Tempt Me (7 page)

“Earth to Rafe.”

Shit.
“Yeah.”

“If she doesn’t have an ulcer yet, she’s verging on it,” Lukas said with a tired-sounding sigh. “She’s going to a doctor when she gets home if I have to drag her there myself.”

Rafe stared at her. Hard. Though sometimes Bailey and Lukas squabbled more like brother and sister than employer and employee, Rafe knew they cared for each other deeply. His own feelings about Bailey were nowhere near brotherly, but on the issue of Bailey’s health, he and Lukas marched in lockstep. “I’ll drag her there with you.”

“No, you won’t,” Bailey called from the hearth, pointing the wooden spoon at him. Somehow, she’d figured out what they were talking about. “Lukas, I can take care of myself.”

“Then why aren’t you?” his brother hollered back.

Rafe jerked the phone away from his ear. “Lukas, she can’t hear you.”

“Thankfully,” Bailey grumbled under her breath.

Silence hummed on the line. When Lukas spoke, it seemed to be from between gritted teeth. “How are the road conditions?”

“The road crews have been out since early this morning,” he replied. “Why do you ask?”

“Someone broke into Bailey’s condo last night.”

“You’re kidding.” As soon as he blurted the words, he knew they were wasted. Lukas did not kid—not about criminal activity, at any rate. “Was anything stolen?”

“A computer’s gone, but she needs to check the rest of her possessions, see if anything else is missing.”

Her computer. To Bailey, having a computer stolen would be akin to someone snatching her child off the street.

“The computer is no loss; it was an old piece of shit she used to comply with the terms of her probation,” Lukas said. “Now that she’s been released, she planned to donate it to charity anyway. It was stolen before Jack could wipe the surveillance software, so whoever took it might get more than they bargained for.”

Bailey had completed her probation?

“Put us on speaker,” Bailey demanded, suddenly standing at his side.

He smelled lobster and truffles on her breath. He wanted to watch her tiny, white teeth sink into pillows of pasta, watch her jaw move while she chewed. Eating together was one of his favorite forms of foreplay—

“Rafe? Speaker?”

Damn it.
He complied with a punch of a button.

“Lukas. For future reference, having my boss call while I’m on a boss-ordered relaxation weekend is not at all relaxing. What do you need?”

Rafe grinned. Though Lukas
was
her boss, she was tearing him a new one as well as Sasha or Antonia would.

“Your condo was broken into last night. Your computer is gone—”

She snorted. “No loss.”

“—but we need you to walk through, check the rest of the place out.”

“Let me check road conditions and give you an ETA.” She went to the butcher block island, bypassing the two pre-paid disposable cell phones he’d found in her purse in favor of the prototype mini that most Sebastiani Security employees carried. He’d watched
The Wire
. Why did she carry burner phones when she had so much secure mobile firepower at her disposal?

Did he really want to know?

Bailey peered at the screen. “MN-DOT shows the road conditions as passable,” she said to Lukas. “I can probably be on the road within an hour.”

He couldn’t read her expression, but he could sense her emotional pulse: thwarted desire, sexual frustration, and a distinct lack of concern about her condo having been broken into.

Odd...and oddly intriguing. Just one more way she seemed utterly unlike any other woman he’d known. 

As Lukas and Bailey made arrangements to meet at her place later that evening, leaving a wide margin for safe travel, he tried to be philosophical about their snowed-in sojourn being so rudely interrupted. It was really for the best. The time-out would give him a chance to think this through.

He sighed. He wanted something serious, something long-term, with
her
. He wanted what his brother had with Scarlett, what his father had with Claudette. With
her.

She definitely knew the score, but were they even playing the same game? Was Bailey simply interested in a stellar lay, or did she sense the possibility of...more?

Did she want
him
, or would any body do?

––––––––

B
ailey glanced in her rear view mirror as she pulled into her condo complex’s poorly plowed parking lot. Yep, there Rafe was, following a safe distance behind, signaling his turn. Why hadn’t he just continued on to his place when she’d turned onto Hwy. 694 westbound? Now she’d have to invite him in.

Her 70’s-era building overlooked the busy interstate, and like many multi-family housing units built during that time, it was blocky, beige, and completely devoid of personality—unless you counted the tag art adorning the side of the building. The stores in the strip mall across the street had been closed for hours, and a snowplow scraped snow to the edges of the empty parking lot. Next door at the auto shop, a customer dropped off his car for a next-day appointment, the headlights of his waiting ride spotlighting him as he dropped his keys into the slot in the door.

Rafe’s navy blue Jeep pulled into the space next to hers. He got out of the vehicle, stretching his arms overhead, and joined her. Wearing jeans, Uggs and a soft black sweater, his blond hair tumbling down to his shoulders, he looked like he should be sipping an aperitif at a Swiss chalet, not dodging snow turds in her working class neighborhood.

Rafe Sebastiani had probably never set foot in Brooklyn Park in his life.

He looked around the parking lot with a frown. “Too dark.”

“It’s perfectly safe. Look, there’s a day care across the street.” After shrugging back into the heavy coat she’d removed for the drive, she reached into her tiny back seat, unthinkingly grabbing her heavy laptop bag with her left hand. Pain ricocheted up her arm, and she dropped it back into the car with a hiss. 

Budging her out of the way with a nudge of his hip, Rafe picked up her laptop bag and duffle, pretending to stagger at the weight of her computer bag. “This thing weighs a quarter what you do.”

With two laptops and assorted peripherals, she knew exactly how heavy the bag was. His estimate was fairly accurate. “You don’t have to carry my stuff.”

“You’re on the road to recovery. Let’s not tempt fate.” He scanned the parking lot with a jaundiced eye. “Or thieves.”

Bailey rolled her eyes. “I’ve lived here for ages. I haven’t had anything stolen—”

“Before today?”

Damn it, he had her there.

“Let’s go inside. It’s freezing out here.” He glanced at his jam-packed Jeep. “The clay should be okay for an hour or so.”

So, she had a clay sculpture of her nude body to thank for the fact that he wouldn’t be hanging around her apartment very long. The thought sent a shiver through her body that had nothing to do with the weather.

As they picked their way around snow clods, she wondered what they’d walk into upstairs. Lukas had been stingy with the details of the break-in. If her place was completely trashed, she just might consider moving. Her condo was more a storage space than a home, and the stolen computer was Paleolithic, a slow, clunky POS she’d used solely to establish some innocuous online activity for Banner to analyze—set dressing, and now that she’d competed the terms of her probation, the show was over. She silently laughed. If Banner thought he’d gained any authentic insight into her by analyzing her online purchases, he had another think coming. Most of the searches she’d issued, and items she’d bought, had been chosen with mind-fucking Banner as her one and only priority. She’d closed down all the credit cards and accounts Banner had been aware of before she’d left for Lukas’s cabin. Any cookies, temp files or other information someone might be able to recover from the stolen computer’s hard drive would be useless to a thief.

Lukas was waiting for them in the tiny entryway, taking up so much space that Rafe had to brush up against her to close the outer door behind them. “I saw you pull in,” he said, taking her laptop bag from Rafe. “How were the roads?”

Lukas opened the stairwell door, letting more oxygen into the room. While the men talked about road conditions, Bailey started up the stairs. Maybe the overwhelming onion and garlic odor of Miss Ella’s famous Sunday hash browns would drown out Rafe’s luscious scent.

She didn’t know whether to thank Lukas or throttle him for interrupting what she and Rafe had started up at the cabin—because she would have slept with him, for sure. The angel on her shoulder whispered that she should be thankful for the opportunity to think about her actions with a clear head. The devil laughingly informed her that if she’d slept with Rafe, the frustration that had plagued her for three hundred miles wouldn’t be an issue.

“How’s your wrist?” Lukas asked. “Do you need an X-ray? I can call Wyland, get you into Memorial—”

“I’m fine,” she answered before Rafe could agree with his brother. “So, how bad is it? What am I going to walk into up there?”

“It looks contained. Targeted.” When they reached the fourth floor, Lukas opened the fire door. “Jack discovered the break-in. When he came over to remove Banner’s surveillance software from your home computer, it was gone.”

“Any damage to the door?”

“Locked when he arrived,” Lukas said, his footfalls heavy on the thin carpeting as they approached her unit at the end of the hall. “No signs of forced entry.”

“Hmm.” The fact that someone had acted with such apparent deliberation bothered her more than a shattered doorframe would. 

Jack opened her door before she could. “Hey.”

“Hi.” She walked into Jack’s open arms. His hug was home, the only one she’d really had since her conviction, when her parents had oh-so-piously removed themselves from her life.

“Were you able to relax at all?” he asked.

“Yeah.”
Liar, liar, pants on fire.
Relaxing was hardly the word she’d choose to describe the feel of Rafe’s long fingers on her breasts, but it would do for now.

She backed out of Jack’s arms and removed her boots, setting them beside Rafe’s Uggs on the rug next to the door—

Rafe. Where was he?

Standing in the middle of her pocket-sized living room in his stocking feet, looking at his surroundings with too much interest.

The combo living room/kitchen/dining room was beige and bare—no photographs, no posters, no art. The sagging love seat had definitely seen better days. The hand-me-down computer table, empty now except for a snarl of cords, was barely serviceable. The refrigerator door was papered with take-out menus held by magnets, and there was a stack of unopened Amazon.com boxes stacked along the south wall—the books she’d ordered to screw with Banner’s psych profile. She’d planned to donate the books to a local library, but had never gotten around to it. Somehow, the boxes had just become part of the décor.

What did her apartment look like through his eyes?

“Jack, there’s nothing in the bathroom—hey, Rafe!” Jenny Williams’ face lit with pleasure. “What are you doing here?”

“Hi, Jenny.” Rafe hugged the other woman, kissing her on both cheeks.

It took Bailey a second to recognize the emotion slinking through her system—jealousy. Apparently statuesque Valkyrie cops with sleek brown ponytails weren’t immune to his charm.

“Excuse me. I need to make a call.” Lukas headed back to the door.

Jenny sighed, stepping out of Rafe’s embrace. “Is your brother ever going to be able to look me in the eye again?” Jenny had been part of the team who’d taken Annika Fontaine’s killer, Stephen, into custody the night he’d attacked Lukas and Scarlett. Her speed retrieving a portable defibrillator had probably saved Lukas’s life.

“Appreciate it while it lasts,” Rafe muttered. “Jenny, have you met Bailey?”

“Not officially.” Jenny extended her hand. “Nice to meet you, Dr. Brown.”

Bailey shook it, her own hand completely engulfed. Jenny had man hands, callused and capable, and she wore a hammered silver ring on her thumb. “Please, call me Bailey.”

“And I’m Jenny. I’ve seen you at Underbelly a couple of times,” she added. “It’s nice to finally meet you in person.”

Though Jenny wore no uniform or insignia that would draw the attention of human civilians—her trim black pants and blue oxford shirt would blend in almost anywhere—her flat, cut-the-bullshit gaze positively screamed ‘cop.’ Bailey felt neatly dismantled, examined and reassembled before the short handshake was over.

As Jenny explained what she’d done so far—a cursory search, and dusting the doorknob, doorframe, and computer table for fingerprints—Rafe wandered over to the chipped Formica breakfast bar separating the kitchen from the living room. He perched on one of the second-hand barstools and started snooping through the items that had collected there over time.

Jack sat on the stool next to him.

Crap.

Jenny touched her forearm to get her attention. “Can you walk around with me and check whether any other belongings are missing?”

“Sure.” Shooting Rafe and Jack a quick look over her shoulder, she followed Jenny into the sea-of-beige bedroom. After several minutes, she was certain that nothing in the room had been disturbed, not even the dust coating the bedside table. If Jenny was baffled or intrigued by Bailey’s living arrangements, she didn’t let it show.

“Is there anything on the computer’s hard drive you’re concerned about? Documents, credit card numbers, anything that could be used for identity theft?” Jenny asked as Bailey made a cursory search of the cabinet under the bathroom sink. Out in the living room, the apartment door opened and closed. Lukas was back, and the guys were talking, but not loudly enough for her to hear what they were saying, damn it—

“Bailey?”

“Sorry. No.” Leaving the lightest possible digital footprint was such a deeply ingrained habit that she wasn’t worried. “One thing that might interest you, though? There’s a surveillance package loaded on the stolen computer.”

“Reporting to...?”