayal of herself...

“This was a mistake,” she murmured.

He sucked in a breath as if she’d struck him. “I thought you wanted it.”

“I did,” she said. And she did again—even though he was still inside her. She wanted him. “But it complicates everything.”

“Everything wasn’t already complicated?” he asked. “With people trying to kill us?”

“I was thinking more of our history,” she said. Their complicated history of hating each other.

And finally he pulled out of her.

She felt empty—more empty and alone than she’d ever felt, even when her father and brothers had been
away.

He uttered a ragged sigh. “That’s right. You hate me.”

“Ah, hell,” she murmured as she pushed him back onto the mattress. “I don’t hate you. I wish I hated you...” But she was afraid that she was falling for him instead. She swung one leg across his lean hips to straddle him. “I want you...”

His hands caught her hips, his fingers digging into the flesh of her butt as he stilled her. Had she reminded him that he hated her?

“I’m going to need a minute to recover.”

He lied. It didn’t take him a full minute to recover. It took him much longer to reach his pleasure breaking point, though. So she was able to enjoy herself—setting her own pace as she slid up and down him and rocked back and forth.

Sweat beaded on his upper lip and the muscles in his arms and neck corded and pulsed. He waited until she peaked again, and then he thrust up, hard, and joined her in ecstasy.

She dropped onto his chest, so exhausted that she was boneless with sexual satisfaction. She’d never been so fulfilled or so exhausted. Feeling safe and secure in his arms, she easily fell asleep.

* * *

L
OGAN
SHOULD
HAVE
been tired. Exhausted now. But he couldn’t close his eyes. He could not take his gaze off her. He watched as the bright sunshine of midmorning streaked through the bedroom blinds and fell across Stacy’s face, illuminating her already luminous beauty.

He would like to blame his inability to sleep on his having to stand watch and protect her. But he had made certain that no one had followed them here. And nobody knew where he’d brought her. He hadn’t even told Parker.

Not that he told Parker everything. Despite being twins, they didn’t have that intuitive connection that twins were rumored to have. They didn’t tell each other everything. Parker had his secrets—about women. Logan suspected he’d slept with a few of their female clients, which was an offense that merited termination from the Payne Protection Agency. So of course he wouldn’t have admitted to the boss what or whom he’d done.

But Logan kept his secrets, too—about women. He wouldn’t admit to his feelings for his fiancée to his twin. He wasn’t even ready to admit to those feelings to himself. For so long he’d thought he’d hated Stacy Kozminski. When they’d made love, his feelings had been intense—more intense than anything he’d felt before. He definitely didn’t hate her.

But he didn’t want to love her, either...because nobody kept more secrets than Stacy Kozminski. And he couldn’t love someone he couldn’t trust.

A phone rang, shattering the silence of the town house and scattering Logan’s thoughts. Beside him, Stacy tensed and jerked awake. In a fearful whisper she asked, “Who knows we’re here?”

“Nobody,” he soothed her. And that was probably why someone was calling—to find out where the hell he was. “That’s not the landline. It’s my cell.”

He’d left it on the bathroom counter with his gun. So he had to leave her to answer it. He had to unwrap his arms from around her warm, nude body. Then he had to slide across the bed. Cold air rushed over him, chilling his naked skin as he padded into the bathroom and grabbed his phone.

If it was Parker...

But it wasn’t Parker’s number on the caller ID. He answered, “Logan Payne.”

“Payne, Captain O’Doyle here.”

He’d recognized the number; it wasn’t one he was ever likely to forget, but one he hoped he would never have to use again. “Captain, I didn’t think you were serious about that job offer—at least not serious enough to call so soon.”

“It’s nearly noon, Payne,” the captain replied with a chuckle. “I didn’t think I’d be waking you up at noon.”

“You didn’t wake me.” And it was noon? How had he stayed awake all night?

“Too much adrenaline to sleep,” the captain replied. “That usually happens after defusing a monster like that bomb.”

It wasn’t the bomb that had had adrenaline rushing through his body. It was Stacy.

“And I was serious about that job offer,” O’Doyle continued. “But that’s not why I called. I got back the initial report on the bomb.”

“The monster?”

“No, that one’s pretty professional.”

“The first one wasn’t?”

“No. It was crude and amateurish. If it’s the same bomber, he’s a fast learner and vastly improved for his second attempt.”

“When I was back on the force, whenever we were chasing a serial killer, we wanted to find his first kill because that was the one he would have made his mistakes on...”

The captain chuckled. “You are good, Payne. You’re wasted on private security.”

He glanced through the open door to where Stacy had fallen back to sleep in the bed—her beautiful face and naked body completely bathed in sunshine now. “No. Not wasted at all.”

Not as long as he could keep her safe.

“So what did you find on the first bomb?” he asked.

“We learned that the components to buy it were stolen from a hardware store just down the block from the jewelry store.”

“Were there cameras? Witnesses?”

“No cameras, and it happened after the place closed. No one sees anything in that neighborhood, you know.”

“Of course not.”

“But we know what day the store was broken into.”

And when the captain named the day, Logan’s blood chilled. It was the same day that Stacy’s father had died in prison. Why had someone chosen that day to make the bomb and set it in Stacy’s apartment?

Because of her father’s last words? The words she’d refused to share with anyone else—even with her family?

“I thought you’d be more excited about the news,” O’Doyle said.

“I’d be more excited if we knew who actually made the bomb.”

The ATF agent chuckled. “Thought you’d want me to leave some work for you to do. Let me know if you figure it out...”

“When,” Logan corrected him. “I’ll let you know
when
I figure it out.” Because it had just occurred to him how he might do that.

He hung up on the ATF agent and returned to the bed where Stacy slept. But he didn’t join her on the soft mattress and the silk sheets. He just stood over her, watching her sleep as he must have most of the morning.

He wanted to keep her here—in this private town house where nobody knew where they were. He wanted to keep her safe. But she would only be truly safe when the threat against them was eliminated.

“Stacy...”

She didn’t stir.

“Stacy!”

She jerked awake like she had when the phone rang. “What? What’s wrong?”

Everything.

“You have to get up,” he said. “You have to get dressed.”

“Why?” she asked. “Why are we leaving? Does someone know we’re here?”

“Nobody does,” he assured her.

“Then why can’t we stay?”

He wished they could. He wished they could just pretend the outside world didn’t exist. But they didn’t have that choice. They had families. Businesses. Responsibilities. And they couldn’t take care of any of those if they were dead.

And while nobody knew where they were now, somebody might figure it out. So they needed to figure out who that somebody was first.

“We can’t,” he said. “We need to leave.”

“Where are you taking me?” she asked as she sat up and the sheet slipped lower, revealing all her sexy curves.

He just wanted to take her over and over again. But if they made love, he wouldn’t be able to do what he had to. He would want to stay forever in this place where they’d made love.

“Are you taking me to another safe house?” she asked.

He shook his head and reluctantly replied, “I’m taking you to prison.”

Chapter Fourteen

I’m taking you to prison.

His words rattled her. After that horrific day she’d watched her father die, Stacy had never intended to return to River City Maximum Security Penitentiary. Yet here she was, walking through the high fence—with armed guards standing watch in high towers.

Her stomach knotted with nerves and grief. As much as she had loved seeing her father, she’d hated coming to the prison. But since it was the only way she could spend time with him, she’d overcome her fears and reluctance. But she wouldn’t be able to see him today.

She wouldn’t be able to see him ever again. Because of this place, she’d had to bury him. And she used to blame this man for his death. But this man was now her fiancé.

As they went through security, he watched her carefully—his blue eyes intense. He acted concerned and regretful. But if he were either of those things, he wouldn’t have forced her to come back to this place. After they cleared security, a heavily armed guard escorted them to another part of the prison—away from the visiting areas and cells.

She had been there once—after her father died—to collect his last effects. The guard opened the door to the reception area for the warden’s office. A young secretary glanced up from her desk. She flashed Logan a big smile and then spared Stacy a sympathetic glance. “You can have a seat. It’ll be a few minutes before Warden Borgess can see you.”

Logan nodded at the woman before steering Stacy toward chairs at the other end of the reception area as if he didn’t want the secretary to overhear the conversation he anticipated them having.

“I don’t understand why you think we had to come here,” she said for the umpteenth time. But he had yet to answer her. So they actually hadn’t had much of a conversation yet. “If it’s to find out what my father’s last words were, you’re wasting your time.”

“And keeping that secret is probably how you’ve endangered your life,” he said.

“I’ve endangered
my
life?” she repeated, anger replacing her sadness at being back at the prison. “You’re blaming
me
for the bombs and the shootings?”

He glanced toward the secretary, who was either fascinated with their argument or probably just with him. Then he lowered his voice, as if that might make Stacy do the same. “That isn’t what I meant.”

“It wouldn’t be the first time you’ve blamed me,” she said. “When you confronted me at my father’s funeral, you thought I was the one shooting at you.” And that same day they’d become engaged and then hours later they’d made love. Maybe grief over her father’s death had addled her mind so that she’d acted more impulsively than she ever had in her life. But making love with him had actually been the most impulsive thing she’d ever done.

“I didn’t think you were personally shooting at me,” he said.

“You thought I put my brothers up to it.”

“That was before I learned you really don’t have that much control over them.”

She felt as though she no longer had any control over any aspect of her life. Hopefully the ATF had cleared her building so that she could go back to the store and the workshop behind it. She needed to design something. She needed to control something—even if it were only metal and stones. But even if her building was reopened, it still wouldn’t be safe—not until she and Logan caught whoever was trying to hurt them.

That was why she had put aside her fears and anguish and agreed to return to the place where her father had suffered and died. “I don’t understand what you think we’re going to find out here.”

“Neither do I.” Warden Borgess stood in the open doorway to his office. But he held out his hand to Logan and shook it heartily. Then he awkwardly patted Stacy’s shoulder just as he had the day her father had died. That day he’d been full of guilt and regrets. “I still can’t understand what happened to Mr. Kozminski. None of the other prisoners had
ever
showed any ill will toward him...” He shook his head.

Logan’s brow furrowed. “So that attack on him was not provoked?”

Stacy gasped that he could still think so little of her father. But then he still believed that he had killed his father.

“Absolutely not,” the warden said, as astonished by the comment as Stacy was. “Nobody had bothered Patek until that day.”

“Is it possible to speak to the prisoner who attacked him?” Logan asked.

Fear clutched Stacy’s heart, squeezing it tightly. She didn’t know how Logan had confronted the man he believed had killed his father; she didn’t want to ever see the monster who’d taken hers. She’d already had enough nightmares about him.

Borgess shook his head.

“If you asked, he might be willing to speak with us,” Logan said.

The warden shook his head again. “No, it’s not possible. The man died that very same day.”

Stacy gasped again. “What?”

“I tried to let you know,” the warden said, “but you didn’t return the messages I left for you.”

She hadn’t wanted to hear from the warden again—or from anyone else associated with the prison that had taken away her dad.

He continued, “I figured you were busy planning services for your father.”

She nodded. She had been busy planning the services. But Logan Payne had forced those plans to go awry. Instead of mourning her father, she’d gotten engaged.

“Who killed him?” Logan asked.

Borgess shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“You must have seen something on security cameras.”

“The camera in that area had malfunctioned that day.”

“So it was premeditated. Someone had messed with the camera before they attacked him. That someone must have had easy access to that area.”

“All the prisoners do,” the warden replied a bit defensively. Had he thought Logan was implying that a guard had killed the man?

Was that what Logan was implying?

“I’d like to see the visitor logs for that prisoner,” he said.

Warden Borgess narrowed his eyes. “As I understand it, Mr. Payne, you’re no longer with the River City Police Department. Aren’t you private security now?”

“Yes, that’s why I’m here. Stacy’s life is in danger and I’m trying to find out why someone set a bomb in her apartment on the day her father died.”

The warden’s eyes opened wide with alarm. “Are you all right, Miss Kozminski?”

She nodded. “Logan defused it.”

The warden turned back to her bodyguard/soon-to-be husband. “You must be very good at your job, Mr. Payne.”

“That’s why I’m here,” Logan repeated. “That’s why I need to see who’d been visiting the prisoner who killed Mr. Kozminski.”

“From your years with the River City Police Department, you must remember the law and the privacy rules that prevent me from giving you that information without a warrant,” he replied almost regretfully.

“What about Stacy’s father? Will we need a warrant to see his logs?”

“All you need is Ms. Kozminski’s permission. She was his power of attorney and legal representative.”

Both men turned to her, but Stacy hesitated. She wasn’t certain what Logan hoped to gain by looking over visitor logs for either prisoner.

“If we’re going to find out who’s after us, we need to get as much information as we can,” Logan said.

It was true. It was why they were there. She nodded her agreement. “Yes, I’d like to see the logs.”

Borgess turned back toward his office. “I will personally pull those from my computer and print them out. It will only take a moment.”

A moment for fifteen years of visits? Was that how few people had visited her father?

Regret and loss pulled heavily on Stacy, and she dropped back into the chair she’d been sitting in before the warden had stepped out of his office.

“Are you okay?” Logan asked, his deep voice vibrating with concern.

“Can I get you anything?” the secretary inquired.

Her father. That was all she wanted back. But he was gone forever.

Maybe that was why she had become engaged to Logan, why she’d left her family to be with him. So she wouldn’t feel so alone. But she knew that he wasn’t going to stay her fiancé, let alone ever become her husband. As soon as they were safe again, they would break up.

* * *

W
ARDEN
B
ORGESS
WAS
only gone a few minutes. But it felt much longer, and with each second that ticked past, Stacy had grown more pale and shaky. If she hadn’t already thought Logan was an uncaring jerk, she certainly would have after today.

He never should have brought her back here. Forcing her to do so had been heartless and insensitive. But the warden wouldn’t have handed over the visitor logs, as he was now, without Stacy’s permission.

“If there’s anything else I can do for you, please let me know,” the warden said, but he spoke to Stacy, his gaze warm with concern and maybe attraction. He was a young warden, and his ring finger was bare.

But then so was Stacy’s and she was engaged now. He really should have gotten her a ring...

“We’d also like her father’s personal effects,” Logan added.

“I already gave those to Ms. Kozminski,” Borgess said. “The day her father died.”

The day the bomb had been set to blow up her apartment and anyone and anything inside it. The minute they’d stepped through the door, the timer had been tripped so that it had begun counting down the less than a minute they would have had to get out of the place. Was that why it had been set—to destroy whatever Patek Kozminski might have left behind?

He couldn’t share his suspicions with Stacy in front of the warden, though. He didn’t entirely trust the man. The prisoner who’d killed her father had turned up dead a bit too conveniently and easily for Logan’s peace of mind. Because he didn’t want to reveal any of his theories, he even waited until they’d exited the prison gates and climbed back inside the damaged black SUV before looking at the logs.

Stacy sat quietly in the passenger’s seat as if the prison visit had physically drained her. But then she hadn’t gotten much rest—because they had been too busy making love to sleep.

“What do you see?” she asked.

“A woman who loved her father very much,” he replied honestly as he brushed a strand of hair back from her face and tucked it behind her ear.

She shivered, but it wasn’t from cold. Maybe his touch had given her chills. She sighed and said, “I meant in the logs.”

He’d perused them quickly but one name had kept jumping out at him. “I saw that in the log,” he said. “In how many times you visited him.”

She shrugged. “It wasn’t enough.”

“Once a week?”

She uttered another shaky sigh. “That was all that was allowed, but I wish it had been more.”

“At least you came as often as you could,” he said. “I still feel guilty for all those times I blew off watching a game or going to the restaurant with my old man so that I could hang out with my friends instead.”

“You were a teenager,” she excused him. “Teenagers think they and everyone around them are immortal.”

Her visits hadn’t been any less frequent when she’d been younger. She’d always made time for her father. But then she’d already known there was no such thing as immortality or her dad wouldn’t have been in prison for taking a life.

But had he taken it?

Maybe Stacy was getting to him, but he was beginning to have his doubts. He was beginning to wonder if she was right. That her father and his hadn’t been alone that night that one of them had died and the other had been arrested for it.

“Nobody’s immortal,” he murmured as he started the SUV. “That’s why we need to figure out who’s after us. Because eventually we’re not going to survive the bombs or the gunshots.”

She shuddered.

“That’s why I brought you here,” he said as he drove out of the prison lot. “I wouldn’t have put you through coming back here for any other reason.”

“You weren’t just torturing me?”

“I don’t want to hurt you.” That was why he’d tried to resist her last night; he hadn’t wanted to take advantage of her vulnerability. But she’d wanted him. Last night. Today she would barely even look at him.

“Not anymore,” she said of his statement.

“I never wanted to hurt you,” he said. “That’s not why I showed up at your father’s parole hearings. I just wanted justice for my father.” But now he wondered if in that quest for justice a horrible injustice had taken place.

“Then you should find out who really killed him,” she suggested.

He nodded in agreement. “I intend to look into it more,” he said. “I want to know the truth.”

She grasped his arm. “Thank you. Thank you for listening to me.”

It wasn’t just her certainty that had given him doubts but also what he’d found in the visitor logs. Instead of taking the turn toward the city, he turned toward the rural outskirts. “That’s why we’re going to talk to someone else who was there that night.”

“Your father’s old partner? You’re not going to learn the truth from him. For fifteen years, he’s been blaming my father.”

“Then why has he been visiting him nearly as often as you have?”

She sucked in a breath. Of shock.

Logan had felt the same way when he’d seen the name on the visitors logs. Shocked. And confused. He probably would have felt the same way over his mother’s name appearing frequently in the logs—if she hadn’t already admitted to visiting the man. But his mother’s visits made more sense; she was the forgiving sort. Robert Cooper wasn’t.

“I don’t like the man,” she admitted.

Neither did Logan. When he had been with the police department, he’d never lost a partner. And since he’d gone into private protection, he had never lost a client. He couldn’t understand how Robert Cooper had lost his partner.

“But you’re right,” she continued, “that we need to talk to him. He must know more about that night than he admitted—like who else was there.”

“But why would he have let that person get away with murder?” Robert Cooper might not have been a good cop, but he’d still been a cop. And to let a criminal get away with murder...

She shrugged. “I don’t know. Nothing about that night ever made any sense to me.”