The Men With the Golden Cuffs (41 page)

“No, I’m talking about being horny. That ain’t a feeling. It’s a simple state of being.”

“It’s his usual state of being,” Sean supplied helpfully.

“Like I was saying, it’s not so bad. There’s two points of entry, both guarded with alarms and cameras. No windows. It really is a box, though a nicely decorated one. The main floor has fairly clean lines of sight. I advised the owner to place the table where she’ll be signing those books in the back, so she’s got a wall behind her. As for the cocktail party, as long as we’re in the same room, we should be fine. We can use metal detectors. The owner sells impact toys. No knives. I’ve already talked to the police, and they’re sending the two detectives and a female plainclothes who’ll join the party. I think your girl’s little party is a go.”

Not what he’d wanted to hear, but at least Liam was thorough. Adam slid a look Sean’s way. “And you’re letting Grace come?”

“She wouldn’t miss it. She loves Amber Rose. She thinks those books brought us together. I would say they probably helped.” Sean sighed and opened his coat, showing off a shiny SIG Sauer. “I’m coming out of retirement for the day. This woman means a lot to my wife. I won’t let some shitbag hurt her. And I think she means something to my friends.”

Jake nodded somberly. “She does. She means the world to us. We just have to convince her of it.”

“I think Grace might be helping out with that even as we speak,” Sean replied.

Liam let his head hit the bar. “You’re back on feelings again. Can someone shoot me?”

Adam laughed. This was way better than shooting Liam. Torture. The Irishman deserved it. Well, just a little. He looked at Sean Taggart, his commanding officer in the Army, his friend and mentor, the man who seemed to be forgiving him. “Thanks for coming along, Sean. We would love to have the help.”

“Feelings make me vomit.” Liam’s head came up. “Do we have time for a beer?”

“No drinking before work,” Jake announced.

Liam frowned. “But I’m on e-mail duty. I get to sit here and read four hundred and fifty of Doyle Brooks’ boring rants against undergrads and all the people who don’t appreciate his genius. God, just let me kill the pretentious fucker.”

They had been going through every bit of information Adam had managed to hack from Professor Brooks’ computers and the computers from the Anderson Agency. They had all been taking turns going through them and all the information they had been able to find out on the two detectives.

Jake shook his head. “No beer. No killing Brooks until we get some shit on him. Now, let’s get ready. We leave in twenty minutes.”

Adam was going to count the minutes until they could snuggle down beside Serena, and she would be safe and sound again.

* * * *

“Are you sure you don’t mind?” Grace Taggart asked.

Serena had to smile as she took the books from Grace. She might be a little jealous of the lovely woman since it seemed Adam had previously had a thing for her, but she was so sweet it was impossible to hate Grace. And she was a fan. That made up for a lot of ill will in Serena’s mind. They were all there. All the
Texas Sweetheart
books and
Three Riders, One Love
and the rest of that series. Yes, Grace Taggart was definitely a fan.

“Most people just buy the e-books,” Serena said, sitting down on the couch as Grace handed her a pen. She opened the first book.
Small Town Sweetheart
. She’d labored over that book. She’d put so much of herself into it.

“I got through many lonely nights because of those books. I guess I would really like to thank you for that.”

Tears pricked at Serena’s eyes, and she had to fight to maintain a modicum of professionalism. She hadn’t started writing thinking she would find people like Grace. She’d started writing because it filled a void in her life. It was one of the universe’s great miracles that her work had managed to fill the void in someone else’s life. “Thanks. That means a lot to me.”

“So you can’t let some jerk scare you out of writing.”

She signed her name with a flourish. Well, she signed her fake name with a flourish. Sometimes she wondered who was more real—Serena Brooks or Amber Rose? Last night, Serena had been the real one. Serena had been the one locked in Jake’s and Adam’s arms. “I won’t. I’m not even going to let him scare me out of going to the signing.”

Grace smiled and then took a long breath. “And you also shouldn’t let some jerk scare you out of having a great life with two amazing men.”

 
The conversation had taken a turn for the deeply personal. It seemed her men liked to talk. “Well, I guess you know Adam, Jake, and I have been having a little fun.”

“No. I know Adam and Jake are falling in love with you.”

What the hell was she supposed to say to that? “I wouldn’t say it’s that serious. We haven’t talked anything long term. It’s just a little fling.”

The sympathy that hit Grace Taggart’s hazel eyes made Serena want to flinch. “Oh, sweetie, some man did a number on you, didn’t he? You’re divorced?”

“Happily,” she forced herself to say. She hadn’t really loved Doyle. She’d thought she was in love, but she’d been too young.

“Honey, no one is happy to get divorced. Not really. The marriage might have been hell, but almost everyone mourns at least the loss of the possibility it represented.”

She’d been barely nineteen and the possibilities had been a whole wide future. “Well, I only know that the reality was a man who threatened to walk out on me any time something went wrong. The whole marriage was one long fight where I had to give in to him or lose the relationship. I finally found something I wanted more than that marriage. I found writing. I don’t think I’ll ever get married again.”

It was easier this way. She could just live for the moment and know that it could all end tomorrow. It was the truth. Nothing was certain, so why should she pretend it was?

“My husband died. I was pretty sure I wouldn’t marry again.”

“But you had a happy marriage?” There was a huge difference there. Grace’s husband hadn’t meant to leave her.

“For the most part. There were whole parts of myself I shut off because I didn’t think my husband could handle it. And then I found Sean. I’m too old to start over. I told myself that like a hundred times. But it doesn’t work that way, at least it doesn’t have to. I’m forty-one. I should be a grandmother, but here I am having another baby, and I think this one is going to keep me young, like Sean does. I thought that loving Sean would be the stupidest thing I could possibly do, but it turns out to be the joy of my life.”

“That’s wonderful, Grace.” It was a lovely story. It just didn’t have anything to do with her.

“Why won’t you give them a chance?” Grace sat back, her hand on her round belly. “Tell me if I’m intruding.”

“You’re intruding.”

A slow smile slid across her face. “I might be now, but if you let yourself, we would be such good friends. So I’m going to claim pregnant-lady rights and plow through anyway. I’m going to say a few things because I love Adam and Jake and because I love you, too.”

Serena shook her head. “You don’t know me.”

“Oh, but I do. You’ve been a voice in my head for the last few years. It’s like that with some authors. When I was really lonely, I had your characters. And I learned a lot from them and the woman who wrote them.” Grace put her hand on the stack of books that represented Serena’s life work. “This woman is strong. This woman doesn’t let the past rob her of a future. This woman reaches out with both hands and grabs what she deserves. This woman knows how to love and how to fight. I pray for my friends that this woman isn’t a work of fiction.”

Serena stared at her books, her life’s passion. But what did her life mean if all her passion was spent on words? Her marriage had been a failure. Did that mean she should be alone for the rest of her life or simply exist in the moment because future hurts were too much to contemplate?

“Serena? Are you ready?” Jake stood in the doorway looking handsome in a dark suit and tie, the jacket of the suit in his hand. He had a leather shoulder holster on, his gun in plain sight, reminding her that she needed a bodyguard.

Was she ready? She probably wasn’t ready for any of this. She wasn’t ready to make a decision about anything.

“Baby?” Jake stared down at her. “You okay?”

She shook her head. He was asking if she was ready to go to the signing, and she was sitting here asking enormous life questions. Questions she still didn’t have a damn answer for, but Grace Taggart was making her think. She’d been obsessed with this signing for months and now all she could think was that it would be nice to get it over with because she had a lot of thinking to do.

“I’m ready.” She stood, her focus caught on the books. Was she just fiction? Or were those books her training wheels, her way of getting ready to do what it took to be truly strong, to take the risk to really love again? Her voice was steadier this time. “I’m ready.”

Jake took her hand and led her to the car.

* * * *

Jake really wasn’t ready. He looked around the small store and realized he wasn’t ready to put her in harm’s way, and he damn sure wasn’t ready to let her go.

“So, this is where our illustrious author chooses to sign her books?” Detective Hernandez held up a vibrator in a box. “Well, we know what the books are about, at least.”

Jake had had just about enough of the detective. He turned to Detective Chitwood. “Maybe we don’t need Dallas PD here. This asshole obviously has a real problem with my client’s work.”

Chitwood motioned Jake over and kept his voice low. “Please, Mr. Dean, give him a little leeway. I’ll talk to him. He’s going through a bit of a rough patch at home. His wife seems to have found herself, so to speak. She started a new career, and she’s leaving him behind. And she loved romance novels. Not like Amber Rose’s, but Mike is lumping them all in together. I’m afraid he thinks his wife got unrealistic expectations of what to expect from books like that.”

“I don’t care about his marriage,” Jake said frankly. Yeah, he would give Hernandez another look. They hadn’t found anything, but Adam would have to look deeper. “I only care whether or not he does his job. And I got the feeling you didn’t approve of Serena’s career, either.”

Chitwood shook his head. “I don’t get it, but I don’t particularly care one way or the other. It doesn’t matter what she does for a living. She deserves to be able to make that living without fearing for her life. I took an oath, and I intend to honor it. My home life is hard right now, too, but I won’t let it affect my ability to protect her. Speaking of, I got the profile you sent over. Excellent work. Your profiler seems very capable.”

Eve had been the best the FBI had to offer until a case had taken a terrible turn. “So, you agree that this is someone she knows?”

“I’m not sure. I certainly think the perpetrator believes she’s committed a great wrong that touches the stalker’s life.” Chitwood frowned and stared at his feet for a moment. “I know what you think.”

Jake simply waited for Chitwood to prove he wasn’t as dumb as he’d first looked.

“You think it’s me or Mike. Given that the violent threats occurred after the police were called in, and given our response, I would logically put us both on a list of suspects. I think, after today, that we should recuse ourselves and let this whole case start over.”

Chitwood was saying all the right things. But that wouldn’t make Jake back off. “I think that would be a good idea.”

A little smile played on the detective’s lips. “Of course, it would be exactly the right play if I wanted to throw you off the scent. Feel free to have us followed, Mr. Dean. We are exactly what we come off as, a detective looking forward to retirement and…dear god, Mike, put that down.” He shook his head back toward the racks where Hernandez was studying an enormous anal plug. “A detective looking toward retirement and his idiot partner. That’s all you’ll find.”

Jake wasn’t so sure about that, but Adam hadn’t found anything on either man just yet. He’d already known Hernandez was separated and living at the
Y
, which could make any man cranky, and Chitwood’s wife was fighting cancer. Still, Chitwood was described as deeply religious, his church’s website posting some strong warnings against what they called the pornography of the world.

He would keep an eye on both. He felt much better about the plainclothes officer they had brought with them. She was a young woman with a bright smile who didn’t seem at all offended that she was working in a toy store. She’d laughed with Grace about something before she’d started doing perimeter sweeps.

“Where’s the agent?” Adam asked, coming in from outside. There was a line of readers, almost all women with stacks of books. It was a bit of a madhouse outside. Ian himself was handling the security, and surreptitiously taking pictures of everyone for later research. If the stalker was here, they would at least have a picture to go from.

“She’s in the back.” Jake pointed to the door that led to the owner’s office and the large room which she used for storage. Jake had walked through the room, making sure the one door to the outside was locked up tight. There was a DPD officer standing guard outside. The officer had been very helpful, opening the door for Lara and Brian as they carted in books and boxes. Lara was in the quiet back room, unpacking books and merchandise. “I saw Chris helping her out, though he stated he was doing it under protest and that Lara was still on probation. And the other guy was down there, too, though he mostly seems to just be frowning at his wife.”