his kiss as his tongue dipped into her mouth and tangled with hers. She grunted and wriggled again
beneath him, but all the friction did was juice him up and send his last remaining brain cells due
south. His groin swelled, and he pressed into her, giving her a warning hint at what she was doing to
him.
She went still. Relaxed beneath him as he changed the angle of the kiss and stroked deeper with his
tongue, more insistent, more frantic, more wild as her taste filled his mouth and head and soul. And
though he knew he should stop, that he was doing exactly what he said he would never do to her or
any woman, he couldn’t.
You think this makes you less of a coward? Less of a failure?
That little voice somehow cut through the sexual haze surrounding him, and when it did, he realized
what the hell he was doing. He let go of her hands, braced his on the mat near her shoulders and
started to push off. But as soon as his mouth and body lifted from hers, she let out a moan of frustration, flipped him to his back quickly and climbed on top of him.
Reality came crashing in. And with it, a whole helluva lot of guilt. “Hailey. Shit, I didn’t mean to
—”
But he didn’t get to finish his apology because her mouth was suddenly on his again, only this time
she was kissing him with a frantic need that was 10,000 times hotter than he’d ever imagined.
He groaned into her mouth as her tongue licked over his, knew he had minutes—maybe seconds—
until one or both of them realized what a stupid move this was. His hands rushed to her hair, and he
pulled the band free, letting all those gorgeous blonde waves cascade around him. He brushed her
hair back, ran his fingers over her shoulder, down her sweat-slicked back, to her hips, where he
grasped and pulled until she was rubbing right where he wanted her most.
Are you trying to save her now, too?
His brain came back online like a power grid suddenly amping up. And though he wanted nothing
more than to flip Hailey to her back once more, strip her of those hot little shorts and prove to himself he could shove that goddamn voice out of his head for good by driving deep inside her, he
couldn’t.
He’d learned his lesson before. He couldn’t help her if he got wrapped up with her any more than he
already was. Which meant he needed to kill this right now and never let it happen again.
He rolled her to her back and broke the kiss. She was breathing hard and staring up at him with rank
sexual hunger in her eyes. And he knew right then it was too late. He was already way more
wrapped up with her than he ever had been with Julie.
He pushed off her quickly and stood, running a hand down his face as he reached into his pocket for
his Tic Tacs. Not the Jameson he desperately needed. But they worked. Most of the time. He
palmed five and popped them in his mouth.
She eased up slowly to her elbows and stared at him. And she knew. He didn’t even have to hear the
voice to know what she was thinking.
Coward.
Yeah, he was. But she was too important to play loose and easy with. And he still hadn’t told her the
real reason he was here.
He held a hand out to help her up. She stared at it a beat, then slowly slid her fingers in his and let
him pull her up.
When she was on her feet in front of him, his eyes ran over her bruises again, and that guilt swept
through him like a tsunami. “Did I hurt you?”
“No.” The venom was gone from her voice, but she was cautious. “I’m tougher than I look.”
Yeah, she was. And dammit, he didn’t want her to be. He wanted her locked up safe and sound
where nothing could harm her. “They have you on the house’s surveillance video.”
Her gaze, which had dropped to his mouth, suddenly shot back up to his eyes.
“You and someone else,” he said quickly. “They found DNA in the house they think they can link
back to the killer. Shit, they’ve got a Roarke employee saying you threatened Bryan in Miami. Hailey, what the hell’s going on?”
She reached across her body and grabbed her upper arm. But didn’t answer. Only stared at him until
he wanted to scream.
“You were at the house the night Bryan Roarke died.”
Nothing. Her eyes didn’t even flicker.
“Dammit, I can’t help you if you don’t tell me what’s happening.”
“Why do you want to help me?” she whispered.
“I don’t know,” he snapped, his frustration over everything—her secrets, her cousin’s murder, and
his pent-up sexual frustration—all compounding at once. “Maybe because I haven’t been able to get
you out of my freakin’ head for the past three months.”
“That’s a lie.”
“Is it? Then you tell me why I can’t decide if I should arrest you right now, just to keep you out of
trouble, or tackle you to the mat and kiss you crazy all over again.”
He saw it then. A flash of something he couldn’t quite read in her eyes. Arousal? No, that wasn’t it.
Disbelief? Or was that fear?
What did she have to be afraid of? Unless…
She took two quick steps back, until her spine hit the punching bag she’d been taking her frustrations out on earlier, stopping her. “You need to go.”
“Hailey—”
“No, Maxwell, you really need to go. Now. I’ve already said and done way more than I should
have. I’m not answering any more of your questions. Go before I call security and have you thrown
out.”
“Just talk to me.”
She shook her head slowly. “You can’t help me. Don’t even try.”
The finality of her voice stiffened his spine. Something in her tone set his instincts on alert.
Before he could ask what she meant, she was gathering her sweatshirt and heading for the door.
“Don’t come back. Not unless you really do plan to arrest me.”
Then she was gone.
Somehow Hailey made it back to her room, closed and locked the door, then sank right to the floor.
In the words of her ex…holy hell.
She pulled her knees up to her chest, dropped her head. Then just breathed. In and out. Until her
heart rate slid back in the human range and her brain slowly came back online.
Okay, the whole sparring thing? Not her brightest idea. But when he’d walked into that gym, she’d
been so frustrated with him and everything else, it’d seemed like the easiest way to get him gone. At
the time, knocking him on his ass had felt like heaven. Until the tables had turned and he’d kissed
her. Then she’d been reminded what true heaven was really like.
Her hand trembled as she brought it to her mouth and ran her fingers over her lips. Like she didn’t
have enough stupid fantasies swirling in her head where he was concerned? Thanks to the last two
nights, she now knew what Shane tasted like, what he felt like pressed up against her, all hard and
aroused, what it would be like to give in and take exactly what she wanted.
Dammit. Dammit, Maxwell.
She pushed up from the floor and started pacing. Around the couch, over to the cherry dining room
table, across the room to the fireplace and back to the door. She wasn’t going to think about Shane
and that stupid—second—kiss. How either one had made her feel or the fact all she wanted was
more. Or his admission he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about her for the past three months.
Nope. Nada. Not doing it. Going there would only get her in more trouble. And right now she had
enough trouble to fill an entire freakin’ Egyptian pyramid.
So think, moron.
Okay. He’d come for answers. But also, for some strange reason, to warn her. And for that she was
thankful. If they could really ID her on that security camera, he’d have been here to arrest her. Not
kiss her silly until she turned to gelatin.
Don’t go there.
Right. She wasn’t.
So that meant the video wasn’t conclusive and they didn’t have enough to take before a judge—at
least not yet—which also meant they were probably going nuts searching for a murder weapon. And
she knew they weren’t going to find one. Not with her prints on it anyway. Not unless…
Her stomach rolled. And she thought of her missing Italian dagger. The one her father had left her in
his will.
What if that warning in the elevator hadn’t been a warning after all? What if it was simply a distraction? Everyone at RR knew the dagger was hers. If someone wanted to frame her for Bryan’s murder, they couldn’t have picked a better way to do it.
Holy…hell.
She was going to get charged for this. She could feel it coming, rolling in her blood like a wave on
the Atlantic. There was a whole host of Roarkes who hated her and wanted a piece of the business.
Though, yeah, just the thought a blood relative of hers could do something so horrible…her family
was sick.
She needed to get the hell out of Lake Geneva. Before the cops found something else on her.
She reached for the phone. Though it was after midnight, she didn’t care about the hour. Steve Gleason, her pilot, was staying just down the hall, in one of the only other habitable rooms in the resort’s
hotel. He answered on the second ring, sounding groggy as hell.
“Steve, it’s Hailey. Change of plans. I need the jet fired up and ready to go tomorrow morning.”
“Sure thing, Ms. Roarke.” He yawned. “You tell me what time and we can be out of here in minutes.”
Hailey thought through her schedule. She couldn’t get out of the meeting in the morning, and if she
disappeared before then, it’d be like slapping an I’M GUILTY sign right to her forehead. She could
slink out afterward and no one would be the wiser for…at least a day. “The meeting with the city
planning commission is at nine. Shouldn’t take more than an hour or so. Have the plane ready and
on standby at ten.”
“No problem. I have to file a flight plan. We heading back to Miami?”
She wasn’t sure. A lot depended on what happened in the next few hours. “Yes.”
She hung up and immediately went into the bedroom to pack. Though she was sweaty and needed a
shower, it could wait. She wasn’t leaving a damn thing here because she wasn’t sure when she’d be
back.
If things escalated like she expected they would, the cops would come looking for her. Her timeline
had just taken a drastic nosedive. No more playing CEO and taking her time while she looked for
those damn statues in her father’s ludicrous treasure hunt. The only way to clear her name now and
find out who’d really killed Bryan was to get to the end first. She had no doubt when she had all six
statues and figured out whatever this big secret was, the real killer would come after her.
He couldn’t sleep for shit. Tylenol PM hadn’t helped. Counting sheep in his head didn’t do a damn
bit of good. And there was no way he was touching the hooch in his kitchen cupboard. It hadn’t
worked in quite a while anyway.
Instead of staring at the ceiling until he felt like putting his fist through a wall, Shane dressed and
headed for the office. As he parked it behind his desk, he figured if he couldn’t sleep, he’d get
caught up on some of that damn paperwork piling up. Maybe writing reports would take his mind
off things he couldn’t control.
Or didn’t know what the hell to do about in the first place.
That’s how Tony found him just after eight A.M. As office staff filtered into the Detective Division,
the room went from the quiet din of the last few hours to the normal chaos Shane was used to hearing. He stopped typing as Tony eased a hip onto his desk. Tiny swirls of steam filtered up from the
Starbucks cup in Tony’s hand. “When was the last time you were here before me?”
Shane frowned, went back to typing. “I don’t know. Never?”
“Yeah, that’s what I was thinking.” Tony took a sip, eyeing Shane over the lid. “You don’t look so
hot, my man.”
He didn’t feel so hot, either. But that little fact had nothing to do with his health.
“Tried to call you last night,” Tony said.
“I was out.”
“Yeah, I got that.”
Tony’s scrutinizing gaze told Shane he wasn’t getting any more crap done until they had it out. He
dropped his hands from the keyboard, swiveled and stared at his partner. “Spill it, goldilocks.”
“I’m worried about you, wife.”
“Don’t be.”
“You’ve got that look in your eye again,” Tony said flatly.
“What look?”
“The one that says, fuck with me and you’re gonna get it.”
Shane rolled his eyes. “I always have that look.”
“No.” Tony shook his head. “Not like this. This one’s been building for the last six months.”
The reference to what had happened with Julie brought Shane’s blood pressure up, but he clenched
his jaw tight and didn’t respond.
“The IA stuff didn’t help,” Tony added, not taking the hint. “But all this shit with the Roarke girl’s
making it worse.”
Shane scoffed and went back to his computer.
“I’m not kidding,” Tony said. His voice dropped so no one else could hear him. “If I get a call in the
middle of the night that you ate your fucking gun—”
Shane inclined his head Tony’s way. “That’s not gonna happen.”
“Is that a guarantee?”
Was it? Yeah, he realized, it was. Because he’d already discovered he didn’t have a stomach for
what that would take. While he didn’t have a whole helluva lot of self-respect left, he wasn’t about
to hurt the ones he loved just because he was struggling with what he’d done.
Plus after running into Hailey Roarke again and finally getting a taste of those sweet and tempting
lips, the only thing he could think about putting his mouth to right now was wet and warm and tasted a million times better than cold metal.